Why is Ele bad?

Bladestrom.6425 · November 24, 2018

@apharma.3741 said:
@Jski.6180 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@Jski.6180 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@Jski.6180 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@Jski.6180 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@Jski.6180 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@"BlackBeard.2873" said:Ele is mostly fine in PvE. Its a little clunky, and not really worth the effort if you care about raiding efficiency outside of top-tier (the damage is hard to land and you often end up doing less than 2 button specs like dps thief).
In PvP it is completely worthless. The healing spec (tempest) is almost a free kill and isn't even half as good as a bad firebrand. The dps spec (fresh air) has no effective defense vs. all the ports, the superspeed isn't effective vs. nowadays specs, the burst is MUCH lower than other burst (with longer between bursts), and it doesn't have any tools to deal with all of the blocks/evades other specs have. The bruiser spec (sword weaver) is probably the "best ele spec", and, at best, it can force a stalemate on a point then lose when +1'd, while having less mobility, less team support, and less damage than other bruisers.
Idk about WvW.

WvW staff weaver can drop some insane damage on an area with meteor, lava font, pyroclastic blast and plasma blast with fire autos....however they have long casts/travel so mileage will vary. Also thieves can pretty much (and will) one shot you with vault + steal for 21k so RIP having to cast meteor.

Sword weaver with focus works OK with marauder and lightning rod build, it's not any better than a holo, druid, soulbeast, condi mirage, scourge, firbrand....ok so it's kinda meh but the good thing about WvW is if you can find your backside with 1 hand you're already going to stomp 50% of people you see.

What tends to happen is the weaver is doing good dmg but its only dmg that dps readers are going to like its missing effects that make dmg stick on ppl in wvw (soft cc boon strip and condis) with out that its more for show only.

As for any thing that not staff it only works in low player fights or you will find your self getting randomly one shot by a rev.

Maybe for you but it's very clear to me, my commander, and the enemy players when they're hit with 7k meteors and go down in 2 hits. Just like it's very telling that they're never gonna rez those players because they have 8-10k ticking damage from 1 ele on those downs. Ele has always done incredible damage in WvW if it can get the casts off, except during tempest era, the biggest issue has always been that they can easily be taken out by a FP due to the casts. As damage from HoT increased FP damage (though they became absent due to pirate ship and infinite boon melee ball metas) it meant it got harder and harder and after PoF it's very difficult to get those casts and be in the right position especially with the plethora of corrupts and chill around.

Ofc you use things that aren't staff in low man fights, you wouldn't use a hammer to screw a nail would you?

Edit: What ele needs and has always needed since PoF hit was nerfing of other classes, and maybe a tune up of the cast/aftercasts.

That great and all but ele not the only class doing things like that and its only doing hits like that at the high end of things vs other glass classes. Dmg like that is fun to wach but its often meanless with out the ability to trigger an added effect. In a way you need a one two hit not just a one hit you need as a dmg class a means to make that dmg important.

The lack of dmg is not a problem on ele it never realty has its the lack of every thing else. Ele dmg at best is for show not for use.

To sum it up why ele is bad is because its a quantity over quality class. This is fine for pve but bad for pvp and for what ever reason pve is part of ele pvp balancing.

Bolded: Yeah, this has been since launch, you know why? It has 4 attunements and so 20 weapon skills by default, no other class boasts that number except possible engineer with more kits than anyone would ever want to use. So yes they do have to be lacking some of that extra 2 for 1 duality that some skills on other classes have had. Mind you if ANet keep buffing the way it does ele won't be that way for long and the game will be all the worse for it.

That not a good thing though and why its not working every time they try to re-balance the class. They also had combo fields that added a lot of quality to the class but its all been made worthless due to power creep. There a lot more going on that is destroying the ele class.

I keep telling you, yet you choose not to listen. Nerf everything back down and all that becomes relevant again, as in all ele needs if for everyone to get nerfed.

Before Blackbeard shows up with his 15,000 word thesis of masterful ele, yes there's inconsistencies in the traits and they can be a bit better but on the whole ele is in a decent spot if the ridiculous power creep is addressed.

And every one even the devs. (by there action) are telling you there never going to be any major nerfs to any classes even ele. Buff and asking for buffs for ele on the ele forms is the only way and asking for nerfs for other classes on the ele forms is out right crazy way of asking devs to fixing the ele class.

Yeah and how's that keep buffing been working out? WvW servers getting merged because populations plummeted. PvP population decimated. PvE population? Not a clue but maps seem more empty now though we have more maps so /shrug.

