Rework elementalist class from the scrap

[Eva.3629]

As the title says, I don t see how they will "balance" this class without nerfing it to the ground or making it insanely over powered. Maybe it is time for A net to look into the core of this class and fix it by demolishing it to the ground and remake it :), I know that I might get alot of hate from you players for this topic, but i simply don t see a future for elementalist, all the potential that could be there for elementalist feel scattered to all over the place, hiding behind huge tradeofs(signets, traits, conjure weapons). Even today I do not understand the meaning of conjure weapons, it is a design tedious to use, but maybe thats personal preference. What do you think ele should look if we would get a big rework? (I saw warrior getting some big reworks, maybe it is hope for us eles too^^)

[Downstate.4697]

Its traits arent bad. Biggest setback are its weapons and utility skills

[Serephen.3420]

Any such radical change to how ele plays would kill all enjoyment of the class for many dedicated ele mains. There are good changes that can be made without needing an entire mechanical rework. 

But definitely most utility skills and some weapon skills could be looked at.

Updating some traitlines to be more up to date would be good as well.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Serephen.3420

[AliamRationem.5172]

I would not like to see the feel of the class (i.e. the weapon skills and attunement swap mechanics) changed dramatically.  What I would like to see is a rework of utility skills and traits.  I think that's an area where ele is clearly lacking, with mostly outdated, low-impact skills.  Arcane, water, and earth traits need a hard look as does every category of utility skills (but especially conjured weapons). 

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

19 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Its traits arent bad. Biggest setback are its weapons and utility skills

 

I'd deny that completely.

The problem already starts with traits being related to attunements, and the attunements themselves not being clearly distinguished between roles. The idea of non-trinity still lives here, but we must also acknowledge that this idea is outdated a long while ago, since HoT. Therefore, the whole trait system would need a necessary overhaul. 

 

The idea of an elementalist as stated from the description: "Their profession mechanic is their four attunements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. They wield each of these elements to defeat their foes and aid their allies. Albeit lacking in defense, elementalists are very versatile and have access to a plethora of skills, as these change when attuning to the different elements. Elementalists can also manifest the elements as conjured weapons with their own set of skills, or as allied elementals to aid them in combat"

 

And this very idea isn't working out as it should be.

Instead, camping is being enforced by most builds, while real versatility is being punished. Auto-Attacks are having an important part in many builds which makes it even worse. 

The skills do their rest. They aren't "versatile", while picking the wrong attunement/skill is severely punishing overall performance. 

The way I see it, the whole system needs to be completely overworked:

 

- Traits should be clearly distinguished between heal, support, power and condi dps. The only traits being related to class mechanics should be arcane, as well as the elite spec traitlines, the same as every other class does.

 

Auto-Attacks should be severely nerfed, while the skills themselves also have to be overworked completely:

 

No skill should be bound to a certain role, but all skills should get buffed from the traits you use:

- Earth: Condi, Support/Healing

- Water: Healing, Support

- Fire: Power DPS, Condi

- Air: Power DPS

 

Let me give an example:

If you use Water with the fire Trait being used, your water becomes hot, dealing more damage, but also inflicting conditions. 

 

If you use Water with Earth Traits, your water becomes muddy/poisonous, giving protection while also inflicting other conditions like slow or poison. 

 

If you'd use both traits, water would instead become hot as well as poisonous, being very strong as condition dps, same can be said about the other elements as well. Take for example Water Trait with Fire Attunement, which would make it a steam element, cleaning conditions and giving boons. This could be realized over the minor traits, while the major traits can be reserved for more precise configuration of what you actually want to do.

 

This would give the skills the versatility they lack while forcing players to swap between elements to use them to the maximum efficiency. The idea would be quite similar to what we know of ARPGs like PoE or Last Epoch.

[pallas.8150]

Biggest problem with Ele design is that they are still stuck in 2012.

While other professions have been tweaked and updated, Ele has mostly seen nerfs or 'this is in a good place' and they are simply left alone.

The traits are, honestly, bad. They need to be reviewed - as does Skills (Arcane, Conjures, Signets).

