ScottBroChill.3254

i tend to agree that the lack of physical and magic damage types sorta screws the elementalist in terms of it's role. The glass canon role usually succeeds not just because it has large numbers, but the damage type is more effective against a larger array of enemies. Without the unique damage type then the elementalist doesn't really have a true competitive advantage, or uniqueness. Every other class has some kinda unique effect or role that other classes don't have, so even those that are less optimal in their specific roles tend to be more useful. Ele's weakness isn't just its difficult rotations to achieve the highest benchmark, it's weakness is that it's not much of a team player, doesn't bring a sufficient amount of boons which are the center focus of the games combat, and it doesn't have access to the rare boons like alacrity and quickness, and can't really stack might... and doesn't have special trait effects for the team. Couple that with ele's high benchmark not being necessary and it's 10x more practical to take something simplier like a necro or guardian who also provide a lot of support. Now I'll continue to keep playing ele because it's fun and satisfying to play piano succesfully, but it literally sorta sucks on effectiveness and is missing a lot of tools that are easily accesible to most other classes. The only other class that feels as out of place as ele is probably thief because instead of being an in-and-out spiker, it's an in-and-out tickle me elmo because "spike damage=no fun" for pvp aspects so the pve aspects get a little screwed on this. But thief provides barely any utility, and seeing as this game is designed around self sufficency, both ele and thief needing to rely so hard on team mates providing support, they feel like a handicap that take more than they give.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > So you're whole goal here is to prevent power creep (because I'm not going to argue core isn't viable enough) by giving ele a unique mechanic? That's suspect considering I JUST quoted you as saying core ele can't be buffed without affecting it's especs ... > > > > > > See how you are contradicting yourself there? You want to PREVENT power creep with this unique mechanic ... to BUFF core ele. I'm just going to let that simmer. > > > > Dude, are you ok? > > I'm fine. I just don't think it's reasonable to claim you want a change class mechanic just for ele to prevent power creep and to buff it. That doesn't make sense. > > I get your argument is that profession mechanics are a nice powerful add on to classes that bring something extra to the table on top of the rest of the class. Swapping attunements does that. They _always_ did that. The complaint here is contingent on the existence of ele especs, not the lack of 'bringing something extra' to the class. > No, its not on top of. It's a whole replacement of weapon skills. All it does is dilute 2 sets of weapon skills into 4, but because of balance it doesn't really add anything. It's a wash without much benefit that causes a hurdle of problems where half the skills are useless because you can't allocate enough attribute points to make use of the "jack of all trades, has tools for everything" shtick it has going for it. Technically yes, it is something different with ele, but it is not very beneficial. So If we want to get into balance reasons as to why the attunement mechanic is a hinderance, which is a totally different conversation, we can. Say I'm building a power/crit build, well because no matter what the attunements force me into taking healing, damage, and utility, My power/crit abilities tend to get taxed because of the theoretical availability of so many other skills. My damage skills have to be tuned down because of the availability of healing, whether that healing is strong or not. My power skills are taxed and balanced around the fact that I'm forced to have condi skills on my weapon, whether or not those condi skills are providing a benefit. They usually aren't effective though unless I build stats for them, but this is not a condi build. The problem with stats is you really get to only focus on one or two main things and that's about it. Celestial builds used to be good back in 2012, but because of the large balance issues with ele, it has been balanced out of viability. Attunements are a cool concept, but they don't fit in the balance of this game due to stat focusing. So really what they did was take ele weapon skills, multiply them by 4, and cut their usefulness by 4. It ends up just being a bunch of spammy cannon fodder with no largely impactful abilities.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > So you're whole goal here is to prevent power creep (because I'm not going to argue core isn't viable enough) by giving ele a unique mechanic? That's suspect considering I JUST quoted you as saying core ele can't be buffed without affecting it's especs ... > > See how you are contradicting yourself there? You want to PREVENT power creep with this unique mechanic ... to BUFF core ele. I'm just going to let that simmer. Dude, are you ok? You are seemingly picking out one facet of an argument and saying "so you just want that one thing now? you hypocrit!". you've been doing this to everyone on this thread. No, we were talking about another point of the argument, must i bring all the other arguments that you and I have been replying to to this comment just to appease your short memory span? It looks like you are trying to argue semantics now and it's not constructive to a discussion. You are tring to win the argument and pin a flase narrative to what I'm trying to get across. No, there a multitude of reasons why I think something needs to be done. 1. The main point being, core specs should be able to operate outside of elite specs. One of the main ways they do this and how they make especs unique is changing the profession mechanic, and making that a tradeoff. Ele has no real tradeoff. 