I ask for nerfs on WvW and PvP forums, here's one from Engineer forum:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/61083/on-power-creep-example-holosmith#latest

If ppl who agree with my point of view but not the means to get to a real objective in a real world way is not with it then its impossible to make any real change. Devs will not read any thing here of a meaningful level as there is no ele dev. I am talking to ele players. If you want to talk about nerfing classes to fix ele go to that classes forms and say it there OR talk about such things in more gen. views on the main forms where they fit.

My view that ele is (mostly) fine and that the issue is with other classes so don't buff ele is perfectly valid to be in the ele forum. If you do not agree and feel that my comment belongs in another area please inform a moderator who will diligently move it.

That's like saying 2 is not lesser than numbers greater than 2 because those numbers are too high..

The reality is that the balancing team dont have the skills to do the job as can be demonstrated by the failure to deal with the ele issues (and many others) that have been in place for well over a YEAR. If they cant cope with balancing 1 class to bring it up to the level of the other x classes they are hardly going to cope with bringing every other class down to ele level.

Simple simple simple fix - give ele another 4khp and it releases the build shackles.

Benefits? min maxers in raids etc are already maxing out dps so this has 0 impact on raid balancing, and everywhere else in the game the ele has scope to not invest so heavily in dmg mitigation.

MyPuppy.8970 · November 25, 2018

I came up with a simple solution.Facts:

basic stat deficiency.
no range switch.
4 attunements and twice as much weapon skills that are already balanced with higher cast time / animations / aftercasts / cooldowns and lower damage / utility. That is supposed to be the class mechanic but it is not because it offers nothing if not traited. Ele is the only class that has to trait for its mechanic to do anything, and has to trait it even more for it to be somehow useful.

Solution :Make these points baseline :

increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.

Furthermore:

Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.

Instead:

Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.

Arcane line could stay the same i guess.

Thoughts?

Dabrixmgp.4758 · November 25, 2018

i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isnt a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

Dace.8173 · November 25, 2018

@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Arheundel.6451 · November 25, 2018

@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

Bladestrom.6425 · November 25, 2018

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isnt a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

we have element swap, its the same thing with a different set of pixels and not the root issue with ele balancing. Many including myself love ele because of the complexity and removing half of the abilities is dumbing down.

The problems is stats and the need to compensate for lack of hp/toughness because our mitigation is not good enough, forcing us to swap out offense which makes is comparatively weaker.

Dace.8173 · November 25, 2018

@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

That doesn't work. Designing two levels of a profession would just make the balance issues far worse. It would effectively increase the number of factions in the game and as you include more and more factions the balancing of it all gets worse. To be frank, the player has to adjust to the profession, not the other way around. It is impossible to design a faction in a game in such a way that its playstyle is something that everyone who agrees with the concept will like. There are folks who love the concept for Revenant but hate the Energy mechanic and not being able to pick their utilities. Anyone who wants to play Revenant HAS to adjust to the profession. You can design a faction so that it allows for more than one playstyle but there is no way to design one in a way that it would be able to meet everyone's playstyle preferences. So on some level, a player HAS to adjust to the faction they want to play.

As for the quality of purpose ...... there is no way of knowing if your issues with the profession are actually held by a majority of the people who play the game. The forums is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to tell if people like or hate something. The forums tend to self select and the people who tend to spend the most time are the ones who are unhappy and voicing that displeasure. Not everyone mind you, but you are never going to get an accurate picture of the wants and desires of players. You'll get a picure of some but nowhere near enough where you can make the assumption that the way you feel about the profession is the way Elementalist players writ large feel. The quality of the purpose could mean that the profession remains as is.

Also, you totally need to have one hard profession in a game. Not everyone wants to play something that is easy. Making all your factions in a game easy is going to upset people. They would argue that people who like an easy faction to play have plenty of choices and they have none and they would be correct. That's poor game design. Granted, Elementalist isn't the only hard profession in the game so claiming that there is just one hard profession and then eight easy ones is disingenuous, at best.

It sucks when the design and play style of a faction goes against the way you want to play. However, that happens in most games. You are always going to have factions in a game in which the flavor of it is cool to someone but the way it works just doesn't work for them. It is impossible to deliver the kind of game you speak off outside of a single player experience. Some people will have to accept that the profession whose flavor they identify with is simply something they can't play. There are people who love it and it would be wrong to take that away from them just to appease another set of people. That would is a sure fire way to kill your game.

