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The state of Elementalists in PvP


Fortus.6175

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Been a while since I have posted in forums, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, we can get some traction here.

Right now Elementalists feel very underwhelming. The only available builds are deep in water/arcane, require mender/celestial and 1/2 cantrips in order to even survive. Yes, they have sustain, and thanks to evasion runes they have better cleansing, although that has never been an issue with water, which you have to take nonetheless, as well as only working with weaver. Tempest was further nerfed by having frost aura reduce even less damage.

I'm not entirely sure what can be done since I'm not a developer, but this isn't a number's problem, this is a core problem. I see 2 main options, bring all other 8 classes down to ele's power-level, or bring eles up to the rest. We are heavily locked into going defensive since we have low hp, low armor, little access to damage mitigation that doesnt prevent point capture or gated behind a weapon (sword). I do not have many proposed changes but I would like to see staff coming back, with reliable ways to do damage, fire staff #2 and #5 were nerfed heavily, the bread and butter of any damage we could potentially do, when casting staff fire #5 already made us an easy target to begin with.

The worst part is, we are getting raged before the match even begins, I have a few mails with hate, I have had to go offline to stop the whispering harrasment, my block list is growing big and I would rather not block the people calling strategies or incomings. It isnt our fault as ele players that the class feels weak, so I think the onus is on Anet to work a solution, or release stats disproving us otherwise.

Anyways, I want to hear you guys comment, and yes I'm aware of cello's evasion rune build, which again, will probably get ele's nerfed, and still doesnt answer the problem since, well, lots of sustain, no damage.

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I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

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@"sephiroth.4217" said:I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

If you are ranked low enough compared to your skill, anything can work.

Think of it like this: MMR is the sum of your personal pvp skill and the strength of your class build (with some modifiers, but for simplicity, this gets the idea across). Playing ele right now is like having nearly 0 in the build strength portion. Even if you play Cello's annoying fly stalemate build, the build power is about half of what you get out like a holo or boonbeast or spellbreaker, which all have some value when they aren't in strictly 1v1 situations on a side note. Hell, they can actually decap which ele is extremely weak at due to terrible pressure.

So you can play a bunch of builds that have some synergy in them, and you will simply lose until you reach an MMR where you have enough players skill to make up for being handicapped with playing ele. If you were to swap to meta builds like a blood Necro or boonbeast you will find yourself on a win streak until you swap back and readjust for the "ele is dogcrap penalty"

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@BlackBeard.2873 said:

@"sephiroth.4217" said:I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

If you are ranked low enough compared to your skill, anything can work.

Think of it like this: MMR is the sum of your personal pvp skill and the strength of your class build (with some modifiers, but for simplicity, this gets the idea across). Playing ele right now is like having nearly 0 in the build strength portion. Even if you play Cello's annoying fly stalemate build, the build power is about half of what you get out like a holo or boonbeast or spellbreaker, which all have some value when they aren't in strictly 1v1 situations on a side note. Hell, they can actually decap which ele is extremely weak at due to terrible pressure.

So you can play a bunch of builds that have some synergy in them, and you will simply lose until you reach an MMR where you have enough players skill to make up for being handicapped with playing ele. If you were to swap to meta builds like a blood Necro or boonbeast you will find yourself on a win streak until you swap back and readjust for the "ele is dogcrap penalty"

MMR and rank is based on node captures...Not the mechanical skill of the player, as tempest you can go 28/2 but still lose rating and the match because no one bothered with nodes.

I dont know what others are like, i could take a good guess based off personal opinions on the class but I can handle a lot of top players on top classes and have had the privelage of them raging at me numerous times when they've lost a 1v1...

I have nothing to prove either as I know what I can do with the class and its sad to see so many people have given up on it... sure, not as strong as meta engie but it can still beat a meta engie if you play your cards right... you just have to work ur butt off while the engie only needs to press a button or 2, and I totally understand why that could be seen as undeniable proof as to why an engie should never lose vs a tempest while simultaneously making the class look like trash.

