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Concerns about Elementalist


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Needs some survival tools on fire and air so eles don't depend on water arcane and needs some survival tools on weapon skills - sword was a step in the right direction.Boon uptime could use an buff or a nerf on other professions, since some professions have more boon uptime than an ele with sigil and rune of %boon duration.

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@Derkon.7408 said:So, we've created a 13 page insanely long read. Do we have any proof that ANet is doing even the slightest towards these concerns? We've been fooled before only to see mindless number crunching. What is our hint that they are interested in anything that has been said so far in this thread?

Desperate and blind Faith in the improbable. This thread is a wailing wall.

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@MyPuppy.8970 said:Ele is the lowest return on investment class. But if you're truly a god with it, you can do slightly better than commoners.

Or you can go the easy way, play any other profession, and perform far above most players with far less effort.

@"reikken.4961" said:This is an old thread and incredibly long, and I doubt anyone is reading it anymore, so I'll keep this short and only touch briefly on one point.

The problem with ele, as I've said before, is that it doesn't have anything baseline. Nothing.

Mesmer has illusions, guardian has virtues, necromancer has shroud, etc. So that no matter how they build they have some strong baseline tools to use. Elementalist has, what, attunements? Except that's it's a replacement for weapon swapping. It's already a tradeoff since you can't change weapon paradigms, like thief swapping from daggers to shortbow. An ele on daggers is stuck being close range. An ele on staff is stuck with a slow unweildy weapon unsuited for close quarters and evasive single targets. It's not a baseline tool like every other class has. And perhaps more importantly it doesn't offer any extra utility without being traited. Which would be fine concept: class power is a blank slate that accepts traits. Except every other class can trait their baseline mechanics too, so ele is still left behind.

Anyway, the result of this lacking anything baseline is that all ele builds either have to check the same few boxes before getting to the rest of the build, if there's even any budget left in the build, or they're one trick builds with no versatility, like the pve dps builds. that do literally nothing but dps and are useless in all other regards. or the recently nerfed pvp burst weaver build that did nothing but instant burst someone if it caught them off guard but had no answer to receiving any kind of pressure.

Yeah, attunements aren't "enough" as a mechanic. Elementalists need something more, which doesn't need to be a different entity, it could be included inside the attunement mechanic. For example, an advanced combo system, where you're encouraged to swap attunements to get the best combos. Or chains and channels that don't get interrupted when you switch attunement. There's so many possibilities to make attunement more interesting, instead of just a glorified weapon swap.

By the way, here's a few elementalist redesign ideas.

@Kirnale.5914 said:I think that increasing the base HP would already be an utopian stuff for ele.

Yup, if we aren't getting DPS buffs any time soon, at least give us the right amount of health. It's incredible that mesmers have more health than us, when they have much more mobility and escaping tricks.

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Just looking at the first page of threads for each profession and apart from fashion wars discussions, none of them are even remotely close to the number of replies and views that have been made on this thread.This really makes the cynic in me believe what some people are stating here, that Anet isn't concerned with the Elem class problems.Not a constructive comment from me, just a personal observation and opinion.

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what others have said basically sums it up. Weapons are stuck in one range which is counterintuitive to this game that revolves around adapting to combat scenarios. Traits are somewhat terrible as they mostly only affect 1 attunement and are often times very reliant on meeting specific conditions like water's damage traits that only work while in water against somewhat with vulnerability and crap like that. Elementalist also lack a real class mechanic. you can't tell me that 4 attunements make up for the fact that all the skills are plain and watered down and that ele lacks weapons swap, which comes back to lacking the ability to adapt to range. Also the lack of a real mechanic has been making all the elite specs incredibly dull in terms of reshaping how the class plays. At least on guardian the virtues can change because they arent tied to weapon skills, but if they were to alter the attunements at all they would have to make and adjust skills for the baseline weapons and it just wouldnt work. Weaver has some fun moments because of all the fast swapping and dual skills, but really its just playing the same elementalist only pressing buttons faster. Revenant suffers the same profession mechanic problems, but at least its f2-4 aren't taken up by the core class and are able to provide something. Next is the extreme cut and dry nature of elementalists skills. We have all these professions who can condi bomb, stack boons, and have some strong flavor in terms of the condis and boons that are accessible to the class. Elementalist literally just has direct damage and healing. Thats it. You can make a gimmick burn build but it just isnt viable, and ele lacks the condi pressure and cover condis that other classes have possesion to. Ele's also lack boons in comparison to other classes. We have ours balanced around when the game was released, where 5-10 stacks of might was all you might see playing by yourself. Nowadays if you cant stack 25 might, have fury, vigor, protection and have a bunch of condis whether their damaging or not depending on the build, then your playing at a disadvantage.

