Suprise nerf

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

IMO it's actually better to nerf all modifiers, or just delete some. Elem has just too high modifiers, this is ridiculous at some point you just rotate with useless elements and skills only to loop modifiers.

...If they compensate with weapons buff.

[Bleikopf.2491]

12 minutes ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

..If they compensate with weapons buff.

We both know how this will end. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

16 hours ago, Markus.6415 said:

Yeah unfortunately it does make sense. Except that pistol is not new and shiny, it's some patched together decade old scrap material repainted with a glossy finish.

I mean that they want you to buy SotO, so all balance decisions prioritize selling SotO first and making a balanced game second.  

[Sweetbread.3678]

On 3/20/2024 at 2:50 PM, Markus.6415 said:

And yet again, as if Anet is incapable of learning.... nerfing traits for whole specs, when it's ACTUALLY just a new weapon overperforming is beyond my understanding.

Nah the issue was super obviously the traitline. The weapon was only overperforming on Tempest and Tempest's bloated trait modifiers had already got Hammer nerfed for every other spec. Tempest is by far the easiest Ele spec; it basically having +35% damage for simply existing has always dumb, but that kitten became just straight-up absurd once SotO dropped and it started holding Cata and Weaver's weapon choices hostage.

[Emberheart.8426]

57 minutes ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Nah the issue was super obviously the traitline. The weapon was only overperforming on Tempest and Tempest's bloated trait modifiers had already got Hammer nerfed for every other spec. Tempest is by far the easiest Ele spec; it basically having +35% damage for simply existing has always dumb, but that kitten became just straight-up absurd once SotO dropped and it started holding Cata and Weaver's weapon choices hostage.

And here I thought that spec difficulty was irrelevant. At least it seems like it when comparing ele to any other profession.

[rotten.9753]

17 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Ele playerbase cares more about golem dps than actual gameplay....they should rename the class to GolemDPSmancer  to avoid confusion for new players expecting a playable class

This is a brutal hot take but really true: based on https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity it's the least popular class. The class is overcomplicated for no reason except it being its trademark.

[rotten.9753]

2 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Nah the issue was super obviously the traitline. The weapon was only overperforming on Tempest and Tempest's bloated trait modifiers had already got Hammer nerfed for every other spec. Tempest is by far the easiest Ele spec; it basically having +35% damage for simply existing has always dumb, but that kitten became just straight-up absurd once SotO dropped and it started holding Cata and Weaver's weapon choices hostage.

That's not exactly true. Pistol is good on tempest because the dual attacks and bullet mechanic suck on weaver and catalyst is not even a condie spec.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

pistol deals 10% more dps than its next alternatives (hammer, dagger) on condi tempest

pistol only deals around 4% more dps than its next alternatives (scepter, dagger) on condi weaver

pistol has no notable advantage over scepter for condi core/catalyst maybe except for an amusing interaction on core where it replaces crappy autos with dodge rolls (proccing evasive arcana) and condi quick catalyst because pistol breaks out of the fire-only pitfall of scepter (dagger also works but is a notably weaker option)

now if you play condi tempest with anything other than pistol, youll barely do any more than condi catalyst camping fire scepter, while pistol still makes it equal with condi weaver, who also has to take pistol or else it loses

Edited March 23 by Noodle Ant.1605

[Markus.6415]

11 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Nah the issue was super obviously the traitline. The weapon was only overperforming on Tempest and Tempest's bloated trait modifiers had already got Hammer nerfed for every other spec. Tempest is by far the easiest Ele spec; it basically having +35% damage for simply existing has always dumb, but that kitten became just straight-up absurd once SotO dropped and it started holding Cata and Weaver's weapon choices hostage.

Also true, those straigt up damage buffs are always some kind of... cheap approach to balancing. It would me much more interesting to make the overloads actually strong while you channel them, but like it is now, you only want to finish them as fast as possible to get that buff.  Wich makes it even worse when you have no stab and get interrupted.

[Sweetbread.3678]

16 hours ago, rotten.9753 said:

That's not exactly true. Pistol is good on tempest because the dual attacks and bullet mechanic suck on weaver and catalyst is not even a condie spec.

It's not the entirety of the issue, but it's definitely true that having a spec with an innate +35% modifier and a kittenload of condi damage baked into it's espec mechanic is going to inevitably affect the balancing of all of the condi weapon choices it shares with Weaver and Cata. Like we've literally already seen this happen with Hammer so I don't know why anyone's debating it.

