Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Concerns about Elementalist


System

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 986
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

What ele players should expect are :

1- Nerfs to sword weaver as it make ele as "easy" as other classes by being able to chain defense and be sort of a threat thx to Primordial stance2- Nerfs to dmg in some sort or another as ele is still TOP DPS on that snocrow benchmark table3- Completely worthless buffs or skill change that only apply shit load of eye candy but does shit in the end4- Zero change to earth traitlines5 - Zero reductions in casting time/activation for most skills or the most hateful skills like dragon's tooth , lava font etc etc etc etc6- Zero change to worthless utilities...maybe they will add some more might/regen boon7- Zero access to quickness/slow

Next week I will be here with a big, fat, juicy : I TOLD YOU SO

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@SCVwar.3784 said:To be honest, Unravel should have been F5 button not taking another util slot from weaver. Keeping it's core function of single element attunement should have done fine, and possibly adding depth to it's function with traits.. But this looks like a missed opportunity and I doubt Devs actually care what Eles should do in competitive scenes.

I agree with you, it's a bummer you have to dedicate an utility slot for an skill which just allows you to be able to use your regular vital weapon skills without limitations - when the whole e-spec itself is already nerfed to the bone, in the first place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm here for the lols and giggles to remind you folks the devs have done nothing in almost the past year and just to clarify, now we know why.Unannounced projects, opposite of rich design, and now they have to lay off staff on what was already an inefficient application of it.the Elementalist is going exactly where those unannounced projects are. To the underworld xD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Derkon.7408 said:I'm here for the lols and giggles to remind you folks the devs have done nothing in almost the past year and just to clarify, now we know why.Unannounced projects, opposite of rich design, and now they have to lay off staff on what was already an inefficient application of it.the Elementalist is going exactly where those unannounced projects are. To the underworld xD

It could easily be the opposite. Surely, they will lay off some staff (though not necessarily vital for the development process specifically) - and then it's quite likely they will put the rest back to their main title's team. That could be the very point ncsoft tried to convey to them: stop wasting resources and invest them into your main source of stable income.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:

@Derkon.7408 said:I'm here for the lols and giggles to remind you folks the devs have done nothing in almost the past year and just to clarify, now we know why.Unannounced projects, opposite of rich design, and now they have to lay off staff on what was already an inefficient application of it.the Elementalist is going exactly where those unannounced projects are. To the underworld xD

It could easily be the opposite. Surely, they will lay off some staff (though not necessarily vital for the development process specifically) - and then it's quite likely they will put the rest back to their main title's team. That could be the very point ncsoft tried to convey to them: stop wasting resources and invest them into your main source of stable income.

There realty been no dev on ele for a year + i am not sure the lay off will change any thing for the class. More then likely its going to start acting like other classes weaver is on its way to it because there is no ele only dev so its picking up other classes way of playing. We may see it get some much needed effect BUT at the cost of being an ele.

Update i guess this coming Tuesday lets see where it goes. Keep in mind for ele players down sizing already happen maybe a good mark for other classes to be ready for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Auburner.6945" said:To show how lovely the state of ele is. Last night during reset, all weavers were asked to get into ranged sub-s before we get kicked if any other better spec was there to take our place. This shows how ele gives so much in terms of support and damage that it doesn't even need a squad. The solo capabilities of ele are perhaps way too high that it can solo cap SM.

We'll probably get 1 or 2 lines of changes just like last patch, or nerfs, maybe Lava Font is still powerful so the damage would be 10% of the current damage while fixing MS bug that caused its damage to be higher than Air Sigil's proc. Ele trait lines are "perfect by nature" anyway and further fixes would get it into "broken" state.

Others will have positively effective changes that will keep them invested into finding newer playstyles.

