Concerns about Elementalist

[MyPuppy.8970]

@Kako.1930 said:

@Milosz.5938 said:I think ... and Im really sad for that reason... that our friends from ANEt are not interested in that post anymore.... and in anyother simillar posts that touch any topic about reconstructing, buffing elementalist. Only they notice posts about nerfing elementalists. Sad :(

They never were. These posts were taken from various other areas that might get more attention, merged together, and stuck here so that nobody has to look at them. It's sad to see people keep posting as if someone is actually reading them.

Maining ele is being masochistic by nature, to begin with.

[Mbelch.9028]

@Megametzler.5729 said:

@Kako.1930 said:

@Milosz.5938 said:I think ... and Im really sad for that reason... that our friends from ANEt are not interested in that post anymore.... and in anyother simillar posts that touch any topic about reconstructing, buffing elementalist. Only they notice posts about nerfing elementalists. Sad :(

They never were. These posts were taken from various other areas that might get more attention, merged together, and stuck here so that nobody has to look at them. It's sad to see people keep posting as if someone is actually reading them.

Yeah, it was a clever trick, I'll give them that. Fake some attention, wait it out... at some point ele players must give up, right? We're past that now.^^

I gave up years ago :(. They have no plans to make ele a functioning class.

[LordTemujin.5498]

Maining ele is being masochistic by nature, to begin with.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnd ur absolutly right on that one....probably most weavers on WvW are insane masoshists....including me XD. no wonder weaver is off meta ...:(

[Jski.6180]

Right the winds of disenchantment nerf is going to hit staff ele hard in wvw as it has no means on its own to deal with boons so this thread is pointless start to post on others forms types keep smart about how you word it.

[Milosz.5938]

Maybe if we put here 1 000 000 000 of comments someone from GMs will start to think to do something to make playing elementalist in PVE non-masochistic, suicidal style... Trolo lolo lo

[Milosz.5938]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:Thank you to everyone participating in this thread with meaningful and well-thought feedback. I have one request: When you post, could you make it clear what game mode(s) you're writing about? I noticed that a lot of you did -- like Megametzler, Nightmare, and Nicenikeshoe -- and Agrippa's comment made me realize that in order to most accurately assess the recommendations and feedback, it's good to know the context and your point of view.

Thanks.

Of course.... PVEI put already few posts here... and one of them with Trolo lolo lo :) Very nice song btw with Saruman. You can find it in Youtube.OK.Now serously, is there really chances to make something with "life pull" hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe sorry I almost crying saying that "life pull" of elementalist. Ele has the lowest health point.... and no defence... please tell me then (maybe i didn't notice since my only one year of playing ele) how I can survive meeting with POF (random) hydra for example, how I can kill stronger then rabbit monster without fear of death?. Or maybe place for Ele is in main maps (Tyria) and better do not go to any other? Also better do your story (living world) with party (with anyone else)? Or at the end... after playing 1K+ hours (only ele), trying and giving chances to ele (and only) one year, put money in him... gave up and continue as other profession... ? Yeah, it's easy to say - to give up. But I don't want to.Thank you very much.

Post scriptum: :( I really like ele anyway... antique tragedy

[solemn.9670]

@Jski.6180 said:Right the winds of disenchantment nerf is going to hit staff ele hard in wvw as it has no means on its own to deal with boons so this thread is pointless start to post on others forms types keep smart about how you word it.I literally just released a video today with clips of me playing weaver post-bubble nerf and weaver plays exaaaactly the same way it used to. Still top DPS, still generating & eliminating downs, still surviving fights really well overall. I realize I'm going to get flamed for saying this and thats cool cause you can just watch me do it if you don't believe me but I'm not going to lie to you - you get what you give, competent weavers won't even notice a difference.

My response in general about this thread: I'm honestly more afraid that anet will nerf ele. A single good weaver can turn the tide of a battle right now and it's been like that since PoF release (source: watch literally any competent weaver on youtube do their thing). The only people who will say ele isn't OP as hell in WvW right now are people who either don't play it or aren't great at it/die frequently because they have a poor build or can't predict enemy movement well enough. As for PvE it's the same story - ensure that you're running a reasonable build first of all, i.e. half marauder/half zerk with twist of fate + any other defensive utilities you feel like using if it helps, utilize dodging, utilize movement skills like burning retreat or lightning flash/twist of fate, and be smart about your engages/skill placement/enemy prediction. Then just practice.

Point in case - elementalist rewards you for mastering the class. If you can't survive on it play something else, I love ele, I haven't stopped maining it since PoF release and I don't plan on stopping, it's an amazing class. (Again I'm expecting to be flamed for this but somebody had to say it, might as well be me)

edit: I realize I made this post very WvW-centric and I just want to say that as far as PvP is concerned, I do agree that some changes could be made for PvP to make ele a bit more viable in general, but some builds are doing alright - check out what Cellofrag has been doing lately.

[Jski.6180]

@"SoulSlavocracy.4902" said:

@Jski.6180 said:Right the winds of disenchantment nerf is going to hit staff ele hard in wvw as it has no means on its own to deal with boons so this thread is pointless start to post on others forms types keep smart about how you word it.I literally just released a video today with clips of me playing weaver post-bubble nerf and weaver plays exaaaactly the same way it used to. Still top DPS, still generating & eliminating downs, still surviving fights really well overall. I realize I'm going to get flamed for saying this and thats cool cause you can just watch me do it if you don't believe me but I'm not going to lie to you - you get what you give, competent weavers won't even notice a difference.

My response in general about this thread: I'm honestly more afraid that anet will nerf ele. A single good weaver can turn the tide of a battle right now and it's been like that since PoF release (source: watch literally any competent weaver on youtube do their thing). The only people who will say ele isn't OP as hell in WvW right now are people who either don't play it or aren't great at it/die frequently because they have a poor build or can't predict enemy movement well enough. As for PvE it's the same story - ensure that you're running a reasonable build first of all, i.e. half marauder/half zerk with twist of fate + any other defensive utilities you feel like using if it helps, utilize dodging, utilize movement skills like burning retreat or lightning flash/twist of fate, and be smart about your engages/skill placement/enemy prediction. Then just practice.

