Dislike Group Content After Patch

[Voyant.1327]

After taking some time with the new patch and running the basics, fractals, pvp, etc.

I found the flow of things to be unfavorable from just a few days ago, for me personally. 

PvE is now like a race to the end with content literally taking 1/2 as long it feels like. No hate to people who like speed clearing/efficiency (there's a lot of you I know, lol) but it reminds me of another game when the speed got so outta hand it starts making the levels not worth playing (Warframe)

Before I used to not worry about what classes I ran with, now I've gotta actively make sure there's no quickness/superspeed in the group. Alacrity is fine, but all of these, all the time in so many situations. It just made PvE so much easier while it was already too easy. Feel like its warp speed constantly in everything. In a game where people already rushed thru things and tried to skip as much as possible... Like just provide a win button and one dps button with an autopath if this is the goal to just autopilot the game.

Meanwhile the PvE changes have made playing the other modes a lot less enjoyable, all so that I now do 1-5k less dps & am now the flash. 

I might have an unpopular opinion here (prepared for forum equivalent of downvotes) but I feel like speedcreep is a real issue comparable to power creep. Its great for grinding type players, horrid for people who like to play games for the enjoyment vs. efficiency focuses.

This patch effectively made me less likely to join other groups as I now have to meticulously select who I play with to enjoy the content or get stuck racing to the finish line instead of feeling like I'm playing the game.

I get its usefulness and idea, just dislike the results in application.

This is something that shoulda been a different mode in my opinion, "turbo mode", bc not everyone is into speed clearing. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Voyant.1327
Grammar

[Nico.9361]

21 minutes ago, Voyant.1327 said:

Meanwhile the PvE changes have made playing the other modes a lot less enjoyable, all so that I now do 1-5k less dps & am now the flash. 

The fact that in many groups we can simply outdps certain mechanics -> looking at fractals, strikes AND raids, means that we really need to bring the overall group dps down...
I remember the good days when groups had to use updraft on Gorseval...

[Voyant.1327]

6 minutes ago, NotTooFoolish.7412 said:

The fact that in many groups we can simply outdps certain mechanics -> looking at fractals, strikes AND raids, means that we really need to bring the overall group dps down...
I remember the good days when groups had to use updraft on Gorseval...

I would say the facetank and stack approach is 100% something I'm not fan of. I would much prefer dying 20x and having to actually learn how to get good at the game versus "Ok guys now lets all hold hands in the bubble" 

Like no hate to people who like the Final Fantasy style of raiding, but it would be nice to actually play the game on occasion 😂

So I will agree with you, much prefer when group content is fun vs. just obliterate everything and collect rewards. Thats why there's so many people who like stacking difficulties, new game+, etc.

The challenge IS the fun. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Voyant.1327

[kharmin.7683]

This has been an issue prior to the latest patch.

[Gaudeon.5849]

You're not alone on this, I feel the same, but we are a minority in this. This has been the issue for a very long time now though, their design decisions have actively went to this route for quite a while, we are not the target audience (those who seek engagement and challenges) - their design choices have been catered very much towards people being reward driven and wanting fast clears in order to get their rewards of the day. There is nothing wrong with such players. In my opinion we just have to bite the bullet in this, enjoy the little we have and move on overtime. (I as example mostly only play in controlled environments with custom challenges now)

The only solution that they can do I believe at this point without disrupting their current target audience is to create 'Challenge Modes' without any rewards or achievements, so there zero incentive for reward driven people with this we atleast have a place to play and find likeminded people - the Challenge Modes also would have to be mostly number changes & effects such as 80% outgoing healing/barrier reduced, since if we get too many additional unique mechanics that seem 'cool' it might upset a majority of the playerbase on missing out . This is very unappealing to do as a anet though, I think conceptually its actually easy to do these modes but its an implantation effort that likely doesn't seem worth it, I do believe its necessary to have a place of growth for players like us though.

The issue is that they are making fundamental changes that can't be fixed with challenge modes over time, it will be harder and harder to design when the tools to break your encounter get stronger and stronger.

Edit: Their encounter design team to be fair does identify the issue in how to make it engaging/challenging and does a good job in newer content releases, but unfortunately with the on-going overall game changes they will break sooner or later aswell. Similar to how older contents got powercrept easily by it. It might be done on purpose to keep their newest content always be 'the content' to play, for me its just unfortunate to see previous encounter design thrown in the bin all the time.

