Its time to increase base hp

[asket.5674]

There is no reason to keep it that low, while other classes have greater burst potential and are far more tankier. This low base hp is a residuum from aeons ago. 

[Yasai.3549]

Anet agrees and that's why Repair anvils now boost Health and Toughness for all classes when you interact with them, in all game modes. This change was implemented long time ago. 

[asket.5674]

34 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

Anet agrees and that's why Repair anvils now boost Health and Toughness for all classes when you interact with them, in all game modes. This change was implemented long time ago. 

Haha as this affects every class,  the gap between ele and all other classes persists. Its also not affecting spvp and in wvw its just 1%. 

Edited May 12 by asket.5674

[zeyeti.8347]

23 minutes ago, asket.5674 said:

Haha as this affects every class,  the gap between ele and all other classes persists. Its also not affecting spvp and in wvw its just 1%. 

you know what's the best part it's +5% armor and hp max so classes with 11600 based are again in disavantage from classes with 16000 and 19000 hp because this is how maths works.... same for jade drone vitality , you now can have +- 14000 hp while you have abberation like a full zerk reaper with +22000 hp based , laughable .... no need for clelestial stats you have in build sustain , meanwhile ele have to go water arcane and whatever useless e-spec with full celestial , hit like a wet noodle to have the same survivability as a full zerk reaper , meanwhile the dmg of the reaper vs the celestial ele is comparing a grizzly chopping your head off to hamster trying to eat your foot nail.

it's simply frustrating , everytime i was down as ele in raids my mind was pretty clear : if you played any other class who had more than 11600 hp you wouldn't have all your team to press F over and over again cause you thought ele was cool , meta and you saw snowcrow benchers doing 45k with it...

[Bladestrom.6425]

1 hour ago, Yasai.3549 said:

Anet agrees and that's why Repair anvils now boost Health and Toughness for all classes when you interact with them, in all game modes. This change was implemented long time ago. 

As other have said anvil gives a % boost, so Anet did not in fact agree since Anvil rather stupidly gives a bigger boost to heavy Armor classes over light Armor classes.

[Codename T.2847]

Hell no, do you really want to see buncha cele signet Catas/Tempests or Sword Weavers running around with 28k hp? Omnivore cele D/D Catalysts with 28k? Or glass cannon FA oneshot weavers with more than 17k? It would be too much.

You can already reach numbers like this with meme stats like Sentinel or Shaman's, but with the understandable tradeoff of doing 0 damage. (reminds me of my full shaman Specter build, which is just a kind-of damagesponge while main function is being barrier bot. I can do NOTHING beyond that, can't fight 1v1 without making enemy run away from boredom, for example xD) 

Before you say "ohh but Reaper and Spellbreaker both have tons of health while having big damage! " No they don't, if you want to do good for yourself you run those with full zerker, or maybe with some marauder mix, so you actually have damage and the important crit cap. This way you have maybe 19-21k HP but that's nothing too crazy considering

A.) how little active defenses you have on Reaper, you only rely on smart kiting and damage sponging in shroud to smaller extent. (I would've said they are slow too but that's not really true anymore) 

B.) Warrior/Spellbreaker is a full melee class and 'bruiser' archetype, kinda like grapplers in fighting games, so they can and should have high base health, since they have literally no good ranged weps. This also complements some of their traits in Defense which encourage trading hits to maintain good adrenaline. 

TLDR: No. You can already get about 18k HP on ele with mara stuff (I imagine similar numbers with Mara amulet in PvP) and do just about great damage still. Just remember, ele is all about using active defenses, blocks, evades or invulns smartly, and they designed it with this in mind; and not to just be a damage sponge like Spellbreakers/Stance Zerkers or Reapers (neither of which usually end up running with more than 21k HP neither [in WvW]

 

Edited May 12 by Codename T.2847
Le grammar

[asket.5674]

1 hour ago, Codename T.2847 said:

Hell no, do you really want to see buncha cele signet Catas/Tempests or Sword Weavers running around with 28k hp? Omnivore cele D/D Catalysts with 28k? Or glass cannon FA oneshot weavers with more than 17k? It would be too much.

