November 29 Balance Update Preview - Elementalist

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

13 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Didn't think about FA builds.  That a weak condi on a pure power build is all we got just makes it seem even more sad.

Mostly I'd see it showing up on the hybrid builds.  On rare occasion Fresh Air won't proc after attuning to water, which will cause players to accidentally use Shearing Edge during the rotation.  It's only there that this might be of use, but... it would have to be a lot of bleed.  Sword hybrid runs almost no general condition duration, and also does not run the earth line.  Condi sword itself doesn't go into water or air, either.  To make use of this skill it would have to inflict something obscene, like 10 stacks of bleeding for a base 10 duration, and even then I'm not sure that it is worth it to pause the double air attunement to cast the skill. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Mostly I'd see it showing up on the hybrid builds.  On rare occasion Fresh Air won't proc after attuning to water, which will cause players to accidentally use Shearing Edge during the rotation.  It's only there that this might be of use, but... it would have to be a lot of bleed.  Sword hybrid runs almost no general condition duration, and also does not run the earth line.  Condi sword itself doesn't go into water or air, either.  To make use of this skill it would have to inflict something obscene, like 10 stacks of bleeding for a base 10 duration, and even then I'm not sure that it is worth it to pause the double air attunement to cast the skill. 

Obviously, this was a PvP patch for weaver and a kitten one at that.  Let's face it.  Nothing was done to improve weaver or its lowest performing weapon.  For whatever reason, it simply wasn't a priority.

[Riba.3271]

As a WvW player I understand where they're coming from with the Catalyst nerfs. Now that they already made Tempest decent, and are even buffing it further, Catalyst would be by far best DPS. It is already the best one in my eyes due to how strong pulsing boons are and how it can actually attune to CC on demand unlike weaver. Catalyst will still be quite busted with middle bottom bottom traits, sacrificing DPS for ton of AoE boons that are hard to get.

 

I do think that hitting 10 stacks of EE reliably is going to be near impossible, and they should either increase stack duration or make Elemental Empowerment proc already at 9 stacks.

 

I do believe tempest buff is overkill tho, the class does so much else. 0.4 -> 0.65 healing coefficient would be more reasonable.

[Avatara.1042]

22 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

As a WvW player I understand where they're coming from with the Catalyst nerfs. Now that they already made Tempest decent, and are even buffing it further, Catalyst would be by far best DPS. It is already the best one in my eyes due to how strong pulsing boons are and how it can actually attune to CC on demand unlike weaver. Catalyst will still be quite busted with middle bottom bottom traits, sacrificing DPS for ton of AoE boons that are hard to get.

 

I do think that hitting 10 stacks of EE reliably is going to be near impossible, and they should either increase stack duration or make Elemental Empowerment proc already at 9 stacks.

 

I do believe tempest buff is overkill tho, the class does so much else. 0.4 -> 0.65 healing coefficient would be more reasonable.

Wtf are you talking about?  Catalyst can actually do something other than roam badly in WvW?

[Phyrak.7260]

If there could be something done to reinforce/make Catalyst a camping spec that uses the jade sphere to further push the element into a refined focus - maybe using the auras as way to emphasise this mindset? 

Keeping the charge mechanic for aligning with this long term play in a single element.

[Scynte.1340]

If scepter water 3 healing is going away, perhaps make scepter earth 2 give barrier to you and those around you. 

Also, why can't all ele elite specs get healing and support potential? I'd like to see healing catalyst. More utilities should affect allies. 

Another suggestion: Water Signet should restore your water attunement recharge. Perhaps that could be a characteristic of all signets or some other utility type. 

[soulknight.9620]

13 hours ago, Scynte.1340 said:

Also, why can't all ele elite specs get healing and support potential? I'd like to see healing catalyst. More utilities should affect allies. 

Heal quick catalyst has been a thing for half a year now. It works, kinda. There are better options, but its playable. Tbh utilities like water signet, frostbow, glyph of elementals do affect allies if you play them right. 

 

And yea, tempest can go heal, same for catalyst, same for core ele. Even weaver can be made a useless but still healing spec (although im not recommending it at all). First two bring quick and alac to the table, decent healing and nice boon uptime. Weaver can provide some buffs with arcane and some heals with water, but thats it. Weaver wasnt actually designed to be a support spec. Its a pure selfish dps type of spec.

