I got a solution to ele: Why not just have ANET add some xtra sustain somewhere to make builds more balanced in sustain?

[Axl.8924]

Can they maybe overhaul mobility avoidances or something maybe earth so its not a massive DPS loss?

 

Something to help eles  as i think they aren't going to give them massive power creep DPS that is way above so wouldn't it just be better to make it so eles utility mobility and sustain is better balanced then to fit this light mobile and glassy DPS?

[Sunshine.5014]

It's not about the sustain. It's not about the damage. It's about the utilities and flexibility.

All attunement should be able to deal similar DPS. They can provide different utilities (teleport, block, heal, cleanse...) All trait line should have options for DPS, defense, utilities.

[Axl.8924]

Can they maybe then fix the utilities and the flexibility and the damage?

It just seems unlikely Arenanet will make ele superior dps to all and something has to be done to allow flexibiltiy for all specs.

Edited October 15, 2022 by Axl.8924

[Downstate.4697]

Its a weapon and utility problem imo. Needs more damage on weapons and stronger utilities.

[zeyeti.8347]

Problem with ele is every way you play , there is one or two attunements you will not play with (except catalyst hammer for damage) , i think ele need dedicated weapons for specific role , one for supp./healing , another mainly focused on dps in every attunements , a little bit like hammer.

for example if you play condi , you will mainly never attune to air/water , if you play power same problem you maily never attune water/earth this is a great lose potential  as ele has all cd on skills higher than intended because he has 4 weapon switch , but when you only use 2 or 3 of them , well it's badly designed...

[Axl.8924]

Yeah fire and air for DPS earth for sustain tools and water for heal arcane for some mixture of stuff sustain and sometimes DPS

Fire and earth for condi would be nice for a solution.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Nothing will change until attunements are no longer tied to entire traitlines, because you have all four attunements but can only take two traitlines with an elite spec. To put this into perspective, it would be like if other classes could weaponswap to four weapons at a time but they could only trait two of them to do anything.

 

Its a design flaw that is unique to Elementalist class alone.

 

On top of this, many of the traits are in the wrong traitlines. For example, the resurrection skill and trait for staff is in Arcane for some reason, which has nothing to do with Water. Key issues like not being able to take your main source of reviving on a Water-based support build are what cripples the class. Its damage options have the same problem, they're all disorganised and in the wrong places, and don't fit the builds.

 

Ele is supposed to be the master of all trades, but instead its "pick 2 out of 3 options", basically..

Edited October 15, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[PolarBear.3961]

I hate the fact that the elementalist traitlines are split by elements... you are literally gimping 2 or even 3 of your elements when in elite spec because the traitlines buff the specific element of that traitline... I wish they would just change the traitlines and make one with aura/support(lets call it conjuration), one focused for power dmg(destruction), one for condi(entropy) and one for element swapping/cd reduction(discipline). The whole class is contradicting itself... it wants you to swap elements but at the same time the traitlines are gimping you for doing so :/... 

[Axl.8924]

26 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Nothing will change until attunements are no longer tied to entire traitlines, because you have all four attunements but can only take two traitlines with an elite spec. To put this into perspective, it would be like if other classes could weaponswap to four weapons at a time but they could only trait two of them to do anything.

 

Its a design flaw that is unique to Elementalist class alone.

 

On top of this, many of the traits are in the wrong traitlines. For example, the resurrection skill and trait for staff is in Arcane for some reason, which has nothing to do with Water. Key issues like not being able to take your main source of reviving on a Water-based support build are what cripples the class. Its damage options have the same problem, they're all disorganised and in the wrong places, and don't fit the builds.

 

Ele is supposed to be the master of all trades, but instead its "pick 2 out of 3 options", basically..

 

Then when is ANET going to get off their butts to fix it?

[soulknight.9620]

Anet already did this. Jade bot bonus vitality helped a lot plus the new anvil buff. Both generaly benefit ele more than other professions. Ele doesnt need any extra sustain beyond what it already has. If you want more sustain you need to spec into it and make tradeoffs. 

