the.2458 - Guild Wars 2 Forums (2024)

Biggest issues with Elementalist and a solution proposal [Attuner / Conjurer]

the.2458 replied to Jeyzer.1605's topic in Elementalist

I agree with this to an extent, but they idea I was pointing at would essentially be a damage spiritual being that comes down and just does an attack rather than being a lingering aoe. Think of it as a creative theme change they could do to make spheres seem more interesting in terms of trait selection. Kinda like how thief dodges for daredevil or vindy completely change. Regardless, catalyst traits are a mess in general so it would definitely need more work for that.

Biggest issues with Elementalist and a solution proposal [Attuner / Conjurer]

the.2458 replied to Jeyzer.1605's topic in Elementalist

I am kinda late to the topic here, but I have been thinking about this for nearly a month and I wanted to get my 9 year+ Elementalist player experience perspective on the profession in all three game modes. I am not going to write 10 essays worth on the matter due to what has already been said. I am going to focus on the core issues and state my thoughts to respond to what has been said, not only here, but from the broad statements made on Twitter, Youtube, etc. PvE There are most statements here that I can agree with and that I have to most to say about. Elementalist has far more weaknesses in PvE than almost all of the professions in the game. Elementalist is very akin to Revenant and the way it plays. Revenant has cooldowns it cannot access due to a stance cooldown similar to weapon swap. Revenant only has so many stances that are capable of giving support like stab, protection, might, healing, etc. Once you switch from Ventari to Glint, your healing and cleansing capabilities are cut in half or more. This is one of the reasons we do not see a ton of heal boon Revenants in raids and strikes currently. Elementalist has the same problems, but they are worse. The same is true especially in the damage department. The general theme is... 1.) Fire does damage and burns 2.) Water sustains and controls (daze/knockback + chill) 3.) Air has moderate damage and control (stuns) 4.) Earth bleeds, sustains and controls (knockback/down + cripple/immobilize) This has become noticeably fundamentally flawed due to continuous reworks to all professions over time. Elementalist has always been on a slow decline in play rate since 2015. If we take a look at the other professions, the weapon choices, utilities, traits, etc, are selected to adapt to any encounter they may come across. Elementalist simply does not have this capability (yet). Elementalist does not have sufficient core trait lines due to the fact that you need to be in an attunement for some of the traits to be activated. Zephyr's Speed: gives crit chance (they had to change it so that you didn't have to be in air), but the movement speed increase is still trapped in air attunement. If an Elementalist specializes in air, they should permanently have the buff. It is like this for every profession with an innate speed buff in the specialization that has it. Power Overwhelming doubles the power gained while in fire. Air attunement gives extra ferocity with Aeromancer's Training. Why are all of the damage bonuses separated? Stone Flesh only gives damage reduction in earth. Soothing power is a trait that only works when attuning to water. Once again, everything feels closed off and forces the player to go into an attunement to only get a partial benefit rather than utilizing the attunement for certain abilities you wish to access. The problem is not the cooldown of the attunement itself. If that was the case, weapon swap would be a problem because, fundamentally, it is literally the same concept. Five cooldowns you cannot access for ten seconds. I believe the best solution is to generalize some of the core traits and improve the Elementalist experience so that the elements feel in unison with one another rather than their own separate entity. Aruas exist to do this, but we can do better. The trait Soothing Mist could be extended when an arua affects a target and when the Elementalist accesses water. Lightning rod works with all CC regardless of attunement, which acts as a very good example. Fresh air gives you the option to get back into air attunement as long as you critically hit the target. Maybe we can work a similar idea into fire. We could add a burning stack threshold or blast finishers to slowly reset the cooldown of fire attunement. That would pose some rather interesting builds with firestorm and fire signet perhaps. These would all make elementalist very refreshing to play especially if you want to feel like a water or fire or lightning wizard specialist. This could easily me achieved with moderate changes. No brutally intrusive reworks needed. I really do not think we need something drastic like "a new elite spec that accesses two attunements only", or being able to pick your weapon skills on each weapon set/give in combat weapon swap. You need to choose what you need for the encounter. If you need range, pick range. It's not like we don't have the option. Staff, scepter and pistol are all fine choices. Just play the correct build and you will be fine. Weaver and Catalyst are a let down. I understand and hopefully Anet revisits what these elite specializations are supposed to accomplish. In my mind, Weaver is supposed to be an evasive duelist and quickly does high amounts of burst damage before it has to retreat. The Weaver trait line isa not sufficient enough for this. Catalyst has cool concepts for PvP, but in PvE the damage is uninspired. A grandmaster trait to turn the spheres into damage spheres would be amazing and could really fill the gap to do damage when access to weapon damage diminishes regardless of weapon choice. Half the duel skills for weaver are also uninspired and Catalyst is just support core Elementalist with selfish utilities. The hammer weapon is great though :D. There are too many issues with both elite specs. I will not address them here as I agree with almost all statements that surround them currently. PvP Elementalist is in a very good spot here. The idea of swapping to an attunement to give yourself an advantage in a duel is a pretty neat idea. After all, Elementalist is the most fragile out of all the professsions at a base. Having this unique way of healing and sustaining damage, outside of the heal skill, with powerful weapon abilities makes Elementalist feel special. I see nothing wrong with most of the abilities we have thus far. I believe Anet has done a great job here, as Elementalist in PvP feels fun and rewarding to play when mastered. I have tried playing other professions in PvP and I have come to realize that the grass was never greener on the other side. Every profession took a good amount of mastery to be able to match anyone fairly competent at their profession. Elementalist's weakness comes from the fact that attunements go on cooldown when you have to sustain. That is a good weakness to have. If they didn't have this, Elementalist would be overpowered. Fresh air bypasses this, but I think concepts of traits similar to this are generally healthy for the game. WvW Same thing goes here. Roaming builds are very fun. Support tempest is great for zerg support or even organized play. We are about to get spears which will most likely replace staff which was a terrible weapon that was only good due to hitting that once in a life time meteor shower that was actually useful. Elementalist is mostly selfish so the addition of tempest really saves it here, which is fine. Overall, I literally just see a PvE issue that I would love to be resolved, because currently, fresh air tempest is the only thing that I truly feel is fun and makes the most sense to play. It is a well crafted DPS that has access to support and can still use staff for further support if cleansing or CC is an issue. It has many options right now and a competitive DPS that feels complete. We shall see what the future brings. For anything else, I will be using my Revenant and Druid for dps and boon heal respectively.

