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Concerns about Elementalist


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@"Quasar.1756" said:Ok, so let's get to the nitty gritty of things.

What is the "biggest' issue with Elementalists? - and - What can Anet do to satisfy / appease the Elementalist community of GW2?

All replies are welcomed.

just some:low HP: Why do Necros have more HP, good health, can cast long time marks and wells on the move and do their walking aoe of death run?

no protection against stealth: A mesmer or thief jumping out of stealth just kills you. Done. No defense, nothing. A deadeye marking you? Good luck running into the right direction, or you go down. Without any defense whatsoever. A soulbeast with his unblockable shots isn't much better either.

lack of mobility: While a ranger is pew pewing you from a save distance, you can stand still and channel pile driver - just to see it fail or do negligible damage. And for some reason even oh so slow necros are able to run away - how? It is said they are slow. All hackers?

lack of protection: warriors with their permablocks, guardians with all their stuff going on.. yeah fun. Fun to fight them.

evades are a bad joke: twist of fate can be interrupted. You can be pulled right out of it. And then you die. Great fun.

healing: just abysmal

barrier: exists for pretty much every class but ele. Oh, we get some. 200 barrier is a lot, isnt it? compared to the 2-4k other classes get. Good thing no Mirage will ever jump at you out of stealth for 24k damage. Oh wait, they do. A lot.

boon sharing: dead. FB does it better.

boon removal: other classes can at least take away or turn opponents boons. Eles can't.

damage: apart from the test golem, pretty bad. There is a reason why scourges dominate wvw group fights.

CCs: a joke

clunky: other classes can pop there defensive skills at will. Ele has to attune to the right element. And low and behold, that comes with so long cool downs between switching, you don't even really have to care. Just sit down and die. Good luck to double attune to earth, when you are in fire/air. But you can use unravel! No, you can't. Because the utility slots you need for such basic survival skills like flash or mistform. Which have both deliciously long cool downs.

Elite skill is just garbage: it could be good. But you have to time your 4 elemental switches perfectly and you have to hope that you don't need to go back to any element because of circumstances. Others just pop theirs and it is done. Winds of Disenchantment anyone?

anything else I missed?

Ele isn't good in any aspect and abysmal in most.

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If i spelled it wrong, woops...

Anyways,

I see alot of complaints on the forums, and of course I believe it all to be whining. Because, that is what players do over their main. I mean, I complain about thief treatment, but I can acknowledge that more than half the bad results I receive while playing it are my own fault.

I play a lot of pvp, and I have seen some really amazing ele's when I do "see them". But, I guess my memory will quickly dismiss the ones that were practically free kills once I figured out there kit.

Anyways, I said "holy crap, what a whining lot. they make a thread a day and pop in into pvp forum knowing it will get booted to profession forum, what a bunch of babies".

That being said, I am a fan of "tragedies" and so I decided to play outside my class (which is all I do- thief), and hop into a class all are claiming is the hardest.

What did I learn?:

A lot of skill cast really slow, and most can avoid them.I am squishy as hell and no real evasive maneuvers.Any boon I give myself gets removed.How the heck does everyone build up 25 might so quick, "smack"...Im dead!My stunbreaks don't give me alot. and hs thge cooldownsAm I supposed to be a hybrid?Why am I tier 1 health?

What do I suggest?:Auto attacks need to go out faster 1/2 s cast or 1/4 but maybe reduce damageAll fire spells should put 1 stack of buning for 1-2 secs regardlessall of the big hitters should be reduced in damage but increase the cast speed, no spells cast longer than 1 secBring ele up to tier 2 healthStun break on dodge roll if attuned to waterAll water spells should put .5s-1.5 secs chillMaybe reduce hela in water, but add damage or more damage to healing water spellsAll the air skills should do damage, and not just blindEarth magic should have wards to reduce or stop conditions for a small time, and provide smoke fields so ele can gain a stealth blast after a attunemnent swap atleastWhy are the main heals so slow and weak? If they are to be hybrid all the effects should be shared.

