Only nerfs, no buffs to sustain, no way for more elemental empowerment uptime, no hammer orb change....

[Puck.3697]

11 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

No.

But seriously, people should go look back at all their patch notes for the last few years. Every single one is a mix of nerfing things to the point that those builds dont exist anymore, reworking things no one asked for, ignoring pvp and wvw, and making empty statements like "We think X is too strong because..." or " Y is performing very well in all types of content".

I get that mmos are very difficult to maintain but that doesnt explain how they keep completely missing the mark on class balance.

we have proof they've played.. we've seen them on stream in Teapots raids lol xD

They just spend too much time Looking at benchmarks and Not realistic fights. Saying this real results arent really seeable to the average player

for example what DPS Was catalyst doing in Snowcrows Raid as a Example.. as much as we like to say the average raid arent getting those numbers.. their results would result in balancing.

[Shiyo.3578]

10 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Every single one is a mix of nerfing things to the point that those builds dont exist anymore,

As much as I hate power creep and only buffing, this is kind of a big issue.

My friend took a break during PoF, came back 2-3 years later, and the best build to play was still DH for guardian and guardian was still basically the best class to play. He returned to doing the EXACT same rotation and thing he was doing 2-3 years ago(At least now they made sword > scepter but it wasn't like that back when he returned).

There's a lot of replay value is just ADDING new ways to play or CREAITNG new builds instead of only NERFING every single build players find that works well.

An expansion launch is a great time to completely mix things up, go wild, and try buffing random stuff. What if scepter weaver is now optimal for DPS instead of sword? That'd be a cool new interesting playstyle to come back to!

There's tons of examples, but you should get the point. They simply don't create things to look forward to, patches AND expansions should be "Whoa i can't try out all these new changes!", while with Anet it's "oh god what builds did they delete now?"

That's bad. Your player base should be excited for patches, not dread them.

inb4 this post gets deleted because I gave constructive criticism regarding the devs decisions in this game. 

[Flori.2194]

27 minutes ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

inb4 this post gets deleted because I gave constructive criticism regarding the devs decisions in this game. 

Oh, don't worry, I insulted those muppets a lot already and nobody cares, I guess they don't read the forums. The feedback threads were just a bait kekw

[Shiyo.3578]

6 minutes ago, Flori.2194 said:

Oh, don't worry, I insulted those muppets a lot already and nobody cares, I guess they don't read the forums. The feedback threads were just a bait kekw

I had an entire thread deleted, actually.

[Bleikopf.2491]

37 minutes ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

That's bad. Your player base should be excited for patches, not dread them.

Some of us are still naiv. At least I was.

I could've seen some damage adjustments, sure, that's fair. Overall, Catalyst had a lot of stuff that needed polishing.
I also expected QoL buffs to happen first before any meaningful balance could be implemented. Simple stuff, like preventing Hammer 3 double tap, increasing Hammer 3 duration by even just one second. Fixing anything about energy, at least that you don't lose everything when you're downstate.
I don't know what the code looks like, but that should be really simple stuff to do. I'm not asking for a big rework of the energy mechanic, a new UI for the energy bar, adjustments that needed more in-depth coding like combo finishers or bigger design choices like moving traits around. That's not something you can just do in the first two weeks of an expansion drop.

Just really, really simple things. To make it feel less like my Ele is trying to swing a Hammer around while not having any arms.

And there was a complete tunnel vision on nerfs. Nerfs that wen't totally over the top, considering how bad the QoL actually is.

This just broke something in me. Any respect, really, I had left for ANet balancing. It's not always easy, and neither me nor the Devs are all-knowing so balance will never be perfect. I still don't think that ANet hates Eles. "Never attribute to malice which coul be explained by incompetence."

This balance patch seemed to have no thought put into it. Just "see big number, nerf" like a trained pet. And while it's really not my style to lower the discussion to this niveau, I'm just a little bit more convinced now that Ele balancing is handled by a pair of crackhead monkeys.

[fixit.7189]

3 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

willybender

it's funny (and a bit sad) that one button press on my willybender does as much dps as at least 3 on my ele. all that work for less payout is kinda depressing tbh.

Edited March 16, 2022 by fixit.7189

[Avatara.1042]

Absolutely pathetic.  Why do I even play this game?