Arheundel.6451 · November 25, 2018

@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

That doesn't work. Designing two levels of a profession would just make the balance issues far worse. It would effectively increase the number of factions in the game and as you include more and more factions the balancing of it all gets worse. To be frank, the player has to adjust to the profession, not the other way around. It is impossible to design a faction in a game in such a way that its playstyle is something that everyone who agrees with the concept will like. There are folks who love the concept for Revenant but hate the Energy mechanic and not being able to pick their utilities. Anyone who wants to play Revenant

HAS

to adjust to the profession. You can design a faction so that it allows for more than one playstyle but there is no way to design one in a way that it would be able to meet everyone's playstyle preferences. So on some level, a player

HAS

to adjust to the faction they want to play.

As for the quality of purpose ...... there is no way of knowing if your issues with the profession are actually held by a majority of the people who play the game. The forums is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to tell if people like or hate something. The forums tend to self select and the people who tend to spend the most time are the ones who are unhappy and voicing that displeasure. Not everyone mind you, but you are never going to get an accurate picture of the wants and desires of players. You'll get a picure of some but nowhere near enough where you can make the assumption that the way you feel about the profession is the way Elementalist players writ large feel. The quality of the purpose could mean that the profession remains as is.

Also, you totally need to have one hard profession in a game. Not everyone wants to play something that is easy. Making all your factions in a game easy is going to upset people. They would argue that people who like an easy faction to play have plenty of choices and they have none and they would be correct. That's poor game design. Granted, Elementalist isn't the only hard profession in the game so claiming that there is just one hard profession and then eight easy ones is disingenuous, at best.

It sucks when the design and play style of a faction goes against the way you want to play. However, that happens in most games. You are always going to have factions in a game in which the flavor of it is cool to someone but the way it works just doesn't work for them. It is impossible to deliver the kind of game you speak off outside of a single player experience. Some people will have to accept that the profession whose flavor they identify with is simply something they can't play. There are people who love it and it would be wrong to take that away from them just to appease another set of people. That would is a sure fire way to kill your game.

Your argument does entirely not apply to ele, the class was not meant to be hardcore to such degree where you need 300% effort to beat even your average player on other professions, being harder to play it's ok but no to such an extent where your entire toolset is nothing but a mockery of what other professions can do.

You compare ele to revenant where those who master it , we'll go and lay waste from pvp to wvw, be it duels or large zerg fights and that's not the case with ele where mastering it doesn't bring you anything but a moral accolade

Bladestrom.6425 · November 25, 2018

@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

That doesn't work. Designing two levels of a profession would just make the balance issues far worse. It would effectively increase the number of factions in the game and as you include more and more factions the balancing of it all gets worse. To be frank, the player has to adjust to the profession, not the other way around. It is impossible to design a faction in a game in such a way that its playstyle is something that everyone who agrees with the concept will like. There are folks who love the concept for Revenant but hate the Energy mechanic and not being able to pick their utilities. Anyone who wants to play Revenant

HAS

to adjust to the profession. You can design a faction so that it allows for more than one playstyle but there is no way to design one in a way that it would be able to meet everyone's playstyle preferences. So on some level, a player

HAS

to adjust to the faction they want to play.

As for the quality of purpose ...... there is no way of knowing if your issues with the profession are actually held by a majority of the people who play the game. The forums is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to tell if people like or hate something. The forums tend to self select and the people who tend to spend the most time are the ones who are unhappy and voicing that displeasure. Not everyone mind you, but you are never going to get an accurate picture of the wants and desires of players. You'll get a picure of some but nowhere near enough where you can make the assumption that the way you feel about the profession is the way Elementalist players writ large feel. The quality of the purpose could mean that the profession remains as is.

Also, you totally need to have one hard profession in a game. Not everyone wants to play something that is easy. Making all your factions in a game easy is going to upset people. They would argue that people who like an easy faction to play have plenty of choices and they have none and they would be correct. That's poor game design. Granted, Elementalist isn't the only hard profession in the game so claiming that there is just one hard profession and then eight easy ones is disingenuous, at best.

It sucks when the design and play style of a faction goes against the way you want to play. However, that happens in most games. You are always going to have factions in a game in which the flavor of it is cool to someone but the way it works just doesn't work for them. It is impossible to deliver the kind of game you speak off outside of a single player experience. Some people will have to accept that the profession whose flavor they identify with is simply something they can't play. There are people who love it and it would be wrong to take that away from them just to appease another set of people. That would is a sure fire way to kill your game.

Your argument does entirely not apply to ele, the class was not meant to be hardcore to such degree where you need 300% effort to beat even your average player on other professions, being harder to play it's ok but no to such an extent where your entire toolset is nothing but a mockery of what other professions can do.

