DaKillaOfHell.5907

- Please redo the aoe nerf. It has nowhere any justification anymore aside from pvp. - Please rework the catalyst energy management or completely remove it. It is unrewarding, completely useless and just and simply annoying. - Rework the elementals so they work like any other minion-type and fix the kitten riding bug! - Please give us the options in gameplay to either use auto-target for movement skills or not. And please... Redo the conjured weapons. They are useless, awful, and no fun to play with at all!

Not only that, but it is one of the very few classes being that hard-dependent on different factors whether it is being good or not in an encounter (with the other one being for instance deadeye). 95% of encounters being a meh choice and < 5% being an actually extremely good choice makes a class imba... understood. In the meantime, every average-mech is rolling on the floor laughing about the low dps output of elementalists.

They are just in the wrong body. Not the bullets, the charr I mean. /sarcasm off

And this is exactly THE problem. Elementalist has plenty of utilities, scepter has also good utilities AND good damage, but pistol has nothing of both of them. Dagger is a completely failed weapon design nowadays and needs complete rework, especially when comparing with other classes. So by you comparing it to a "ranged" dagger, you basically say (and this is true, by the way), that pistol is also a completely outdated and useless weapon no one asked for like that.

I don't get what is so strong about alacrity tempest for it being doom-nerfed in PvP. It is in fact a mechanic many other professions have as well. And other professions or elite specs such as mechanist or renegade are able to apply alacrity much easier to groups too and with far less effort.Not to mention their heal output being far higher. I get the problem, alacrity is kinda problematic in PvP, but isn't this true for any class applying Alacrity? So instead, wouldn't it be important to talk about the status of alacrity in PvP instead of tempest applying alacrity (which is in itself already ridiculously weak compared to other classes)

So you complain about a supporter being a supporter? And you complain about groups without support sucking in PvP? I think the only thing broken here is player skill.

Yeah, you forgot the "but then my class/profession xyz isn't good anymore!111"

First of all: You just saw a snowcrows video. You probably didn't see the 99 trys until it worked out like that. Secondly: Forget the benchmarks. They mean nothing in a real situation. It is the same what me and many other more experienced players (though I am nowhere being good to be honest) already critisize for a long time, that this is no benchmarks for bosses where you have a lot of movement, mechanics, you name it... Third: As soulknight said, try a LI build first, something more simple and not as sophisticated as this build even though you don't do the 42k benchmark.

Let me answer that. Is Ele the weakest class? Not really. Is Ele the weakest class compared to the effort you have to invest to have a halfway decent build? Definitely yes! There is simply no other class whose gameplay is that tedious to have at least a decent output. And most of it comes down to basic design. Ele has more skills. More skills but overall far weaker than those of other classes. Then the elite-spec-mechanics, not to mention the base mechanic of attunements! You have tons of skills, but you need to use those skills in a flawless execution, otherwise your output drops a lot. Ele gameplay is the most unforgiving of any other class in GW2. And that is, why it seems to many people, that Ele is the weakest class out there, but just the gameplay is far too complicated for the majority of people. Meanwhile, other people just roflstomp everything because of having too many hours played.

I think everybody else stated already what I also found out during testing except for one thing which worried me from the start and bothered me even more now. And that is that there is no proper ranged OH available for elementalist. In order to maximize damage, I have to use dagger, so melee range. Very similar to scepter except for that I think scepter uses focus. So, we get again, a weapon with 900 range but can't use at 900 range because of lack of OH weapon?

That elementalist current design is mediocre at best (I dont want to use any swear words because mama forbid me to use them)...?

I think the proper description should be: Every other weapon combo other than sword+WH is just underperforming in every aspect. Staff: Dead. Dagger? Even more dead. Hammer? Also nerfed into oblivion. Scepter? Well, usable, but still by far underperforming. and for offhand our only options are dagger, focus and warhorn. Dagger is completely dead, Focus is only good for condi-based builts. What's left? Uhm yeah, warhorn. It's not that other people warned a long time ago nerfing other weapons or making them unusable.... Oh, now we come to a great moment of realization by yourself. But I wouldn't only count it on reaper. I would say, every other melee-performing class has either higher life and/or higher armor than elementalist while also providing at least on same if not far better level of other utilities. Maybe it is right that a glass cannon is stronger than other class because it is considerably harder to play? But nooo, we make a harder to play class, nerf everything to the ground because < 0,001% of people playing can do a lot of damage on an immovable boss which we call "meta-defining".