I don't actually know what you understand under 'speedcreep'. For me it really is just powercreep and and reduction in interesting complexity. I also wouldn't call it 'enjoyment vs. efficiency' because getting rewards for majority of people is fun. Not everyone has the same fun and we should respect other peoples fun if we want others to do the same with us

Edited July 12, 2022 by Gaudeon.5849

[Kozumi.5816]

Our new balance team is led by a young modern gamer who grew up in the gogogogogo MMO mindset. Do not expect the game to get any better.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Labjax.2465]

Far as I can tell, it's a symptom of a larger problem this game's reward system has, which a number of people have talked about in better detail than I can go into here: that most things are obtained through gold, so most reward-seeking comes down to gold-per-hour and this effectively means if you are seeking just about any reward in the game, you are pushed toward playing at maximum efficiency even if that's not your style. Of course no one is "making you" in a coercive sense. You can choose to take the game slow (I have to say this for the people who will tell me "but it's optional!"). But that means you now have to wait longer to get whatever it is you want next. So to enjoy the game in a relaxed way you pretty much have to disengage from the reward system as it is and make it your own game. Which some people evidently do with great success, but for a lot of us, it's easier said than done to just stop caring about that carrot on the stick.

[anbujackson.9564]

Speedcreep is a huge problem in fractals. Nothing better than ruining your mood to play than a group in uncategorized that tries to rush past the harpies and keeps dieing instead of killing them which takes just a few seconds.

[Gajex.2386]

On 7/1/2022 at 12:06 PM, NotTooFoolish.7412 said:

The fact that in many groups we can simply outdps certain mechanics -> looking at fractals, strikes AND raids, means that we really need to bring the overall group dps down...

Not quite sure what to think of OP but this, basket of kittens, THIS!

It's good to be able to avoid some things if your entire group is performing well enough, but...

Guild Wars 2 does not suffer from increased item levels every update or higher character levels with every update, yet the powercreep is just as noticeable.

Although, one could argue that new stat combinations could count as a form of item level increase for certain builds, i.E. Viper for condi builds.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I talked about this in a recent post, it was about PvP but really applies o all game modes. Here it is directly quoted from the thread I posted it in:

Quote

I've said this many times, but powercreep has infested all game modes. Movement and attack speed should be reduced so that Swiftness and Quickness only bring players up to what we have as baseline now, which may feel slow but would give 100% more room for counterplay.

 

The game was better in Core because you could see animations and react to them in real-time.

 

Yet I've seen threads of players asking for Quickness to be made baseline, even in PvP. This is because players enjoy much more running into a group and dumping all their skills in 5sec and downing half the enemy team. Harbinger wasn't the first class able to do this, and it won't be the last.

 

I wish people would stop confusing adrenaline rushes with fun gameplay (for others). Bunker meta exists because its the only way to counter DPS spam adrenaline junkies. Some of us actually want to survive for a little while, have a bit of fighting, maybe play the game some instead of just being a free +5.

 

But these players don't want PvP, they want 20k in their log and more points in their score, as quickly as possible. If you could instagib players, half the "PvP" community would approve of it.

 

And they have before.

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Cyninja.2954]

Welcome to the world of: boons for everyone at nearly no effort.

In an attempt to balance all classes AND lower the skill floor by giving essential boons to every class, the developers have ended up making the game "easier" to a great amount of players. That on it's own is not a bad thing, except if this performance improvement comes without any input from the player.

You no longer have to understand how boons work or how to build so your class provides those boons. They are given away for free, even class unrelated in EoD with the overcharge buffs.

The "I want to play how I want, everywhere" crowd got nearly what they were asking for. Across the board viable builds, no matter how bad they are. The game got that much easier. In fact, GW2 was never hard, it simply required some basic class, composition and game mechanic understanding to tackle more challenging content. Something some "I get to play my way" advocates never seemed to understand.

The net result:

All content has become significantly easier, borderline boring for many. New challenging content was added which in fact is "challenging" and can not be made insignificant with proper boon/support setups. Content which many players will most certainly NOT be able to complete.

