Arkaile.5604

I've been gone and only occasionally checking back to see how much more fuel Anet has added to the dumpster fire that is class balance in gw2, but here I am again, posting something late at night after drinking too much. @pninak.1069 you take the cake. You roll up in this thread where people are talking about class balance in high end pve content and you have said numerous times that you have little experience with said content and dislike benchmarks. For what it's worth, I'm with you on hating benchmarks and the elitist culture that they reinforce, but they have at least one purpose and that is to show the potential dps of classes and builds under ideal scenarios and function as a baseline before considering how different classes and builds handle various mechanics and how that impacts their overall performance in more difficult group content. All this means benchmarks are, at least in part, important to whatever it is Anet is (or should be) doing to balance the classes and if you're going to participate in this discussion, I think you should at least acknowledge that they're meaningful in some way. Moreover, open world pve is a joke; anything can work out there. Please do not bring it up as a talking point. A good point of comparison that I can make for EE on ele is Kalla's Fervor on renegade. Renegade has a lot more ways to generate fervor and all of its grandmasters interact with it in some significant way, on top of it also being baseline. I can see people making the argument that EE is baseline as well because it's granted by a minor trait, but I'd rather see that same trait reworked to instead improve EE with the rest of the traits being reworked to include more ways to gain stacks or make EE more powerful or otherwise effective, with the grandmasters being capstone traits which each give EE a different major modification that actually changes the catalyst's play style or role within a group. Is there a chance EE would become too powerful? Yes, which is why it and its new related traits would need to be tweaked going forward. Could Anet do what Anet almost always does and nerf ele for the worse in its entirety? Sure, but that's just normal Anet stuff and you can't get away from making that gamble every time we get a new balance update regardless - unless you do something crazy like quit gw2 and only rubberneck now and then to see how bad things are getting... Who would be foolish enough to do something like that?

Such a shame Anet opted for hammer instead of an off-hand pistol. It would have fit the elite spec's name, the magic-tech and jade-tech theme, and it would fill a niche as a ranged, offensive, off-hand option. Maybe next time, right? lol With respect to potential changes to hammer, it would be nice to at least see all the third slot skills replaced with fields or something, almost anything else, and their function rolled into an elite skill for Catalyst that can compete with Fiery Greatsword and Tornado, preferably something that's actually useful. Give it two charges and have it function as a stance which lasts roughly 6 seconds during which the Catalyst applies additional effects to any reactions it triggers according to which attunement it was in when the elite skill was activated. Allow it to also apply an additional stack of empowerment which lasts longer than usual or something. Come on, Anet, where's your creativity?

Real Gamers Run 5-Man Scourge Parties Seriously though, what's even going on here? I come back after taking a break from gw2 and the t4 lfg tab is infested with people looking for triple scourge for dps slots. I remember seeing holos, thieves, the occasional mesmer, even eles, but now even condi fb is becoming uncommon despite it also overperforming. This tends to be at its worst right around reset (if by some miracle an anet employee reads this, go check the lfg around reset yourself), so I started doing my dailies about 12 hours afterward, but lately it's been getting bad even then. A single e-spec, not even class, **E-SPEC**, is occupying an average of 60% of the slots for these parties. I understand that scourges received a buff, but I've never seen listings in lfg in such a sorry state in any game I've played. There are two groups to blame here and anet is the first while also shouldering much of the blame. I understand that addressing anet and hoping something changes is lunacy, but this needs to be said over and over, at least as a reminder to the community to keep their expectations low. This particular disaster has been an issue for months and it doesn't take a Ph. D. in game design to see that something is wrong while determining that scourge needs to be addressed. Go check out what builds the community is running, join some t4 fractal parties yourselves and especially CM groups, see what's overperforming, shave it down and do some internal testing (lol), then release incremental nerfs scourge and any other overperformers to bring builds back into the meta while not accidentally nerfing anything to the point that no one sees any reason to use it. I understand that EoD has been getting a lot of work, but that's no reason to neglect ongoing issues. The second group is the playerbase itself. Scourge was buffed because people whined incessantly about it being weak until it caught anet's attention. Just as a reminder, scourge was/is a mess, causing problems from the day it was released. It was nerfed time and time again, sometimes getting minor reworks, because its design is to take the aoe spam common in gw2 and run that train off a cliff so hard that it became the biggest issue in wvw and spvp at that time. People need to take their blinders off, look at something besides golem benchmarks and their dps meters, and understand that utility has value in a party; just because your build is not a hard support and cannot hit 35k+ dps, doesn't mean it's useless in group content. Moreover, scourges are having a negative effect on player quality because they're easy to play and are thus used as a crutch. The smoothest daily runs I've had are those without scourges, or with only one, because those parties have players who know how to proficiently engage with mechanics as opposed to facerolling them with triple epi and barriers. Just as an example, here's a fun thing I was told today in 100CM before the party disbanded: "If we only have two scg, epi has to be timed." Timing something? In an action MMO? Golly-gee-williker, that's WILD! Maybe these people should start by rebinding their dodge keys. From my experience in two-scourge parties, failing the sorrows in 100CM is always the result of one of them being bad. That said, nothing is going to change except for another e-spec, possibly even one from EoD, being crowned as whatever the hell scourge is right now. Big sad, but that's just what gw2 is at this point. On a final note, I'd like to mention @anbujackson.9564 who talked about this in a post back in late August.