I don't know. A big problem is with how professions where designed in the beginning and how some professions seem better designed to stray from their core mechanics and abilities. Elementalists core using 4 attunements is something that is hard to change without breaking older skills and balance, as we have seen with weaver causing core ele to be nerfed because it just increased the frequency of skill use and just straight damage buffs without any real trade-offs.

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Concerning conjures:If we compare them with engineer kits, we see the differences are

  • Conjures aren't instant cast
  • Conjures themselves have a cd
  • Conjures can be shared

Many in this thread has suggested that we convert conjures into kits, and in that process we would lose these unique functionalities. Therefore I want to propose another option:

  1. Conjures break stun upon activation.

This gives the skill instant value on your bar, with alot of added utility on demand. This alone gives us a reason to equip them since they would already be one of the better picks, and a ton more useful under pressure.

  1. The different conjures yield a respective aura when the picked up.

This means:

  • Lava axe gets fire aura
  • Earth shield gets magnetic aura
  • Frost bow get frost aura
  • Lightning hammer gets shocking aura
  • Fiery greatsword should receive the "Fire Up" effect instead of axe
  1. Since conjures are designed to be shared, we should keep this mechanic, but be able to choose whether we want to aid an ally or use it ourselves by automatically equipping it when you are within range of it's spawn AoE (meaning you drop it on yourself if you need it, or away from you for an ally) instead of summoning 2 conjures.

These changes would create alot of synergies across traitlines, with aurashare, tempest auras, weaver rotations and a great choice for core elementalists.

Using conjures would now get you back in the fight, with a little 4 second boost and a whole new kit to use while your weapon skills come off cooldown.

Edit: If this gives ele too many stunbreaks, consider removing the breaks upon overload for all attunements except earth - tempest stunbreak capabilities has been over the top since it's release anyways. If eles still want a stunbreak on overload they just have to trait accordingly, with Harmonious Conduit, which in turn will make it competitive within it's tier.

It would also be beneficial to lower all cooldowns on these weapons, including the cooldown on the conjure itself - allowing you to quickly cycle through the skills once then drop the conjure, in order to make them more situational. Naturally then the conjure uptime should also be nerfed (10 sec active, 25 sec cd upon unequip?)

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I think, from a pvp perspective, elementalists just need too many stats in all areas. Your defense is designed around healing up damage, so you need toughness and healing power, but you also have the lowest hp pool, so you need vit. All your weapons are hybrid power/condi so you could really use all 5 of those stats too. On top of this you're a boon class both offensively and defensively, better get some boon duration as well.

The weapon range restriction is somewhat annoying, but not really a deal breaker. If you use staff, you could imagine yourself playing a similar role to a scourge... only you're worse, especially survivablity wise (for pvp not wvw where you have a zerg to hide in). If you use scepter in a burst build, you play a role like a thief, mesmer, or revenant... only you're worse, especially survability AND mobility wise. If you play tanky menders sword weaver, you play a role like soulbeast, holosmith, or spellbreaker... only you're worse, as you are spending 1600+ attribute points on defensive stats while they only need 560-1050 so you do less damage and have less burst.

I think giving eles the medium hp pool (15.9k instead of 11.8k) would be a good start to evaluate, without overpowering pve dps or pvp hps sustain.

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@MyPuppy.8970 said:Or give ele higher Boon duration/attack power by default. I mean all classes should have same base total stats by default. Some might have more vit/toughness, others could have more precision/whatever.

This doesn't work because a large portion of ele damage is locked behind damage modifiers. It is actually kind of silly how many damage modifiers you need for max damage as an ele. Maybe ele should have the highest base damage instead of so many modifiers, to make up for their very bad baseline defensive capabilities. That's another possible idea. There are many ways to fix ele, but no big changes are being made.

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@"Dahir.4158" said:Give up. The class has been abandoned.

Most have as rev and eng makes a far better ele or mage class then ele dose now (rev for ranged mage dmg and eng for mages support). Its realty just animations that holding back the ideal of "mages" from them. If you make the hammer bolt into a fire ball and eng med kit 1 into a water ball you would have no ideal they where not mages. On the flip side if you made ele fire ball into a hammer bullet or arrow you would have no ideal that ele was realty a mages.

The lack of mages like effect boon contorl, real condi effect, dmg that gets arone armor and blocks makes ele just a pure physical class with mages like animations. A ranger with a bow whom arrows are on fire but do not burn in effect.

As a player base if talking about it on the forms is not doing any thing action may be the next best thing to get a real update to the class. I suggest stop playing ele at all points of the game rev / eng fill the mages roll far better and play a lot like ele. Anet has a real problem about balancing base off the number of population playing the class. If ppl stop playing ele it will get a buff. Sadly this seems to be the only chose now.

