PvE Ele balancing and wishes

[DrFlausch.4293]

With the recent patch preview I felt like Anet might have issues identifying what we actually need and why. the change to arcane wave is very nice since now we have a utility spell that we can swap in if more CC is needed, but the other changes centered around PvE felt a little random. Not bad but sort of unimportant, considering we have a group of utilities in conjured weapons, that feel very bad to use in PvE.
As a heads up: I mainly play instanced PvE content, meaning strikes, raids and fractal, with the occasional CM here and there. I have absolutely no experience in WvW and PvP and the state of these game modes and won't adress them at all, but input is still welcomed of course.

First of all I want to talk about the elite specs and their identity in PvE at the moment. For me it seems like both weaver and catalyst fill very similar roles. They are high dps with low utility builds.
there is not really any reason to switch between the two in most game modes. I think I have read somewhere that power weaver has more frontloaded burst than cata, thus making it better suited for fractal CM 98 and 97, but imo this doesn't really give them different identities. Catalyst has more cleave than weaver, but I personally never considered that to be a big enough plus to choose cata over weaver.  Weaver can play both condi and power, while cata has only a power build for competetive damage, making catalyst even less relevant for me. They are also quite close to each other in terms of execution and difficulty, so again, no reason to play cata, since learning weaver simply gives me the option to also play a good condi build.
The only reason to play catalyst is to have a quickness option for elementalist, but I am not a huge fan of the sphere mechanic. its stationary and you need to attack something to generate energy, so whenever there is a phase or some sort of invulnerability, like some strikes, Ai, etc, you have to pretty much stop your rotation, wich can be annoying. 
The problem of weaver and cata being so similar in these game modes is one that I don't really know how to solve, so maybe you guys have some good ideas in that regard.

Now lets talk about tempest.
Tempest has a good damage build for condi and an ok one for power(I might be biased towards the fresh air power tempest since I really enjoy playing it) and it also has both an alac condi and alac power build that are imo fun to use, good and practical, maybe only lacking some CC but I hope this will be fixed with the next balance patch(kinda depends on how long the daze actually is, but either way its better than nothing).
The only Issue that comes up with tempest is the cast time of overload and the danger of being interrupted, but you can use a trait for stab or have your other boon guy help you out with some stab, so this is thechnically a weakness, but there is a solution that is practical and honestly a weakness like that gives the class more of an identity that it being a real flaw. I don't expect my class to be perfect at everything, just viable at everything and i believe Anet agrees with that Idea, since now every class can give both alac and quickness in some way, wich brings me to an Idea that might be a little bit of a hot take, especially if you don't play Ele:
make Elemental Bastion provide quickness in PvE., just give it the chrono treatment.
You can slap this trait on any dps or heal build instead of the alac trait and nothing breaks. you might need some extra ways to apply auras, but thats it.
this trait also fixes some of the Issues I have with heal tempest at the moment.
Heal tempest has a rotaion: stack alac->insane heals->stack alac. if you are overloading, you only have passive heals wich can be very stressful and it feels like you have less control over the encounter. Elemental bastion being viable for boon healers in PvE would fix this and it also gives us a quickheal build, since heal cata has no real utility and struggles with the energy mechanic.
Chrono can heal with either quickness or alac, deal power and to some degree condi damage with either alac or quickness and go full power dps and again to some degree condi dps. Condi chrono is def. not a meta build, but I have seen it used by other players and I would call it viable but I am not a mesmer main and might be wrong here. not that good, but viable, and thats again all I want for my class or even any other class.
Mesmer/ chrono also has  group stab, boonstrip, ranged damage, aegis and some other useful tools and I think thats great. Don't nerf this, but give other classes some similar options.
Boonstrip is usually not very important, but for no pain no gain you def. need it. engi, mesmer, necro and untamed are afaik the only classes that can do that reliably, wich is a bummer. 
maybe give arcane blast some boonstrip(maybe only for PvE), since the spell at the moment  is just dmg and utilities are called that for a reason.