You can already reach numbers like this with meme stats like Sentinel or Shaman's, but with the understandable tradeoff of doing 0 damage. (reminds me of my full shaman Specter build, which is just a kind-of damagesponge while main function is being barrier bot. I can do NOTHING beyond that, can't fight 1v1 without making enemy run away from boredom, for example xD) 

Before you say "ohh but Reaper and Spellbreaker both have tons of health while having big damage! " No they don't, if you want to do good for yourself you run those with full zerker, or maybe with some marauder mix, so you actually have damage and the important crit cap. This way you have maybe 19-21k HP but that's nothing too crazy considering

A.) how little active defenses you have on Reaper, you only rely on smart kiting and damage sponging in shroud to smaller extent. (I would've said they are slow too but that's not really true anymore) 

B.) Warrior/Spellbreaker is a full melee class and 'bruiser' archetype, kinda like grapplers in fighting games, so they can and should have high base health, since they have literally no good ranged weps. This also complements some of their traits in Defense which encourage trading hits to maintain good adrenaline. 

TLDR: No. You can already get about 18k HP on ele with mara stuff (I imagine similar numbers with Mara amulet in PvP) and do just about great damage still. Just remember, ele is all about using active defenses, blocks, evades or invulns smartly, and they designed it with this in mind; and not to just be a damage sponge like Spellbreakers/Stance Zerkers or Reapers (neither of which usually end up running with more than 21k HP neither [in WvW]

 

Thats just pure  exaggeration; 1-2k more basehealth would  be enough and helping alot.  Why is mesmer aloud to have highEr basehealth and active defense mechanisms? This post is just hypocrisy. Alone the part about warrior. SPB a dmg sponge with gap closer,  active defense mechanisms and big burst potential. Lol what a biased view.

[Codename T.2847]

29 minutes ago, asket.5674 said:

Thats just pure  exaggeration; 1-2k more basehealth would  be enough and helping alot.  Why is mesmer aloud to have highEr basehealth and active defense mechanisms? This post is just hypocrisy. Alone the part about warrior. SPB a dmg sponge with gap closer,  active defense mechanisms and big burst potential. Lol what a biased view.

Oh, my bad, I wrote allthat with the assumption that you want to put it to Necro level base health, which would be ridiculous. xD 

On that note though, if I assume you mean Mesmers for example under "why do they have more HP with more burst potential?" that self proclaimed 'more HP' part is barely if ever noticeable. If you cut on the game right now, and go on mesmer with lvl 80 ascended gear and get yourself some marauder stuff, you will end up hovering at, or around, 22k HP or so. Now if you've ever played mesmer you know that while it might seem better than Ele's 18-19k with same setup, but it's really not a lot more in the grand scheme of things, with how fast things kill nowadays. I think that the part about Mesmer having better/more active defense mechanisms is a bit questionable though, i mean for God's sake Ele has a frickin invuln skill on focus, a buncha blocks with arcane shield and final shielding, a mist form stunbreak that you can take also, mist form in downed state (going behind gate after dying, anyone?), channeled blocks with Catalyst, channeled block and stationary invuln with Earth Shield...

Meanwhile Mesmer has what? Shield 4 which you can just notice and not hit into, F4 which most players typically use as the "oh sh*t I'm CC-d but don't have my stunbreaks up" button, Stealth from elite skill or torch 4 (which they use to either cast healing skill, jump on someone, or run away), and a few detargets on Mirage. Now it can be argued that Virtu has the best of both worlds defensively, because it still retains original invuln from F4 (and a slot skill), while also having a bunch of aegis from the must have traits and, up until recently, also had channeled block for F5. But that's just thanks to EoD classes bloat in general, core mesmer or Chrono are kitten defensively in comparison, therefore they must have big kitten damage with 2 or all 3 offensive traits and operate under the "kill or be killed" rule more than any other class which can cheese stuff.