The problem with ele atm is the balance of dps to utility. Ele (mostly weaver) does low dmg for the utility it brings to a group. It either needs to do more dmg on selfish specs like weaver or bring more utility (which is kinda hard to do as a selfish spec). If you want a compromise of sustain/dps/utility - catalyst and tempest are ur friends. First is more of a offensive supportish build with nice utility, second is more healish (defensive) supportish build. Both can be played as a dps, but they will net u less dps than a weaver, which is okay. 

[Nephalem.8921]

Is this about pve or pvp?

In pve cata already has high sustain. Its everything else thats clunky. 3orb mechanic. energy. Very low and gated cc.

Cele/trailblazer weaver is one of the tankiest builds in the game. Sustain is not the problem. it brings barely any relevant support or gimmicks. not even dps. Fixing dps is one thing but gameplay is another issue. its ok if one build is stance dancing but almost all (all) builds attune swap every 5sec? I dunno maybe buff weapon skills and increase cd to reduce stance dancing a bit while equalizing all aas per weapon?

Currently its like core engi playstyle. 1-2 useful skills per attunement on rather low cd so you have to swap constantly. I like the idea of removing the support/dps hybrid idea from weapons. Only hammer works this way sadly and even that still leans heavily on fire = dmg, air = cc, water = heal, earth = air but brown. Why cant we have proper ice/air/earth dps builds? Why is only fire allowed to have multiple skills with decent dmg?

Staff has so many useless skills. Needs a rework. and buff shatterstone.

[Axl.8924]

2 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Is this about pve or pvp?

In pve cata already has high sustain. Its everything else thats clunky. 3orb mechanic. energy. Very low and gated cc.

Cele/trailblazer weaver is one of the tankiest builds in the game. Sustain is not the problem. it brings barely any relevant support or gimmicks. not even dps. Fixing dps is one thing but gameplay is another issue. its ok if one build is stance dancing but almost all (all) builds attune swap every 5sec? I dunno maybe buff weapon skills and increase cd to reduce stance dancing a bit while equalizing all aas per weapon?

Currently its like core engi playstyle. 1-2 useful skills per attunement on rather low cd so you have to swap constantly. I like the idea of removing the support/dps hybrid idea from weapons. Only hammer works this way sadly and even that still leans heavily on fire = dmg, air = cc, water = heal, earth = air but brown. Why cant we have proper ice/air/earth dps builds? Why is only fire allowed to have multiple skills with decent dmg?

Staff has so many useless skills. Needs a rework. and buff shatterstone.

I-m talking primarily pve

[Gorani.7205]

8 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

I-m talking primarily pve

In PvE, one of the basic problems is that the utilities are stuck in the past (e.g. Conjures, the Elites & the summon's AI model). The other problem is that either sustain or high DPS on Ele (core or any specialization) is tied to "being excellent at piano playing" compared to other classes that are "easy" (like "auto attack" Mechanists or phases of Scourge, with "just push all available buttons and watch stuff die").

Like the others said (including all the issues with the trait lines), Ele too stuck into an old concept that never really paid off and that Devs can't balance even if they tried (and they did not really try hard IMHO)

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 10/15/2022 at 8:32 AM, Axl.8924 said:

Can they maybe overhaul mobility avoidances or something maybe earth so its not a massive DPS loss?

 

Something to help eles  as i think they aren't going to give them massive power creep DPS that is way above so wouldn't it just be better to make it so eles utility mobility and sustain is better balanced then to fit this light mobile and glassy DPS?

I think ele sustain is fine, but all of the specs need to be more competitive in their respective roles (e.g. buffing sword weaver DPS, making Tempest alacrity more reliable/convenient).  They also need to do a big overhaul to core traits and utilities, in particular conjured weapons.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

19 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

 

Then when is ANET going to get off their butts to fix it?

 

The problem is still, that they don't really question their own design here.

All I see is that they try to fight the symptoms instead of the problem, which is the bad core design of the class being stuck in 2012.

 

19 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Anet already did this. Jade bot bonus vitality helped a lot plus the new anvil buff. Both generaly benefit ele more than other professions. Ele doesnt need any extra sustain beyond what it already has. If you want more sustain you need to spec into it and make tradeoffs. 