7 hours ago, Markus.6415 said:

Also true, those straigt up damage buffs are always some kind of... cheap approach to balancing. It would me much more interesting to make the overloads actually strong while you channel them, but like it is now, you only want to finish them as fast as possible to get that buff.  Wich makes it even worse when you have no stab and get interrupted.

Yeah, I'd argue that Tempest has the worst trait design of the three specs. Honestly, they probably should've shaved the 5% off of Transcendent Tempest, because the only thing balancing out Tempest's modifiers was the risk of Singularity being interrupted. With Tempestuous Aria at only 5% it's now probably a functional dps loss to take it over Harmonious Conduit's interrupt immunity on most fights and that screws with the whole risk/reward paradigm of the entire spec.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

5 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Honestly, they probably should've shaved the 5% off of Transcendent Tempest

it wouldnt have touched condi alac tempest which was also out of line with pistol and wouldve required a ~10% shave regardless to get the numbers they wanted, because the build only has 60% transcendent tempest uptime

[zeyeti.8347]

On 3/22/2024 at 2:36 PM, Arheundel.6451 said:

Ele playerbase cares more about golem dps than actual gameplay....they should rename the class to GolemDPSmancer  to avoid confusion for new players expecting a playable class

héhé it may be an actual joke but there is some truth in it , but let's be real , did any of you didn't expect a nerf after seing 46k , i saw that a 100 miles away , i just was surprised they didn't nerf just the pistol instead of whole tempest , yeah anet wants all tempest players who wants to bench high use the "so fun , very well designed , amazing mechanic" pistol (reverse all the compliment in it's negative way , i was surrounded by a sarcastical cloud there)

What i do not understand is the balance just about numbers , do we have any data of the % of elementalist (who is already low in pve) who use pistol in endgame content , i mean they need to balance about the % and not about how well a class bench on a pinata , the numbers of players who take ele in hard content in pve is so low , like nobody like the actual class design , as a personal experience i only take htemp (the sole ele thing i play) on sabir encounter cause the squad is full of lazy people who don't want to do the tornado mechanic , yep that's the only value i see for ele : rebound , that's his only strong point.... Even in openworld i always see the same answer "go celestial , that's the way ele is ment to be played" , why can't i go full zerk like my herald or necro without being annihilated by a mosquito belch ?

[zeyeti.8347]

On 3/22/2024 at 4:42 PM, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

Elem has just too high modifiers

Really ....  where ? you see some classes having +25% damage 100% of the time and weaver with his poor +7% needing to go full attunement every 8 secs , catalyst needing to do a combo every 4 secs in differents attunements , tempest barely able to upkeep the +25% damage and having his second modifier downed to 5 (the +10% in power damage sucks , tempest is a condi spec) 

You have reaper with +15% crit. chance afk , revenant +25% crit chance under fury ... +25% damage for 10 secs after a dodge ... , engi +15% when hitting a target with lesser hp than you ... berserk with +20 in berserk form (which is now 95% of the time)

I mean , okay some of ele modifiers are big , but they are not easy to obtain , to upkeep and some of them are blocked behind attunements who makes them unable to upkeep , i don't see a problem with a class performing better than the others while this class has much more complexity , do you see any mirage , any holo (maybe now after sword buff , or mech is gonna use it ...) any kind of ele , bladesworn in endgame ? no those classes do not perform better than the others and are more complicated so in many ppl mind it is "why should i play X while Y do the same and require 5 less fingers ".

it's not even a damage problem , look at virtuoso he is maybe 10th in bench dps , but ppl know the class is easy , even if you play with your brain put aside you will perform decently , and you are able to full dps from 0 to 1200 range , take a sword weaver and try to do that ... this is what make me faceplam with anet everytime , they look at golem numbers and balance around that , why don't they look at some high end fights like olc cm and wonder , "hey there is 0 qcatalyst in this fight ... why ? " that's a lazy way to balance , it's easy to look on a snowcrow bench scoreboard and say "oh look this thing is 2 k stronger than the others let's nerf it "... i awlays said snowcrow should fake out bench as an april fool's day , i am pretty sure anet balance patch will balance all around the april fool joke...

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

33 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Really ....  where ? you see some classes having +25% damage 100% of the time and weaver with his poor +7% needing to go full attunement every 8 secs , catalyst needing to do a combo every 4 secs in differents attunements , tempest barely able to upkeep the +25% damage and having his second modifier downed to 5 (the +10% in power damage sucks , tempest is a condi spec) 

*

Yeah . . . that's the point.