Game Update Notes Preview: Profession Skills

the.2458 replied to Rubi Bayer.8493's topic in Professions

A lot of these changes are interesting honestly. If there is one thing I hate, it is overloading the boon capabilities. I like the direction. I have 1 gripe as an Elementalist player. The Catalyst nerfs were needed and I like the changes, but... where are the Weaver changes? I feel completely useless playing this specialization. It isn't worth running in any game mode currently. It is fun to play but incredibly bad when you consider other options. The Weaver trait line needs to be reworked in a few areas. The barrier change is extremely confusing. That "Buff" felt like a spit to the face in all honesty. I was looking forward to more changes to the elite specialization. Weaver deserves it. The theme of it is outstanding. Currently, the skill required to play it effectively is not rewarding enough. If I may, I would like to give a few suggestions. The HP trait needs to be in the minor traits. Weaver should be beefier by default. Weaver also needs a way to stick on targets better. Chill and immobilization ruins Weavers. More superspeed access in the traits could also be more appreciated as the range of a sword Weaver is next to none. This would increase the chances to secure kills similar to Herald. One last thing. Half the duel skills are pointless (Shearing Slash, Monsoon, Pressure Blast, Ashen Blast, etc). These skills need to either be quicker or reworked to match the reason why we would want to duel attune to those elements in the first place. Some weapons truly only feel like they have 2-3 duel skills. The other ones are either slow, clunky, or get you killed due to long animations.

