Ele Scepter Is Unacceptably Overpowered

[Jagdtiger.2517]

I was dueling a Catalyst today. I dodged his phoenix flames and dragons tooth. The fight was going fairly evenly. Then he randomly water tridents me for 5k twice and swaps to lighting and presses 2 and I die. Water trident, a skill that previously did zero damage, is randomly doing 1/3rd of my health. How is this acceptable? Why was this skill even changed?

 

Ele scepter needs massive nerfs. The majority of the top 10 on NA is Catalyst players. I propose the following nerfs:

 

- Dragon's Tooth damage nerfed by 33%

- Pyromancer's Puissance might duration nerfed by 33%

- Water Trident damage nerfed by 50%

- Fortified Earth barrier reduced by 50%

- Lightning Strike damage nerfed by 25%

- Dust Devil now blinds on the last strike instead of the first

 

Even with these changes I suspect catalyst will still be the top meta build, but at least it will be somewhat fair. The current state of scepter catalyst is absolutely ridiculous and Arenanet should be ashamed for releasing it in this state. 

 

 

[Hotride.2187]

Title says "ele scepter" yet I read catalyst this catalyst that?

[Dr Meta.3158]

Cal "CMC" Cohen, the new balance?/design? lead is an elementalist players that revels the days of pre expansion d/d celestial elementalist. I've never played during those times (I mostly started playing more than once or twice a week starting with covid) but some veterans showed me footage of those elementalist builds in action. It was quite absurd. I've seen some games where there's eight of them in matches. I've never seen anything like it.

So the predominance of elementalist builds across the meta does not surprise me at all. I would be personally more upset about it like you are but I have to stop playing this game much if at all soon anyway. The fun has been slowly sucked away since end of dragons and the steam release has unleashed a new level of toxicity that had even tainted the once magnificent pve community. So in the end, I'm sorry for this disaster and hope for the best.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Dr Meta.3158
Spelling

[Hederrain.9207]

7 minutes ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

Cal "CMC" Cohen, the new balance?/design? lead is an elementalist players that revels the days of pre expansion d/d celestial elementalist. I've never played during those times (I mostly started playing more than once or twice a week starting with covid) but some veterans showed me footage of those elementalist builds in action. It was quite absurd. I've seen some games where there's eight of them in matches. I've never seen anything like it.

So the predominance of elementslist builds across the meta does not surprise me at all. I would be personally more upset about it like you are but I have to stop playing this gsmd much if at all soon anyway. 

Team balanced - 4 eles 1 thief (shadow refuge, just in case someone ever dies), vampirism runes for extra hard memes... what a time...

Indeed dont have to be a genius to see how absurd these buffs were for the scepter. While dragontooth rightfully gets all attention, strange, that no one bats an eye about ranged instablind with 2 charges on low cd that applies weakness on top and can be used w/o seeing your enemy while running like a ferrari on superspeed into sunset. GL HF landing any setup on them w/o stealth.

25 minutes ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

The fun has been slowly sucked away since end of dragons and the steam release has unleashed a new level of toxicity that had even tainted the once magnificent pve community. So in the end, I'm sorry for this disaster and hope for the best.

Very true, but I think it began when they began to layoff ppl right and left. Cal arrived to ruin whatever was still playble imo

[Dr Meta.3158]

39 minutes ago, Hederrain.9207 said:

Team balanced - 4 eles 1 thief (shadow refuge, just in case someone ever dies), vampirism runes for extra hard memes... what a time...

Indeed dont have to be a genius to see how absurd these buffs were for the scepter. While dragontooth rightfully gets all attention, strange, that no one bats an eye about ranged instablind with 2 charges on low cd that applies weakness on top and can be used w/o seeing your enemy while running like a ferrari on superspeed into sunset. GL HF landing any setup on them w/o stealth.

Very true, but I think it began when they began to layoff ppl right and left. Cal arrived to ruin whatever was still playble imo

Yeah and people will still singularly focus on dragon's tooth in isolation and say it is fine while ignoring the rest of the kit in tandem with it. It is almost as if they're incapable of cognitively holding more than one variable in their minds at once.