[Sena.2761]

11 minutes ago, fixit.7189 said:

it's funny (and a bit sad) that one button press on my willybender does as much dps as at least 3 on my ele. all that work for less payout is kinda depressing tbh.

It's because we're "blessed" with having 4x the buttons of most other classes, so our buttons have to be worse or we'd have overwhelming options at our disposal.

 

You know, in hindsight, I wish we had to pick two Elements to equip at a time or something. Like Rev Legends. Then they could justify making each individual button better.

[Puck.3697]

16 minutes ago, Sena.2761 said:

It's because we're "blessed" with having 4x the buttons of most other classes, so our buttons have to be worse or we'd have overwhelming options at our disposal.

 

You know, in hindsight, I wish we had to pick two Elements to equip at a time or something. Like Rev Legends. Then they could justify making each individual button better.

Pretty much this. 

But although this is a default that has to be accepted for the sake of balance, it'd be nice if it was a competitive specc to the other options too. 

The fact they're not very open with the statistics their getting doesn't realistically help either. 

The average player in average groups will never see the raw strength of speccs in organised top level play realistically and without knowing what those players are doing it's very hard to understand why they do them. 

As a example WoW has wowlogs, so you can physically see if this sort of thing is happening. As a example.

Alot of people in PoF said D/F Condi Weavers rotation was not practical and that's why they disagreed with the nerfs, while others said the Condi weaver was perfectly practical you just had to be good at it. 

Now anets statement, states that quickness catalyst does more damage then alternative quickness options. Now I'm going to assume Anet wouldn't just outright lie. Because there are lots of people on a position to be able to call them out. 

Catalyst however requires a team providing optimal boon uptime for its rotation to be possible something the average player cannot access. 

Now. 

If their telling the truth. This is a major highlight to a secondary problem. Being speccs being balanced around optimal boon uptimes is in many areas not working and causing problems such as here and boons need dealing with to some degree. 

Or simply Anet are lying in some sorta bias against elementalist players, but Anet also hate warriors, mesmers, thieves and revenants according to their respective sub forums. 

I'd say it's likely the latter, 90% of this playerbase likely have never played in a raid with optimal boon uptime. Yet it's existence means everything's balanced around that exact thing 90% of players never have... That's likely the real problem behind things. 

That and somehow elementalists always end up with the speccs most dependent on it but this is likely a side effect to having so many buttons in a rotation which makes quickness / alacrity a high demand to get all these abilities out in a time window. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Jski.6180]

Well ya.. anet hates ele a lot they are going to keep nerfing it but more then any thing they nerf hit box effects. In-fact it looks like they are going to be nerfing the quickness catalyses has soon as they over buffed a trait from 50% to 20% to 100% anet for sure is setting up for a nerf. That is the life of ele and just show how much ante hates the ele class.

[Puck.3697]

19 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

Well ya.. anet hates ele a lot they are going to keep nerfing it but more then any thing they nerf hit box effects. In-fact it looks like they are going to be nerfing the quickness catalyses has soon as they over buffed a trait from 50% to 20% to 100% anet for sure is setting up for a nerf. That is the life of ele and just show how much ante hates the ele class.

I doubt it's a hatred situation. Elementalist elites take more time to develope espically given the fact they were given a 2 handed weapon this time.

I think the problem is more aligned with boon dependency to perform. 

If for example you have 8 seconds of quickness, and your GCD is 1 second. You can only use 8 abilities in that window. If u then have a boon which reduces that GCD. That boon becomes more and more important the more abilities above 8 you have to actively use in the window.

But the DPS loss in its absense would also get larger and larger when they haven't got this boon as over time your rotations and CDs would become more and more misaligned. 

This is why games generally do not have permanent boons such as alacrity and quickness in the game. So in balancing you can control the GCD of proffessions individually. 

But with a lack of that, trying to make a char that has 4x the amount of abilities to other choices becomes almost impossible in a average players gameplay. Because boons existence means the balancing is made based on the top 5% of players due to how much of increase these boons are when in optimal situations. 

People like to say the 44k benchmark is massively over the top and u can't get close to that In a real situation. But the question would be is it really impossible. 

If snowcrows did a raid. With 100% uptime on boons for the entire fight. And the fights done in the fastest fashion and in the most efficient way. Could catalyst achieve over 40,000 DPS. 