[asket.5674]

2 hours ago, Codename T.2847 said:

Oh, my bad, I wrote allthat with the assumption that you want to put it to Necro level base health, which would be ridiculous. xD 

On that note though, if I assume you mean Mesmers for example under "why do they have more HP with more burst potential?" that self proclaimed 'more HP' part is barely if ever noticeable. If you cut on the game right now, and go on mesmer with lvl 80 ascended gear and get yourself some marauder stuff, you will end up hovering at, or around, 22k HP or so. Now if you've ever played mesmer you know that while it might seem better than Ele's 18-19k with same setup, but it's really not a lot more in the grand scheme of things, with how fast things kill nowadays. I think that the part about Mesmer having better/more active defense mechanisms is a bit questionable though, i mean for God's sake Ele has a frickin invuln skill on focus, a buncha blocks with arcane shield and final shielding, a mist form stunbreak that you can take also, mist form in downed state (going behind gate after dying, anyone?), channeled blocks with Catalyst, channeled block and stationary invuln with Earth Shield...

Meanwhile Mesmer has what? Shield 4 which you can just notice and not hit into, F4 which most players typically use as the "oh sh*t I'm CC-d but don't have my stunbreaks up" button, Stealth from elite skill or torch 4 (which they use to either cast healing skill, jump on someone, or run away), and a few detargets on Mirage. Now it can be argued that Virtu has the best of both worlds defensively, because it still retains original invuln from F4 (and a slot skill), while also having a bunch of aegis from the must have traits and, up until recently, also had channeled block for F5. But that's just thanks to EoD classes bloat in general, core mesmer or Chrono are kitten defensively in comparison, therefore they must have big kitten damage with 2 or all 3 offensive traits and operate under the "kill or be killed" rule more than any other class which can cheese stuff.

Demanding necro base hp would be cocky af. 
and i think though, that those 1-2k more hp would make a huge difference. I already recognize it now building for slightly more hp, with getting more time to react, especially in pvp modes. 
 

i agree ele has a lot of options for  active defenses, but slotting them all would severely cripple your build. To stay competitive most ele builds do not have more slotted than any other avg build.

[zeyeti.8347]

We are just saying that in pve this low hp and armor is for no purpose at all , ofc in pvp and wvw your ele build shines out from versatility , but in pve regards people like more having strong armor and huge health pool based than to have to get rid off some of your dps traits and slot in survivability (like celestial) into armor.

this is how pve endgame work , you have one role -> dps , you dps , nobody is gonna care you heal yourself by 1500 hp each time you go to water , you have a healer who care about that for you , but what people are gonna care is your kitten low dps who will make them feel you are leeching , it will be the case if you run ele survival with arcane and water or if you slot in marauder stuff (not reaching 100% crit. chance and no condi dmg for a condi build... and trailbrazer c'mon , you really think you could keep up in trailbrazer against a pure viper or zerk ?)

I am not joking on the ele state in pve endgame , people runaway from ele for a good reason and one of those reason (they are plenty) is discused in this forum , his super low survivability when you play in endgame is how you are supposed to play it (berserker/viper with either fire/air/e-spec or replace air with earth for condi).

All other classes have build in survivability trough large hp pool (ele with drone and armor is +- 14000 hp necro with all that is 22000hp ...) or sustain like virtuoso life leech trough bleeding, ele to have that have to get rid off a big chunk of damage.

Say whatever you want but numbers don't lie https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity , each class (except for fractals) has at least one e-spec who is basically represented in endgame , the only one with ele who struggle is thief but is still more often played than ele , only ele is below 2% in all his e-spec and as you can see from previous patches it never shined for whole 6 years -> anet don't know how to balance it , so ele is leaved in a rotten state in pve waiting for any buff who will be nerfed the week after... just becausee 1 guy in snowcrow benched 2k too far from the "anet bench limit" , i say it again , snowcrow should fake off benches ,i am pretty sure they can manipulate anet to do nerfs/buffs.

Edited May 14 by zeyeti.8347

[Codename T.2847]

On 5/14/2024 at 10:21 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

We are just saying that in pve this low hp and armor is for no purpose at all , ofc in pvp and wvw your ele build shines out from versatility , but in pve regards people like more having strong armor and huge health pool based than to have to get rid off some of your dps traits and slot in survivability (like celestial) into armor.

this is how pve endgame work , you have one role -> dps , you dps , nobody is gonna care you heal yourself by 1500 hp each time you go to water , you have a healer who care about that for you , but what people are gonna care is your kitten low dps who will make them feel you are leeching , it will be the case if you run ele survival with arcane and water or if you slot in marauder stuff (not reaching 100% crit. chance and no condi dmg for a condi build... and trailbrazer c'mon , you really think you could keep up in trailbrazer against a pure viper or zerk ?)

