tekfan.3179

Same bug. Bought the item from the gem store. Got no icon to expand at the column of bags either.

To laugh about it, someone would have to read it. I think the only way they will get the message, is if people start editing the wiki-pages for the elementalist to reflect the poor state the profession is in, until the staff there starts complaining. But I think it's more likely they'll just shut down the wiki for "maintenance".

There is no reason to play elementalist unless you like to be disappointed.

Another snippet of feedback, but spoilers, so beware: The characters and some aspects of the story.

Here's my "two" thoughts...or wall of text to be more precise. The art of the maps is beautiful, but still flawed in my opinion. Basically I have two big gripes with the design. The first thing would be the transitions between regions, even on a single map. It doesn't feel like naturally grown areas, more like a bad themepark where one attraction is plastered to the next. There might be an abandoned temple full of enemies next to a fishing village, but there is no interaction between them. Likewise there is the connection between maps. Lorewise there is supposed to be a highly important transfer of materials between two maps, with one additional map between them. While the high-tech map is full of infrastructure to deal with large shipments and such, the only thing connecting both maps are unguarded dirt paths. No shipping canal, no railroad, heck, not even a cobbled street. As beatiful as the art is, the design is disjointed. The second thing would be that the larger maps of Path of Fire managed to feel more alive than the ones from EoD. The big metropolis which is supposed to be the heart of Cantha feels downright sterile to me. As for the map-mechanics with meta-events and what not...I sadly can't say anything good about those. The rewards are a joke, and overall they are more a nuissance than something you'd like to partake in. To unlock the turtle mount you need to succeed in the meta event on the last map. Said event was troll-able on launch with players sabotaging others in a single phase of the battle. You barely get a map with enough organized players to succeed in the event as well, so as of now the map is pretty much unbeatable if you have to rely on pugs. I decided to steer clear of it for now, after about ten failed attempts. I do like however that the glider-skills from the Bloodstone map of the third living world season are working on that map. The new masteries. Fishing is nice and surprisingly extensive. Haven't gotten around to everything there yet. The skiff is quite relaxing, a good combo with fishing. Can't say anything about the turtle, as stated above. The jade bot is underwhelming as can be. It boils down to some very useful buffs like more vitality and quicker mount endurance recharge, movement-mechanics on maps (which you can almost ignore with mounts) and buff-stations on cantha maps, as well as some situational skills that have huge cooldowns. But a real companion? Nah. Lastly one mastery track allows you to upgrade the new player-hub. That's it. The new specs. What I tried so far is mostly awful. The mechanist is ok-ish, but I admit to having more fun with the holo-smith.

I didn't have any fun with the catalyst in the beta events and while I see that something has been done, I'm still not having fun. The catalyst feels either clunky or hectic. Like a fifth wheel cobbled together from hastily organized notes from brainstorming-meetings. Layering the different "3-skills" on top of each other feels more like a latency-issue than one of gameplay, considering their short duration and the time it takes to switch attunements and cast another skill. Range is still an issue. Even more so, since practically every mob plasters the ground with field-effects. Aside from devs simply not giving a kitten or being negatively biased, I can not comprehend how the profession with the lowest armor rating and lowest base-vitality constantly is forced into short-ranged options, while adding more and more mechanics that require you to go on a distance to your enemy. Right down to the bounties in Elona, where you literally can't damage some enemies on short range at times. I've heard in one of Mightyteapots recent videos that there will be a big rework of sorts in summer. Here's hoping.

As someone who played the ele since the beta, I feel the current implementation and place of the profession is a disaster. The least fun I ever had with the profession, is now. At this point I have doubts that the devs at Anet even play the game anymore, or at least no one plays the elementalist I assume. I can only agree to the class feeling clunky. Also: Unrewarding, squishy and weak. It's almost as if they balanced the ele around youtube-vids of raid-build dmg-rotations at the test-golem, totally disregarding the effects of general movement, dodging and casting-times outside of strictly controlled environments. I feel every other class feels more dynamic, is more forgiving if you need to pick up a rotation after dodging or movement and is more resilient. The latter not just because ele has the lowest armor-rating and amount of HP, but because other classes seem to have more synergy in their passive effects from traits or skills.

