Elementalist - The good Design

[Kuma.1503]

I've been pretty vocal about the parts of elementalist that miss the mark.

The lack of group stab on Tempest, the punishing nature of tying alac to overloads, elemental empowerment not refreshing stacks, ect...

But there is one design choice that Elementalist has that I like. This choice plays a role in why Ele is so fun to play regardless of its spot in the meta. 

 

Tying boons to skills instead of utilities. 

 

This is why I will always play catalyst over Scrapper. It doesn't matter what type of support ele you play, you're free to take whichever utilities you like to get the job done. You can take dps utilities, grab some extra stab if you need it, run shouts, glyphs, whatever you need. You can do this because you don't need to sacrifice your utility bar to give boons. Tempest gives might, fury, regen, vigor, and alacrity purely through overloads, and some extra protection by hitting WH 4. 

Catalyst gives all of its boons through its Jade Sphere. This is why it was able to pump so hard when it first came out (leading to the... questionable choice to give it -10% dps in its traits). It was able to fill up its entire utility bar with skills to bolster its DPS. 

You aren't forced to mash all of your utility skills midlessly in order to upkeep your boons. You have the freedom to drop a clutch rez glyph or a well timed rebound. 

This freedom is greatly appreciated, and it's something I miss when playing other classes like Quick Scrapper, Alac Ranger, or Quick Herald. 

The lack of non-selfish utilities does hold ele back unfortunately. If it was able to provide more value with its utility bar, Elementalist would be a lot more desirable than it is currently. 

 

[soulknight.9620]

3 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

This is why I will always play catalyst over Scrapper. It doesn't matter what type of support ele you play, you're free to take whichever utilities you like to get the job done. You can take dps utilities, grab some extra stab if you need it, run shouts, glyphs, whatever you need.

Nope, thats not how it works. Actually thats the main issue of ele design atm. You have best in slots utilities to each build and thats it. You simply cannot take some defensive utilities and not loose loads of dps by doing so. Thats why 99% of meta builds run the same skill over and over again. Catalyst isnt any different, you basically run fire/ice augment, GotS, FGS to get your dps on the lvl. If you drop either of them, you get quite a lot less dps (and since you mainly go for quick dps support, thats an issue). 

The most "freedom" of utility slots atm is availible on the support tempest. There are a few rly core skills and a slot or two for you to experiment. 

The real "freedom" is what HFB has. You literary have 3 slots (2 utility and 1 ulti) to adapt your build to any fight, while doing 100% of what is required from HFB. 

[Kuma.1503]

1 hour ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Nope, thats not how it works. Actually thats the main issue of ele design atm. You have best in slots utilities to each build and thats it. You simply cannot take some defensive utilities and not loose loads of dps by doing so. Thats why 99% of meta builds run the same skill over and over again. Catalyst isnt any different, you basically run fire/ice augment, GotS, FGS to get your dps on the lvl. If you drop either of them, you get quite a lot less dps (and since you mainly go for quick dps support, thats an issue). 

The most "freedom" of utility slots atm is availible on the support tempest. There are a few rly core skills and a slot or two for you to experiment. 

The real "freedom" is what HFB has. You literary have 3 slots (2 utility and 1 ulti) to adapt your build to any fight, while doing 100% of what is required from HFB. 

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think you misunderstand what aspect of ele's design I'm praising. 

To be specific, it's the fact that Elementalist doesn't fall into the same pit as other supports. Burning your situational utility skill just to upkeep one boon. 

Number tuning holds ele back unfortunately. The fact that you have to take the dps utilites on Cata to deal competetive dps removes a lot of the potential choice of what you can take in your utility slots. So in practice, this good design choice is somewhat "negated", but this issue can be fixe with proper number tuning. 

I'd also like to see Augments made less selfish in general, as I mentioned in the end of my post. If these were used for utility purposes instead, and the damage was transferred into their weapon skills, that would help Cata out immensely. 

A few examples of what could be done here include: Sharing the unblockable buff to allies on Fire augment. A chunky heal/cleanse with water augment. Aegis and Barrier with Earth augment. And perhaps also making Staunch Auras AoE, which would enable a Heal Quickness Catalyst build. 

Cata is clearly designed to be a support hybrid. Augments should reflect that. Weaver is the selfish spec. 