The layoffs happened when they sneakily tried to devote most of their resources to developing cashgrab mobile games, failing the development, laying off a lot of staff in response, and then lying publicly about guild wars 2 being their main focus all along. That was the point where I lost respect for the company leads. The "banning" of a few wintrading players (who were back the next day) only after several articles went viral of the rampant cheating in guild wars 2 pvp in order to save face rather than to actually fix the game mode was icing on the cake. At this point I'm just waiting for a "Cosby Suite" scandal to seal the deal.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Dr Meta.3158
Spelling and syntax.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

You know there is something wrong when the semis & finals of ATs are looking like:

1. Catalyst
2. Catalyst
3. Tempest
4. Vindicator
5. Spellbreaker

[CutesySylveon.8290]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

You know there is something wrong when the semis & finals of ATs are looking like:

1. Catalyst
2. Catalyst
3. Tempest
4. Vindicator
5. Spellbreaker

'jUsT dOdGe!' 

 

Did I do it right?

[Dreams.3128]

4 hours ago, Jagdtiger.2517 said:

I was dueling a Catalyst today. I dodged his phoenix flames and dragons tooth. The fight was going fairly evenly. Then he randomly water tridents me for 5k twice and swaps to lighting and presses 2 and I die. Water trident, a skill that previously did zero damage, is randomly doing 1/3rd of my health. How is this acceptable? Why was this skill even changed?

 

Ele scepter needs massive nerfs. The majority of the top 10 on NA is Catalyst players. I propose the following nerfs:

 

- Dragon's Tooth damage nerfed by 33%

- Pyromancer's Puissance might duration nerfed by 33%

- Water Trident damage nerfed by 50%

- Fortified Earth barrier reduced by 50%

- Lightning Strike damage nerfed by 25%

- Dust Devil now blinds on the last strike instead of the first

 

Even with these changes I suspect catalyst will still be the top meta build, but at least it will be somewhat fair. The current state of scepter catalyst is absolutely ridiculous and Arenanet should be ashamed for releasing it in this state. 

 

 

Take out Pyromancer's Puissance and Lightning Strike then you have some reasonable nerfs. Also dropped the nerfs down by 25% instead of 50%. Dust Devil needs a pulse cut, but keep blind for melee trying to run down the ele.

Pyromancer's Puissance hasn't been touched since July 07, 2020. If it was problematic, you would have already seen it with weaver, which when it was changed, it actually ended up getting its competitive split in 2018. 

Lightning Strike hasn't been touched since February 25, 2020 before the November changes and if anything its power coefficient was nerfed moreso than buffed. The only thing that is allowing it to anything noticeable is the fact it hits two people now and the...one stack of vulnerability according to what I'm reading? 

Fortified Earth Barrier was nerfed back in October and had both barrier reduced and its cooldown upped, so clearly that is not the problem. 

Only ones I am going to agree with is Dragontooth and Water Trident since those were the only ones that had a noticeable power coefficient raise due to it actually having a low coeffecient range due to FA weaver nerfs from back in the ye' old days. If you are going to suggest nerfs use reasonably percentages in order to see if Scepter needs another hit or not. Stop trying to gut classes without actually taking the time to hit it once to see if it was an oversight of the dev's for buffing it TOO much. You people always want to gut classes and then cry about having a crappy pvp mode.

[Eugchriss.2046]

Dude that whole "X hasn t change since Y" lost any of it value when chaoctic interruption mesmer was litteraly DISABLED not nerfed. It was a litteral one shot. Then renegade which suddenly received massive nerfs complain after 3 years of been trash.

All that to say if you whole argument is "it hasn t been touched since....", you better say nothing at this point.

[apharma.3741]

Dust Devil: Maybe remove the conditional cripple and instead make it cripple and remove the blind.
Blinding Flash: Not sure why it got ammo, was fine with just the target increase imo.
Water Trident: That's a lot of damage for a healing skill, I'd remove the conditional part and evaluate performance. Move damage to shatterstone for memes.
Dragon's Tooth: Too much damage for a skill that's cast and forget on players. drop it 20% to start and evaluate. Reduce drop time to 1-2s or something to shorten the window of holding defences.

Evaluate these changes because it is nice to see scepter used, would be nice for the weapon to be useable without being broken. Same with all classes and skills.

[Jake.7526]

I was the ele lmfao 

[Jake.7526]

You have no right making a post about this as someone who just got back to the game 1 week ago. You don't know what the skills do because what you described was incorrect and you personally have not played it so you don't know how to play against it. 

[Sahne.6950]

If someones interested on the opinion from someone actually running sceptre , here it comes!