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@Jski.6180 said:

@"Dahir.4158" said:Give up. The class has been abandoned.

Most have as rev and eng makes a far better ele or mage class then ele dose now (rev for ranged mage dmg and eng for mages support). Its realty just animations that holding back the ideal of "mages" from them. If you make the hammer bolt into a fire ball and eng med kit 1 into a water ball you would have no ideal they where not mages. On the flip side if you made ele fire ball into a hammer bullet or arrow you would have no ideal that ele was realty a mages.

The lack of mages like effect boon contorl, real condi effect, dmg that gets arone armor and blocks makes ele just a pure physical class with mages like animations. A ranger with a bow whom arrows are on fire but do not burn in effect.

As a player base if talking about it on the forms is not doing any thing action may be the next best thing to get a real update to the class. I suggest stop playing ele at all points of the game rev / eng fill the mages roll far better and play a lot like ele. Anet has a real problem about balancing base off the number of population playing the class. If ppl stop playing ele it will get a buff. Sadly this seems to be the only chose now.

http://gph.is/18Sfht9 Finally somebody who gets it!

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Trolo lolo loAnd I'm horse if anything will change soo ele can survive in PVE..... trolo lolo lo ... ANET thank that you have d... i... a... elementalists. I lost hope for that and started playing holosmith. And I strongly adviced to do the same maybe then someone in ANET will start to think about eles.

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This is from PvE PoVSooo, let me quote something from the July 10th Balance Patch ..."Core engineer gameplay has had a complex condition-damage rotation for a long time, which paid off with solid damage output. That has fallen off in part due to condition damage tweaks over time and other condition builds eclipsing it by nature of their simplicity."

Complex Rotation thinks about weaversLets make a new Balancenote...

"Weaver gameplay has had a complex power-damage rotation for a long time, which paid off with solid damage output. That has fallen off in part due to power damage tweaks over time and other power builds eclipsing it by nature of their simplicity."

Deadeye anyone? Im still looking for a written Rotation there, with pressing 5111151111 and doing more dmg then weaver going creazy with all skills used and attunement swaps which also must be well timed.

Many others already said it. The Dmg output from weaver is NOT good. It just ... feels not really rewarding for doing such a complex rotation.Other classes have more space for fails inside their Rotation while Ele has not. Ele has a fast timed Rotation and lose much dps if you are failing.Other Classes are just better overall, for doing massiv dmg while bring tons of CC with you and have more sustain.Ele doesnt compensate the lack of low CC or surviveability in terms of Dmg.

I rarely play PvP, but ...correct me if im wrong, power weaver/Ele/Tempest is nonexisting there? Good luck with power 12k Hp running in Condi Bomb and stay perma watter attuned D:I only see tanky healing weavers etc. cause other options arnt viable.

I also like the other Ideas that were already said (Conjure, Aura changes etc) wont say more about these because i share their ideas.Just wanted to emphasize the bad state Ele is in.

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Staff is good in pve because it's a power weapon thus easily enhanced by traits/amulet/runes/sigils... Other weapons do hybrid damage making it harder to maximise damage on those. It is possible, but to reach their full potential you basicaly sacrifice every survivability option. And the class has no built in survivability option by default.

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@Jack Redline.5379 said:Biotuful even here. Devs answering and nothing in Theif forum. Wondeful.

Sorry man but about thief's problems you should write in thief's forum... better do not mix all things together a specially if ANET has problems to see even one thing in the same time. Too many problems in the same forum and in the same time can be impossible to solve to them.

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@"MyPuppy.8970" said:I'm still concerned.So am I, lets see for the patch today, maybe something will happen today. Should be Balance Patch too aight?At lest they said last time its only a "small" Balance Patch inbetween which leads to the conclusion that a "normal" or more bigger one will follow.Idk tho, lets just all hope that sooner or later something will happen.

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@Oli.4597 said:

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:I'm still concerned.So am I, lets see for the patch today, maybe something will happen today. Should be Balance Patch too aight?At lest they said last time its only a "small" Balance Patch inbetween which leads to the conclusion that a "normal" or more bigger one will follow.Idk tho, lets just all hope that sooner or later something will happen.

I think balance patch will be next week or the week after. Today's patch should be about runes/sigils revamp.

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I hate to suggest weapon swapping on an already-complex class, but I would /really/ like to have a ranged option when using sword. The only thing I can do if running around with bounties and getting phase-shifted into range is drop an ice bow and hope I don't get downed or somebody doesn't pick up the other one so I can keep holding one until it recharges. And that requires a utility slot to be expended on a frankly disappointing 'weapon.'

It doesn't have to be weapon-swapping, but some way to extend my range, even temporarily, without a utility slot sacrificed would be a godsend.

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