 

Let me ask you one question.

Why should the class with the lowest armor, lowest health of all classes, even have to have a tradeoff when being always forced to use melee to do some proper damage (which is far inferior to any other melee class, and even some range class), while not having any, and I mean really ANY kind of dps negation by class design?

Mesmer has blocks, illusions, distortion.

Necro has Shroud, and TONS of cc, not to mention very high health.

And what do you get? Oh, yeah, as a tempest, you get Aura after 4 seconds of casting. As Weaver? Oh, nevermind, you get a dual-weapon-skill-thief-like-ability. As a catalyst? You get non-moving wells like necro core, with far inferior buffs to tempest, being bound to a resource you can only get by hitting and all class mechanics are bound to hammer. Very good design. NOT!

What would be good designed? Catalyst doing 40k+ dps. Because of being very slow with attack speed while not having movability nor the cc like a scrapper does, not to mention the overall defensive capability.

Sword weaver being top dps because of being the most difficult-to-play-spec in entire gw2. After you mastered this you can play any class without failure.

 

And what do we get instead? "Meta-defining" nerfed Catalyst, buffed-a-bit-core-ele, while not mentioning the major design flaws in the whole class being made for a different kind of game.

 

P.s. it doesn't make sense to balance the class for <1% of top players while the majority of players simply neglect elementalist even after "all" this buffs...

[Jski.6180]

Eles dmg is a bit too gear base and with the low hp / def build into the ele class it simply playing the game at an disadvantage other classes do not have to deal with. This has a lot to do with over nerfs to ele dmg scaling and the over buff to other classes dmg +% effects (something that was ele main selling point for dmg).

Ele is balanced for 2012 all the other classes are balanced for 2022.

Eng Kits vs ele conja weapons are a realty good example of just how bad dmg scaling is for the ele class. A eng kit has no cd on its swap and has no duration also they skills on the kits have both effective utility and high dmg. Where you have ele conja weapons are on very long cd very short duration and even have massive cast times for there use in combat. Even with the bonuses effects of power etc.. the conja weapons do not compare to what end kits can out put in dmg and utility. Its just bad balancing.

[Axl.8924]

3 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

 

The problem is still, that they don't really question their own design here.

All I see is that they try to fight the symptoms instead of the problem, which is the bad core design of the class being stuck in 2012.

 

 

Let me ask you one question.

Why should the class with the lowest armor, lowest health of all classes, even have to have a tradeoff when being always forced to use melee to do some proper damage (which is far inferior to any other melee class, and even some range class), while not having any, and I mean really ANY kind of dps negation by class design?

Mesmer has blocks, illusions, distortion.

Necro has Shroud, and TONS of cc, not to mention very high health.

And what do you get? Oh, yeah, as a tempest, you get Aura after 4 seconds of casting. As Weaver? Oh, nevermind, you get a dual-weapon-skill-thief-like-ability. As a catalyst? You get non-moving wells like necro core, with far inferior buffs to tempest, being bound to a resource you can only get by hitting and all class mechanics are bound to hammer. Very good design. NOT!

What would be good designed? Catalyst doing 40k+ dps. Because of being very slow with attack speed while not having movability nor the cc like a scrapper does, not to mention the overall defensive capability.

Sword weaver being top dps because of being the most difficult-to-play-spec in entire gw2. After you mastered this you can play any class without failure.

 

And what do we get instead? "Meta-defining" nerfed Catalyst, buffed-a-bit-core-ele, while not mentioning the major design flaws in the whole class being made for a different kind of game.

 

P.s. it doesn't make sense to balance the class for <1% of top players while the majority of players simply neglect elementalist even after "all" this buffs...

 

This is why i asked about balancing the tools kit ele has like: Why did they nerf the blink ele has from kit? just as a example.

 

I also think if you want a class like ele to use dagger in melee range either its DPS needs to be so op its top  by a lot OR you need to improve the knife in mobility and evade or give it such so its somewhat like the way mesmers get invulns and stuff.

[soulknight.9620]

13 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Let me ask you one question.