So lets talk about the big problem here. Hit boxes! A normal enemy can be hit 14 times. The bigger the mob, the more hits, the maximum is 42 times. This is especially strong for very large mobs, e.g. bosses. And there, yes, it is devastating and especially when having a hard-hitting-build such as weaver. So far, so understandable, but: We got the same trouble with skills such as meteor shower, or, to be more precise, any skill which is being AoE-related and is based on hitting an actual enemy. For example something like the barrage skill isn't counting to that principle. It hits 12 times, has a maximum amount of targets, meaning 5. The only problematic skills are those having exactly those points as related before. But instead of putting them all at the same level, for example giving hits per second instead of a total hit count or so, which is related to the hitbox and exactly the problem here, elementalist skills get gutted (and yes, I mean gutted) to the point of being useless for the builds they are intended to, while trying to keep the balance for other builds. It isn't the first time that such discussions occured. And always, Anet "fixes" skills while ignoring the underlying problem. And the problem here is exactly those AoE-related skills. Why not give lightning orb an AoE attack which does damage for every second or so instead of actual projectiles and stuff? Why make an easy matter overly complicated and now people have to do a phd in math to calculate a precise dps output of a simple skill in an mmorpg?

Nah, it should be more like: "By now, Ele starts every combat in downstate by default. We felt it'd be appropriate. Downstate skills do only 0.01% of the former damage. If downstate gets lifted, you gain 99 stacks of downstated, each reducing your damage by 1% and having a duration of 1 minute per stack."

And that is why we have the same trouble as always. Try the same and get the same results.

And here we are again... same old discussions as for ritualist in gw1. The class itself is not too strong, the problem is and will always be class stacking in sPvP. Instead of pointing towards class stacking and doing something against it, you talk about the class being the problem which it is not.

Oh yeah, but compared to the amount of thieves and harbingers? I saw a few of those too, and might be a very subjective view, but I thought half of those zergs you see on the maps consisted of those two classes. As I said - subjective view, I just did what had to be done to farm my leggy, but if I think about people complaining about that in the chat I thought it might be true.

I was just in WvW lately for farming my legendary. I am by no means a big PvP player, just farming the stupid gift of the mists out of obvious reasons. Except for me, I saw maybe 2 or 3 more elementalists. The rest of, especially the other two servers were plain and simply over 50% thieves and harbingers and 10% HFB or so. But this patch obviously states that elementalist is the problem when it is getting nerfed again...

How about the following attacks? Fire: - Auto: Shoots three bullets in a row which may inflict burning while you get to 90range with every attack. If you are not, you get ported 90 range closer. - Skill 2: Imba-Smacker. You use your pistol and smack the kitten out of the enemy. Gives might. - Skill 3: Shotgun. Shotgun inflicts devastating damage at 90 range, but gets 90% weaker if it is being fired by further away. Water: - Auto: Works like the ice thrower of the end boss of caudecus mansion wearing the similar weapon minus freeze. Can heal allies. Range: 90 - Skill 2: Water explosion. Works like one, so should be great. Range: 90 - Skill 3: Water slicer. Shoots three water slicing projectiles at close range which inflict bleeding ... And so on. Who said that Elementalist wouldn't need another melee spec? I am quite confident, because we never got any melee spec in any kind of addon yet.

Just to give a few points about that topic: What I think mostly is that the biggest problem isn't that elementalist is especially weak or so; it is more that other classes became far too strong and this is directly related to addon-introduced changes such as elite specs and also armor sets/stat combinations like viper or harrier. In core gw2, boon management was very important and upkeep of 25 stacks of might+fury+protection+regen+all the other ones was by far harder. Not to mention that there was no build being viable for only healing like now druid, HAM or HFB. This also leads to more specialization which is exactly what you can't do much as an elementalist being a jack of all trades. Of course, you may use viper, harrier, or zerker gear to give some examples, but in many specific parts, elementalist is simply far inferior to other more specialized builds. Try HAM and alac management becomes a joke as well as healing. The rotation for dps is tedious, to say the least. And it also isn't about "learning" it. It is about doing it a thousand times before you see some actual results, because you can't do any mistake, far more unforgiving than any other build. Either then you're downed or your overall performance is halved. The best difference between specs to see is to me for example thief elite specs vs ele elite specs. Deadeye gives the thief very good ranged capabilities. Daredevil is a very strong melee-oriented build. While specter is in between those two and also providing good support. Meanwhile, all of the ele elite specs are being melee-oriented and on top of that strict rotation/piano-only. Is is very easy to see why this really sucks. There is nothing, you can do "easy" with an elementalist.

