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I really believe Ele needs some redesign


Einlanzer.1627

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I do not main Ele, but it is one of my favorite peripheral classes to dabble with due to its "mage" theme and some of its mechanics. Unlike other classes, though, certain facets of the base design simply don't work well, and it does not receive the proper attention it needs to make it feel good to play consistently. The poor reception of the Catalyst is a manifestation of general frustration among Ele players that I believe is totally justified.  
 

Specifically, the main problem is that attunement dancing is supposed to be a better substitute for weapon swapping but is actually an inferior one. The tldr is that weapon swapping provides synergistic matching, while attunements have little synergy and are all locked to the same range via your equipped weapon, so you end up with a "quantity over quality problem" on what is defensively the weakest class in the game. In more detail:
 

a.) Each attunement is mechanically over-specialized. Why is healing so overloaded on Water, and damage so overloaded on Fire? Why can you not comfortably spend time in any attunement without dropping your efficacy to near-zero?  Contrary to what is often called attunement-dancing, the design of the attunements all but forces you to camp one attunement (based on your build, most commonly it's fire) accessing other attunements only very briefly for specific utilty and rushing back to your primary to avoid tanking  your damage/healing output. This doesn't feel good to play and is a natural outcome of the attunements being too specialized and holding too little synergy with each other. Revenant has the same issue with its legends (which is just bad design), but let's do a quick comparison:

  1. - Jalis got buffs so that it was more generally useful, creating a natural interplay with the other three core legends
  2. - Revs have weapon swapping with two legends instead of no weapon swapping with four legends, which would be atrocious and should tell you something
  3. - they have much higher base attrition so melee restrictions are less problematic
  4. - new elite specs add new legends that focus at least to some extent on synergy with one of the core legends.


b.) The fact that you have perpetual access to all four leads to a "bloat" problem that makes the class just way harder to figure out and more tedious to play even after you do figure it out - especially in conjunction with the above.

c.) You are range-locked based on what weapon you have equipped - something that no other class is forced to deal with. Having no options to escape from melee range while still dealing damage on the lowest-attrition class in the game is and always has been completely nonsensical. The only fully ranged weapon offered by the class doubles down on a, b, and d to compensate for mitigating c, which is frustrating - it's needed a rework for years on end and never gets any attention, exacerbating Ele frustration as most prefer the ranged spell-slinger theme. 

d.) "Attunement dancing" (see the notable caveat in a.))  is required to make good use of nearly any Ele spec, while weapon swapping merely provides opportunities for better versatility - not required for basic efficacy.


Some potential solutions that could really improve the status quo:

a.) distribute damage better across the attunements. It's fine for Fire (or Air) to be best, but your sustained DPS shouldn't crater to practially nothing just because you spend a little time in Water or Earth for the utility they offer - that's already regulated by the build you have. I.e. if you're spec'd for healing, your damage will be bad anyway, so there's no reason to make water attunement spells do garbage base damage.  
 

b.) similarly, while it's logical for Water to be the primary healing attunement, I don't see any reason why all healing should be loaded on Water instead of at least having it be partially shared with Air to give support Eles more opportunities for changing attunements.
 

c.) Melee range locking shouldn't be a thing for elementalists, period. Ranges for spells should be intermixed both within and across weapons. Conjured weapons can easily help offset the lack of weapon swapping - the problem is they're all stale and, like Staff, way overdue for a tuneup. I like how Hammer is attempting to experiment with this, but it should be both better and more common across all Ele weapons.

d.) Due to their "mage" role, they arguably should be designed with stronger-than-normal utility skills rather than utility skills that are comparable to other classes. This is almost necessary in light of how frail they are. 

 

Edited by Einlanzer.1627
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1 hour ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Then why have attunements if their identity doesnt matter? The design problem comes entirely from high end pve. They should take a look at that instead of reworking ele


I agree with this. If we tried to make all attunements do everything, we'll run into a situation where players are only concerned with one attunement (why should I ever swap out of Fire if I can get everything I need in it), which was the case back in the day with Eles only camping Fire... or the attunements will be able to do everything, but its done poorly for balance reasons, so nothing really changes the Elementalist just gets more watered down and less impactful.

Although I think ANet is trying to break out of this mold with Catalyst. Water Melee Hammer is so cool, I hope as the class gets tweaked we get to see some awesome builds that use that.