Why should the class with the lowest armor, lowest health of all classes, even have to have a tradeoff when being always forced to use melee to do some proper damage (which is far inferior to any other melee class, and even some range class), while not having any, and I mean really ANY kind of dps negation by class design?

Mesmer has blocks, illusions, distortion.

Necro has Shroud, and TONS of cc, not to mention very high health.

And what do you get? Oh, yeah, as a tempest, you get Aura after 4 seconds of casting. As Weaver? Oh, nevermind, you get a dual-weapon-skill-thief-like-ability. As a catalyst? You get non-moving wells like necro core, with far inferior buffs to tempest, being bound to a resource you can only get by hitting and all class mechanics are bound to hammer. Very good design. NOT!

What would be good designed? Catalyst doing 40k+ dps. Because of being very slow with attack speed while not having movability nor the cc like a scrapper does, not to mention the overall defensive capability.

Sword weaver being top dps because of being the most difficult-to-play-spec in entire gw2. After you mastered this you can play any class without failure.

 

And what do we get instead? "Meta-defining" nerfed Catalyst, buffed-a-bit-core-ele, while not mentioning the major design flaws in the whole class being made for a different kind of game.

 

P.s. it doesn't make sense to balance the class for <1% of top players while the majority of players simply neglect elementalist even after "all" this buffs...

Because every class should have tradeoffs. That is a good design in any MMORPG. 

And yes you are wrong. Lets analise this:

As a tempest u get: 40% protection (instead of 33%) and the ability to maintain it (almost)permanently, ability to trait even more healing, gain stability,  aegis, alac, condi cleanse, projectile reflect, good CCs, Rebound (lets just ignore some raid oneshot mechanics?), access to 3 auras that imbuess ur survivability (air, earth, water). Im not even going into 15% dmg boost trait, and vigor/boons uptime with tempest (and some free concentration to go with it).  

As a weaver you get: barrier (from traits, skills or from stances), a lot of low cd evades (water 2, earth 2 on sword), 24/7 weakness uptime on the target (which is a defensive condi), u can slot high vigor uptime for even more dodges, u get a massive condi boost (20% duration, 10% dmg) if u spec it, a trait (that gives free stats based on the attunements) and  weave self which provides free stats and some dps traits aswell. 

As a catalyst you get: hammer 3 spheres which provide u with defensive buffs and debuffs (perma weakness on the target), you get easy access to heal skills without loosing dps (water field blasts, water 4), you have perma access to auras, you get 10-20% bonus stats (yes yes hp too), you get massive boon uptime (quick, protection included), you have decent cc (air 4,5, earth 5), you get a block from earth utility skill, you get boosts to dmg from auras when traited, an elite which lets you double cast any of ur weapon skills, and you may trait perma stab. 
And as an ele (you can bring it to any of the abovementioned) you get: you get focus defensive skills (obsidian flesh, magnetic wave, projectile block), good cc to go with it and nice condi dps, if you choose dagger - a few evades, good ccs, mobility (MH/OH) and an 24/7 air/water aura. Scepter nets you great condi dps options, staff nets you with some nice aoe dps and support. And im not even goint into core traits, too much to write but a few outliners - arcane trait line which gives tons of utility, boons, condi cleanse etc, water with omega heals, condi cleanses, fire with dmg, condi cleanses, air with dmg and CC, earth with defences and condi dmg. Ill just mention glyph of greater elementals - u can tank almost anything on earth elemental, or water one with decent heals. 

The challenge is to make a build with which u can utilise this mechanics, and yes there are some rly broken builds atm for any game mode. 

I might have forgotten somethings, but it would only add up even more benefits to ele. 

So the only things elementalists have no access to atm is boonstrip/booncorrupt, pulls, teleport (party one), area reflect dome. 

As for catalyst doing 40k dps. No, it is not good design. U need to take into consideration the amount of utility the build brings. More utility - less dps. Thats why weaver should be top dps build of ele. And Catalyst should be offensive support with dps capabilities (quick, boons, and deal moderate amount of dps), and tempest defensive support (heals, alac, and a bit of dps). The ideal situation would be something like: weaver 40k dps, catalyst 35k dps, tempest 30k dps. The numbers may change, but the proportion should stay. 

