Wishlist for the November balance patch

[crosknight.3041]

We know from the fall/winter roadmap the next balance patch will be November 29th, and i am assuming that will be the last balance patch of 2022.

i'm wondering what you all would like to see for ele coming in november (possibly giving the balance team an idea of what to do in the time they have)


personally i would love to see the core ele traitlines and utilities get a rework/update. they are imo the biggest shortcomings of the elementalist at the moment.
the traits need an update to define more what roles they want as well as kick the "while attuned to specific attunement" and "when swapping to specific attunement" traits to the curb (im fine if the trait has "get bonus for being in specific attunement"). imo traits should be able to be active in all attunements not just specific attunements
as for the utilities, i would love to see cantrips/arcanes get buffs/reworks. core ele utilities are kinda lacking in more support oriented options, and DPS utils have long been dominated by glyph of storms fire signet and elite spec utils. (bias, this coming from a primarly pve player, idk how well most of them do in pvp. aside from mist form and lightning flash being useful there)

[Jski.6180]

I would like to see weaver getting more dmg as well as boon strip.

 

 

[Kulvar.1239]

Alac/Heal Tempest gets to give Fury without the Air trait line.

[Downstate.4697]

I really want to see weapon updates and utility updates, but anet is just going to make ele an after thought and give them generic changes that dont do anything to revitalize the profession

[tykel.6073]

Reworks/updates for core utilities and staff and scepter air skills so they aren’t as much of a waste of time in pve. Maybe some changes to the earth trait line.

 

My real pipe dream is for them to replace hammer 3 with actual skills and to make the catalyst orb be the utilities as wells as augments are just more boring stances with a different name. Then the concept of attunements charging a special skill (basically what hammer 3 is) can be used for a new f5 that does various things based on the attunements it has stored. Would this make more sense with the name catalyst? No idea, that’s a different discussion though.

 

oh and having a good power build that isn’t just propped up by the crutch of hammer 3 would be nice. I miss power weaver being up there with condi.

Edited October 6, 2022 by tykel.6073

[the krytan assassin.9235]

I'd really like to see some sort of extra defiance break skills.

 

Currently elementalist is simply lacking CC's:

Staff has 150 defiance break (350 in Weaver)

Scepter has 0 defiance break 

Dagger mh has 100 (450 in weaver

Sword has 225

Hammer has 350 

Dagger OH has 432

Focus has 600 

Warhorn has 300

 

That being said, quite some of the CC's are part of the rotation (like shock blast on hammer) making them less accessible/higher cost whenever you wait for CC phase. Weaver usually takes 4-8 seconds to even reach its CC. Most CC's result in a major dps loss due to the CC's being on suboptimal dps elements. 

The only CC on the utilities come from conjure shield, hammer and bow, all have 60 sec cd's, long casting time for conjuring and casting the specific skill. This results in very clunky slow CC. 

I understand that immob/blind/freeze/cripple can deal some defiance break aswell, but this isnt reliable due to other players stacking it already. 

Just boost some of the current defiance break skills, add some defiance break on some skills (like shock wave or when inside static field), and add some easy access defiance break on the utility skills so we can use our CC's without fcking up our damage rotation for like 10 seconds. 

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[Axelteas.7192]

Id like to see some incentive to quit camping fire.

[soul.9651]

Make fresh air dps tempest great again

[Faebe.7341]

My Wishlist consisting of 5 Points to make Tempest and Elementalist Great again:

Talking mostly about Tempest and PVE here since its my main Class

1) Pls not another nerf I cant take it anymore

2) Buff and revamp weapon skills to do more viable dps (talking mostly about core weapons)

give more overall dps to all weapons (hammer is fine i guess) and revamp them like buff the auto attacks, dragontooth feels slow and slugish an not impactful, when it finally hits the enemies are already cold from my teammates, the dagger water + fire cones feel like a fart in the wind, could get more range, and the water cone is not comparable to the awesome scepter 3 trident healwise.

Air skills never really feel (or are) impactful or strong when dps,  warhorn skills almost all feel slow (tornado, lighning orb), the lightning orb is weird with the movement, why not make the orb follow or hit or circle around a target? .

I feel all the aoe fields were dps-overnerfed on ele. I cant even talk about Staff anymore since I dropped it when all the weird changes(nerfs) to ele aoe fields happened. kitten I felt powerful switching to Scepter and Dagger main hand after the Staff.

