Elementalist - Whats the real problem?

[Sahne.6950]

This Thread is not supposed to be a discussion thread, i would love a small and dense list of problems. I would like to ask you guys to, as short as possible, summarize where exactly you see the problem with Elementalist currently.

I will start:

 

1. Dtooth 2.0 Coeff is a bit over the top, for how reliable it is.   suggestion: -> 1,7 coeff and burn duration down.
2. Earthsphere(4 seconds) + Rockbarrier(4 seconds) grant too much resistance, previously chill and especially weakness would shutdown any FA or ele build in general, with the ammount of resistance available, this is no longer true. -> reduced the duration for both skills down to 3 seconds.
3. Fortified Earth cooldown reduction in Earthsphere, makes this skill available too much, the barrier ontop is also overkill.  -> remove the barrier. remove the cooldown reduction. When Fortified Earth is cast in Earthsphere, it will grant the barrier and 3 seconds of protection after the channel is completed.
4. Air 3 being a ammoskill -> reduce the recharge to 8 seconds, but take away the ammo.
5. Catalyst elite resetting defensive skills. ->  either: Catalyst elite reduces the  Cooldown of skills by 50%.  or: Catalyst elite no longer reduces the cooldown of utilityskills.
6. Staunch Auras stability is too unpredictable. Anyone that hasnt played Cata themselves or has alot of experience with ele, has no chance to see the stabiltiy coming, making even the attempt at CCing a cata a big gamble for unexperienced players. -> it needs an ICD so its predictable! increase the duration of the Stabistack back up to 3 seconds, but add a 5 second ICD. This way there ALWAYS is a 2 second window after the stability has run out, where they wont have any.  currently you can maintain permastab on cata, even with the 2 second duration   !!!!! When implementing this, the eles need a way to tell if the trait is ready or not otherwise eles all around the globe will burn auras, thinking the trait is ready altho only 4,8 seconds have passed!!!!! something similar to attunement symbol that ele already has on his statusbar. When staunchauras is ready the elemental icon could have a yellow outline or something.  This gives clear windows, that even new players can understand, where the Catalyst is actually vulnerable to CC.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

What I'm going to point out is more on the mechanical side of things, from the perspective of a Ranger main. Keep in mind these things apply while running either power or condi:

1. I have to choose whether to attack or to defend, I cannot attack and defend at the same time. The Ele on the other hand, can come at me with a lot of front loaded passive defenses running and attack me while it sits in defenses. The Ele's ICDs on these defenses feel a lot shorter than they should be to the point that there is almost never a clear opening to precision play counter-offense the Ele. It results in me trying to close the gap to get in at the Ele with melee because it's usually the only way to hit the Ele. During this phase of closing the gap, he can hit me, but I can't hit him.
2. Why can't I hit him? Because he will have nearly 100% uptime of anti-projectile fields & effects. My ranged is counted as projectile, but his ranged is all channeling. If I try to fire at him while closing the gap, 90% chance it does nothing and during that time he's plowing me with channeled effects. This means I have to burn a bunch of my defensive CDs to even be able to get near the Ele. By the time I engage it, I'm already low on CDs to use. When I am using those CDs to get to the Ele, I cannot offense while defensing, so essentially he is getting this free phase of landing a ton of DPS on me and burning out my CDs before I can even engage it.
3. Once I've engaged the Ele on top of his head, he has too much Stability. It's just too much Stability to deal with for a class that really relies on needing to land its CCs as an offensive way of being defensive. Due to all of that Stab the Ele has, it is ridiculously difficult to stop up his DPSing and create any opening for a burst. Furthermore, he has unblockable CCs that interrupt my phases of defensing like with Greatsword, and he also has passive CCs from Shock Aura which also deny any openings I may be able to create for a burst. The Shock Aura also ruin the use of Lightning Reflexes because of the small damage on LR, which triggers the Shock Aura CC and keeps you stuck in place with no movement and automatically forces you back into another CC when you've tried to use a stun break. The Ele of course also has an enormous amount of consistent high DPS pressure that is extremely reliable for it to land, where as my DPS options must be executed with the utmost of trickery, patience, and outskilling the Ele to even be able to land that damage. It all adds up to a situation where if both players are of generally equal level, let's say it's P2+ players, the Ele just bullies the Ranger and there isn't anything you can do about it but attempt to kite away and bait the Ele into a +.
4. The Ele has too much chase potential between the air swap Super Speed, Lightning Flash, and the ranged channels & DT. Like I'll be running a maximum mobility Soulbeast with Gazelle F2, GS#3, Quick Zephyr even, and I can't get away from the Ele. Even if I can survive, I can't actually shake the Ele. This is largely because of all the proj reflect, so you can rarely ever turn and hit with a LB#3 for stealth to get that detarget and reposition. And the Ele isn't just "keeping up" with you, no they will be able to continuously fully catch back up to you and force you into melee range, and this has a lot to do with the unblockable CCs stopping you up and how LR triggers the Shock Aura which essentially negates the use of LR.