TL;DR:

The game did not become easier. It always was easy to begin with it merely had a high point of understanding. Difficulty got removed/simplified from one area, understanding of basic game mechanics, to be more readily available to everyone. Now everyone can feel bored in open world content and either feel pressured to do instanced content, or quit and even here: most instanced content is barely above open world content in difficulty when booned up to the max.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Spucke.4163]

my advice if you don't like speedclearing: just play low dps builds

 

 

[Firebeard.1746]

I'm confused because most pe

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

You no longer have to understand how boons work or how to build so your class provides those boons. They are given away for free, even class unrelated in EoD with the overcharge buffs.

You do realize that the devs are claiming FA power tempest is supposed to provide Alac? You also realize how ridiculous that is, right? claiming "no cost" is inaccurate in that world. Power tempest hasn't even had a viable SC build for months, let alone WH 5 being nerfed in air just before EoD launch. Now they expect a sub-par DPS, thats usage was situational at best. BEFORE NERFs, to sacrifice a high-DPS major trait and add additional BD to make it work, because you definitely can't do it with 0 BD, even with FA because FA only recharges swapping back to air, it doesn't reset the overload. I actually wish this were true though. BD is an awful stat, it doesn't feel good to be locked into a gear set that is only useful when other people aren't running it, as you have 0 control over that. For end players than have tons of legendaries and who buy gear sets, it's not an issue, but for any player that doesn't, it's an awful high tax on your gear and an annoying usage of a build slot, because the gear is only useful in particular situations. 

Also, I don't really think there's anyhting novel/OP about the current balance. Spot checking a few builds, nothing looks any higher than it was before, if anything DPS should have gone down with the removal of class buffs like banners and spirits. It looks like some builds still edge close to 40k, but even then, that wasn't exactly rare before the balance patch either. 

If you believe that having to hand-pick people who played 1 of 2-3 classes that had significant amount of BD in their builds was somehow novel and engaging, I respectfully disagree. They've nerfed Catalyst specifically to avoid the situation you talk about, and even as someone who doesn't normally run ele in PVE, I find that ridiculous. Ele, with less built-in survivability than any other profession (requiring you to get mechanics right, whereas some classes can stand in bad with evades), and higher rotational complexity than any other class, is literally expected to get 0 pay-off for it.  Elementalist, if they're going to stick with piano-style gameplay, and extremely low and situational survivability in a raid setting, should get some payoff for it. And if they're not going to give it ridiculous damage, it should at least give a freaking boon to give it something over classes that can literally stand in bad while doing full DPS. Not calling them out, don't want them nerfed, just want some concept of balance.  Ele, in fairness does have some ways of getting survivability, but even when i do this in my OW builds, I feel like I'm sacrificing damage that I wouldn't have to on other classes that I play. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[Cyninja.2954]

16 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

I'm confused because most pe

You do realize that the devs are claiming FA power tempest is supposed to provide Alac? You also realize how ridiculous that is, right? claiming "no cost" is inaccurate in that world. Power tempest hasn't even had a viable SC build for months, let alone WH 5 being nerfed in air just before EoD launch. Now they expect a sub-par DPS, thats usage was situational at best. BEFORE NERFs, to sacrifice a high-DPS major trait and add additional BD to make it work, because you definitely can't do it with 0 BD, even with FA because FA only recharges swapping back to air, it doesn't reset the overload. I actually wish this were true though. BD is an awful stat, it doesn't feel good to be locked into a gear set that is only useful when other people aren't running it, as you have 0 control over that. For end players than have tons of legendaries and who buy gear sets, it's not an issue, but for any player that doesn't, it's an awful high tax on your gear and an annoying usage of a build slot, because the gear is only useful in particular situations. 

So your argument to counter my claim that boons are out of control is that 1 specific class which hasn't seen enough revamp?

There is absolutely no argument that boons are not across the board more available since EoD. They are all over the place and sometimes with nearly no significant effort involved.

Dhuum is easier than ever with new mobility on classes and power creep from EoD. Sorry I didn't base my argument around only the 1 class in this game, I kinda of looked at all 9.

Quote

Also, I don't really think there's anyhting novel/OP about the current balance. Spot checking a few builds, nothing looks any higher than it was before, if anything DPS should have gone down with the removal of class buffs like banners and spirits. It looks like some builds still edge close to 40k, but even then, that wasn't exactly rare before the balance patch either. 

HAM is one of the most braindead and op boon support builds ever.

DPS did go down, which reduced the skill ceiling because balancing those unique modifiers to actually be beneficial required some effort.