3) Alternative DPS Skills to the elementals

For dps options I wish for some more Utility alternatives for the elemental utility skills. I kinda hate having them around and when the damage comes from them. I would rather see underused utility skills and conjures buffed in dps and with ammo mechanic so they are viable alternative (oh and bring back ice bow 4 pls? come on why not?)

4) Changes to traitlines so we can combine the rare good traits we have

(also wishing for changes and buffs for the antic core ele traits)

Im not too unhappy with the alac mechanic, im just glad we finally got something this year. But Pulsing it instead of getting everything in the end of an Overload would be a welcome change. I would also like to see the Aura Heal and Alacricy Traits not on the same Grandmaster Line so we can pick them both to make a viable Heal Spec, or increase radius on soothing mist. Otherwise I would mostly like to see earth and fire Traitlines reworked, give em a bit more juice

5) Rethink the recent PVE "Gale Song" nerf Anet

The Recent change to the Gale song Trait is obviously Dogshit. Halves the Stab and Aoe Stunbreak. Maybe it was too powerful as a single trait, it only became meta after alac and stab got intodruced and auraheal wasnt possible anymore with them. but it was fun and unique and made up for other stuff we are missing elsewhere. I wish it was back or we would get a decent replacement (maybe a dps increase trait?) and not a dead trait which ensures 300% prot uptime. We already have over 100% prot, have you forgotten? Without it we would still be in downstate.

And something nice for the end:

The Utilities are actually great non dmg wise, the tempest auras and eye of the storm saves them and its already a pain to leave 1 of the 4 great options out. We also have access to other great core ele utility like teleport.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Faebe.7341

[Serephen.3420]

My hopes/suggestions. 

Earth traitline in particular looked at again and either updated/reworked. 

Arcane utilities need some love.

More stab on tempest or more reliable access to alacrity. 

Sword weaver to get a good amount of love.

Quick catalyst nerf to be reverted partially (as in just the10%) 

If no changes are made to the 3 skills on hammer, some buffs to damage or animation speed would be great. 

Remove energy mechanic from jade sphere or change it so that energy provides a damage boost to the sphere.

 

Conjure and glyph rework.

Conjures changed to conjure elemental

Elite glyph changed to glyph of elemental weapons. 

 

No longer replace weapon skills and doesn't drop on the floor, instead it will cover your f1 to f4 attunement skills so you can't attunement swap but you keep weapon skills of current attunement. No auto attack for elemental weapons. Can swap out of it the same way we do with current conjures.

 

Current conjure skills now summon element appropriate elementals for a period of time. No longer despawned upon mounting.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Serephen.3420

[crosknight.3041]

10 hours ago, Jski.6180 said:

I would like to see weaver getting more dmg as well as boon strip.

honestly, boonstrip would fit perfectly for some arcane skills.
 

2 hours ago, Faebe.7341 said:

 warhorn skills almost all feel slow (tornado, lighning orb), the lightning orb is weird with the movement, why not make the orb follow or hit or circle around a target? .

I feel all the aoe fields were dps-overnerfed on ele. I cant even talk about Staff anymore since I dropped it when all the weird changes(nerfs) to ele aoe fields happened. kitten I felt powerful switching to Scepter and Dagger main hand after the Staff.

would love to see lightning orb get changed to be like the damaging version of water globe. mobile damage field. always erk'd me that it would only shoot projectiles at one target at a time.
and 100% agree that aoe change where it reduced the damage of the aoe by 10% per hit was way overtuned. would love to see that kicked to the curb or as a compromise, have it only reduce damage to a max of 50% drop instead of the current 90% drop (with a 5% drop in dps each hit instead of the current 10%)

 

1 hour ago, Serephen.3420 said:

My hopes/suggestions. 

Earth traitline in particular looked at again and either updated/reworked. 

Arcane utilities need some love.

More stab on tempest or more reliable access to alacrity.

 

Remove energy mechanic from jade sphere or change it so that energy provides a damage boost to the sphere.

 

Conjure and glyph rework.

