[Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Are Coming Soon! We've Made Updates Based on Your Feedback.]

2 cents for Ele:

• Please have a dedicate UI for the bullet. Please DO NOT add another buff bar icon for the love of the Six!
• Please consider having the same cooldown for both Pistol #2 and Pistol #3 in all attunement. Pistol is advertised as "decide whether you want more offense or more defense". If there is a cooldown mismatch, it's rarely a choice anymore. You would always want to use the low cooldown one first so that it's available for another use before you switch attunement.

[World Restructuring Beta Event Feedback]

On 2/2/2024 at 2:07 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

• Do you play on NA or EU? -- NA
• What team were you on during January 12-26? -- Don't remember sorry
• What team were you on during January 26-February 2? -- Don't remember sorry
• If there is a day of the week and time of day you usually play, what are they? Usually late at night, weekends more often than weekdays (would love weekly reset to happen Saturday night btw, not Sunday mid night)
• Did your world restructuring matchups feel more or less balanced than your regular WvW Server matches? -- more balance, and importantly: more fun!
• Did you select a WvW Guild for the beta? -- Yes
• Was your guild part of a larger alliance guild? -- I don't know. I'm too casual to check those. I join a guild, I play during the time people are on.
• Were there usually commanders around during your normal playtime? -- Yes
• Which week felt most balanced and enjoyable for you? -- I like both weeks. We win some, we lose some. But overall it's more fun.
• What part of world restructuring felt the most well executed? -- The reward section
• What part of world restructuring feels like it has the most room for improvement? -- You need a GIANT notification a week ahead of the beta to tell people to select a guild

Also, just want to say good work ANet. I wouldn't mind if this "beta" happens every month or so. It seems close to ready (beside the initial team selection mess up for other people).

[Balance patch 26/09/2023]

Weaver is nerfed because of Snow Crows Speed Run, not because of Warhorn. Any time Snow Crows release an Ele speedrun, Ele will get nerfed.

[Rock Barrier]

Hi dev, can you make Rock Barrier not grant Toughness but reduce incoming damage by 33% instead? Having Toughness really messes with instance bosses. Thank you!

[How much do mighty infusions affect benchmarks?]

Infusions add about 3% DPS. For comparison, a sigil slot is worth around 5% DPS.

[What's the most fun raid/fractal build you have played?]

Fun is probably Tempest/Weaver. My brain was filled with adrenaline. I read every animation from the enemies, evading the right attacks, time dodge, attunement swap, and skills. It's honestly pretty fun. But I usually got demotivated when my DPS is lower than a Mech spamming #2. Dodge is a DPS loss.

Effective is probably Mechanist. A Mechanist with everything on auto attack, and only spamming #2 would have more DPS than the majority of Ele in fractal.

[Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats]

3 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Honestly, I think the whole "power budget" metaphor is just a convoluted way of saying "we don't want individual skills to be too powerful."  The reason being that many elements of a skill are largely incongruent, and thus nigh incomparable.  I.E. how do you quantify attack radius with evade duration?

Attack radius is way less important than evade duration.

Attack radius is on the level of piercing, with piercing slightly stronger. You can hit 2 different targets that's pretty far apart. Think MO raid soliders.

Evade on the other hand is stronger, on the level of Dodge, Block, Reflect.

The main thing to keep in mind is: the number can be tweaked. It's the mechanics that need good power Budget. A piercing 5 target may be similar to a 360 AoE skill. If they are still imbalance, tweak the skill range or animation/after cast time for example.

[Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats]

Just now, Infusion.7149 said:

Actually if you play WvW tempest is quite popular right now and engi is not tier 1 meta anymore unlike Firebrand/revenant (vindicator/herald).

Yep I know :). And I agree with that.

It's just funny people still bringing up GWEN thinking it means Ele when the E was replaced to mean Engi for multiple years already. The latest patch nerfed Engi, but that doesn't mean that E suddenly means Ele now. It's still Engi and their gyros.

[Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats]

1 minute ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Elementalist (staff DPS backline)

That's a great joke, I like how effortlessly sneak in the references to numerous Staff Ele and Meteor Shower nerfs!

Now people won't be able to confuse between the meta Engineer and meta defining Meteor Shower Ele anymore!

[Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats]

36 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

You've never met a tempest, weaver, or catalyst with a brain, have you?

Mesmer would fit your use case far better as its vastly more niche, but no you decide to go with a literal GWEN staple class 😂

Hint: the E in GWEN is for Engineer. Ele has been too meta defining for a long time it's a class of its own!

[Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats]

6 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

These stats are already considered.

Elementalist has one of the best mobility and damage mitigation potentials in the entire game. It doesn't have the raw defensive stats, but instead gets tons of active defenses.

Also the fact that elementalist basically has 4 weapon sets always available as their class mechanic.

I think you misspoke. It's not that Ele has 4 weapon sets. It's that 75% of their weapon skills are locked away at all time. It's a drawback, not an advantage.

To make it even more clear, normal classes have 50% of their weapon skills locked away, Ele has 75% of their weapon skills locked away. Want to CC? Sorry you gotta swap to Air. Want to DPS? Oops, Fire is on cooldown and is locked away. Wanna heal? Tough luck doing damage until you swap away from Water.

[Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats]

A Warrior has about 1000 more stats than an Ele (700 Vit, 300 armor). If Power Budget only accounts for the equipment stats, Ele will forever be a bottom class.

Either remove the HP penalty and make all classes the same HP, or ANet need to include that penalty in the Power Budget and makes Ele skills naturally includes more utilities.

[Power fresh air, should have the highest DPS in the game.]

2 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

Weaver doesnt have a heal skill? As for mechanist if i eat an attack that removes my scholar buff which hurts my dps alot  so if the dmg can be avoided i need to always avoid it.

Losing scholar buff is -5% DPS.

Dodging _once_ every 20 seconds is a 5% DPS loss. Not even count that it messes up Ele rotation, which leads to even bigger DPS loss.

Ele has to dodge constantly. Way more than once per 20 seconds. That's why real world DPS is way worse than benchmark on golem. They don't have to dodge on golem.

[Power fresh air, should have the highest DPS in the game.]

8 hours ago, tykel.6073 said:

In general high cleave damage builds cannot also have the top single target damage. Then you have no really to bring the single target damage builds. However power tempest does need some help (as do most power ele builds it seems).

High cleave?

Overload Air has a kitten 3 targets limit. How is that cleave? Mechanist has 5 targets limit from range and deal more damage than FreshAir Power Tempest.

Let repeat it again: Overload Air has a kitten 3 targets limit, not 5.

Edit: also please feel free to tell me another class that has their main mechanics on 3 targets limit instead of 5.

[[BUG] Elementalists Evasive Arcana and Woven Stride [Merged]]

For real ANet. When will you fix this? It's beyond ridiculous at this point.

[Power fresh air, should have the highest DPS in the game.]

15 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

As much as power fresh air tempest is my preferred elementalist gameplay it isn't supposed to be the top DPS spec for elementalist. Sword weaver is supposed to be top DPS (right now it is more scepter condi weaver or staff condi weaver provided the target doesn't move), followed by power catalyst (which is essentially melee <600 range), with condi tempest / power tempest last.
 

Why should Power FreshAir Tempest be last? Overload, which is its main attack, is melee range.

[Power fresh air, should have the highest DPS in the game.]

On 10/13/2022 at 8:51 AM, zealex.9410 said:

Either im having a stroke or you are unaware that literally every (power) build needs to dodge attacks.

You must be joking. When I'm on my Mechanist, I only need to walk away from wipe-mechanics (stress on walk away, since I still have range DPS). While when I'm on Weaver, I need to dodge even normal attacks. If I get hit once, I either pray that the healers heals me in time, or swap to water and lose DPS. Mechanist doesn't have any of that problem. Even the normal heal from Explosion + Signet can top off my HP.

As I said above, to make Ele Golem benchmark fair:
Like all Ele benchmark must use dodge whenever the energy bar is full. Then the DPS meter is more accurate.