Point in case - elementalist rewards you for mastering the class. If you can't survive on it play something else, I love ele, I haven't stopped maining it since PoF release and I don't plan on stopping, it's an amazing class. (Again I'm expecting to be flamed for this but somebody had to say it, might as well be me)

edit: I realize I made this post very WvW-centric and I just want to say that as far as PvP is concerned, I do agree that some changes could be made for PvP to make ele a bit more viable in general, but some builds are doing alright - check out what Cellofrag has been doing lately.

Dps readers do not get the full pic of what going on for dmg. You can trick them and often eles do due to doing dmg vs down players. You need to do hard to deal with dmg condis soft cc dmg or unblockable dmg with out that you need things like winds of disenchantment and scorge to make the weaver dmg worth it.

YouTube is about views dont base your views on the games balance from that i hope anet dose not think this way too lol.

Weaves dmg is to easy to deal with to get nerfed in wvw any more now it can be nerfed due to pve and for what ever reason ele of all classes is much more effected by pve balancing in wvw and spvp.

Ele is an all risk class with superficial rewards the reality is an avag dmg class that needs other classes to do the hard work for it.

[Mini Crinny.6190]

@"SoulSlavocracy.4902" said:

edit: I realize I made this post very WvW-centric and I just want to say that as far as PvP is concerned, I do agree that some changes could be made for PvP to make ele a bit more viable in general, but some builds are doing alright - check out what Cellofrag has been doing lately.

I can edit videos and only put the good vids out too, Cellofrag isn't amazing

Aside from that, I agree that Ele still holds it's place in WvW since there will be less Warriors around but more Scourges for the boon rip

[supreme.3602]

I miss my 6K lava fonts

[solemn.9670]

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:I can edit videos and only put the good vids out too, Cellofrag isn't amazingAside from picking the more interesting fights as opposed to just videos of wrecking random smaller groups since no one wants to watch that anyway, if you think those are cherry picked clips then with all due respect that just says more about your own experience with this game. Yes I'll admit many of cellofrag's clips are average fights for anyone who is competent. I sincerely don't mean to come off as ego-stroking, but in an attempt to prove my point, I will mention that in-game I'm consistently top DPS nearly 80-85% of the time when it comes to real full-on fights both in d/ps and total %dmg (yes I look at it during every single fight) I'm almost always on the ball with my gameplay and by now I have way too many videos uploaded for it to be cherry picking so I reeeeeally don't mind if you want to say someone necessarily has to be cherry picking their clips dude! I live that experience out every single day, not just the days I make videos.

Weaver is indisputably top dog for generating downs and breaking frontlines up so that the melee train can push through. I can't even tell you how many times I've chained off skills quickly and watched the opposing frontline crumble. Honestly I've only seen a few handfuls, maybe 15-20 other weavers who can even pull it off that I know of, but you're just doing yourself and your guild(s) a disservice by not recognizing the true DPS meta. You just need the right people to be on the right classes. Weaver is NOT for everyone and there are many ele mains who would be better off (in terms of maximizing success) playing Rev or Scourge, unless they're more casually oriented in which case fair enough. inb4 I get flamed for telling the truth.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@"SoulSlavocracy.4902" said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:I can edit videos and only put the good vids out too, Cellofrag isn't amazingAside from picking the more interesting fights as opposed to just videos of wrecking random smaller groups since no one wants to watch that anyway, if you think those are cherry picked clips then with all due respect that just says more about your own experience with this game. Yes I'll admit many of cellofrag's clips are average fights for anyone who is competent. I sincerely don't mean to come off as ego-stroking, but in an attempt to prove my point, I will mention that in-game I'm consistently top DPS nearly 80-85% of the time when it comes to real full-on fights both in d/ps and total %dmg (yes I look at it during every single fight) I'm almost always on the ball with my gameplay and by now I have way too many videos uploaded for it to be cherry picking so I reeeeeally don't mind if you want to say someone necessarily has to be cherry picking their clips dude! I live that experience out every single day, not just the days I make videos.

Weaver is indisputably top dog for generating downs and breaking frontlines up so that the melee train can push through. I can't even tell you how many times I've chained off skills quickly and watched the opposing frontline crumble. Honestly I've only seen a few handfuls, maybe 15-20 other weavers who can even pull it off that I know of, but you're just doing yourself and your guild(s) a disservice by not recognizing the true DPS meta. You just need the right people to be on the right classes. Weaver is NOT for everyone and there are many ele mains who would be better off (in terms of maximizing success) playing Rev or Scourge, unless they're more casually oriented in which case fair enough. inb4 I get flamed for telling the truth.

Says it all really about why balancing is screwed and has been for a year 'consistently top DPS nearly 80-85% ' this is what the balance team seems to see, bloody meter numbers. dee pee eees has absolutely nothing to do with pvp beyond a meaningless spam behind the field in a zerg, i.e when facing a zerg of 40, your spam hitting 5 or so people who dont instantly dodge your aoe is meaningless pretty numbers. What makes pvp is the ability to compete in 1v1, spike individuals down fast, be able to hold in 1vx or be able to safely retreat.

[solemn.9670]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:Says it all really about why balancing is screwed and has been for a year 'consistently top DPS nearly 80-85% ' this is what the balance team seems to see, bloody meter numbers. dee pee eees has absolutely nothing to do with pvp beyond a meaningless spam behind the field in a zerg, i.e when facing a zerg of 40, your spam hitting 5 or so people who dont instantly dodge your aoe is meaningless pretty numbers. What makes pvp is the ability to compete in 1v1, spike individuals down fast, be able to hold in 1vx or be able to safely retreat.

I agree on your points regarding PvP but you should've read my post a little more carefully. I outlined how I frequently see enemy frontlines start immediately going down after I've chained off a few high-damage aoes in rapid succession. This was not an exaggeration. I have many videos to prove it works. My damage is not just a pretty number, it's effect is able to be confirmed visually. Everything around me dies and every guild I'm in, as well as a few other guilds I'm not part of/squads who know me well recognize that they are able to do a lot more when I'm around. In some squads I can consistently hit over 40% of the total zerg DPS [this is infrequent, but it does happen] ... if I'm doing almost half of an entire squad of 30's DPS, it's not just a 'meaningless number' ... that's a game changer. Again ... not ego-tripping. Just telling the truth. Weaver is effective. I have a toon for every class and used to main several others, it's not that I don't understand the importance of 1v1 combat or any of the other important things regarding pvp ... it's that weaver is genuinely OP as hell in WvW and sometimes it seems like nobody even knows it.

