Scepter changes - Heal tempest

[Caladrius.6594]

*I am typing this from a PvE players perspective.

Sceptre is one of the main weapons used by heal alacrity tempest, and the upcoming balance changes will mess with this significantly.
Therefore I am asking to reconsider some of these changes, atleast for the PvE modes.

Most importantly: Water Trident.
This skill is one of the main reasons to take trident on heal tempest. It is the only ground targetable long distance heal without having to use a utility slot for signet of water.
If you are truly intent on taking away the ground targeted heal in this (which I truly hope will be reverted), at the very least I feel this skill should be ally-targetable (like druid staff and spectre) and bounce between allies to atleast preserve the healing ability of this skill.

Secondary: The Dragon's Tooth change.
This skill was *great* for use as a blast finisher. Especially since our overload fire has a very small range, being able to blast fire fields means we could properly stack might on our group, even if some players don't stack in our tiny overload. (while we're at it, please make our overloads 360 radius universally to prevent further issues with this)

Please reconsider these changes, at the very least for PvE.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Caladrius.6594

[Arheundel.6451]

Quote

Secondary: The Dragon's Tooth change.
This skill was *great* for use as a blast finisher..........

I am done.....I am totally, completely done

Edited November 12, 2022 by Arheundel.6451

[Infusion.7149]

You can just untarget and the dragon's tooth will cast where you are.

The water trident change leads me to believe that they want staff and dagger+warhorn as the support sets. If you look on Lucky Noobs they still have the older dagger+warhorn heal alac tempest.

[keykey.9182]

Water trident Its actually a nerf.... lost a healing skill and for what Strike damage that bounces to 2 extra targets? And need to be in water attunement? Wow.....thanks? I guess Scepter is now 100% out of the picture for HAT.

 

This is all a bad dream and nothing is actually happing right?......right?

[the krytan assassin.9235]

36 minutes ago, keykey.9182 said:

Water trident Its actually a nerf.... lost a healing skill and for what Strike damage that bounces to 2 extra targets? And need to be in water attunement? Wow.....thanks? I guess Scepter is now 100% out of the picture for HAT.

 

This is all a bad dream and nothing is actually happing right?......right?

The most annoying part is this nerf feels just like the Gale song nerf from oct 4. Nerfing one of the foundations of heal Tempest without any good reason for a completely different gamemode without any mention at all about the consequences of PvE. Also who the kitten suddenly decided that scepter is a dps weapon? Dagger has always been the more dps focused weapon, whereas scepter was more focused towards condi/support. 

Every single time Anet manages to destroy my already little hope and low expectations that ele will finally get some of the buffs it deserves. 

[Ace.1784]

I'm fine with losing the healing on Scepter. With this update, Scepter fills the niche of a burst weapon that Elementalist is missing. Also, the added damage in Water will add some synergy to existing water traits.

By not reverting this change, we're increasing the diversity of Elementalist options. Staff has some ranged healing options and dagger can provide some extra healing when used in conjunction with warhorn. Even the WvW tempest build runs d/d due to the high amount of cleansing and healing the setup can provide. 

These benefits are worth the loss of a build that only cares for 2 abilities out of the 12 and opens up builds that will utilize all 12 of those abilities. From a utility perspective, the correct choice is obvious.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Ace.1784

[the krytan assassin.9235]

8 minutes ago, Ace.1784 said:

With this update, Scepter fills the niche of a burst weapon that Elementalist is missing.

What Burst damage? The moving dragons tooth that you can just easily Dodge out of if you time it correctly? Flamestrike, stone shards, arc lightning or rock barrier don't deal barely any Pdps at all?

 

I mean dont get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with most of these changes, but the nerf of water Trident is simply horrible. Just revert the changes on water Trident and its all fine. 

[Ace.1784]

8 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

What Burst damage? The moving dragons tooth that you can just easily Dodge out of if you time it correctly? Flamestrike, stone shards, arc lightning or rock barrier don't deal barely any Pdps at all?

 

I mean dont get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with most of these changes, but the nerf of water Trident is simply horrible. Just revert the changes on water Trident and its all fine. 