[I got a solution to ele: Why not just have ANET add some xtra sustain somewhere to make builds more balanced in sustain?]

It's not about the sustain. It's not about the damage. It's about the utilities and flexibility.

All attunement should be able to deal similar DPS. They can provide different utilities (teleport, block, heal, cleanse...) All trait line should have options for DPS, defense, utilities.

[3 Major Flaws of Catalyst]

4 hours ago, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

Making the hammer3 weapon mechanic into a Cata spec mechanic has three problems:

• The projectiles are inherently close-range (130), and would add little to no damage synergy to ranged (staff or scepter) Cata builds. (Yes, I agree they would at least get the buff benefits.)
• To generate them, pressing F5 every time one swaps attunement is boring and tedious.
• To upkeep the projectiles would push Cata builds to constantly swap attunements just as a maintenance requirement, not for actual gameplay. This is unfun and especially problematic for staff, with its many slow cast times.

What if....just throwing this out....the projectiles were generated automatically simply by swapping attunements (in-combat only)? Madness, eh?

• Rate of projectile generation is still gated by attunement swap CDs.
• Removes the unfun tedious 'press a button after swapping' just to summon and maintain the projectiles.
• Upkeep of projectiles still requires attune-swapping.
• Replace the master trait Evasive Empowerment with one that enables the damage portion of projectile generation on attune-swap (i.e., w/o this trait projectiles are generated but only give the player the buffs associated w/that projectile), or perhaps w/o this trait the DPS and buffs from projectiles are 50% of their current value, so selecting the trait doubles buffs/dmg from projectiles. This gives a good tradeoff option between this new projectiles trait, Spectacular Sphere (remove the 10% DPS penalty ofc), and Empowering Auras. 

Otherwise, I don't see making the hammer3 weapon mechanic into a Cata spec mechanic.

We can still keep F5 for manually launch the Sphere, or make a trait that automatically launch the spheres after you collect all 4 attunements.

[Evasive arcana..]

2 hours ago, Bizgurk.5639 said:

At least they have acknowledged that bug.

It's not much, but it's something!

Where did they acknowledge it?

[I was able to solo three champions at the same time with my Rifle Mechanist]

40 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Don't encourage them!  They'll probably nerf weaver in reaction to this! 🤣

LOL, I was actually thinking about your Weaver vids. ANet might actually read that and decide to nerf Weaver more.

[Power fresh air, should have the highest DPS in the game.]

I'd rather Snowcrows bake in Ele dodge for their benchmark. Like all Ele benchmark must use dodge whenever the energy bar is full. Then the DPS meter is more accurate.

It's unrealistic that Ele doesn't dodge when DPS on a golem.

[3 Major Flaws of Catalyst]

I'd rather the F5 be on F1-4 like Tempest. There is no reason you need a separate button when you can tap the same attunement button to drop a sphere. Then move the hammer #3 to the F5 button.

[Profession Choice Corollaries]

Guardian is your best bet. The way FB is designed means it has access to everything:

- bursty DPS with burning

- aegis on demand

- high healing, high armor

- stability on demand

- projectile hate on demand

While each of the above may get number tweaking, the core mechanics will always be there (and that's what make guardian OP).

If you can only main one class, it's clear that Guardian is the best choice.

[Make Ele Fun: 5s attunement cooldown baseline]

7 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

And then they hard nerf damage to compensate. Sure wish people would consider the consequences of changes before they post about it.

Hard nerf damage?

Before, let's say 35k DPS. After the 5s change, it becomes 40k DPS. ANet then rebalance it down to 35k DPS again. I get that you're jaded, but the DPS is something that can be tweaked with numbers.

On the other hand, the combat is gonna be more fluid, better utilities, and allow Ele to react to more situations.

Not everything is about DPS. You can buff the utilities of the spec while balancing DPS too. Focusing only on DPS is a trap, and that was what keeping Ele in this pothole for years: everyone was just focusing on DPS and didn't realize the profession needs utilities buffs.