Catalyst Feedback Thread

the.2458 replied to Fire Attunement.9835's topic in Elementalist

I played it for an hour and I hated it. I was of the impression that we would be able to move the sphere with us as it seems to be the flavor of this elite specialization. Unfortunately, I feel like the Catalyst was a messy release even for testing. I understand Anet wanted to meet the timing but even for testing I find this to be completely unplayable. We have 1 mechanic and that is the sphere. If we take off the hammer, we are left with just that. While I like the hammer and its design, I will agree it is underpowered, but if I want to run dagger/dagger in pvp, I have way to much mobility to even use the jade sphere. If the theme is to have the sphere with you, I would honestly be in favor of the jade sphere acting like a gyro. Either that, or the jade sphere should have less resource and we should be able to resummon it almost instantly to maybe have some interesting field play. The main mechanic being on a 15 second cooldown is not appropriate, especially with these underwhelming utilities and elite. Those need buffs and the elite needs a rework in my honest opinion. I could make a list of everything I would like to see, but many have already said most of these things so I will give the important ones. 1.) The spheres energy needs to be an actual energy system. The energy depletes when the sphere is cancelled early. WHY?!?!?! 2.) Fix functionality of the Sphere 3.) The traits need to actually synergize with other base traits. Right now it is a little awkward because I do not know what traits to take. If I am being brutally honest, the base traits on Elementalist are quite bad in many areas. Other profession beat it down with more flexible choices. The only thing we have going for us is aruas and even then, we do not get that many aruas in practice. Overall, there is a ton of work that needs to be done. Elementalist is the only profession I play at the moment and this has been a letdown so far. I really do see potential with this. Good luck devs!

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

This is such a black and white statement to me. The point of staff is to be a rewarding, massive AOE, multi support weapon, yes, but asking for staff to hit harder is not the only thing being asked for here. This post was specifically to change or rework some of the skills in staff. Added damage will not change what makes staff an awkward weapon. It is fun to play, yes, but that is only because we are blinded by the beauty of its abilities. It is very true that some of the abilities in staff make no sense what so ever. There should not be condition damage based abilities on staff. Let's not forget people have to stand in the AOEs to actually achieve the full value of staff. There is so much grey area with the weapon and the game itself. The least we can do is come up with ideas for what staff could possibly need. I hate to play the weapon just to see I am literally spamming anything on CD other than Meteor because it is one of the only impactful skills on the entire weapon set.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

It is strange isn't it? Elementalist has synergies and builds that have these powerful roles, however, they are completely brushed off because a few builds have a more potent power level in terms of utility. I realize that those are problems too. I was over the moon when I saw the trait rework for Elementalist. It fixed a lot of problems in their traits, but when the other professions got the same treatment, everything started outclassing Elementalist in general. They have been reduced to being played just because people are bored. I only play my Elementalist because I have simply loved the mechanics. Elementalist feels like a fair version of the game where as everything else seems to be either broken or power crept. It is quite saddening. I feel like Elementalist should have some buffs in terms of utility (maybe rework the awful design of arcane). Not only that, but the outliers should be broken down a bit (Firebrands, Scrapper maybe and Scourge).

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

You have to remember that we have a new balance team these days. Almost all of the changes have been positive. CMC may save us yet another weapon. Who knows? The teams behind the game seem to be getting better and better.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

