Infusion.7149

> @"SeptembersOwn.4583" said:

> So I bought a glider/backpack voucher solely for the purpose of purchasing the geomancer glider. Right clicked the voucher, skimmed the list, and its not even available. GG

I think you wanted the Black Lion Glider Voucher , not the backpack+glider one

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Glider_Voucher

versus this

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Backpack_and_Glider_Voucher

Because you don't want to give up damage to do so in most cases.

Plaguedoctor is probably what you want as it doesn't give up damage immensely in a pure condi build.

Wanderer isn't advisable unless you are building for WvW, don't run it fully on all pieces, need boon duration+ run runes for it, don't heal, and want some damage (i.e. revenant not running ventari).

It affects WvW players because there is limited queue space. You can't have a bunch of PvE players thinking about gold per hour running around in PvE gear and PvE builds, not getting in comms, building paper arrowcarts in openfield, and repairing towers/keeps while it is getting trebbed.

The suggestion to draw more players in shouldn't be more gold per hour , especially for things as "number of people in squad". Many WvW guilds have low player squad size around 15-20 at best. All it will lead to is more people using PvE builds in WvW , more blobing, and not doing smart decisions.

1. repairing rewards currency = repair while being trebbed instead of taking out treb

2. attacking / defending already gives rewards if you kill enemies

3. PUGmanding will make more gold than organized group if it is not dependent on performance and just number in squad

4. support classes that aren't auto-attacking all the time won't benefit from your "spending resources" currency gain ; mesmers hiding in structures as well (current scout system works)

5. Taking a keep/camp/etc rewards WxP and WxP gets you closer to a wvW rankup chest , so this is pretty pointless

If you want to increase rewards , should just tweak the reward track system to remove useless things such as red lentils in the crystal desert , sandswept isles, and kourns tracks. Additionally there's no way to earn elegy mosaics.

I suppose you weren't around when repairing cost gold, upgrading structures cost gold, and WvW rewards consisted of lord/players dropping heavy loot bags + mostly garbage, rank up chests only. Did I mention siege used to be much more expensive?

Any player with less than 1,060 WvW rank doesn't have all WvW abilities unlocked so there's an innate disadvantage vs someone with all abilities unlocked.

Rewards in WvW are alright now provided you aren't new to WvW or under 2 participation, although I don't know why grandmaster shards aren't in all final chests up to diamond. Given that the mark shards themselves are worth a few gold at best, it isn't a huge deal.

You can't compare WvW to Istan or Silverwastes let alone anything deliberately timegated such as daily Tequatl, daily fractals , or weekly raids.

The reason why ascended (non mistforged) armor is difficult to obtain is because it can also be upgraded to legendary.

Also you don't need ascended armor for WvW , although weapons + trinkets are highly recommended.

It's more of a condi / utility weapon mainly used in WvW.

staff 1 = life force

staff 2 = bleed

staff 3 = chill/poison (with reaper it does damage from chill via Deathly chill)

staff 4 = condi transfer

staff 5 = fear (with Terrifying descent trait it does damage)

Portal, veil, alacrity , shield 5 breaks projectiles, gravity well / focus pull, stability, etc.

Boon removal on sword auto too.

I only play scrapper in PvE to get better at scrapper timing for WvW. In WvW, projectile block/reflect , bulwark gyro, water fields , condi conversion, break stun/quickness, stability, and mortar kit are essential (you can't use F5 with holosmith).

Holosmith is better for PvE because nothing of the support aspect is relevant and people just want to DPS everything. Also holosmith has support such as hard light arena / spectrum shield which are stationary but more relevant in PvE.

It's due to the sheer amount of boon corrupt that you feel this way.

In general: Unravel should have been the F5 skill for weaver.

Mainly for WVW :

Elementalist needs more damage to counteract the glass cannon nature , especially on weaver. This way you can run just under half marauder (power precision ferocity vitality) and not do less damage than another class running full glass that can still stay alive better. You'd still have less HP than Mesmer or Necromancer and less active and passive defense. I used to run elementalist in 2012 era along with Mesmer and necromancer (every backline). I now run mainly revenant. In its current iteration, meteor does less damage than CoR (rev hammer 2) and revenants can effortlessly provide fury 100% of the time , along with +33% boon duration and swiftness for scourges ; revenants provide massive condition resistance by use of Pain absorption.

