Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: Elementalist

[Wulfhearth.7962]

They said it would be a a pure glasscannon damage weapon but still insisted on gimping water attunement instead of making it offensive for once.... Feels bad man. 

Other classes get different flavors and fantasies of skills and animations with new weapons, why are the ele atunements so kitten set in stone? Give us an icy offensive water attunement, give fire more support with smoke fields, blinds or boonrip. There's so many different ways to interpret the elements.

Every attunement doing the same stuff on every weapon is boring as hell, and coming up with ever more convoluted mechanics and lavish animations won't fix that. 

[Rittsu.5698]

1 minute ago, Wulfhearth.7962 said:

They said it would be a a pure glasscannon damage weapon but still insisted on gimping water attunement instead of making it offensive for once.... Feels bad man. 

Other classes get different flavors and fantasies of skills and animations with new weapons, why are the ele atunements so kitten set in stone? Give us an icy offensive water attunement, give fire more support with smoke fields, blinds or boonrip. There's so many different ways to interpret the elements.

Every attunement doing the same stuff on every weapon is boring as hell, and coming up with ever more convoluted mechanics and lavish animations won't fix that. 

I just said it now in another post, the coolest the effect on element more useless. Spear just have Soo Won fantasy in the 1 atk, and water still being nonsense for damage. The same had happened with pistol where the air atk is the one cool atk who matchs pistol fantasy, and its for a condi weapon.

[rabbitofharmony.6943]

water having no healing at all would be a very refreshing sight to see, glass cannon means death on being poked after all ya? we should suffer for our lust for power, and I mean that genuinely.

[Wulfhearth.7962]

3 minutes ago, rabbitofharmony.6943 said:

water having no healing at all would be a very refreshing sight to see, glass cannon means death on being poked after all ya? we should suffer for our lust for power, and I mean that genuinely.

Water can have healing for all i care, as long as it's allowed to have the same dps as other attunements. Or even higher for a change. 

I'm not sure i'd want an ele weapon to be completely without defense or utility, but that doesn't always have to be healing on water and barrier on earth. They showed it can be done with swirling winds and shock aura on air. 

[Shelph.6501]

Just to talk a bit about dps, I saw xChirs, one of the legendary players when it comes to making dps rotations for ele was benchmarking around 37,500 dps on the golem using catalyst. Of course the weapon needs some buff to get that number up a bit, but I would love to see that most of that damage go into the auto attacks rather than the abilities. Spear does pretty strong autos already, but stronger auto attacks means that players who aren't using a cracked dps rotation can see more success on the weapon, but players who want to get the most out of it still need to press all the buttons.

I would also love to see twister and undertow have low damage. Specifically, low enough damage that its better to auto attack, and they don't get used in a dps rotation so we can use them as a reactive cc tool, instead of making it take even more buttons to do dps.

The quarter second cast time to place the etch feels bad and clunky. I'd say just make it instant, or give it a longer cast. Also please give us a way to make it less intense for the person using it. If it blocks red circles for the person using it, it seriously makes it worse in group content. Just having a ring, without the effect on the floor, or making the floor effect mostly transparent would be great.

Lastly, though probably not a spear change, right now weaver is the only ele spec that can actually do full dps at range. Tempest needs to get close for overloads which makes sense, but I'd love to see cata tweaked to allow for ranged game play. If the cata utility skills didn't require you to stand in the jade sphere, the build would function a range. I think just letting those skills get the extra effect for the sphere being down even if you are not inside it would be a great change. 

[Flame Of The Titan.3649]

Make a weapon not balanced around hitting a golem with all buffs.

[ScottBroChill.3254]

From a pvp perspective, I find some issues in trying to make an effective build. The spear looks great, but it's at odds with the rest of the ele class. It almost feels like a penalty when taking an elite spec with it. Skill 5 mechanic I don't think is effective in it's current form, low damage, etc. 

In regards to the elite specs

Tempest- This I've found to be the best one to use because you can actually benefit from overloads because it allows you to deal actual damage and gives you an extra heal. The only issue is everything on tempest is close range, so you might as well just take another weapon. Second, both the overloads and skill 5's are fighting for time to camp the same attunements, but that could also be a good thing If you really just want to camp an attunement and be a straight up fire wizard. 

Weaver- What can I say that hasn't already been said. Camping for skill 5 just goes against the design of the mechanics, traits, and skills. None of the minor traits do anything for spear. Stances don't really benefit the spear from long range. The spec was designed to make ele survive in melee range and to have at least some damage on dual skills. It's just not an optimal traitline, or I need to look at it from another angle and use skills with more thought at control.