Flamestrike has a faster and smoother channel

Dragon's tooth is now mobile

Phoenix (it can be blocked by projectile hate)

Ice shards has a faster and smoother animation, aftercast removed (can be blocked by projectile hate)

New shatterstone that slows

New Trident

New Lightning strike that is now AOE

New Blinding Flash that provides sustain

Rock barrier provides resistance and barrier, not spike damage, but huge for a quick moment of self sustain in WvW

New Dust Devil that is now ground targeted.

----

From the preview, all of these skills had a pretty small cast time as well, meaning you can apply multiples from several attunements at once. In the context of organized WvW, where coordinated bombs are called, this is huge. It's essentially making Elementalist into a similar niche as Dragonhunter and old Herald.

Other users are talking about it's potential in roaming and sPvP. I'm not an expert in those areas, so I will leave it to those users to come here and add their perspectives. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Ace.1784

[Jimbru.6014]

It's typical ANet Bizzaro logic. "We want to improve scepter and broaden our support options...so let's nerf scepter healing!"

[the krytan assassin.9235]

3 hours ago, Ace.1784 said:

Flamestrike has a faster and smoother channel

Dragon's tooth is now mobile

Phoenix (it can be blocked by projectile hate)

Ice shards has a faster and smoother animation, aftercast removed (can be blocked by projectile hate)

New shatterstone that slows

New Trident

New Lightning strike that is now AOE

New Blinding Flash that provides sustain

Rock barrier provides resistance and barrier, not spike damage, but huge for a quick moment of self sustain in WvW

New Dust Devil that is now ground targeted.

----

From the preview, all of these skills had a pretty small cast time as well, meaning you can apply multiples from several attunements at once. In the context of organized WvW, where coordinated bombs are called, this is huge. It's essentially making Elementalist into a similar niche as Dragonhunter and old Herald.

Other users are talking about it's potential in roaming and sPvP. I'm not expert in those areas so I will leave it to them. 

Unless they make some serious changes to the damage coefficients its not really gonna provide any meaningful dmge outside of dragons tooth and Phoenix, so probably no viable dps rotations on PvE. For WvW zergs it isn't great either. 900 range is basically the dead zone in zergfights 90% of the time, so you'll end up vulnerable all the time. Besides that scepter hasn't got anything outside of dps, no group support, cc, voorop or whatsoever. 

So that basically leaves you with sPvP and roaming. A gamemode that only a small group of players actually enjoy. And within that small group the small group that actually plays ele. And within that group there's only a small fraction of players that wants/is able to play scepter. 

 

So 3/4 of the changes of the elementalist goes to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase while at the same time it actually removes the main heal of one of the most popular elementalist PvE builds out there. Its just plain stupid dev favouritism. CMC likes pvp ele, used to play/played the game whenever scepter pvp was popular, suddenly decides to buff/change it, doesn't care a single bit about the mess it causes towards the rest of the profession while simultaneously ignoring way bigger & more important problems. 

 

Meanwhile playrate of ele is at an all time low. Catalyst's skill/damage gap has grown even further. Sword Weaver still has very low risk/reward ratio. PvE Tempest lost its main source of healing, HAT is back at trash tier support class. Majority of the ele community is now forced into sc/f Weaver, a spec that isn't really loved by the ele community. 

 

Staff dps is still trash in WvW with delay upon all of its attacks and skills that hit like a wet noodle. Only viable place to play it at is against barely coordinated groups that keep standing in your AoE fields for no good reason. Support Tempest did get a decent buff though so that hopefully makes them abit more relevant again. Still, there's no solution for any of the long lasting support elementalists problems like the lack of any decent stability (which is now ALOT more important due to the massive stability nerfs on guard). 

 

Right now playing dps ele in PvE feels like playing a worse version of dps mesmer. HAT/ WvW htemp feels like playing a worse version of druid. WvW staff dps feels like a worse version of Herald. 

 

[Infusion.7149]

23 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Unless they make some serious changes to the damage coefficients its not really gonna provide any meaningful dmge outside of dragons tooth and Phoenix, so probably no viable dps rotations on PvE. For WvW zergs it isn't great either. 900 range is basically the dead zone in zergfights 90% of the time, so you'll end up vulnerable all the time. Besides that scepter hasn't got anything outside of dps, no group support, cc, voorop or whatsoever. 

So that basically leaves you with sPvP and roaming. A gamemode that only a small group of players actually enjoy. And within that small group the small group that actually plays ele. And within that group there's only a small fraction of players that wants/is able to play scepter. 