Dtooth needs -10% Damage and CD increased from 8 to 12 seconds. Currently it applys 1 stack of burn for 10+ seconds. It should be 2 stacks for 3 seconds.   Cd increase makes it so that Dtooth isnt conveniantly useable twice per fireattune. + It needs a rising aoe indicator so even inexperienced people can time the dodge.

Watertrident needs to be reworked.  The damage needs to be risen by roughly 20-25%, but the +50% bonus when the enemy is chilled needs to go.   Currently the skill tickles or completly burst you.  This will decrease the overall damage but make it more reliable. 

Air AA needs to stop doing ramping damage.   Air AA is just d00d00 currently. The damage should be phase 2 all the time.

Rockbarrier Bonus Toughness needs to be decreased from 250 to 200. This makes Sceptre cata needlessly tanky.  Also the Resistance needs to go aslong as you have Catalystelite equipped. Together with Earthsphere your very resistant to immob/chill/cripple/slow/weakness/blind right now.

That should honestly seal the deal. If thats still not enough, they can adjust it further.

 

BUT!!!! Before they do any of this, they have to first fix sceptre. Right now if you interrupt a sceptre skill it will go on full CD.   You cast rockbarrier, but need to interrupt it to dodge.....  skill will go on 15 sec CD but nothing happens. Every sceptre skill currently behaves like this.

The UBER strong Dtooth is essentially a Bandaid that Sceptre needs because its one buggy mess. If they fix it, they can nerf Dtooth no problemo.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Terrorhuz.4695]

54 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Watertrident needs to be reworked.  The damage needs to be risen by roughly 20-25%, but the +50% bonus when the enemy is chilled needs to go.   Currently the skill tickles or completly burst you.  This will decrease the overall damage but make it more reliable. 

One of the design points for scepter ele was that skill3 should deal more damage if you get hit by skill2 first. Removing that kind of interaction completely deletes the whole design point the devs were trying to make, turning into a normal "press button to do damage" thing, which I'm not really fond of.

[Jagdtiger.2517]

2 hours ago, Jake.7526 said:

You have no right making a post about this as someone who just got back to the game 1 week ago. You don't know what the skills do because what you described was incorrect and you personally have not played it so you don't know how to play against it. 

My friend, I am already in the top 50 in NA and was actually top 20 two days ago before I had a losing streak. I've faced many of the top Elementalists already. I played scepter catalyst for several hours before I felt disgusted with myself and dropped it. The class is disgustingly overpowered.

[Kuma.1503]

I propose the following quality of life solution:

Add an optional setting to the game. When enabled, every time you die to a class, it will instantly open the forums and load up a post template. 

It will automatically fill out the title with the name of the class that killed you followed by a randomized selectiosn of options, including but not limited to

"[insert class] is OP and needs a nerf"

"[insert class] is overperforming"

"[insert class] is unhealthy and promoted degenerate gameplay"

 

I believe this is the quality of life this game needs. 

 

 

[Goldilock.2584]

I feel its stronger than willy was in its prime. Its not just zerker dps thats strong on scepter if u go burn condi u can also lay down some evil birst aoe even with tempest. But i hate nurfs i dont mind a quick fighting meta aslong as every class has something broken in buncker dps and support. So they jeed to buff things over nurfing and i only say this because anet have a bad history for deleting a problem build/ weapon over fixing it

[Albert.3574]

when all ppl use q another class then in game all back ele give me 6+ ele games....ok why ppl do this

[Sahne.6950]

18 hours ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

One of the design points for scepter ele was that skill3 should deal more damage if you get hit by skill2 first. Removing that kind of interaction completely deletes the whole design point the devs were trying to make, turning into a normal "press button to do damage" thing, which I'm not really fond of.

valueable point...   I was just trying to provide a diffrent approach to your average forum suggestions: Nerf dmg by 30%.  I was trying to find a way to bing down the dmg but make it more reliable in return.

Watertrident right now is just so unreliable. But at the same time Uber devastating should the stars align. People will forever cry that they get hit by a 8k Waterskill..... They dont see the requirement you have to meet to get the big hit. 