And slapping ranged skills onto Dagger and Sword isn't the way to go. Dagger has some of the best mobility in the game, its meant to be a flexible weapon you can get in and out or battle quick. Sword is supposed to be a close range beast that punishes opponents for approaching the Elementalist in Melee range. Giving them ranged abilities dilutes their weapon roles and would probably make them worse weapons overall (because they would have to be rebalanced with new range abilities in mind. Range and Melee balance problems are not the same).

 

I do agree with extending the range on Catalyst if only to make it stand out more from Dagger. I would love for there to be the two melee specs with a 600 range and a 900 range attunement as well. Giving Ele options is fine, but the weapon needs to be designed around that: options. Just giving sword ranged abilities won't make it easier to use.

Maybe if, sometime in the future, ANet decides to change one of the attunements to "Range DPS" for an idenity vs a more "Melee DPS" idenity then we can talk about range on every weapon.

 

Also why does everyone seem to forget Scepter is also a fully ranged weapon? 🙃

Edited by fuzzyp.6295
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It realty dose need a rework mostly earth (barrier and stab support) and arcain (condi dmg + as well as more soft cc) lines though. Dagger needs a bit more ranged and scepter needs an transmutation and staff needs to be fixed to not be balanced as pve in spvp / wvw.

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I came back to guild wars recently and started leveling an ele because it was the class I had never tried before. 
 

At first I was in love with having 20(!) weapon skills at any moment. I thought to myself, wow, with all these skills I’ll be able to do anything. 
 

What I have been noticing is that I don’t feel like I actually have more power or utility - I just have more skills. I feel like they took a normal class with their 10 weapon skills, and just spread them out over 20 skills and increased cooldowns so I’m forced to use them all. 
 

So on one class if I press one button on a 3 sec cooldown, on ele I’m pressing two buttons each with a 6 second cooldown. 
 

So it’s just doing the same work with double the buttons instead of having double the power or utility. 

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1 hour ago, AppleSauce.4578 said:

I came back to guild wars recently and started leveling an ele because it was the class I had never tried before. 
 

At first I was in love with having 20(!) weapon skills at any moment. I thought to myself, wow, with all these skills I’ll be able to do anything. 
 

What I have been noticing is that I don’t feel like I actually have more power or utility - I just have more skills. I feel like they took a normal class with their 10 weapon skills, and just spread them out over 20 skills and increased cooldowns so I’m forced to use them all. 
 

So on one class if I press one button on a 3 sec cooldown, on ele I’m pressing two buttons each with a 6 second cooldown. 
 

So it’s just doing the same work with double the buttons instead of having double the power or utility. 

 

This is exactly right.

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4 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Then why have attunements if their identity doesnt matter? The design problem comes entirely from high end pve. They should take a look at that instead of reworking ele

 

Their "identity" does matter, and reducing the degree to which they are specialized wouldn't change that. 

I don't understand people that get so hung up on mechanical uniqueness. 

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3 hours ago, fuzzyp.6295 said:


I agree with this. If we tried to make all attunements do everything, we'll run into a situation where players are only concerned with one attunement (why should I ever swap out of Fire if I can get everything I need in it), which was the case back in the day with Eles only camping Fire... or the attunements will be able to do everything, but its done poorly for balance reasons, so nothing really changes the Elementalist just gets more watered down and less impactful.

Although I think ANet is trying to break out of this mold with Catalyst. Water Melee Hammer is so cool, I hope as the class gets tweaked we get to see some awesome builds that use that.

And slapping ranged skills onto Dagger and Sword isn't the way to go. Dagger has some of the best mobility in the game, its meant to be a flexible weapon you can get in and out or battle quick. Sword is supposed to be a close range beast that punishes opponents for approaching the Elementalist in Melee range. Giving them ranged abilities dilutes their weapon roles and would probably make them worse weapons overall (because they would have to be rebalanced with new range abilities in mind. Range and Melee balance problems are not the same).

 

I do agree with extending the range on Catalyst if only to make it stand out more from Dagger. I would love for there to be the two melee specs with a 600 range and a 900 range attunement as well. Giving Ele options is fine, but the weapon needs to be designed around that: options. Just giving sword ranged abilities won't make it easier to use.

Maybe if, sometime in the future, ANet decides to change one of the attunements to "Range DPS" for an idenity vs a more "Melee DPS" idenity then we can talk about range on every weapon.