You compare ele to revenant where those who master it , we'll go and lay waste from pvp to wvw, be it duels or large zerg fights and that's not the case with ele where mastering it doesn't bring you anything but a moral accolade

The class is not hardcore, but its deliberately complex, and aimed at players that like that type of gameplay. Balance is an entirely different concern that is concerned with power and mitigation levels. Its the latter that needs tweaked not skill choices and gameplay style.

Emberheart.8426 · November 25, 2018

@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

This still doesn't justify removing attunements. Just because attunements exist, it doesn't mean that every single good build has to be difficult to play. Elementalist has had some easier builds in the past.

Also look at engineer. Holosmith simplified engi a lot, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Anet had that sort of design goal with the next e-spec. Weaver was designed to be the most complex and they won't do that with ele again.

Removing attunements would take immense design effort. Not only would every single aspect of core ele would need to be rebalanced, but there would also have to be a new class mechanic. Weaver and tempest mechanics would also need to be scrapped and redesigned. All of this effort is completely unnecessary. What the devs have to do is stop being afraid of buffing ele. It has been over a year and the class doesn't feel much stronger than it was on PoF release. It's a weak class so stop being so conservative with the buffs. We can't be waiting for 2 more years until the next expansion for this to be fixed.

Arheundel.6451 · November 25, 2018

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

That doesn't work. Designing two levels of a profession would just make the balance issues far worse. It would effectively increase the number of factions in the game and as you include more and more factions the balancing of it all gets worse. To be frank, the player has to adjust to the profession, not the other way around. It is impossible to design a faction in a game in such a way that its playstyle is something that everyone who agrees with the concept will like. There are folks who love the concept for Revenant but hate the Energy mechanic and not being able to pick their utilities. Anyone who wants to play Revenant

HAS

to adjust to the profession. You can design a faction so that it allows for more than one playstyle but there is no way to design one in a way that it would be able to meet everyone's playstyle preferences. So on some level, a player

HAS

to adjust to the faction they want to play.

As for the quality of purpose ...... there is no way of knowing if your issues with the profession are actually held by a majority of the people who play the game. The forums is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to tell if people like or hate something. The forums tend to self select and the people who tend to spend the most time are the ones who are unhappy and voicing that displeasure. Not everyone mind you, but you are never going to get an accurate picture of the wants and desires of players. You'll get a picure of some but nowhere near enough where you can make the assumption that the way you feel about the profession is the way Elementalist players writ large feel. The quality of the purpose could mean that the profession remains as is.

Also, you totally need to have one hard profession in a game. Not everyone wants to play something that is easy. Making all your factions in a game easy is going to upset people. They would argue that people who like an easy faction to play have plenty of choices and they have none and they would be correct. That's poor game design. Granted, Elementalist isn't the only hard profession in the game so claiming that there is just one hard profession and then eight easy ones is disingenuous, at best.

It sucks when the design and play style of a faction goes against the way you want to play. However, that happens in most games. You are always going to have factions in a game in which the flavor of it is cool to someone but the way it works just doesn't work for them. It is impossible to deliver the kind of game you speak off outside of a single player experience. Some people will have to accept that the profession whose flavor they identify with is simply something they can't play. There are people who love it and it would be wrong to take that away from them just to appease another set of people. That would is a sure fire way to kill your game.

Your argument does entirely not apply to ele, the class was not meant to be hardcore to such degree where you need 300% effort to beat even your average player on other professions, being harder to play it's ok but no to such an extent where your entire toolset is nothing but a mockery of what other professions can do.

You compare ele to revenant where those who master it , we'll go and lay waste from pvp to wvw, be it duels or large zerg fights and that's not the case with ele where mastering it doesn't bring you anything but a moral accolade

The class is not hardcore, but its deliberately complex, and aimed at players that like that type of gameplay. Balance is an entirely different concern that is concerned with power and mitigation levels. Its the latter that needs tweaked not skill choices and gameplay style.

Balance itself would means dumbing down the profession is some people's eyes

Teevell.1684 · November 25, 2018

I'm not a game dev, so I'm not sure how to fix Ele, but something is definitely off with this class. I just came back after a two-year break, and am really loving weaver, but everything is easier/less frustrating to do in this game on one of my other characters (ranger, necro at the moment but I played around on my engi and thief too) than it is on my Ele. By a large margin. I honestly don't think at this point I'll even finish the PoF story on that character because some fights are so hard to get past, whereas I got through them first try on my other classes. It's not that I want Ele to be a cakewalk, and I know it's not impossible to do this content on them, it's that the difference in difficulty between Ele and the other classes really struck me.

So yeah, I agree that Ele needs some work. The reward for the effort just isn't there like it is in other classes.