DPS also went up, because lowering the skill floor via multiple means did just that.

Quote

If you believe that having to hand-pick people who played 1 of 2-3 classes that had significant amount of BD in their builds was somehow novel and engaging, I respectfully disagree. They've nerfed Catalyst specifically to avoid the situation you talk about, and even as someone who doesn't normally run ele in PVE, I find that ridiculous. Ele, with less built-in survivability than any other profession (requiring you to get mechanics right, whereas some classes can stand in bad with evades), and higher rotational complexity than any other class, is literally expected to get 0 pay-off for it.  Elementalist, if they're going to stick with piano-style gameplay, and extremely low and situational survivability in a raid setting, should get some payoff for it. And if they're not going to give it ridiculous damage, it should at least give a freaking boon to give it something over classes that can literally stand in bad while doing full DPS. Not calling them out, don't want them nerfed, just want some concept of balance.  Ele, in fairness does have some ways of getting survivability, but even when i do this in my OW builds, I feel like I'm sacrificing damage that I wouldn't have to on other classes that I play. 

I specified this. It's not about having those 2-3 classes. For all I care, and even would advocate for, all classes should have access to some type of boon support. What I disagree with is making it as braindead easy as say mechanist and making boons insignificant in acquiring them.

The later, while it may reduce the performance difference between players, causes for just the issues noticeable right now: more players realizing HOW easy this game actually is.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Gaudeon.5849]

30 minutes ago, kaese.8765 said:

my advice if you don't like speedclearing: just play low dps builds

 

 

It doesn't work, it only works if everyone you play with is doing that which they won't. The issue is that these days in older instanced content including fractals, you don't even have to try that hard to have a decent build - neither do you need much effort with how you play the build - there is just more passive/aura like damage around and sustain has increased a lot for you to simply ignore mechanics (in effect increasing your damage even more). That means that players like us have to be very selective with who we play and LFG becomes non-viable, since many players will not listen if we ask them to play 'worse' builds on purpose. And that is totally fair, many want to also play the content 'normally' (how it is now) before doing self-imposed challenges since they won't know if it fits the content. 

If one person plays a low dps build, then there are just gonna get hard carried by the others which still results in a speedclear, you already start going fast for older instanced content on 3+ people so it really doesn't make much difference. Its also rude to do this in public groups, if their goal is to just clear the content fast (which it is by default).

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, kaese.8765 said:

my advice if you don't like speedclearing: just play low dps builds

 

 

Powercreep is making this multiplayer game into single-player.

 

Today in Fractals we had a Bladesworn who was doing 100k burst (40k+ sustained) while everyone else was 10-15k (which is already higher than most groups I join anyway).

 

Because of this, the bosses would phase in seconds and no one else could get hits in., and you might think that's better but it just becomes a rush for rewards; other players no longer get to experience the content, test their builds or rotations out or anything, just watch things explode.

 

You can say "get good", but have players ever considered that others just want to play at their own level and not have to rush through everything as fast as Humanly possible? It takes the soul out of it, and changes from playing a game to working a job. They're literally trying to make hourly wages.

 

Its become especially bad in dungeons and other old content.

 

I help out with them alot since I spend about half my time mentoring, and lately there's been alot of players doing story dungeons due to the token change and needing to unlock explorables, so they join a party full of e.g lv30-40 newbies for AC, with their 455 Mastery Points and then go through and do raid-level DPS the whole time, disallowing new players from enjoying the content too.

 

Yesterday, in Ascalon Catacombs, a veteran player ran ahead of the newbies and killed all the bosses while they were watching cinematics, only taking 4-5secs per boss. The new players couldn't do anything but watch back to back cinematics (not wanting to skip the story beats), and were never able to touch anything except a few monsters and I imagine it left a very bad impression on them.

 

This has become a plague on the gameplay for anyone but farmers and speedrunners. Its come to the point where I'm almost relieved when I find a group who don't want to hop, skip and jump through T4 Fractal dailies because it means I can breathe and chat a little with them.

 

It takes a little longer but we kitten around and have more fun and its great.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Tescao.3042]

10 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Today in Fractals we had a Bladesworn who was doing 100k burst (50-60k sustained) while everyone else was 10-15k (which is already considered quite high for pre-Strike content).