Or could quickness catalyst out DPS the other alternatives in that situation. 

Now I know the reply will be "well you can't balance the game on the vast minority at the cost of the majority" but this is not true, in every mmorpg this is exactly how it works. The primary difference is simple. 

The DPS difference in other games between top level players and averages are smaller, this is done by simply your proffession playing as it should at a base level. Because other games don't run 100% uptime. 

Catalysts proper rotation is not possible without specific boons that's factual. It's largely unplayable in alot of situations because it requires optimal boons to be able to play fundamentally.. 

The existence of boons has caused this and this affects you more and more dependent on the quantity of abilities you have to use. 

The fact for balance reasons every ability of the elementalists have to be weakened to balance out the quantity of abilities means your squeezing out more abilities in a window which requires more time or the ability to speed up the rate you can use those abilities. 

 

[Jski.6180]

30 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

I doubt it's a hatred situation. Elementalist elites take more time to develope espically given the fact they were given a 2 handed weapon this time.

I think the problem is more aligned with boon dependency to perform. 

If for example you have 8 seconds of quickness, and your GCD is 1 second. You can only use 8 abilities in that window. If u then have a boon which reduces that GCD. That boon becomes more and more important the more abilities above 8 you have to actively use in the window.

But the DPS loss in its absense would also get larger and larger when they haven't got this boon as over time your rotations and CDs would become more and more misaligned. 

This is why games generally do not have permanent boons such as alacrity and quickness in the game. So in balancing you can control the GCD of proffessions individually. 

But with a lack of that, trying to make a char that has 4x the amount of abilities to other choices becomes almost impossible in a average players gameplay. Because boons existence means the balancing is made based on the top 5% of players due to how much of increase these boons are when in optimal situations. 

People like to say the 44k benchmark is massively over the top and u can't get close to that In a real situation. But the question would be is it really impossible. 

If snowcrows did a raid. With 100% uptime on boons for the entire fight. And the fights done in the fastest fashion and in the most efficient way. Could catalyst achieve over 40,000 DPS. 

Or could quickness catalyst out DPS the other alternatives in that situation. 

Now I know the reply will be "well you can't balance the game on the vast minority at the cost of the majority" but this is not true, in every mmorpg this is exactly how it works. The primary difference is simple. 

The DPS difference in other games between top level players and averages are smaller, this is done by simply your proffession playing as it should at a base level. Because other games don't run 100% uptime. 

Catalysts proper rotation is not possible without specific boons that's factual. It's largely unplayable in alot of situations because it requires optimal boons to be able to play fundamentally.. 

The existence of boons has caused this and this affects you more and more dependent on the quantity of abilities you have to use. 

The fact for balance reasons every ability of the elementalists have to be weakened to balance out the quantity of abilities means your squeezing out more abilities in a window which requires more time or the ability to speed up the rate you can use those abilities. 

 

What makes you think its not going to get nerfed agen? Anet is more then willing to give other classes 100% up times on there stronger boons yet still "bless" them with good dmg and effects.

 

Where is your line? At some point you need to realty question the chose anet makes for classes and there own internal game testing did not see (its just foolish to think they did not see it doing dmg with a hit box effect). How much longer will you let anet get away with these just badly made arguments "we think it is in a good places" but for catalyses?

What is more painful then anet nerfing ele class is other players doing every thing they can to defed anet as they are DESTROYING the class that you must like on some level.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Jski.6180
Added thoughs.

[KelyNeli.4516]

So they nerf the class that is only good against golem dps check, but complete garbage everywhere else? 

It only had a DPS to the large sitting in place target, its not even fun to play ... 

And leave alone nerfing pvp, but pve? Is it 2012 year or what? No other mmorpg nerf classes like this, THIS IS NOT MOBA GAME where i could choose a character and play it in 1 minute, each character requires massive time investment, which most of us dont have. This balance and class design team is garbage, even Elder scrolls online doing better job balancing and designing their classes, and it is and achievement to do it worse than them. xD 

Edited March 16, 2022 by KelyNeli.4516

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Jski.6180 said:

What is more painful then anet nerfing ele class is other players doing every thing they can to defed anet as they are DESTROYING the class that you must like on some level

Except I didn't defend anet. 