 

So 3/4 of the changes of the elementalist goes to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase while at the same time it actually removes the main heal of one of the most popular elementalist PvE builds out there. Its just plain stupid dev favouritism. CMC likes pvp ele, used to play/played the game whenever scepter pvp was popular, suddenly decides to buff/change it, doesn't care a single bit about the mess it causes towards the rest of the profession while simultaneously ignoring way bigger & more important problems. 

 

Meanwhile playrate of ele is at an all time low. Catalyst's skill/damage gap has grown even further. Sword Weaver still has very low risk/reward ratio. PvE Tempest lost its main source of healing, HAT is back at trash tier support class. Majority of the ele community is now forced into sc/f Weaver, a spec that isn't really loved by the ele community. 

 

Staff dps is still trash in WvW with delay upon all of its attacks and skills that hit like a wet noodle. Only viable place to play it at is against barely coordinated groups that keep standing in your AoE fields for no good reason. Support Tempest did get a decent buff though so that hopefully makes them abit more relevant again. Still, there's no solution for any of the long lasting support elementalists problems like the lack of any decent stability (which is now ALOT more important due to the massive stability nerfs on guard). 

 

Right now playing dps ele in PvE feels like playing a worse version of dps mesmer. HAT/ WvW htemp feels like playing a worse version of druid. WvW staff dps feels like a worse version of Herald. 

 

In PvE scepter condi weaver has been relevant for well over a year. See 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IMNi5_yulQ

2022 simplified rotation without weave self ; 38K otherwise

 

Scepter is fine in WvW if there's tracking on dragon's tooth and actual damage on lightning strike and shattterstone AoE. You aren't going to be using projectile stuff like hurl or ice shards. 900 range is what scourge is.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

9 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

In PvE scepter condi weaver has been relevant for well over a year. See 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IMNi5_yulQ

2022 simplified rotation without weave self ; 38K otherwise

 

Scepter is fine in WvW if there's tracking on dragon's tooth and actual damage on lightning strike and shattterstone AoE. You aren't going to be using projectile stuff like hurl or ice shards. 900 range is what scourge is.

My reaction was towards someone who claimed these changes were a massive boost to burst dps of elementalist. My response was simply that the dmge coefficients on scepter are really bad atm. PvE Pdps scepter hasn't been a thing for a very long time and this balance patch isn't gonna change that, especially because all AA on scepter barely deal any Pdps. 

 

For WvW the Burst potential will increase on scepter, but there are certain limiting factors at play which will heavily limit the effectiveness of scepter dps ele. The most important factor is the amount of skills that are unlocked at 900 range (the range that scepter needs to operate)

The dmge difference between 1200 range and 900 range is actually massive (f.e. willbender/dh and scourge, mesmer unlock some big dps/stun/boonrip potential at that range). Most encounters only are able to last a couple seconds within the 900 range before 1 group has to bail out again/ is defeated. Any ranged skill that has 900 range will therefore have a very significantly lower upkeep time then a 1200 ranged skill. 

If you want to play relevant Pdps the tankiest armor you can take is marauders, so you'll be quite vulnerable. Staff Weaver often has to position himself out of the group since the boonball is not able to sustain the squishyness of the dps ele. Scepter wont be able to do this due to its lack of range compared to the staff. Scepter will most likely remain completely irrelevant for zergfights in WvW. 

[zeyeti.8347]

So we stuck with dagger for healtempest ... great , and staff ... just how do you maintain might with staff ? fire overload with that tiny 180 aoe pulsing might ? no ! so stuck with dagger and its amazing heal belch water 2 heal for almost 1600 hp in a cone of 400 range in front of you ... amazing ! And still the f u ck ing cluncky way to provide alacrity ... proves once more that anet is unable to balance ele properly , just what are our range healing option now ? water signet ? cool that make 1 . Ice bow ? love having my main healing tool on a 60 sec cd ... thats a no ! You said you will read forums to see some ideas there you go :

- Make alacrity from aurashare - the trade off will be to play water as a dps , other healer have literally no trade offs , so i dont see why we have to choose between alacrity and elemental bastion as healers , as i dont see why we have to choose between transcendent tempest or alacrity as a dps. that will solve the problem of consistant healing (you will heal your sub after an overload , givng them auras if you wish , and all the other source)

-Make soothing water a 15 secs duration , that stays at 15 sec till we leave water , it's very frustrating to have this healing pulsing 10-7 secs depending the timing you go off water. Remind firebrand has sharing f2 virtues passiv , mech has increased régéneration effectiveness and barrier passiv pulsing from mech every 3 secs (providing alacrity passively btw ...) why can't we have those Qol as ele , i mean scepter changes are good for dps for sure , and even scepter is played condi , i see no condi damage modificators ... but thats not the point here.