[draxynnic.3719]

I think the thread title is essentially how elementalist is supposed to operate. Low base health, but relies on a mix of mobility, damage mitigation, and self-healing to make up for it, which means that when played well the lower health is what actually gives the enemy a chance to bring it down. Similar principle to the other low-health professions (albeit through different mechanisms).

 

This actually does work reasonably well in sPvP. Well-played elementalists can be surprisingly resilient there.

 

In group content, though, the problem becomes that other professions receive the benefit of defensive boons and healing from supports and have higher base health to begin with. So everyone in a raid has about the same damage mitigation and resustain, but the elementalist still has a smaller pool against anything that smashes through this. Particularly when barrier gets involved, since lower base health also means lower maximum barrier.

[Junkpile.7439]

Maybe give elite specs all trash utilities and only core could use good ones?

[Serephen.3420]

On 10/18/2022 at 6:23 PM, Junkpile.7439 said:

Maybe give elite specs all trash utilities and only core could use good ones?

So nothing much would change? Cause most ele utilities are trash lol.

[Axl.8924]

On 10/18/2022 at 11:23 AM, Junkpile.7439 said:

Maybe give elite specs all trash utilities and only core could use good ones?

 

Thats a terrible idea i'm not saying every utility for ele has to be great but having niche stuff that helps prop up ele when needed is quite important, especially since its so squishy. This suggestion could possibly break weaver, especially since it seems to have some mele procss in melee range.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

On 10/17/2022 at 9:43 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

Because every class should have tradeoffs. That is a good design in any MMORPG. 

Nope.

Many MMORPGs focus heavily on holy trinity and therefore have no real tradeoff-system. And even in GW2, it used to be different (which I won't deny), but nowadays, especially for fractals, raids and strikes, you have a lot more role focus.

And that's exactly why specs without tradeoffs are nowadays dominating, because the game focus changed a lot. 

Especially progress guilds play a lot like that.

 

On 10/17/2022 at 9:43 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

And yes you are wrong. Lets analise this:

As a tempest u get: 40% protection (instead of 33%) and the ability to maintain it (almost)permanently, ability to trait even more healing, gain stability,  aegis, alac, condi cleanse, projectile reflect, good CCs, Rebound (lets just ignore some raid oneshot mechanics?), access to 3 auras that imbuess ur survivability (air, earth, water). Im not even going into 15% dmg boost trait, and vigor/boons uptime with tempest (and some free concentration to go with it).  

 

Yeah, but tempest is only viable as a support.

Support can't really count as melee dps which is the main topic I talked about.

Plus, I talked about class mechanics. You talk about skills and traits, which is a wholly different matter as well.

 

On 10/17/2022 at 9:43 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

As a weaver you get: barrier (from traits, skills or from stances), a lot of low cd evades (water 2, earth 2 on sword), 24/7 weakness uptime on the target (which is a defensive condi), u can slot high vigor uptime for even more dodges, u get a massive condi boost (20% duration, 10% dmg) if u spec it, a trait (that gives free stats based on the attunements) and  weave self which provides free stats and some dps traits aswell. 

 

And here we come to one of the worst designed elite spec in all of gw2, namely weaver.

Weaver has so many issues, it is hardly even worth mentioning.

First of all, lets talk about the basic problem of the spec, which are its dual attacks. 

 

Dual attacks are only those being counted as those attacks using two different attunements at the same time. Yeah, Lightning/Lightning doesn't count to that. So first of all, you are punished for using same attunement both while having to rely on that because of cauerizing strike/quantum strike for dps rotation. Does sound contradictionary? Yes, it is.

As a power dps rotation, the only ones being viable, however, are fire and lightning.

And the only time when this happens is when using pyro vortex, so only in a very few cases when you actually have to swap to fire/lightning.

So, you get like around 500 barrier every 12.5 seconds when using it on CD. That's very impressive. NOT.

 

Then, we have of course dodges. dodges are being viable if they wouldn't completely and utterly punish your overall dps output harshly. 

So, we could call power dps, also with the miserable low amount of dps, broken by design.

