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Concerns about Elementalist


System

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As a weaver main, I want the skill combinations I perform to feel numerically rewarding. The higher the skill cap, the greater my damage, healing, or support/utility output should be.

As a player that is rapidly switching attunements, I want to be able to swap my main and offhand attunements easily, quickly, and without having to use up my utility and elite skill slots.

As a longtime elementalist player, I want all of my elements to be able to contribute to a primary goal based on my weapon type. Ex. If my staff is a heavy AoE direct damage damage weapon, every elemental attunement's skills should be able to contribute in some way that further enhances or extends the AoE direct damage.

As a squishy character class with a melee weapon in my main hand, I want to have sustainability that doesn't require specific skill activation.

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@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:First of all, i play engi, elem, war, mesmer and core guard.

As i say in an other post :

The problem here is that ppl mix between love playing a profession and knowing how to play it,

Weaver is not a class for everybody, there's a few gooooood weavers there, the rest !!? averages or bads.

Buffing Elem (Weaver) at the moment gonna just make Averages/bads weavers good and Good Weavers.... GODS.

Boy, this happens with all classes.Isn't a reason to won't revamp a class.

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@System , you did a great job with Guardian Staff (changing only 2 skills) please do the same with Elementalist.Could add chain attacks to fire and water, in Earth change to something like Rock Barrer/Hurl and the skill animation Wave of Wrath could replace it.If possible, add another weapon to Elem core, like a mace or a torch. Elem has few options with weapons.

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As I posted in the aura thread, I think the only change ele needs right now is to move Powerful Aura from the Water Trait Line and make it a Grandmaster in Arcane. This would allow eles to not always have to spec to Water in order to run an Aura build. You might actually take Earth for the Protection boost, or Fire for the condi cleansing.

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@ClickToKill.8473 said:As I posted in the aura thread, I think the only change ele needs right now is to move Powerful Aura from the Water Trait Line and make it a Grandmaster in Arcane. This would allow eles to not always have to spec to Water in order to run an Aura build. You might actually take Earth for the Protection boost, or Fire for the condi cleansing.

Core ele has quite pathetic aura support though. Powerful aura shouldnt be more than a minor on tempest, a spec that actually focuses on auras.

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Ele needs weapons specified to carry one thing, all weapons now have a full package but half of the it is wasted because of the trait lines themed around the attunements, you spam all damage dealers and then camp fire the whole time because it carries all multipliers yet provides 0 defense: add trait lines like arcane but actually useful because arcane is the worst line now especially after last update damage wise and boon uptime is a joke. Ele will always be locked into either earth/water or fire/air because the trait lines that kind of unlock the attunements to be useful. Weapons and trait lines are awful and perhaps a weapon swap like what weaver would have been would be great one weapon carries 2 attunements with the ability to reach other attunements with another weapon that can carry out these attunements better and focus on this mechanic with the trait lines and utilites. Allow ele to specialize in one role and nothing else besides and forget about the jack-of-all-trades concept because other professions can fit in any role with 2 e-specs.

And for once, stop nerfing core to take down an e-spec, this isn't a solution amongst all professions, because any further changes that will be taken to the e-spec then will be the death of the profession.

I bet anyone would love to know in the balance patch why some adjustments were done and how harmful were things before the change, allow the community to least share an insight on what's going on.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Jski.6180 said:

@Nepster.4275 said:I was thinking people stopped posting here, seems like its not that way

Maybe for another 6 months but only these light bumbs to keep showing anet they not used this at all and in fact seems to be going out of there way to do want the ele community dose not want.

The thing i do not understand is that Anet keeps telling they want balance in the game, but actually they do not do anything important to get it done. What i mean is, GW has a very big community, they could find people for ALL game modes for ALL classes and ALL builds ever played who could explain them what to change to maintain the perfect balance, but NO they change stuff that they think causes the imbalance.I mean changing stuff they think is a good way to start it, no question , but when you fail to bring balance after the X th balance patch, you should consider asking someone who basically lives on GW, but this is only my opinion about it maybe am wrong

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@Nepster.4275 said:

@Nepster.4275 said:I was thinking people stopped posting here, seems like its not that way

Maybe for another 6 months but only these light bumbs to keep showing anet they not used this at all and in fact seems to be going out of there way to do want the ele community dose not want.

