[Concerns about Elementalist]

nobody cares about weaver dps when minstrel fbs and chronos can literally stand inside meteor showers and emote as long as their boons dont get removed by scourges/spellbreakers. weavers are useless without the help of various other meta classes.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

people still trying to make suggestions in this thread? it's basically balance team's spam folder at this point.

it's highly likely that people can make all sorts of comments trash talking the team in here that will usually get them banned but it doesnt happen because this thread (and this subforum) is likely set to be hidden from display on dev team's UI

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@maddoctor.2738 said:One of the constructive trait changes requested by Elementalists finally became a reality, Heat Sync affecting 10 targets.

Who cares. Warhorn support tempest still won't be taken over other supports in all game modes.

This is including staff support tempest & focus support tempest because you just dont have the staff's heals in pve and focus's survivablity in pvp/wvw when you run warhorn

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@"Dahir.4158" said:I think we need Arcane Fury back. It would really help to get some more fury from other places instead of having to rely on Raging Storm (crit). Having that trait back would definitely benefit staff weavers and those who use scepter.

We actually have builds that can one shot people, but we are held back by our own lack of fury. The might gain is a nice idea, though it's not what we need. We can get that from multiple sources via sigils, runes and other places. Fury is the one thing DPS weavers need on demand right now since you've introduced the ferocity buff to Raging Storm.

Maybe I'm talking rubbish, but it's worth changing it back to what it was and then having a look at the impact afterwards.

Do the same for Lava Font. I'm still pissed off.

Dont bother, terrible balance team never ever actually admit to their mistakes and revert things.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

what is the point of this thread if basically almost all the suggestion is ignored lol.

incoming shatterstone buff next patch (they did the dagger buffs this patch just like they did previously) and druid or daredevil rework because those specs definitely need it.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@steki.1478 said:

Fire

- strong for pve and staff, useless everywhere else.

This isn't true anymore because Fire is great for Sword Weaver too, both condition and power build.

Grandmaster:

• Persisting flames (unchanged)
• Pyromancer's puissance: change to gain might (5-8 stacks, 10-15 sec duration) and recharge fire attunement on kill.
• Burning ashes reworked into active cleanse on burning enemy/attacking a burned enemy (or halved cooldown from current trait).

Pyromancer's Puissance is a trait that works very well as it is now on Sword, due to fire skills on sword being better than Air skills, you camp sword and get 21-22 stacks of might on yourself without boon duration gear. The reason this trait is weak is because only Sword and Staff have good Fire auto attacks, for Dagger and Scepter it's better to swap as quickly as possible to another attunement (in PVE Air - or Earth for condition builds), Allowing you to get back to Fire when you kill something won't fix the Fire skills on those weapons being lackluster, staff users will still use Persisting Flames anyway. And the most important problem in PVE is that someone else (a Druid) will give you your 25 stacks of Might, making might generation useless. Now if Pyromancer's Puissance could be reliably combined with Heat Sync for 25-stack might uptime then we'd get a good Might generation Alternative.

As for PVP, I think the nature of Elementalist (low health/armor) means relying on defensive trait lines, meaning Fire will always be a secondary option unfortunately

Imo Pyromancer's puissance currently is just inferior to Persisting Flames in PvE even when you are solo. The might generation is too slow thanks to all the slow attacks Fire have and it also generates less might compared to WvW/PvP version. It's actually hard to get to 25 might because enemies are either long dead (trash mobs in open world) before that happens or you are forced to play defensively by kiting and swapping to other attunements. I can get my might a lot quicker from sigil of strength and blasting fire fields, abeilt usually only to 10~15 stacks, but most importantly, Fury for critc is just that much better on power builds, especially berserkers gear where it has low critic chance but high critc damage.