Now,

Feel free to tear me a new one, but you can't say that I as a thief main did not try to advocate for you. I acknowledge outside of maybe 1 build in the hands of extremely good players, the elementalist needs some work, but hey I could be wrong.

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I am mostly a PvE player so these are from a PvE and mostly raid perspective.The biggest problem with elementalist or at least as i see it, is that its hard to play(conjure management), very dependent on the chrono and druid(mostly boons and heals, so if one of the both just makes a mistake, you will be the first to realize it, ofc other DPS players too, but since you have CD on attunement, the whole rotation gets delayed, or need to switch attunement for heals or CC and thats a huge drawback),very little to no group support not even CC and as of now, not rewarding to play at all.This is because its competitor, the deadeye can upkeep quickness with minor DPS loss, doesnt need alacrity and has a quick access to CC via Basilisk Venom, and also can provide group boon support with the raid stolen skills.As i see it Weaver was broken with the default PoF damage, but i dont see the need for the Meteor Shower changes on other skills too.Also the whole change to weaver since the Meteor Shower nerf hurt the Tempest and Core Ele builds too.So imo let weaver with this changes and fully rework how conjures work, for example into a ammo mechanic, or take it back to a reasonable damage so that matches with the skill that it requires to play it correctly

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The ele needs a 'purity of purpose' rework. Instead of having everything be half-baked, the weapon skills need to each excel at either direct or Condi damage. Having half Condi and half power all mixed in is just making it half good at whatever it tries to do.

Their survival needs to be updated to be on par with everything else. Just being able to spam evades isn't enough. They shouldn't have to sacrifice all of their offensive ability just to stay alive, and the water tratline should be more of an option for players that want to play support than a requirement for anyone that wants to survive more than 2 seconds. Sort of like running a ventari rev or support firebrand.

The more recent nerfs should be reverted at the very least though... Ele was already in a weak state before the past 3 or 4 nerf patches, and for some reason they've just been pushed further out of the competitive scene.

(This post is referring to PvP, not wvw or pve)

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@Gaile Gray.6029 said:Those of you who care about the ele and its balance, please join this thread and continue to add your thoughtful and constructive comments. Thank you.

This is a WvW staff elementalist’s PoV.

It is obvious that we are the squishiest class when it comes to participating in guild raids or blob fights, and the recent changes done to us haven’t helped us one bit. Sure, we are top of the dps meter, but our damage needs to be exact for us to be there.

I’ve said this a few times before, so I’ll say it again, until the words here are etched in your minds. The Lava Font change sucks. Plain and simple. What was done to Meteor Shower is understandable, but it still doesn’t feel right.

Let’s talk about the stealth nerf done to the boons gained from swapping attunements twice. Did that really need to happen? I liked it when we got swiftness from attuning to air twice, or when we got might from going into fire. What was the point of the nerf?

Piledriver… can’t we move while using it? I’m sure if a Berserker wanted to use Gun Flame, which, in my opinion, is a more powerful version of the skill, they would be able to move with ease and use it. So why can’t we?

Unravel. Lol. Who uses this stance? It’s such a waste. There was a suggestion in some other thread where Unravel could remove 2 conditions while granting superspeed and some other thing. Something like that would be nice, or just add it as an F5 skill and leave it as it is. Several others have asked for that.

I don’t even care that we have low health and toughness (in WvW), but at the very least, don’t take away the damage that lets us compensate for the lack of survivability. You also nerfed Lava Font by -40%, which to me, was a dumb move since there was nothing wrong with the skill, and hardly anyone even complained about it.

I don’t know what to say about the conjures. I’ve seen FGS and the LH used often, but what about the other three? Icebow doesn’t really exist anymore. The Earth Shield is abysmal, and about the Flame Axe, what is its use? I’ve not seen it used once in a large or small-scale fight.

Our only good heal (as a staff elementalist) is Ether Renewal and even that is a liability at times. It’s slow, and once stowed within half a second, the whole skill goes on a cooldown. Thanks.