 

Because of this, the bosses would phase in seconds and no one else could get hits in., and you might think that's better but it just becomes a rush for rewards; other players no longer get to experience the content, test their builds or rotations out or anything, just watch things explode.

 

You can say "get good", but have players ever considered that others just want to play at their own level and not have to rush through everything as fast as Humanly possible? It takes the soul out of it, and changes from playing a game to working a job. They're literally trying to make hourly wages.

 

Its become especially bad in dungeons and other old content.

 

I help out with them alot since I spend about half my time mentoring, and lately there's been alot of players doing story dungeons due to the token change and needing to unlock explorables, so they join a party full of e.g lv30-40 newbies for AC, with their 455 Mastery Points and then go through and do raid-level DPS the whole time, disallowing new players from enjoying the content too.

 

Yesterday, in Ascalon Catacombs, a veteran player ran ahead of the newbies and killed all the bosses while they were watching cinematics, only taking 4-5secs per boss. The new players couldn't do anything but watch back to back cinematics (not wanting to skip the story beats), and were never able to touch anything except a few monsters and I imagine it left a very bad impression on them.

 

This has become a plague on the gameplay for anyone but farmers and speedrunners. Its come to the point where I'm almost relieved when I find a group who don't want to hop, skip and jump through T4 dailies because it means I can breathe and chat a little with them.

 

It takes a little longer but we kitten around and have more fun and its great.

Don't worry, sometimes it's like a blind person talking to a deaf person. Life is beautiful because it has two sides of the same coin, the other side will eventually take its toll anyway. If people tried to realize the depth of the moment - for example, here they decided to speed up, and then they would still slow down by coming to the store earlier and getting into a big queue, which might not have happened if they were not in a hurry. There are thousands, millions of such situations, so enjoy the moment.

[Firebeard.1746]

8 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

So your argument to counter my claim that boons are out of control is that 1 specific class which hasn't seen enough revamp?

Well your post was extremely general, so it sounded like you were talking about everything. You didn't even acknowledge some classes were left behind. 
 

8 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

HAM is one of the most braindead and op boon support builds ever.

DPS did go down, which reduced the skill ceiling because balancing those unique modifiers to actually be beneficial required some effort.

DPS also went up, because lowering the skill floor via multiple means did just that.

So you're complaining that the skill floor was reduced? THat's really all your argument comes down to when you admit that high-end players took a DPS hit. Maximum raid damage was reduced. Ergo, content is now more challenging for the 0.1% of the population capable of doing 40k DPS, which is what I thought they wanted? I thought they were bored? Now, heaven forbid, people who don't play that way are a little more effective and can enjoy the content. 

Also HAM isn't the end-all be-all. Its Stab is a liability on SH. it requres your group does a really good job of staying out of bad because corrupted stab = fear. Sure, it's strong in a lot of places. Doesn't ham still require BD? That's not for free. If you think that it's OP, that's a different story.

Out of curiousity, outside of HAM, what other classes are "giving away boons for free"? Because the catalyst nerfs seem to imply the devs are requiring BD. THough with the removal of class buffs, if they weren't aiming for reducing overall raid damage, one way to increase it is to lower the BD breakpoints for providing boons. 

Your post still sounded like the boons being provided and more widely available was an issue. Is that the case? 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[Firebeard.1746]

 

On 7/1/2022 at 2:42 AM, Voyant.1327 said:

After taking some time with the new patch and running the basics, fractals, pvp, etc.

I found the flow of things to be unfavorable from just a few days ago, for me personally. 

PvE is now like a race to the end with content literally taking 1/2 as long it feels like. No hate to people who like speed clearing/efficiency (there's a lot of you I know, lol) but it reminds me of another game when the speed got so outta hand it starts making the levels not worth playing (Warframe)

Before I used to not worry about what classes I ran with, now I've gotta actively make sure there's no quickness/superspeed in the group. Alacrity is fine, but all of these, all the time in so many situations. It just made PvE so much easier while it was already too easy. Feel like its warp speed constantly in everything. In a game where people already rushed thru things and tried to skip as much as possible... Like just provide a win button and one dps button with an autopath if this is the goal to just autopilot the game.

Meanwhile the PvE changes have made playing the other modes a lot less enjoyable, all so that I now do 1-5k less dps & am now the flash. 

