Snow White.1842

I enjoy playing Guild Wars 2, however, the writing is generally so terrible that characters change quite drastically within short periods of time. There is absolutely no voiced characters that I can tolerate for any extended periods of time. Zero, zip, zilch. I mean, I would have said Canach, except they ruined him in EOD. Taimi has been annoying from the start, but even as the character changes through the game, stays annoying. Braham actually started out pretty normal, then I have no idea what happened but the character regressed in to an emo teenage rage state, and pretty much stayed there. I could rip every character if I listed them. So, all the the previously listed characters (in this thread) are a no go. Trash, all. BUT I bring to you two characters who do not speak. Will not annoy you, and otherwise barely move...that can bring joy in to your gaming life IF you choose to go visit them. The first is obviously Pickle. Slightly over weight. Enjoys food, being petted and absolutely hates whoever put all those stairs on Cat Island. ANET I WANT PICKLE IN MY HOME INSTANCE. The second is Bubbles "The Megalodon". Doesn't say or do much. Can't offend because Bubbles is just super chill. Wears a fancy red bow and does not care how you feel about it. ANET I WANT THIS AS A PET ASAP.

Conjured weapons should have been removed a long time ago. A class that was designed to have so many weak skills and no weapon swap (because they have so many skills in general), really should have been the last class to have conjures dumped on it. Conjures add more (temporary) skills which just compounds issues with trying to balance the class. If you make conjures remotely useable, they become "required" for skill rotations (as per raid reqs - which WAY too many people take WAY too seriously). If you make conjures too weak, who would bother using them? They are one giant mess, that only cause more issues trying to balance the class. I'd remove them completely. Then balance the class. I wouldn't even replace them. Its a trash set, that has what? One actual trait directly related to them? Remove the conjures (was always a stupid idea on this class), remove what extremely little trait(s) exist that interact with them, then balance the class.

I think you completely missed the mark. I can use an ele. I can use it in pve, and in pvp. Point is, auras were removed from core. It IS incomplete. Saying otherwise is foolish. Nothing was returned to the class. It also has never received any actual baseline bonus, like most other classes. Even lingering elements couldn't be made to work properly. Lets be clear, your entire post is an extremely poor attempt to cover problems with the class by redirecting a subtle blame in my direction. As for stats, they are important. Low armor and health absolutely affect how this class operates. Otherwise celestial would never have been functional on this class, which it obviously was until it was nerfed into oblivion. Again, another argument that fails to hit its mark, because ele is extremely stat dependent. That argument might work on other classes, but falls short on the one class that actually uses all stats. I've seen all your arguments before, and they are foolish. You think because ele has more now, that it isn't outclassed by what other classes have now, that used to be the domain of the elementalist? That thought is ridiculous, and hides behind "what-about"isms concerning blatantly over powered damage coming out of other classes. As stated, I don't want anything nerfed. But only a fool would state the over powered history of the class as a reason that it doesn't deserve to be on par with everything else. I also don't even care much anymore if it even GETS any fixes or changes. At this point, considering the state of anet, i would almost prefer that they don't touch it anymore.And to be clear, i'm not all that emotional about it. I'm also not feeling all that maligned or targeted. Fantastic assumptions. I'm also not attempting to "emotionally manipulate Anet into" yadda, yadda...I'm not even sure what kind of therapy you are making an attempt at here. Because again, not all that emotional. Go home. You're drunk.

For those asking for fixes, and those offering solutions for problems that plague this class. I offer a quick reminder. I won't delve into the entire history of this class, as I have done that before. It just seems like people have forgotten some things about this class. First. The elementalist class isn't even a complete class anymore. Hasn't been since HoT. Core elementalist actually lost functionality with the release of HoT. Lost you say? What sort of witchery do you speak? Oh, I dunno. It seems like Karl waited to work on tempest until the night before it was due, like a college student with a 20 page essay. Originally auras were on SIGNETS. They were stripped from core elementalist and added to shouts. Then resold back as the new tempest spec. Basically since HoT, core ele has been an incomplete class. Tempest was released with auras on shouts, and fairly decent damage on overloads (which has since been nerfed into the ground, like so many other aspects of this class). Not sure why anyone is begging for fixes or balance passes for this class anymore. I just started using my engineer (had it to 80, and unlocked all the specs, just never used it - as in...AT ALL). I can do more with 3 skills on my engineer, than I can do with my ele using 10 skills plus utilities. I barely even look at the utilities on my engineer, I don't need them for pve at all. I might even take it into wvw soon, because it looks like it would be hilarious. I mean, with a few thousand hours of practice on my ele, i'm alright. People even want me around in wvw on my ele...I'm just kinda thinking if I take any other class into wvw, I would probably be a monster. Which is sad. Really, REALLY, sad. Maybe just a little bit pathetic (on anet's part). I shouldn't be able to take classes that I've had less than two hours played on (EVER), and do so much (oh God, so much more) than I can do on a class that i've played literally thousands of hours on. I mean, I dusted of my ranger. I ran through using core, druid, and soulbeast. Its crazy. I mean, really crazy. And NO. I'm not asking for, implying, or even remotely wanting nerfs to either of those classes (because they are so much fun - and this is just in pve). Requesting nerfs just makes everyone angry, and if it happens, it kinda ruins other people's fun. I don't want that. But I do envy what those classes can do using so little though. Even our class mechanic kinda sucks. Since elements provide next to ZERO actual condition damage related to each element...whats the point? I mean, effectively we have a cooldown on top of cooldowns...and this justifies ele not having weapon swap? We have the lowest health pool. The lowest armor. Cooldowns on top of cooldowns. Pretty much the longest cast and after casts on any major skills (which really hurts staff now that some act of stupid decided that meteor storm can ONLY hit five people and the damage keeps getting reduced). Honestly, when looking at what is happening at this class, as much as I love it, it just feels (I have a lot of things to fill in this statement, but i'll probably get in trouble - and I do want people to see this and understand why this class is really starting to feel a bit hopeless and lost) like its lost more than just its place in the meta. It feels like whoever is working on this class is lost or doesn't have the resources, or just doesn't have the confidence (in self, or of superiors) to fix, adjust, balance (take your pick) this class. I apologize for this running on. I didn't expect to pour this much into a post.Jsk, you used to argue with me about the direction that ele was headed. I have noticed your position has changed quite a lot. I'm actually kinda unhappy that we're seeing a lot closer to eye to eye on this class now.

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.

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.