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[soulknight.9620]

28 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

I'd also like to see Augments made less selfish in general, as I mentioned in the end of my post. If these were used for utility purposes instead, and the damage was transferred into their weapon skills, that would help Cata out immensely. 

Well thats what is holding dps support ele back. The sole purpose of dps supports is to do dps while providing some sort of support via quick/alac. If anet removed dps increase from augments then well you would just use the core dps boosting utility skills (GotS, GoEP etc) and so on. Anet would have to literary butcher all of the dps utilities to make that work. And only after that they could add some dps onto weapon skills or the dps would get out of control. The current situation is bad desing by default. The only reason why support tempest has some free utilities is that it is not dependant on the dps aspect. Thats why it can pick some of the utilities to adapt to different situations (tbh that also goes for hfb). 
 

37 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Burning your situational utility skill just to upkeep one boon. 

Well i think its more complicated than that. A good design is tradeoffs. Any class should be able to specialise in a role by trading off some of its other potential. Like if you want to provide quick/alac/heal - sacrifice dps/utility slots/traits/etc. The main problem i have now is that ele works that way, but some other classes dont. HFB/QFB/HAM/AlacMech do not have tradeoffs - they get the full package with a single build doing almost nothing to achieve this. 

[Mattmatt.4962]

Actually,

What OP describe as balanced is how every single profession EXCEPT elementalist should be designed. Why ? well as described in that topic

Why alac heal tempest has issues ? Healing is tied to water. And thats a recuring issue "X is tied to A-element". Elementalist is supposed to have utility through its attunement but if you go to an attunement whose purpose is not what your build is meant to do, you hurt your rotation. (See power weaver doing only fire fire air air repeat, any water or earth press is a huge mistake.

 

Utility slot of ele should be defining the build so hard that you could do the job almost as well as any other class with only your utility ..... But that would quickly be insanely broken (well ... Afk power engi factored ... Maybe not actually LOL).

 

Tl;dr

Having whole attunement useless for some build is bad design

[soulknight.9620]

5 hours ago, Mattmatt.4962 said:

Why alac heal tempest has issues ? Healing is tied to water. And thats a recuring issue "X is tied to A-element". Elementalist is supposed to have utility through its attunement but if you go to an attunement whose purpose is not what your build is meant to do, you hurt your rotation. (See power weaver doing only fire fire air air repeat, any water or earth press is a huge mistake.

You have a point there. Atm the attunement that you are not speced in is close to useless (or has a very limited use). They should redesign ele weapon skills the same way they did with hammer, where every attunement has some nice skills that arent a dps loss when you rotate over them (i do like how hammer water skills are used for sustain and condi cleanse, but also provide some decent dps). And yes i do agree that they should increase base healing/support on most skills and nerf the scaling from heal power. That way you would make skills more usefull for builds that are not full speced (for example towards healing)  and keep these skill in check for balancing when you actually do invest into these stats. 

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

On 8/4/2022 at 9:37 AM, Mattmatt.4962 said:

Why alac heal tempest has issues ? Healing is tied to water. And thats a recuring issue "X is tied to A-element". Elementalist is supposed to have utility through its attunement but if you go to an attunement whose purpose is not what your build is meant to do, you hurt your rotation. (See power weaver doing only fire fire air air repeat, any water or earth press is a huge mistake.

 

But isn't this also the case w/Ventari healing on revenant? Switching legends is like switching attunements. Without completely eliminating attunements or legends, this is always going to be the case. If healing skills were spread out between attunements, it would make healing very difficult as it would require attune-swapping just to get to the next heal skill. 

[Jski.6180]

I think they need to move utility on different trait lines and have though utility fill an more define roll.

Signet should be the "support" core utility and be moved to the water line, Conja weapons should be more self only effect (less about sharing the wepon and more about self buffing for a time) and be on earth line, Cantrips should be an self def and fast hit skills for strong bust and should be on fire line, arcain skill should be purly crit / power dmg and be on air line and lastly glyph should be about self powerful boons with strong cc/soft cc /condi dmg base off of atument and should be on arcain line.

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

 

But isn't this also the case w/Ventari healing on revenant? Switching legends is like switching attunements. Without completely eliminating attunements or legends, this is always going to be the case. If healing skills were spread out between attunements, it would make healing very difficult as it would require attune-swapping just to get to the next heal skill. 