 

Then of course, there is condi dps.

And guess what? Nearly the same.

Instead of fire/lightning, it becomes fire/earth. The problems still remain the very same as before.

I can just repeat myself: Broken by design.

 

On 10/17/2022 at 9:43 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

As a catalyst you get: hammer 3 spheres which provide u with defensive buffs and debuffs (perma weakness on the target), you get easy access to heal skills without loosing dps (water field blasts, water 4), you have perma access to auras, you get 10-20% bonus stats (yes yes hp too), you get massive boon uptime (quick, protection included), you have decent cc (air 4,5, earth 5), you get a block from earth utility skill, you get boosts to dmg from auras when traited, an elite which lets you double cast any of ur weapon skills, and you may trait perma stab. 

 

I said already in another thread, and I will repeat myself here, that the design is quite bad.

First of all, you are dependent on a weapon in order to execute class-mechanics which is already miserable design. 

That being said, we come to the second huge weakness:

 

In order to benefit from those boosts, you have to be able to do your rotation. Without rotation, meaning without bosses standing all the time at the same spot, hammer cata is rendered almost useless. 

All of those buffs are only being viable for static encounters, not dynamic encounters. .

Of course they sound powerful on first glance, while if you really are using it and playing it, it becomes useless very qickly for around 90% of all encounters. This, together with very low attack speed by most Hammer attacks makes catalyst more like a sitting duck. 

And air 4 Hammer- are you serious? The worst cc skill in all of gw2? Rifle engi skill 4 had the same mechanic a long while ago until people complained for years about it until it finally got fixed. Which other skill provides self-stun backwards, especially as a melee class?

 

By the way, it has its reasons why guilds have been using catalyst only in static encounters to prove an imba-ness which never existed at all. If one thing is imbalanced, it is the fact thar purely static encounters even exist.

 

To put it in a nutshell, we have some fatal design flaws pointed out above:

 

First of all, none of the specs is comparable to a purely melee dps, namely a harvester, bladesworn, berserker, not even a soulbeast!

 

This comes from the simple fact that we do between 20 and 50% less damage than such a build.

Even when comparing it to a semi-support-build such as scrapper, the damage is still lower, while scrapper has tons of better cc, not to mention far higher defensive capabilities.

 

Second, elementalist gets punished to use defensive skills/abilities, while all of the other specs have offensive and defensive capabilities built in by default.

 

This point is harder to get because of the fact that some exist, but are rendered almost useless by class design. Many cant be used in a large amount of situations. Others are being contraproductive to role, as stated above, and make using them punish overall performance.

 

Third, trait system and class mechanics are far outdated!

 

If you go for efficiency, you are only stuck with some attunements while other attunements are left out even though attunements are the signature mechanic of elementalist. The whole attunement-trait-link has to bee revamped completely to provide proper non-contradictive gameplay. Same goes for Catalyst, where this is by far more obvious. It would be easy to change, for example by giving spheres the ability to travel with you such as gyros from engi, which would also make sense. 

 

As simple as that: Everything, an Elementalist can do, other classes/specs can do by far better with far less input.

And that is exactly why it is outclassed and needs a complete rework in class and design in order to work functionally.

 

[soulknight.9620]

4 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Many MMORPGs focus heavily on holy trinity and therefore have no real tradeoff-system. And even in GW2, it used to be different (which I won't deny), but nowadays, especially for fractals, raids and strikes, you have a lot more role focus.

Holy trinity is a tradeoff by itself. By playing a tank you are trading off ur healing/dps, by playing heal u tradeoff dps/tankiness, by playing dps u are tradingoff ur heal/tankiness. And yes gw2 is balanced around "trinity" atm. The difference is that there is healboonsupport, dpsboonsupport (both can be tanks) and pure dps.The only difference is that in gw2 u can freely swap ur "classes".

4 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Yeah, but tempest is only viable as a support.