Earth traitline imo would be perfect if we had a lot more barrier application options and synergies. like for example, give aura trait barrier application instead of protection. and change stone heart to be "can't be critically hit while you have barrier"

i feel for stab, the one on EotS was a bit insulting with how low it is (heck get rid of swiftness on it and give more stab) and then the rework of gale song took more stab away.
would love to see armor of earth cantrip become the equivalent of SYG for ele. that would greatly help out heal alac tempest, as well as if they made the alacrity pulse during the overload.

would love conjure weapons to become something more like guardian spirit weapons instead of engie kits, considering the ele is already juggling 20 weapon skills (more if weaver) i think adding another 5 per weapon was a bad design decision.

glyphs are mostly ok imo, only elemental power could use a big touch up (maybe make it an ally effecting aoe, in the same vein as firebrand Ashes of the just), definitely a cooldown reduction for glyph of renewal as its cooldown is the longest of all the revival utility skills, ofc excluding elite skills (guard signet of mercy is the shortest cooldown at 50s, almost half the cooldown of GoR, necros glyph of undeath and mesmers illusion of life cooldowns are at 75s. imo the revival util skills should be standardized to 60s). glyph of storms is currently a dps dominant force, and glyph of lesser elements is pretty decent.

[Serephen.3420]

9 minutes ago, crosknight.3041 said:

honestly, boonstrip would fit perfectly for some arcane skills.
 

would love to see lightning orb get changed to be like the damaging version of water globe. mobile damage field. always erk'd me that it would only shoot projectiles at one target at a time.
and 100% agree that aoe change where it reduced the damage of the aoe by 10% per hit was way overtuned. would love to see that kicked to the curb or as a compromise, have it only reduce damage to a max of 50% drop instead of the current 90% drop (with a 5% drop in dps each hit instead of the current 10%)

 

Earth traitline imo would be perfect if we had a lot more barrier application options and synergies. like for example, give aura trait barrier application instead of protection. and change stone heart to be "can't be critically hit while you have barrier"

i feel for stab, the one on EotS was a bit insulting with how low it is (heck get rid of swiftness on it and give more stab) and then the rework of gale song took more stab away.
would love to see armor of earth cantrip become the equivalent of SYG for ele. that would greatly help out heal alac tempest, as well as if they made the alacrity pulse during the overload.

would love conjure weapons to become something more like guardian spirit weapons instead of engie kits, considering the ele is already juggling 20 weapon skills (more if weaver) i think adding another 5 per weapon was a bad design decision.

glyphs are mostly ok imo, only elemental power could use a big touch up (maybe make it an ally effecting aoe, in the same vein as firebrand Ashes of the just), definitely a cooldown reduction for glyph of renewal as its cooldown is the longest of all the revival utility skills, ofc excluding elite skills (guard signet of mercy is the shortest cooldown at 50s, almost half the cooldown of GoR, necros glyph of undeath and mesmers illusion of life cooldowns are at 75s. imo the revival util skills should be standardized to 60s). glyph of storms is currently a dps dominant force, and glyph of lesser elements is pretty decent.

I agree, it would be nice to work like spirit weapons, but since we already have all those skills it would feel like a bit of a waste to me. Maybe my suggestion falls more in withan elite spec perhaps but it would add an some interesting flavour, similar to toolbelt skills for engie.

[tykel.6073]

2 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

I agree, it would be nice to work like spirit weapons, but since we already have all those skills it would feel like a bit of a waste to me. Maybe my suggestion falls more in withan elite spec perhaps but it would add an some interesting flavour, similar to toolbelt skills for engie.

I mean a lot of the skills are barely used, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a build use lava ax. 
 

However if they were more like spirit weapons, you could have the earth shield make a reflect bubble that cripples enemies who walk into it, make the frost bow so it does its (imo) iconic freeze stun arrow but also add a burst heal around the arrows explosion, have the lightning hammer smash into the ground dazing those hit, and then if it hits an enemy create a chain lightning that bounces to nearby targets (and back if there aren’t enough) and applies vulnerability, and the lava ax could be a single target nuke that then pulses burn to the target and nearby enemies.

 

as for the fiery greatsword, perhaps some type of giant sword slam like in conjured amalgamate that leaves behind a burning fissure. If that’s too similar to holo elite then it could like a persistent effect where you throw the sword to an area, at which point it rains fire around the sword like the 5 skill and opens up fissures like the 2 skill. Then since it’s also a mobility tool in wvw at the moment you could let the player reactivate the skill to have the ele go charging to the sword rapidly and then make an explosion or giant spin attack or something once they fly into it.

 

there are probably other ways to fix conjures regardless but they need something 

[Dimitri Filichkin.3954]

My wishlist is pure pie-in-the-sky and will never happen, but a wish doesn't need to be realistic I suppose. My list is as short as it is unlikely.