The thing i do not understand is that Anet keeps telling they want balance in the game, but actually they do not do anything important to get it done. What i mean is, GW has a very big community, they could find people for ALL game modes for ALL classes and ALL builds ever played who could explain them what to change to maintain the perfect balance, but NO they change stuff that they think causes the imbalance.I mean changing stuff they think is a good way to start it, no question , but when you fail to bring balance after the X th balance patch, you should consider asking someone who basically lives on GW, but this is only my opinion about it maybe am wrong

Your not wrong, they 'should' be consulting with key stakeholders, i.e experienced representation of the ele player base. They should also have sufficient fingers on the pulse to recognise fundamentals of their own design e.g it should be bleedingly obvious that you need to spend 1.1k on heal/vitality as an ele to simply be able to survive in a skirmish, leaving 1.1k to spread across toughness/crit/power/condy in a class that has hybrid skills and 1 viable build that is melee!! You really don't need to be a rocket scientist to see the flaw there.

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There is no such thing as "perfect balance" you mention. Ele even today can bring almost highest dps in the game - highest on large targets/AoE, second highest to small/single target right after deadeye with rifle. Ele also got a lot of survival skills on demand while other classes dont. Thats my opinion and also a lot of people - you can see that on every benchmark.

And you tell me ele is in wrong place? So please tell me what you expect. As far as i can see its pretty good right now. Do i want ele buffed? Nope. Already there is too many ele around who cant do anything useful and just put the blame on class and balance. Ele is one of the hardest classes to master - not without the reason. If already i got highest dmg in almost every raid on weaver and im pretty good on pvp (even few times i fought with 3 enemies at once... i survived, kill them and all that time i stayed on point) then with buffs the class gonna be too OP.

That's the main point : few people are lazy (and dont use full potential of class bcs it req too much effort. Yup, sometimes i got the same, for example on meta-events) or simply just "dont feel" this ele, while other few people know every single spell and also can plan few moves forward - so they always got spells they want for every situation and deal tons of damage while still are untouchable. Try balance that. To buff ele they must first take something, maybe increase cd between attunements? Or otherway ele will be Monster of the game, capable to do everything - tank bosses while healing yourself and others, and also deal top dps? You really wanna that?

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@"gonzi.7605" said:There is no such thing as "perfect balance" you mention. Ele even today can bring almost highest dps in the game - highest on large targets/AoE, second highest to small/single target right after deadeye with rifle. Ele also got a lot of survival skills on demand while other classes dont. Thats my opinion and also a lot of people - you can see that on every benchmark.

And you tell me ele is in wrong place? So please tell me what you expect. As far as i can see its pretty good right now. Do i want ele buffed? Nope. Already there is too many ele around who cant do anything useful and just put the blame on class and balance. Ele is one of the hardest classes to master - not without the reason. If already i got highest dmg in almost every raid on weaver and im pretty good on pvp (even few times i fought with 3 enemies at once... i survived, kill them and all that time i stayed on point) then with buffs the class gonna be too OP.

That's the main point : few people are lazy (and dont use full potential of class bcs it req too much effort. Yup, sometimes i got the same, for example on meta-events) or simply just "dont feel" this ele, while other few people know every single spell and also can plan few moves forward - so they always got spells they want for every situation and deal tons of damage while still are untouchable. Try balance that. To buff ele they must first take something, maybe increase cd between attunements? Or otherway ele will be Monster of the game, capable to do everything - tank bosses while healing yourself and others, and also deal top dps? You really wanna that?

the issue isnt pve.

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@"gonzi.7605" said:There is no such thing as "perfect balance" you mention. Ele even today can bring almost highest dps in the game - highest on large targets/AoE, second highest to small/single target right after deadeye with rifle. Ele also got a lot of survival skills on demand while other classes dont. Thats my opinion and also a lot of people - you can see that on every benchmark.

And you tell me ele is in wrong place? So please tell me what you expect. As far as i can see its pretty good right now. Do i want ele buffed? Nope. Already there is too many ele around who cant do anything useful and just put the blame on class and balance. Ele is one of the hardest classes to master - not without the reason. If already i got highest dmg in almost every raid on weaver and im pretty good on pvp (even few times i fought with 3 enemies at once... i survived, kill them and all that time i stayed on point) then with buffs the class gonna be too OP.

That's the main point : few people are lazy (and dont use full potential of class bcs it req too much effort. Yup, sometimes i got the same, for example on meta-events) or simply just "dont feel" this ele, while other few people know every single spell and also can plan few moves forward - so they always got spells they want for every situation and deal tons of damage while still are untouchable. Try balance that. To buff ele they must first take something, maybe increase cd between attunements? Or otherway ele will be Monster of the game, capable to do everything - tank bosses while healing yourself and others, and also deal top dps? You really wanna that?