 

Also why does everyone seem to forget Scepter is also a fully ranged weapon? 🙃

 

This is nonsensical hyperbole. Putting some healing on Air and distributing damage a little bit better across all four attunements would not change the fact that the inidividual skills themselves are still unique and that each attunement favors certain forms of utility. 

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1 hour ago, Einlanzer.1627 said:

 

This is nonsensical hyperbole. Putting some healing on Air and distributing damage a little bit better across all four attunements would not change the fact that the inidividual skills themselves are still unique and that each attunement favors certain forms of utility. 


ANet already struggles to balance Elementalist as it is, what do you expect will happen if you try and make all attunements do a little bit of everything? Elementalist will become even more watered down and bloated, becoming even less impactful because it will be trying to do way too many things.

Identity is important when it comes to balance because right now we know what we need to pick in order to play the style we want. If I want to focus on condi, I can pick Fire or Earth. If I want a fully sustain heavy class, I can focus on Earth and Water. If you make everything do a little bit of everything, then you are weakening these roles and have the potentional to either create the watered down mess or an ungodly power house... why trait into Water/Earth when I get decent heals in Air/Fire in addition to Water? No need to balance yourself between power/sustain anymore.

It would be an utter mess.

Edited by fuzzyp.6295
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The only thing I agree with is water attunement needing more damage on dagger or sword (a DPS weapon) in PVE. Piercing Shards give you a 20% damage bonus instead of 10% while in other attunements so the 0.33/0.45/0.66 coefficient on sword is extremely poor when you factor in the average attack chain of ~2.44 seconds : it means the average is ~0.6 coefficient per second , lower than the first hit of any other attunement. All you get for it is a meager 66 heal with ~330 heal on last hit unless you are running healing power and/or water attunement. For comparison a scepter auto on water is ~0.72 coefficient per second and a guardian scepter auto is ~0.9375 coefficient per second even after nerf ; rev shortbow is ~1.0 coefficient per second plus bleed.

Dagger has vulnerability application in water attunement at least , but Frozen Burst does far too little (0.4 coefficient is less than an autoattack on air attunement or fire attunement) for the chill and blast effect. If Vapor Blade did more than the 0.33 coefficient it does now it could be decent; as it is now even with Piercing Shards and a double hit for 0.66 it still is only 0.79 coefficient a second on something with 1K weapon strength.

Air is in a relatively decent spot unless you're trying to auto on scepter or staff in PVE ; earth is meta for condi and so is fire (for both power and condi).

The issues you are presenting are more evident on power tempest and condi weaver. It is possible to play power tempest with fire+ air only but it won't reach full potential; condi tempest uses fire+earth+air, condi weaver needs dual attacks so you need more than 2 attunements whereas power weaver uses fire+air.

Edited by Infusion.7149
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I think Ele needs a soft rework, but not a total overhaul like some people think.

Removing the attunements would be the worst thing Anet could do. That's the core of our profession, our main identity. I love playing the piano class- it's also why I chose Summoner in FFXIV. Always having a button available is a plus for me, and a lot of other Ele players.

I do agree that attunements are too hyper specialized, though. As it stands pretty much every Ele build camps fire unless they need the defenses from earth, the healing from water, and if they need neither they'll switch to air for some extra damage while the fire skills are on cooldown. Even the Weaver builds that require you to cycle through all the elements really just want you to get back to fire for the damage.

I also really like your "option C" idea. I'd love to see some weapons reworked to have more variety amongst the attunements. While I don't think Catalyst hammer has been implemented especially well, I think the intent is very cool.

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Every time I really think about this, particularly your issue c) about the range locking, I keep coming back to the notion that it seems like the intended answer to this was supposed to be the conjure weapon skills.  In their current form though, it’s really hard to justify taking any of them.  

 

So maybe a potential solution to many of these issues lies in a rework of some of the conjure weapons, and making them more versatile and attractive…

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44 minutes ago, TheDarkness.6947 said:

Every time I really think about this, particularly your issue c) about the range locking, I keep coming back to the notion that it seems like the intended answer to this was supposed to be the conjure weapon skills.  In their current form though, it’s really hard to justify taking any of them.  

 

So maybe a potential solution to many of these issues lies in a rework of some of the conjure weapons, and making them more versatile and attractive…

Definitely.  If they would just rework conjures into something that does a better job of filling those gaps and is more usable.  But the way they're designed with the weapon drop, the long cooldowns, and most of the conjures being simply worthless.  I just don't get it.  Big missed opportunity there, but it doesn't look like they'll ever do anything about it.