During the bugged MS week in WvW I was messing around with Persisting Flames + Air trait line for perma fury instead of the standard Pyromancer's Puissance because who cares about some shitty 6~8k normal damage from 25 might when you can crtic for 15~20k.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

But you only give examples that can compete with elementalist... What about Necromancer? You accuse me of ignoring your points, which i probably did... When people are rude i tend to just ignore most of what they say. But you didn't address that point, or the fact that ele still can outperform most other classes in PvE and WvW. It does require more specific builds, and doesn't work as well now as it did before PoF in PvP, i'll give you that. But then again that's probably a consequence of tempest and chrono having been so broken in the past that they broke pvp.

I'll skip core stuff like obsidian skin, like most of earth and water traits, and i'll go directly to the traits and skills that allowed tempest, along with chrono, to become unkillable in PvP. Note that all classes had access to the same stats, but only chrono and tempest had the skills to become unkillable, and that's pretty close to literally.You'll never see any class in this game do max damage will keeping high sustain, that's simply not how the game works.

I don't know why you keep going on about ele being good in WvW when it's currently one of the worst class in WvW. It's bottom tier in roaming on par with necros and also not that great in zerging, though better than top roaming classes such as mesmers/thieves/rangers for sure. It's only good at killing siege and doing high dps on undefended lords/guards but in a zerg fight it pretty much gets hard countered by firebrands and spellbreaker bubbles. So many times I'll meteor shower a blob and see bunch of big numbers pop up but nobody goes down thanks to fb giving protection and sustaining through them. Scourge's barriers also work pretty well against meteor shower too . All of your good ccs gets also gets countered by fb who has easily access to stab. In fights where there's a lot of moving and neither zerg wipes to 1 or 2 pushes, I've pretty much came to realize that I just can't move with the tag because I pretty much cant do any counter pressure when there's bubble and stability flying around and I have to be off to the sides channeling my MS hoping nobody sees me and interrupt it much less have a hammer rev one shot me.

With this many fb running around I've pretty much given up on playing ele in WvW and switched to scourge and guess what? I actually feel like I'm doing a lot -- removing boons, especially stability and then ccing enemies with fear and I'm also keeping my squad alive through barriers. So many times I see bunch of red circles on choke coming from meteor shower I just laugh and put on my barrier and run right through, and if the ele is trying to channel it without stab I just put a fear mark on him for immediate cancel. This all hoping I dont die to retail too

and i dont understand what you mean by tempest and chrono being unkillable? invulnerable? guardian and engi have invuls too and mirages have something close to an invul with choice for free action.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@"Legendofzelda.1278" said:This a general suggestion that I hope the devs were thinking of with the nerfs to ele.I have seen several people in this thread talk about reversing the nerfs to ele. I would suggest instead of reversing the nerfs; make the mechanics of skills and utilities better so that we can do a bit more damage and be more useful in all game modes because mechanics are better not just bigger numbers.An example of changing mechanics to make ele better instead of just bigger numbers: Change to conjures like has been suggested many times instant cast or all low cast time, cd 30s 2 ammo to all conjures except fgs which is like 90 or something no second conjure on ground maybe even if you are holding one the skills become a ground target to put second on the ground. Make conjure elemental skills better to be more reliable and controllable maybe even permanent until killed. These two and more are good suggestions how to make mechanics better (also smaller after cast on allot of skills would be nice to make them more smooth).so ya please don't just make numbers big make skills fun to use, and not feel clunky and then numbers can be tweaked to change to be balanced.

I personally think there's nothing wrong with ele's skills being "clunky" to use (channeled/long animation...etc). It's a big part of what makes it a hard class and distinguishes itself from other classes this way. Eles can have several slow attacks but they just need to do huge impact (big damage, big cc...etc) when they land. Currently a ton of ele's slow skills don't do enough (eg. all staff autos except Fireball, Eruption, Ice spike, Pressure Blast, Shatterstone, Dragon's Tooth, Phoenix, all Overloads, and the list goes on, even many of sword weaver's skills with its 3/4s cast time everywhere). Even Churning Earth is bad. I mean come on, an immovable skill with that huge of a telegraph and no innate protection such as evade or stability should instantly bring glass builds like most thieves' HP from 100% down to 10% when it hits, not do some bad bleeds that take forever to tick and gets instantly cleansed. I think out of every single slow ele skills, currently only Meteor Shower correctly matches its risk with reward.