Yeah, while the change is potentially good (a nerf may have been rolled in), we didn't see anything else of note. In all honesty, teatime comes across as a bit unhinged when he's talking about Catalyst; I have no idea how he can have this much faith in Anet unless he's unwell, joking, or contractually obligated to be hyped up. While this is a tiny step in the right direction, the Jade Orb mechanics, in my opinion, are the least problematic aspect of the e-spec.

So, I've had some time to think about Catalyst. I don't like it, I'd probably never use it, I might not even train up the e-spec unless the hammer it gets from its collection is really neat. Why? Let's gloss over a few reasons which themselves are a massive issue, but the Jade Sphere and its effects across different attunements bothers me most as that is honestly the thing I find most baffling as it's an enormous, missed opportunity. The first is the hammer's skills. Give that thing combo fields or there's no reason to use it on a spec which is all about using combos. It needs more tweaking beyond this, but it would be a start assuming the Jade Sphere isn't meant to be spammable. The second is cooldowns and the durations of all the special effects. Hammer 3 in all its attunements needs to be easier to maintain and more rewarding if you manage to fire off all four orbs. Hardened Auras and Empowered Auras need to last at least 8sec instead of the current 6sec and the cooldown on Elemental Epitome needs to be decreased from 10sec to at least 8sec. Adjust these for the different game modes as necessary, but they need to be easier to maintain. Ele players have enough headaches to deal with as is. As honourable mentions, I bring up the heal, all the utilities, and the elite skill. What's even going on with these things? And now, the most interesting but also least impactful part of Catalyst: the Jade Sphere. Why the heck does this thing have the same effects across all the different attunements save for the boon and type of combo field? Fire should apply a low duration pulsing burn to enemies, water should heal allies instead of damaging enemies or at least apply a half second of chill, and earth could apply torment as that synergizes with immobilize which weapons have access to while in that attunement. The only one which is fine as is would be air, but even that one could do with a little bump up in damage or added vulnerability application. And finally, the slap to the face every Elementalist main felt upon seeing this trait: Energized Elements. If fury on attunement swap was such an issue that it had to be removed from the arcane trait line, why bring it back for Catalyst? If it's not overpowered, put it back where it belongs, in its former slot as the minor adept trait of the arcane trait line, or, if it really is that much of a balance issue, outright delete fury on attunement swap from Ele's traits and never bring it back. Pick one. PS: To all the players posting in these feedback threads, let's be real here - we're about four months out from the release of EoD and ANet doesn't have the manpower necessary to redesign everything that people want redesigned across all nine e-specs in so little time. We're getting number tweaks, a few bug fixes, and that's it; what we're seeing in these beta events is almost exactly what we're getting on launch.

My own issues with the spec have already been communicated by others, so I won't bother writing that book. However, there is one thing I would like to address. Those of you asking for the Jade Sphere to act like a Scrapper's gyros, that being a well which follows the caster around, have you forgotten about how much of a pain it can be to play a flimsy class in melee range and how much that limits build diversity? Have you lot been spending too much time farming trash mobs in squads while using a full set of dire or trailblazer? If you want point blank aoes, Tempest and Weaver already offer plenty, and the Jade Sphere, while it has some serious issues that need to be addressed, is at least an opportunity to add something more interesting than yet another point blank aoe with a couple pulsing boons.