Arheundel.6451 · November 25, 2018

@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

This still doesn't justify removing attunements. Just because attunements exist, it doesn't mean that every single good build has to be difficult to play. Elementalist has had some easier builds in the past.

Also look at engineer. Holosmith simplified engi a lot, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Anet had that sort of design goal with the next e-spec. Weaver was designed to be the most complex and they won't do that with ele again.

Removing attunements would take immense design effort. Not only would every single aspect of core ele would need to be rebalanced, but there would also have to be a new class mechanic. Weaver and tempest mechanics would also need to be scrapped and redesigned. All of this effort is completely unnecessary. What the devs have to do is stop being afraid of buffing ele. It has been over a year and the class doesn't feel much stronger than it was on PoF release. It's a weak class so stop being so conservative with the buffs. We can't be waiting for 2 more years until the next expansion for this to be fixed.

Holosmith is not an engi with new elite, the whole class has solid traitlines that make holosmith the powerhouse it is...you cannot build a castle on sand, the traitlines on ele have not be buffed since 4 years ago, like earth trait line received only nerfs since Dec 2013...no change whatsoever

Emberheart.8426 · November 26, 2018

@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

This still doesn't justify removing attunements. Just because attunements exist, it doesn't mean that every single good build has to be difficult to play. Elementalist has had some easier builds in the past.

Also look at engineer. Holosmith simplified engi a lot, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Anet had that sort of design goal with the next e-spec. Weaver was designed to be the most complex and they won't do that with ele again.

Removing attunements would take immense design effort. Not only would every single aspect of core ele would need to be rebalanced, but there would also have to be a new class mechanic. Weaver and tempest mechanics would also need to be scrapped and redesigned. All of this effort is completely unnecessary. What the devs have to do is stop being afraid of buffing ele. It has been over a year and the class doesn't feel much stronger than it was on PoF release. It's a weak class so stop being so conservative with the buffs. We can't be waiting for 2 more years until the next expansion for this to be fixed.

Holosmith is not an engi with new elite, the whole class has solid traitlines that make holosmith the powerhouse it is...you cannot build a castle on sand, the traitlines on ele have not be buffed since 4 years ago, like earth trait line received only nerfs since Dec 2013...no change whatsoever

I didn't even talk about how strong holosmith is. I only said that holosmith made the engineer much simpler. This happened mainly because of photon forge.

Dace.8173 · November 26, 2018

@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

That doesn't work. Designing two levels of a profession would just make the balance issues far worse. It would effectively increase the number of factions in the game and as you include more and more factions the balancing of it all gets worse. To be frank, the player has to adjust to the profession, not the other way around. It is impossible to design a faction in a game in such a way that its playstyle is something that everyone who agrees with the concept will like. There are folks who love the concept for Revenant but hate the Energy mechanic and not being able to pick their utilities. Anyone who wants to play Revenant

HAS

to adjust to the profession. You can design a faction so that it allows for more than one playstyle but there is no way to design one in a way that it would be able to meet everyone's playstyle preferences. So on some level, a player

HAS

to adjust to the faction they want to play.

As for the quality of purpose ...... there is no way of knowing if your issues with the profession are actually held by a majority of the people who play the game. The forums is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to tell if people like or hate something. The forums tend to self select and the people who tend to spend the most time are the ones who are unhappy and voicing that displeasure. Not everyone mind you, but you are never going to get an accurate picture of the wants and desires of players. You'll get a picure of some but nowhere near enough where you can make the assumption that the way you feel about the profession is the way Elementalist players writ large feel. The quality of the purpose could mean that the profession remains as is.

Also, you totally need to have one hard profession in a game. Not everyone wants to play something that is easy. Making all your factions in a game easy is going to upset people. They would argue that people who like an easy faction to play have plenty of choices and they have none and they would be correct. That's poor game design. Granted, Elementalist isn't the only hard profession in the game so claiming that there is just one hard profession and then eight easy ones is disingenuous, at best.

It sucks when the design and play style of a faction goes against the way you want to play. However, that happens in most games. You are always going to have factions in a game in which the flavor of it is cool to someone but the way it works just doesn't work for them. It is impossible to deliver the kind of game you speak off outside of a single player experience. Some people will have to accept that the profession whose flavor they identify with is simply something they can't play. There are people who love it and it would be wrong to take that away from them just to appease another set of people. That would is a sure fire way to kill your game.

Your argument does entirely not apply to ele, the class was not meant to be hardcore to such degree where you need 300% effort to beat even your average player on other professions, being harder to play it's ok but no to such an extent where your entire toolset is nothing but a mockery of what other professions can do.