I might have an unpopular opinion here (prepared for forum equivalent of downvotes) but I feel like speedcreep is a real issue comparable to power creep. Its great for grinding type players, horrid for people who like to play games for the enjoyment vs. efficiency focuses.

This patch effectively made me less likely to join other groups as I now have to meticulously select who I play with to enjoy the content or get stuck racing to the finish line instead of feeling like I'm playing the game.

I get its usefulness and idea, just dislike the results in application.

This is something that shoulda been a different mode in my opinion, "turbo mode", bc not everyone is into speed clearing. 

Out of curiousity, which PVE game modes are you clearing with no quickness? 

In honesty I can sort of agree with the "speed creep" concept, but Snowden drifts CM is undoable without it (so they'd definitely need to redo it). I hate being forced to phyiscally rush through PVE content and I hate skipping mob packs. It's an issue I've had both here and in WoW. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[SidewayS.3789]

I dunno if the OP has activated sarcasm or not. If you are serious, what can I say that L.O.L. If you wanna play a slow game, you can choose to play something else or, you know... play some low dps builds and have fun. Where these kind of players are coming from? Are the gates of "The Stupid Realm" are open and they now pour here?

[cyberzombie.7348]

Even in vanilla GW2 this has been a thing, but mainly in dungeons. While I can understand going through the same run can get repetitive, I personally was never fond of trying to speed through them. As it doesn't give any moment to learn, or get immersed into the lore behind them.

[Obtena.7952]

Never get complaints like these ... almost like running a PUG with "play whatever you want" advertised never existed. I can guarantee you, an optimal team with people filling Alac and Q will not self assemble.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Firebeard.1746]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Never get complaints like these ... almost like running a PUG with "play whatever you want" advertised never existed. I can guarantee you, an optimal team with people filling Alac and Q will not self assemble.

In fairness I've injected "YOLO" into my fractal group descriptions only to get some over-optimizing kitten still joining and proceeding to scream at us. That's another point when I gave up on trying anything off-meta. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[Gajex.2386]

5 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Never get complaints like these ... almost like running a PUG with "play whatever you want" advertised never existed. I can guarantee you, an optimal team with people filling Alac and Q will not self assemble.

Only reason I like to organize strikes myself, is so I can write 'Daily X | Bring whatever' and add my most recent shower thought.

Like It's not a human rights violation if it's an Asura. Still prouder of that one than I should be...😐

Not recommended for raids though, that ain't going to end well.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

21 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

If you believe that having to hand-pick people who played 1 of 2-3 classes that had significant amount of BD in their builds was somehow novel and engaging, I respectfully disagree. They've nerfed Catalyst specifically to avoid the situation you talk about, and even as someone who doesn't normally run ele in PVE, I find that ridiculous. Ele, with less built-in survivability than any other profession (requiring you to get mechanics right, whereas some classes can stand in bad with evades), and higher rotational complexity than any other class, is literally expected to get 0 pay-off for it.  Elementalist, if they're going to stick with piano-style gameplay, and extremely low and situational survivability in a raid setting, should get some payoff for it. And if they're not going to give it ridiculous damage, it should at least give a freaking boon to give it something over classes that can literally stand in bad while doing full DPS. Not calling them out, don't want them nerfed, just want some concept of balance.  Ele, in fairness does have some ways of getting survivability, but even when i do this in my OW builds, I feel like I'm sacrificing damage that I wouldn't have to on other classes that I play. 

Well, if you want to be technical, ele does have two things it excels at that other professions don't.  Problem is, they're sort of outdated: the combo system, and auras.  Fire fields themselves are damage buffs, causing direct burns on spin and projectiles with indirect burns coming from leaps.  For a very long time, the high uptime of fire fields was very valuable for might stacking, as well as all of the additional damage that it would do.  These benefits are still there, however they aren't talked about as much due to how miniscule an increase they are now.  Likewise, Ele being able to put down water fields for emergency heals and lightning fields for group swiftness used to be an invaluable part of dungeon running and early fractals.  The permanent boon situation has rendered most field play useless.  IMO the finishers should have much stronger effects than they do currently, so it would reward combo field play.

Auras themselves in PVE are... mostly useless.  Magnetic Aura is good, and Shocking Aura is O.K. if you have the dagger equipped to blast it for a large stun.  Frost and fire offer miniscule benefits, given they're there to proc on-hit effects against enemies that attack very slowly.