Your question was "What is the real problem?" Well, when I really stop and evaluate it like this, and keep in mind I am referencing higher tiered play like P2+ teams in ATs, I could sum this up with a couple simple statement:

1. As a Ranger, there simply is no counter-play against the best versions of these new Ele builds if the Ele sees you coming and is ready for you. There is no meaningful way to engage/interact with it, you're not going to kill it unless the Ele fumbles largely, you're not going to hold against it, and you can't shake it while trying to disengage. It's like the only counter-play to these builds is to avoid them and only ever engage them during a +.
2. There are three main things that allow Ele to mechanically bully the Ranger. 1) Way too much projectile reflect. 2) Too much Stability. 3) Too much mobility. - After evaluating this like this, I can see that it isn't even really the Ele's DPS that is the problem for Ranger. It's the super air tight defenses & kiting/chase potential that's the real problem. <- This is what shuts out counterplay.

If I had my pick of nerfs, it would definitely involve lowering the amount of anti-projectile uptime, lowering amount of stab it gets, and lowering if not removing the super speed it gets from air.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Trevor Boyer.6524, not that I play sword/dagger on my ranger when I play her, but wouldn't a condi focused Soulbeast have several evades to attack and defend at the same time with such a build in that matchup?

[Disney.7826]

LOL u want to destroy Ele forever just beacause one build.

 

Fresh air 2s ICD.

 

Elemental Celerity 3/4s cast time. Recharge occurs when the cast ends. Should the skill be interrupted by attacks or by the user themselves, it always goes on a full recharge, and no recharge will occur.

 

Deploy Jade Sphere from 10s to 15s CD. 
 

@Trevor Boyer.6524TL;DR bs as always. If something kills you, its not necessarily OP and not necessarily counters u. They are maybe just better than you. Weird thing, u did never complain about anything like Ranger being OP. Just 8 other classes are broken.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Filip.7463

[ArthurDent.9538]

Rarely ever 1 specific problem, in general it's just too good at offense and defense simultaneously and there are countless ways to tune either down.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

8 minutes ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

Rarely ever 1 specific problem, in general it's just too good at offense and defense simultaneously and there are countless ways to tune either down.

Elite refreshes X seconds of weapon skills, instead of 100%.

Make it 15s, IDK, 20, whatever, that's balancing, you name it.
Skill 2,3 on all attunements are fully recharged; skill 4 and 5 are partially recharged. This way you can't chain double obsidian flesh, double gale, double whatever. You still get value, you keep identity of the skill\specialization, you just don't get to be a total degenerate chaining a gazillion defensive skills while the instacasts on scepter still deal damage.

Because the elite skill is the only big difference between cata and weaver; a field with some boons is good, but it doesn't turn you from C tier to S tier.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Terrorhuz.4695

[Disney.7826]

2 minutes ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

Elite refreshes X seconds of weapon skills, instead of 100%.