2. Every other profession's mechanic can exist outside of their professions and could theoretically be completely removed without destroying the class. Ele cannot, eles mechanic is having unique weapon skills. You cannot adjust this without inherently unbalancing or breaking core weapon skills. Weaver has made using weapons on core more watered down due to the power of dual attacks. 3. Eles attunements as a mechanic is much like if thieves initiative and revs energy were the only part of their own respective profession mechanics, without steal and stolen skills, and without ancient echo. Anet has clearly went back and has given more to a profession (Revenant) to make its core have a tradeoff and so it has a proper mechanic, because beforehand it was pointless to play core rev. It felt terrible to play, and that sole f2 ability gave rev a lot more viability because it could be buffed outside of herald and renegade. I believe core ele is in the same boat. 4. Power creep should always be something to try and tone down, so i don't see how that's some terrible thing to think about. But no, the power creep is just a fact with every new espec, but with weaver in particular it has caused core ele to even be more indirectly nerfed. There is almost no way to improve core ele without buffing weaver and to a slighter degree tempest. Weavers benchmarks are sorta up there so any improvements to performance will cause it to be hit with a nerf bat real quick. They usually combat this by putting more power and usefulness in the core profession mechanic, something that isn't accessable to elite specs, but they cannot do this with ele. 5. Ele attunements are too ingrained into the weapons, and is really just a fancier weapon swap. The problem is that for balancing purpose, its balanced around having all four attunements and anything less or more would require a lot of numbers adjustments. So lets talk about weaver. They had an amazing idea and went over the top to accomplish it, but it indirectly screwed over core ele because all it did was make the core weapons perform so much better. So in turn, they had to nerf those weapons due to the accesability to dual skills. Dual skills had to stay strong because otherwise playing piano as weaver would be more pointless than it is now, so the rest of the weapons were "tuned down" to make weaver balance. Well that tuning down did no favors for core ele weapons. And you couldn't have an espec that uses only two attunement without completely changing how core weapons work. Ele has pinned itself into a corner where the only solution is to add stuff on top of core without a real tradeoff. My main all around argument as that, as the game is now, profession mechanics are a nice powerful add on to classes that bring something extra to the table on top of the rest of the class. Essentially, it should be somewhat standalone and should be modifiable. Various professions that have unique fighting or skill styles like attunements, initiative, or energy should count as unique aspects of how the class performs, but does not constitute a profession mechanic that is an addition on top the rest of the class. A profession mechanic should not be an altered way of how skills work because it is inherently a giant trade-off and it is more of a style and not an "extra". This isn't about prevent powercreep, although I think that should be done. This is about core ele being completely pointless to play and that their "mechanic" is not an actual mechanic, it is just how their weapons work. It is literally just weapon skills. You cannot change attunements without changing the weapon skills and vice versa because they are one in the same.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > ok, fair. But the inability of buffing core ele without buffing it's elite specs is near impossible because there is no actual tradeoff in accessability to core ele's skills or abilities or what have you. > > That's true, but I don't see why that's a concern though. > > That statement also assumes Anet needs a way to buff ele without affecting especs at the same time. I don't think that's a good assumption either. I mean, we haven't seen much evidence from Anet in the history of game changes that suggests they won't make a change to core if it affects especs or vice versa ... so where does that assumption you are making come from? > Because Anet has been making efforts for the past few years to make core specs more viable and to combat powercreep, as well as slightly cater to players who do not own the expansions. Guard, Necro, Ranger, War have all decent core builds, and the rest of the professions are far better than ele. I've already pointed out revenant as it's core was mostly unusable but now it is possible to create competitive core builds in most game modes. I guess the problem withy ele's "mechanic" or lack there of, is that it doesn't account for elite specs and most likely wasn't designed with the route they went with especs in mind, due to its ingrained-ness with ele's weapon skills it's really hard to modify without destroying/unbalancing core weapon sets. The route they took with weaver is pretty extreme and I feel like the work and payoff for such a design is a little overboard and also presents a lot of balance issues within the game. Because of all the added skills to core weapon sets, the rest of the weapon set outside of dual skills needed to be adjusted in ways that only hurt core builds.