@AliamRationem.5172 You sure showed that PvE mob who's boss - oooweee... Good lord, this has been a long time coming. The fire weaver build you seem to love pushing everywhere is made to address the major weakness of ele, that being it's made of wet, single-ply, gas station restroom toilet paper, by stacking mostly dire stats and then building for burning damage, the most damaging condition in the game. This makes the build much more welcoming to new, inexperienced players, which is good, but that's all they'll ever use that ele for. They could use the exact same gear on a scourge, be tankier, bring a wider array of functions into play (boon rip for instance), and have 900 range on most of their attacks. I'm not obsessive enough to test this, but I suspect they'd have better dps as well due to larger aoes and being able to kite better, and that gets to the point others have been making here: ele can work, but it takes more effort and special builds to do what other classes accomplish much more easily, and that is putting it favourably. As for fractals, it doesn't say much that you can hit 40k burn ticks here and there on this build because that's what it's meant to do, but that doesn't mean it's all that good for anything beyond t2 and some of t3 because by that point other players will be getting a better handle of their dps builds and blowing you out of the water. The best comparison would be the condi weaver build. That thing not only gets higher burn ticks, but it also has a significant amount of power damage and all that damage is sustained fairly evenly. I usually run my healbrand in cm groups and even on that slightly changed hb build with only 812 condi damage (before boons are considered) and no extra burning duration, I will see burning ticks of roughly 15k when I use Tome of Justice, but that doesn't mean it's good dps. Push ele all you want, but we need to be clear on the fact that the fire weaver build you advertise is one with training wheels meant for new players and there are more effective, specialized builds on ele and even those will be superseded by what other classes can pull off.

Did an ele piss in your cereal or something? That immobilize on Aftershock comes out on the second impact; if you manage to get hit with it, you absolutely deserve it and so much more. I will agree that the increased target cap and weakness application on Tempestuous Aria may seem like a bit much, but I want you to actually go and try playing the class and messing around with its traits before asking for nerfs. Check out which traits and utility skills the two are competing with. There are good reasons why we see fbs and scrappers on support and scourges on soft cc and bombing duty rather than having 10-15 tempests per blob trying to debilitate/support everything by screaming in its general vicinity. What's more baffling is you defining this as an offensive and defensive skill. What about this skill is killing you? The ranged spam that it reflects? Even if I concede this point, how is that different from half the skills on other professions? If an ele is making an offensive build, it will almost certainly take something else because the offensive components of Aftershock (idk, the cripple?) are negligible at best (middling to lower-tier if traited) and whatever defenses it offers are overshadowed by other utilities when used on any build other than an auramancer, which is a support build and does not include enough damage to pose a threat.

So, weaver gives ele main-hand sword, and now people think the next elite spec is going to give the class main and off-hand sword. K.And no, this is not the same as ranger getting main-hand dagger because off-hand dagger was already a part of core whereas ele only gets access to main-hand sword through an elite spec. I doubt the next spec will include any 1200+ range dps weapon because ele already has staff; I know it needs work, but that's the role staff used to have and it should probably fill it again in the future - if the balance team ever gets its act together. There's almost no way anet would add any weapons which are already present as conjures, and that just leaves pistols, maces, and torch. I hope it'll be pistols, maybe just a main-hand, but I'm thinking it'll be a torch because that's the kind of suffering that playing an ele has taught me to expect.

That isn't how the tablet works; the tablet itself does not have a hitbox, though a skill it has can summon a bubble which blocks projectiles. And just to clarify this for you, a LOT of skills in this game are actually aoes, one major group being just about every single melee attack, and this is often referred to as "cleave." The fact you need to mention aoes leads me to suspect one or more of you didn't bother to run up to the rev and just mash a melee weapon into its face. Revs can build to be very tanky and have a lot of regen, though I don't know if it would be enough to handle more than three or more people beating it to a pulp, especially with recent nerfs to healing and damage reducing traits. From what you describe here, it could very well be that you just had a very tanky rev and didn't hit it with enough damage while having some person, or people, mindlessly spamming projectiles into a projectile block, or you genuinely found someone abusing a bug or some sort of hack. My bet is on the former.