[Ragnarox.9601]

But eles are op, but in wvw all I see guards, necros, engies, thieves and revs. When I see lone ele I dont even want to fight him I just wanna enjoy hes presence.

[DaKillaOfHell.5907]

On 3/23/2024 at 8:00 AM, rotten.9753 said:

This is a brutal hot take but really true: based on https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity it's the least popular class. The class is overcomplicated for no reason except it being its trademark.

 

Not only that, but it is one of the very few classes being that hard-dependent on different factors whether it is being good or not in an encounter (with the other one being for instance deadeye). 

95% of encounters being a meh choice and < 5% being an actually extremely good choice makes a class imba... understood.

In the meantime, every average-mech is rolling on the floor laughing about the low dps output of elementalists.

[Jedda.6287]

On 3/22/2024 at 11:03 PM, Markus.6415 said:

No, that's not even close to what i was trying to say. They released the pistol and with the pistol a tempest build emerged with a ridiculous high dps rate you can only achieve when you use the pistol. It's not that high if you use a scepter or a dagger, it is a dps build with the pistol. A sane person might get the conclusion that it maaaaay be the pistol that actually needs some tuning, to make it balanced with the other 900 ranged condi weapon. Instead of nerfing the whole condi tempest.

But i guess.... what's less effort for the balance team to do? Adjust 1 trait or go through a couple of weapon abilities and fumble around with coefficients.

Love my Tempest and not a fan of pistol (it's just a preference thing) albeit admit I have limited time clocked up on that weapon.  I agree with Markus and was/am certainly unhappy with the condition nerf.  I don't understand how this decrease can be considered as balance when I just came out of a Convergence where a Power Reaper was hitting and maintaining 52k (more power and respect to him/her).  But if this Condi Nerf was done to achieve balance then it confuses me greatly.  I absolutely agree, if pistol is the problem then couldn't it have been dealt with in an alternate way that didn't include holding to hostage the entire Tempest Condition build.  It really saddens me.  I just get the feeling when you consider the nerf and the existing healing disparities (compared with other healing builds),  that the Tempest remains forgotten and unloved.  When you consider the hours many players have invested in this class, is it to much to ask for a little consideration?

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 minutes ago, Jedda.6287 said:

Love my Tempest and not a fan of pistol (it's just a preference thing) albeit admit I have limited time clocked up on that weapon.  I agree with Markus and was/am certainly unhappy with the condition nerf.  I don't understand how this decrease can be considered as balance when I just came out of a Convergence where a Power Reaper was hitting and maintaining 52k (more power and respect to him/her).  But if this Condi Nerf was done to achieve balance then it confuses me greatly.  I absolutely agree, if pistol is the problem then couldn't it have been dealt with in an alternate way that didn't include holding to hostage the entire Tempest Condition build.  It really saddens me.  I just get the feeling when you consider the nerf and the existing healing disparities (compared with other healing builds),  that the Tempest remains forgotten and unloved.  When you consider the hours many players have invested in this class, is it to much to ask for a little consideration?

Convergences give you a huge damage buff if you hold onto your collected essence.  You can also use potions and sigils of night and demon slaying to further magnify your damage output far beyond what is possible under normal conditions.  This makes convergences not a particularly useful metric for comparing classes.

[Jedda.6287]

9 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Convergences give you a huge damage buff if you hold onto your collected essence.  You can also use potions and sigils of night and demon slaying to further magnify your damage output far beyond what is possible under normal conditions.  This makes convergences not a particularly useful metric for comparing classes.

Good point.  I play reaper also and have some understanding of the class/build capacity. Being a member of that small squad where boons were not so abundant, and with everything you mentioned I remain impressed (although not so sure about Zojja :D), certainly the above would have helped significantly, but I am not singling out the class more so the existing balance disparities.  The nerf to a build that can and does for various reasons struggle, based on the over performance of one newly introduced weapon seems... harsh to say the least.   It's all very well to say how sad, to bad unless, of course, it impacts one of your favorites in a like manner (and I realize that there are other class's/builds that could benefit from a little consideration).  Perhaps if a more in-depth approach is considered, the line separation of Lucid Singularity and Elemental Bastion as well as an area increase might also be a consideration or is that pushing it?

[Obfuscate.6430]

At this rate the developers should take some time to really get down what they want from this class because from a non golem-attacker, just regular casual person I don't know. They make them squishy, but give them melee weapons, give them multiple elements but only make 1 do the most damage, give you the impression conditions should be their strength but then take it away...