So techically every ele elite spec can go for healing and support. 

 

 

[Kreator.3701]

I honestly just expected 2 things for eles...

 

Lesser fire eles signet rework. It's rly rly annoying to spend 2 mins to cast 3 of em then mount up and loose em all.

Alac rework. It's just not fun at all and clunky

[Jski.6180]

I am kind of hoping the new dragon tooth will track your team mates if you cast on them or at least let it track you if you dont have a target.

[Gorani.7205]

With the patch being out tomorrow I finally gave the Scepter changes a though:

- DT needing a target it can snap to will make focusing on the "backline enemy" (when fighting multiple people or NPCs) more difficult, when you are fighting in melee range already. Things I often do in WvW is to drop the DT on a NPC Scout, while fighting the melee NPCs, or dropping a DT onto a dolyaks path, so it walks in. Sounds a bit more like "more piano", but I will see.

-  I have noticed a lot of changes to the #2 & #3 skills, that require e.g. auto attacks in between, so you get the extra effects (e.g. Phoenix doing more burning if the target is already burning; Shatterstone needed to be placed before Trident so the enemy is still chilled when Trident strikes; LS needing to come before BF to get weakness; to get Cripple you need to AA the enemy in the Dust Devil); Again, more micromanagement needed to play Ele effectively, a class that needs so many skill combos and rotations to be good to start with (compared to those notorious auto-attack & the rest is passive professions or the "click skills when they come off cool down" specializations)

- I really need see Elemental Bastion in play to judge that doubling the attribute scaling makes a big difference, if you don't invest heavily into Healing Power 

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

6 hours ago, Gorani.7205 said:

With the patch being out tomorrow I finally gave the Scepter changes a though:

- DT needing a target it can snap to will make focusing on the "backline enemy" (when fighting multiple people or NPCs) more difficult, when you are fighting in melee range already. Things I often do in WvW is to drop the DT on a NPC Scout, while fighting the melee NPCs, or dropping a DT onto a dolyaks path, so it walks in. Sounds a bit more like "more piano", but I will see.

-  I have noticed a lot of changes to the #2 & #3 skills, that require e.g. auto attacks in between, so you get the extra effects (e.g. Phoenix doing more burning if the target is already burning; Shatterstone needed to be placed before Trident so the enemy is still chilled when Trident strikes; LS needing to come before BF to get weakness; to get Cripple you need to AA the enemy in the Dust Devil); Again, more micromanagement needed to play Ele effectively, a class that needs so many skill combos and rotations to be good to start with (compared to those notorious auto-attack & the rest is passive professions or the "click skills when they come off cool down" specializations)

 

I think the targeted DT will actually makes it easier to focus the backline since it follows the target now, so you don't have to plan ahead where the target will be when DT lands, but it sure will suffer from Line of Sight issues now that it didn't had before, It's more reliable to single target but you lose the control over the AoE. I still think the Pros are more relevant than the Cons tho

The changes to #2 and #3 will soon become muscle memory, so don't worry about it. If you're on fire att while using scepter you probably would want to fit some autos in the rotation anyway (and if the target is already burning you won't have to). You won't need to auto attack on earth to get the cripple, because you can shoot your Rock Barrier for these bleeds without the need to be locked into the autos animation (which you shouldn't because the auto is terrible). Air #2 and #3 have instant cast, so it's not really a biggie having to cast one before the other to get extra value (and I kinda thought it was a standart move to cast #2 followed by #3 when attuning to air, but maybe thats just my experience lol). Same for shatterstone and trident, it's already usual to cast Shatterstone the very first thing when attuning to water. 

 

[Kal Edosh.1327]

Just started playing Ele. Sword? What a joke.

C'mon Anet, you can do better.

[tykel.6073]

Well the additional buffs to weaver were a nice surprise as is the (necessary with the scepter changes) cone of cold buffs. Not surprised the catalyst hammer 3 buffs got reduced.

 

I’ve said it before, hammer 3 is an unfun upkeep skill that is also a balance nightmare. It exists as a bandaid to a problem the spec shouldn’t have, and if they want the spinning orbs that add up to make a combined elemental skill, it should be part of the spec mechanic and not part of the weapon taking up so much design real estate.