Not quite. There are some decent condi dps builds out there. By decent i mean they do enough dmg to not being kicked out of instanced content for not doing its job well. Ofc it has to do less dps than a pure selfish dps like weaver. Thats why elites are actually called Elite Specializations, you specialise in one aspect of the game. Thats why there must be a difference between elite specs. You want to support defensively - go tempest, offensively  - go catalyst, full dps - weaver. If every spec could do everything (including top dps) elite specs would not make any sense since you wouldnt be specialising in anything. There is a balance of utility/dps among ele elite specs atm and that is good design. Imagine druid complaining that it cant outdps SB. 

4 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Support can't really count as melee dps which is the main topic I talked about.

Plus, I talked about class mechanics. You talk about skills and traits, which is a wholly different matter as well.

Its obvious that support is not dps. But u can build a support oriented elite spec with more punch and make it a decent dps with built in support abilities. 

Skills and traits are mechanics. Rebound is a mechanic. Overloads are mechanics. Shouts are mechanics. All of them are exclusive to tempest. No weaver/catalytst/core ele can get them. 

On 10/16/2022 at 8:52 PM, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Mesmer has blocks, illusions, distortion.

Necro has Shroud, and TONS of cc, not to mention very high health.

Blocks, illusions, distortion, shroud, cc are all skills/traits. 

If you ment basic design centered mechanics like attunement swap then blocks/distortion, cc and hp pool is not considered a mechanic by that definition. So why would you compare it that way?

Attunement swap gives ele a variety of skills/mechanics/utility that no mesmer/necro has (like ive listed in the post above). That is why it is so hard to kill a decent ele player in wvw/spvp, cause it has basically a lot of capabilities at once. 

4 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Weaver has so many issues, it is hardly even worth mentioning.

First of all, lets talk about the basic problem of the spec, which are its dual attacks. 

 

Dual attacks are only those being counted as those attacks using two different attunements at the same time. Yeah, Lightning/Lightning doesn't count to that. So first of all, you are punished for using same attunement both while having to rely on that because of cauerizing strike/quantum strike for dps rotation. Does sound contradictionary? Yes, it is.

As a power dps rotation, the only ones being viable, however, are fire and lightning.

And the only time when this happens is when using pyro vortex, so only in a very few cases when you actually have to swap to fire/lightning.

So, you get like around 500 barrier every 12.5 seconds when using it on CD. That's very impressive. NOT.

 

Then, we have of course dodges. dodges are being viable if they wouldn't completely and utterly punish your overall dps output harshly. 

So, we could call power dps, also with the miserable low amount of dps, broken by design.

 

Then of course, there is condi dps.

And guess what? Nearly the same.

Instead of fire/lightning, it becomes fire/earth. The problems still remain the very same as before.

I can just repeat myself: Broken by design.

Weaver has only one issue atm. Low dps for the amount of utility it has availible. 

Dual attacks could use some love with dps increase too. But its not that bad as u say. 

First of all, you are not punished for using same attunement. There is literary a trait that boosts ur dps while double attuned to a single element. Secondly, we need to actually state which build we are talking about when we say power dps. There is FA power dps, and BttH build. They function a bit differently. Later one utilises mainly air-fire attunement (with some exceptions when CC or sustain is needed). The first one uses 3 out of 4 attunements. You either use fire-air-earth, or fire-air-water in your dps rotation. You can make use of 4th attunement for bonus cc/sustain if needed. Same goes for double skills, lava skin is a nice dps/sustain boost, Twin strike is a nice dps skill, aswell as Pyro vortex. The fact that only one build uses 2 attunements doesnt change the fact that they have their uses. Otherwise we can all start complaining that LI (or LI based) builds are not using all of the mechanics of a class. 

Dodges punish every class the same, most classes that are forced to dodge to stay alive do not do dps at the same time. Mb mirage/vindi can argue about that. But there is a way to actually make dodges do dps/provide utility with arcane trait line for ele. So thats that. 

As for condi, it basically uses all of the attunements to some extent due to weave self rotation. And even sword/fc condi weaver uses fire-earth-fire-air (rinse and repeat) in its rotation. So, no, its not the same. 

And the only thing in common in all abovementioned is - lack of dps, thats a number issue and not by any means considered "broken by design". 

4 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

I said already in another thread, and I will repeat myself here, that the design is quite bad.