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@sephiroth.4217 said:

@sephiroth.4217 said:I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

If you are ranked low enough compared to your skill, anything can work.

Think of it like this: MMR is the sum of your personal pvp skill and the strength of your class build (with some modifiers, but for simplicity, this gets the idea across). Playing ele right now is like having nearly 0 in the build strength portion. Even if you play Cello's annoying fly stalemate build, the build power is about half of what you get out like a holo or boonbeast or spellbreaker, which all have some value when they aren't in strictly 1v1 situations on a side note. Hell, they can actually decap which ele is extremely weak at due to terrible pressure.

So you can play a bunch of builds that have some synergy in them, and you will simply lose until you reach an MMR where you have enough players skill to make up for being handicapped with playing ele. If you were to swap to meta builds like a blood Necro or boonbeast you will find yourself on a win streak until you swap back and readjust for the "ele is dogcrap penalty"

MMR and rank is based on node captures...Not the mechanical skill of the player, as tempest you can go 28/2 but still lose rating and the match because no one bothered with nodes.

I dont know what others are like, i could take a good guess based off personal opinions on the class but I can handle a lot of top players on top classes and have had the privelage of them raging at me numerous times when they've lost a 1v1...

I have nothing to prove either as I know what I can do with the class and its sad to see so many people have given up on it... sure, not as strong as meta engie but it can still beat a meta engie if you play your cards right... you just have to work ur butt off while the engie only needs to press a button or 2, and I totally understand why that could be seen as undeniable proof as to why an engie should never lose vs a tempest while simultaneously making the class look like trash.

The thing about what you are saying though is; basically with enough "skills" ele is actually balanced, however, the point im trying to make is, that if two equally skilled players (like god-like skills) were to be matched up agaisnt, and one of them is playing ele vs say, boonbeast, holo, condi mesmer, then by default ele would lose due to lower power. I havent given up on ele, and Im not unexperienced either, I do not wish to go into "my skills are better than X" route so I'm trying to keep it objective. True, we do not have numbers on our side, but if several experienced, skilled ele players are agreeing on it, perhaps there is some true on the matter. Im still playing ele, I'm still trying new builds, but even putting maximun effort, they still fall short of other builds on other classes that take incredibly less "skills" to pull off, and when played optimally, or decently well, far surpass what a god-like ele could be.

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Before the thread gets moved to Dwayna knows where, i wanted to say i understand your concerns, OP. Most of us agree that ele's issues are more a mechanical issue than just a number's. Sephiroth might be an exception though, he's quite happy with his temp aura build, but he enjoys playing like it's a TDM, which is fine as long as he's having fun.If you read ele's concerns thread on the ele subforum you'll find that many of us already made the same statements, and came up with many reasonnable suggestions. I want to believe Anet is aware of it and a rework is on schedule, but i regret the lack of communication and information about it.Now if you enjoy the class don't let others bully you. If anyone complains about me picking ele, i just invite them to report me and send a ticket to Anet for playing ele.

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@Fortus.6175 said:

@sephiroth.4217 said:I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

If you are ranked low enough compared to your skill, anything can work.

Think of it like this: MMR is the sum of your personal pvp skill and the strength of your class build (with some modifiers, but for simplicity, this gets the idea across). Playing ele right now is like having nearly 0 in the build strength portion. Even if you play Cello's annoying fly stalemate build, the build power is about half of what you get out like a holo or boonbeast or spellbreaker, which all have some value when they aren't in strictly 1v1 situations on a side note. Hell, they can actually decap which ele is extremely weak at due to terrible pressure.

So you can play a bunch of builds that have some synergy in them, and you will simply lose until you reach an MMR where you have enough players skill to make up for being handicapped with playing ele. If you were to swap to meta builds like a blood Necro or boonbeast you will find yourself on a win streak until you swap back and readjust for the "ele is dogcrap penalty"

MMR and rank is based on node captures...Not the mechanical skill of the player, as tempest you can go 28/2 but still lose rating and the match because no one bothered with nodes.