I am not joking on the ele state in pve endgame , people runaway from ele for a good reason and one of those reason (they are plenty) is discused in this forum , his super low survivability when you play in endgame is how you are supposed to play it (berserker/viper with either fire/air/e-spec or replace air with earth for condi).

All other classes have build in survivability trough large hp pool (ele with drone and armor is +- 14000 hp necro with all that is 22000hp ...) or sustain like virtuoso life leech trough bleeding, ele to have that have to get rid off a big chunk of damage.

Say whatever you want but numbers don't lie https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity , each class (except for fractals) has at least one e-spec who is basically represented in endgame , the only one with ele who struggle is thief but is still more often played than ele , only ele is below 2% in all his e-spec and as you can see from previous patches it never shined for whole 6 years -> anet don't know how to balance it , so ele is leaved in a rotten state in pve waiting for any buff who will be nerfed the week after... just becausee 1 guy in snowcrow benched 2k too far from the "anet bench limit" , i say it again , snowcrow should fake off benches ,i am pretty sure they can manipulate anet to do nerfs/buffs.

Yea, well I couldn't care less about endgame PvE,as I only really play Tempest healer which has little to no issues. Ideally tho, if people made enough noise, Anet would find a way to split HPs between gamemodes, so that DHs and Weavers wouldn't die in endgame after being farted on while healer is not paying attention, but meanwhile Ele wouldn't get too out of control in PvP/WvW.

This will never happen though, but one can dream xD Adding jade bot modules was already a step in this good direction they just didn't really follow up on it^^

Edited May 15 by Codename T.2847

[zeyeti.8347]

3 hours ago, Codename T.2847 said:

Yea, well I couldn't care less about endgame PvE,as I only really play Tempest healer which has little to no issues. Ideally tho, if people made enough noise, Anet would find a way to split HPs between gamemodes, so that DHs and Weavers wouldn't die in endgame after being farted on while healer is not paying attention, but meanwhile Ele wouldn't get too out of control in PvP/WvW.

This will never happen though, but one can dream xD Adding jade bot modules was already a step in this good direction they just didn't really follow up on it^^

little to no issue if you are with a squad who knows how to deal with mechanics , i do some raids with trainee and when half of your squad get bonked around by samarog 1 hit out of two you gonna struggle keeping them out of being impaled by playing tempest heal , as stab and aegis are not often accessible as ele.

And i think any other meta healer is a better healer than ele , everyone of them has solid adavantge while as ele i can only see "rebound" to be very unique , the rest is average booning average healing and average condi cleanse , any other meta healer is better in one of those domain than tempest 

reanimation :  ofc healscourge 

barrier : healscourge again/revenat 

Aegis/stab : chrono/hfb/ rev with dwarf road and aegis on a 15 sec cd

Raw long distance healing : chrono/druid

Ele can play staff , oke then ppl need to stay in your tiny fire overlaod to expect have some might (no struggle IF you have a herald paired), can he give specific boons like resistance ? no, does he have barrier ? no , reanimation ? yes a glyph on a  90 sec cd... and a water spring who looks like a toilet flush against a hscg , best average and burst healing ? no , druid is far better and chrono with rifle plus clever use of continuum split has amazing burst healing and constant healing and it's not soothing water going from 10 to 6 secondes depending on the timing you leave water 

Numbers don't lie , tempest is below 2% playrate while you have 3 options of gameplay being healalac , alacdps and dps and even with these 3 options it's the bottom feeder as a multi tool class, i have played all healer possible of the game (meta) and it's with the tempest i feel the weakest the squishiest and the less efficient and apparently i am not alone.

But again if you are specific about it in pvp and wvw i cannot argue in these domains.

[Codename T.2847]

16 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

little to no issue if you are with a squad who knows how to deal with mechanics , i do some raids with trainee and when half of your squad get bonked around by samarog 1 hit out of two you gonna struggle keeping them out of being impaled by playing tempest heal , as stab and aegis are not often accessible as ele.