[LazySummer.2568]

nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

[steki.1478]

@LazySummer.2568 said:nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

Then you're casting your meteors on wrong targets. You have no business in damaging tanks when your biggest nuke has DR on it. Meteors still hits squishier targets quite hard and those are the enemy damage dealers; remove pressure and enemy supports have nothing to support.

Supports are useless without damage dealers. Damage output is useless when enemy still rolls over you (there's no boon rip/corrupt/cc). Necros are useless without proper support. It's all team play, no class can work on their own in a wvw blob.

Staff weaver performs perfectly fine in big zergs, the issue is that lots of skills are worthless/too slow and its main pressure comes from 1 or 2 skills. It makes sense on hammer rev since it doesn't have many dps skills, but ele has like 10-15 of them. The issue is that it's forced into semi support (any water skills, whose heal is quite low on dps builds) in every build so it sustain has to be awful to compensate. The issue is that despite having 95% of damage output from only 3 fire skills, you still need to swap attunements for CC, while almost completely losing damage output (due to damaging skills being unreliable) - with ~15 skills across 4 attunements you're basically doing the same thing rev does with 4 on just 1 weapon. The issue is that self boon sustain is weak/non existing. The issue is that good condi cleanse comes with huge loss in damage (water/arc traits) and/or loss in self sustain (ether renewal is both channel and weak heal; cleansing fire's offensive part has no use, but you're essentially losing a defensive utility skill).

Winds nerf didn't impact eles negatively, it made all ranged builds better since there's a lot less projectile hate now. Dome wasnt stipping boons after 5 seconds anyway, it was mostly a zone control at that point, which is gone now.

I'd rather have meteor shower on shorter cooldown, channel time, duration, less hits, but with weapon skills that are more responsive and execute faster instead of waiting 24 seconds to press 5 and run around trying to squeeze 10% of meteors' damage output with my whole kit and pretending I support allies (at least CC is great).

@certain people in this thread: There's balance issues and l2p issues, don't mistake one for another. Ele is not really designed for spamming 5 buttons off cd like all other classes, so don't treat it like it's made as such. It's supposed to have high effort/reward ratio, but you make it sound like you want reward for no effort by complaining how weak ele is.

[LazySummer.2568]

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

Then you're casting your meteors on wrong targets. You have no business in damaging tanks when your biggest nuke has DR on it. Meteors still hits squishier targets quite hard and those are the enemy damage dealers; remove pressure and enemy supports have nothing to support.

Supports are useless without damage dealers. Damage output is useless when enemy still rolls over you (there's no boon rip/corrupt/cc). Necros are useless without proper support. It's all team play, no class can work on their own in a wvw blob.

Staff weaver performs perfectly fine in big zergs, the issue is that lots of skills are worthless/too slow and its main pressure comes from 1 or 2 skills. It makes sense on hammer rev since it doesn't have many dps skills, but ele has like 10-15 of them. The issue is that it's forced into semi support (any water skills, whose heal is quite low on dps builds) in every build so it sustain has to be awful to compensate. The issue is that despite having 95% of damage output from only 3 fire skills, you still need to swap attunements for CC, while almost completely losing damage output (due to damaging skills being unreliable) - with ~15 skills across 4 attunements you're basically doing the same thing rev does with 4 on just 1 weapon. The issue is that self boon sustain is weak/non existing. The issue is that good condi cleanse comes with huge loss in damage (water/arc traits) and/or loss in self sustain (ether renewal is both channel and weak heal; cleansing fire's offensive part has no use, but you're essentially losing a defensive utility skill).

Winds nerf didn't impact eles negatively, it made all ranged builds better since there's a lot less projectile hate now. Dome wasnt stipping boons after 5 seconds anyway, it was mostly a zone control at that point, which is gone now.

I'd rather have meteor shower on shorter cooldown, channel time, duration, less hits, but with weapon skills that are more responsive and execute faster instead of waiting 24 seconds to press 5 and run around trying to squeeze 10% of meteors' damage output with my whole kit and pretending I support allies (at least CC is great).

@certain people in this thread: There's balance issues and l2p issues, don't mistake one for another. Ele is not really designed for spamming 5 buttons off cd like all other classes, so don't treat it like it's made as such. It's supposed to have high effort/reward ratio, but you make it sound like you want reward for no effort by complaining how weak ele is.

yeah because scourges and firebrands are perfectly balanced where one just has to put down a shade and spam all F keys and wells, and nobody -- from fbs/chronos to squishies including eles can just face tank it, while as fb you just afk until they happened to get your boons removed then you spam utilities skills and pull out your broken tomes.

keep preaching l2p when the """"learning"""" part is basically you not following the tag and camping at the sides hoping nobody sees and have your zerg do all the work of:

1. drawing enemy's attention away from you
2. removing boons for you
3. buffing you with stability/fury/might/quickness/barriers
4. ccing enemies for you
5. removing chill & weakness from you

no other classes are that reliant on the team and being able to sit in a highly telegraphed, long channeled, high cd skill and barely take a scratch no matter which target or build is quite retarded in my opinion

[steki.1478]

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

Then you're casting your meteors on wrong targets. You have no business in damaging tanks when your biggest nuke has DR on it. Meteors still hits squishier targets quite hard and those are the enemy damage dealers; remove pressure and enemy supports have nothing to support.

Supports are useless without damage dealers. Damage output is useless when enemy still rolls over you (there's no boon rip/corrupt/cc). Necros are useless without proper support. It's all team play, no class can work on their own in a wvw blob.

