What I said for years....somebody finally made a public video

[Arheundel.6451]

All I ever said about this class : effort > reward , every thing said in this video, it's exactly what I always stated for years:

Nothing else to add....

Edited July 26, 2022 by Arheundel.6451

[Asek.1869]

Yea everything is what we need that I agree but it is also everything that Anet will never give us even when this game will be crashing down they will in first place kill ele olny after that they will try to save game

[AliamRationem.5172]

I agree with most of what he says, but he's wrong that isn't also about numbers.  At least with respect to the pure DPS builds.  How can weaver possibly compete when benchmark for power is like 32k and condi is 35k?  It's a selfish melee DPS with a sensitive rotation and it benchmarks lower than several faceroll ranged DPS builds.  Balance in this game is so borked it's pathetic.  When are they going to address this?

[Kuma.1503]

He's mostly on point in this video, the problem is that ANet couldn't even give ele the benefit of being a glass canon. There are also other balance issues that hold it back beyond the dps it deals and the boons it gives. 

So many of its skills need to be brought out of 2012. Staff cast times need to be looked at especially. Lava Font should deal a tick of damage when you place it and it should pulse burns. AoE's on ele are also very small, so enemies walk out of them often, and they barely tickle when they do hit. 

[Endaris.1452]

Personally I don't think turning Ele elites into yet some more completely bloated support dps specs is a good idea and I'd much rather have them knock down mechanist and FB by a notch. Cause I agree, technically Ele is a well designed class.

The main issue right now is that mechanist is essentially by design unfixable. Like say what you want, none thought engineer was overpowered by any means before mechanist happened. Every problem that mechanist represents for the health of the game now is concentrated in that elite spec, its traits and the mech and none of it in engineer.

Unlike with Scrapper back in the day, it's too popular to just redesign the traits and skills without significant backlash from mechanist enjoyers. Which means it just needs heavy heavy nerfs, a pet spec truly should never be so dominating in a game. And that would honestly be enough for hTemp to become a meta pick.

I do agree that Staff (and to some degree Scepter) could need some love but that's basically old news at this point.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

30min long video about Elementalists and I only hear about elite specializations, that itself is a big red flag that should actually point to the real problem of the design issues which the whole elite specialization system. Beside that core issue which hinders every possible potential of the classes, another one is the lack of actual direction for them, which he does mention to a degree. We have core Elementalist, Tempest, Weaver and Catalyst, but core Ele doesn't exist and doesn't have a role, Tempest is pseudo-support at most, Weaver is pseudo-DPS and Catalyst is something between these two, why?
Also, wrong solution, bringing Ele to the level of FB or others will widen the already big af gap between core and e-speces...

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I've definitely heard similar before.  Don't know if it was me saying it or somebody else, but I've heard it.  Other professions get specialization lines focused around some basic functionality of the class.  I.E. Necromancer has a power damage line, a condi damage line, a defensive minion focused line, a heal focused line, and a grab-bag line that is focused around the special mechanic.  Revenant has a similar setup of specializations.  Elementalist doesn't get this.  Instead, it gets lines based around the attunements.  Gain movement speed while in air, gain power while in fire, deal more damage while attuned to water, etc.  I noticed this problem when trying to make aura support builds, where I discovered that all of the aura buffing traits were scattered across 4 different lines.  

Unfortunately Anet has no intention of fixing this.  With the most recent update, they kept the status quo by making alacrity mutually exclusive to the aura heal trait.

[Mattmatt.4962]

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I've definitely heard similar before.  Don't know if it was me saying it or somebody else, but I've heard it.  Other professions get specialization lines focused around some basic functionality of the class.  I.E. Necromancer has a power damage line, a condi damage line, a defensive minion focused line, a heal focused line, and a grab-bag line that is focused around the special mechanic.  Revenant has a similar setup of specializations.  Elementalist doesn't get this.  Instead, it gets lines based around the attunements.  Gain movement speed while in air, gain power while in fire, deal more damage while attuned to water, etc.  I noticed this problem when trying to make aura support builds, where I discovered that all of the aura buffing traits were scattered across 4 different lines.  