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > I'll say it again, the nature of a classses weapons skills does not make it a class mechanic. That's just the style of it's weapon skills. > > It seemed to be more than enough of a mechanic pre HoT for elementalist to stand at the top. > > All in all, more than asking whether the profession have a mechanic or not, this is a very long thread about whether or not core elementalist need to be powercrept in order to stand up to it's e-specs. > - The thing with _tempest_ is that the devs were kind enough to give the players the choice to use overload or not, making some players confused about whether or not there is a drawback. Good grief there is since tempest traits tend to encourage the player to actually use it's overload and thus lengthen it's stay within an attunment, indirectly weakening quite a few core traits that rely on frequent attunment swaping. > - Weaver also have obvious drawbacks; Having all attunments sharing a 4s cool down drastically change the mechanic compared to core elementalist. Not even talking about the reduced flexibility due to the fact that swaping attunment is delayed for your off-hand skillset. > > Considering those points, I think it's fair to say that core elementalist's mechanic is unique enough to not need additional effects piled up on top of it. Maybe core elementalist is lacking balance wise, but that's another topic alltogether. ok, fair. But the inability of buffing core ele without buffing it's elite specs is near impossible because there is no actual tradeoff in accessability to core ele's skills or abilities or what have you. The only way I can think of is if they overhaul the elemental traitlines to be a lot stronger or universally usable (looking at you earth) and provide more, while toning down espec lines and (maybe) arcane. The e-spec traits are better than core traitlines and I never feel handicapped by only being able to take two core traitlines. The espec traits are just far better.

I'll say it again, the nature of a classses weapons skills does not make it a class mechanic. That's just the style of it's weapon skills.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > > > OK it's bad ... but swapping elements is STILL a class mechanic. This isn't up for debate. Any argument otherwise is absurd. > > > > > > > > > > If it's that bad and you don't like it ... hey, class choices, you got em. > > > > > > > > Well like i said earlier, what constitutes as a fully fledged out professon mechanic for EVERY other class is not present on ele. > > > > > > I mean, you can have that opinion. Clearly, it's not relevant to how the game works though. I mean, I'm just going to go back to my original point; if class mechanics are dissatisfying to you from a gameplay perspective, why aren't you choosing a different class? > > > > > > > > > > It's relevent enough for the developers to make the change for core revenant so I would disagree. > > See, this is the problem ... ele HAS a class mechanic so the premise it doesn't have a class mechanic to justify ANYTHING a person wants to suggest to change the class is just wrong. It's wrong. > > I get you think that the class mechanic is terrible ... but it exists. So if you want to make a thread that core ele class mechanic is garbage and needs to be fixed, that's awesome ... because it's not a lie. This whole thread is based on something that is NOT TRUE. No amount of debate will change the fact that ele DOES HAVE a class mechanic, so you CAN'T argue a change based on it NOT having a class mechanic. That's nonsense. > > No, it's not that I think it's terrible. I just don't think it hit's all the requirement for being a profession mechanic. It's like if mesmer had clones and illusions as its profession mechanic, but no shatter skills. Or if rev only had legend swap and energy, but no ancient echo. Or if thief had initiative and no steal. Or if ranger had a pet, but no pet skills. Or if Necro had no shroud and just necro weapon skills. Or if warrior had no burst skill and just weapon skills. Or guardian having only guard weapon skills and no virtues. Or engineer having kits but no tool belt skill. Or ele having attunements and no overload... oh wait. Attunements are weapon skills. It is not a mechanic if it is your weapon skills and its unavoidable to use. Every other profession I can play without using it's mechanic if I so choose. Saying attunements is a mechanic is like saying every other classes weapon skills are their mechanic. It makes no sense. Just because rev uses a hammer that is ranged over guard and wars melee hammers does not make the rev hammer a class mechanic.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > OK it's bad ... but swapping elements is STILL a class mechanic. This isn't up for debate. Any argument otherwise is absurd. > > > > > > If it's that bad and you don't like it ... hey, class choices, you got em. > > > > Well like i said earlier, what constitutes as a fully fledged out professon mechanic for EVERY other class is not present on ele. > > I mean, you can have that opinion. Clearly, it's not relevant to how the game works though. I mean, I'm just going to go back to my original point; if class mechanics are dissatisfying to you from a gameplay perspective, why aren't you choosing a different class? > > It's relevent enough for the developers to make the change for core revenant so I would disagree. And look, I have changed classes, I main revenant now for the most part. It's core, after some years, now has a proper profession mechanic. Ele can be extremely fun, but its "mechanic" is terrible for balance and does not possess the qualities that other mechanics do. It's a half of a mechanic. It's mechanic is having ele weapon skills. The reason we complain is because developers who dont have the manpower to have people constantly playtesting every profession need community feedback to help guide the game. They need to know whats fun. This whole "if you don't like it don't play it" is your way of leading everyone into a "balance" argument in which you just dismiss everything because the thread is "about ele having no profession mechanic." But here's the thing, game design is inherently tied into balance, so nice try trying to get away with that one. How can a playstyle be fun when it's constantly shooting itself in the foot and bumping heads with design philosophy.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > OK it's bad ... but swapping elements is STILL a class mechanic. This isn't up for debate. Any argument otherwise is absurd. > > If it's that bad and you don't like it ... hey, class choices, you got em. Well like i said earlier, what constitutes as a fully fledged out professon mechanic for EVERY other class is not present on ele. They even retroactively added a profession mechanic to core rev because of this SAME exact issue. If the developers were also in agreement that core rev posessed no profession mechanic, then could we also agree that core ele is in the same boat and quite possibly might need the same treatment?