Staff weaver performs perfectly fine in big zergs, the issue is that lots of skills are worthless/too slow and its main pressure comes from 1 or 2 skills. It makes sense on hammer rev since it doesn't have many dps skills, but ele has like 10-15 of them. The issue is that it's forced into semi support (any water skills, whose heal is quite low on dps builds) in every build so it sustain has to be awful to compensate. The issue is that despite having 95% of damage output from only 3 fire skills, you still need to swap attunements for CC, while almost completely losing damage output (due to damaging skills being unreliable) - with ~15 skills across 4 attunements you're basically doing the same thing rev does with 4 on just 1 weapon. The issue is that self boon sustain is weak/non existing. The issue is that good condi cleanse comes with huge loss in damage (water/arc traits) and/or loss in self sustain (ether renewal is both channel and weak heal; cleansing fire's offensive part has no use, but you're essentially losing a defensive utility skill).

Winds nerf didn't impact eles negatively, it made all ranged builds better since there's a lot less projectile hate now. Dome wasnt stipping boons after 5 seconds anyway, it was mostly a zone control at that point, which is gone now.

I'd rather have meteor shower on shorter cooldown, channel time, duration, less hits, but with weapon skills that are more responsive and execute faster instead of waiting 24 seconds to press 5 and run around trying to squeeze 10% of meteors' damage output with my whole kit and pretending I support allies (at least CC is great).

@certain people in this thread: There's balance issues and l2p issues, don't mistake one for another. Ele is not really designed for spamming 5 buttons off cd like all other classes, so don't treat it like it's made as such. It's supposed to have high effort/reward ratio, but you make it sound like you want reward for no effort by complaining how weak ele is.

yeah because scourges and firebrands are perfectly balanced where one just has to put down a shade and spam all F keys and wells, and nobody -- from fbs/chronos to squishies including eles can just face tank it, while as fb you just afk until they happened to get your boons removed then you spam utilities skills and pull out your broken tomes.

keep preaching l2p when the """"learning"""" part is basically you not following the tag and camping at the sides hoping nobody sees and have your zerg do all the work of:

1. drawing enemy's attention away from you
2. removing boons for you
3. buffing you with stability/fury/might/quickness/barriers
4. ccing enemies for you
5. removing chill & weakness from you

no other classes are that reliant on the team and being able to sit in a highly telegraphed, long channeled, high cd skill and barely take a scratch no matter which target or build is quite kitten in my opinion

After latest patch you don't even need to be part of squad to be effective. You get your own might and fury, it's just a lot slower without rev (who gets permanent boons with no effort). It's not main zerg who's drawing enemy's attention, it's ranged zerg who's damaging and zoning enemy. You're not even in range of enemy boon rips, if you're getting corrupted you're playing backline wrong. While I agree that quickness does make meteor shower a lot more effective, you can get healed from just walking through melee squad; you have your own defensive skills and stability (which you really only need for safe meteor). Chill/weakness is problem of every backline build, not just ele (those traits are quite ridiculous actually; cc reflect, taunt and weakness procs really need to go, or at least have range cap).

Ele (and shiro rev) is barely reliant on team, that's why it's capable of clouding around enemy with almost no problem. Try doing that on necro and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you can survive retaliation, you don't need your team to babysit you at all.

[Jski.6180]

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

Then you're casting your meteors on wrong targets. You have no business in damaging tanks when your biggest nuke has DR on it. Meteors still hits squishier targets quite hard and those are the enemy damage dealers; remove pressure and enemy supports have nothing to support.

Supports are useless without damage dealers. Damage output is useless when enemy still rolls over you (there's no boon rip/corrupt/cc). Necros are useless without proper support. It's all team play, no class can work on their own in a wvw blob.

Staff weaver performs perfectly fine in big zergs, the issue is that lots of skills are worthless/too slow and its main pressure comes from 1 or 2 skills. It makes sense on hammer rev since it doesn't have many dps skills, but ele has like 10-15 of them. The issue is that it's forced into semi support (any water skills, whose heal is quite low on dps builds) in every build so it sustain has to be awful to compensate. The issue is that despite having 95% of damage output from only 3 fire skills, you still need to swap attunements for CC, while almost completely losing damage output (due to damaging skills being unreliable) - with ~15 skills across 4 attunements you're basically doing the same thing rev does with 4 on just 1 weapon. The issue is that self boon sustain is weak/non existing. The issue is that good condi cleanse comes with huge loss in damage (water/arc traits) and/or loss in self sustain (ether renewal is both channel and weak heal; cleansing fire's offensive part has no use, but you're essentially losing a defensive utility skill).

Winds nerf didn't impact eles negatively, it made all ranged builds better since there's a lot less projectile hate now. Dome wasnt stipping boons after 5 seconds anyway, it was mostly a zone control at that point, which is gone now.

I'd rather have meteor shower on shorter cooldown, channel time, duration, less hits, but with weapon skills that are more responsive and execute faster instead of waiting 24 seconds to press 5 and run around trying to squeeze 10% of meteors' damage output with my whole kit and pretending I support allies (at least CC is great).

@certain people in this thread: There's balance issues and l2p issues, don't mistake one for another. Ele is not really designed for spamming 5 buttons off cd like all other classes, so don't treat it like it's made as such. It's supposed to have high effort/reward ratio, but you make it sound like you want reward for no effort by complaining how weak ele is.

yeah because scourges and firebrands are perfectly balanced where one just has to put down a shade and spam all F keys and wells, and nobody -- from fbs/chronos to squishies including eles can just face tank it, while as fb you just afk until they happened to get your boons removed then you spam utilities skills and pull out your broken tomes.

keep preaching l2p when the """"learning"""" part is basically you not following the tag and camping at the sides hoping nobody sees and have your zerg do all the work of:

1. drawing enemy's attention away from you
2. removing boons for you
3. buffing you with stability/fury/might/quickness/barriers
4. ccing enemies for you
5. removing chill & weakness from you

no other classes are that reliant on the team and being able to sit in a highly telegraphed, long channeled, high cd skill and barely take a scratch no matter which target or build is quite kitten in my opinion

After latest patch you don't even need to be part of squad to be effective. You get your own might and fury, it's just a lot slower without rev (who gets permanent boons with no effort). It's not main zerg who's drawing enemy's attention, it's ranged zerg who's damaging and zoning enemy. You're not even in range of enemy boon rips, if you're getting corrupted you're playing backline wrong. While I agree that quickness does make meteor shower a lot more effective, you can get healed from just walking through melee squad; you have your own defensive skills and stability (which you really only need for safe meteor). Chill/weakness is problem of every backline build, not just ele (those traits are quite ridiculous actually; cc reflect, taunt and weakness procs really need to go, or at least have range cap).