One thing that made me laugh once. I think there’s some Engineer/Holosmith skill that can produce a Static Field which is bigger than our own. I’d like that back, please.

I’m sure there are other things that are wrong with the class which I haven’t mentioned before, but this is all I can think of at the moment.

Edit: let us glide and change attunements at the same bloody time!

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My 1st suggestion is to sepearte the balance among 3 or 2 modes: PvP, WvW and PvE or PvP+WvW and PvE

  • Because all the cry about how broken Ele is from PvP and WvW. I have never seen and heard complain about Ele from PvE, if there is, Ele is not doing Expecfed DPS.
  • Why do PvE Ele players suffer for someone else modes miserable?

After Seperated modes, revert back all the Ele nerfs from the past.

  • Its open world, versus AI, balance for what? if devs so keen on balance in PvE, then howabout reduce the health pool of mobs equal or double to the combine of fractal's party or raid's squad health pool combine. Mobs can not have millions of health and able to 1 shot whole party. Thats how the balance if devs want to talk about.
  • In PvE, can we please allow Ele moving without cancelling casts while casting Meteor Shower and all other skills?

For PvE, I would love Ele to be broken. Trust me, no PvE players will ever complain about that.Ele can offer utilities to party, cause Ele is the selfish class, only take and never give anything to others.I read the description for Elementalist from GW2 page, Anet took out the word "Rewarding" for its squishies. Any reason or aim for that action?

In the End game content, what roles Does Ele take? DPS, healer, support, boon remover, etc, all other classes can do better. So what Role is An Ele now? Have the devs actually asked themself?

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Hey, thanks for joining us on the dark side! ;) You're totally correct in your observation. Thank you for seeing the truth for yourself, as well, and not just joining the bandwagon of anti-eles in assuming that nothing is wrong.

I also really like your suggestions! Those are things I hadn't thought about, but they would definitely make the ele feel less like an outlier I think.

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If Ele goes to tier 2 health, can Mesmer go to tier 1 health? xD Now game is balanced in pvp

I also tried Ele out. I can't figure out how they assassinate people (so many buttons so fast o.O!). What I did figure out is that I decide to never die, I can do that. And nothing else. Unlike Yolosmith, I can't tank and murder- I tank or murder.

On top of all your suggestions, I really hope the attunement minors become baseline then get replaced. Having to attune to heal allies when swapping to water, slowing foes on earth swap, dealing melee on fire, or sniping someone in lightning isn't a "trade-off". It's highly restricting.

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The official elementalist description is : "Elementalists are multifaceted spellcasters who channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up for in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage."

About versatility : in an actual PvE scenario, ele isnt versatile, it has to specialize (like most other professions). However, unlike most other professions, ele builds are very specialized : they give up absolutely everything for one single purpose. In other words, eles are LESS versatile than other specialized professions, and when traited for versatility, become mediocre.

About massive damage : this once was the case, but isn't anymore. What they lack in physical toughness (and overall survivability), they do not make up for in the ability to inflict massive damage. In fact, they are a little behind many professions, and that is considering perfect play. Considering the general unreliability of the ele's rotations (because of interrupting skills that root you down because you need to move, because of overall squishiness, and because of less intuitive rotations), in an average scenario, ele is lacking.

Like others said, I do not understand the balance towards ele. What is the point of playing this profession if other professions can easily outperform its role AND provide other utilities to the group, while being also more survivable and reliable ?

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This is from a pve and wvw perspective(causal WvW, raiding and t4 fractals for PVE)

You(being anet) have completely taken away the last thing the Ele had and that was being the top DPS class. It has nothing to offer most groups that cant be offered better by other classes anymore. Ele needs to be split hard between the game modes. Every single skill it has, needs to be split and reworked so that it can be viable again.

It needs to be given a dedicated role, its mix of everything that you have done to it doesnt work in the current game, it hasnt worked well since the game launched, its weapons either need to be power or condi and not split between the two.