I dont know what others are like, i could take a good guess based off personal opinions on the class but I can handle a lot of top players on top classes and have had the privelage of them raging at me numerous times when they've lost a 1v1...

I have nothing to prove either as I know what I can do with the class and its sad to see so many people have given up on it... sure, not as strong as meta engie but it can still beat a meta engie if you play your cards right... you just have to work ur butt off while the engie only needs to press a button or 2, and I totally understand why that could be seen as undeniable proof as to why an engie should never lose vs a tempest while simultaneously making the class look like trash.

The thing about what you are saying though is; basically with enough "skills" ele is actually balanced, however, the point im trying to make is, that if two equally skilled players (like god-like skills) were to be matched up agaisnt, and one of them is playing ele vs say, boonbeast, holo, condi mesmer, then by default ele would lose due to lower power. I havent given up on ele, and Im not unexperienced either, I do not wish to go into "my skills are better than X" route so I'm trying to keep it objective. True, we do not have numbers on our side, but if several experienced, skilled ele players are agreeing on it, perhaps there is some true on the matter. Im still playing ele, I'm still trying new builds, but even putting maximun effort, they still fall short of other builds on other classes that take incredibly less "skills" to pull off, and when played optimally, or decently well, far surpass what a god-like ele could be.

And im not disagreeing with that as I said that the ele has to work thier butts off while the engie presses a button or 2... I also said you gotta play cards right too lol

I would love some tempest buffs but its not as useless as most claim it to be.

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@sephiroth.4217 said:

@sephiroth.4217 said:I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

If you are ranked low enough compared to your skill, anything can work.

Think of it like this: MMR is the sum of your personal pvp skill and the strength of your class build (with some modifiers, but for simplicity, this gets the idea across). Playing ele right now is like having nearly 0 in the build strength portion. Even if you play Cello's annoying fly stalemate build, the build power is about half of what you get out like a holo or boonbeast or spellbreaker, which all have some value when they aren't in strictly 1v1 situations on a side note. Hell, they can actually decap which ele is extremely weak at due to terrible pressure.

So you can play a bunch of builds that have some synergy in them, and you will simply lose until you reach an MMR where you have enough players skill to make up for being handicapped with playing ele. If you were to swap to meta builds like a blood Necro or boonbeast you will find yourself on a win streak until you swap back and readjust for the "ele is dogcrap penalty"

MMR and rank is based on node captures...Not the mechanical skill of the player, as tempest you can go 28/2 but still lose rating and the match because no one bothered with nodes.

I dont know what others are like, i could take a good guess based off personal opinions on the class but I can handle a lot of top players on top classes and have had the privelage of them raging at me numerous times when they've lost a 1v1...

I have nothing to prove either as I know what I can do with the class and its sad to see so many people have given up on it... sure, not as strong as meta engie but it can still beat a meta engie if you play your cards right... you just have to work ur butt off while the engie only needs to press a button or 2, and I totally understand why that could be seen as undeniable proof as to why an engie should never lose vs a tempest while simultaneously making the class look like trash.

The thing about what you are saying though is; basically with enough "skills" ele is actually balanced, however, the point im trying to make is, that if two equally skilled players (like god-like skills) were to be matched up agaisnt, and one of them is playing ele vs say, boonbeast, holo, condi mesmer, then by default ele would lose due to lower power. I havent given up on ele, and Im not unexperienced either, I do not wish to go into "my skills are better than X" route so I'm trying to keep it objective. True, we do not have numbers on our side, but if several experienced, skilled ele players are agreeing on it, perhaps there is some true on the matter. Im still playing ele, I'm still trying new builds, but even putting maximun effort, they still fall short of other builds on other classes that take incredibly less "skills" to pull off, and when played optimally, or decently well, far surpass what a god-like ele could be.

And im not disagreeing with that as I said that the ele has to work thier butts off while the engie presses a button or 2... I also said you gotta play cards right too lol

I would love some tempest buffs but its not as useless as most claim it to be.