Looking at the benchmarks on SC then saying its almost top dps doesnt prove anything. This has mainly 2 reasons: 1. On huge its RNG grinded, on small its less RNG i think.Btth build cant be trusted because it relies on the length of the fight. Also if you take into consideration the ele rotation vs DD rotation and look at the 900 dps difference you will see what am talking about. Also, raids are not all about standing on the boss and hitting it till it dies.2.There is the holo build(riffle) its like 3k lower than ele but in raids it performs same or even better+ has more utility than ele on sword by this i mean mass CC without DPS loss(more if dps loss isnt a problem) perma 25 vuln, self efficent might/fury upkeep. Thief does more damage on small hitbox no matter what, almost everyone can do that rotation close to being perfect while on ele its kinda hard but still not impossible, but when a phase comes in a thief only needs to stop AA ing and he already did his reset, while ele on the other hand has some other things to do.And these were only 2 classes, theres DH with Aegis spam too + condi classes and pChrono too.But as someone said, ele has problems in PvP/WvW game mode, in PvE its kinda playable, before the ditch of staff weaver it was used because it did insane damage and burst so it was not used because it was that useful for the team but because it was good when someone could play it and got a horde of support around them. A lot of people didnt really understood at that time that ele is broken because supports(mainly chrono with the boon spam and the arcane traitline) were broken and ele had a trait that got use of that.

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Darevil/deadeye do better with >>>>>>>>>3 <<<<<<<<<<<< skills, renegade higher DPS too (a bit more complicated). Staff weaver is not even listed as staff is complete shit now. And now look at the recommendations : thief, renegade, mirage, DH, Holo ...Look at the build : Hammer, FGS, storm; Look at the rotation : Hammer, FGS, storm + 34 skillsOther classes can do better in instance : they add vulnerability, more conditions, more cc, boons, boonstrip, easier rotation, more sustain, more cleave, pull , (mid)range/melee.... What weaver/elem is good for : ??????? Burst in fractals ???

And you tell me weaver elem is fine ???

PvP/WvW : healing power + vitality mandatory in all builds, 80% of utility skills totally useless (pvp and pve, condi, power support ...same everywhere), weak elite skills, no boonstrip, ; no sustain no condicleanse without healing power and water/arcane, but no dps without air/fire, no swap range/meleee ; sword : no block, no counter attack, standstill skills without counterpart, no range + useless AA / no cleave, long cast, long cd, useless "no mechanic" of weak barriers, poor target tracking; no good "temporary" dmg buff.All specs too focused on respective attunements, attunement swap and so weapon skills, not on utility skills and general play.They nerfed the only "viable" dps build : fresh air and the counterpart ? They up #2 fire scepter ...Oh yeah we can play "bunker", like the only viable option since HoT.

So yes, you can be the top DPS, because you're better than the other, of course you can chain noobs or survive 5 minutes against 3 foes; but you can do that with half the efforts and half the keyboard with an other class.This isn't about being a noob or not; it's just about the class potential, and maths; and master elem is not that rewarding . Play weaver or tempest, then play soulbeast, holo, mirage, herald, FB, thief ... simpler and stronger.

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Weaver is only picked because of its burst damage, that's why it shines in fractals, but still you need tons of support to achieve anything on it, you need every boon to not mess up the rotation and perhaps in a raid environment, even a master at the class that requires a sheet of skills for a rotation can agree that a DD/DE can oust them because of how forgiving their rotation is when under pressure whether they mess up a bit or the easiness of their rotation. And benchmarks don't mean anything all the time because the golem is a static target for 2mins without any environment damage or movement, even if that's the case, try achieving a benchmark with staff weaver, look at the RNG you'll get and how many attempts you'll need. And if benchmarks still meant that much, SC has weaver as meta on 1/2 bosses, check other DPS classes that their benchmarks are of lower tier. Benchmarks are nothing but setting the damage potential when in a perfect scenario and against a static target, it's like which class has the maximum potential of skills: Engi with kits or weaver with conjures, it doesn't mean that you can go with either of these builds and expect wonders.