Fire or air could have another ranged skill to make the ranger aspects of the weapon work more, water or air could have another mobility skills to let it work better during melee fights without having to rely on invulns and lots of damage reduction, earth or water could have other active sustain options or soft crowd control. Orbs on the hammer are a crutch that brings it down.

 

Still, continued disappointment at catalyst aside, excited for most of the other changes personally.

[thetwothousand.5049]

The patch has gone live, with some additional notes for Weaver specifically. Most other changes, with two big exceptions, for elementalist went through as expected. I've got the changes posted here and bolded the important stuff.

 

Core

Cone of Cold: Increased base healing from 944 to 1,888 and increased heal attribute scaling from 0.6 to 1.2 in PvE only.

Weaver

Shearing Edge: This skill now inflicts bleeding in addition to its other effects.

Twin Strike: Increased burning stacks from 1 to 2 in PvP only.

Flame Uprising: Increased burning duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP only.

Elements of Rage: Increased damage bonus from 5% to 10% in PvE only.

Swift Revenge: Increased damage bonus from 10% to 15% in PvE only.

Woven Stride: Fixed an issue that prevented this trait from increasing the effectiveness of swiftness.

• Catalyst

  Hardened Auras, Empowering Auras, Staunch Auras, and Elemental Epitome: These traits will now only trigger when the catalyst grants an aura to themselves, rather than when gaining an aura from any player.

  Flame Wheel, Icy Coil, Crescent Wind, Rocky Loop: These skills now strike enemies once per second instead of using a projectile. Increased power coefficient from 0.001 to 0.1 in PvE only.

•  

  So our feedback did have an impact! This is by far the most important take away for me. It's clear that the balance team does have limitations on what they can do in a patch due to size of the team and the number of specs they have to balance. But when we give them feedback things do happen! And as more patches come through in 2023 I'm confident that elementalist will get a focus patch like Firebrand got this time and over all the class will improve.

   

  As this patch my new thoughts; power weaver will be in a better spot overall between changes to Stormsoul and the 10% increase from Weaver traits. Very rough estimate this will probably put sword power weaver at a roughly 38K bench. Still some work to do to really get it to where it needs to be, but a welcome step in the right direction. I really do hope that Anet looks to make

  Elemental Refreshment trigger off of attuntment swaps as well in the future, and looks to buff swords skills in the future, particularly Pyro Vortex. Sword wouldn't need to see modifier adjustments as intense as I suggested earlier in this thread due to today's buffs, but I am very optimistic that we will see these things in the upcoming year.

• The Catalyst change is honestly not surprising, though I wish we had had a chance to see the original buff go live. The original plan for a .25 modifier would have had Catalyst DPS at the top of the charts period and already had people talking. The numbers would have been crazy, it would have been fun for a week or so, then get brought it line. Overall I think it will be fine numbers wise, now Catalyst just needs energy addressed. It is by far the worst mechanic in the game and I have yet to see a single player say anything positive about it.

  Finally for Tempest dagger got a healing buff to offset the lost of scepter. This is exactly what people asked for in compensation, very nice to see it come through.

   

  Overall I'm pretty happy as an elementalist with this patch. It wasn't perfect, there's a lot of work that each spec still needs, but we're a lot better off than we were yesterday. Effectively got a new weapon to play with, some nice buffs, and most important of all clear proof that this balance team is paying attention to the feedback we are giving. Its a nice way to close out the year in my opinion. 

[Infusion.7149]

Anyone else find it hilarious that Catalyst hammer orbs were pre-nerfed? It was poorly though out to have up to 1.0 coefficient per second tick, up to 0.4 coefficient per tick is saner.

I guess the people complaining "dagger is not a heal weapon, scepter is" can stop with that nonsense now

I'm disappointed with the weaver Swift Revenge and EoR changes because it cements scepter as the defacto pick, there aren't any changes to sword weaver of note to make it worth taking over a power hammer cata or condi scepter weaver.

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Anyone else find it hilarious that Catalyst hammer orbs were pre-nerfed? It was poorly though out to have up to 1.0 coefficient per second tick, up to 0.4 coefficient per tick is saner.

I guess the people complaining "dagger is not a heal weapon, scepter is" can stop with that nonsense now

I'm disappointed with the weaver Swift Revenge and EoR changes because it cements scepter as the defacto pick, there aren't any changes to sword weaver of note to make it worth taking over a power hammer cata or condi scepter weaver.