Ontop of that its showing its age. All other classes can use almost all their skills and move, ele is locked into place for almost all of its skill, for very little reward, making it alot harder to cast in the very mobile game you have turned GW2 into. At one point skills that locked you into place did alot of damage, that is no longer the case for the vast majority of skills and Ele has been left in the dust when it comes to this.

On top of that, you have continually taken away its damage(WHICH is literally what it is described as doing, having little survivability but does massive damage, NO, NO it does not, not anymore.), and given it laughable minor buffs to compensate if you give it anything, and you never ever have buffed its ability to survive in any game mode.

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The issue is the ceiling is too low for such a high floor.

Ele has complicated dps rotation (not just in terms of how many skills you use, but the window and order of use has a high impact on results), it is squishy with little room for taking defensive utilities or attunements without major impacts in dps, it brings little to the team besides raw dps, and is highly dependent on group support and heals.

The skill floor for the weaver dps role is high(er).But the benefits for doing it all perfect are not there. Others can put out more dps, with more room for error and bringing more party utility/support.

Meanwhile, ele as a support role, although able to bring good heals, it brings bad dps (if you want to go for a offensive support), low support (not enough boons or buffs) so its not only not good, its not even an option on most game content (CMs, most raids, PvP).

Ok, Here is my take on what is limiting the ele:

Class traits and weapons:Elementalists have the attunement system, this change what their weapon skills do (heal, dmg, condition, control, burst, cleanse) while the weapons itself change how this is done (long range slow AoE, mid range burst, fast PBAoE, etc).The traitlines are one for each attunement and its theme, while arcana works for all attunements in a leaser extent (short boons instead of greater buffs) and the e-specs focus on staying longer on attunment (tempest) or moving attunements fast and combining them (weaver).

The issue here is, that traits on each traitline are very limited on their scope (mostly only function on each attunement) and are not powerfull enough to cover this limitation. For instance the ele does not have any trait to lower CD of its weapon skills, but of its attunment skills, and at the same extent other classes have for their weapons.

At the same time, traits related to utility skills are on very random places. Why conjurer is on fire if we have conjures for each attunment? Why gliphs on air?

With PoF tempest was pushed further into the realm of support, specifically with auras. But to use auras as a support you need water attunment. This locks tempests on defensive support and makes it not viable as a decent offensive support. Meanwhile weaver is a great spec for dps or sustain/dueling, but dual skills, sword and some of the stances are just very lackluster. The idea of elements of rage and weavers power is great, but elements of rage need to give its crit dmg bonus (ferocity) on the same way it gives the main dmg bonus, so it creates an improved gameplay (by giving temporary bonuses when dual attuning) instead of flat bonuses.

I've made a lot of sugestions to give ele more synergy, to give options to dealing with condi outside of water, to give tempest more room to work with other traitlines and create opportunities for offensive and defensive support roles, to create more options for hybrid dmg (condi and power), etc:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/48446/the-trait-changes-the-elementalist-needs-more-synergy

StatsEle has the lowest base defensive stats. But it has no greater coefficients on its weapon skills to compensate that. Sure, it has attunements, but it already has no weapon swap to balance for attunements. A engi has kits and toolbelt while still having medium HP and armor. We got attunements and low armor and hp.

Not only this but attunements are very specific and need high specialization (gear and traits) to work decently. So a zerker ele does not have better sustain than a zerker warrior due to having water attunement, it does not have higher dmg or crit coefficients on fire or air, it does not have higher mobility or condi dmg output.

There is no value on having lower defensive stats if everyone else (with more HP and armor) can achieve the same level of dmg or burst or heal or support than you can ever specialize in.

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Ele as a class is know for what it lacks more then what it has. When in pvp environment the lack of effects of unblockable dmg, boon control, powerful boons, counter stealth or stealth , and over all counter healing seems comply out of places for any pvp class and often makes ele a bunker only set up with out means of dealing with any of these effects it lacks. On-top of having low passive def in both low hp and armor it goes over the top of being a viable any thing.