My post very much states there is a problem with balancing, it doesn't state anything other then that it sheerly points the finger at a different reason then you do. 

If as a example, catalyst was outdpsing other quickness options. Or achieving over 40k DPS in optimal boon enviroment it does qualify to be nerfed. It's overextending what it's suspose to do

If the DPS disparity between optimal boons and average gameplay is so wide that the specc is unplayable in the vast majority of players eyes. Theres a deeper problem to the situation. 

[Salt Mode.3780]

Lol i wish people would stop looking at golem benchmarks for class usability. 

Golem benchmark is only to show the maximized dps a class can do, this is completely different then consistent dps in a regular fight.

I honestly doubt the average playerbase can even pull 40k+ dps on a dummy let alone a boss.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

Lol i wish people would stop looking at golem benchmarks for class usability. 

Golem benchmark is only to show the maximized dps a class can do, this is completely different then consistent dps in a regular fight.

I honestly doubt the average playerbase can even pull 40k+ dps on a dummy let alone a boss.

The average player couldn't do 30k DPS on the easiest class avaliable on a golem.

And that's the issue with balancing based on average and not maximum. You would be bolstering proffessions to insane DPS numbers to get the average player of any proffession doing even 30k DPS realistically. 

If your looking at making things more accessible to the average player dumbing proffessions down would be the viable choice to go. But if that's something players want they can push for it. 

And this would be easy to Do. 

Nerf the rotation and buff the auto attack to close the gap. Make proffessions do 35k DPS with auto attack and 40k DPS with a correct rotation. 

It's doable but again unlikely a good look for the game difficulty wise realistically. 

Yes catalyst is harder then most speccs. But even something like warrior or guardian is too difficult for a average player. 

Heck there was a reaper complaining he couldn't do more then 5k dps on the forums a few months ago. 

Look at raid averages on wingman. The average of every specc is within 24-26k DPS. 

Which means the average of any proffession is not closing 30k on any specc in the game. 

A skillful player could use Condi tempest and outdps 90% of the players he will ever play with that's just how it is in gw2. To buff based on the average performance would make pro players quite litterally 1 shot a boss in under a minute. 

No serious mmorpg designs proffessions based on the average player. The problem is 60% of your DPS is made up of optimal boon uptime. Which no other game possesses for this exact reason, rotations are impossible to do without correct boons. You won't crit enough without boons, you won't hit hard enough without boons. Your sustain is dogsh*t without boons, heck there are physical damage modifiers which require boon uptime. 

No ones ever gonna average high on anything in realistic fights because most can't access what their being balanced on 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Salt Mode.3780]

2 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

If as a example, catalyst was outdpsing other quickness options. Or achieving over 40k DPS in optimal boon enviroment it does qualify to be nerfed. It's overextending what it's suspose to do

Which is why this comment is irrelevant. Doing 40k DPS on optimal boon environment on a golem when most cannot even achieve that goal should not be on the chopping block of nerfs.

If they truly want to balance the game let the flipping devs play their game and see actual numbers for themselves. This is true even more so with the balancing team. They are completely disconnected to the game whether it be PvE or competitive. 
 

Its already easy enough to balance PvE but after the patch today I REALLLLLLY do not have hope with the "summer" patch.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Yer.8096]

7 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

It's not a question of if I'm wrong. It's a question of what Anet wants. I don't make these changes. They do ... and they are going to use their process to do it, not the process players want to impose on them, including whatever data you want them to look at. The ironic thing is that this is what players have been asking for many years now ... well, this is what it looks like. 

 

Anet ignored all sugestions about catalyst not based in benchmarks or any data-based during beta. What seems to me is that you and Anet dont realize the golem is a bad measure for us too. ALL elementalists agree with that. Because almost all damage output occurs in fields and they are static. People use these data to show Anet even in a perfect situation catalyst is bad.

 

I agree with you when you defend Anet has their plans on catalyst, what I dont understand is why they don't tell us? Where is the developers showing to community who plays with elementalist whats the plan? They really have one? Why they don't explain us why there is no group effective support builds and DPS builds able to survive like almost anyone else?

 

A friend of mine said once: "Anet fears elementalist because they don't understand it". I have to agree on that and extend: they dont understand the players who plays with elementalists too, they are just ignored. See catalyst feeeback for instance.