I think we can all agree it's not useless, it's just inneficient and unoptimized. In the right hands, and if you play your cards right, it can be a nice addition to a team comp. You'll still be at a disadvantage, but it is possible to pull it through. As i Say, most people calling ele useless are generaly those who don't play it or understand its gameplay, i.e. teammates and enemies.

Two seasons ago, while contesting a neutralized far against a SB and P/P Deadeye and dying there after 30s or so, SB asked 'how can you be in plat ?' Well sorry for not being prof/build carried.

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@MyPuppy.8970 said:

@sephiroth.4217 said:I dont disagree that ele could be in a better place but there are much more viable builds that have been working for me...Celestial fire air, sage fire water, mender air water and so forth thats all for tempest DD too... to name a few

I feel like Tempest needs access to more stability, not just 1 stack either as there is a lot of CC to work aroud on any given match...

If you are ranked low enough compared to your skill, anything can work.

Think of it like this: MMR is the sum of your personal pvp skill and the strength of your class build (with some modifiers, but for simplicity, this gets the idea across). Playing ele right now is like having nearly 0 in the build strength portion. Even if you play Cello's annoying fly stalemate build, the build power is about half of what you get out like a holo or boonbeast or spellbreaker, which all have some value when they aren't in strictly 1v1 situations on a side note. Hell, they can actually decap which ele is extremely weak at due to terrible pressure.

So you can play a bunch of builds that have some synergy in them, and you will simply lose until you reach an MMR where you have enough players skill to make up for being handicapped with playing ele. If you were to swap to meta builds like a blood Necro or boonbeast you will find yourself on a win streak until you swap back and readjust for the "ele is dogcrap penalty"

MMR and rank is based on node captures...Not the mechanical skill of the player, as tempest you can go 28/2 but still lose rating and the match because no one bothered with nodes.

I dont know what others are like, i could take a good guess based off personal opinions on the class but I can handle a lot of top players on top classes and have had the privelage of them raging at me numerous times when they've lost a 1v1...

I have nothing to prove either as I know what I can do with the class and its sad to see so many people have given up on it... sure, not as strong as meta engie but it can still beat a meta engie if you play your cards right... you just have to work ur butt off while the engie only needs to press a button or 2, and I totally understand why that could be seen as undeniable proof as to why an engie should never lose vs a tempest while simultaneously making the class look like trash.

The thing about what you are saying though is; basically with enough "skills" ele is actually balanced, however, the point im trying to make is, that if two equally skilled players (like god-like skills) were to be matched up agaisnt, and one of them is playing ele vs say, boonbeast, holo, condi mesmer, then by default ele would lose due to lower power. I havent given up on ele, and Im not unexperienced either, I do not wish to go into "my skills are better than X" route so I'm trying to keep it objective. True, we do not have numbers on our side, but if several experienced, skilled ele players are agreeing on it, perhaps there is some true on the matter. Im still playing ele, I'm still trying new builds, but even putting maximun effort, they still fall short of other builds on other classes that take incredibly less "skills" to pull off, and when played optimally, or decently well, far surpass what a god-like ele could be.

And im not disagreeing with that as I said that the ele has to work thier butts off while the engie presses a button or 2... I also said you gotta play cards right too lol

I would love some tempest buffs but its not as useless as most claim it to be.

I think we can all agree it's not useless, it's just inneficient and unoptimized. In the right hands, and if you play your cards right, it can be a nice addition to a team comp. You'll still be at a disadvantage, but it is possible to pull it through. As i Say, most people calling ele useless are generaly those who don't play it or understand its gameplay, i.e. teammates and enemies.

Two seasons ago, while contesting a neutralized far against a SB and P/P Deadeye and dying there after 30s or so, SB asked 'how can you be in plat ?' Well sorry for not being prof/build carried.

Yea I completely agree that people who call it useless haven't discovered or learnt its true potential... 6 years and the class still teaches me new things with every shift on the meta.