It is a hard sell on tempest unless you have to hit a sieged keep where siege is on the inner side of the wall and nobody plays weaver. There's no other reason to run it over scourge in the current WvW meta , since scourges counter firebrands + condi builds via condi transfer / condi conversion, boon corrupts might/stability/protection, and provide barriers against power-based damage. Going weaver means you just gave up any semblance of utility skills or ability to have consistent small water fields (dual attacks / instead of geyser aka staff water 3) as well (which is why unravel should be F5 so weavers don't need to attune to water twice).

1) Utilities

Lightning Flash , for WVW (the only place it is used) could use a stun break.

Mist form is not as strong as before due to the sheer amount of CC and condis flying around.

Weaver's twist of fate mainly sees use in WvW. As an evade it isn't surefire. Your other real stunbreak option is Arcane Shielding (3 attacks is close to nothing in WvW), whereas Armor of earth isn't quite viable due to boon corrupt. Stone resonance's barrier isn't particularly strong and doesn't break stun. Other options such as swapping in conjure earth shield for the invuln on conjure earth shield skill #5 (it's not a stunbreak) or mist form mean you do 0 damage in a WvW setting in any form of damage gear because the 3s is a long time to be doing nothing.

2) weapon skills

Ele needs lava font reverted to before July 10th patch, for starters. Most of the damage on staff is from lava font for stationary targets , unless you manage to pull off casting a 4 second meteor shower. Unless the devs want eles on staff to just auto things on fire to RNG (random due to on crit) proc burning from fire and arcane traits (on crit), there should be more emphasis on well placed lava fonts. Necromancer marks are 240 radius.

Stoning (staff - earth auto) could use more synergy with the Pyroclastic Blast , Piledriver, & Lahar dual attacks. It's not particularly strong.

The healing scaling is too dependent on soothing mist (passive). The healing on the massive cooldown skills on the weapons should be lowered a bit. Essentially, make elementalist a more active profession.

The problem is staff has been nerfed too hard over the years and everything else has power creep. For example, compare static field (a staple skill for WVW in 2012 through 2014 at least) to the Scrapper hammer 5 (Thunderclap) + Spellbreaker bubbles (Winds of Disenchantment). Static field used to be larger. Scrapper is better at water fields too.

Dagger is not as terrible, but it is no longer as strong an option due to the buffs other classes received. I would start by looking into increasing the damage on water auto as there is no healing component to the water auto attack. Its 0.33 damage coefficient is worse than that of a condition oriented weapon or a utility skill, I feel it could be 0.55 or something even higher like 0.6, maybe have it do additional 10% damage to burning targets. Make it thematic with the idea of Vaporblade.

3) Traits

Weavers gain massive benefit from swift revenge in groups with heralds. I would suggest that the damage bonus be lowered to 3-5% under swiftness and 7% under superspeed. This would reduce the uptime on the trait and make elemental pursuit trait less niche.

Diamond skin could use some resistance application on some conditional trigger.

Gale Song trait for tempests should do something other than break stuns. Maybe it could reduce shout recharge by 15-20%. Utility shouts in general are usually taken for their healing capability with powerful aura trait (water line) and not for fire aura or frost aura.

Frost aura in general ought to have an additional effect such as -10% bleeding damage taken , to counteract the condition heavy focus of the current meta. The Frost Aura skill on offhand dagger ought to chill unconditionally on use.

Realistically the one trait you can count as passive for eles in WvW is final shielding. You're more likely to run tempest defense for damage than for the shock aura. Earth's embrace is more or less unusable with the amount of necros around. Soothing ice is prone to overheal due to not having a health maximum such as triggering at <75% health only.

One with air could probably use 1-2s of superspeed when applying swiftness (while in air attunement) or something that makes it relevant for situations where swiftness is readily available. This change would mean you trade off Ferocious Winds if inclined to spike with the above mentioned changed to swift revenge.