Catalyst- I find it's hard to take advantage of the f5. Someone else said the energy generation on it is bad and I'd have to agree. And at the same time you gotta deal with skill 5 and f5 being in two different place, It's really hard to aim everything and keep track of locations. Like I put skill 5 down and have to cast in it to charge it, I also place f5 down either at my feet or at target, because in order to get auras and stacks of EE I need to combo fields, and since spear is ranged, I need a field near the target making me use f5 for that, or use my damaging blast at my feet inside of skill 5. But then in order to gain quickness I need to be in the f5 field, so yeah, at my feet it goes. Oh, and the lack of auras on the weapon is just another missing element that goes well with catalyst. The augmentations are good for damage though. Having said all this crap, I got completely destroyed by a good spear catalyst so it could be user error and bad build.

Another thing to note, you need stability to be able to use skill 5. The amount of times I get cc'd when I get it charged, only to have it disappear in .5 seconds, is more than 50% without stability. Then add in the fact that it's a chaotic mess that I'm too bad to be able to hit with most of the 5 skills, excluding fire cuz its a giant circle, causing it too just be a waste. This is a skills issue, but is it worth the hassle and hoops to jump through?

 

For Skill 5 

Find a new way to implement skill 5. It's beautiful but it's flawed.

• it goes at odds with the class design
• the abysmal time limit is no fun
• another case of fire my skills off fast even if they miss or the skills are random
• doesnt work with weaver
• only volcano feels really EPIC
• water, air, and earth are all kinda hard to hit a moving target with

It shouldn't be both time limited and require 3 skills to cast while in the same attunement. You only have 5 weapon skills. It feels like it was designed to be used with arcane blast. The old arcane wave would have also been great for it, but the new version puts you in melee and isn't insta cast. This may be a stupid idea but why not just make skill 5 like a giant glyph that shares cooldown across attunements, you get the skill of the attunement you casted initially, and you can fire that off in any attunement you want. Change the visuals so instead of the giant moving pool of color under the etching (which looks awesome, can't knock it for cool factor), it's just a faint hue of light that allows you to see other things going on, that way you can adjust the skill to be able to be active longer without it being visual penalty for telegraphed attacks and danger circles. You can either make it like how it is with casting skills inside of it to charge it up, or you can just make it charge by standing in it for a bit of time, like capping a point in pvp. This would make it so you can't cast skill 5 for every attunement swap, but it allows it to work smoother without needing to spazzing and casting skills like theyre going out of style. You could also bulk up the numbers more and really add to the big powerful glass cannon ele, and would probably make balance easier. And You don't have to worry about it being some unfair one shot snipe build, it still takes time to charge up so it's not like a thief, mesmer, or ranger in stealth where you get ganked out of nowhere with no ability to react. 3 out of 4 skills are skill shots with big visuals, it's easy to dodge and react to. 

[Loke.1429]

22 hours ago, Loke.1429 said:

... It also suffers greatly from the weak baseline defence of ele, so it isnt just glassy, its practically a free kill.

e.g. no stunbreak on lightning flash and 900 range, 35s cd

Edited Saturday at 06:52 PM by Loke.1429

[bruakumfd.4817]

Maybe it's because I wasn't particularly enemies, I wasn't given enough time for the Etchings to truly shine. And when I managed to, only the earth one really stood out.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

23 minutes ago, Flame Of The Titan.3649 said:

Make a weapon not balanced around hitting a golem with all buffs.

A-net's LIVE reaction to your comment: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Einhasad.9028]

Having read every coment, and agreeing with 98% of them, i have nothing left to add, just a oversimplification of this whole thread:

We deserve to shine more than any other class in the game, if this was an orchesta, ele would be the monster pipe organ with pedals and 3 racks of keys playing a vivaldi concert and be considered mediocre while SOME OTHER CLASSES only deign to hit the triangle and get a standing ovation

Really, we are playing a piano to get a miserable 20~25k dps while other class can put a sticker on the keyboard to keep the skill 1 pressed and go on a smoke break while doing 35k dps while afk.

Get it together anet. This is not glass cannon, this is just glass.

[Kai.1620]

- Is it possible to have the flip skill on 5 flip faster?  Several times I don't know if it's due to cast time of the 2/3/4 skills but i'd press my 2, 3, 4 skills and the 5 but 5 haven't flipped yet so i ended up casting lesser volcano instead of volcano.  Since etching is only 5s, it seems imperative that the 5 flip skill need to come up asap?  Ele tend to be high rpm in general, so it feels a bit slow to have to sit and wait and watch for the flip skill to come up - and as others have said, since the etching only last 5 seconds, and you still have to do mechanics and aim, any wait time for it to flip could result in loosing the flip skill.