They dont notice that it was actually the third Trident that hit them in the fight, but the other two did hit for 1500 dmg, so they didnt even notice.....  Then the third one is actually a crit, that lands while the enemy is chilled, while you managed to swap to air between casting the skill and landing the skill so freshair is active, shortly after you have fired a arcane skill so Elemental surge is active, while you have elemental empowermentstacks, while you have might stacked, while you have fury applied to yourself and while the enemy has no protection, and while you have applied Vuln from Electirc discharge.... Then you need to be lucky the enemy didnt dodge, because you dont have hardCC in Water and dont have time to swap to air and cast gale.... You are not allowed to have a single blind on you, otherwise either the chill or the trident misses, and dont even get me started on Weaknessspam... and then.... but only if every single of those stars align....... THEN....

This Trident will hit for 7-8k.....   leaving the enemy ragetyping in chat how braindead the skill is.  

But if just one of the things up top did miss, or you dont have a arcane skill ready, you didnt manage to swap air in time.... yada yada... the dmg takes a massiv dip. Having the enemy chilled is just another requirement ontop of the other 6 or 7......

People think trident is :  Press 3 to win.   Most people dont even understand how many diffrent buffs and requirements a Ele has to stack to reach this dmg. Most people just cry for dmg nerf. If they nerf the dmg, they have to make it more reliable.

Flattening the dmg isnt good for the design, but it might lead to the Forum people putting down their pitchforks. Because they wont get hit for 8k+ anymore.

If the salt keeps flowing at the current rate, Ele will be back in the dumpster rather fast.

Also you can cheese the Chillmechanic big time...  To counter the sceptre cata meta, i run Orr rune, Watersignet, Earthenblessing.  Those reduce my chilltime down to literally 0. Chill doesnt affect me at all. Because i am immune to chill, i am automatically winning every fight against Sceptre cata....  I just think the chillmechanic is not doing any good.... Previously Shatterstone would apply alot of vuln, doing the exact same thing. You would try and hit Shatterstone to setup a even more deadly burst. But now they removed the vuln, making it useless for setting up burst outside of trident. But for Trident its a Hardrequirement that is worth "50 Vulnstacks".....

 

 

They should increase the dmg by 20%. Remove the chill requirement, and give Shatterstone the 10 Vuln back.   Shatterstone -> trident would still increase the dmg of the Trident. The dmg will be 30% stronger compared to hitting the current trident without chill. But it doenst rise to the +50% bonus we have currently. 

Right now you have either 0% bonus or 50% bonus.  With the new change you are always between 20% and 30%.  You dont dip so low but also not so high, making it overall more reliable and less rage enducing. While still making landing shatterstone prior to Watertrident beneficial. Mechanic stays in place, while at the same time shifting power from Watertrident, onto other skills in the form of vulnerability.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Terrorhuz.4695]

1 hour ago, Sahne.6950 said:

very many things

Then just raise the cast time to 0.75s (not unreasonable for such a heavy hitter; there's a bigger telegraph) and make the projectile fast, as to remove the interaction with air, because when the skill finishes casting you don't have time to switch to air and cast anything before it hits.

[Sahne.6950]

59 minutes ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

Then just raise the cast time to 0.75s (not unreasonable for such a heavy hitter; there's a bigger telegraph) and make the projectile fast, as to remove the interaction with air, because when the skill finishes casting you don't have time to switch to air and cast anything before it hits.

you can switch to air during the cast of Watertrident. You can transition every ele skill into another element. The second you started casting, you can swap and it will not interrupt the cast.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Dreams.3128]

On 1/4/2023 at 7:48 AM, Eugchriss.2046 said:

Dude that whole "X hasn t change since Y" lost any of it value when chaoctic interruption mesmer was litteraly DISABLED not nerfed. It was a litteral one shot. Then renegade which suddenly received massive nerfs complain after 3 years of been trash.

All that to say if you whole argument is "it hasn t been touched since....", you better say nothing at this point.

Hold your horses because if you take ten seconds to realize WHY I said that you'd understand that those specific traits that were listed is not the reason why the build is overperforming. The NEWER changes is most likely the reason and which is why I said to take out the two things that I mention. Water Trident and D-Tooth are probably the culprits. But you wanted to go on a tangent for no reason. 

And here's a fun fact for you:  Chaotic Interruption was one of MANY traits that made mesmer disgusting during its hey day. In fact, I strictly remember these forums being blown up BECAUSE of that trait not being addressed properly which led to the disabling of said trait. 

Renegade was also actually REALLY strong at one point too because, just like ele, they ended up getting MASSIVE buffs similar to this so what are you actually talking about.