And i think any other meta healer is a better healer than ele , everyone of them has solid adavantge while as ele i can only see "rebound" to be very unique , the rest is average booning average healing and average condi cleanse , any other meta healer is better in one of those domain than tempest 

reanimation :  ofc healscourge 

barrier : healscourge again/revenat 

Aegis/stab : chrono/hfb/ rev with dwarf road and aegis on a 15 sec cd

Raw long distance healing : chrono/druid

Ele can play staff , oke then ppl need to stay in your tiny fire overlaod to expect have some might (no struggle IF you have a herald paired), can he give specific boons like resistance ? no, does he have barrier ? no , reanimation ? yes a glyph on a  90 sec cd... and a water spring who looks like a toilet flush against a hscg , best average and burst healing ? no , druid is far better and chrono with rifle plus clever use of continuum split has amazing burst healing and constant healing and it's not soothing water going from 10 to 6 secondes depending on the timing you leave water 

Numbers don't lie , tempest is below 2% playrate while you have 3 options of gameplay being healalac , alacdps and dps and even with these 3 options it's the bottom feeder as a multi tool class, i have played all healer possible of the game (meta) and it's with the tempest i feel the weakest the squishiest and the less efficient and apparently i am not alone.

But again if you are specific about it in pvp and wvw i cannot argue in these domains.

Honestly, Heal Tempest is just a well rounded, perfectly fine way to play Ele, floating atop a sea of brokenness, where other healers really don't require as much player imput to be effective. (Exception being maybe Scrapper or Specter, but you don't see anyone playing those either xD) It sucks, and I wish it was better, but it's not Tempest's fault at the end of the day ;_; That being said tho, I still enjoy playing Tempest in Fractals and Strikes (I don't really engage in dead Raids anymore) and I'm having a comparatively easy time, although it might just be because of my 3k hours on the class itself xD For WvW however, I've given up on heal tempest, partly because of the server I'm on persecuting anyone who uses it in zergs, no matter how good x) But yeah, the wheels keep on turning.

[Dadnir.5038]

On 5/14/2024 at 10:21 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

Say whatever you want but numbers don't lie https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity 

This site give you a glimpse of what hardcore raiders play as only those players feed such site with data. Said hardcore raiders could probably go through all the raid wings with any profession and any build but mostly chose the simplest option to get rid of the "chore".

Elementalist simply ask more investment from the player than the other options so it's left out.

Increasing the base health pool isn't going to reduce the attention requiered by the player when playing elementalist. You could give elementalist 19k base health pool in PvE and it would change nothing to it's popularity in wingman as the one that are dying with 12k hp would still die with 19k hp.

What the elementalist need to be popular on wingman is a potent build with a simple rotation. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Atoclone.4810]

2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

This site give you a glimpse of what hardcore raiders play as only those players feed such site with data. Said hardcore raiders could probably go through all the raid wings with any profession and any build but mostly chose the simplest option to get rid of the "chore".

 

not necessarily, as a member of an definitely none hardcore raiding group we upload ours every week and previously when comparing my self to others on there i've been at times slightly above average.

 

not last week though, last week i played power catalyst and was absolutely terrible

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Eles HP and Thoughness would not be a problem if the current balance Philosophy would care about class difficulty. 

Hey, ele can do the same dps as all other classes. 

But why play ele then? And looking at ele play rates in pve.... Oof. 

[Jski.6180]

38 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Eles HP and Thoughness would not be a problem if the current balance Philosophy would care about class difficulty. 

Hey, ele can do the same dps as all other classes. 

But why play ele then? And looking at ele play rates in pve.... Oof. 

Why not just have base power change base off of the class then?

Anet needs to drop every one to mid hp and mid def (or low if you truly want to brake bunkers) and put all of the heavry armor / high hp into gear combos. If you want to be tankly then you must build for it your class should come with no passive def for being that class.

[Kyon.9735]

I don't know if I'm misremembering it but wasn't the original "reason" to the base health/armor differences back in 2012 was that:

Warriors have minimal access to defensive boons so they get high base health and armor. Guardians on the other hand had access to a lot of defensive boons and some healing, add the fact that they are heavy armor in lore (plus were not very mobile compared to warriors), so they get high base armor but low health pool. Now Ele on the other hand, had access to a lot of defensive boons and has a ton of built in healing (weapon skills, traits, water field + combo finishers etc) which is why even at lowest base HP and Armor they had acceptable levels of effective HP..