 

 

Edited September 18, 2022 by pallas.8150

[the krytan assassin.9235]

The elementalist traits are in dire need of rework. Earth, water fire and air traitline arent specifically designed for a specific role. They are designed to symbolize the elements. This is the reason only Fire and water traitline are functioning properly since the fire element symbolizes damage and burning and the water element symbolizes healing. 

Air attunement is still decent since you have 1 Pdps trait in every traitline, but apart from those it offers nothing usefull. 

Earth attunement traitline is simply a complete failure. 5/9 traits are used for self defense only. The major Grandmaster traits do not offer a single decent trait for party support or condi dmge. Support earth traits should be giving stuff like stability, protection, aegis, resistance, resolution, barrier. 

Arcane traitline majors lacks flavor in general except for the attunement swap traits. Aura traits definitely deserve to be included into the arcane traitline (instead of water & fire)

 

Tempest, Weaver and catalyst traits need some rework aswell, but the elementalist core traits need proper balancing first before you can start working on that. 

 

Same goes for the weapon & utility skills of ele, build up the class from the base (the core traits) and start tweaking some numbers/skills after to properly balance it. 

Also still wondering after 10 years. Why does signet of FIRE (power/burning element) provide precision (air element) on passive ability while simultaneously providing burning on active use? Just give it power/condition damage on passive lol. 

[Sahne.6950]

Am i the only one that is satisfied with where ele is standing currently!?

The class is pretty stronk compared to earlier times....

Edit: this is a PvP/WvW perspective. Catalyst is meta and so is Supporttempest. Never did Elementalist have 2 builds in the meta.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[the krytan assassin.9235]

52 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Am i the only one that is satisfied with where ele is standing currently!?

 

Im pretty satisfied that ele is in a good spot in sPvP and has 1 decent Cdps and heal alac build (apart from maybe triggering alac on finishing OL).

For all other builds/gamemodes the current state of the ele is problematic. Ele currently has no decent role in WvW at all, PvE catalyst is completely trash, especially when used for Qdps. Alac dps is really bad aswell.  Sword/dagger/staff and hammer are not able to provide competitive dps, while at the same time offering almost 0 team utility at all (dps also drops off very fast in suboptimal scenarios). Also there is still no compensation for having lowest health & armor pool in game (and no class specific surviveability).

Don't get me wrong, the current state of ele is alot better then a month ago, but unfortunately we still have quite some catching up to do. 

[Eponet.4829]

On 9/19/2022 at 2:39 AM, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

The idea of an elementalist as stated from the description: "Their profession mechanic is their four attunements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. They wield each of these elements to defeat their foes and aid their allies. Albeit lacking in defense, elementalists are very versatile and have access to a plethora of skills, as these change when attuning to the different elements. Elementalists can also manifest the elements as conjured weapons with their own set of skills, or as allied elementals to aid them in combat"

 

And this very idea isn't working out as it should be.

Instead, camping is being enforced by most builds, while real versatility is being punished. Auto-Attacks are having an important part in many builds which makes it even worse. 

 

Versatility is punished when trying to specialise into just a single role.

 

I've found that when you actually want to play a generalist role like a Celestial Healer Alacrity Tempest, it actually fills the atmosphere it's aiming for pretty well, using all four elements actively, a lot of room for build flexibility, and very little auto-attacking because of how much cycling between elements there is.

 

 

[zeyeti.8347]

What anet need to do is look in depths core traits , utilitys , skills from weapons and reajust some and completely rework some , can state you some very good example :

-lightning flash : while mesmer and engi has there tp on a 20 sec cd , why has ele a 40 secs cd ? and less range ! 1200 vs 900 range

-pyromancer puissance : a trait who decrease your stacks of might while you go out of fire or overload fire , ... just ... wtf is this trait supposed to be ? an april fool joke ? just make this trait an option for condi , like +10 % burn damage and increase further the effectiveness of sunspot 

-elemental shielding : give 3 sec of prot when you give an ally any aura ... yeah anet , could use some numbers increase ... doubling it or making this trait proc barrier on auras shoudl be way more effective

 

And the list can go on , but i think nobody want to read further more.