Now this fits well in a pve environment as mobs lack ai and no real block / boons that need to be dealt with. So this leaves the ele class in a very bad spot they can do high dmg to targets that have no brains and do not move causing what ele can do to look a lot stronger then it realty is and in a pvp environment often dose next to nothing most of the time due to players having brains and powerful effects that ele lacks. This is where skill split is a MUST for a class like this as its dmg skills are very strong in pve but are nothing in pvp.

When what dmg effects are nerf in pve aimed but are carried over to the pvp environment the effect of the ele class becomes that much weaker in that pvp environment other then the bunker builds. So every time a skill is not split or un split your causing a great deal of harm to the class in both environments.

This is true for healing and support set up eles as well. What happens in ele raw healing fits into pve environment but due to how pvp works out it makes the ele into something that is unkillable so the healing effects get nerf and destroy any hope for a support ele in pve as things are nerfed in pvp carrying over to pve. That and pve dose not need powerful boons but are very much needed for pvp.

This is all with building all in builds in mind to get to the hart of ele problem of being a gen. class you must question why other classes are not balanced in the same mind set. Other classes are very much able to play as support and dmg at the same time with the cele builds set up in pvp and still dose near dmg of that of an ele. Ele is a gen. class with in a game that was made for gen. classes in mind only. The only thing that was different for ele was that it is balanced with the ideal that is can some how do dmg and support at the same time (when it very well cant) but other classes who can on the same wepon sets are not balanced in such a way.

To put all of this in one ideal is ele is out dated for gw2 the balancing mind set behind the class is for 2012 not for 2018. I cant not stress this enofe fields and combos are not viable in the game any more nor are one hit stuns / soft cc. The level of power creep added to the game with in 6 years as comply destroyed any id of the ele class and with it real balancing. The last thing ele had was it top in dmg that just got destroyed leaving ele with nothing but a gear set class that makes it less of an ele and using ele effects but a tool (it can only do on part dmg by building all in glass something other classes can build high dmg and not be even close to as glassy and locked out of playing most of its class effects).

I hope this was not too long and was readable.

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You know what the problem is? Way too many elementalists go staff glass cannon weaver and expect to be able to play PvP. Max DPS Staff Weaver is ok for PvE and WvW if you have other people to help you. Sword/Dagger Weaver is pretty damn good in PvP as long as you don't have some stupid build and you actually know how to play Weaver.

I also see some people complain that Weaver takes too much effort compared to other professions, or that it's too hard. Coming from games like Ultra Street Fighter 4 (where 1-frame links are very prevalent in BnB combos and tight execution is required for optimal damage; in order to learn how to play a new character properly, you would need to spend hours and hours in the lab, practicing your links, punishes, character-specific combos, option selects, mix ups, and reactions, as well as learning match-ups in general, figuring out which of your links/cancels won't work against specific characters, etc. and THEN try playing a match against a player so you can practice doing all of those things under pressure, which I promise will also take quite some time to get down, and much longer to master), Counter-Strike (where strategy, positioning, coordination and execution is everything), and Dota (I main Invoker), I thought Weaver was fairly easy.

GW2 in general is an easy game, especially compared to execution heavy fighting games. You don't have to time your abilities at all really. You can mash buttons one after another, and your skills will all come out just fine; no 1-frame window for correct inputs or anything. So I really don't understand these complaints at all.

But hey, if most people still think ele sucks and push Anet to buff ele, I won't mind.

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So this is coming from a WvW perspective, particularly from a D/D Elementalist, a weapon combo that just doesn't exist anymore. This is probably more of a rant, but I will try to add some constructive feedback as well.

My biggest disappointment in the Elementalist is that it lacks any decent class based survival mechanic. I get the idea of the elementalist is that it is a glass cannon. You kill things before they kill you. Burst damage has and will always be the counter to an Ele. We have the lowest armor rating and the lowest HP pool. Our class mechanic is a glorified weapon swap, whereas other classes get access to higher HP, higher armor rating, higher mobility, multiple blocks and/or evades (we have next to none). And thats before getting into actual class mechanics like Mesmer's distortion, Guardians Aegis or Warriors straight up "ignores damage" traits.