Make it 15s, IDK, 20, whatever, that's balancing, you name it.
Skill 2,3 on all attunements are fully recharged; skill 4 and 5 are partially recharged. This way you can't chain double obsidian flesh, double gale, double whatever. You still get value, you don't destroy the identity of the skill\specialization, you just don't get to be totally degenerate.

It could be 80%, just so he cant use earth focus 5 one by another

and longer cast time, 1/4 is like insta, cant cc

maybe 90s cd like in wvw

Edited January 26, 2023 by Filip.7463

[Terrorhuz.4695]

2 minutes ago, Filip.7463 said:

It could be 80%, just so he cant use earth focus 5 one by another

and longer cast time, 1/4 is like insta, cant cc

For these kind of skills I dislike the concept of percentage recharge (I say the same about Signet of Illusions for mesmer, just to be sure). Want to chain offensive pressure, it's good to me, you're investing a considerable amount of cooldowns to do that and it can convert into a kill. But when you get all of that offensive pressure on top of recharging all of your defensive cooldowns too is too much. I don't have problem with things dealing damage, I have a problem with things surviving way too long, and that's the situation for scepter cata. It's supposed to be glassy, but with all the bs it can pull out it just doesn't die.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Terrorhuz.4695

[voltaicbore.8012]

42 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524, not that I play sword/dagger on my ranger when I play her, but wouldn't a condi focused Soulbeast have several evades to attack and defend at the same time with such a build in that matchup?

I play sword dagger, and pretty much the only pure attack+evade is dagger 4. Sword 2 has an attack+evade on the flip, but requires you to leap close enough to the target that you can make use of the flip (leaping right onto the cata works too... at the risk of eating all the nasty that the cata has in store for you).

The real "attack+defend" for my build comes from traps, and that requires the cata to actually step in them. Thankfully I don't run the spike trap, but instead run several immobs, so I can force the ele to eat some condi stacks and burn a few cds (or maybe even disengage slightly). However, ele in general has so many tools that it doesn't seem to matter. My only hope is that either the cata is bad, or I can entice them off point long enough for help to show up.

Usually I just have to leave.

[Sahne.6950]

*cough* smokeassault*cough*

Stop theorycrafting... its right there 😄

But its not coming close to the levels that ele has... so lets stop here and return to ele.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Disney.7826]

13 minutes ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

For these kind of skills I dislike the concept of percentage recharge (I say the same about Signet of Illusions for mesmer, just to be sure). Want to chain offensive pressure, it's good to me, you're investing a considerable amount of cooldowns to do that and it can convert into a kill. But when you get all of that offensive pressure on top of recharging all of your defensive cooldowns too is too much. I don't have problem with things dealing damage, I have a problem with things surviving way too long, and that's the situation for scepter cata. It's supposed to be glassy, but with all the bs it can pull out it just doesn't die.

But we dont want completely destroy the class forever.

Anyway, no devs read this so we can type BS.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Filip.7463

[Disney.7826]

22 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

I play sword dagger, and pretty much the only pure attack+evade is dagger 4. Sword 2 has an attack+evade on the flip, but requires you to leap close enough to the target that you can make use of the flip (leaping right onto the cata works too... at the risk of eating all the nasty that the cata has in store for you).

The real "attack+defend" for my build comes from traps, and that requires the cata to actually step in them. Thankfully I don't run the spike trap, but instead run several immobs, so I can force the ele to eat some condi stacks and burn a few cds (or maybe even disengage slightly). However, ele in general has so many tools that it doesn't seem to matter. My only hope is that either the cata is bad, or I can entice them off point long enough for help to show up.

Usually I just have to leave.

Ur build is braindead garb, thats why it cant kill

Edited January 26, 2023 by Filip.7463

[RedAvenged.5217]

39 minutes ago, Filip.7463 said:

LOL u want to destroy Ele forever just beacause one build.

 

Fresh air 2s ICD.