52 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

In PvE scepter condi weaver has been relevant for well over a year. See 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IMNi5_yulQ

What is relevant is the % of ele players in endgame mode , so no scepter is irrelevant , why should i play a 900 range squishy class when i have 1200 ranged class with more hp more survivabilty and even less complicated rotation ? reminder https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity thats relevant ! but i guess you talking more pvp and wvw , i am talking engame pve .

healtempest was already the bottom healers and in this patch they are narrowing our options ... if your idea is to make weapons oriented in very specific roles as you do for scepter (i dont think condi scepter will attune to water btw , so the change on scepter water trident are oreinted for pvp and wvw , not for pve , clearly !) give us a full healing weapon then , i dont know , staff maybe or ... yes sword , the changes to sword weaver are just cringe , so make sword a healing weapon , so we can stay in the nonsense state... knew i shouldn't have watched the live ... if that stays like it , time to look after another mmo.

Edited November 12, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[Infusion.7149]

2 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

My reaction was towards someone who claimed these changes were a massive boost to burst dps of elementalist. My response was simply that the dmge coefficients on scepter are really bad atm. PvE Pdps scepter hasn't been a thing for a very long time and this balance patch isn't gonna change that, especially because all AA on scepter barely deal any Pdps. 

 

For WvW the Burst potential will increase on scepter, but there are certain limiting factors at play which will heavily limit the effectiveness of scepter dps ele. The most important factor is the amount of skills that are unlocked at 900 range (the range that scepter needs to operate)

The dmge difference between 1200 range and 900 range is actually massive (f.e. willbender/dh and scourge, mesmer unlock some big dps/stun/boonrip potential at that range). Most encounters only are able to last a couple seconds within the 900 range before 1 group has to bail out again/ is defeated. Any ranged skill that has 900 range will therefore have a very significantly lower upkeep time then a 1200 ranged skill. 

If you want to play relevant Pdps the tankiest armor you can take is marauders, so you'll be quite vulnerable. Staff Weaver often has to position himself out of the group since the boonball is not able to sustain the squishyness of the dps ele. Scepter wont be able to do this due to its lack of range compared to the staff. Scepter will most likely remain completely irrelevant for zergfights in WvW. 

Very few nonprojectiles have over 2.0 coefficient in one hit in WvW , even CoR doesn't and the pathing is horrible now ; True Shot is projectile and scepter symbol is DoT

Fresh air scepter has been relevant in smallscale before and was a popular spike damage in PvP. So if you are only fixated on large scale obviously you want staff due to more cleave from auto and lava font.

[Ace.1784]

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Unless they make some serious changes to the damage coefficients its not really gonna provide any meaningful dmge outside of dragons tooth and Phoenix, so probably no viable dps rotations on PvE. For WvW zergs it isn't great either. 900 range is basically the dead zone in zergfights 90% of the time, so you'll end up vulnerable all the time. Besides that scepter hasn't got anything outside of dps, no group support, cc, voorop or whatsoever. 

These skills already had meaningful damage and from the notes, some of these skills have damage boosts based on certain conditions. 

I don't have time to explain all the phases of WvW fights to you, but this youtube video does a really good job of it. 900 range is pretty good, but majority of the spike damage will happen in melee range. Meaning scepter's 900 range isn't a big deal. Something else to note, you can drop this damage while being mobile. Which is huge.

Video:  

 

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

So 3/4 of the changes of the elementalist goes to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase while at the same time it actually removes the main heal of one of the most popular elementalist PvE builds out there. Its just plain stupid dev favouritism. CMC likes pvp ele, used to play/played the game whenever scepter pvp was popular, suddenly decides to buff/change it, doesn't care a single bit about the mess it causes towards the rest of the profession while simultaneously ignoring way bigger & more important problems. 