Ele (and shiro rev) is barely reliant on team, that's why it's capable of clouding around enemy with almost no problem. Try doing that on necro and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you can survive retaliation, you don't need your team to babysit you at all.

Eles own might and fury are build up effects so from MS your first hit will be with out only your 2ed hit or the ppl who are not your first target will be hit by the fury and might effect.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@"SoulSlavocracy.4902" said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:Says it all really about why balancing is screwed and has been for a year 'consistently top DPS nearly 80-85% ' this is what the balance team seems to see, bloody meter numbers. dee pee eees has absolutely nothing to do with pvp beyond a meaningless spam behind the field in a zerg, i.e when facing a zerg of 40, your spam hitting 5 or so people who dont instantly dodge your aoe is meaningless pretty numbers. What makes pvp is the ability to compete in 1v1, spike individuals down fast, be able to hold in 1vx or be able to safely retreat.

I agree on your points regarding PvP but you should've read my post a little more carefully. I outlined how I frequently see enemy frontlines start immediately going down after I've chained off a few high-damage aoes in rapid succession. This was not an exaggeration. I have many videos to prove it works. My damage is not just a pretty number, it's effect is able to be confirmed visually. Everything around me dies and every guild I'm in, as well as a few other guilds I'm not part of/squads who know me well recognize that they are able to do a lot more when I'm around. In some squads I can consistently hit over 40% of the total zerg DPS [this is infrequent, but it does happen] ... if I'm doing almost half of an entire squad of 30's DPS, it's not just a 'meaningless number' ... that's a game changer. Again ... not ego-tripping. Just telling the truth. Weaver is effective. I have a toon for every class and used to main several others, it's not that I don't understand the importance of 1v1 combat or any of the other important things regarding pvp ... it's that weaver is genuinely OP as hell in WvW and sometimes it seems like nobody even knows it.

if a front line has 10-40 people that's not whats happening at all, the aoe hits 5 people and has long cooldowns. What is happening is a lot of confirmation bias with meters and number spam.

[LazySummer.2568]

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

Then you're casting your meteors on wrong targets. You have no business in damaging tanks when your biggest nuke has DR on it. Meteors still hits squishier targets quite hard and those are the enemy damage dealers; remove pressure and enemy supports have nothing to support.

Supports are useless without damage dealers. Damage output is useless when enemy still rolls over you (there's no boon rip/corrupt/cc). Necros are useless without proper support. It's all team play, no class can work on their own in a wvw blob.

Staff weaver performs perfectly fine in big zergs, the issue is that lots of skills are worthless/too slow and its main pressure comes from 1 or 2 skills. It makes sense on hammer rev since it doesn't have many dps skills, but ele has like 10-15 of them. The issue is that it's forced into semi support (any water skills, whose heal is quite low on dps builds) in every build so it sustain has to be awful to compensate. The issue is that despite having 95% of damage output from only 3 fire skills, you still need to swap attunements for CC, while almost completely losing damage output (due to damaging skills being unreliable) - with ~15 skills across 4 attunements you're basically doing the same thing rev does with 4 on just 1 weapon. The issue is that self boon sustain is weak/non existing. The issue is that good condi cleanse comes with huge loss in damage (water/arc traits) and/or loss in self sustain (ether renewal is both channel and weak heal; cleansing fire's offensive part has no use, but you're essentially losing a defensive utility skill).

Winds nerf didn't impact eles negatively, it made all ranged builds better since there's a lot less projectile hate now. Dome wasnt stipping boons after 5 seconds anyway, it was mostly a zone control at that point, which is gone now.

I'd rather have meteor shower on shorter cooldown, channel time, duration, less hits, but with weapon skills that are more responsive and execute faster instead of waiting 24 seconds to press 5 and run around trying to squeeze 10% of meteors' damage output with my whole kit and pretending I support allies (at least CC is great).

@certain people in this thread: There's balance issues and l2p issues, don't mistake one for another. Ele is not really designed for spamming 5 buttons off cd like all other classes, so don't treat it like it's made as such. It's supposed to have high effort/reward ratio, but you make it sound like you want reward for no effort by complaining how weak ele is.

yeah because scourges and firebrands are perfectly balanced where one just has to put down a shade and spam all F keys and wells, and nobody -- from fbs/chronos to squishies including eles can just face tank it, while as fb you just afk until they happened to get your boons removed then you spam utilities skills and pull out your broken tomes.

keep preaching l2p when the """"learning"""" part is basically you not following the tag and camping at the sides hoping nobody sees and have your zerg do all the work of:

1. drawing enemy's attention away from you
2. removing boons for you
3. buffing you with stability/fury/might/quickness/barriers
4. ccing enemies for you
5. removing chill & weakness from you

no other classes are that reliant on the team and being able to sit in a highly telegraphed, long channeled, high cd skill and barely take a scratch no matter which target or build is quite kitten in my opinion

After latest patch you don't even need to be part of squad to be effective. You get your own might and fury, it's just a lot slower without rev (who gets permanent boons with no effort). It's not main zerg who's drawing enemy's attention, it's ranged zerg who's damaging and zoning enemy. You're not even in range of enemy boon rips, if you're getting corrupted you're playing backline wrong. While I agree that quickness does make meteor shower a lot more effective, you can get healed from just walking through melee squad; you have your own defensive skills and stability (which you really only need for safe meteor). Chill/weakness is problem of every backline build, not just ele (those traits are quite ridiculous actually; cc reflect, taunt and weakness procs really need to go, or at least have range cap).

Ele (and shiro rev) is barely reliant on team, that's why it's capable of clouding around enemy with almost no problem. Try doing that on necro and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you can survive retaliation, you don't need your team to babysit you at all.