There used to be a time where an Elementalist's sustain could be consider its defense mechanism. You could outsustain your foe with regen and water traits, while comboing in finishers to buff yourself to the point where you can over power them. But this style of game play for Ele is long dead and burried; half because the game itself evolved over the years and half due to knee jerk reactions and over zealous nerfs that honestly could be reverted in todays game and not change a thing. I think it was Karl getting on twitter way back when to brag about how he was nerfing ele? Before HoT? ... :( Alright well thats int he past. Ele right now has two options: 1) Go full glass DPS. This is the fresh air scepter builds that can 100 to 0 an opponent decently fast, but melt if their opponent so much as looks in their direction. or 2) Full Tank Support, which is arguably a really bad idea since right now in nearly all game modes support ele is outclassed.

Why does it feel like the class that is suppose to be a well rounded jack of all trades feel like there is no middle ground? This is my biggest complaint right now. I wouldn't be so upset if this was across the board, but then you encounter full glass Mirages that can instantly down you, Soulbeasts that can use WI that crits for more HP than an Ele can even have, or a burst warrior who after missing their combo can then kite and run away while enduring pain.

When I heard of Barrier I thought that was a really good idea to explore with Elementalist. Having it scale of Healing Power, I thought it would be a great way to bring the sustain of an Elemenatlist back up. Unforuantely, the amount of barrier given to Weaver is... kinda lacking. And the fact that it hasn't been extended to any core Elementalist traits, particularly in Earth or Fire, is really boggling.

We currently have four mainhand weapons: Long Range High AoE Damage (Staff), Long Range High Single Target Damage (Scepter), Mid-Close Range Weapon (Dagger) and Close Range Weapon (Sword). The Sword on Weaver right now is, I believe suppose to be another high single target damage weapon, having more survivability built into it at the cost of some damage and it being close range. But what about Dagger? It really, really needs some love. Look into it.

I also BEG you guys to look at the traits for the Elementalist. There are so many that could probably be retooled. Why is Diamond Skin not using Resistance? Have you considered moving Powerful Aura into the Tempest Trait line so it synergies better and perhaps gives Tempest a chance to break out of its support-ness into a more well rounded, offensive Aura class? Speaking of Tempest, has anyone ever used Latent Stamina? Like, ever? I dunno man.

So TL;DR: Elementalist's survival mechanic now feels like its suppose to be"kill the enemy before it kills you" but its lack of any middle ground makes it impossible to really play any decent builds that aren't one of the extremes: High DPS or High Tankiness. Other classes get that middle ground easy. I think the best way to reach that would be to re-tool the Dagger a bit since it is currently an underused weapon that stands potential of being a great mid-ranged weapon.

Thanks for listening. I know you guys put a lot of effort into this game so thanks for taking the time out to arrange this thread. I hope we can have more dialogue with developers in the future about the long term goals of Elementalist! Because this is the only class worth playing. :)

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:Those of you who care about the ele and its balance, please join
this thread
and continue to add your thoughtful and constructive comments. Thank you.

feel free to add mine to this, or merge it or whatever...please

Done. Thank you for the suggestion.

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most of this is for pve. The conjure and trait reworks are also for wvw.one who is an ele main for almost 6 years now. There are allot of good things about ele. I like how complicated and diverse it is. For almost any situations I can find a build for it. One of the possible problems is that if you want to do any one thing really well everything else suffers for it. you do good damage means you have bad survivability, team support and so on. Same thing any which way you go. I still like playing ele because when I get on other characters ya they are strong, (easy) but it just not as fun; like playing deadeye where you are basically doing the same or more damage with basically auto attacking; same goes for most other professions engie being the one exception where its close to same complexity (or more so with condi engie). Problem is there is little reward for taking ele over anything else especially now that we are no longer top dps.

possible ways to improve ele:

  1. conjures of them selves with their utility could with a big rework which many people have given feed back on.
  2. Other skills/traits so fire is not the only way of doing dps so other options are available (that being said it makes sense fire is the main dps). Allot of these things I would think would be kinda hard as it would require some major reworks. Also if you do it wrong you could make ele do too much making other classes unviable which would also be a bad thing.