- is it possible to add a countdown on the etching skill that counts down to how long you have to charge with 3 skills?  Currently there's no indication, so i feel like i just have to spam, and then more than once while trying to dodge i discover it expired.  A way to see how much time I have left would be nice (but preferably not just an icon on the buff bar, there's sooooo much on there now it's borderline impossible to keep track, especially if the icons keep going behind the mini map.  

- not a spear related comment but...consider moving non-combat related buff icons to like...that space to the right of your skill bar (bottom right), below the mini map, above the exp bar?  or...just somewhere else, because it's legit impossible to keep track.  For example ele pistol bullets, they don't get put to the first 4 on your boon bar so i spend an absurd amount of time in combat trying to find the icons.  (i know this is probably wrong venue tho, so feel free to discard orz)

- lastly, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the new animations and the etchings, they are SO gorgeous.  Buuuuuuuut as many others probably have said, it's impossible to see enemy dmg aoes.  XD  I know it doesn't show for other ppl, but i'd hate to be the person that steps in Oil in Deimos just 'cause i can't see XD.  But seriously though, the animation team have done a PHENOMENAL job with the new animations and graphics, I'm so impressed and just so happy seeing them!!!

[CETheLucid.3964]

1 hour ago, Kai.1620 said:

- Is it possible to have the flip skill on 5 flip faster?  Several times I don't know if it's due to cast time of the 2/3/4 skills but i'd press my 2, 3, 4 skills and the 5 but 5 haven't flipped yet so i ended up casting lesser volcano instead of volcano.  Since etching is only 5s, it seems imperative that the 5 flip skill need to come up asap?

Yep. You wait for the color change or the skill to flip twice. I hope when the art gets added proper, each version of the skill (lesser/final) have a unique art. It's also aggravating some skills that should count don't (weaver dual skills) and the timing in general is too tight. Those are my only real criticisms.

I generally agree also that water 3 being a distance evade is a bit counterintuitive with the idea of wanting to sit in the circle. Maybe they could do something like make it an in-place evade like Twist of Fate?

[BugTheDebugger.2465]

Not sure if this has been reported yet or not but. Ripple (Water spear 3) interacts with speed boon/condition. If you have greater movement speed provided by swiftness or super speed, you travel more distance than reported. Same is true if you have cripple. If you're crippled, you travel less than the noted distance.

Posting an example of it here, Arrow to circle is the intended range but if you have speed buffs you can travel twice the distance.

Not sure if this was intended or not.

 

[Arcosa.9123]

5 hours ago, BugTheDebugger.2465 said:

Not sure if this has been reported yet or not but. Ripple (Water spear 3) interacts with speed boon/condition. If you have greater movement speed provided by swiftness or super speed, you travel more distance than reported. Same is true if you have cripple. If you're crippled, you travel less than the noted distance.

Posting an example of it here, Arrow to circle is the intended range but if you have speed buffs you can travel twice the distance.

Not sure if this was intended or not.

Yeah, a few people have mentioned this. But, have you tried using it against a wall? Because it moves so fast, it's possible to completely go through keep walls or the ground around a keep lord to solo cap bases from within the terrain.

[fuzzyp.6295]

5 hours ago, BugTheDebugger.2465 said:

Not sure if this has been reported yet or not but. Ripple (Water spear 3) interacts with speed boon/condition. If you have greater movement speed provided by swiftness or super speed, you travel more distance than reported. Same is true if you have cripple. If you're crippled, you travel less than the noted distance.

Posting an example of it here, Arrow to circle is the intended range but if you have speed buffs you can travel twice the distance.

Not sure if this was intended or not.

 

Try it with Warclaw Blessing for a real gotta go fast experience 💪

[quake.9023]

really fun n smooth, nice to see the ele skills dnt cast so long...the no.5 skill needs graphic work....its too much. the skill no.4 for air is too op 16cd for aoe 1200range float?@?@???? needs nerf. 

[Wintah.7089]

I personally dislike the auto attack animation. The throwing animation looks like every other class and does not fit for Elementalist. I would rather see Elementalist use the spear like a pointed/bladed staff and point towards the enemy and shooting the fire/water etc shots at the enemy. The throwing animation with the spear disappearing and just popping back up does not look good in my opinion.

Also every etching skill beside fire is a wall/wave. Maybe there could be more unique differences like a lighting storm for light or sandstorm for earth.

On a different node I felt like with this whole etching mechanic that is what catalyst should have been. 😅

Other than that cool looking weapon I am looking forward to using it.