You compare ele to revenant where those who master it , we'll go and lay waste from pvp to wvw, be it duels or large zerg fights and that's not the case with ele where mastering it doesn't bring you anything but a moral accolade

It applies. The profession does not require 300% effort to beat even your average player. If you are bad with the profession then yes it may be 300% more but if you're good then it will likely not be anywhere remotely near that 300%. You are creating an arbitrary figure and treating it as a fact. Your statement that it is a hardcore difficulty level profession is not a truth. It is your take. For other people, the profession is not hardcore difficult. Elementalist was made for those types of people. If we were to do as you suggest we would create angry players who like the profession as is but just want it buffed to be more competitive. Also, unless you have some quotes from the developers about what Elementalist was meant to be when it was built and how the way it works right now is 300% harder than what they intended then your statement that it was not meant to be hardcore to such a degree where you need 300% more effort is just your opinion on the difficulty level of the profession and not an actual fact on the professions difficulty level.

It still doesn't counter the argument I actually made. Even if it does require 300% more effort that 300% more effort is aimed at people who want to play like that. Again, not every profession is going to be made in a way that the people who like the idea can play it. There is nothing wrong with that. What you are talking about is bad game design. It's ok that Elementalist isn't playable to everyone. That happens in a game. It is an unavoidable fact. You will always have people who just don't adapt well to some factions in a game. That doesn't mean the game was designed bad. That doesn't mean that the faction was designed bad. It just means that the mechanics just don't work for you. There was no way to create Elementalist where 100% of the people who like the concept would agree with the playstyle and mechanics.

Also, you didn't get why I compared Elementalist to Revenant. Granted both professions are difficult to master the reason why I compared the two is that Revenant is a profession that some people wish worked differently like you are suggesting. There are elements that they don't like and that makes it unfun for them and they wish those elements were removed in order for the profession to play closer to how they want to play, like you. There are folks who feel that Revenant is hardcore and requires 300% more effort to win with, as you do. You may disagree with that statement and if you do then it highlights how arbitrary your statement that Elementalist is hardcore and requires 300% more effort than others.

@Arheundel.6451 said:
@vesica tempestas.1563 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

That doesn't work. Designing two levels of a profession would just make the balance issues far worse. It would effectively increase the number of factions in the game and as you include more and more factions the balancing of it all gets worse. To be frank, the player has to adjust to the profession, not the other way around. It is impossible to design a faction in a game in such a way that its playstyle is something that everyone who agrees with the concept will like. There are folks who love the concept for Revenant but hate the Energy mechanic and not being able to pick their utilities. Anyone who wants to play Revenant

HAS

to adjust to the profession. You can design a faction so that it allows for more than one playstyle but there is no way to design one in a way that it would be able to meet everyone's playstyle preferences. So on some level, a player

HAS

to adjust to the faction they want to play.

As for the quality of purpose ...... there is no way of knowing if your issues with the profession are actually held by a majority of the people who play the game. The forums is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to tell if people like or hate something. The forums tend to self select and the people who tend to spend the most time are the ones who are unhappy and voicing that displeasure. Not everyone mind you, but you are never going to get an accurate picture of the wants and desires of players. You'll get a picure of some but nowhere near enough where you can make the assumption that the way you feel about the profession is the way Elementalist players writ large feel. The quality of the purpose could mean that the profession remains as is.

Also, you totally need to have one hard profession in a game. Not everyone wants to play something that is easy. Making all your factions in a game easy is going to upset people. They would argue that people who like an easy faction to play have plenty of choices and they have none and they would be correct. That's poor game design. Granted, Elementalist isn't the only hard profession in the game so claiming that there is just one hard profession and then eight easy ones is disingenuous, at best.

It sucks when the design and play style of a faction goes against the way you want to play. However, that happens in most games. You are always going to have factions in a game in which the flavor of it is cool to someone but the way it works just doesn't work for them. It is impossible to deliver the kind of game you speak off outside of a single player experience. Some people will have to accept that the profession whose flavor they identify with is simply something they can't play. There are people who love it and it would be wrong to take that away from them just to appease another set of people. That would is a sure fire way to kill your game.

Your argument does entirely not apply to ele, the class was not meant to be hardcore to such degree where you need 300% effort to beat even your average player on other professions, being harder to play it's ok but no to such an extent where your entire toolset is nothing but a mockery of what other professions can do.