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1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Definitely.  If they would just rework conjures into something that does a better job of filling those gaps and is more usable.  But the way they're designed with the weapon drop, the long cooldowns, and most of the conjures being simply worthless.  I just don't get it.  Big missed opportunity there, but it doesn't look like they'll ever do anything about it.

Yep.  I really wonder if the complaints about staff wouldn’t just melt away if the conjure weapons were improved.  I get that it’s hard to take something with so many 1200 range skills and keep it from being overbearing.  To me the probably the biggest issue is that you’re effectively stuck with it once your range situation inevitably changes.

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Conjure lightning hammer and conjure fiery greatsword aren't that bad although RNG could be lower if there's a single target. Conjure fiery greatsword could use a huge cooldown reduction (120s before Conjurer maybe) and lightning hammer could be made into an ammo skill though. Both are inconsequential on condition type builds.

If you make conjure weapons even stronger you end up with what amounts to engineer with 4 attunements and cooldowns rather than kits.

see

Damage summary:

Spoiler
  22.172% Lava Font (7160 DPS)
21.261% Meteor Shower (6866 DPS)
8.581% Invoke Lightning (2771 DPS) --- from conjure
8.503% Fireball / auto (2746 DPS)
6.923% Frost Storm (2235 DPS) --- from conjure
5.594% Burning (1807 DPS)
4.685% Firestorm (1513 DPS)
 

3.527% Frost Fan (1139 DPS) --- from conjure
2.538% Firestorm (820 DPS) --- from conjure
2.338% Lightning Storm (755 DPS)
2.224% Thunderclap (718 DPS) --- from conjure

Plus a bunch of <2% damage sources

 


It just highlights the issue with elementalist in general, you need hitboxes to be favorable in order to do passable damage for the effort. If lava font was reverted it would help a bit as far as staff goes but since it does a substantial portion of damage already probably Chain Lightning could be sped up a bit as far as aftercast and Lightning Surge has a 10s cooldown in PVE when it could just have the 6s cooldown from PVP/WVW.

As it is now staff is more of a support weapon and because it has higher range than dagger it should do less overall damage (see single shortbow condi soulbeast ~32-33K) to keep melee range the highest DPS. Scourges are an outlier right now because before torment changes they only benchmarked ~28K.

Edited by Infusion.7149
fix firestorm to be one word
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23 hours ago, fuzzyp.6295 said:


ANet already struggles to balance Elementalist as it is, what do you expect will happen if you try and make all attunements do a little bit of everything? Elementalist will become even more watered down and bloated, becoming even less impactful because it will be trying to do way too many things.

Identity is important when it comes to balance because right now we know what we need to pick in order to play the style we want. If I want to focus on condi, I can pick Fire or Earth. If I want a fully sustain heavy class, I can focus on Earth and Water. If you make everything do a little bit of everything, then you are weakening these roles and have the potentional to either create the watered down mess or an ungodly power house... why trait into Water/Earth when I get decent heals in Air/Fire in addition to Water? No need to balance yourself between power/sustain anymore.

It would be an utter mess.

 

I just... don't really think you are following the argument rationally. You are jumping straight to "he wants to make all the attunements the same" which is a strawman and is not what is accomplished by any of the suggestions I made. Each attunement retains a unique thematic identity as well as focusing on different types of utility, and that is not only sufficient, it's optimal. 

Consider this - when you equip two different weapons on any weapon swapping class - do you equip two same-range weapons that are designed for totally different builds, or do you equip two weapons that provide some synergy with each other, i.e. a power-focused melee weapon and a power-focused ranged weapon? 

That's the problem in a nutshell. 

Edited by Einlanzer.1627
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8 hours ago, Einlanzer.1627 said:

 

I just... don't really think you are following the argument rationally. You are jumping straight to "he wants to make all the attunements the same" which is a strawman and is not what is accomplished by any of the suggestions I made. Each attunement retains a unique thematic identity as well as focusing on different types of utility, and that is not only sufficient, it's optimal. 

Consider this - when you equip two different weapons on any weapon swapping class - do you equip two same-range weapons that are designed for totally different builds, or do you equip two weapons that provide some synergy with each other, i.e. a power-focused melee weapon and a power-focused ranged weapon? 

That's the problem in a nutshell. 