It must be hard for Anet to balance a class thats essentially a jack of all trades but if I were to make suggestions it would be directed right at tempest on a fighting perspective.. some of my suggestions would be: with small explanations from experiences.

  • Add stabilty to Aftershock / Rez game is weak, would come in handy to help rez people under fire, would also help with the Immobilized set up when using offensively.

  • Add more stacks of Stabilty when overloading when traited / Theres way too much CC flying around, even with 1 stack of stability Im still forced to play as if I have no stacks at all.

  • Improve the Rebound health proc when it prevents a lethal blow or grant barrier aswell. / burst meta, an auto attack nullifies it... only good to literally buy 1-2s until your next heal is up if its comin up... Only use it has really is that it can run off soldier runes and procs aura share.

  • increase Water Overload pulsating heals but decrease the final heal, same treatment as Staff on Guard / again, lots of damage flying around with a lot of CC, overloading in the fight means winding up with less health than what had before you started overloading, which means you're forced to disengage for a safe heal. This also means you can't use it on your allies when they need it most.

  • Churning Earth needs to have lower CD or activate the blast finisher effect much sooner.

These are my very selfish suggestions as they would go a very long way for me... not sure if they are big changes to others or not but yea, those would go a mile for me.

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Bring back Fresh Air Scepter Weaver. When people pick elementalists, I think most people want to be that squishy wizard raining death upon people with immensely damaging spells at a range. Making sword weaver viable is boring. We don't need more super sustainy bruiser builds in the meta and I feel like developers dropped the ball designing sword just in terms of flavor. Sword weaver should feel like that Elder Scrolls style spellsword, using use sword in one hand while casting powerful offensive magic in the off hand. Sword just doesn't feel like that, so I don't care if it is ever made viable unless it gets a redesign that makes it more fun and flavorful.

Back when Fresh Air Weaver was closest to being viable I really loved seeing them as good ones could excel and be very threatening and made for fun fights with moments of panic when you were in a teamfight and realized you were being targeted by one, and also fun and relief when you could counter burst them instead. The spec was barely viable and only excelled in a couple of people's hands before it was unjustly nerfed out of the metal. Staff elementalist should be reworked into an extremely deadly crit version of scourge. Just huge, AoE hate.

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@XECOR.2814 said:Remove kitten evade skills then buff. Dont buff without it.

The lack of hard mitigation on other weapon sets besides sword is exactly why they are not viable in today's environment. Also, they lack damage too, due to having huge windups and long cooldowns for lackluster effects, while other classes can spam short-CD bursts that have very little animation. Further, alot traits are just terrible and don't really have a complete set of useful options at every tier (look at Fire for instance, which lacks a decent GM of nearly the same caliber as other builds have for pvp).

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And im not disagreeing with that as I said that the ele has to work thier butts off while the engie presses a button or 2... I also said you gotta play cards right too lol

I would love some tempest buffs but its not as useless as most claim it to be.

I'll agree with you there. A lot of these meta builds that people complain about are actually beatable if you play Tempest. No one knows that, or even cares, because no one plays Tempest.The only one that hard counters Tempest quite laughably is Mirage- but that's a whole other discussion.

If any buffs- Tempest needs better aura's and stability without traits added.

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@Balsa.3951 said:out of curiosity what are weavers good at ?

Stalemating someone to hold a cap at it's current level. Not good at decapping or capping, but holding a point owned or already neuted. It doesn't kill, it doesn't support, it is just an annoying fly that can tie up a point. If well played it can even stall out getting 2v1d long enough to give a map advantage.

Note, it doesn't really do any of this better, or even as well as something like boonbeast.

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@Raine.7681 said:Ele is pretty broken right now with the condi immunity build ^^

Good thing the meta revolves around condi builds and not burst...

With this rune, ele can stalemate Condi builds the same as it could before. Sure, there should be an icd on the rune, but the fact they aren't hotfixing this, and probably are barely aware is a testament to how irrelevant ele is.

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