The difference is that revenant can choose two legends to fit their build. You don't take Ventari unless you're specced for healing or you want a lot of projectile hate. Elementalists, however, always have the same four elements regardless, so unless you're running celestial you often end up with one or more attunements being effectively dead because you don't have the stats it needs.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

15 hours ago, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

 

But isn't this also the case w/Ventari healing on revenant? Switching legends is like switching attunements. Without completely eliminating attunements or legends, this is always going to be the case. If healing skills were spread out between attunements, it would make healing very difficult as it would require attune-swapping just to get to the next heal skill. 

Not quite the same.  Rev maintains its weapon skills when swapping attunements.  This makes it easy for Diviner or Ritualist Renegade to do good damage while also providing permanent alacrity, while also having whatever utility the weapons themselves provided.  On heal builds, I camp sword/ more more than staff, largely because I have enough heals through utilities alone.  The power weapons let me stack vulnerability, give me movement skills, and do O.K. damage considering that I'm the healer.  I'm still able to give alacrity and might, which makes it so the heal renegades does everything at once.  I haven't tried heal quickness herald yet, so jury is out on that one.

Ele, particularly tempest, is different in that it doesn't have good healing utilities and it must sacrifice its weapon skills to heal.  This poses a problem for both self-healing and group healing.  The dagger/warhorn rotation for heal tempest is largely a trust fall for my teammates, hoping they'll survive long enough for me to get to the part of the rotation where I get to water and can heal people.  Outside of that, the burst heals come from the shouts, and with Aftershock and Rebound providing useful utilities.  This is only true with the healing auras trait, which poses a big problem for heal ele. 

In all not-for-fun scenarios, the healer is expected to provide good boons and fulfill niche utilities simultaneously.  Losing Elemental Bastion's 1.2k heal per aura is actually a pretty big hit, considering all the extra auras that are granted outside of the shouts.  There are some skills to replace the shouts (Signet of Water, Glyph of Elementals, Ice bow), but they don't synergize with all of the other traits and utilities that Tempest provides.  Ice bow replaces the weapon skills, which puts us in the same situation we started with.  Glyph of elementals is inconsistent, and largely inferior to Rebound.  So, the only option left is Signet of Water, which heals for 2.8k base.  It's not bad, but not good enough to carry a team.  Core ele has no other utilities that provide group boons, group heals, or any meaningful utility with but one exception (glyph of storms).  It's all about the traits and the weapon skills, which is why the loss of damage in water attunement is so damning for heal tempest.

It is these limitations that make playing heal ele so frustrating and difficult.  We're making sacrifices that no other boon or heal support has to make.  Catalyst has proven that you can have damage in water attunement without it being overpowered, so really all of the limitations ele faces are relics of old design.  

 

[FoodFest.2061]

19 hours ago, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

 

But isn't this also the case w/Ventari healing on revenant? Switching legends is like switching attunements. Without completely eliminating attunements or legends, this is always going to be the case. If healing skills were spread out between attunements, it would make healing very difficult as it would require attune-swapping just to get to the next heal skill. 

Yep same issue than ele , and pretty much same design , when you try playing heal herald , you wanna take brill and ventari legend .

Ventari has awesome heals and a pretty kitten good bubble for projectiles , but for boons it sucks , you then switch to brill to upkeep the offensiv boons , but what for the healing ? there is non , i dont count skill 4 from and AA on staff ,  its mostly irrelevant.

And fro renegade while his alacrity is always available , he lacks the offensiv boons , he can upkeep some might but largely not 25 stacks , but has a good healing option with soulcleave summit and his heal skill. But rev can change/switch weapons and legends , ele is tied to 4 attunements whatever u play .

Ele suffer the same design problem , they should make some weapons all offensiv and some others all supports ( they did a pretty good job with hammer who has offensive option in all attunements). Staff seems to be a good redesign for this , but then  you gonna anger staff ele in wvw ... scepter maybe , so you can still keep warhorn for might/fury share and extended boons duration ? (making like the AA in water can target allies and heals by bouncing from an ally to another one).

Those two need a 4 traitlines to work well and access utiltys and boons others have with only 3 tratlines.

Anyway they have to do something for those two classes , ele is the less played class in endgame , and i feel like rev. is gonna join it soon. Just play firebrand if you need quickness or mech if you need alacrity , there goes class diversity ...

Edited August 6, 2022 by FoodFest.2061