Squad support wise, it has literally nothing when going for damage, the only time I feel like I can support anyone is by cleaving as much as possible (that's in Open World mostly), because I can't press one or two buttons and out of a sudden my trait lines synergize perfectly to acquire tons of might stacks, fury, etc., you bring nothing but pure damage and even the utilities are nothing but numbers, no cc, boons, nothing, just a number and how long this number lasts, other classes can apply perma vuln., might, fury, etc. without messing up their damage (a bit sometimes), that is if weaver has any of these things built-in there weapon's DPS skills or utilities, and topping the DPS chart by 500-1000 DPS still shows nothing about effectiveness, when you think about: who applies vuln, who can cc, who can rely on less boons yet pull out enough damage, etc. which shows how ele won't compete without what other DPS and support classes offer to them, and perhaps this is in a raid scenario where all the support is present, now remove this and look at what ele would be. As a support, it is useless without a chrono and it still brings nothing but burst heals only which other classes perform with even better group support, buffs and yet higher dps.

4 Attunements are literally nothing but wasted extra 10 skills that are out of use because how awful the trait lines are preventing anything beside fire/air or water/earth, making ele's skills deal less damage because they have twice the amount of abilities but that's not the case, a class that can use a skill or two, ele has to use 4/5 skills on the other hand to match the same damage consistency, you even swap attunement while still using a skill from a past attunement given how fast you need to fit in tons of skills, the case here is not class complexity - in fact I play the class for that - but it's not dealing enough damage on some attunements which adds nothing to the class and the lack of survivability.

Even in solo PvE, talking about a DPS class, any other DPS going solo exploring can deal more damage than ele. Reaper for example, the bottom DPS of all classes on SC site, can still burst out more damage when solo because they can maintain boons, let alone other DPS classes. Even with higher DPS when solo, they have higher survivability and give out boons and apply non damaging condis.

In PvP or roaming, it's not even worth the effort because the maths behind your skills won't let you get what you want, what's the point of healing a ton and having as much in evades with 0 pressure, if the enemy can maintain a consistent damage source while still making distance or apply some cc, ele is nothing but a set of cards, once you're out of them, the enemy bombards you with ease because they needn't use their defensive skills at all while weaver was dancing around as the pressure was negligible.

The only case I would say ele is a competing role it would be fractals because of its burst. In WvW zerg fights, it's still relevant though but your top damage is one skill, so I would say a Revenant is still more reliable, yet ele's stable fields are highly lethal sometimes as they can hit and run only in zerg fights.

Now all these issues don't mean that ele is terrible by a huge margin at each of their aspects, ele still has highest burst and great cleave but these problems require thorough balance patches than just hit or miss, hoping you can hit once. It shows what should be expected from a DPS glass cannon class that is competing with other glass/non-glass better cannons, as the class fails to offer enough or none at all, what others can with yet minimum losses

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@"gonzi.7605" said:There is no such thing as "perfect balance" you mention. Ele even today can bring almost highest dps in the game - highest on large targets/AoE, second highest to small/single target right after deadeye with rifle. Ele also got a lot of survival skills on demand while other classes dont. Thats my opinion and also a lot of people - you can see that on every benchmark.

And you tell me ele is in wrong place? So please tell me what you expect. As far as i can see its pretty good right now. Do i want ele buffed? Nope. Already there is too many ele around who cant do anything useful and just put the blame on class and balance. Ele is one of the hardest classes to master - not without the reason. If already i got highest dmg in almost every raid on weaver and im pretty good on pvp (even few times i fought with 3 enemies at once... i survived, kill them and all that time i stayed on point) then with buffs the class gonna be too OP.

That's the main point : few people are lazy (and dont use full potential of class bcs it req too much effort. Yup, sometimes i got the same, for example on meta-events) or simply just "dont feel" this ele, while other few people know every single spell and also can plan few moves forward - so they always got spells they want for every situation and deal tons of damage while still are untouchable. Try balance that. To buff ele they must first take something, maybe increase cd between attunements? Or otherway ele will be Monster of the game, capable to do everything - tank bosses while healing yourself and others, and also deal top dps? You really wanna that?

Its not about perfect balance its about letting clases have the abitly to play all rolls and to have all effects in the game if you build that way VS classes who simply have these effects for free.

Ele as a class lacks a lot of effects in gw2 but gets nothing for it. At the same time other classes have most if not all of the effects in the game with out needed to build for them at all.Ele pays for its dmg even when your not playing a dmg build ele pays for its support even when your not playing support. That because ele dmg / support is very much tide to the gear your running. Other classes get dmg from being that class alone or support with out paying such a high cost. Often you find these classes dont need to build all in to fill a roll like ele MUST. Filling that roll as an ele comes at the cost of def or utitly (or dmg if your going support). As well as missing out on major boon effects and boon counter effects.