[ManaPotato.3279]

Elementalist is broken on fundamental level. The entire class needs complete rework.

 

It suffers the same fate as shaman in WoW

[Mauti.3520]

I don't think Elementalist needs a rework. I think ArenaNet needs a rework.

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

Which is why this comment is irrelevant. Doing 40k DPS on optimal boon environment on a golem when most cannot even achieve that goal should not be on the chopping block of nerfs.

If they truly want to balance the game let the flipping devs play their game and see actual numbers for themselves. This is true even more so with the balancing team. They are completely disconnected to the game whether it be PvE or competitive. 
 

Its already easy enough to balance PvE but after the patch today I REALLLLLLY do not have hope with the "summer" patch.

But if we are gonna talk about this on a scale of "nothing should be balanced around the top 1% but the average players". 

Every proffession in this game needs to be buffed. 

Do you honestly beleive your average pug has a bladesworn in it doing 38k DPS? So should we buff it to 70k DPS so the average player could get 38k DPS? 

For aslong as boons exist they have to be balanced around you can't have speccs going absolutely nuts in speed runs and more for the sake of the average playerbase.

And devs. They likely play with optimal boons and not average groups as they test the game based on 100% boon uptime 

If you want the DPS numbers in optimal and non optimal set ups to be closer together, it's boons that need to be the target of nerfs. 

 

[ScottBroChill.3254]

So they nerf something ridiculously hard to perform and thats complicated so they can avoid people demanding others to play a really complicated class, but then keep over-complicating ele so it's stuck in a feedback loop of really strong but complicated -> Nerf -> underperforming for 90% of players and content while also remaining complicated. Just give us an easy to play spec already so you can justify ele being in demand for having damage. Because as of right now it seems you're too afraid to have something complicated be demanded, as lets say guardian and necro are demanding due to ease of use and providing a lot. But I imagine those get to stay strong, even after nerfs, because anyone can play them. With those two classes, no one is required to play anything complicated so their strength is less toxic and detrimental to team composition. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by ScottBroChill.3254

[Salt Mode.3780]

Truth be told Ele always had one of the most complicated rotations in PvE history (I know because I played staff weaver way back in the days in raids before the meteor shower nerf), that being said why should they not be rewarded with over the top DPS if you are able to perform at the optimal level. 

As it stand not only is the class overly complicated in rotation but it cannot compete with other easier classes.

Not to mention this benchmark was based off of a golem dummy, even the 1% would have difficulties pulling off those numbers in a realistic fight.

The nerf was unjustified, EoD released a couple weeks back without enough data to support that it needed the nerfs. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Arheundel.6451]

16 minutes ago, ScottBroChill.3254 said:

So they nerf something ridiculously hard to perform and thats complicated so they can avoid people demanding others to play a really complicated class, but then keep over-complicating ele so it's stuck in a feedback loop of really strong but complicated -> Nerf -> underperforming for 90% of players and content while also remaining complicated. Just give us an easy to play spec already so you can justify ele being in demand for having damage. Because as of right now it seems you're too afraid to have something complicated be demanded, as lets say guardian and necro are demanding due to ease of use and providing a lot. But I imagine those get to stay strong, even after nerfs, because anyone can play them. With those two classes, no one is required to play anything complicated so their strength is less toxic and detrimental to team composition. 

Excellent analysis! That's the gist of it and more people should understand this :

Necro and Guardian are the bread winners for this company.....so even if these two classes start farting lasers while riding a flying rocket propelled shark while being played by a hamster on a spinning wheel....they still won't nerf them..no matter what, if you nerf necro and guardians, you start alienating the super casuals , the ones who spend thousand of dollars in gemstore skins each month, if you'd be Anet..you wouldn't do that as it would spell disaster for the company revenues.

[Prank.1962]

19 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Excellent analysis! That's the gist of it and more people should understand this :

Necro and Guardian are the bread winners for this company.....so even if these two classes start farting lasers while riding a flying rocket propelled shark while being played by a hamster on a spinning wheel....they still won't nerf them..no matter what, if you nerf necro and guardians, you start alienating the super casuals , the ones who spend thousand of dollars in gemstore skins each month, if you'd be Anet..you wouldn't do that as it would spell disaster for the company revenues.

 

It's funny you say this, since they literally nerfed necro survivability accross all specializations two weeks ago... 😄