[AlCapwnd.7834]

Meteor Shower needs to be able to cast on the move (Like staff 5 in water) and needs a reduced cast time in all game modes. As well as a CD reduction from FGS (Fire Great Sword)

[Mortime.1359]

On 9/18/2022 at 2:29 AM, Serephen.3420 said:

Any such radical change to how ele plays would kill all enjoyment of the class for many dedicated ele mains.

Yes all 7 of them would be mildly irritated, the rest already jumped ship to mechanist some 6 months ago.

[Jski.6180]

I just think the class lacks consistently in how though out skills are and how you can get added effects with though skills. Transmutation is the best example of this there is one trait for it and its only for clears i am not sure what about fire screams transmutation but that is the only way to get added effects for it.

Another example is added effects from condis such as blinding from burning and bleed from roots but not added effects for  applying weakness or chill. There is do more dmg vs burning targets and a bit more crit chase for targets who have weakness as well as more dmg vs stuned targets but there no vs root targets bleeding chill its all kind of inconsistent.

I do not think scraping the class would work.

[Vik.9617]

I personally love playing my ele and am not that annoyed with its layout that much HOWEVER I do find it unfair that it is balanced around those that who play at godlike levels. Sure some guy that min maxed their build had insane dps a while ago so balance team focused on that now they are unplayable beacuse you cant pull off the combo reliably enough so noone will have you. But I suppose that is perfectly fine just pick another class that fixes the problem..

Now almost noone playes it in raids because you have to use the very hard mechanics to be able to reach mediocre damage. Add a diminishing return feature where if you prefrom perfectly as an ele you get punished in the sens that you dont get as much damage as you would have call it a dps limiter where any damage caused above 20k dps is reduced by 50%, then up all skills damage of the class by 30%. 

Edited September 24, 2022 by Vik.9617

[Kaleban.9834]

The reason Elementalist feels weird/poorly designed is because it was the first designed profession back when there weren't going to be skill cooldowns. If you remember the reveal video from way back, one of the scenes just had a single Elementalist re-casting Meteor Shower with no CD to kill a couple of Ettins.

The concept was that you'd have access to all your skills whenever you needed them, but you'd have to switch to a different attunement. The skills themselves, had they stuck with the concept would have been MUCH more specialized and something I've harped on in other threads for a long time.

But ANet changed the skill system without adapting the design concept of the Elementalist.

 

To fix it would mean some work but I think it's doable and would bring the Ele back into mainstream play. Some of the other professions pretty much have the groundwork for a re-work already, ex. the Water Attunement being designed in the same way as Druid Staff and Earth Attunement being designed similar to Firebrand's Tome of Courage. Air Attunement would be your single target Attunement, and Fire your AoE cleave. Eliminate Attunement CD entirely, since you'd see no or marginal benefit from "stance dancing" to maximize DPS. Then it would be far easier to balance the numbers as well as tweak traits and utility skills.

[draxynnic.3719]

4 hours ago, Kaleban.9834 said:

The reason Elementalist feels weird/poorly designed is because it was the first designed profession back when there weren't going to be skill cooldowns. If you remember the reveal video from way back, one of the scenes just had a single Elementalist re-casting Meteor Shower with no CD to kill a couple of Ettins.

The concept was that you'd have access to all your skills whenever you needed them, but you'd have to switch to a different attunement. The skills themselves, had they stuck with the concept would have been MUCH more specialized and something I've harped on in other threads for a long time.

But ANet changed the skill system without adapting the design concept of the Elementalist.

 

To fix it would mean some work but I think it's doable and would bring the Ele back into mainstream play. Some of the other professions pretty much have the groundwork for a re-work already, ex. the Water Attunement being designed in the same way as Druid Staff and Earth Attunement being designed similar to Firebrand's Tome of Courage. Air Attunement would be your single target Attunement, and Fire your AoE cleave. Eliminate Attunement CD entirely, since you'd see no or marginal benefit from "stance dancing" to maximize DPS. Then it would be far easier to balance the numbers as well as tweak traits and utility skills.

That's not really true - elementalist was first revealed, but we don't know the design order, and we saw it being reworked along with changes to game mechanics. It was just as up to date as mesmer (last profession revealed) at the time of the beta weekends and release. The bigger problem, really, is that elementalist was designed around the idea that it changed function by changing attunement, but they coupled this with an attribute system where what you were actually good at was determined by your attributes.