Some of the nerfs (eg. lava font, air overload) are what's making many of the ele's slow skills useless, so imo they should be reverted.

Conjures are a whole another beast though and definitely needs rework. Currently basically all of its skills are bad and it locks eles from their more useful skills so people only pick them up, use 1 or 2 skills, and immediately drop them. The 180s cd on FGS also don't make much sense to me given the impact it brings. With that long of cd it should be like Sohothin from pof story (with numbers against down so you dont just wipe everything) I think.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@Sunshine.5014 said:

@LazySummer.2568 said:

@Sunshine.5014 said:I see so many buff request that would make Ele completely OP. We should not do that. We need to

diversify

Ele trait lines.

• All trait line should provide some level of Direct Damage, Condi Damage, Defense, Cleanse Utility
• Stop the Monopoly of Water on defense.

For example:

• Fire: nerf might generation, small heal when you burn away conditions, add blind to more skills
• Air: small heal on evading attack, nerf the damage bonus, remove conditions during super speed, add weakness to some skills
• Earth: small heal on stripping boons from enemies, nerf the defense bonus, remove conditions on hit above threshold, add boon stripping to some skills
• Water: massively nerf heal (and spread to other lines), significantly increase damage bonus, remove conditions when applied Regen, add chill to some skills

You get the idea: each line

must

offer something to

all

aspects of the game. The offer must be small enough (like, each line adds heal for about 1/3 of what Water adds heal). But things need to be spreaded out. You can't let Air has a monopoly on damage, and Water has a monopoly on Defense. That's what make Ele so bad at everything.

What you're suggesting will make ele even worse than what it currently is because now all the trait lines are some bad lines that do a little bit of everything but not enough of anything, especially the heal on rare situations such as removing boons or evading an attack, and fire line definitely does not need its might generation reduced because currently every other class that can generate might generate them at a lot faster rate than eles (even necros with blood is power). It will just be like how sword weaver currently is trying to be hybrid power and condi damage and just end up not enough of anything. Picking tempest or weaver specialization also means you can only pick 2 normal lines, and when you spread these all out across 5 lines it will just not work. Some comments might make ele too OP but a lot of the suggestions are completely reasonably to me.

None of the other classes have trait lines that tries to do everything in a single line and attempt to balance it by making the everything it does insignificant. You can clearly see the many lines in other class are definitely mainly all defensive (eg. Engi's Inventions, Necro's Blood Magic, Mesmer's Inspiration, Warrior's defense), all utility (Engi's Alchemy, Necro's Soul Reaping, Mesmer's Chaos), or all offensive (eg. Engi's Firearm, Necro's Curses, Mesmer's dueling). I just listed some specific examples of lines with specific purposes, if you look at all the classes including Guardian, Revenant, Ranger, and Thief that I didn't mention you can see it's all like that.

You're thinking about it too shallowly. Things add up.

Let's assume:Before:

• Fire 100% damage
• Water 100% defense
• Arcana 100% utility

If you take only Arcana, you will have no heal at all.

After:

• Fire 40% damage, 30% defense, 30% utility
• Water 25% damage, 40% defense, 35% utility
• Arcana 40% damage, 20% defense, 40% utility

Now it opens up the freedom for people to play-the-way-they-want.

Of course, the number and specific changes are always up to debate. But I think that's the principle we want to go with.

That makes trait line more usable, and none of the trait line becomes a must pick like the current Water line.

