Sunshine.5014

Any Guardian class is amazing in open world, with Cele Firebrand takes the cake. 17k DPS in open world, with perma quickness, great heal, and aegis for the random pugs.

What are you talking about? Ele clearly does have a role: it's the only class that can activate "PvP Challenge Mode" for the team! That power is so unique that ANet keep nerfing it in fear it will bring more tears.

Ele is not complicated because it has 20+ skills. It's complicated and requires high skill level because IT'S LOCKED OUT of 15+ skills at all time. It's the inaccessible skills in non-attuned attunements that makes Ele hard. You're on Fire for DPS. Wanna CC? It's locked behind Air. Okay, swapped to Air for CC. Now you're locked out of Fire for 10s and your DPS suffers. Oops, didn't dodge right and you take a 10k hit. On Necro, you can simply wait for healer to heal. On Ele, you have 1k HP left, you better swap to water to heal. Now you're locked out of your DPS attunement for 10s and your DPS suffers. Again, people need to stop thinking of the 20 skills as an advantage. Being locked out of 15 skills is a liability and a big disadvantage. Ele will forever be nerfed into oblivion if people keep thinking the 20 skills is an advantage. *It is not.*

I don't remember the last time I used a Warhorn on my Ele, and I played Ele a lot. If I want more damage, I'll use Dagger. If I want more defense, I'll use Focus.

Staff Ele is very powerful and needed to be nerfed to prevent power creep. Everytime I see a glass Staff Ele in WvW I almost have to stop myself thinking about free food. I mean, I needed to stop thinking about food because if I stand still to eat food, they may kill me with their Meteors Shower after a minute, clearly not enough time to eat food. There, I'm so glad ANet are not afraid of alienating the player base to prevent power creep. Thank you for the food ANet!

Hate to break it to you, but Ele is not "the" mage class. Not since a long time. It's still squishy, yes, but it has no range damage. It's not dangerous if not shutdown fast. Hell, Tempest even has 3 targets max on Overload Air. You can call Mesmer a Time Mage and that would be more fitting. You're free to play Ele, but don't expect a "Mage".

Proof. And it only takes 3 Catalyst, not 4. Catalyst will get nerfed because of the free group quickness without having to trait. Jade Sphere boons by default should give boons to only the Catalyst. With the Sphere trait, then it gives 5 targets boons. Then we can revert the nerf on Sphere cooldown and make it more fun again. It also allows ANet to remove the energy mechanics, since the boons duration can be tuned independently. Via trait.

Ele weapon is locked in combat. If you have a melee main weapon, you're stuck until you are out of combat. Conjure can be much more useful if it helps cover that melee range weakness. NOT saying that this is the only fix Conjure needs. It still needs to function like a Kit, or instant cast Ammo skill. This is on top of that (and rebalance the numbers to a reasonable range).

Just want to add that if ANet decide to fix Staff, please do not forget Weaver Staff dual skills. Their speed is way too slow.

Let's not asking for more stats. What Ele needs is interesting and synergic traits. Many of Ele traits are boring stat boost, or X% damage. We should have traits like: Fire: Every Fire skills activation will increase the AoE by 20, max 10 stack, stack lost 10 seconds after switching out of Fire. Arcane: Aura stacks duration Water: Every evaded/dodged attack reduces Cantrips cooldown by 1 second. All trait line: each has a minor trait to give an Aura upon attunement (right now only Fire has one). Things like that. Ele can be so much more interesting. Instead, half of the meta traits are just "+X% damage" or "+X stats". It's boring.

Hammer is not the most loved Ele weapon, but ANet does get one thing right: - All hammer attunement can deal solid DPS, with different utilities per attunement. Staff, on the other hand, languishes in the hot flame. Outside of Fire Attunement, the damage drops off dramatically. Even Air can't keep up with Fire. For Core Ele, it's essentially a single Attunement weapon for DPS. For Tempest, people only use Air if they have Fresh Air. For Weaver, it's a niche weapon in WvW, and most people just camp Fire anyway. To fix Staff, we need a rework, not a simple number tweak patch. - Reduce the damage from Fire, and spread the damage to the rest of the Attunements. Make the cast time and projectiles faster. Make the combat flow more smooth. You don't need to put a lot of defensive tools to Staff. No block or invulnerability. But it should have some mobility for active avoidance and retreat. The DPS should be higher though. Virtuoso and Harbinger can reach 40k DPS from range. Ele shouldn't be stuck DPS _inside_ the boss hitbox to reach 38k. Buff Staff. Make Ele range dangerous again.