 

Elemental Celerity 3/4s cast time. Recharge occurs when the cast ends. Should the skill be interrupted by attacks or by the user themselves, it always goes on a full recharge, and no recharge will occur.

 

Deploy Jade Sphere from 10s to 15s CD. 
 

@Trevor Boyer.6524TL;DR bs as always. If something kills you, its not necessarily OP and not necessarily counters u. They are maybe just better than you. Weird thing, u did never complain about anything like Ranger being OP. Just 8 other classes are broken.

Probably because ranger isn’t op and whenever it has a strong build it gets nerfed instantly and the class becomes C-teir.

 

everything on ranger is complete kitten rn except untamed which is ok, but not even in the realm of ele, war, engineer or even thief.

 

it’s been that way for quite a few years

[Sahne.6950]

1 minute ago, Filip.7463 said:

Ur build is braindead garb, thats why it cant ki

can you stop flooding this thread with L2P-insults? Just use the Confused button, like i will do on your post. ty.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Disney.7826]

Just now, RedAvenged.5217 said:

Probably because ranger isn’t op and whenever it has a strong build it gets nerfed instantly and the class becomes C-teir.

 

everything on ranger is complete kitten rn except untamed which is ok, but not even in the realm of ele, war, engineer or even thief.

 

it’s been that way for quite a few years

Id say untamed farms cata, but Trevor plays core trapper…

[Disney.7826]

1 minute ago, Sahne.6950 said:

can you stop flooding this thread with L2P-insults? ty.

No because u are making false claims.

[Sahne.6950]

7 minutes ago, Filip.7463 said:

No because u are making false claims.

your a bit lost, are you...?  your talking to the wrong guy m8... 😆

i will once again ask you to keep it on the topic and stop flooding the thread with your L2P comments.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[RedAvenged.5217]

Just now, Filip.7463 said:

Id say untamed farms cata, but Trevor plays core trapper…

Untamed is completely countered by cata.

 

trevor doesn’t play core traps, I played that in plat3+ back before Eod. It was strong then but I was only good player on it

[Disney.7826]

4 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

i said nothing you dumbo xD your talking to the wrong guy m8... your a bit lost are you? 

i will once again ask you to keep it on the topic and stop flooding the thread with your L2P stuff.

U replied to my reply to stop saying l2p so who would i reply to?

 

8 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

can you stop flooding this thread with L2P-insults? Just use the Confused button, like i will do on your post. ty.

Ure the one lost lol

 

U want to destroy entire class cuz one build. Bec of u devs dont read forum

[Sahne.6950]

or maybe they dont read it, because of people that take a constructive thread and just type L2P to everyone involved....🤔

Your picking on peoples Ranger build in a thread about ele.... you see what i mean!?

You said, that Untamed is farming Catalyst... every inch of my body wants to type that you are either heavily biased or just plain blind... but i didnt do it.... cuz it leads nowhere. 

Try it next time.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[asket.5674]

S/f Catas are so telegraphed they are not that hard to counter. yall  complainers must be high high plat bc 99% are just fodder, but somehow i doubt that. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, Sahne.6950 said:

*cough* smokeassault*cough*

Stop theorycrafting... its right there 😄

But its not coming close to the levels that ele has... so lets stop here and return to ele.

I did say Soulbeast for a reason 😉

[Khalisto.5780]

Problem is 80% catalyst 20% scepter, you nerf scepter without touch cata, they just go back to hammer and stay very strong, FA weaver wasn't a build you could spam every match before scepter buff. Scepter tempest  is at best an A tier build.

Prolly a +cd -dmg nerf on DT would be enough for scepter, cata issues seem to be related to energy generation and stab spam, once you nerf energy generation to a healthy level you also nerf the stab spam indirectly.

[Spellhunter.9675]

58 minutes ago, Filip.7463 said:

Id say untamed farms cata, but Trevor plays core trapper…

 

58 minutes ago, Filip.7463 said:

u are making false claims.

Funny

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

problem is perma boons+auras