That's your opinion, and my opinion is the reverse. There's no way you can get meaningful fury/might/stab yourself unless you sacrifice your defense/offense or exchange one of those boons for the other. The fury from Raging Storm trait is not even real because it requires a critc in the first place and only lasts 2s on a 3s icd. Air trait line is also quite trash compared to Arcane in my opinion because you miss out crucial cd reduction for your attunments, perma swiftness, and need to camp air to be able to move anywhere, but it's still probably personal preference (and no, I'm not wasting time doing the switch build thing just to move around and then switch back every time). The best fury you can get from standard dps staff weaver is from either Unravel or blasting your fire fields with Persisting Flames. Taking Unravel means giving up either mist form or lightning flash and you're that much easier to get caught and die without these 2. The easy 10+ stacks of might from Pyromancer's is just that much better than Persisting Flames it's really not even an option. Having stability for safe MS is quite useful when zergs are constantly moving and there are a lot more opportunities to cast it when you do have it, especially when defending against enemy siege, otherwise it's really just hoping for your zerg to distract enemy's zerg for you again until you can actually use your MS.

Necros can poke with their 1200 ranged staff & 900 ranged skills quite well, and they have their own spammable condi clears and barriers to poke if they wanted. Plus, chills & weakness don't affect them as much as it does to power weavers. In fact, no other specialization in the entire game, including core ele and tempest, gets countered by chill as hard as weaver does because that's just how weavers work -- they need to constantly switch attunement to be effective but they also get locked out of all attunements whenever they switch (also why alacrity is so much more effective on weavers). If I see some staff weavers running around by themselves trying to harass our zerg as necro, all I have to do is spam my marks, especially chill & fear on them. There's no way they can channel their meteor shower without getting hit by my shades unless they do the lightning flash/burning retreat trick, and the telegraph of meteor shower is so huge and slow anyways all i have to do is walk out of it and maybe dodge/barrier once to take no damage.

The only downside I felt when playing necros is their incredibly slow movement because they don't generally have access to perma swiftness and less stunbreaks compared to weavers so it's that much easier for me to get chain cced and killed, but really these 2 issues don't matter as much considering that it's mostly solved by actually being with the tag. I'd also gladly make this trade to be able to just spam skills regardless of targets and still do actual pressure, or play the blood variant where i get to not only play as support that has powerful barriers and incredible rez for my zerg but also still pressure the enemy because boon removal is just so useful.

Every time I play ele in both WvW and sPvP it's really just me feeling like I'm getting carried by my team the entire time. I could care less about some artificial numbers on a 3rd party tool that's inflated from hitting downs most of the time, and these downs are even usually generated with the help of the team. Ele is just neither a play maker nor a true team support to me but instead some class that begs for its team to do all the work so it can look at some big numbers and feel like it's doing something.

[steki.1478]

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

Then you're casting your meteors on wrong targets. You have no business in damaging tanks when your biggest nuke has DR on it. Meteors still hits squishier targets quite hard and those are the enemy damage dealers; remove pressure and enemy supports have nothing to support.

Supports are useless without damage dealers. Damage output is useless when enemy still rolls over you (there's no boon rip/corrupt/cc). Necros are useless without proper support. It's all team play, no class can work on their own in a wvw blob.

Staff weaver performs perfectly fine in big zergs, the issue is that lots of skills are worthless/too slow and its main pressure comes from 1 or 2 skills. It makes sense on hammer rev since it doesn't have many dps skills, but ele has like 10-15 of them. The issue is that it's forced into semi support (any water skills, whose heal is quite low on dps builds) in every build so it sustain has to be awful to compensate. The issue is that despite having 95% of damage output from only 3 fire skills, you still need to swap attunements for CC, while almost completely losing damage output (due to damaging skills being unreliable) - with ~15 skills across 4 attunements you're basically doing the same thing rev does with 4 on just 1 weapon. The issue is that self boon sustain is weak/non existing. The issue is that good condi cleanse comes with huge loss in damage (water/arc traits) and/or loss in self sustain (ether renewal is both channel and weak heal; cleansing fire's offensive part has no use, but you're essentially losing a defensive utility skill).

Winds nerf didn't impact eles negatively, it made all ranged builds better since there's a lot less projectile hate now. Dome wasnt stipping boons after 5 seconds anyway, it was mostly a zone control at that point, which is gone now.

I'd rather have meteor shower on shorter cooldown, channel time, duration, less hits, but with weapon skills that are more responsive and execute faster instead of waiting 24 seconds to press 5 and run around trying to squeeze 10% of meteors' damage output with my whole kit and pretending I support allies (at least CC is great).

@certain people in this thread: There's balance issues and l2p issues, don't mistake one for another. Ele is not really designed for spamming 5 buttons off cd like all other classes, so don't treat it like it's made as such. It's supposed to have high effort/reward ratio, but you make it sound like you want reward for no effort by complaining how weak ele is.

yeah because scourges and firebrands are perfectly balanced where one just has to put down a shade and spam all F keys and wells, and nobody -- from fbs/chronos to squishies including eles can just face tank it, while as fb you just afk until they happened to get your boons removed then you spam utilities skills and pull out your broken tomes.

keep preaching l2p when the """"learning"""" part is basically you not following the tag and camping at the sides hoping nobody sees and have your zerg do all the work of:

1. drawing enemy's attention away from you
2. removing boons for you
3. buffing you with stability/fury/might/quickness/barriers
4. ccing enemies for you
5. removing chill & weakness from you

no other classes are that reliant on the team and being able to sit in a highly telegraphed, long channeled, high cd skill and barely take a scratch no matter which target or build is quite kitten in my opinion

After latest patch you don't even need to be part of squad to be effective. You get your own might and fury, it's just a lot slower without rev (who gets permanent boons with no effort). It's not main zerg who's drawing enemy's attention, it's ranged zerg who's damaging and zoning enemy. You're not even in range of enemy boon rips, if you're getting corrupted you're playing backline wrong. While I agree that quickness does make meteor shower a lot more effective, you can get healed from just walking through melee squad; you have your own defensive skills and stability (which you really only need for safe meteor). Chill/weakness is problem of every backline build, not just ele (those traits are quite ridiculous actually; cc reflect, taunt and weakness procs really need to go, or at least have range cap).

Ele (and shiro rev) is barely reliant on team, that's why it's capable of clouding around enemy with almost no problem. Try doing that on necro and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you can survive retaliation, you don't need your team to babysit you at all.