[Markus.6415]

One ability that is in dire need of changing: Fulgor (Air 2)

Maybe it's completely not working as intended, but a power based condition you can only increase in duration? In PvE at least your rotation would grant 100% uptime of fulgor right now, but for some reason it cannot do critdamage and the damage is only scaled by the power attribute. Every single other damage buff doesn't increase it -> Weavers swift revenge, elements of rage or tempests tempestuous aria and transcendent tempest are doing nothing to it. Just realized I didn't test it with Catalysts elemental empowerment, wich should be the only buff that increases the damage due to attribute scaling.

[TYTan.5246]

Was hoping we would finally get a "simple" to use weapon on Ele but yet again no, I can even say that for me personally, when using skill 5, it can be even more "difficult" and grindy, than Weaver or Catalyst mechanics, at least there you press the skill and it does what is said in the description, no mini game just to use one skill. Air 3 never works, my normal AAs always do more damage than the one with skill 3 effect.

 

Skill 5

• How can Full potential versions feel so weak! Fire 4 feels more impactful than skill 5 fully charged.
• Earth skill 5 gives 1 second if Stability, really?!
• Skill 5 many times doesn't activate and goes in a 3 sec cooldown...
• Skill 5 feels bad, we are stuck in that area and can't move and die to a one hit attack, personally I really don't like/enjoy the skill 5 mechanics, feels like a gimmick and doesn't had anything to the weapon, only more complicated stuff which makes the skills even less impactful in general.
•  Elementalist skills already feel pointless sometimes cause you spread the boons and effects/stuns in 20 skills which is bad, like Earth 2 is an AA with a cripple, skill 3 makes (again AA) your next AA apply a 1/4 daze (1/4? really?).

Water

• Water attunement does not heal me, fitting a mob in HoT and can't even heal 20% of the damage that I'm receiving.
• Even using Ether Renewal heal skill a single mob in HoT manages to out damage me and I can't heal enough, even using Spear 1 and 5 plus heal skill.
• Water AA feels pointless, you don't even notice the heal, aren't we supposed to be able to camp water for 15 seconds so we don't do damage, but we can heal ourself? Cause right now if I attune to water I can't heal and neither can do damage.
• Water skill 2, what is this for? Again feels like a filler skill because you had to have a water skill 2, it lasts 1 second, I'm gonna be honest first 2 times I used it I didn't even noticed the animation and though it was not working.
• Water 3 doesn't have an ammo mechanic? Only one dash with a 15 seconds CD?
• Sometimes I don't really understand the way devs think about classes, many classes, specially with Spear weapon, can dash 3 or more times and even have blocks, (or make Fire 2 also an evade, the animation already gives the imprecion that it is an evade).
• Again water 5 feels bad to use and is not impactful, can barely get 25% HP heal with the full charge that makes me stuck in place and easy to target.

 

All in all 

• From all the things I would really appreciate to be changed, skills 5 would be the priority, we have to press them 3 times to use them, 3 TIMES (1 to put the field, one to target in which direction and one to fire it) is so frustrating, literally for 2.5 seconds we are stuck in this "mechanic" just to use a skill (that barely changes anything and is difficult to use), also it feels so infuriating to do all off this annoying process to use skill 5 and then if we don't use it in a 2 SECONDS window, it goes on CD!

 

Guys, really, this mechanic in skill 5 is infuriating! Resume, will be a bless if you made skill 5 just a normal skill, we press it, and it fires, easy, great, and simple.

Can you next expansion just make a weapon for Elementalist that only has 5 skills? How? Just make that when we change attunements we get boons, but the skills stay the same, and they can have a thematics, like AA is normal, 2 is a fire themed skill, 3 is water themed, 4 Air themed and 5 Earth themed, easy. Or skills 1, 2, 3 and 4 are the same but Attunements change skill 5, so in Fire skill 5 will have a Fire theme, etc, etc Earth attunement skill 5 will have a Eath theme.

 

Tell me what you think about the varios points guys

[NoggDog.5486]

Feels good, a couple of tweaks I think would make it better all involves the Etching mechanic. I'm also in the camp that the ground effects are too much with the etching, so toning that back would be good, but I don't see much of a point in the undercast-into-manual cast mechanic for the charge on 5. It only takes 3 skills. Just let the etching detonate itself so that we can drop one button in the rotation. Goodness knows Ele already presses enough.

[SheenaMalfoy.8079]

Wow so many things need to be tweaked with this thing. It looks great, it has loads of flavour, but... so many problems/potential problems.

Fix the Etching AoEs so the Elementalist can actually see what the kitten is going on. It's not good enough for the rest of the squad to not be blinded, we need to be able to see too.