Harmonious conduit likely harkens back to pre-stacking change of stability. An increase in the number of stability stacks (4+) would help since stability can only be removed per 0.75 seconds.

4) summary

In general it feels like the entire class is currently balanced around weaver with 25 might stacks, every damage trait, and all buffs possible on stationary targets. This is not a realistic situation whatsoever since boons don't stick long in WVW with necros on the enemy teams.

If you've ever thrown marks on a scourge necromancer or anything using conditions and then played an elementalist on staff you will notice the stark difference in survivability and ease of getting damage done. There's players running trailblazer scourges that don't even get dented by elementalists in full berserker.

The only time people tend to ask for eles is to kill siege on walls due to meteor shower ; Fireball reaches cannons others sometimes cannot due to splash damage.

Dagger+dagger core celestial elementalist used to be a thing but after years of nerfs and powercreep it isn't strong now.

Just remember when balancing: risk vs reward. Nobody sane is going to play a high risk character with low reward for playing it well vs other classes.

For PVE:

1) Scepter is *still* basically unusable

Scepter needs its fire auto AOE reworked to do more damage in the form of burning or power damage. I feel as though the lower the range is the higher the attainable damage should be. The rest of the scepter skills are generally slow to do damage , for example Dragon's tooth & Shatterstone.

Right now scepter is basically being held back due to fear of scepter spikes in PVP I suppose.

2) Staff mostly gutted

Staff is pretty bad for PVE in its current state due to lava font nerfs unless there is a reason you can't get in close range. Meteor requires you to channel for 4s , trash mobs are dead by then with any competent group while any moving target is unlikely to be hit by all strikes.

3) Elites

Conjure fiery great sword should have lower cooldown. It isn't a gamebreaking elite skill.

4) Weaver , weaver on sword

At the same time, sword needs more offensive buffs and weaver needs to have the swift revenge trait accordingly reduced to maybe 3 or 5%, with the condition of "under superspeed" added using the current damage bonus of +7%. Swift revenge is not as easy to satisfy solo, but in a group with a chronomancer it is essentially surefire.

Weaver sword fire auto #1/#2 ought to burn. Weaver water #2 sword auto ought to scale better with healing power. In every mode, sword should do more damage than dagger or staff because it is inherently riskier and harder to land attacks with.

Weaver's Primordial Stance is used in many meta builds, but I don't see the appeal. It could use some looking at, burn/bleed/vulnerability is not worth the utility slot in my opinion.

Sword weavers have an inherent problem vs enemies such as Legendary bounties in Crystal Desert with Phase shift. Being limited to one weapon and having that weapon limit you to melee range is an issue. Another example is Torin in deepstone fractal or the anomaly once it starts vaporizing pads.

5) Tempest

Tempest warhorn air #5 ought to be quicker to travel. I'd also like to see cooldowns reduced for all warhorn skills not dealing with boons: wildfire, tidal surge, water globe, cyclone, lightning orb could all be reduced by 5s.

Dagger tempest would make use of increases to dagger damage (mainly on water attunement).

Reverting lava font would make staff tempest better off.

Fire Auras should be able to do more in PvE. The duration is too short generally. The same goes for Frost Aura.

Shocking aura (the skill) needs to stun unconditionally on use , it's a liability to require getting hit for the stun to trigger and it's a boss channeling a lethal attack that can only be prevented by breaking the CC breakbar.

Harmonious conduit could use stability increased to 4 stacks.

6) Dagger offhand

Earthquake needs to do extra damage vs weakened or crippled targets. It would be an indirect buff to weavers with swords. Current damage modifier is a paltry 1.0. At full berserker's 2556 power the tooltip is under 1K (unless you're in fire attunement you won't have +200ish power on weaver) , which is false advertisement of "massive damage".

Frost aura (the skill) needs to chill unconditionally due to many bosses not hitting when charging up their lethal attacks yet having a CC breakbar.

7) Focus offhand

I rarely use it. In the past it was used by others in PvP for the invuln.

Flamewall is weak and needs to be looked at.

Fireshield needs an additional effect.