If you can say what I've edited into bold font there, you do not understand what Auburner is getting at, though you do say that barrier can be a problem. The core of this matter is that dps does not matter if those big numbers aren't downing people. A couple days ago a zerg I was part of ran into another group comprised almost entirely of fbs, scourges, and revs, and they simply clumped up and sat in one place, killing anyone who got too close and eating all our aoes without a single one of them getting downed over the course of a few minutes. That blob essentially became a dps golem for anyone who had a ranged weapon and it did no good as the ludicrous amount of barrier and other defenses just ate up the damage, with any damage to hp being healed up. I know exactly what you're talking about with 30v30 fights and being able to turn them as an ele, I did that myself now and then before anet started going extra nuts with the nerfs to staff, but that just isn't possible anymore unless the group you're dealing with has already run out of defensive abilities or they're just that bad and have too many people running full zerker stats. The key skill in doing this is meteor shower, but the changes it has received have enormously front-loaded its damage; if a group can prot, aegis, RotG through the first few meteors, they'll be just fine standing in the middle of it to be pelted with the now weaker hits. Even though the first damaging component of the skill was reduced or outright negated, you'll still see your dps increase just because of all the additional impacts following that, but it won't have any meaningful impact on the outcome of the exchange. Moreover, while staff weaver has a lot of ranged aoes at its disposal, they are all small and don't deal all that much damage unless you stand in them for their full duration. This makes them good for hitting siege and finishing downed targets (this also inflates your dps), but doesn't do much for zerg vs zerg battles when people are constantly moving. All that said, it's good that you love playing the class and, more importantly, you probably play it really well, but it's simply in a bad spot right now and we can't justify that by saying its dps is great under ideal scenarios. It's actually good to require people to be more strategic with their abilities and where/when they're used as opposed to just bursting people on open fields like a scourge, but at the very least it would be nice if ele could bring some unique utility to groups. I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.

Three years since I first saw that video and it's still accurate, save we can now insert almost any other class in place of the necro.

It can be a bit tough to keep up 10 stacks when solo, but that's what happens with Anet balancing PvE for raids and t4 fractals where people always have quickness and alacrity. It really isn't a huge deal, though. If you're doing solo stuff, it's probably better to focus on not dying instead of missing out on half of your potential 10% damage modifier. That said, I just tested this and can confirm the fire field from Overload Fire does not proc Persisting Flames. What's funnier is that Lava Skin, a skill which does not list a fire field in its tooltip, does proc Persisting Flames. I just looooove finding these little inconsistencies; they don't at all add support to the idea that this last "balance" update was rushed out.

Anyone who actually thinks Flame Expulsion is going to deal considerable damage must have been living under a rock on Pluto for the past few years. I doubt Anet's going to put two dps grandmaster traits into a trait line, especially when the base trait we're talking about, Pyromancer's Puissance, is a selfish support trait as of this day. Devs probably wanted to have an interesting way for ele to share might outside of tempest without having to blast fire fields. The idea of removing might from oneself to grant it to allies is neat - bad in terms of gameplay and likely balance as well, but neat. Flame Expulsion honestly just looks like something extra which was tacked on to make the trait look more appealing than just "lul you removed your own might stacks and gave them to allies who already generated 25 of their own." It may be okay on release, but once all the usual nerfs are applied I expect it to do about 500 damage with the usual marauder build, double it if you use ten stacks of might, and it won't be able to crit. Enjoy.

This just keeps getting funnier with every update.

So, it's possible but so extraordinarily difficult to pull off that there's no point to even trying. Got it. It is a funny thing to think about, though. The only way I could see this working is if someone set up a bot to move a rev through each sub-group of a squad between pulses. I'm sure it would end with a temporary ban for the player(s) using this and a permanent nerf of some sort for rev.

It seems as if they took a really old version of CoR, before all the bug fixes that made it actually work, and somehow made it even buggier. How? HOW?!

You may have seen it already, and I am not going to link the thread and comment because that's too much effort to find it, but people in the WvW section were complaining about Phase Smash after this patch's CoR nerf. It may have been trolls, but it's impossible to tell at this point. I get that some people may be dumb and stand still in zerker gear, but how do they not see something flying at them through the air? In my opinion you are correct; much of the player base is pathetic, expecting other, more attentive players, to not notice someone standing still, freecasting in the back line.

@Mini Crinny.6190 How are the nerfs to CoR and Lava Font at all comparable? Not to mention lava font didn't end up getting bugged in such a way that it stopped working on small inclines.

Guys, guys - hear me out; there's a simple solution to this! Just take the air trait line so you get +25% speed while in air attunement and zephyr's boon so that you once again have swiftness being granted to you when your overload gives you an aura from unstable conduit. Overloads have swiftness again - kind of! It even lasts 7sec with the new concentration minor tempest was given. Just don't mind that about 80% of the trait line may as not well exist as far as support builds are concerned and you're set. It's most likely a coincidence that you have just enough time to charge up and cast a new overload with the swiftness from zephyr's boon lasting 7sec with gathered focus now existing, but there's a tiny chance the balance team actually thought it would be a reasonable way for tempests to keep swiftness up and, if that's the case, that is HORRIFYING.