The time to use the etching is too short. 5 seconds is plenty to get 3 separate casts in, but I often find myself losing the fully charged skill before it goes off. We need either a longer time in general, or an extra couple seconds if we reach the final stage to actually aim and use the skill.

While we're talking about Etchings, it's a big kitten AoE, why is it turning into a piddly little shark with Kamohoali'i Kotaki equipped? Not only does it suddenly look pathetic, it completely belies the size of the skill itself. Volcano is decent, cause it still has an actual effect going on and the sharks are the little baby meteors, but the other 3 are terrible.

Why does Jolulhlaup, Derecho, and Haboob have a target cap of 5 but Volcano only a target cap of 3?

Energize (air 3)'s next guaranteed crit is utterly useless for PvE where you want to be crit capped at all times.

Putting the projectile reflect (Air/Earth 3) on a Dual Skill locks out any non-Weaver from that utility, and also makes it incredibly hard to access even if you do need it. Likewise for the superspeed on fire/air 3. Ditto for stability on fire/earth 3.

Seethe (fire 3) needs to not trigger its bonus on an autoattack.

There's so much trait anti-synergy I can't help but laugh. There's no damaging fire fields to trigger Persisting Flames. There is almost zero burning on the entire kit to trigger Pyromancer's Training (not even on the autoattack, which usually gets burning on other weapons!). None of the Dual Skills deal any sort of damage to trigger Superior Elements, and the weapon as a whole has too little Weakness application to maintain the buff without it. The entire weapon has ZERO Immobilize for Vicious Empowerment. I'm probably missing more.

Oh and it's a 1200 range weapon when 2/3 of its Elite Specs are forced into melee range due to their mechanic (Tempest Overloads, Catalyst Spheres), but the 3rd can't even use its trait to crit cap (Superior Elements). Who is supposed to use this? Core Elementalist?

As a whole, it feels like the weapon was made in a vacuum, without considering the rest of the class. It's pretty, but it's not cohesive. And don't even get me started on the damage numbers.

 

Edit: Knew I was forgetting things. Twister's visual is wayyy too short compared to the Float effect it creates.

Fulgor needs to be able to crit, this is a power weapon for crying out loud. It also needs to be able to stack, so multiple Elementalists aren't screwing each other over with this skill like the Venoms you all just fixed.

 

Edited Monday at 12:24 AM by SheenaMalfoy.8079
forgot to add some stuff

[Nivi.3401]

Aside from the visual issue with Etchings (even if you only blind yourself, you're still trolling if you bring this to Deimos), I also have concerns about some other skill effects:

• Volcano, which is so massive that some player characters can be entirely hidden within it! It obscures a large area of the ground for a good amount of time too. It really needs Effect LOD and be hidden by Hide Ally Visual Effects.
• Undertow, which covers a good chunk of the ground, but for a much shorter time than Volcano. It adds too much visual clutter for other players, as it also doesn't (currently) have Effect LOD, and it isn't hidden by Hide Ally Visual Effects either.
• Fulgor could really use Effect LOD.

There are also a bunch of other skills that should probably be hidden by Hide Ally Visual Effects (also, I hope the remaining issues with that setting hiding some boss mechanics will be fixed, because it's so good otherwise), but they're less pressing than these.
I really hope this will be addressed, because not being able to see mechanics kills my enjoyment of even the most fun builds.

[SDSkuld.9352]

6 seconds is barely enough to throw 3 more skills, then line up and launch an AOE/ray attack. If anything goes wrong the attack is wasted. Some might see it as incentive to 'git gud' but I think it's too punishing.

[Markus.6415]

5 hours ago, Nivi.3401 said:

Aside from the visual issue with Etchings (even if you only blind yourself, you're still trolling if you bring this to Deimos), I also have concerns about some other skill effects:

• Volcano, which is so massive that some player characters can be entirely hidden within it! It obscures a large area of the ground for a good amount of time too. It really needs Effect LOD and be hidden by Hide Ally Visual Effects.
• Undertow, which covers a good chunk of the ground, but for a much shorter time than Volcano. It adds too much visual clutter for other players, as it also doesn't (currently) have Effect LOD, and it isn't hidden by Hide Ally Visual Effects either.
• Fulgor could really use Effect LOD.

There are also a bunch of other skills that should probably be hidden by Hide Ally Visual Effects (also, I hope the remaining issues with that setting hiding some boss mechanics will be fixed, because it's so good otherwise), but they're less pressing than these.
I really hope this will be addressed, because not being able to see mechanics kills my enjoyment of even the most fun builds.

They specifically stated that the effect LOD isn't implemented for the beta yet, but will be at release.