So far I've refrained from posting at all here or elsewhere, because what ele players blatently clearly whished for (bow/ranged option as a weapon) was ignored in a fashion so tonedeaf it boggles the mind how they keep saying they read the players opinions. But well, what do I have to lose from venting my frustration?
Altough advertised as the "versatile, range prefering" spell slinger, again and again the ele has been forced into melee, with the lowest hp, light armor and no inherent survivability mechanic. Instead the name of the game is: sacrifice what ever you are supposed to do to do extra skills that keep you barely alive and pray the hfb takes pity on you (and does the cc for you, too, if you havent predicted that cc phase literaly 5 seconds prior at the least).
so contrary to the advertisement, your "versatility" boils down to two options: high raw dps or healing output. And the dps is chained down to melee, since there isnt a ranged option thats not pathetic in dps output. So the current "versatile Ele" can't provide significant boons besides might which is already present in abundance on every class, can't boon strip/rip, and the dps potential is locked behind a forced melee with a reliance on absolutely nothing going wrong/desturbing your chain, or you do subpar damage, while still having to choose between having your cc ready or surviving (eg. go air/water on sword/focus weaver or go fire/earth) the ordeal. But ofc, ele players are just playing the class wrong, because they dont understand they are supposed to go full celestial so they....die "only" as easyly as all the other classes normally do and do half the damage of a autoattacking renegade, while still having to circle every attunement and pressing every button available? Gee, thanks, "range prefering" my butt.
So what does the ele get? A Hammer. a slow kitten hammer with a weird mix of melee and laughable 600 range? and on top of that a boon field that is immobile and only applies to you, so you have to sit insight a 600 unit circle and wait for the Boss to randomly drop a one hit kill aoe in your tiny puddle of "you get half a decent boon in here"? On top of that, you get a stupid energy bar to manage besides your attunement cool downs and a sphere that only does damage when you are in melee range, effectively nullifying the tiny range on your hammer? and a "grande finale" only available on one of your weapon choises? what the actual f?
So, since i dont have any delusions on you just deleting the catalyst.dat folder and starting over, here finally is what i see could be done to make this spec something of a win:
- energy is removed and replaced by a simple cd and a boon thats affected by boon duration
- Hammer gets 900-1200 range on every attunement.
- Grande Finale is moved to F5 and available on every weapon.
- add a boon strip option
- Orb is merged with the augment mechanic and either spawns on attunement swap or activateable with no or low cd, like the tempest overload.
and the best/most important thing:
- Give the trait option to control how the augment/orb works: one option is to simply be a strong buff on the player character only, who can carry it around., the other is a placable well/aoe with a 1200 range (not radius) with decent buffs and affecting your allies as well, last is to have the well bound to you, but still affecting your allies. That way the mechanic is actually useful regardless of your decision to play ranged or melee and gives the versatility to either be a great dps with better survivability, a good dps with team utility or a support who doesnt have to constantly hug the people he is supporting.
also: rework the kitten staff.
And thats just my 2 cents on the matter, but i realise the futility of my input here, on all these forum postings i've read there is 0 discourse with the actual devs, no real discussion or communication happens. Only players venting like me, and a moderator or two listing a "feed back"-thread where players can dump their frustration and concerns that will sadly be ignored.
But apart from all that, still, i want to thank the devs sincerely for all the hard work they put into this amazing game that i still love, all my critisism aside.