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > That doesn't mean ele doesn't have a class mechanic. > yes it does. dude, your incouragable and stubborn. If its a "mechanic," its a really really really bad one for a game that for the past 7 years has based its progression around getting new elite specs that alter your mechanic. And it has left ele back in 2012 because core cannot be balanced with it's elite specs without breaking.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > > > > > > > > That's true, I'm not, because the thread isn't about balance. The OP is VERY clear about what this thread is about: > > > > > > > > > > _This is mainly a complaint about core ele, as tempest has overloads and weaver skills 3 are on par with other classes skills (aka real skills), so the specializations have mechanics._ > > > > > > > > > > That's not about balance ... his complaint is LITERALLY that ele doesn't have a mechanic. That's not true ... and you have grasped onto that untruth to make this thread your soapbox to complain about ele balance because of changes over time you don't like. It certainly doesn't help that on top of all that, you continually make untrue statements to proceed in dishonest, perpetual argument. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Well, idk. Look at the profession mechanic page on guild wars 2 wiki and read off all the core mechanics. All of them add something. Ele is the only one that is a full replacement of how a system works like, weapon swapping, and then that's it. > > > > > > It's obvious ele has a class mechanic. There should be NO debate on this. > > > > > > > You didnt read any of my statement besides the first sentence apparently. Ok what if we take away thieves steal and revs ancient echo? that would be fair and cool, right? > > I don't know ... what if you did? What does that have to do with the fact that ele has a class mechanic? Because every other profession mechanic can be removed from a class and replaced with another without destroying the fabric of how their skills work besides ele. Ele's mechanic is their weapon skills, you can't do anything with that. It's not a mechanic, its a different type of skill set. Now if the attunement worked for skills like how legends worked for revs trident, that would be different. So instead of all attunements getting vastly different skills on the same weapon, each weapon has 5 skills that get altered effects based on your attunement, then that would be a better mechanic. You could remove it and replace it without it affecting the actual weapon skills. It would be an addition to your weapon skills. It would be akin to having stances as a mechanic. But if the class mechanic cannot be changed or altered without destroying all your skills in the process, than that is not a mechanic. That is a base and foundation of the class.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"ScottBroChill.3254" said: > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > > > > That's true, I'm not, because the thread isn't about balance. The OP is VERY clear about what this thread is about: > > > > > > _This is mainly a complaint about core ele, as tempest has overloads and weaver skills 3 are on par with other classes skills (aka real skills), so the specializations have mechanics._ > > > > > > That's not about balance ... his complaint is LITERALLY that ele doesn't have a mechanic. That's not true ... and you have grasped onto that untruth to make this thread your soapbox to complain about ele balance because of changes over time you don't like. It certainly doesn't help that on top of all that, you continually make untrue statements to proceed in dishonest, perpetual argument. > > > > > > > > Well, idk. Look at the profession mechanic page on guild wars 2 wiki and read off all the core mechanics. All of them add something. Ele is the only one that is a full replacement of how a system works like, weapon swapping, and then that's it. > > It's obvious ele has a class mechanic. There should be NO debate on this. > You didnt read any of my statement besides the first sentence apparently. Ok what if we take away thieves steal and revs ancient echo? that would be fair and cool, right?