It's 2024 and these reasons don't apply anymore. Warriors now have access to a ton of defensive boons and healing. IMO, the class "weaknesses" that balanced the effective HP back in 2012 are a thing of the past at this point.

Edited May 16 by Kyon.9735

[mirage.8046]

eh, weaver and catalyst especially have it slightly easier to do burst DPS and maintain vitality thanks to elemental empowerment and elemental polyphony. harbinger also has vitality and can benefit further from it with vital persistence. while they are both incredibly squishy, they do superior DPS in return. also, has anyone not seen power harbinger in WvW? that has done 11k hits with devouring cut and voracious arc does around 10k with a few stacks of might. you have to play these two classes to really understand why their HPs are different. and out of the three especs in this comparison, harbinger has life way harder than ele will ever have lol.

what's more, necro lacks the same active defenses that ele has. you have to play very carefully with other classes or else you melt like ice cream. 

I don't see why HP should be increased baseline in any game mode. you can also get away with mixing marauder and dragon gear if you desire more sustain. on top of that, dragon benefits especially when you are perfectly crit capped. for wvw, go for marauder, or again mix the two stats because you'll want a mix of precision, vitality, and ferocity.

[Bladestrom.6425]

8 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

eh, weaver and catalyst especially have it slightly easier to do burst DPS and maintain vitality thanks to elemental empowerment and elemental polyphony. harbinger also has vitality and can benefit further from it with vital persistence. while they are both incredibly squishy, they do superior DPS in return. also, has anyone not seen power harbinger in WvW? that has done 11k hits with devouring cut and voracious arc does around 10k with a few stacks of might. you have to play these two classes to really understand why their HPs are different. and out of the three especs in this comparison, harbinger has life way harder than ele will ever have lol.

what's more, necro lacks the same active defenses that ele has. you have to play very carefully with other classes or else you melt like ice cream. 

I don't see why HP should be increased baseline in any game mode. you can also get away with mixing marauder and dragon gear if you desire more sustain. on top of that, dragon benefits especially when you are perfectly crit capped. for wvw, go for marauder, or again mix the two stats because you'll want a mix of precision, vitality, and ferocity.

 try playing pvp on ele condy tempest or core or any hybrid non meta build with no stats spent heavily into vitality or toughness or heal.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

10 hours ago, Bladestrom.6425 said:

 try playing pvp on ele condy tempest or core or any hybrid non meta build with no stats spent heavily into vitality or toughness or heal.

So... my WvW staff Weaver?

[Sweetbread.3678]

Fun Ele health factoid: even with max stacks of Blight (-37.5% total health), a Necro with 0 vitality will still have 16% more health than an Ele with 0 vitality. Yup, even when a Necro pushes the single remotely skill based mechanic of their entire class to it's absolute maximum risk level and cuts an entire 8104+ from their max health, they'll still have an inherent 1863 more health than an Ele lol.

[Codename T.2847]

On 5/16/2024 at 8:54 AM, Kyon.9735 said:

I don't know if I'm misremembering it but wasn't the original "reason" to the base health/armor differences back in 2012 was that:

Warriors have minimal access to defensive boons so they get high base health and armor. Guardians on the other hand had access to a lot of defensive boons and some healing, add the fact that they are heavy armor in lore (plus were not very mobile compared to warriors), so they get high base armor but low health pool. Now Ele on the other hand, had access to a lot of defensive boons and has a ton of built in healing (weapon skills, traits, water field + combo finishers etc) which is why even at lowest base HP and Armor they had acceptable levels of effective HP..

It's 2024 and these reasons don't apply anymore. Warriors now have access to a ton of defensive boons and healing. IMO, the class "weaknesses" that balanced the effective HP back in 2012 are a thing of the past at this point.

Well said. Probably they had an idea originally about class design, and what was supposed to be what, but now it's all over the place, especially since weaponmaster training.