Unfortunately Anet has no intention of fixing this.  With the most recent update, they kept the status quo by making alacrity mutually exclusive to the aura heal trait.

Might have been me a while ago (paused the forum ^^)

When we were discussing tempest and aurashare i said they needed to put most (if not all) aura related trait in a single line (water seems obvious but not mandatory ... I see arcana actually better suited since aura is all element ... You know, lore and kittens).

 

Back when the game launched every profession had iits power line, crit line, defense line, heal line and core mechanic line. Over time most crit lines turned into condi lines. And lines became more and more focused toward their theme ... Except ele.

And you can clearly see that remnant with last patch and warrior ... Anet decided to put the 5% crit trait in the condi line ... That used to be the crit line ... Years ago LOL

 

You want condi on ele ? Pick fire and earth and you re not even good to go cause you have no condi-coverage (also youre still made of glass unless you give up some condi for aura on prot or cleanse on aura)

Lets look at necro, i can pick the condi line (curses) and lets say death magic (defense) and be almost maxed out on condi while taking real defensive options. Thats one example amongh dozens.

While all classes need to trade off  for lines. Ele needs to do trade off within the trade off!

 

Tl;dr

Specialise core lines

Edited July 27, 2022 by Mattmatt.4962

[Ragnarox.9601]

for elementalist(tempest) I would like to see some defensive and healing buffs and increasing base hp to next level. 

Need dagger/dagger buff skills. And I would be happy.

[Stallic.2397]

Ele is Prefectly balanced in a meta where many professions aren't (Too Bloated) 

 

I'd rather see Anet buff Traitlines rather than weapons or utility skills. Earth attunement has needed attention for years. Better Stability output, condi application, and barrier. 

 

Water needs some of its traits condensed into one (ex. Soothing power & cleansing water) to add more damage traits and Chill application. 

 

Lastly, Air Traitline needs better utility use rather than just damage. Weakness application makes sense but for now it's just on a Grandmaster trait after stuns (LR) which shoehorns builds. Mobility is only applicable in air. Why?? 2/3 Adept traits are concerning mobility. So many other glass Canon builds have added survivability but if an Ele chooses Air the best luck they have is to outrun their opponents...

 

I agree with teapot. Ele is effective in godlike hands. But it's tradeoffs are too finely balanced. Updating traits, rather than just buffing numbers, would help drastically. 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Meh if there's 1 person outside of the Anet dev team that has burned ele to the ground it's tpot. All he did for years was claiming that ele was in a powerful spot while simultaniously never playing on it. Sure maybe he's changed his thoughts abit now there's an increasing amount of evidence & criticism about ele's playrate & balancing, but i'd say he's a couple years late for that. 

 

Might be a lillbit of personal aversion aswell, really can't stand him and his attitude lol

[soulknight.9620]

9 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Meh if there's 1 person outside of the Anet dev team that has burned ele to the ground it's tpot. All he did for years was claiming that ele was in a powerful spot while simultaniously never playing on it.

This. Ive seen that too. He was always "ele is great", "ele is op", "cata is broken", "weaver is god tier" etc for literary years. And now he suddenly decided that "oh look, its not quite there yet". And he makes a video stating same arguments that have been discussed in ele subforums for years now by other people. And you know what? Anet might actually listen to him, cause well you know, every voice matters (unless you are a paying customer on the forums that is). 

Personally i have given up on this. After the "meta defining" bs anet gave us this month, i just give up. Ele "works" (well im not getting kicked out of groups) for me to a certain extent and thats it. I dont believe anet will actually change something, there is clearly bias towards certain professions on the dev team and there is nothing we can do about it. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by soulknight.9620

[zeyeti.8347]

There is no need to do a whole video for that , ele sucks in comparison of others specs thats all.

When you have a class and her whole 3 specs less played than only 1 elite spec ( mecha or fb , huh...) there is a problem !

Arenanet should stop looking at groups (snowcrows, hardstuck ,etc,...) with 7 catalyst , each dealing 45 k on MO (easiest raid boss ever , lol...) who also represent  like 0,01% of the players and look at random players raiding , they will notice one thing : wellll ppl do like mechas and firebrands ....