**Summary**

The litmus test for a PvE ele's effectiveness shouldn't be hitting a stationary golem with every buff possible , mainly because A) strategically raids are reduced to tanking , healing, and DPS-ing at the moment but most other content is not B.) most of the userbase doesn't raid C) unless you have that rigid party composition and uptime you won't achieve that number D.) there's damage from confusion and torment that is never reflected in those sorts of benchmarks as well as huge damage loss for staff eles versus targets that move. Eles (especially weaver) shouldn't be balanced toward only <10% of the content with one of the most difficult playstyles and under sterile ideal conditions.

It should be mainly evaluated in a loose group comp (i.e no dedicated tank + heal strategy) vs moving targets that have CC bars (Vinetooth is an example), in fractals with random players of different skill levels where the objective isn't a boss in the middle that barely moves, in Living Story zones without a party (low boon priority) where enemies will hit without an obvious animation and won't die in 2 hits (so more than 2-3 enemies is likely death if you're not playing well), or in story mode vs a boss with CC bars with no outside help. Most players are facing these situations and every person working on HOT/POF legendaries will be as well. It is ill-advised to alienate 90% of the userbase for a vocal minority fixated on stationary golem damage.

Devs ought to test weaver on half marauder half zerker (to better match other classes HP pool ; Elements of rage makes this less of a damage loss) as well as full damage zerker+scholar+sigil of force, etc : the stat set normalized to other classes' HP pool should perform OK (within 5%) while the full damage glass cannon weaver on sword (130 range) needs to have at least 15% more damage if perfectly executed (i.e. not just camping fire attunement like some people do).

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**Other thoughts**

I don't agree with some posters stating eles should have stealth and boon removal. AoE is largely a counter to stealth; boon removal should not be a major problem provided there is enough access to vulnerability (vs protection), stun (vs stability mainly), chill (vs alacrity), burning/bleed (counter regen), and CC.

...

will add more when I think of it

Don't believe that Minstrel's firebrand is easy to play. Scourge on the other hand...

Mesmer. There's a pull and a phantasm that does respectable damage and reflects.

Your other possibilities are pretty bad unless it's for PvP:

Necromancer - I don't think anyone uses it for PvE over torch, dagger, or warhorn

Guardian - single target now but high damage

Elementalist - usually offhand dagger is used if not warhorn

It's because PvErs only care about their DPS and quickness / alacrity... just look at the holosmith spec.

Before it was changed, this would help neutralize rangers , pistol/rifle users, and other such threats for a few seconds. The word "random" really wasn't accurate as both possibilities destroyed projectiles.

There's no reason they can't auto on axe.

Dagger and GS (reaper) are melee weapons.

You use it for fields ; it has huge range as well

Except ice spike already has a high damage modifier...

It's overblown. Tempest isn't the best as far as damage anymore, weaver is (on ele). You give up ferocity (Elements of rage) and +120 while in fire attunement as well as +7% damage while under swiftness (with an organized group it's easy).

Tempest has more survivability in WvW because you don't lock yourself out of attunements and also overloads break stun. On weaver you basically have **twist of fate**.

It's because raids typically have a big boss. There's really no other location **normal people** use DPS meters.

For ascended armor it's : 439 , 315 , 315 for 3 stats = 1069 total and for 4-stat it's 376 , 376 , 207 , 207 = total 1166. Maybe what you're proposing is 350,350, 185, 185 for that instance? Or an outright reduction of minor stats only such as 376, 376 , 159, 159 ?

For weapons it is 251 , 179 , 179 = 609 total and for 4-stat weapons it is 215 , 215 , 118 ,118 = 666 total. So it would be 205 , 205, 100, 100? Or would it be 215,215, 90, 90?

Current Total 3 stat major stat = 690 , minor = 494

Current Total 4 stat major stats = 591 , minor = 325 ; under your proposal it would be around 555 and 285 (otherwise an outright reduction of minor stats to 249)

A total loss of just under 100 power would be incurred right now.