the last issue that comes to mind for me is staff. this is a problem with alot of the weapons and Eles design in generell:
You cannot freely switch between attunmenst as you please, because obviously that would be nuts. but that also means that stuff like cc, heal and boons aren't reactivly usable, wich is a bit of a problem. I would like staff to be a support weapon that can be useful in every element to some degree.
take cc for example: we have air3(even harder to use for weaver) and air 5 and some soft cc with chill in water, but nothing too relevant really. I think it would be ok to have some breakbar damage in every attunment, maybe not in fire if you wanna meet in the middle. in theory you could swap between each element and only use the cc for a huge burst of breakbar damage, but no build would be able to do that without loosing either a good portion of their damage or boon uptime since you are locked out of swapping now.
a two handed support weapon is also the only thing missing exept for maybe a long range weapon, wich could maybe also be done by staff if reworked properly, but i think giving weapons one
specific use if pretty important, not just for ele. there should be a ranged and melee option for power and condi, something that a healer can use and maybe some things in between.
having the different attunments fill these tasks doesn't really work for the content i am playing because rotations exist and the class is obviously balanced around these rotations and their benchmarks.
the new pistol does this right in my opinion, since its a condi weapon. if you wanna deal condi damage you can find a use in every attunment for this task. if i play a condi build with scepter i only use eart and fire. The other elements only see use because of weave self, not because they are actually useful for the build, wich also means that swapping to air for cc means i cant deal condi damage as long as im able to return to either fire or earth. and for power its a similar problem, since I am forced to use attunments for damage and can only use the cc abilities of the rotaion alligns with the breakbar of the boss. Especially encounters like samarog, where you can only deal breakbar damage feel very awkward for this reason.


There are probably more things that need adjustment and maybe some of the things mentioned are just skill issues on my behalf. Im also aware that my lack of PvP and WvW or even open world 
playtime makes this post very specific about the content that I play. Feel free to correct me if you disagree, I am definitly open for criticism.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk



 

[Dadnir.5038]

6 hours ago, DrFlausch.4293 said:

I felt like Anet might have issues identifying what we actually need and why.

I think you are looking at things from the wrong perspective. The main concern of the devs isn't the "need" of the players. 99.9% of the ideas/opinions of the players will be ignored while the 0.1% left will be cooked through their own recipe.

[DrFlausch.4293]

19 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I think you are looking at things from the wrong perspective. The main concern of the devs isn't the "need" of the players. 99.9% of the ideas/opinions of the players will be ignored while the 0.1% left will be cooked through their own recipe.

I can't really agree or disagree with you, since I don't know how Anet interacts with the community in terms of balance if at all, but some of the later bigger patches showed that they atleast have used some input from the community. the fact that they moved boons like alac or quickness from utilities and moved them to elite spec mechanics was something the community wanted, if im not mistaken.
They also adressed feedback for the new weapons.
But in other cases they seem to completely miss the mark and change things in ways that make no sense at all, even though they have inputs from the community they could use,
so again, I can't say you are wrong.
Generally it feels like game balance as a whole is very low on the priority list, considering the amount of cosmetics we get in the gem store and whatnot.
 

[Noodle Ant.1605]

things are hardly properly balanced for the very top percentile. unless the balance devs actively participate in speedy, non-casual runs and know bascially know the profession inside out, its mostly a guessing game as to the changes they can make

weaver vs catalyst: with the exception of quick/alac support, especs are no longer designed around any specific role. the lack of utility is mostly caused by eles strict dps rotations as well as outdated skill effects, because eles utility has always been baked into its weapon skills

in terms of dps (particularly power dps), many especs hardly feel unique anymore because current balance favours high amounts of straight-up damage increasing traits over the unique skills/interactions especs bring. profession mechanics are largely relegated for trait procs, and then the main bulk of dmg comes from buffed common weapon skills that are no longer unique due to weaponmaster training. in this case, weaver would be immediately different if it actually pursued using its dual skills, tempest its overloads and catalyst charging its spheres (or something like that)

anyways, there is an existing fundamental difference: power weaver is stupidly reliant on external boon support while catalyst has proper solo potential

tempest: overloads were ok before back when the game played differently. now there are high-damage ranged builds with non-existent skill animation commitments and players are gradually losing responsibility over their own healthbar because healers are expected to constantly blast them with heals and barriers

the relic of karakosa was likely an attempt to bring heal tempest up to par, but it seems like they overestimated the blast capability of ele doing its heal rotation while underestimating the other professions that didnt even need it. with the direction that balance is going in, ele will eventually need either more healing or crazy barrier spam outside of water and blasting fields

ele weapons: mainly a case of outdated skill effects/game taking on new standards. eles are still expected to combo in fields that may or may not exist, while other professions are allowed to casually generate group boons with far less effort involved. the amount of times the game throws breakbars at players now doesnt reflect the past when groups planned around bringing cc (eles were known not to bring much or was situational). then ofc eles breakbar damage hardly reflects the sacrifice in using it

i am personally indifferent to pistols attunement design. evidently, cycling through attunements has always been double edged sword and i think there is merit in having both weapons/builds that attunement-cycle and ones that camp an attunement so they can switch on demand