First off let me give you an idea of my perspective: My main is an ele and I've played since launch with some phases of inactivity. Pretty much only PvE, with a few dips into WvW for the occasional reward-track or back in the day, when it still was required for world completion. I've been doing T4-fractals for some time, raided for a few months but the latter not very excessively. I had the times when eles wouldn't get a place in a dungeon-group, been through the age of the ice bow when ele was meta for dungeons, witnessed the power of the old meteor storm and how staff-ele was used for high level group content and am now here. None of that is supposed to frame me as an expert, I just went through a lot of balance-changes with this class. So let me just dump of some observations/criticism and ideas. As strange as this sounds, after eight years of balance and two specializations, this class feels clunky, restrictive and unrewarding to me, compared with the other classes I've learned to enjoy. A reward for mastering the elementalist is non-existant in my opinion, instead it feels like dps, condi-dmg and CC are just spread over four attunements instead of two weapon-sets and I only get access to those abilities in even remotely the same fashion as other professions, when I finally master the elementalist.In theory it could be fun to re-assemble skills from other professions with three other skills...yes, could be, but isn't. With additional cooldowns on skills and attunement-swaps everything takes longer, requires more time to get back to what you did before and is highly vulnerable to interrupts. The interruption may just be a dodge, as ele still has the squishiest base-stats regarding survivability. The elementalist used to be one of the top-damage-dealers in raids. Back in that time, I think the ele had an overall better balance in PvE.Consider raids, or more specifically, the youtube-vids we see from the specialized raid-guilds: First the golem training. A target that doesn't move and doesn't fight back, with the hitbox-size you want. All the perma-buffs you need for you and all the perma-debuffs for the golem come from a console on your whim. In the final raid ten trained players work to emulate those conditions and deal with mechanics while likely communicating with each other over voice-chat.To say it mildly: You don't have such conditions in PUGS, which is exactly the reason why we see "Show LI", "250 LI" and other notices in the LFG-tool for raids and strike-missions. Without the damage and no buff to survivability, the ele now runs tight spaced rotations to keep up with other professions which are easier to keep alive. Interrupting your damage-rotation to CC, dodge or heal now pulls you under the average, since the higher dps from back then is gone since balancing the ele towards other professions at the golem. Another rigidity is that you're locked into one specific weapon-set during combat, or more specifically: One range. This was less of a problem when staff was a better choice and you could run around with your high-range weapon, which was also fine on close range. While some attunements offer a few long-ranged skills on melee-weapons, your ability to engage in content can be quite stumped when you can't switch on something with longer range in combat. An example for this would be the "Phase-shift"-ability on bounties. As I mentioned ideas, let me get that off my chest:So what to do about the ele that I could come up with?Frankly...I think reworking the class entirely may be the best approach. My impression until now is, that each time some aspect of the ele or one of its specs was worked on, the rest of the profession suffered. Therefore working on core-aspects that stretch through all the specs as well, could yield the best results.Right now we have standard burning builds and aura-support.There are two ways to go: Push the effectiveness on certain skills up so dps/CC/healing and whatever can be done on par with other professions without a total dent in efficiency when reacting to something, or work on cooldowns, whereas I'd probably prefer the latter since it would address the slow auto-attack on staff.Maybe remove the global cooldown to switch attunements, so skill-combinations run faster. Reduce attunement-cooldown if the related trait-line is equipped in the build. Reduce the skill-cooldown of skills which are interrupted by a dodge. Allow for weapon-swap in combat for the price of putting all attunements into cooldown. Give the weaver a trait so Main- and offhand-attunement can be switched directly(for example F1 for fire main, doubletap F1 for fire offhand).Carefully reworking the elementalist to play more dynamically and a little more forgiving if you change what you're doing, while also looking out not to overdo it, would benefit the class and its specs as a whole, without requiring too much changes for whatever is being worked on for Cantha. As a last request to Arenanet: Please make the special ability of the new specialization dynamic and not some kind of stack-mechanic like you started to do it with weaver.