It's not a fraction of a fraction. As Infusion mentioned, there's already DPS Scepter builds that just need a bit of a boost to be relevant. Now you're adding sPvP and WvW. This has the potential to be relevant in all game modes. To give you a bone, even if the numbers are bad, these things are easily tweakable.

Note that in a group setting, no one is relying on a single player to provide all of the damage. Generating downs in WvW is a GROUP effort. It's about the ability to layer multiple damage abilities in one spot at the correct time. The fact these Scepter changes let ele do this means that it is EASIER for people who want to play Ele in WvW to get groups. Staff required the Ele player to be EXTREMELY competent at understanding and predicting movement of the groups. The new Scepter abilities, at least from the stream preview, are in line with other spike classes that are heavily desirable in WvW.

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Meanwhile playrate of ele is at an all time low. Catalyst's skill/damage gap has grown even further. Sword Weaver still has very low risk/reward ratio. PvE Tempest lost its main source of healing, HAT is back at trash tier support class. Majority of the ele community is now forced into sc/f Weaver, a spec that isn't really loved by the ele community. 

Not relevant to the discussion imo and having a single ability to keep a weapon viable sounds much worse compared to having 12 abilities keeping the weapon viable.

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Staff dps is still trash in WvW with delay upon all of its attacks and skills that hit like a wet noodle. Only viable place to play it at is against barely coordinated groups that keep standing in your AoE fields for no good reason. Support Tempest did get a decent buff though so that hopefully makes them abit more relevant again. Still, there's no solution for any of the long lasting support elementalists problems like the lack of any decent stability (which is now ALOT more important due to the massive stability nerfs on guard). 

Tempest is huge in WvW right now. Just an fyi. Staff Ele requires the Ele player to understand WvW dynamics really well. These scepter change are going to give a little more leeway.

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Right now playing dps ele in PvE feels like playing a worse version of dps mesmer. HAT/ WvW htemp feels like playing a worse version of druid. WvW staff dps feels like a worse version of Herald. 

 

I only play Ele in PvE and I don't feel like I'm being hindered at all. I'm typically running Catalyst nowadays. This is also not relevant.

Overall, a build that is relying on a SINGLE ABILITY from a weapon, two abilities if we want to stretch the blast finisher, is not worth the effort to keep when we can unlock a NEW PLAYSTYLE for elementalist that would make it more desirable in PvP settings. 

This forum complains about how Ele is not viable in X, Y, and Z game mode, but this scepter change is one that will actually unlock capabilities in WvW and PvE.

8 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Very few nonprojectiles have over 2.0 coefficient in one hit in WvW , even CoR doesn't and the pathing is horrible now ; True Shot is projectile and scepter symbol is DoT

Fresh air scepter has been relevant in smallscale before and was a popular spike damage in PvP. So if you are only fixated on large scale obviously you want staff due to more cleave from auto and lava font.

Correct as always Infusion; however, I do want to note that staff's capabilities in large scale coordinate fights is dependent upon the Elementalist player. These changes will encourage WvW fight centric guilds to add Elementalist as a DPS slot for shade spikes and bombs since it reduces the backloaded nature of Elementalist. Even if the damage is slightly off, these things are easy ratio tweaks.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Ace.1784
Inserted the correct video

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 minute ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Very few nonprojectiles have over 2.0 coefficient in one hit in WvW , even CoR doesn't and the pathing is horrible now ; True Shot is projectile and scepter symbol is DoT

Fresh air scepter has been relevant in smallscale before and was a popular spike damage in PvP. So if you are only fixated on large scale obviously you want staff due to more cleave from auto and lava font.

Its not just about the dmge coefficients though... Most classes are able to provide alot of extra utility/boonrip/Support. Scepter doesn't provide any of that. Like i mentioned usually over 80% of the fight takes place outside 900 range. The moment the zerg dips in 900 range, all classes have some incredibly powerful long cd skills ready (like wells/grav). Scepter hasn't got any of that. Even for small scale roaming its usually a very easy target for the enemy team. 

Yes these changes will positively impact the scepter in roaming/pvp, but outside of the very few ele players that enjoy playing scepter in pvp, these changes are practically irrelevant (except the nerf on PvE HAT).

[Ace.1784]

2 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Its not just about the dmge coefficients though... Most classes are able to provide alot of extra utility/boonrip/Support. Scepter doesn't provide any of that. Like i mentioned usually over 80% of the fight takes place outside 900 range. The moment the zerg dips in 900 range, all classes have some incredibly powerful long cd skills ready (like wells/grav). Scepter hasn't got any of that. Even for small scale roaming its usually a very easy target for the enemy team. 