That is an other problem; elem/weaver is too selfish, support for allies (as for oneself) comes mainly from Water lane and not enough, or not effectively, from utility and weapons skills.Earth is trash ; unplayable/non-functional without bunker amulet and tempest (Because otherwise you need water/arcane)Tempest support : you need water ...Arcane : need you to swap, over and over. But arcane prowess, that is kitten, (bring back fury pls ... or more stacks ... ) is not even shared.Staff : #1 poor velocity, #3 poor radius, even Healing Rain is stuck in 2015; 1 condi every 3 seconds ?? Regen ??? Seriously with 40sec CD ?? Why not make it like the spirit-bow from guard a "heals" rain and not "regen" rain. It's more useful to swap to fire/air, then swap back to Water to proc traits.And utility skills ... is there any skill that share effect with allies ???????????? Apart Arcane power (even that it's nerfed to 50% for allies ...) ?? Even thief and necro have more. Don't say Glyph of Renewal, this skill is impossible to cast.Weaver : nothing for allies ... Oops, no, sorry; we have Aquatic Stance ... 1sec tick, need to stay at melee, excellent. Why we couldn't share barriers or something ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just have tried sword on Weaver for the first time on golem (I started play-testing it with dagger/dagger). I be kittened! It deals absolutely insane amount of damage at almost no additional cost when comparing to the dagger. How any other weapon can even compete with that? It's all so broken in this state, why did they even care to make up all those dual attacks for the other weapons then? They don't look like a viable alternative to sword anyway. Seems like a very rushed design.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

@"Auburner.6945" said:To show how lovely the state of ele is. Last night during reset, all weavers were asked to get into ranged sub-s before we get kicked if any other better spec was there to take our place. This shows how ele gives so much in terms of support and damage that it doesn't even need a squad. The solo capabilities of ele are perhaps way too high that it can solo cap SM.

We'll probably get 1 or 2 lines of changes just like last patch, or nerfs, maybe Lava Font is still powerful so the damage would be 10% of the current damage while fixing MS bug that caused its damage to be higher than Air Sigil's proc. Ele trait lines are "perfect by nature" anyway and further fixes would get it into "broken" state.

Others will have positively effective changes that will keep them invested into finding newer playstyles.

That is an other problem; elem/weaver is too selfish, support for allies (as for oneself) comes mainly from Water lane and not enough, or not effectively, from utility and weapons skills.Earth is trash ; unplayable/non-functional without bunker amulet and tempest (Because otherwise you need water/arcane)Tempest support : you need water ...Arcane : need you to swap, over and over. But arcane prowess, that is kitten, (bring back fury pls ... or more stacks ... ) is not even shared.Staff : #1 poor velocity, #3 poor radius, even Healing Rain is stuck in 2015; 1 condi every 3 seconds ?? Regen ??? Seriously with 40sec CD ?? Why not make it like the spirit-bow from guard a "heals" rain and not "regen" rain. It's more useful to swap to fire/air, then swap back to Water to proc traits.And utility skills ... is there any skill that share effect with allies ???????????? Apart Arcane power (even that it's nerfed to 50% for allies ...) ?? Even thief and necro have more. Don't say Glyph of Renewal, this skill is impossible to cast.Weaver : nothing for allies ... Oops, no, sorry; we have Aquatic Stance ... 1sec tick, need to stay at melee, excellent. Why we couldn't share barriers or something ?

I can't agree more. We can't provide anything and when we do, there are numerous better options. We rely heavily on core traits that are incomplete and not-universal, but nothing we can do. Ele is nothing but damage, you support by dealing damage, you survive by Lava Tomb meme'ing, you have nothing but to go for damage, because utilities and weapons themselves provide no support, trait lines do and they are lacking. I love playing aggressively, but that doesn't mean being with no back-up for missing a beat. Also, in the current state of the game, you need to provide something to be considered useful, else carry your own self: weavers get placed into ranged squad in pugs quite a lot lately which nullifies the whole idea of being in a squad. In PvP, I believe I would get an easy 90+% poll in PvP forums now no matter the class anyone plays, all will say that ele is the most under-performing class. In PvE, there is that belief of the Large Hitbox on SC is all you need to be accepted as DPS, and that there is no need for any other buffs, while ele is acceptable (meta on few bosses) by squad leaders, they would probably want you to roll something else. Let's see what comes tomorrow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:Just have tried sword on Weaver for the first time on golem (I started play-testing it with dagger/dagger). I be kittened! It deals absolutely insane amount of damage at almost no additional cost when comparing to the dagger. How any other weapon can even compete to that? It's all so broken in this state, why did they even care to make up all those dual attacks for the other weapons then? They don't look like a viable alternative to sword anyway. Seems like a very rushed design.