Hmm, I would have thought about a longbow to be honest. Somehow, I still remember the old rambo movies with rambo putting on explosive arrows or such, it would also be a quite fitting theme...

What better? It just came down to making them again complete garbage in almost every situation. It makes the same kitten as before the patch, meaning only using one charge in order to trigger the effect and hope not to trigger the second one for casting 2,5 seconds again. I want to remind to the 2021 changes that brought the former logic in and its description: We acknowledge that there are significant flaws with the core gameplay innate to mantra skills, and that this problem was exacerbated in Path of Fire™ when we switched mesmer mantras to an ammunition system, creating an incentive to not use the final charge. This is a poor user experience and something we have hoped for a long time to be able to come back and address. Needing to prepare for combat by using a sequence of skills with a long casting time is not fun, and in most cases, using the final charge of a mantra in combat felt like a mistake. It not only denied your use of the skill for a long time, but it also required you to prepare your mantras again after the cooldown expired. Instead of being rewarding to use, mantras have been a chore; something you need to remember to do every time you change maps or respawn, or deal with after every /gg in a fractal, strike, or raid. Holding your group up while you again prepare each of your mantras never feels great either! During the development of this balance patch, we tried several alternatives, including automatic preparation while out of combat. Ultimately, we found that the best course of action was to simplify the mantra skills and remove the preparation mechanic altogether, as this ensures that we can have consistent behavior between mesmer and firebrand mantras, as well as consistent core functionality between PvE and PvP game modes. As a result, in this balance update, we have decided to rework both mesmer and firebrand mantras into simple ammunition skills. Just a question here, has anything changed during the past 2 years for why this logic doesn't apply anymore?

I prefer Skritt as a playable race. Nothing would be more funny in the story dialogues...

Sinister used to be the best set until expertise came up, but with expertise, it is a completely different matter. In terms of regular damage, they are roughly the same, with Viper being a bit better. In terms of condition damage, Viper is by far better than sinister. This is especially true for builds inflicting burning. Just an example: Burning base damage is 131, modifier is 0.155. So you need 845 Condi damage for doubling the base damage, while for bleeding, it is only 367 condi damage. That's why builds using bleeding are profiting far more from sinister than fire would do. But for weaver, that is not an option since weaver has to cap bleed and fire. with weaver prowess, you get 20% always, so 80% are remaining. Your fire is almost capped, but Bleeding is at a mere maybe like 40 or 50% with weavers prowess. That is especially bad, since a) you have to go to earth a lot in your rotation, and also water, and therefore inflict bleeding, and b) there aren't many valid sigils for a build like that, while normally, you use rune of the elementalist and sigil of earth and torment. If you'd have to switch out one for getting another 10% condi duration, you'd actually lose a lot of dps. Is it viable? Yes. But over long term, I'd think of exchanging the gear for vipers. Especially over long fights, the difference between those two is really big.

The problem is sustainability. Since alac ticks also down when casting OL, this gives you less alac uptime after OL cast. I tried yesterday dungeon, Fractal, and Raid, and it came out that with quickness, it gives you a minor advantage, which is, depending on the gear (either you go full-support with harriers or half with celestial or heal with harrier/magi), either a bit better or worse, but doesnt change much. After OL you have to switch directly to next attunement in order to keep up alac. What I found to be a viable tactic was to use pre-casting before the fight to have around 20-30 seconds of alac in the background, but I did that before patch as well. Still, the problem is that I have to rely on such tactics and quickness upkeep to keep my own buffs up, so-to-say. And as you say, it gets far worse when no quickness is there because the person providing quickness died. But I think, that, by buffing the time of the alac uptime for a bit, it should solve that problem.