* at 15pts of ferocity per 1% critical = 11% critical hit difference from weapons and armor

At 15 pts of expertise per 1% condition duration , it's +20% condition duration

For power builds the loss of the power plus the loss of ferocity is a bigger hit than on condi (trailblazer / viper) , especially due to condition duration (300 minor stat = easily +20% from expertise). If anything it highlights how broken condi damage is as far as stats because it only relies on 2 (condition damage, expertise) rather than 3 things (power , precision, ferocity).

I don't believe crits ignore armor, it's just the effective power used in that hit.

i.e. 2500 power with 200% crit is equal to 5000 power. Versus a 2000 armor target you get a damage multiplier of 2.6/2 = 1.3x compared to tooltip , a critical of 200% would be 2.6x tooltip.

Demolisher's pieces (as opposed to full set) would be ok if revenants running CoR and weaver eles became more rampant but it's a condi meta (scourge + firebrand are popular). The extra health is also better for reapers using shroud.

You'd trade +633 vitality on a full set for +633 toughness.

Right now marauder's has about 15% less power before runes (8% less when accounting for power rune) but the larger difference is the loss of ferocity (Berserker/Valkyrie mixes have +960 ferocity instead of +633 , is about 21% crit damage). Without traits, full zerker + scholar rune is 220% critical hit while marauder+scholar would be ~200%.

For eles, guardians not running Force of will +300 vitality, thieves, and such I think the majority of armor should prioritize vitality.

If demolisher's were put in, it would likely be better to run a few pieces (i.e. +300 armor worth for heavy such as all trinkets + backpiece) in place of soldier's or valkyrie, with the rest marauder's (~15K HP).

I watched a sword weaver die 13 times doing a Fractal recommended scale last week , and it was molten boss. So at least for PvE, the skill level vs damage is going to be skewed toward low damage (whether due to stats or due to poor performance of using that class). The player likely wasn't using final shielding from Arcane line.

IMO Unravel should be a special skillslot such as F5 , it shouldn't use up a utility slot. Being locked out of your attunements is certain death.

Sword should be higher damage than dagger or staff because realistically it won't be run full damage everything without support or heals; if a trait needs to be tweaked and the damage buffs moved to sword instead of weaver so be it. Also I have the opinion peak damage should be inversely proportional to range , such that sword > dagger > scepter > staff.

The dual attacks have been buffed multiple times so really they need to be reevaluated as major patches are put in.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protector%27s_armor

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ornate_Guild_armor_(heavy)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heavy_Scale_armor

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tempered_Scale_armor

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Council_Guard_armor

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leystone_armor_(heavy)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reinforced_Scale_armor

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Worn_Scale_armor

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Protector_armor

I am unsure if it is that large of an issue.

Well the options are slim (non-offhand):

mace - typically melee

axe - typically melee

hammer - typically melee

shortbow

longbow

greatsword - typically melee

rifle (unlikely)

pistol (unlikely)

I'm inclined to think if it is a ranged weapon following convention it'd be shortbow , 900 range & likely condi based. It would need some focus on burn/bleed + (and stun+ daze + knockdown/pull/launch +blind +immob + cripple + chill+ vulnerability + weakness) since I don't believe elementalists use poison , confusion, or torment (taunt , slow , fear too).

Both the fire and arcane line already provide burning on critical hits (while in fire attunement) with an internal cooldown.

It is also highly likely torch will be given to eles rather than shields. I hope that the next elite spec weapon is a mainhand since scepter isn't a very strong option due to delay and low AOE.

You can use them in fractals. Other than that I would pick another elite.

It's a lightning field so if your party needs to break a breakbar it is alright.

You argument is that gear is too hard to get but we have reward tracks and repairs cost nothing now.

If anything I would think sigil of concentration (33% boon duration = 495 concentration ; this ought to be closer to +175 or +250 which is ~12-15%) + rune of durability (20% boon duration = 200 concentration on top of 175 toughness and 125 vitality already) would have been hit with nerfs by now. Leadership runes are sort of kept in check by the much smaller defensive boost.

I'd rather Rune of Resistance have resistance.

You can use agony infusions in WvW , it just means you don't have the damage boost vs lords / guards.

gyros should be like clones where if they aren't directly targeted they shouldn't take full damage.