I understand your argument friend, the problem is you and I see Elementalist from different points of view.  You're trying to change the class, this is a rework suggestion after all, and I'm looking at it how its been previously balanced and the identity ANet has been pushing for Ele and its Attunements over the years. I just don't think it'd be a good idea overall and it will weaken the identity of each attunement and its purpose in the Ele's kit, making it even more of a balance challenge.

As ANet moves into having Water Catalyst doing  damage, maybe one day we'll see Air have a healing ability. I even said in my original post I think its great that Water is getting more DPS. But I just don't think trying to rework ever Attunement to do more than what it already does is practical and would just be even more of a balance nightmare for Ele. For Air to get that healing, something will need to be taken from it, no matter how thematically you try to make it fit in. I don't think that is the right way to go.

Bottom line, we disagree on this. You think it will make Ele better, I think it would make Ele worse. Thats all there is too it I guess, and thats fine. Different views are important. Yay.🎇

Edited by fuzzyp.6295
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7 hours ago, fuzzyp.6295 said:


I understand your argument friend, the problem is you and I see Elementalist from different points of view.  You're trying to change the class, this is a rework suggestion after all, and I'm looking at it how its been previously balanced and the identity ANet has been pushing for Ele and its Attunements over the years. I just don't think it'd be a good idea overall and it will weaken the identity of each attunement and its purpose in the Ele's kit, making it even more of a balance challenge.

As ANet moves into having Water Catalyst doing  damage, maybe one day we'll see Air have a healing ability. I even said in my original post I think its great that Water is getting more DPS. But I just don't think trying to rework ever Attunement to do more than what it already does is practical and would just be even more of a balance nightmare for Ele. For Air to get that healing, something will need to be taken from it, no matter how thematically you try to make it fit in. I don't think that is the right way to go.

Bottom line, we disagree on this. You think it will make Ele better, I think it would make Ele worse. Thats all there is too it I guess, and thats fine. Different views are important. Yay.🎇

There is definitely an issue with water attunement.  It's like a punishment rather than a benefit.  Your class is built around the idea that you have water attunement and that it features healing.  If you avoid using it entirely, you are missing part of the assumed skillset.  However, if you do you are penalized with a reduction to damage output.  This a pretty big drawback.

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3 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

There is definitely an issue with water attunement.  It's like a punishment rather than a benefit.  Your class is built around the idea that you have water attunement and that it features healing.  If you avoid using it entirely, you are missing part of the assumed skillset.  However, if you do you are penalized with a reduction to damage output.  This a pretty big drawback.


But would that issue be fixed by increasing the workload of other attunement? I don't think so.  People are still going to avoid Water unless they do a major turn around on how it works, like how Catalyst is using Hammer Melee.

It's hard to create an attunement that offers fantastic heals and sustain while also having it output decent damage from a balancing point of view. Ele already had Fire and Air for DPS so making Water weaker is a trade off for giving it more sustain and more of its own identity. Water has also historically been one of the strongest attunements in PvP because of incredible cleansing and healing abilities, so I don't blame ANet for keeping its damage low for balancing issues. Over time though, as other traits have been buffed and Water nerfed, its no longer the must pick it once was in competitive modes, which I think is why we're finally seeing it branch out with Catalyst. And as for PvE, is it an issue with Elementalist or the game design that has made healing power traditionally ignored? I don't think adding a bit of power to Water is suddenly going to make rotating into it any more appealing than currently having Eles rotate into Air.

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9 minutes ago, fuzzyp.6295 said:


But would that issue be fixed by increasing the workload of other attunement? I don't think so.  People are still going to avoid Water unless they do a major turn around on how it works, like how Catalyst is using Hammer Melee.

It's hard to create an attunement that offers fantastic heals and sustain while also having it output decent damage from a balancing point of view. Ele already had Fire and Air for DPS so making Water weaker is a trade off for giving it more sustain and more of its own identity. Water has also historically been one of the strongest attunements in PvP because of incredible cleansing and healing abilities, so I don't blame ANet for keeping its damage low for balancing issues. Over time though, as other traits have been buffed and Water nerfed, its no longer the must pick it once was in competitive modes, which I think is why we're finally seeing it branch out with Catalyst. And as for PvE, is it an issue with Elementalist or the game design that has made healing power traditionally ignored? I don't think adding a bit of power to Water is suddenly going to make rotating into it any more appealing than currently having Eles rotate into Air.