First of all, you are dependent on a weapon in order to execute class-mechanics which is already miserable design. 

That being said, we come to the second huge weakness:

 

In order to benefit from those boosts, you have to be able to do your rotation. Without rotation, meaning without bosses standing all the time at the same spot, hammer cata is rendered almost useless. 

All of those buffs are only being viable for static encounters, not dynamic encounters. .

Of course they sound powerful on first glance, while if you really are using it and playing it, it becomes useless very qickly for around 90% of all encounters. This, together with very low attack speed by most Hammer attacks makes catalyst more like a sitting duck. 

And air 4 Hammer- are you serious? The worst cc skill in all of gw2? Rifle engi skill 4 had the same mechanic a long while ago until people complained for years about it until it finally got fixed. Which other skill provides self-stun backwards, especially as a melee class?

 

By the way, it has its reasons why guilds have been using catalyst only in static encounters to prove an imba-ness which never existed at all. If one thing is imbalanced, it is the fact thar purely static encounters even exist.

 

To put it in a nutshell, we have some fatal design flaws pointed out above:

Hammer 3 spheres are not class mechanics, but a weapon mechanic. So called "class mechanic" would be jade sphere. And it can be used on any weap sets (as d/d catalysts in spvp/wvw). 

The rotation is not that hard. Its quite fluid and easy to learn to perform on average lvl. But if you want to perform on top lvl you need to put some effort to it (like every build). Most of the hammer skills are casted on the run  so no problems with running bosses. 

As for air 4 - yeah, i do agree this needs to be fixed. This is bad design. But a cc nonetheless.

Catalyst is a new spec it hasnt been balanced yet. Hammer 3 spheres need some love too. It was never OP, it needs a lot of work sure, but it is not broken beyond repair and is playable and can perform well. 

5 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

First of all, none of the specs is comparable to a purely melee dps, namely a harvester, bladesworn, berserker, not even a soulbeast!

 

This comes from the simple fact that we do between 20 and 50% less damage than such a build.

Even when comparing it to a semi-support-build such as scrapper, the damage is still lower, while scrapper has tons of better cc, not to mention far higher defensive capabilities.

There is a flaw in ur logic. You do not compare ele specs to pure melee dps(otherwise you need to also comapare it to melee chronomancer), you compare dps to dps. Condi sc/fc weaver does good dps on par with most of the abovementioned classes. 

5 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Second, elementalist gets punished to use defensive skills/abilities, while all of the other specs have offensive and defensive capabilities built in by default.

 

This point is harder to get because of the fact that some exist, but are rendered almost useless by class design. Many cant be used in a large amount of situations. Others are being contraproductive to role, as stated above, and make using them punish overall performance.

Agree, but i do not think the problem is ele, but rather other overperforming classes (like fb/mechanist/virtuoso etc). They need to tone these classes down and add more tradeoffs. 

5 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

Third, trait system and class mechanics are far outdated!

 

If you go for efficiency, you are only stuck with some attunements while other attunements are left out even though attunements are the signature mechanic of elementalist. The whole attunement-trait-link has to bee revamped completely to provide proper non-contradictive gameplay. Same goes for Catalyst, where this is by far more obvious. It would be easy to change, for example by giving spheres the ability to travel with you such as gyros from engi, which would also make sense. 

Well... i would semi agree to this, but with different arguments. I do think that traits are nice. But weapon skills on older weapons could use some rebalancing to make em more in line with hammer (to be able to do dps in all attunements while getting some utility in every attunement without loosing dps). 

5 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell.5907 said:

As simple as that: Everything, an Elementalist can do, other classes/specs can do by far better with far less input.

And that is exactly why it is outclassed and needs a complete rework in class and design in order to work functionally.

Not quite. Ele has some unique things to it (rebound for ex.). But i think some classes are overperforming atm and it can be fixed by basically tuning some numbers on ele dps/utility skills. 

 

[solemn.9670]

(WvW/PvP) Whenever not playing strictly meta catalyst or boring fire sword focus weaver, ... I often feel like "ah, this build would be on par with meta harbinger/mechanist/willbender/soulbeast/thief, etc etc... if I had four traitlines"