I shouldn't be surprised, but the lack of sword upgrades is disappointing.

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

Been playing around with scepter weaver in pvp since the patch came out and boy I'm loving it

The flexibility of the rework version of shatterstone, dragons tooth and hurl is amazing, I didn't even need to run Fresh Air because every attunement has reliable damage now, which is great IMO. Played around 10games with Scepter Water Weaver and it was so much fun!

Dragon's tooth following it's target is hilarious! super helpful at securing kills and biting dodges. Water attunement with Scepter + Focus can be very aggressive with the amount of chill it provides now pairing Shatterstone and Freezing gust (even more chill if you include Glacial Drift). I didn't get to use Trident, Blinding Flash and Dust Devil  much because of dual attunements, but the rework sure added more value to fully attune as a weaver

Edited November 29, 2022 by AzuritaBlues.3206

[Avead.5760]

Best patch I have seen for this class in ages. Period. Enjoy it all!

[Velth.3780]

17 hours ago, AzuritaBlues.3206 said:

Dragon's tooth following it's target is hilarious! super helpful at securing kills and biting dodges.

I really hate the dragon tooth's change; both in pvp/wvw, where due to the numerous target drops playing scepter ele is even harder against thieves/mesmers and it removes its usage as a blast finisher for allied combofield.

For pve it makes clearing/tagging groups of trash mobs in group content even harder as the scepter ele

 

We already had a keybinding for snapping a ground targeting skill to the current target, than why force this functionality on dragon's tooth permanently? It's moving ele closer to the clunky dragontooth that it had back in 2015...

 

 

Edited November 30, 2022 by Velth.3780

[AzuritaBlues.3206]

19 minutes ago, Velth.3780 said:

I really hate the dragon tooth's change; both in pvp/wvw, where due to the numerous target drops playing scepter ele is even harder against thieves/mesmers and it removes its usage as a blast finisher for allied combofield.

For pve it makes clearing/tagging groups of trash mobs in group content even harder as the scepter ele

 

We already had a keybinding for snapping a ground targeting skill to the current target, than why force this functionality on dragon's tooth permanently? It's moving ele closer to the clunky dragontooth that it had back in 2015...

 

 

why would you want to tag mobs with dragon's tooth? the cast time is so slow that the mobs would probably be dead by the time it lands. Tagging with scepter is more efficient with Flaming Strike and Arc Lightning, and now you can also tag them with INSTANT Shatterstone 😄

I found it easier to use against thieves and mesmers now because it can track them while they're in stealth. No good thief or mesmer would stand in it's AoE circle anyway...

And snapping the AoE circle to the target is different from the skill tracking your target. It's much better now, for real.

[Jski.6180]

I wish the Cone of cold update got carried over to wvw too it would of made dagger/x tempest a realty good healer with out needing aura healing.

[Ace.1784]

Duplicated post - removed

Edited November 30, 2022 by Ace.1784

[Ace.1784]

20 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Anyone else find it hilarious that Catalyst hammer orbs were pre-nerfed? It was poorly though out to have up to 1.0 coefficient per second tick, up to 0.4 coefficient per tick is saner.

Look at Roul's channel if you haven't already lol

 

1 hour ago, Jski.6180 said:

I wish the Cone of cold update got carried over to wvw too it would of made dagger/x tempest a realty good healer with out needing aura healing.

dagger/dagger tempest is already incredibly good at healing without aura healing.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Ace.1784

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Ace.1784 said:

Look at Roul's channel if you haven't already lol

 

dagger/dagger tempest is already incredibly good at healing without aura healing.

You mean this?

or the 40k weaver

Believe it or not in the log for the 45K cata it's 1.1K DPS from flamewheel,1k DPS from crescent wind,  ~800DPS from icy coil, ~600DPS from rocky loop with each hit providing about 1.2K damage.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

You mean this?

or the 40k weaver

Believe it or not in the log for the 45K cata it's 1.1K DPS from flamewheel,1k DPS from crescent wind,  ~800DPS from icy coil, ~600DPS from rocky loop with each hit providing about 1.2K damage.

Catalyst again?  Seriously?  How do you make the exact same mistake again?🤦‍♂️

Scepter looks good, though.  Maybe a little too good if they ever make elementals usable in actual gameplay.  Now if they could just bring sword up to that 40-42k spot...