    I don't want ele to be the only top of anything I just want it to be top with the others, and not feel under powered playing my favorite class especially with more work required.

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my opinion of ele trait lines would be focusing on 3 specific qualities of each element that can either helps dps, survival, or support and bolstering them to be very effective, usable by the attunement itself, and usable outside of the attunement. rather than all those raw damage modifiers that our traitlines have, i rather possess a myriad of effects that actually helps me fight and survive. auras can also use a boost and have their traits moved to tempest since they are barely noticeable in the core ele trait lines. other traits that annoy me are those like vulnerability in water where only scepter's shatterstone and i think a dagger 1 skill can cause, but water can't do any real amount of dps which makes it pointless.

Fire

  • burn (i like burning precision and i think it should have a version for every element)
  • boon removal
  • might stacking

Water

  • chill
    1. frostbite - ice DoT whenever you apply chill
  • heal/cleanse
  • vigor

Air

  • criticals
  • pushback/stun
    1. air skills being able to knock opponents back a little in order to maintain distance
    2. chance to stun if opponent is below a health threshold
  • swiftness/superspeed

Earth

  • Bleeds
  • cripple/reflect/toughness
  • protection/stability

Arcane

  • arcane skill bonuses / effects that change depending on the specific attunement
  • arcane skill bonuses / effects that change depending on the specific attunement
  • cantrip/glyph/conjure/signet/elemental

Weaver

  • effects that change depending on the specific attunement combinations you have / double attunement bonuses
  • barriers/evades
  • boon gain depending on attunement

^something like that, but not necessary these ideas. basic idea is just to have every attunement capable of handling multiple roles depending on what traits you get. right now, the only options are just to pick up as much dps you can or just get as much sustain as you can. no middle ground or alternative and our options kinda suck.

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hallo, i'm talking mainly from a pvp pov

Water&Arcane Line Dependency Issue

  • water lines soothing mist is too powerfull when it scales with healing power and vice versa making ele too dependent on healing power. take soothing mist away and you gonna see that all ele heals are bottom in their efficiency
  • water lines gm trait cleansing water is for a way too long time the only viable condi cleanse trait of an ele.
  • arcane line offers ele nothing special it cant get (better) in other lines EXCEPT a reduced cooldown on atunements. it is the only reason eles are running it

Solution

in the pof betas the weaver gm trait woven stride stated that eles get condi cleanse on regeneration AND swiftness boon. suddenly everyone wasnt thinking about water/arcane anymore but air/arcane or air/earth. but instead of pursuing this direction woven stride got changed into its current form (if u gain swift u also get regen) which cemented eles dependency on water lines cleansing wave even more.change that back to condi cleanse on swift and this time mean it.

the global cd on weaver is too high. it needs to be base 3sec. the high atunement cd is the only reason weaver are forced into arcane.

Clunky and Underperforming Weaponskills

i could start and mention every single skill on every ele weapon that:

  • requires a target
  • a target that you ontop need to face
  • has so high cast & aftercasttimes that any target NEEDS to be immobile and inactive
  • and additionally are a small aoe
  • that you ontop need to aim instead of target tab

i get that you gonna spice skills differently up but all these things combined and they mostly are combined on important burst skills of ele make it unuseable in any pvp scenario AND smaller hitboxes (firegrab, phoenix, scepter aa's, staff aa's, staffs weaver skills on #3, sword fire/fire #3, sword air/earth #3,... it could go on and on).while other profession get huge burst skills that they dont need to face, just tab and force you to double dodge cause channeled eles are stuck with this old concept.

and in that instance we havnt even spoken about the bottom of the barrel auto attacks across all ele weapons.