 

1) Tune up sword and dagger skills to bring them back into line with the logic of high risk, high reward fast paced melee damage. Ranged weapons should feel safer, but the fact you can stand back at range with scepter or staff and still deal more damage just feels like a slap in the face, and giving sword and dagger some of their stolen thunder back would help. That said, even if it's not optimal, I still find sword/dagger infinitely more fun than any other ele weapon (in fact I almost dropped the class entirely before I tried duel daggers early game and fell instantly madly in love) but despite my build being able to solo any story content I've encountered so far, I still feel like a one-legged man in an kitten kicking contest while all the boring weapon users have automated cheek-seeking auto-cannons.

 

2) Abandon this nonsensical view that passive skills are somehow bad, and that forcing us to micro-manage hidden cooldowns and nested skill effects is somehow going to improve the game's 'flow'. Final Shielding is an especially egregious example of that. The ENTIRE point of Final Shielding was that it was passively triggered right when you needed it. Ever since that change I have been using my elite skill as a Final Shielding trigger and not as an actual elite skill, and it BREAKS the flow of combat. The major strength of GW combat is that you need to pick a select few skills to manage, and then layer passive traits and abilities on top to modify everything in a way that feels nuanced and subtle. This new crusade against passive skills is just fighting against the game's strength, seemingly for the sake of just forcing us to press more buttons more often, but clicks per minute does not equate to 'combat flow'. Embrace the game's strength, and learn to love the passively triggered skill.

 

That said I fully expect my sword and dagger to be turned into a spork and butter knife, and all my remaining passive skills to be made into wombo combos that require me to do the macarena to activate.

[nutri.1385]

On 10/6/2022 at 6:14 PM, tykel.6073 said:

Reworks/updates for core utilities and staffd and scepter skills (...). 

oh and having a good power build that isn’t just propped up by the crutch of hammer 3 would be nice. I miss power weaver being up there with condi.

Basically this, but for tempest. Condi tempest is not fun.

Please bring back Power tempest with fresh air back to glory. I'm still using it on open world content, it's a really fun to play build. 

[zeyeti.8347]

Personnaly i just want ele to be at least ... good at something , but that will need a humonguslyhugeamazinglyovertuned patch to be done.

[SamuelW.2685]

Delete Cata and replace it with a Bow Mage as Anet SHOUDLVE done when they were first coming up with EoD specs


Ahem, for a more serious take, I'd like too see summons persist after you mount up, Ele is the only class who's pets they need to resummon, it can make them a pain in open world where you need to go from place to place 

Maybe bring back Eye of The Storm on Tempest, it was a such a nice QoL trait, what we have now feels useless, I think you can already give protection on Earth Overloads too.

And Weaver is overly complex to the point of uselessness imo, I'd love too see them either give people some incentive to memorize a insane rotation, or maybe streamline it a little.

Like really, why would I bother with a intricate almost (iirc) 100 button rotation if I don't even do the max DPS out of any class in the game AND my Condi DD does more with a rotation that uses 5 buttons on a simple loop? Or my Vindicator that also does half decent DPS with a not super complex rotation and having a evade built into it?  

[SolarizedRed.9254]

I agree with those advocating for core ele updates, but I'd also like to see some reworks to Catalyst to make it easier to play and more viable with other weapons:

1. Move Deploy Jade Spheres off of F5 and onto the Attunements, mirroring the functionality of Tempest's Overloads. Ideally, remove the energy mechanic as well. If we want to limit how often they are used, we can always make them an Ammo skill.
2. Remove the circling projectiles of Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind and Rocky Loop from Hammer 3, and instead tie them to Depth of Elements minor trait that triggers them automatically when swapping to the respective attunements.
3. Move Grand Finale from the flipped Hammer 3 and onto the F5. Now, Catalyst can access the core class features no matter what weapon they are using!
4. Finally, fill in the empty Hammer 3 skills with some new functionality. Personally, I'd like to see more finishers on these skills, perhaps Whirl for Fire/Air/Earth and Blast for Water.