I am enjoying reading these posts even though we seemed to have clashed somewhere. Thanks for the posts guys. As for Jwhite and Mikdepadua, I think the both of you bring arguments to the table without any proof. I do have experience in WvW fighting guilds and I do have experience in sPvP. I can say for certain, that if you are looking for meta related builds, staff Weaver does not land in that category. The damage is too slow and superspeed + stability exists. Regardless of if you are Tempest or Weaver, you can not compete with any other build. It is simply a fact at this point. Damage readings that Arc DPS gives you does not give the best tell on what is meta or not. Spike damage is always going to be lower than consistent damage in WvW. If you down 5 people in a single, or even two hits with other damage sources to back you up of course, you will only be doing somewhere around 100k in that moment. As a Revenant you can do this quite often. The reason Weaver reaches higher numbers is because the damage is scattered and chaotic. A single meteor will half health someone if you have 25 might. This neither stops healing, nor does it kill someone before they move out of the area. But because meteor + fire fields, you can easily reach 200k just off of the damage spread. While this is damage being done, the argument Jwhite makes is without variables. The healing and constant defenses a group has completely negates meteor shower these days. Sure, against bad groups you may continue to destroy other groups, but the fact that top level guilds do not even run weaver in a tournament setting is because of their lack of spike damage. People run Weaver in WvW because they have the easiest access to hit players or siege weapons on top of the walls. Be careful what you say here because if you do basic research for actual guild fights, Weaver is either not used, or it is complete negligible. If you watch this clip it shows that the Weaver player starts off well but falls off because the targets are mostly scattered. This is a great explanation as to what problems staff has. It is all in meteor shower. This is in theory bad design. I do not know what skill level these Weavers are, but this guild as you can see is beyond decent and has been posting videos consistently. The more targets that are stacked, the more damage the Weaver does. I think that says enough about the nature of staff already. https://gw2mists.com/builds even GW2mists don't think Weaver is that good in big scale fights. Small scale is still under construction, but I can definitely tell you that small scale fights are not Weaver's strength. Weaver seems ok when put into a mess, but when they find themselves in organized styles of play, they almost seem out of place. At least that is how I feel when I play staff Weaver these days. I don't see the impact.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

Let me stop you right there. First of all, singling something I truly care about so that it gets attention, does not make this discussion "problematic". Secondly, I completely disagree that staff Elementalist is entry level. Sure it is fun, but it is hard to make work compared to other weapon choices. Are you really going to tell someone that dagger tempest is harder than using a staff? Staff requires positioning, knowledge of enemy movements, and planning in competitive environments. I would feel much more comfortable if someone handled sword weaver in PvE or dagger tempest in any game mode. See this is the problem. You may be able to spam healing fields, CC fields, and random packets of damage, but the question becomes whether you hit anything with it or not. Guild Wars has heavy movement. The damage it provides simply does not compete. Sure, sometimes it will output loads of damage, but that is only because of one skill. Does that sound like interesting gameplay to you? I think not, especially if we get duel skills with the Weaver elite specialization. I would argue that those abilities aren't even useful and some are poorly designed.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

I completely agree with this. I mostly think half the skills are outdated. With the release of new elite specializations, staff keeps falling behind. It is becoming more unreliable as players get better too. I would love to see some changes to the weapon itself for sure.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

Thanks for jumping in here Solemn! We can speak about WvW as much as we want. Let me remind everyone that my comments pertained to staff's flaws. I think it is a very exciting weapon in general. The abilities are fun. My only concern is that its general use has poor satisfaction. This is of course my opinion, but many are feeling the same way. I am simply posting this to give the weapon some attention as I feel that some of the abilities given to us are outdated or a poor fit for the identity of staff on Elementalist. I am not here to argue that the weapon is completely trash (even though I specifically said it is a bad weapon). My argument is that staff should not represent meteor shower. Meteor shower should represent staff and the rest of its glory that it could have. The weapon does have good CC potential, I agree, but that does not excuse what makes staff feel unreliable at times. The weapon needs more in its base kit to compete with other weapon choices. I feel that its design is lacking.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

The point I am making here is that a lot of attention has gone into the trait reworks, and even weapon reworks of some builds. Elementalist has had its auras changed, but I feel Elementalist is still lacking when it come to staff specifically. Sure it was a popular choice before, but we are in 2021 now. Surely we can give the weapon a place and a little bit of love. It has one of the coolest playstyles. The problem lies within the payoff. The damage is simply too low for the slow, bursty playstyle.

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

We are at a point in GW2 where many builds are currently being balanced very well. There are other problem, but essentially, staff should be rewarding no?

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

Why should it only be used for supporting?

Staff on Elementalist?

the.2458 replied to the.2458's topic in Elementalist

Thanks for the reply! I really am interested in the idea of hammer Elementalist. It could even be a melee nuker. Who knows?