That's your opinion, and my opinion is the reverse. There's no way you can get meaningful fury/might/stab yourself unless you sacrifice your defense/offense or exchange one of those boons for the other. The fury from Raging Storm trait is not even real because it requires a critc in the first place and only lasts 2s on a 3s icd. Air trait line is also quite trash compared to Arcane in my opinion because you miss out crucial cd reduction for your attunments, perma swiftness, and need to camp air to be able to move anywhere, but it's still probably personal preference (and no, I'm not wasting time doing the switch build thing just to move around and then switch back every time). The best fury you can get from standard dps staff weaver is from either Unravel or blasting your fire fields with Persisting Flames. Taking Unravel means giving up either mist form or lightning flash and you're that much easier to get caught and die without these 2. The easy 10+ stacks of might from Pyromancer's is just that much better than Persisting Flames it's really not even an option. Having stability for safe MS is quite useful when zergs are constantly moving and there are a lot more opportunities to cast it when you do have it, especially when defending against enemy siege, otherwise it's really just hoping for your zerg to distract enemy's zerg for you again until you can actually use your MS.

Stay near revs before fights so you get boons. Walk near tag when you get low on hp/boons.

Necros can poke with their 1200 ranged staff & 900 ranged skills quite well, and they have their own spammable condi clears and barriers to poke if they wanted. Plus, chills & weakness don't affect them as much as it does to power weavers. In fact, no other specialization in the entire game, including core ele and tempest, gets countered by chill as hard as weaver does because that's just how weavers work -- they need to constantly switch attunement to be effective but they also get locked out of all attunements whenever they switch (also why alacrity is so much more effective on weavers). If I see some staff weavers running around by themselves trying to harass our zerg as necro, all I have to do is spam my marks, especially chill & fear on them. There's no way they can channel their meteor shower without getting hit by my shades unless they do the lightning flash/burning retreat trick, and the telegraph of meteor shower is so huge and slow anyways all i have to do is walk out of it and maybe dodge/barrier once to take no damage.

Their 1200 poke barely does damage, it's mostly used for cc, condi spam or condi transfer. If you walk to them then you're basically dead since other 1200 range classes are much more effective at zoning than necro. You dont play range wars with 1 ele, you do it with 5-15 builds with 1200+ range so gl doing something vs them as necro.

The only downside I felt when playing necros is their incredibly slow movement because they don't generally have access to perma swiftness and less stunbreaks compared to weavers so it's that much easier for me to get chain cced and killed, but really these 2 issues don't matter as much considering that it's mostly solved by actually being with the tag. I'd also gladly make this trade to be able to just spam skills regardless of targets and still do actual pressure, or play the blood variant where i get to not only play as support that has powerful barriers and incredible rez for my zerg but also still pressure the enemy because boon removal is just so useful.

And ele issues are solved by being near revenant. Easy 10 might and perma swift/fury, you have your own defenses anyway. You cant stun lock ele due to stability and evade on stun breaks and they can always mist form behind the tag. Basically your only issue is lack of heals, but again, you walk near tag/out of combat and continue what you were doing before.

Every time I play ele in both WvW and sPvP it's really just me feeling like I'm getting carried by my team the entire time. I could care less about some artificial numbers on a 3rd party tool that's inflated from hitting downs most of the time, and these downs are even usually generated with the help of the team. Ele is just neither a play maker nor a true team support to me but instead some class that begs for its team to do all the work so it can look at some big numbers and feel like it's doing something.

In small scale I agree: glass cannon builds dont have high enough burst to compensate for their low mobility/sustain and bruiser builds just dont have damage pressure to handle enemies. But in large scale eles and warrs are what makes plays happen. Warr is the obvious reason due to bubble/boon rip, but ele is often underrated and probably not played properly to its full potential. When you get a ranged squad of 10-15 (mostly revs and eles, but rangers can be quite deadly as well with their 10k autos and unblockable bursts) you can easily control where enemy blob moves with constant meteor spam and they cant do anything against you since you are mobile and have more range than them (unless enemy also has a strong ranged force). In that situation you're the playmaker since it takes only 3-5 good meteors on top of corrupts/bubbles to wipe wipe enemy blob (even if enemy has stronger melee blob that would wipe yours, you have much better ranged damage; I had a blob once with 30 necros and 2 eles that couldnt wipe anything despite having lots of currupts - the damage just wasnt there). I agree that damage is worthless without boon removal and CC, but boon removal/cc are pointless if you have 0 damage pressure, and necros for example have quite lower damage potential than eles/revs.

There needs to be balance between all these roles in wvw and that balance exists at the moment. The problem is that certain classes have much more roles than other ones and ele's role is based on rng.

[solemn.9670]

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:if a front line has 10-40 people that's not whats happening at all, the aoe hits 5 people and has long cooldowns. What is happening is a lot of confirmation bias with meters and number spam.

OK, I should've been more clear - I'm not suggesting I've ever taken down 10 frontliners simultaneously. But you do believe me when I tell you that I consistently chain-cast (as quickly as possible in the game) 5 to 7 skills and can at least take out 4 or 5 of them, yes? Because I do that literally every single day, man. Also the cooldowns are not that long if you do a complete rotation (earth-water, fire-earth, fire-fire, air-fire, water-air, repeat with earth-water... best DPS rotation for WvW and no cooldowns aside from meteor shower) Confirmation bias is a good point to raise and I'm glad you brought it up but it can't be confirmation bias if it survives such a large sample size.

I'm not sure how many times I can say "I do this all the time and I swear to god it works and everyone who sees me do it knows it was me because they comment on it and treat me as an asset" before I sound like I'm entirely absorbed in my ego. It's really demanding and not easy, but it can be done, and it can be done fairly consistently --- that's all I'm saying.