Yes these changes will positively impact the scepter in roaming/pvp, but outside of the very few ele players that enjoy playing scepter in pvp, these changes are practically irrelevant (except the nerf on PvE HAT).

To give you a chance to reply without double posting. In addition to my post above, there are ways for Ele to provide utility and support while being a potent damage dealer. I'm not going to further elaborate on my ideas in this regard. I'm not sure what tier you're playing in, but my guild hovers in tier 1/tier 2 and the fights follows specific phases I outlined above. The large bombs are typically melee range where the two groups are colliding with each other. Sometimes, the groups aren't touching, but you are certainly closer than 900 range 100% of the time.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

7 minutes ago, Ace.1784 said:

These skills already had meaningful damage and from the notes, some of these skills have damage boosts based on certain conditions. 

I don't have time to explain all the phases of WvW fights to you, but this youtube video does a really good job of it. 900 range is pretty good, but majority of the spike damage will happen in melee range. Meaning scepter's 900 range isn't a big deal. Something else to note, you can drop this damage while being mobile. Which is huge.

Video:  

 

It's not a fraction of a fraction. As Infusion mentioned, there's already DPS Scepter builds that just need a bit of a boost to be relevant. Now you're adding sPvP and WvW. This has the potential to be relevant in all game modes. To give you a bone, even if the numbers are bad, these things are easily tweakable.

Note that in a group setting, no one is relying on a single player to provide all of the damage. Generating downs in WvW is a GROUP effort. It's about the ability to layer multiple damage abilities in one spot at the correct time. The fact these Scepter changes let ele do this means that it is EASIER for people who want to play Ele in WvW to get groups. Staff required the Ele player to be EXTREMELY competent at understanding and predicting movement of the groups. The new Scepter abilities, at least from the stream preview, are in line with other spike classes that are heavily desirable in WvW.

Not relevant to the discussion imo and having a single ability to keep a weapon viable sounds much worse compared to having 12 abilities keeping the weapon viable.

Tempest is huge in WvW right now. Just an fyi. Staff Ele requires the Ele player to understand WvW dynamics really well. These scepter change are going to give a little more leeway.

I only play Ele in PvE and I don't feel like I'm being hindered at all. I'm typically running Catalyst nowadays. This is also not relevant.

Overall, a build that is relying on a SINGLE ABILITY from a weapon, two abilities if we want to stretch the blast finisher, is not worth the effort to keep when we can unlock a NEW PLAYSTYLE for elementalist that would make it more desirable in PvP settings. 

This forum complains about how Ele is not viable in X, Y, and Z game mode, but this scepter change is one that will actually unlock capabilities in WvW and PvE.

Correct as always Infusion; however, I do want to note that staff's capabilities in large scale coordinate fights is dependent upon the Elementalist player. These changes will encourage WvW fight centric guilds to add Elementalist as a DPS slot for shade spikes and bombs since it reduces the backloaded nature of Elementalist. Even if the damage is slightly off, these things are easy ratio tweaks.

Ye, played my ele over 5k hrs in WvW, think i should be able to know how the gamemode works by now. Sure you can white Knight all you want and pretend that scepter will be a real thing in WvW but in the end it simply wont. PvE HAT is absolutely gutted with the proposed balance changes aswell.

 

Sure the pvp/roam community will get a new toy to play with and thats completely fine with me. But the  severe lack of proper balancing, breaking of proper working mechanics and lack of fixing some of the long lasting bugs/issues is simply inexcuseable. 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

11 minutes ago, Ace.1784 said:

Sometimes, the groups aren't touching, but you are certainly closer than 900 range 100% of the time.

😂

[Ace.1784]

6 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Ye, played my ele over 5k hrs in WvW, think i should be able to know how the gamemode works by now. Sure you can white Knight all you want and pretend that scepter will be a real thing in WvW but in the end it simply wont. PvE HAT is absolutely gutted with the proposed balance changes aswell.

This caught me off guard because I feel like anyone who plays WvW would recognize the backloaded damage of staff and see how these scepter changes would benefit those spike centric fight. Even before this patch, ele's in my guild would run scepter as a "meme setup" for the spike damage.