RIP Boonbot

ele once succeeded in regards of being kind of a mobile buff machine for your group. now with 25 might stacks as the only class being able to get them they were far to opressiv at one time and got nerfed rightfully.

meanwhile as ele got stripped of 25 might in a long lasting rotation all other classes got 25 might nearly for free. instead of having stationary rotations (which also includes the choice of pursuing a target or buff yourself) they got some minor traits that buff them on the fly. other classes dont even look out for a rotation to buff themself, they either activate a weaponskill or peak at 25 might while they burst anyway.

this is double punishment.

now look at the on the fly whyle bursting aspect. eles biggest offender was boonstrip. you invest(ed) 30sec or more and a fixed rotation to get to 25 might and were than dependent on your concentration to maintain them which also made you more vurlnerable to boonstrips. the short lasting and quickly buffed 25 might these days also neglect that aspect. there is no trait of, no investment, no downside for other classes (ranger, engi, rev, mes, de etc) to go for them.

for eles it allways were and still continue to be so.

Auras

  • ele is the lowest health profession
  • with mostly melee weapons being (a tad more) viable in pvp
  • with not so great stab uptime or stunbreaks on high cd

instead of protecting a certain range around the ele that really make oponents think about entering that zone we get ontop the smalles possible aoe in the game. auras.

for auras to be punishing an ele needs to get hit.

how does lowest hp pool, measly prot uptime, not a single punishing auto attack, and 1 sec cd on aura justify:

  • 1sec of burn
  • chill
  • stun
  • reflect (when you introduced unblockables for everyone and their mother)

when you get hit by any autoattack like a truck?

Nothing Special At All

ele was once the master of fire and ice. burns hurt. chill felt really bad.

nowdays everyone has either burns that tick quadruple the burn of ele and/or are immune to chills. in fact chill is still a hardcounter for any ele whyle other profession just shruck it of.

other professions offer also better boons, support and heal and have also the choice to spice things up via weaponsigills.

the big question is:

in what area does ele succeed over other professions?

what makes it unique and desirable to have?

Hint

conjured weapons offer a lot of utility that our weaponskills are missing. but the design of dropping them so that others can pick them up or you plane dont find them in the visual clutter + their huge casttimes makes them unviable. give them two charges on 60sec cd and make them a kit give them some group support (special action key so members of your poarty could eventually use them too) and you would see eles instantly slot them in pvp.

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@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:Those of you who care about the ele and its balance, please join this thread and continue to add your thoughtful and constructive comments. Thank you.

Dear Gaile,

Thank you for this opportunity, here is few thoughts:

I played 12K hours as Ele mostly in sPVP so hope my opinion will be relevant :)

1. Stunbreaks.

If you die during a stun it's not fun. And this is most typical reason of death in battle for EleEle strongly needs to have more normal "stunbreaks" and it may shine even in cloth armor and low vitality and with no defence and with no blocks.As an option just add it to all stances and signets.This is very small change but helps a lot.It can be even specialization of Ele: Ele is not good in DPS, is not good in Point Decap, not good as tank,but could be good in Stunbkeaks, just make him best strunbreaker in the game (may be even share it to the team)will be a purpose of this profession at least in sPVP.

2. Active defence

Also If Ele will have few more active defense abilities it will be way more interesting and fun to play (today just single "oh-kitten-button": "twist of fate").If Ele is so squishy and have no blocks, no armor, no passive defense, no vitality, need to give him some ways to survive at least for attentive players...I may offer to have this "oh-kitten-button" per dual attunement, today none uses dualattunement since last nerf, so it will add a deep and fun to the fight and it's often available during a fight.

3. Rid of water trait line.

Alternative way for conditions cleanse will diversify builds a lot. You aware that today impossible to play without water.For example "remove 1 condition on each 'swiftness' " or "remove 1 condition on each 'protection' " or remove 1 condition on each 'barrier' ").

4. Oneshots

It's less related to Ele, it's more about oneshot-skills from other professions (wordly impact, etc).It's not fun to die without possibility to react.I may agree to keep these deadly skills in the game, but just make them more visible, give more information to players to react,may be special loud sound for this and increase the casting time (ping could be an issue as well);

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