 

[Codename T.2847]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:50 AM, mirage.8046 said:

 also, has anyone not seen power harbinger in WvW? that has done 11k hits with devouring cut and voracious arc does around 10k with a few stacks of might. you have to play these two classes to really understand why their HPs are different. and out of the three especs in this comparison, harbinger has life way harder than ele will ever have lol.

what's more, necro lacks the same active defenses that ele has. you have to play very carefully with other classes or else you melt like ice cream. 

As they should, lol

Necro was designed with pretty respectable damage and strong DoT in mind, paired with inherently high health and damage-sponginess of shroud, hence they not getting kitten like blocks, blinks, blind, invuln etc. With Harbinger, they kept the big damage formula, but got rid of high health (it now decreases) and damage sponginess of shroud. It was literally designed to be a risky class to play, so it should die even harder to Necro's big weaknesses in return imo. (more mobile builds, focus-firing and hella CCs.) The fact that 95% of people prefer to play it on celestial is a problem with society, and not really with game design. xD Catalyst doesn't really adhere to these rules, while it technically is not tankier inherently than normal Ele or Weaver, it has a lot of safety nets that the latter 2 don't, or got fewer of, meaning of course the basically perma stability, lots of resistance (well, in the past anyway) and damage reduction on auras but that's more of a minor thing. Weird design choices for both of them, and Anet could've definitely come up with more creative e-specs in EoD, but hell, what do I know?

Edited May 17 by Codename T.2847

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Mist form : channeled skill, prevent capture, 75sec CD, can't rez, can't stomp, can't do damage.
Obsidian flesh: channeled skill, prevent capture, can't rez, can't stomp, can't do damage.
Armor of earth is may be the best core defensive tool (not the best BS) yet it still fools people with the 10 stack of stab, while at least 6 of them are useless.
Stone of resonance a lower version, but no BS and barriers cut in half added to the nerf of Bolstered elements.

It's true elementalists have a lot more  "active" defensive tools; weave self, grinding stone, lava skin, arcane shield (the trait is a bit missleading too), riptide/earth#2, conjure earth shield, fortified earth, frost aura etc. Yet counterparts are bigs too : equip a weapon with long CD, half skills useless ; good knowledge and rotation, the utility skills have expensive costs especially for elem.
We coul say this is good balance, which is true; but a bit unfair when power-creep hits hard all other e-specs. Sadly (at least to me) Catalyst is not exception, it's clearly not on podium, but farting stab, boons, EE, schoking aura etc, bury weaver and tempest.
Or we need a nice "balance" update to nerf all access to stab, resistance/resolution, or it's time to give proper tools to core elementalist.

 

The fear to see cele catalyst, FA weavers ? Well may be that's because we don't actually see them now ?
I'm farming a bit WvW lately, and over 2-3 hour sessions I'm sometimes the only elementalist roaming on the battleground, or at least the one alive more than 10 minutes and winning fights. While it's raining willbender, spellbreaker, untamed, thiefs etc.
Even cele druids, cele thiefs, cele harbingers etc are a lot more dangerous than cele catalyst; may be not as annoying as bunker elementalist, but more dangerous.

About celestial. I'm a bit skeptical about it.
This isn't because Celestial is the "laziest" set and your might/fury/quickness fart will compensate DPS, but because they couldn't stop nerfing base healing power, base barrier power, because you need BD to loop fury, to loop protection, to generate might, because you need CD for weakness, vulnerability, for power modifiers, because by default you have a blend of condi and strike damage in weapon skills ...

Elementalist is in a sad spot where they nerf base healing, base barrier, duration, etc because of celestial and (rare) uncatchable elementalist in pvp (and pve benchmarks), while they keep adding "power and condi" modifiers, if not "Celestial" modifiers, killing Power builds (because FA, LR, Water power etc are dead, only exist Fire) and the solution to the problem for players is to add more celestial to compensate.
I think more Vitality could create a virtuous circle, because you could actually remove one issue of the equation and propose more diversity.

And start to decompose Condi and Power : a GM trait with "Power modifier", a GM for "condi gimmick", a GM for Sustain, and repeat.
No need for  "+1% to all stat", "+5% strike and condi damage" etc.

Edited May 17 by Zhaid Zhem.6508