Water is only a must pick entirely because of the condi clear. The real must pick is arcane because it's utility is just so much better than every other ele line including tempest and weaver spec. The sword lighting rod build running Air/Arcane/Weaver is perfectly fine when there arent much condi pressure on enemy team (eg. mutiple condi mirages/thieves on other team) it even do decent against scourges. it's just a totally different playstyle where instead of water bunker sustaining a node you now kite around and do a bit more dmg instead, but lose node more easily. You still have a decent sustain with just riptide water field blasting and some regen from arcane

Edit: I can also imagine Earth/Arcane/Weaver do just as well bunkering against mostly power heavy comps as water builds, but when condi cleanse in water is a thing and you can also just out heal damages back to full, of course water will be way better than earth.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

@Sunshine.5014 said:I see so many buff request that would make Ele completely OP. We should not do that. We need to diversify Ele trait lines.

• All trait line should provide some level of Direct Damage, Condi Damage, Defense, Cleanse Utility
• Stop the Monopoly of Water on defense.

For example:

• Fire: nerf might generation, small heal when you burn away conditions, add blind to more skills
• Air: small heal on evading attack, nerf the damage bonus, remove conditions during super speed, add weakness to some skills
• Earth: small heal on stripping boons from enemies, nerf the defense bonus, remove conditions on hit above threshold, add boon stripping to some skills
• Water: massively nerf heal (and spread to other lines), significantly increase damage bonus, remove conditions when applied Regen, add chill to some skills

You get the idea: each line must offer something to all aspects of the game. The offer must be small enough (like, each line adds heal for about 1/3 of what Water adds heal). But things need to be spreaded out. You can't let Air has a monopoly on damage, and Water has a monopoly on Defense. That's what make Ele so bad at everything.

What you're suggesting will make ele even worse than what it currently is because now all the trait lines are some bad lines that do a little bit of everything but not enough of anything, especially the heal on rare situations such as removing boons or evading an attack, and fire line definitely does not need its might generation reduced because currently every other class that can generate might generate them at a lot faster rate than eles (even necros with blood is power). It will just be like how sword weaver currently is trying to be hybrid power and condi damage and just end up not enough of anything. Picking tempest or weaver specialization also means you can only pick 2 normal lines, and when you spread these all out across 5 lines it will just not work. Some comments might make ele too OP but a lot of the suggestions are completely reasonably to me.

None of the other classes have trait lines that tries to do everything in a single line and attempt to balance it by making the everything it does insignificant. You can clearly see the many lines in other class are definitely mainly all defensive (eg. Engi's Inventions, Necro's Blood Magic, Mesmer's Inspiration, Warrior's defense), all utility (Engi's Alchemy, Necro's Soul Reaping, Mesmer's Chaos), or all offensive (eg. Engi's Firearm, Necro's Curses, Mesmer's dueling). I just listed some specific examples of lines with specific purposes, if you look at all the classes including Guardian, Revenant, Ranger, and Thief that I didn't mention you can see it's all like that.

[Concerns about Elementalist]

Here's what I think that is needed to make ele decent (i.e. meta viable) without redesigning the class completely. Some of these has been mentioned over and over since the beginning of PoF much like how Elusive Mind should be reworked for Mirage yet balance team keep thinking otherwise:

================================================PvP:Only talking about sword weaver:

1. Revert Arcane Prowess trait back to granting fury instead of might

2. Stop making condi cleanses dependent on a single trait in the water trait line. If there are options in other trait lines to cleanse condis, it can not only encourage build diversity, but can also get people to move away from the "get weaver to 10% hp and they heal to full" (which is mainly achieve through high healing power from Menders amulet, Healing Ripple, and Regen spamming) water build that people keep complaining about.