I want to see good auto attacks. Can Ele finally get an auto attack that does 30k dps like other classes? Elite spec is supposed to provide alternative play styles. One play style Ele doesn't have is the non-piano style.

That's Survivor's Bias. Many people switched off Ele in the last couple years. The ones still playing Ele are naturally more fluent at playing the class. That doesn't mean Ele is very deadly. On an average player, the class is severely lacking compared to other meta classes.

This wrong line of thought is why Ele was nerfed to oblivion. Having 20 skills is a _liability_, not an asset. Having 20 skills mean 15 of your weapon skills are _locked_ away not readily available when you need them, instead of 5 skills locked away on other classes. Engi doesn't have this problem because kit _has no cooldown_. Ele has Attunement cooldown, making having 15 _locked out_ skills way more of a liability. In fact, Ele skills should be balanced _stronger_ to compensate for when you need to go into Water/Earth and lose all damage, or when you go into Air for CC and locked out of Water healing.

People here discussing 2% of bleeding is OP. Let me show you an Adept (first tier) trait from Virtuoso: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jagged_Mind Not 2%, but 3%. And not on bleed, but ALL condition damage. Oh, and 100% chance of bleed on crit, no internal cooldown. Ele has a trait in fire, but 33% on crit, with 5 seconds internal cooldown. Are Ele players so submissive that they don't dare to ask for the same treatment other classes have? Make it 3% of total condition, or 5% if Bleeding/Burning only, and throw a +20% duration on top of something. Ask for more. Your attempt to be reasonable is not helping Ele.

People should be able to change build based on information about your team. If you notice your team has 3 supports, swap. People shouldn't be able to change build based on information about the other team. It's not fair to queue as an Ele, swap to Holo if they have a Weaver, or Mirage if they have a Catalyst. Information about the other team should not be revealed before the match starts.

It's funny you said that. Staff CC is one of the few weapon sets that rely mainly on the intelligence of the enemy. You can place the CC, but it requires the enemy to actively choose to get CC'ed and walk into it. Sometimes in PvE I screamed "kitten boss, please walk just a bit so my CC is triggered and I can contribute to breakbar..."

It's a Hammer! - Fire should have a Daze - Water should have a Float - Air should have a Stun - Earth should have a Knockdown I don't mind if it deals low damage value, but it should be the CC weapon set that Ele never had.

Air 4 should be a Leap forward, not a knock backward.

You can burn all your skills to get 10 stacks. Nobody argues that. What people talked about is how do you keep up that 10 stacks after you burn all your #5 skills?

You're missing the point. The point is there is no way you can run 4 DPS Mech and get Alac covered. However, you can run 4 DPS Catalyst and get Quickness covered. That's the difference. Mech has to trait to get Alac; Catalyst doesn't. 4 DPS Catalyst getting 100% quickness while doing top DPS in speed run is how the spec will get nerfed again.

Mechanist is very OP in PvE right now, but it won't be nerfed, because it has to trait to get Alac. Catalyst has access to (very little) quickness without traiting. This means a seasoned group will run 1 heal Alac + 4 Catalyst DPS. Even without boon duration, that would cover the quickness, while still maximizing DPS. ANet will look at it and nerf Catalyst for "overperforming". Solution: make it so the Jade Sphere doesn't give boon to allies by default. When traits, give allies boons, make it follow the Catalyst, and bigger range.

Or make Persisting Flame only requires 5 stacks. Maybe we should think more in term of buffing Core Ele instead.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sphere_Specialist https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Persisting_Flames Right now it's impossible for Hammer Catalyst to maintain 10 stacks of Persisting Flames because the Fire field last 5 seconds, but with 15s cooldown. Instead of making Sphere Specialist to give 100% boon duration, just make it double the field duration (from 5s to 10s). The end result is the same for boon duration, but now Hammer Catalyst can actually keep Persisting Flame up. Bonus: the trait should also make the field moves with the Catalyst.

In PvP, Mech is the best sidenoder in the game at the moment. Fire Weaver has been dethroned. In WvW, abuse AI pathing to gain an advantage, since you're not forced to stay on a point.