I would like to avoid a scenario where rotating into water actually improves damage, thereby adding an arbitrary requirement not linked to its primary function as a healing attunement.  However, I don't see anything wrong with reducing the impact of that penalty either directly or via synergy.  A lot of the limitations and tradeoffs ele is forced to make no longer feel appropriate due to the overall powercreep.  Water attunement is just one area that feels like too big a penalty for what you gain in a lot of cases.

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2 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I would like to avoid a scenario where rotating into water actually improves damage, thereby adding an arbitrary requirement not linked to its primary function as a healing attunement.  However, I don't see anything wrong with reducing the impact of that penalty either directly or via synergy.  A lot of the limitations and tradeoffs ele is forced to make no longer feel appropriate due to the overall powercreep.  Water attunement is just one area that feels like too big a penalty for what you gain in a lot of cases.

That's a fine point and if this post was just about the Water Attunement, it'd be a different story. Water needs a tune up because it is the most extreme of the four attunements. We can do that by balancing Water itself though without muddying the other attunements and their roles.

What I want to avoid a situation where Water's healing abilities is distributed across the other attunements in order to bring power to Water. Right now, if I need healing/sustain, I can just swap to Water and I'm done. If we break up water's heals to add more damage, now we're facing a situation where I may need to rotation through two or three different attunements to heal/cleanse just to get the same impact I would get today on a single attuning to Water, with the only trade off being a slight of a boost to damage (which we'll never use for long because Fire/Air are still better for it, anyway).

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There is more or less no reason to have water sword auto heal other people, there's no water weaver healer build that I know of. If you want to heal other people you would not rely on autochain either and autoattacking in water doesn't even have remotely the damage as other attunements, you would use Riptide or Aquasiphon. If for some reason you decide to autoattack on earth attunement on a power build, earth attunement coefficients still average out to  ~1.0 coefficient a second even before bleeding is counted (0.66+0.77+1.0 coefficients over 2.44s ). That gives you an idea how bad water on sword is , it's almost 40% less that of earth even before bleeding (~0.59 coefficient/second).

Given scepter is a ranged weapon that does more damage (0.72 coefficient/second including whole cast time and aftercast) and mace on guardian (367+0.5*healing power with 1.55 power coefficient , 0.9+1.0+1.55 over 3.26s per auto chain is ~1.06 power coefficient per second ) or staff on revenants also heals people for 197 +0.15*healing power (with 0.65+0.75+1.0 power coefficients or ~1.09 power coefficient per second), there is very little reason sword on water attunement couldn't have a better autoattack. Scepter is passable, staff water auto does substantial healing so it is best kept as a support (i.e. your damage comes from Ice Spike and then you rotate out of water unless you are heal tempest).
If for example the sword auto did 0.44 , 0.68 , 1.0 (so ~0.86 coefficient a second) instead of 0.33,0.45, 0.66 it would go a long way. Arenanet could even make the ending hit merely heal the weaver only. The healing applied right now to other people if you don't run water traitline or healing power is regen-level ~135/second.

Sword on weaver: 66+0.05*healing power for first two hits (self heal only) and 330+0.1*healing power. Why does autoattack matter? Because people that are bad at weaver will obviously get a few autoattacks in inevitably. That is why the hardcore community was laughing about scepter fire attunement auto attack changes but the likely reason is casual players were camping it: the change did nothing for top end players but increase damage by people not playing properly. If you're on another meta class that isn't elementalist most melee-range autos are 15K+ with standard buffs ; power sword weaver Bolt to the heart used to be 20K auto on air attunement (so without EOR bonus).

PVP isn't an excuse , in fact the damage on Aqua Siphon is so terrible it isn't split for PVP.

Catalyst isn't some groundbreaking new thing for water attunement. The only major difference is the autoattack damage on hammer so you can afford to stay in it longer : during beta testing I was able to break 15K just auto-ing. Rain of Blows (hammer 2) doesn't do substantially more damage once you factor in the 1.5s cast time for example : you'd have similar damage output coming out of sword+dagger if you had decent coefficients on Aqua Siphon due to dualattacks such as Natural Frenzy, Twin Strike, and Shearing Edge.

Edited by Infusion.7149
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7 hours ago, fuzzyp.6295 said:

It's hard to create an attunement that offers fantastic heals and sustain while also having it output decent damage from a balancing point of view.

Revenant, devastation trait line (the main DPS trait line) Battle scar effect. 

There you go 🙂

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