3. Either reduce the cast time of all sword #3 double attuned skills to 1/2s or increase their range to 300 with a frontal cone cleave3a. Of all the sword #3 double attuned skills, Aqua Siphon and Rust Frenzy are the most useless. On top of the buff on point #3, Aqua Siphon should either apply some cc such as 1s daze or 5s chill on enemy hit or just do similar amounts of damage as Quantum Strike/Cauterizing Strike. Rust Frenzy, on top of buff on point #3, should be buffed by one the following: have its physical damage (i.e. non bleeding portion) drastically increased, have it apply long immobilize on enemy similar to warrior's Flurry burst skill, or gain evade frame.

4. Revert the change that prevent Shearing Edge and Natural Frenzy from hitting enemies behind you. You can revert Natural Frenzy's 33% damage buff too if you feel it might be too strong because these 2 skills are just really awful now, especially Natural Frenzy where you have to basically stand still just to reliably get it to fully cast, and enemies can side step to avoid all the attacks due to the projectile being so slow.

5. Reduce the cast time of all the final attack of sword's auto attack chain to 1/2s.5a. Increase the damage of all of sword's water's autoattack to be similar in damage to other element's, remove the healing if you have to, because currently that autoattack chain don't do anything, and it's better to just spam it while running away to heal with Signet of Restoration instead of attempting to heal by hitting the enemy with it (and get vastly out-traded instead).

6. Flame Uprising should have its leap range increased to 600 (not just 450+180 flame radius, which, funnily enough falls short of hitting a stationary target that is 600 range away even though it's supposedly 630 range total; holo leap doesn't have this issue). One of the main issue with dealing damage as sword weaver is definitely that enemies can just kite by simply running away in a straight line because you're melee and don't have enough gap closers. Every other classes that wields melee weapons, including warriors, have tons gap closers or can swap to long range weapon (eg. holosmith) so why do sword weavers, the only class that doesn't get the option of 2nd weapon set, get only one high cd gap closer (Polaric Leap on 15s)? Being forced to swap to air attunement just to chase down someone when most of your damaging skills is in fire attunement is also why kiting sword weaver is so easy.

If all of the above changes went through without any random nerfs that balance team seem to like to do to compensate for the buffs, I feel like sword weaver should be in a pretty good spot in Pvp, which can also mean it'll be decent in WvW roaming.

================================================

PvE:

• Either just revert the unwarranted Lava Font nerf from the recent patch or change meteor shower back to doing the same damage as the bugged week (in PvE only for MS). The elements of rage nerf is already a big enough nerf on weaver's general dps, even more so on huge hitboxes with the lightning hammer, ice bow, and lightning glyph changes. Reverting Lava Font nerf will also help zerging eles in WvW

================================================

WvW:

• I don't play much of this mode other than just recently started getting into it because I wanted the mistforged armors, but I personally think, on top of the PvP and PvE changes listed above, which should also get applied to WvW, the best thing to do for zerg eles is to completely redesign or buff tempest. Redesigning/buffing staff's autoattack skills so not all of them are useless except fireball (especially staff's water auto, which is in the same state as sword's water auto -- no damage + not enough healing) like another post has mentioned is also good.

================================================

Others:

• Dagger main hand and Scepters definitely needs buffs or just reworking conjures to serve as a 2ndary weapon that can be swapped to for some time, without long cd similar to engi's kits, can help, but I will already be very grateful if the above changes went through so we can at least have one competitive meta build in all the game modes.

[Anet; what is your goal for elementalist?]

the current balance team clearly envisioned elementalist to be a trash jack of all trades master of none that's only useful in open world pve aka afk fashion wars rp. Meanwhile there's their favorite class named mesmer that's the true versatile class and can be made to be top tier everywhere if you just changed your build. Power dps, condi dps, roamer, tank, support, you name it lmao.

[Stolen Boons should use the initial caster's stats]

I personally think it's an oversight on how mesmers are allowed to generate new clones over the 3 limit when their shattered ones are still running to the target.

[How to beat a Mesmer in SPvP?]

you play teef, perferably sword version so you can steal twice and use consume plasma 4 times, which basically gives you near invincibility. gl beating one if you miss steal tho