For d/d, I only saw hybrid build, because dagger main hand's damage comes from all attunements and ele's trait lines aren't universal, still sword does the hybrid part better. It's quite sad that most weapons never got that much attention. The design of weaver in terms of the trait line and dual attacks is lacking even on sword, sword dual attacks are the hardest to land. Weaver is mostly played for dual attuning and the lovely 4s GCD, if nothing else, then Tempest or core would've been more fun and even better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anet,

First off, I really love GW2, thank you so much for consistently updating and improving it! It's gotten me through some really rough times and i love playing it. :)

That said, ELE is my favorite class to play, but I wish it was more viable in-game. There are some basic difficulties; since i can't change weapons, i have to choose melee or range, and can't really switch later on. But the hardest part is the overall power/damage and annoyingly long cast times. Could you please either give ele a power boost? if it's a glass cannon, it needs the 'canon' part upgraded.

In addition, Is there also a way to change the trait lines?I can only get traits from 2 elements (plus e elite spec) but i have to use all four. I think it would be better if the traits were more mixed. so you get the advantages for ALL elements, not just two. Like how arcane gives boosts to your character, regardless of which element you attune to at a single moment; could we have more lines like that, based on PLAYSTYLE and not ELEMENT. Other classes have this, like Warrior, Guardian, etc.

Or if this is to complicated, maybe the next elite spec could let us FOCUS on just 1 or 2 elements? That way we can focus on just those lines and ignore the elements we don't need.Sorry to bother you, (I know there's never a way to please everyone!) but I hope you take this into consideration. Can't wait for the next episode!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea I get is that Anet developers do read this thread, and they are preparing something for the elementalist class, but they're not allowed to talk about anything.

In other words, this thread exists because they need it (or else Gaile Gray wouldn't have given the amount of attention she gave to it), but they're not allowed to share their thoughts or communicate with us, even if they wanted to, because the company's policy forbids them of doing it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"DiogoSilva.7089" said:The idea I get is that Anet developers do read this thread, and they are preparing something for the elementalist class, but they're not allowed to talk about anything.

In other words, this thread exists because they need it (or else Gaile Gray wouldn't have given the amount of attention she gave to it), but they're not allowed to share their thoughts or communicate with us, even if they wanted to, because the company's policy forbids them of doing it.

That's some nice optimism you have there. I would hope for that to be the case as well, but I can't be arsed anymore. I've lost all hope. Not even a three-month long bug can be fixed, so I doubt the patch will be anything but good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Dahir.4158" said:

@"DiogoSilva.7089" said:The idea I get is that Anet developers do read this thread, and they are preparing something for the elementalist class, but they're not allowed to talk about anything.

In other words, this thread exists because they need it (or else Gaile Gray wouldn't have given the amount of attention she gave to it), but they're not allowed to share their thoughts or communicate with us, even if they wanted to, because the company's policy forbids them of doing it.

That's some nice optimism you have there. I would hope for that to be the case as well, but I can't be kitten anymore. I've lost all hope. Not even a three-month long bug can be fixed, so I doubt the patch will be anything but good.

We already know what is in the patch https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/69910/upcoming-balance-notesSome interesting support tempest changes, but nothing groundbreaking for competitive modes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All I can see from the patch notes is nothing but condition sword weaver being somehow viable in raids, other than that Tempest will barely see the light. Alacrity and Quickness are way too strong that Tempest will replace any of its providers and have in mind that Tempest needs a Chrono all the time because of SoI, so all other support options will still be better, but it might get Support Tempest into it somehow. The patch is nothing to ele players Feels'Good'Man

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's nice to see Tempest getting more support based buffs. I don't PvE much anymore, but I believe these are steps in the right direction to give the Auramancer gameplay a more defined role in end game play. I hope my tempest friends enjoy the changes!! I don't know how it will effect WvW yet,. although the idea of being able to cover 10 players at a time in Magnetic or Frost Aura is pretty interesting... sorta I guess. Man if only we had a shout that gave shocking aura! Haha.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:I'm happy they give a look to tempest; but regen and mights ... tempest need alacrity, stab or quickness or unique effects/buffs in addition to the auras. :s

Core ele should have alacrity on glyph casting when trailed.

Anet seems to be afraid of giving ele the strong boons as support but the self version should be ok to ask for.