Most dont like it , they play it cause it's easy , strong and have great utility .

I start hating my mecha , but when i see the dps i do by just pressing one time AA on rifle mecha , well ... iam shocked and somehow my lazy self comeback , meh ez dps whatsoever ...

Arenanet balance team know as much of the game as i know about woke culture ...

At least i hope they see this video and do something , ty to teapot to FINALLY say ele is actually weakly designed and outdated in comparison to other class.

And the sorry excuse : "It's not because a class is complicated that it must be more efficient than an easy one" OFC it must be more efficient ! Why even bother playing it then ? the leveling down on this game is real.

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[The Boz.2038]

How to fix Elementalist in nineteen easy steps.

• At minimum *double* attunement swap cooldown, across all elites. That will seriously reduce the great big gaping chasm between playing Ele "optimally" and just camping a single element.
• Then, once you have a way of reaching 95% optimal rotation without being a piano prodigy, start looking at the weapon skills, bring up coefficients, add better identity between the weapon/element pairings, polarizing them some, too.
• Next up, utilities. Every single one is currently outright weaker than any other class' comparable option.
• Delete Conjures; replace with Glyph of Conjuration. Come up with a new skill type that's actually useful.
• Rethink Arcane skills' daft auto-crit power identity; it is self-contradicting. 
• Take a good, long, hard look at the elites. Ask yourselves why they are the way they are, and since one of them is about to be deleted, compensate. 
• Take a good, long, hard look at the trait lines. The core trait lines are very 2012 in their design and identity spread. 
• Take a good, long, hard look at the lowest health and armor chassis in the game, ask yourself "is this compensated for?" Then compensate for it. 
• The other ten steps are much finer details, so I won't get into them right now. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The thing is, to fix Elementalist they'd have to fix core Ele first. It would need major reworking and the devs just don't like touching anything from Core in a positive way because its F2P content. Making it worse is a good business investment, while making it better is a potential loss for every change that encourages players  not to buy expansions. I'm not upset at ArenaNet here, I just understand how companies work.

 

They won't even go back and look at the fact that all core classes are missing many skills of a certain type which by default, already makes the elite specs better since you can't specialise into builds that mostly use one type of skill like for example Wells on Necro (compare to Scrapper here), which is important for effective low-intensity builds and new player uptake for a given class.

 

The simple truth is, core specs were incomplete from launch, and in many ways at that. Repeated nerfs throughout the years to make the elite specs more attractive just made things worse.

 

Here's my suggestions on at least making support Tempest better:

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[TheQuickFox.3826]

As long as balance patches keep focusing on what the top-tier of skilled players can achieve on a benchmark this problem won't get solved.
Balancing on what the median can achieve with the professions/specs would make more sense for the majority of the player base. But the drawback is that the most skilled players with the best rotations will be in an unbalanced situation.

[soulknight.9620]

35 minutes ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

But the drawback is that the most skilled players with the best rotations will be in an unbalanced situation.

Does it really matter though? Sure it does in spvp/wvw, but we have a different balance in spvp/wvw. But when it comes to pve it doesnt actually matter if some high skill player outperforms all of the average players. Like really why should it matter? They will get higher clear times? So what? High skill players will get their worth out of any build rly (or easily change build/class). 
 

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

Honestly, I can't disagree more with teapot.

Ele has two very big weak points:

- Lowest Armor

- Lowest Health

 

There is no other class comparable to that. Thief has lowest health as well, but better armor, and not to mention a TON of skills or mechanics which may negate all of that. Guardian? I don't even need to mention. So normally, Ele have to be stronger, because it is a huge tradeoff standing in a fight and having nothing to protect yourself, unlike many other classes have without investing any points. But what do we get instead?

 

In every other way, any other class can do a single job better than elementalist. 

condi? Take condi mech, scourge, virtuosu, whatever. Weaver can't even compare. Something else isn't even worth mentioning-

heal? Heal-mech, heal-firebrand,...?

Support?

Tank?

power dps?

ranged? melee?