You compare ele to revenant where those who master it , we'll go and lay waste from pvp to wvw, be it duels or large zerg fights and that's not the case with ele where mastering it doesn't bring you anything but a moral accolade

The class is not hardcore, but its deliberately complex, and aimed at players that like that type of gameplay. Balance is an entirely different concern that is concerned with power and mitigation levels. Its the latter that needs tweaked not skill choices and gameplay style.

Balance itself would means dumbing down the profession is some people's eyes

That is not true, on any level. You can balance Elementalist better without dumbing it down. The idea that a better balanced Ele is a dumb down Ele is just insane and ludicrous.

@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Ganathar.4956 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?

I see this as being viable. With Earth and Water giving you two bumps in vitality you'll have more HP. That alone would go a long way.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:i feel like atunements should just be combined to give Ele a weapon swap feel. Combine earth and water into a single attunement since they are defense and support then combine fire and air since they are more damage oriented. That isn't a dumbing down of the class, its making them like every other class with 2 hotbars of abilities. Then balancing will be easier to do since you just got rid of half the abilities.

There is no way you can do this and it wouldn't be called dumbing the profession down. For the people who like the micromanagement involved reducing that will be viewed as a dumbing down of the profession. The claim that it's making it like every other class wouldn't hold water either. Guardian has 3 hot bar abilities, Mesmer has 4, and Engineer has 5. So in actuality, you wouldn't be making them like every other profession. Plus, after 6 years of play, you really can't make a change like that without angering a portion of your playerbase (how much is beyond me but it would be bad to assume that the opinions on the shortcomings of the profession on the forums is held with the greater gaming public. The forum is a small sample of the players). Thus, a change of this nature would be read as dumbing down the profession and it would be hard to argue against that.

Hardcore mode should be a playstyle choice..not a design concept, you let people decide how they want to play with their class...not ask all players who enjoy ele concept to go and play hardcore mode for the sake of it. Any change will always anger some players but for quality purposes that's irrelevant at best...if 8 professions out of 9 are easy mode for an easy mode game...we can't have 1 profession hard mode for the sake of every single white fly

This still doesn't justify removing attunements. Just because attunements exist, it doesn't mean that every single good build has to be difficult to play. Elementalist has had some easier builds in the past.

Also look at engineer. Holosmith simplified engi a lot, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Anet had that sort of design goal with the next e-spec. Weaver was designed to be the most complex and they won't do that with ele again.

Removing attunements would take immense design effort. Not only would every single aspect of core ele would need to be rebalanced, but there would also have to be a new class mechanic. Weaver and tempest mechanics would also need to be scrapped and redesigned. All of this effort is completely unnecessary. What the devs have to do is stop being afraid of buffing ele. It has been over a year and the class doesn't feel much stronger than it was on PoF release. It's a weak class so stop being so conservative with the buffs. We can't be waiting for 2 more years until the next expansion for this to be fixed.

Holosmith is not an engi with new elite, the whole class has solid traitlines that make holosmith the powerhouse it is...you cannot build a castle on sand, the traitlines on ele have not be buffed since 4 years ago, like earth trait line received only nerfs since Dec 2013...no change whatsoever

I didn't even talk about how strong holosmith is. I only said that holosmith made the engineer much simpler. This happened mainly because of photon forge.

And you'll notice that there is a lot of hate directed at Holosmith because a lot of Engineer players feel that Holosmith is Engineer on easy mode and that isn't how Engineer should work (I'm not one of them. I love both Scrapper and Holosmith). I point this out with your post to highlight the idea that making something easier or less complex is going to anger some fans of that profession (though my commentary is not directed at you personally but others who have been suggesting making Elementalist easier or changing its core mechanics).

Overall, Elementalist can be made better as is. The idea that its hardcore play is just silly. It's more difficult than others but thats why its appealing to some people. There is never going to be a fix to the profession that will appease everyone. However, the worst road to walk down is one in which they redesign the profession to make it less complex. That will just lead to complaints that ANet doesn't understand what the players want. Additionally, if a redeisgn didn't make the profession better then ANet has made their problems much much worse. It is safer and better for them to just try to improve what they have right now instead of rolling the dice on an entirely new profession that people may still hate.

Zhaid Zhem.6508 · November 26, 2018

Tools+Alchemy+Holo have so much synergy;Swiftness > Vigor > +10% dmg : Hololeap, Thermal release Valve ( dmg + lost heat + heal)Photon Forge counts as a tool belt skill : Kinetic battery (without saying there is 2 traits that give 3 charges in the tools lane)Comeback cure, Regen when you remove a condi : prismatic converter, Transmute, healing turret, Elixir #Power Wrench : swiftness/vigor > Thermal release Valve > Elite skill CD reduction.Elixir in toolbelt : 15%+20% cd reduction !!??Coumpounding chemical : holo leap, corona burst, all elixirs (toolbelt + utility skills + passive one), optimized activatio, invigorating speed, healing turret, Kintetic battery, Comeback cure...