Something which didn't change - the attribute system was reworked quite a bit prerelease, but there was always the link between attributes and role that meant that the idea behind the attunement system was largely undermined by your role already being determined by your attributes, unless you had your attunements evenly spread. No point swapping to water if you haven't specced for healing, for instance, since your healing numbers won't be anything worthwhile.

If anything, I'd do the opposite of what you propose and make the attunements MORE versatile. For instance, consider if we upped the damage scaling on water skills (except hammer), so that they were a little below the damage attunements but not by as much as they are now. That could make it so that a DPS build might be more able to swap to water to provide a little extra sustain without completely tanking their DPS. Meanwhile, something like a Harrier build isn't taking as much of a double whammy from having both weaker damage stats and weak coefficients, and having incentive for healer builds to retain damage stats if they can fit them in would provide more of a benefit to switching to more offensive attunements if there's a suitable window for it. The target to aim for would be for all attunements to be worth using regardless of your build, even if some might be situational rather than part of a rotation.

[Valento.9852]

Ahh, are they still balancing ele based on pvp/wvw?

[Sporks.4395]

The traits are not that good. They work for specific purposes, but they really lack diversity for builds. 

Lets take a look at different classes in comparison to ele.

 

First thing first, lets talk about crit rate modifiers. For some reason, some classes have INSANE crit rate modifiers in traits. 

Engi, in a CORE trait line has 30% increase to crit chance that practically 100% uptime. When foes bleed, and when you are within 450 units. With sharpshooter, you always have bleeding stacks being applied, no skill usage, just attack and have fury (100% uptime btw) and you can run 50% CR on pretty much any engi build. Gear can be messed with. Scholar runes can be used. Diviners and Cele gear is less of a hassle to deal with in regards to crit cap. It is built in flexibility

 

Rev has a core trait that just gives you an additional 25% crit chance if you have fury. On a class that can pretty much spam perma fury. Again, you only need 50% CR to crit cap. Endless gear opportunity and you can just pump power damage.

 

It is crazy easy to get 40% additional CR on a ranger.

 

That kind of extra crit rate gives you a natural ability to play with your gear to fit different roles. All out DPS, boon support damage, even think about getting ferocity in your condi build, because you are crit capped. Might as well work some in?

 

Core ele traits gives you...... 5%.... So 30% with fury. On the lowest health pool, lowest armor, and pigeonholed into mele class. So your gear options and runes are limited. So, you have to rely on your elite specs just to hit crit cap. So, you lose a lot of utility to bake into your skills and traits.

That is one, of a few, reason why, I think, that ele's utility skills feel so bad. 

 

Again look at scrapper.

You have CR modifiers baked into your core trait lines. Every skill in scrapper does something to make your skills insane. Wells are nuts on scrapper because of it, even with the nerfs incoming, they will still be better than all ele utility skills. This makes you able to make your build do different things. Boon support damage is meta. Almost any class can do 35k+ dps right now (lol reaper...).  What makes your class useful is the ability to provide different rolls with ease. This is where Eles lose. If you want your ele to do damage, you have to trait every single aspect of it for damage. Then you are just average. Want utility? well... Weaver sucks for that, there are pretty much no traits to help you support your group on a weaver. Tempest is ok, but because of how the class is designed, you get to take no damage traits if you want to support. Your main source of boon support is also locked behind a ridiculous cast time... So you can... heal.. that's it. It's not even that great at it. It works, but It is clunky and lacking compared to other support classes. Catalyst... well... we lose 10% damage to give out quickness.. Which, if you use hammer, you can still hit over 27k, but any other core weapons can forget that. They suck for damage. 