I love the buff tempest going to get core ele now what needs some major love.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Well I am bringing up this long since since, well, nothing has been actually changed.It's June 2019, we are 2 balance patches further and barely any of mentioned problems with elementalist has been touched.Here's how it is - the Elementalist is, by design, supposed to be the sort of "master of all" type of class, being able to swiftly cycle through attunements to surprise it's enemy. This design, however, is very 2012 and by that I mean it didn't stand the test of time in the game. With the dawn of elite specializations every class has been given special mechanics that alter its playstyle while providing unique mechanics and effects that it can use on the enemies or provide for the party. That makes the classes excel at PVE content, PVP or WvW, depending on the spec. The attunement mechanic is about, as i sai, being user of all, master of noneUnfortunately the Elementalist is still lowest tier in most of the game modes. While it can be a good dps class in raids or fractals, its all it does - DPS. Nothing more and its not even consistent in that matter - more like a one hit KO type for DPS. It has the lowest health pool and lowest armor rating making it the most vulnarable class - that makes it extremely dependant on other classes to survive. For example Guardian, Mesmer or Thief can also deal huge damage while providing usefull utilities and boons for the party. To add an insult to injury the Elementalist's DPS is based around one of the clunkiest and hardly usable mechanics in the game - conjures. Not only it feels sluggish when you summon them, but you need to pick them up the second time t even stand in competent DPS frame. Don't have to remind you of constant need to position it well or people stealing your conjures.In PVP and WvW the Ele is also considered one of the lowest tier classes - in pvp it currently only ONE viable bruiser build, while other classes have several playstyles. Same in WVW - only one roaming bruiser build that requires ultra reflexes to event stay on par with others and one zerg build based around staff.Last year elementalist has received severe nerfs to its damage. I agree - it was to high compared to other classes. However while bringing the damage down to more mortal area the balance team didnt provide the ele with other things to make up for it - no reliable survivability in pve, no consistent damage in pvp.The attunements are an old design, that currently handicaps the ele - it is easy to overtune the class but in its current stat the ele is just underwhelming... completely.Why do people still play the class though? Well, because it's fun to play - the last thing we get, it's actually really fun to play despite it's many drawbacks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Make certain traits still useful outside their specific attunementI believe Elementalist traits which are only helpful in a specific attunement should be balanced so that they're also still helpful while in other attunements.Specifically, I'd like to see each of the 4 Core Minor Adept traits (fire, air, earth, water) and Pyromancer's Training + Aeromancer's Training traits reworked to still grant some kind of bonus while outside their respective attunement.

Core Minor Adept traitsIf you were to review the entirety of Core Minor Adept traits in GW2, very few, if any, of them give zero benefit outside their specific attunement/weapon; in other words they are still helpful regardless of which weapon/kit or attunement is being used.

Weapon/Attunement-specific Major traitsBelow are a few examples of weapon/attunement traits currently in game that are helpful outside their specific weapon/attunement.In contrast, Pyromancer's Training and Aeromancer's Training, both Major Master traits, give zero benefit outside their specific attunement.

Examples:-Major Adept-Dagger Training: Gives 80 power no matter which weapon is being used (in addition to it's weapon-specific effects).Chemical Rounds: Gives 120 condition damage no matter which weapon/kit is being used (in addition to it's weapon-specific effects).-Major Master-Blademaster: Gives 120 expertise no matter which weapon is being used (in addition to it's weapon-specific effects).Ambidexterity: Gives 120 condition damage no matter which weapon is being used (in addition to it's weapon-specific effects).Geomancer's Training: Decreases the duration of movement-impairing conditions (in addition to it's attunement-specific effects).Aquamancer's Training: Gives 10% damage while above the 90% HP threshold (in addition to it's attunement-specific effects, though the water trait line is arguably not the best place for a percent damage modifier).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@eMKay.4028 said:Last year elementalist has received severe nerfs to its damage. I agree - it was to high compared to other classes. However while bringing the damage down to more mortal area the balance team didnt provide the ele with other things to make up for it - no reliable survivability in pve, no consistent damage in pvp.

Weaver had very high damage, not core and tempest. Yet, these nerfs were core nerfs, hurting every ele builds. And as you pointed out, we didn't get any survivability buffs in return. It is clear that ANet nerfed ele because they were overperforming in raid, an exclusive situation where they are totally babysitted by other professions.

We did the highest DPS as it is expected from such a profession and it was normal considering our very low sustain (without considering allies). In any MMO, there is always very high DPS classes that outperform others, but they die in 1 or 2 hits. This concept is fine and better than having all professions doing the same DPS and having the same sustain.

IMO, removal of passive critical hit traits hurt elementalist more than other professions, and increase base damage barely did anything as a compensation. These traits powered by our high critical damage were a strong source of our DPS, and we strongly needed this especially because our lack of sustain : killing before getting killed. Not to mention a killing blow with removal of Tempest Defense.

Without any word from devs and lack of regular consistent balance patchs, I have lost any hope regarding this profession.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

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

Create an account

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

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...