Moreover, I'm not the only one thinking this. In the other thread on this subject, WvW and sPvP players are pointing this out. On reddit and within my guild, people are also thinking in the same direction. Low channel time, damage abilities (in the case of Ele, it's likely we need to stack a few because of the nature of the class) is favored in WvW.

6 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Sure the pvp/roam community will get a new toy to play with and thats completely fine with me. But the  severe lack of proper balancing, breaking of proper working mechanics and lack of fixing some of the long lasting bugs/issues is simply inexcuseable. 

Once again, even if you doubt the capabilities of these builds on the patch release, you're choosing to sacrifice their ability for a single build that utilizes a single ability (Water Trident) for the possibility of builds that use multiple Scepter abilities for a Spike Damage oriented play style. You're not even considering the possibility of buffing other healing options, on top of the already buffed Elemental Bastion.

4 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

😂

I probably should have combined the two sentences, but the sentence you are reacting to is a continuation of the previous sentence. You say you have 5k hours in WvW, so it should feel pretty obvious that no one is dying at 900+ range with the proper support in party.

[hollywoodenspoon.8436]

Basically PvE ele mains are saying, I don't want to give up sceptre (which is cleary a damage weapon for eles) cause I don't wanna try use dagger or staff kind of thing. Instead of actually letting the sceptre be what it's supposed to be, they want having this meme healing skill on water trident remain. 

[zeyeti.8347]

2 hours ago, coinhollyc.8190 said:

Basically PvE ele mains are saying, I don't want to give up sceptre (which is cleary a damage weapon for eles) cause I don't wanna try use dagger or staff kind of thing. Instead of actually letting the sceptre be what it's supposed to be, they want having this meme healing skill on water trident remain. 

So just tell me what do u use then for main  hand with warhorn ? dagger ? healing on dagger is a bigger meme than scepter , we took scepter cause it allow combo field for might , and has the few option to heal at 900 range , scpeter was the least worst to take . Now we can still play staff , but we loose earth boon extension and might/fury share from warhorn then , not any good reason to play healtempest anymore , might has a long duration on overloads ? ofc , but f1 overlaod is a 180 wide aoe , expect your group to stay stacked in that 8 secs ... If they want make scepter a dps weapon , ok , but then give a good main hand healing weapon too , warhorn heals are too cluncky to rely on ... Also ele players expected a less cluncky way to provide alacrity , that adds to the steaming pot more ... in pve regards if that pactch goes on ele will be even less played that it is actually reaching absurd numbers .

Edited November 12, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[Markus.6415]

I'd be fine if they kept the aoe healing happening around the target you are hitting. Or maybe around yourself (could actually be nice with 2 charges)? They just shouldn't make a group heal ability that existed for over 10 years into a selfish dps attack. Even the regeneration is gone. That's quite the drastic rework. And with how alac healtempest plays at the moment, it's hard enough to heal when needed already.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

3 hours ago, coinhollyc.8190 said:

Basically PvE ele mains are saying, I don't want to give up sceptre (which is cleary a damage weapon for eles) cause I don't wanna try use dagger or staff kind of thing. Instead of actually letting the sceptre be what it's supposed to be, they want having this meme healing skill on water trident remain. 

Scepter never has been a damage focused weapon for ele. It's always been a combination of burst, condi and support. Now they basically removed 1 of those options without giving a decent alternative. The whole ele community would be completely fine with it if they just didn't touch water Trident. 

Apart from that, WvW and PvE simply have been waiting for a very long time for certain weapons/especs/skills to get fixed but instead of actually fixing the problems of ele in WvW/PvE they completely revamped scepter design. New animations, different skills, different damage coefficients, added ammo to a skill.

All changes focus heavily on the least played gamemode (PvP) which currently already has 2 S-tier ele builds. The playstyle of the scepter focuses on a  small minority that actually wants/can play high apm extremely squishy builds. With its current status of cata and temp, i'd say the scepter ele maybe gets 10% playrate across the ele class in pvp post patch. 

 

So basically CMC ignored almost all problems with ele class while giving it extra versatility in the one gamemode where it already shines at. By coincidence his favourite gamemode when he used to play on his ele...

[Markus.6415]

I actually thought that the last balance patch was PvP and WvW centered, and the Patch on Nov. 29 was told to be more PvE based? Feels different.