If you would take this game with all of its effects and make it into a new game the ele class would be cut from the game as it simply dose not fit.

Lazy ppl play the meta the meta is 3 classes and an elite skill ele is NOT the meta at any game type. This would not be a problem if there was real imagination in combat and combos but all of that has been profoundly ignored by anet. GW2 is simply not GW2 any more and any thing that did not get the right amount of power creep is not a real class any more and there is nothing the player base can do about it as these post are falling on unwanted ears (yes anet reads the forms but its not changing there minds at all).

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I've got all classes to 80. I've got all the class trait lines completed. I've watched, sometimes i've complained. Now i'm just tired, and barely log in on any class. I'm not even sure I should bother explaining anything to any of you, let alone leave a post in the back water of these forums that no one will ever really see or care about.

Everyone in this thread has an uneducated opinion about how to balance ele, even the people against buffing ele. This is a fact, not a question - its not even up for debate. I mean, people have a few points correct, but miss a lot either because they weren't here or have no idea how the game was intended to be.

At the start even before beta, we were intended to have dual classes. The devs couldn't make this work and so it was canned before it ever saw the light of day, although it was several years in development before it was dropped. I can only speculate about the impact that had on all classes across the board. Since we are playing a game with single classes in a game that was originally designed from the ground to incorporate dual classes I'm guessing the effect was quite profound.

Anyway we ended up with the ele with a stat deficiency compared to all the other classes.

Ele was a powerful class at the start. People didn't know how to play it, and it generally sucked until people realized that although the skill ceiling was high, so was the potential of the class. During this phase of the classes life it had stun breaks and condition removal taken away. Most of these changes were fairly random and poorly thought out, even more so when you can look back and see exactly how bad a lot of these decisions were in hindsight.

Lets jump ahead to HoT, because this is where things get a little stupid again. So, originally the core ele had auras linked to signets. Auras were part of the base class. Sure they kinda suck, but point being, they were core ele. So with the release of HoT auras were taken away from signets and made part of Tempest by way of shouts. Wait, What? Ok, so they TOOK a part of core ele. Removed it from core ele. Added back as part of Tempest. Never replaced what they TOOK from core ele. Fantastic. So now we have an incomplete core class, with a half baked trait line dumped on top of it. Keep in mind, during this phase, core and tempest were hit with a bunch more nerfs to both damage and regen. Oh, and auras still kinda suck even though they moved them from core to Tempest because it was a rushed job on a half baked trait line that wasn't complete and couldn't actually stand on its own.

Ok, so the longer this gets the longer my jumps through ele history are, because I really have no interest anymore and going into complete detail isn't worth it, as its been rehashed by players and ignored by devs for so long now that it isn't important. Lets just get straight to the now (because I just can't be bothered to go through the PoF era). Currently we have another trait line, weaver, that removes access to important skills all the time, based on a core class that isn't even complete anymore, and has been nerfed to the bottom. Although now it appears a new eager intern is making some really cute attempts to make auras useful.

Can this really be fixed without a complete back end revamp? I doubt it. I'm also not interested in waiting around to see if it can be done either. The game just feels like there is too much work for the dev staff and this means the players (the customers) have to wait extended time in order for anything to get done. The time frame on balancing (not just for ele) is ridiculous. Through the years I was hoping that maybe time and experience would allow balance and development to get smoother. It hasn't. The game feels like the staff is constantly new and in training.

There is a ton more that could be said, I guess this is just my TL:DRSee you around the game, or not. Whatever.

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Just to tap this topic one more time because i'm bored. It seems just a little dumb to have a single class with the lowest of all stats.

It has no weapon swap because it has attunements. I'm sure someone somewhere will start chirping about the amount of skills. Lets be clear all ele skills are balanced to have higher cool downs BECAUSE eles have so many. They also have attument cool downs on those skill cool downs. So why don't eles have weapon swap again? Oh, this is where someone chimes in about sigils proccing and forgets that they have internal cool downs (and any that don't, probably should).

Eh. Forget it. I'm done complaining.

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Lets not forget that ele is a 2 - 3 line require treat class. If it wants go to melee it must take at least water and arcain or earth or both. If ele wants to do dmg it must take air and fire. With next to no overlap in effect of dmg and support on the trate lines make ele builds are very non imaginative. Its only gotten worst with the tempest def update taking away more def from a dmg line making things all the worst.

Its out right boring to even try to do builds for ele now because they are all the same its only the gear combos that are some what diffrent and even them are very bland for there chose.

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