And this is exactly what I was getting at with ANet potentially getting frustrated one day and just making ele into a monster class that does everything. As unrealistic as it is, ANet has to put out a huge balance pass which forces all the other classes to make stat, trait, weapon, and utility sacrifices just as ele does because that is good design and, if done right, would encourage people to toy around with builds depending on what is more effective for the given scenario instead of flocking to the same one or two cookie cutter builds each class has at the moment. And no, I do not count "hey, I switched out one utility or trait" as an entirely different build. Let's look at option one, simply raising the damage of water attunement. ANet has already done this, ineffectually, by changing some traits around. Moreover, as long as cast and aftercast times exist, damage buffs to water skills mean nothing unless the damage of water attunement begins to rival that of fire or air and at that point it just becomes fire/air + healing with a little less condi damage (who builds for that as an ele anyway?) and less access to cc, respectively. It could work, but it takes away some of the water line's identity by homogenizing it with other attunements. Earth attunement says hello, btw. Then there's option two, raising base healing and scaling. This is likely the better option, but only if it's done right. If the base values are too high, eles no longer have any reason to use the healing stat because it would be a waste if their base healing is already enough. If this is the end goal of the general game design, why even have healing power as a stat? Increasing scaling too much means any ele who builds for healing essentially makes itself and any allies it's supporting borderline immortal outside of the enemy executing organized bursts against individual targets at key moments. That is why the healing from water attunement keeps getting nerfed: some very vocal people find its mediocre healing output to be too much and cry and scream in pixels until something is done about it. Ultimately, the thing I'd like people to take away from my stupid, drunken rambling at midnight is that the issues we're dealing with here are not just related to ele. The issues are tied to poor and sometimes knee-jerk balancing that has gone on for years, to power creep that has been unevenly distributed among the different class' capabilities, and the balance team's incapability in effectively addressing those long standing issues introduced by power creep. There is no easy, long-term fix to any of this.

I'm confused on this because it sounds like balance having to trade healing vs. damage. I would think all professions should have this trade. Otherwise everyone just runs around in zerker with no risk. Healing will always out-last health, especially in WvW where you can get one-hit for 5k health easily. Damage mitigation is another form of healing and will also out-last pure health increases. This is why some professions seem really tanky without a ton of healing -- they have frequent blocks, evades, blinds, and boons. So taking Marauder stats isn't going to do much at all in WvW for "staying alive". Especially if you have no other mitigation. Also I'd hate to see scaled healing decreased because it diminishes the value of having the Healing Power stat. Choices need consequences, and reducing the effectiveness of a stat is eliminating a choice and associated consequence. The fact ele has to make sacrifices in its stats is indeed good design, and how every single profession should function. I recall bringing that up a while ago and people weren't all that happy with me. It's just a bit funny seeing how this has remained the case with ele, yet I can say that just about every other class has traits or some nonsense skills which allow them to excel in multiple areas without crippling themselves. Boy, I sure hope ANet puts out a huge balance update which nerfs the other classes so that they have to make significant sacrifices, like ele, instead of one day getting frustrated and putting out a much smaller update which makes ele into another monster class that does everything.

The only saving grace this ability has is its potential to do a decent amount of damage, the key word being "potential." As @Clownmug.8357 already mentioned, there's some weird targeting issues which will not be resolved in its current state - ever. Even being near a flag pole, wall, medical kit, a box, etc. decreases the damage of sword 2 by at least 33% and it's something no other class has to deal with. Moreover, it's only really strong if you manage to isolate your target so all three bolts will hit it instead of being split up among multiple enemies, that also counts things like necro minions, ranger pets, and mesmer clones (two of these can rip boons off you again and again; have fun building up those might stacks). How often do you find people running solo in wvw these days? Sword 2 can hit hard, but it's very unreliable. The only way I could see a nerf being justified is if sword 2 was redesigned, something I really hope anet doesn't do with their track record of rev skill changes, to somehow sidestep the whole targeting issue it has right now.

So what you’re saying is it does need a buff...Your argument is stupid because it’s unrealistic all other classes are never going to be nerfed down to where thief is however a tweak or two can put thief on par with the others.Its like asking a stranger for a million bucks vs a dollar go on and try it see which you get first Pot, meet kettle. It's very unlikely ANet will actually nerf down the powercreep, it isn't stupid to suggest that they should. Just because something is easy to do, doesn't mean it would be the correct thing to do. Maybe I'm just an outlier here, but I don't think any class should be able to burst for 15k+ damage in an instant, much less from stealth, while having access to incredible movement options.

I need to stop browsing these forums when I'm drinking.