 

Another issue with Ele, weapon skills are poorly thought out and under tuned. Hammer is ok, but it loses the point of the differnet attunements. You are just swapping through them to do damage and that is it. Hitting key skills in earth and water to pump deeps. How cool would it be, if the attunements had VERY specific idea's behind them to encourage skillful decision making? This would ease on your need for complex rotations, it would GREATLY increase your group value for utility provisions, and it would make the attunement swaps feel more purposeful. Instead of just some mindless button mashing strictly for damage. Make fire do more damage and better provide might, water do more healing and cleansing, air do more spike damage, earth do more defensive boon support. I think it would be nice to see an ele camp 2 attunements for a specific build and have a real impact reason to switch to the other 2 that don't really fit the build purpose, but have utility. Like DPS guardian build. Sure, you lose DPS to take SYG or retreat, but you take it because it is amazing group support. Those two skills can be the difference between a fail or a win in a group. Ele has no skills that provide that. In weapons or in utility. 

 

In short, fix elementalist traits. Make the traits turn each elite spec into something UNIQUE, not just a different way to do damage. Make the attunements have purpose with weapon skills. Make it less button mash as many skills as possible, and more purposeful reaction in usage of skills. Please fix the core utility/elite skills. The cooldowns are to high, they are to selfish, and they need to move forward with the game balance. 

 

[ScottBroChill.3254]

17 minutes ago, Sporks.4395 said:

Another issue with Ele, weapon skills are poorly thought out and under tuned. Hammer is ok, but it loses the point of the differnet attunements. You are just swapping through them to do damage and that is it. Hitting key skills in earth and water to pump deeps. How cool would it be, if the attunements had VERY specific idea's behind them to encourage skillful decision making? This would ease on your need for complex rotations, it would GREATLY increase your group value for utility provisions, and it would make the attunement swaps feel more purposeful. Instead of just some mindless button mashing strictly for damage. Make fire do more damage and better provide might, water do more healing and cleansing, air do more spike damage, earth do more defensive boon support. I think it would be nice to see an ele camp 2 attunements for a specific build and have a real impact reason to switch to the other 2 that don't really fit the build purpose, but have utility. Like DPS guardian build. Sure, you lose DPS to take SYG or retreat, but you take it because it is amazing group support. Those two skills can be the difference between a fail or a win in a group. Ele has no skills that provide that. In weapons or in utility. 

 

 

 

Honestly I'm happy hammer went another route and is a more focused weapon that can specialize on its bruiser role really well without being handicapped from having too much utility or skill variation. There are still undertones of each elements flavor with burning/aoe/and might generation, air has good strike damage with skill 2 and comes with 2 cc's, and I may be alone but I do like the self knockback, its a great kiting tool when you're getting too much pressure or need to create space. Water finally does some damage which I'm thrilled about, taking more of the ice element with it, and its heal leap and cleanse swirl are very strong for burst sustain. The catalyst ult also lets you double down on the healing and cleansing when you need more which also lets you spam two more finishers. And then there's earth. The block comes in handy and is great when I can swap quick enough to get shocking aura, but getting a block with magnetic aura gives you reflect and I think whirling stones also blocks projectiles so you got some decent ranged protection cover. I like hammer because it has a role and knows what it wants to do, and is good at it. I feel like all my attunements are necessary to use with hammer because they are all working towards the same goal. I would also disagree with the mindless spamming of skills, the hammer is a decent combo machine.  Making sure to use the right f5, timing placement of sphere with energy generation, making sure to use a finisher in another attunement so you get a different aura since it's on a ten second cooldown. I feel like hammer skills are very impactful and the order and timing of it is all very important. Dagger and sword are much quicker, but sometimes it feels like I'm just throwing a lot of junk from a backpack at the enemy where each hit does barely anything but through number of attacks alone it is somehow able to perform. those weapons to me seem to be more of a spam fest then hammer because the skills are less impactful. But the playstyle is completely different in terms of how to approach fights. 

[draxynnic.3719]

Another consideration is that I think it's okay for there to be builds that want to cycle through the elements. There are people who enjoy that playstyle, and hammer is still fairly fun to use (although it'd be good to see a bit more range on fire and air). It's just a little unfortunate we've had 'melee that cycles through all elements' twice in a row.

However, the initial promise was for attunements to provide adaptability, not something you simply cycle through in order to maximise effectiveness. It'd be nice to see a weaponset that really fulfills that promise, in a manner that encourages you to actually switch attunements to change your role rather than simply ignoring the attunements that don't fit your role.