[Infusion.7149]

Some things off the topic of my head:
* Pyromancer's Puissance (core Fire trait) - should not drop 10 might (except with overload fire) if you are playing weaver in PVE : maybe 1 might or 5 might at most. A change would restore Pyromancer's Puissance usage for any power elementalist in WVW too.
* Rock Solid (earth trait) - bonus shared stability when using armor of earth or increase the duration past 2s
* Scepter's rock barrier grants barrier or damage reduction instead of 250 toughness
* fix bugged Evasive Arcana in Arcane traitline
* drop PVE cooldown on Gust so that support tempest can fulfill push roles
* Empowered Empowerment (Catalyst) - this is incredibly difficult to maintain on power catalyst and ought to be per stack bonuses so top end damage remains but it is more accessible
* remove energy mechanic from catalyst since it already has cooldowns on deploy jade sphere
* increase range of catalyst hammer in air attunement to 900 and possibly fire as well
* restore catalyst water attunement autoattack to prenerf levels in PvE
* Weaver sword water autoattack - increase autoattack coefficient to match earth at the least to avoid penalizing newer weaver players as heavily
* Lightning orb on tempest - reduce RNG if cast near middle of hitbox
* Overload air on tempest - reduce RNG significantly if there's only one target to hit (since lightning only strikes the largest target in an open field) which would improve power fresh air tempest without touching other elementalist elite specs
 

[Mauti.3520]

Unravel as F5 for Weaver

Increase Radius on Overload Fire

Aftershock Instant Cast to be used while overloading

Make Air Scepter and Air Staff do....something? Hello? Do their 1-3's even exist???

Revamp Earth Armor Utility Skill into Stand your Ground / Dolyak Stance

Make 1 Arcane Utility a big CC Utility

Buff Sword Power coefficients and Condition output

Delete Conjures, give something of use

Edited October 12, 2022 by Mauti.3520

[Asek.1869]

my wish is simple, I want ele to be reliable for us that dont have pianist skills, but seriously I want to get some more hp on ele after all 3 elite specs are all melee but if we want to do max dmg we have 12k hp

[Gwynnion.7364]

42 minutes ago, Asek.1869 said:

my wish is simple, I want ele to be reliable for us that dont have pianist skills

Even for those of us who can play piano, it needs to be a LOT easier and more effective, and that partially means pushing effects into passives instead of requiring us to constantly swap attunements or mash buttons for various effects. 

For example, specializations need to apply their bonuses regardless of attunement so you can always get, e.g., power and burning duration and might from Fire or sustain and condi cleanse from Water.  Ranged weapons need to actually hit reliably and hit hard, albeit not quite as hard as melee.  Weaver needs its power damage buffed, more and stronger barriers, and access to self-quickness and better sustain.  That sort of thing.  And obviously, there's a ton of utilities that need to be updated to the current state of play.  Make conjures kits.  I don't care.  As long as they do something useful and open up other options in combat. 

But we've been saying this stuff for years.

[Mara.6782]

Some defense would be nice. Blocks, Litany of Wrath kind healing (Arcane brilliance can be changed to be like that skill or signet of restoration active give that effect, damage reductions etc. It's hard to stay alive when playing elementalist and you cant even do enough damage to compensate your low health and defense without getting nerfed. 

[Serephen.3420]

Since it's supposed to be a pve patch these are all pve related. Also this is just for catalyst because it's my preferred ele spec for now (I still like the other two very much but there are already enough people giving good suggestions for those.)

 

I would like the damage trade off for quick catalyst to be removed like all the other proffessions who had their trafe offs removed. 

I would like sphere damage restored to what it was or sphere duration increased. I would like energy removed as a mechanic ontop of the sphere. The middle traitline for catalyst needs to be looked at again, especially the master trait. Aura traits should perhaps be changed to combo traits instead.

 

Hammer 3 skills need to be adjusted, especially to consider accidental grand finales or shifted off the weapon and into traits/attunement swap or the sphere or even merged into utilities and fire off with the elite skill. New 3 skills can instead be implemented.

Ideally mobility skill in air and change air 4 to a enemy knockback and no longer pushes you back. Earth could have a pull, water could have an aoe chill and fire being fire would likely be more generic but a molten projectile that burns and either blinds or applies vul could be nice. 

 

Overall I think catalyst should have stronger cc access because of hammer and because ele needs a bit more breakbar love in pve.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Serephen.3420

[Batalix.2873]

Jade sphere hammer 3 orbs shouldn't require attunement swapping as a confused rehash of Weave Self. We should have flexibility to summon orbs of the same element to "augment" fewer attunements and stack effects how we want for Grand Finale.

 

I wouldn't be opposed to the orb being tied to the attunements as well to make it less weapon-dependent, but I would still insist one the above "same-element" change, as well as still giving hammer 3 some kind of orb-related replacement.