Sure, but pistols are mid range and if they have low cast times then it's essentially FA s/f ele or weaver kind of playstyle, which will make scepter completely worthless since it's already a weak weapon. If it's a 1200/1500 ranged weapon with such play style then it's unique for ele since staff is slow and aoe focused. Yep, that's why I said I'd want a long range for it. Ele lacks reliable instant engagement options at range. In the time it takes to cast an auto-attack on staff and for the projectile to complete its journey, some other classes already leapt to the enemy and zerked it down.

I'd rather have dual pistols with the range of a rifle. Just like thief and revenant got staffs for close range and the latter additionally the hammer for long range, weapon-types don't necessarily have to stick to a certain range.But especially I want something with long range that has barely any cast-time.

Extra Key-bindings for Mount utility skills.

Storm Tracking. I got the same issue with the mission-area that has been described multiple times already.

PvE-player here. I've played the game since the beta. My elementalist has by far the highest playtime among all my characters. Recently I've started to put some more effort into my piano-play to get into raiding...right on time for the nerfs. I'm not the type of player to recite all the traits and their respective values, but I'd say I'm a decent ele-player. I'm mostly playing on staff. I was really excited for the sword...but after playing through the PoF story with sword and dagger right on launch...let's say the weak implementation of sword on launch left a mark. I've dipped my toes into other professions. Mostly I'm surprised how easy survival is on those characters in open world or story instances and how easy it is to keep damaging your enemy while you're surviving. This feeling builds up pretty fast, even though I mostly have no deep ties to those professions. Low cast-times and less skills that root you to the ground while they still do high damage, some have inbuilt defense or very interesting buff-packages...it feels more fluid, more dynamic. The ele nowadays feels stiff. With a ton of high cast times, skills that root you to the ground for several seconds and the oh so powerful rotation is messed up easily by a single interrupt because god forbid the ele could attack and defend at the same time. Recently, when I had to collect the materials for the roller beetle saddle, I was once again reminded how long it takes the ele to even auto-attack, given how long I had to camp one specific spawnpoint to get a steam creature before a warrior insta-leaped into it or a longbow-ranger shredded it with a single skill before my projectile even went on it's ballistic arc. While I could once play a jack of all traits and master of non without any rotations, learning specific rotations allowed the ele to become a master in things like stacking might, or healing, or dealing damage, or supplying stability. All of those narrowly defined and nothing of it in parallel, because that's how rotations work. But apparently that was too strong, so everything was nerfed over time. Everything the ele stood out with was cut off.High, vertical mobility with lightning flash? Ahaha...now you can almost dodge as far as that skill shadowsteps you. High dps conjures? Useful utility on conjures? Pffft. With specializations, other classes got roles that allowed them to do two or more of those cut off things in parallel. The druid heals, supplies 25 might, resurrects and can place spirits for passive buffs. A well played chronomancer sustains a ton of buffs, among those the unique alacrity, offer blocks for a whole party and can even tank. Not to mention the amount of CC the mesmer dishes out, while a weaver has to interrupt its dps-rotation and switch through multiple attunements to reach all CC-skills. Both professions also have higher health pools and survivability than an ele while they fullfill those roles. When Tempest came with HoT, it became a dps-spec with some options for support. PoF came out, Weaver became the new dps-spec for ele. Tempest got...left behind.The specs followed the mindset of the nerfed "streamlined" elementalist and mostly just gave it new ways to deal damage, until...wait for it...the ele stood out for doing too much damage. Cut.The specs played more with attunement-mechanics instead of adding any of the roles that were cut off from the ele. Playing sword or dagger in PvE may be a solution to focus your damage on a single target, but if you deal just the same damage as everyone else while being way more fragile, there is really no use to go melee. The following suggestions may seem overpowered, but I'm not expecting them to be introduced without adequate balance. Short term: Buff the dps back up. It won't fix the ele, but at least it makes it viable again. Reduce some of the cast- and rooting times. Give the ele a more dynamic feeling. Rework auras to be a viable asset from open world up to raids. To be usefull for eles, turn on-hit-effects into passive effects. Might as well give the Tempest the ability to cast auras on ten people at once. Long term: If you're opposed to let the ele out-dps other professions in melee, shift more passive survivability or vitality to eles in melee-combat, or consider removing the difference in health pools between the professions. Consider reworking Evasive Arcana into something that doesn't require to sacrifice a dodge, given the squishiness of the ele. If it's not possible to have multiple options on different specs, rework the specs to represent an option. Improve the support-focus of the Tempest, improve the damage-focus of the Weaver. Just an example what could go into support-attunements with low damage...-Fire: Burn boons from enemies, raise firewalls to burn projectiles, dispense might, passively increase power for your party-Air: Stuns. Dispense Quickness and Swiftness for your party-Water: Pretty much like it is now, but some more condi cleanse, passively increase the vitality and healing of your party-Earth: More CC and reflects, passively increase defense and condition duration of your party Rework conjuresInstead of placing one weapon in your hands and one on the ground, give the utility-skill an ammo-mechanic. Using the skill places a weapon in your hands. If you carry a weapon, the utility skill changes, allowing you to place another weapon on the ground. Dropping the weapon in your hand changes the utility skill back. Having the second summon always at hand instead of running around to pick it back up would be a huge QoL-improvement, make it less likely that you pick up a conjure instead of rezzing someone as well as reducing visual clutter at world bosses.The icebow could use either more damage or more chill. The cc on icebow 5 should be higher for the long cast time.Earth Shield could need an actual block. Maybe even grant aegis to you and your party if you drop it.Lightning hammer feels okayish...Not really sure how to make the fire axe viable.Fiery greatsword is not bad, but could feel a little more powerful for an elite skill with that cooldown. Wishlist(not neccessary in my opinion, but would be fun): Change the elite glyph of elemental to be more like the flesh golem. Permanent and with underwater-forms. For the air elemental you'd just need to add a bubble around the current model, for the fire elemental surround it with the effect of boiling water, the earth elemental could become a mud-cloud that follows you and the ice elemental could turn into an undulating ice-wall. Pseudo weapon-set: The ele can't switch weapon sets, but it would be nice to have some slots to store a second set of weapons in the equipment-tab.