 

And the only thing Ele gets back is a lot of mediocre skills, being like a swiss knife for every situation. However, without investing points, gear etc. most are literally useless, and specialization makes them, as stated above, only mediocre.

It doesn't help if you can do a bit here and that, if you can't do any job properly. 

[Infinity.2876]

The joys of playing weaver:

 

 Magicka

 

If you've ever played this game it encapsulates weaver very well

 

Friendly fire, hastely grabbing elements, very little sustain.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Infinity.2876

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

As a staff Catalyst, a few quick thoughts:

• It would likely be too much of an overhaul to turn staff ele into a 'modern' support build, so it can't compete on that basis; therefore it is also not justifiable to use its 'support abilities' as an excuse to not increase its damage output. 
• Most staff cast times need to be halved, at least.
• Staff damage skills then need  to be increased from 25-100% 
• Water
  • Healing amounts are pretty good
  • Fix Soothing Mist bug (i.e., remove this hidden nerf)
  • Reduce Ice Spike animation time by 50% OR reduce animation by 25% + add chill for 3sec
• Air 
  • Maybe add Barrier (group or self-only?) to some Air trait or skill (e.g., Air1) so that power-based builds are not quite so glassy.

There are other details, but this is all I have time for at the moment.

[Infinity.2876]

37 minutes ago, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

 

• • Reduce Ice Spike animation time by 50% OR reduce animation by 25% + add chill for 3sec 

I don't mind the cast time for ice spike much and can usually hit someone with it adding chill or buffing damage would be nice tho

 

The thing that needs less cool down or burning is meteor shower

[jan.7915]

As somebody that isn't excellent on ele I feel the issues a lot.i enjoy the piano, it should be more forgiving though. And maybe possibly variation in skills to make it forgiving.

That's all. There's nothing wrong with a spec that takes mastery to achieve top results and sucks without. Then the class should have an easier spec. E.g. holo vs engi, holo could have kits and Harder rota and Mecha could before players (like me) that should focus on mechanics a lot more.

 

Can't balance everything and the game is forgiving to a point that u can clear without optimal builds. 

 

What it takes then is friends to coordinate the gameplay and that is the main issue. Usually once u got a good group your skill on ele is high enough to make it work. Without skill usually there's no group either and that's negatively double dipping exponentially.

Edited August 3, 2022 by jan.7915

[Junkpile.7439]

Some pve meta build low damage or lack of utility is like smallest ele problem. You can still make some try hard elite spec build that works just fine. Real problems start when you wanna play berserker core spec without abusing lamest weapon in game offhand focus.

[Aedil.1296]

On 7/28/2022 at 9:01 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

This. Ive seen that too. He was always "ele is great", "ele is op", "cata is broken", "weaver is god tier" etc for literary years. And now he suddenly decided that "oh look, its not quite there yet". And he makes a video stating same arguments that have been discussed in ele subforums for years now by other people. And you know what? Anet might actually listen to him, cause well you know, every voice matters (unless you are a paying customer on the forums that is). 

Personally i have given up on this. After the "meta defining" bs anet gave us this month, i just give up. Ele "works" (well im not getting kicked out of groups) for me to a certain extent and thats it. I dont believe anet will actually change something, there is clearly bias towards certain professions on the dev team and there is nothing we can do about it. 

Yes teapot said for years ele was op while 99% of players where saying the opposite and were forced to use other classes for raids and cms. 

And as far I could see i mostly saw him on necro never on Ele, so i don't think he's one of those 0.001% of players particularly skilled with Ele piano play. 

Anet made one of the most popular class ever (mage) to be effective only in the hands of very very small number of people. 

Good job - _-"

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I like this build and I play raids with it but the conjures add too much complexity to the rotation so I don't use these:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Power_DPS

 

This ofc limits the usefulness of the build. It's a bit sad that a profession which can freely use 4 attunements and has an extra overload skill on every attunement still has to rely on summoned weapons to have even more skills.

 

What is the best I can get out of:

• Elementalist, non-weaver.

• Scepter/Warhorn or Scepter/Dagger

• No conjures / summoned weapons

• DPS Power or DPS Condi

• Usage: strikes and raids