What are they going for? 

[zeyeti.8347]

On 3/27/2024 at 1:17 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Convergences give you a huge damage buff if you hold onto your collected essence.  You can also use potions and sigils of night and demon slaying to further magnify your damage output far beyond what is possible under normal conditions.  This makes convergences not a particularly useful metric for comparing classes.

i had once the awesome idea to play ele in convergence and stack orbs , ended up with  7000 hp and saw a mosquito belch on my ele full hp ... my poor char got obliterated , didn't even go downstate , the damage was so high the game crashed and my ele dissapeared from the char selection.

they really need to at least give the class with 11600 hp based a solid +2500 hp in pve , and if firebrands +250 under quickness vitality feels too strong with that hp added they can nerf it to 100 or even lower.

but ele can heal ? yes like any other class if you spec in now .... this idea is generated from the start of the game 12 years ago ... when it was true , now it's mostly unfairness to this class , and starting the game playing ele for a beginner add a challenge mode , meanwhile my herald with 25 might , fury and quickness afk kill trash and vets in one Gs combo....

this nerf is really to force ppl to play psitol if they want to bench correctly damage , but ppl don't like pistol ! so i can see the % of players leaving ele whole class increasing , trust we will soon hit the global 0% playrate !

[AliamRationem.5172]

20 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

i had once the awesome idea to play ele in convergence and stack orbs , ended up with  7000 hp and saw a mosquito belch on my ele full hp ... my poor char got obliterated , didn't even go downstate , the damage was so high the game crashed and my ele dissapeared from the char selection.

they really need to at least give the class with 11600 hp based a solid +2500 hp in pve , and if firebrands +250 under quickness vitality feels too strong with that hp added they can nerf it to 100 or even lower.

but ele can heal ? yes like any other class if you spec in now .... this idea is generated from the start of the game 12 years ago ... when it was true , now it's mostly unfairness to this class , and starting the game playing ele for a beginner add a challenge mode , meanwhile my herald with 25 might , fury and quickness afk kill trash and vets in one Gs combo....

this nerf is really to force ppl to play psitol if they want to bench correctly damage , but ppl don't like pistol ! so i can see the % of players leaving ele whole class increasing , trust we will soon hit the global 0% playrate !

I just run trailblazer so the health just reduces to baseline but with 3.2k armor.  DPS without the buff is up to 25k on self boons so get some boon support and that mega buff the numbers can get pretty juicy.

[zeyeti.8347]

Just now, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I just run trailblazer so the health just reduces to baseline but with 3.2k armor.  DPS without the buff is up to 25k on self boons so get some boon support and that mega buff the numbers can get pretty juicy.

yeah but if you played scourge you would achieve better dps , could have more survivability and end up with same base life as ele but with viper stuff.

I know it's not all about efficiency , but when i go there with my reaper and end up at 50 k on sorrow with 25 stacks and seeing i have the same life as an ele ... well the choice is pretty easy to pick for me (and not talking about the self quickness who make you not rely on your squad), i don't see any reason why do ele need to build survivability in his armor/weapons/trinkets pieces to not be a liability , like all others class have survivability trough armor, bigger hp or can do damage from afar , for me ele full zerk doesn't feel right , as you said , many ppl will point out trailbrazer comp. and celestial , why no berserker like any other class seems to fit very well even in open world solo.

But well i know you from other forums discussion about ele , and i think you know my view on ele 😁(****************** absolute trash class, to stay polite , but that's my opinion)

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

yeah but if you played scourge you would achieve better dps , could have more survivability and end up with same base life as ele but with viper stuff.

I know it's not all about efficiency , but when i go there with my reaper and end up at 50 k on sorrow with 25 stacks and seeing i have the same life as an ele ... well the choice is pretty easy to pick for me (and not talking about the self quickness who make you not rely on your squad), i don't see any reason why do ele need to build survivability in his armor/weapons/trinkets pieces to not be a liability , like all others class have survivability trough armor, bigger hp or can do damage from afar , for me ele full zerk doesn't feel right , as you said , many ppl will point out trailbrazer comp. and celestial , why no berserker like any other class seems to fit very well even in open world solo.

But well i know you from other forums discussion about ele , and i think you know my view on ele 😁(****************** absolute trash class, to stay polite , but that's my opinion)

 

From what I've seen viper and zerker reapers/scourge don't deal much better damage than trailblazer weaver solo self-buffed.  So it probably isn't that big of a difference.  But I can't argue the point about ele low health and other issues being justified.  It isn't.