I remember a dev once saying that their vision for the ele was to be hard to master but rewarding once you do. This dev seems to be no longer a part of the team. Right now the dps of the ele isn't rewarding, probably not even worth the effort, considering other professions can dish out the same damage combined with higher survivability. The warrior dishes out about the same dps as the nerfed ele, can provide banners with a bit of dps-loss, is one of the soldier classes with heavy armor and among those the one with the biggest hp-pool. Even the rotation of the warrior is easier. It wouldn't be that bad if the ele had a viable and unique support-role, aside from long-range heal.

First off I'd change conjure-weapons. The utility-skill gets ammunition-charges, up to two. If you don't hold the summoned weapon, the weapon will be conjured to your hands, nothing more. Once you hold the weapon, the utility-skill changes, allowing you to place the second cast onto the ground like usual. If you drop your conjure, the utility-skill changes back and sets it to a cooldown. This way you stay mobile should your rotation require the conjured weapons, no one can snag them up and combat areas aren't as cluttered with weapons. I'm relatively OK with the Tempest, only the water-overload is a little underwhelming. There is one thing that greatly bothers me with the weaver. Namely that the prior mainhand attunement switches to offhand on attuning to a different element. It makes me feel like the attunements are like a book-stack that you sort on your nighttable, rather than elemental magic.I'd rather have total control over main- and offhand. Maybe something like this: F1 - F4 for mainhand-attunement, (Strg+F1) - (Strg+F4) for offhand-attunement. Cast-Times which root you to the ground also feel highly unintuitive in GW2s flexible combat-system, although I understand the premise of the added complexity and risk.It wouldn't be that bad if dodging would be a bit more responsive to cancel long casts like Meteor Shower, should the need arise. A little less cast time on auto-hits would be nice as well.