I just feel like everyone who says it's number spam/meaningless numbers has never got consistent 10-13k averaged d/ps over a 3 minute long complicated zerg fight while surviving almost flawlessly before. If you've done that first-hand and seen all the downs you've generated you won't think it's meaningless >__> god I sound like a dick when I read that over, but I'm not sure how else to put it. It's possible ;; how do I convince you it's possible!? lol

[solemn.9670]

@"LazySummer.2568" said:There's no way you can get meaningful fury/might/stab yourself unless you sacrifice your defense/offense or exchange one of those boons for the other. The fury from Raging Storm trait is not even real because it requires a critc in the first place and only lasts 2s on a 3s icd.

with a 60-65% crit chance (your crit chance should be somewhere around there unless you don't care about having good dps) you're getting at least 25 seconds to an unlikely but still possible theoretical 40seconds of fury every 60 seconds. I know this because I've done calculations and never had a problem with it, mostly because this trait in WvW is just to make up for not having a rev in your party and optimally your commander should be pairing revs and weavers in the same parties. I have almost 80-90% fury uptime whenever I'm in a squad >__> it's always there when I look down at my boons.

Air trait line is also quite trash compared to Arcane in my opinion because you miss out crucial cd reduction for your attunments, perma swiftness, and need to camp air to be able to move anywhere,

When I finish my WvW max-dps rotation I'm just barely off cooldowns and can restart it, I've tried running arcane and it did nothing because skill cooldowns>attunement cooldowns. Without max boons like you would get in raids, your dps will be significantly lower than it would be if you ran air which has fury uptime, a 10% dmg vs CC'd targets and 20% dmg vs <50% health targets as well as consistent 2.5k 900 range hits just for attuning to air. I also don't know what you mean by "camp air to be able to move anywhere" ... weaver's mobility is one of the best in the game o__O you must be running a weird experimental build or you're just not utilizing it effectively. Weaver is amazing for movement regardless of your traitlines.

Also, perma swiftness - you are playing Weaver right? You know you get swiftness every time you cast a dual skill man? When I'm running alone to catch up with a zerg I dual skill, dual skill, burning retreat backwards, dual skill, dual skill ... perma swiftness and very fast travel time and if you see a roamer coming your way you'll have time to switch attunements, and if you don't see the roamer coming, well you're surprise-ganked either way.

Having stability for safe MS is quite useful when zergs are constantly moving and there are a lot more opportunities to cast it when you do have it, especially when defending against enemy siege, otherwise it's really just hoping for your zerg to distract enemy's zerg for you again until you can actually use your MS.

I tried the stabbing up before casting MS a few times and it's a cool gimmick, but it's really just a gimmick. I get ~90% of my MS casts off just by doing the burning retreat-meteor shower trick. Saves you from slotting a stab skill/weaver trait and allows you to cast MS from 2000 range .... 2900 if you combine it with LF.

Respectfully, the issues you're describing are non-issues

[Bladestrom.6425]

@"SoulSlavocracy.4902" said:

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:if a front line has 10-40 people that's not whats happening at all, the aoe hits 5 people and has long cooldowns. What is happening is a lot of confirmation bias with meters and number spam.

OK, I should've been more clear - I'm not suggesting I've ever taken down 10 frontliners simultaneously. But you do believe me when I tell you that I consistently chain-cast (as quickly as possible in the game) 5 to 7 skills and can at least take out 4 or 5 of them, yes? Because I do that literally every single day, man. Also the cooldowns are not that long if you do a complete rotation (earth-water, fire-earth, fire-fire, air-fire, water-air, repeat with earth-water... best DPS rotation for WvW and no cooldowns aside from meteor shower) Confirmation bias is a good point to raise and I'm glad you brought it up but it can't be confirmation bias if it survives such a large sample size.

I'm not sure how many times I can say "I do this all the time and I swear to god it works and everyone who sees me do it knows it was me because they comment on it and treat me as an asset" before I sound like I'm entirely absorbed in my ego. It's really demanding and not easy, but it can be done, and it can be done fairly consistently --- that's all I'm saying.

I just feel like everyone who says it's number spam/meaningless numbers has never got consistent 10-13k averaged dps over a 3 minute long complicated zerg fight while surviving almost flawlessly before. If you've done that first-hand and seen all the downs you've generated you won't think it's meaningless >

__> god I sound like a kitten when I read that over, but I'm not sure how else to put it. It's possible ;

; how do I convince you it's possible!? lol

lets say you do 11.5k dps on a zerg. People in zergs do not stand still in aoe, so basically your 11.5k is spread across all zerg. Even if everyone did stand about like rabbits caught in headlights so your aoe can rain over them for a sustained period of time , that's STILL only 2kish dps per person. You see its not your 2k dps that's doing the main pvp work to down people, its the players on the front line with the burst. Ele AOE is just background noise that looks shiny on a meter and/or hitting already low players who are pvping.

Ask yourself this, if you were in the front line and you see red circles - what would you do? same for everyone else.

[solemn.9670]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:lets say you do 11.5k dps on a zerg. People in zergs do not stand still in aoe, so basically your 11.5k is spread across all zerg. Even if everyone did stand about like rabbits caught in headlights so your aoe can rain over them for a sustained period of time , that's STILL only 2kish dps per person. You see its not your 2k dps thats finishing people off, its the players on the front line with the burst, your just background noise that looks shiny on a meter or hitting already low players who are pvping.

Ask yourself this, if you were in the front line and you see red circles - what would you do? same for everyone else.Spot on, I should've anticipated and mentioned that, ty for the opportunity. Yeah so players aren't static, they'll move out of damage, but imagine 1 weaver with 11.5k dps, 2 scourges with 8k dps and a handful of revs all within 6-9k DPS and spread that out over a radius of 600 and at least a few things are going down because the damage output is greater than frontline sustain output.

Weaver is the final nail in the coffin, it can't down things alone, that's correct, but you down things so much more effectively when it's present. MS in conjunction with arcane wave and lightning skill 2 (forget the name) alone, as a skill combo, is a massive damage burst unlike seen from other classes. And it can be followed up with other high damage skills to keep lesser output, but still significant damage output going.

I mean, the same argument could be made about scourge or rev as well. But you still need damage to down things lol, and when I see that 70% of the zerg's damage came from 2 revs, 1 scourge and 1 weaver I'm gonna bet that those 4 people did the bulk of the work regardless of how pretty the numbers are or aren't

edit: also keep in mind I actively predict where the zerg is going and I can guess what a commander is about to do next pretty well so most of my skills are placed to keep a constant pressure on the same part of the zerg. You can only walk in weaver aoes for so long man >__>