Photon Forge is already completly broken, but all the specs work so strong together it's so absurd; Dmg boost, dmg reduction, boon stacking and a lot of sustain and cleansing...

And weaver/elem, what do we have as synergy ?weaver/arcane/water : Swiftness > regen > 1 Condi cleanse. Wow Yes ! 3 lanes to remove a condition.Or auras : Aura > 1 condicleanse > Fury/swiftnss or protection ; applied to allies + heal with tempest; but you can't even have all the traits, you need to chose, and not between traits in the same spec, you need to chose between specs for one trait (like kitten earth spec, 5 years of uselessness)Weakness in air lane and the +15% precsion in weaver's trait.

Don't forget you can't have them all in the same build, you can only chose one !Elem specs are very poor design. Specs are already not sufficient alones, but don't have good chemistry between them, and with utility skills. Making hard to build something and make connections between traits, skills, equipment, which worth the sacrifice of, or compensate a little, an other spec/build (aka weaver/arcane/water spam dodge and evades)

ReaverKane.7598 · November 26, 2018

@"Jski.6180" said:Dps is coming from a 3ed partly program and leaves out a lot of info that is very important to a fight.You need to do your dmg vs up / down players dmg vs npc, the amount they are healing for ,how much dmg your running into dmg -% effect, how much dmg your runing into barrier, how many of your dmg is running up vs blocks and evasion, how much condi are you applying and how its getting cleard, what soft cc are you applying what, and boons your striping (ele cant strip any thing). There a lot going on in a fight in gw2 both pve and pvp and ele cant do most of the things they need to as a dps class. A program telling your numbers is not going to def how good or bad your doing as a class in a group but only how good and bad you are doing vs other ppl of the SAME class.

Next time do your research before looking bad...ArcDPS actually has a log feature that allows you to see (and improve) all those, some, like boons are done live like DPS, the rest you can check in "Post-mortem" so you see what errors you (and your team mates) made.You also have websites like GW2 Raidar that also allow you to compare your performance and your group's with the rest of that community.

Finally, dps doesn't come out of a 3rd party program... What the hell man, do you even know what that means??DPS is your damage output... If you look at the chat log, and have a chronometer (or time stamps) you can calculate it yourself. Also you can also use the Golem in the aerodrome to see your DPS using tools given to you by Arena Net. The only thing that the DPS meter does that you can't do yourself, is that it allows you to continuously do those measurements, logs them, and also allows you to see the rest of your partie's DPS allowing you to monitor theirs and your performance.

A program telling and logging numbers is actually the only way you'll ever know with any certainty how good you're doing and where your mistakes were.

Also, what does that rant have to do with anything in this thread? Are you that salty and biased that if you read the word DPS, you immediately go into a rant.

Back on topic:Ele isn't that different than what it used to be.It was nerfed a bunch a while back, but was taken back up a few notches. So now it's not doing 10kDPS over the next best DPSer, but 1-2k more instead.That means other classes with more sustain and/or support options tend to become more useful.Of course ele also has several support and sustain options, the thing is, it's hard to fit them into the rotation.That's the problem with allowing problems to fester for years (like Necro's balance as well), there's been 2 elite specs that were built with a certain power level and role set in mind, then the posterior balance changes that, and they've failed to compensate so far.

Arheundel.6451 · November 26, 2018

@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@Arheundel.6451 said:
@Dace.8173 said:
@MyPuppy.8970 said:Solution :Make these points baseline :
increased attack power and condi damage when in fire.
increased vitality and healing power when in water.
increased precision and ferocity when in air
increased vitality and toughness when in earth.Numbers would be maybe +120 per stat, not lingering when you switch attunement. That alone would give purpose to having attunements besides more weapon skills that you need to combo to get anything out of them. Of course you could further improve those stats by traiting in the desired line. So add + 180 condi damage in fire, +180 healing power in water. Air and earth already have +180 precision and toughness. Not by default for air, so just remove +25% speed it's useless anyway.
Furthermore:
Remove cd reduction on utilities. Replace the traits to give additionnal utility to them.
Instead:
Pyromancer's training : CD reduction on fire skills, fire attunement recharge/overloads/dual skills, and fire glyphs, fire signet, cleansing fire cantrip, fire shouts, fire conjures, etc you see my point.Same for Aquamancer's, Aeromancer's, Geomancer's.
Arcane line could stay the same i guess.
Thoughts?