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > That's true, I'm not, because the thread isn't about balance. The OP is VERY clear about what this thread is about: > > _This is mainly a complaint about core ele, as tempest has overloads and weaver skills 3 are on par with other classes skills (aka real skills), so the specializations have mechanics._ > > That's not about balance ... his complaint is LITERALLY that ele doesn't have a mechanic. That's not true ... and you have grasped onto that untruth to make this thread your soapbox to complain about ele balance because of changes over time you don't like. It certainly doesn't help that on top of all that, you continually make untrue statements to proceed in dishonest, perpetual argument. > > Well, idk. Look at the profession mechanic page on guild wars 2 wiki and read off all the core mechanics. All of them add something. Ele is the only one that is a full replacement of how a system works like, weapon swapping, and then that's it. There were similar complaints with revenenat but then their core got something added, because everyone sorta has the agreement that mechanics are added on top of everything else. Thieves initiative alone doesnt count as their full mechanic, they also have steal and stolen skills on top of it, because initiative replaces the regular weapon system order. Rev has legend swap and energy, but thats a replacement for utility skills and recharge times, so they added ancient echo "On Top" of everything. These three professions have an altered way of using skills that stray from the basic way of skill performance, but ele is the only one of the three to not get an extra skill or ability that works on top of their fighting style. So I think anet has even expressed that yeah, an altered way of skill function (initiative and no recharge time, legend swap and energy, attunement swap) does not fully replace having an added, on top of everything else, profession mechanic.

Or how about we return ele to being a long range class seeing as it's the squishiest thing in the world and shouldn't have to rely on gimmicks to survive lol Everything would be cool If I wasn't forced in melee combat because Battle mage=1337 bro, even though a battle mage should wear heavy armor... Tempest overloads require close range, weaver is all close range because scepter and staff are really just lacking in what they provide. Scepter lacks usability outside its old "one-shot" builds, it used to be able to dual before powercreep, but its damage and survivability just can't keep up, and it's aoe skills are locked behind delayed skillshots (dragons tooth, pheonix, shatterstone). Staff has been gutted and suffers from 2012 balance in terms of rooted skills and having too many aoe's that require the enemy to stand still. I mean it works I guess for are denial in pvp modes, but like cmon, it sucks. it's too slow and doesn't hit hard until you get it going. Very bad design for quick, flowing and active combat that this game is designed around.

I don't play engi much, but I play ele and rev a lot and I can say the classes that seem to suffer the most are the ones that alter core mechanics of the game and go against the grain in that aspect. Thieves suffer from this too from initiative, it basically forces the balance team to put artificial recharge times on skills by making them have ridiculous initiative costs. Revs energy cost and legend swap mechanics have a plethora of balance issues, and right now they are getting by through gimmicks like renegade having a random F skill that provides an insane amount of alacrity, or kalla elite that gives insane amounts of lifesteal, yet also invalidates herald as being any sort of a support spec leaving it in a state of limbo where it's only benefit is really infuse light or its easy to use stunbreak. Rev elite specs, and generally the whole class is not cohesive and doesn't know what it's trying to be. Ele is the squishiest class that is being shoehorned into melee builds that are completely reliant on other's to survive and the massive amounts of skills, and the lack of weapon swap in combat is a real problem when you can't go into melee. Engi also suffers from this, and although they have kits to overcome the issue, there is a reason why holosmith is preferred. Kits in my opinion are sorta boring and gimmicky, and the only ones I really hear about is grenade spam which is always either too OP or too UP. Although I love the unique playstyles that these classes bring to the table, their weird mechanics often times come at a penalty that's not worth the hassle and they become hard to balance for the game, and having all these extra skills means they usually suck in some kind of way. Rev's whole 1 weapon, 2 spammable utility bars balanced with energy cost has now become a 2 weapon, non spammable 2 utility bars that is now loaded with recharge times and high energy costs. It now feels like a normal class with some annoying energy mechanic that gets in my way. Ele's massive skill pool is just a bunch of really mediocre skills that lack any range diversity and it feels like you are in a cafeteria having a food fight just throwing random shit in a direction hoping it all hits and does something. Thieves spammable skills are now watered down and too costly, making everything have a giant opportunity cost that causes most build to be crappy, or unfun. Engi's lack of weapon swap is sorta remedied by kits, but tbh I Just don't like them. Grenade kit, bomb kit, and mortar are in my opinion the coolest (thematically) and most useful, but they are boring in implementation because it's literally just spamming 1 skill over and over. TBF I don't like the general inspector gadget style that engi has and would have preferred a more cohesive, serious theme. I think think that's why holosmith is great, it feels like an actual sci-fi engineer and not some goonie. I guess this is where my rant ends.