Update - Thursday, December 8, 2011

One thing I think you should consider is these skills all deal elemental damage which is reduced by armor. Anet knows PvPers pack high armor so they are just evening the playing field against armor ignoring damage. I agree that the multitude of conditions is OP. Especially blind. Why does Anet hit melee with shit like this? Dervs have the best defense against blind so Sins and most of all Warriors suffer the most.

EDIT: I found the list vader gave annoying to read because its a giant wall of conglomerated text.

Skills

Elementalist

Armor of Frost: reduced recharge to 20 seconds; added the following functionality: "You have +1 Water Magic." Removed "Ends if you use Fire Magic."

Blinding Surge: added the following functionality: "This spell has 25% armor penetration. If this spell strikes an attacking foe, all adjacent foes are also struck and this spell deals 50% more damage."

Celestial Storm: improved description.

Chain Lightning: now always causes 5 Exhaustion instead of conditionally causing 10 Exhaustion.

Churning Earth: reduced casting time to 2 seconds.

Double Dragon: increased casting time to 1 second; increased cost to 10 Energy; increased recharge to 20 seconds; changed functionality to: "Invoke the power of the Dragon. For 8 seconds, you and target ally are enchanted with Double Dragon. Adjacent foes are dealt 5...30 fire damage each second. Additionally, when you or your ally use skills that target a foe, that foe is set on fire for 0...3 seconds."

Elemental Attunement: rescaled duration to 25...60 seconds; reduced recharge to 20 seconds; added the following functionality: "You are attuned to Air, Fire, Water, and Earth and gain +1...2 to these attributes."

Energy Blast: reduced casting time to 1.5 seconds.

Energy Boon: changed skill type to enchantment spell; increased casting time to 1 second; increased cost to 10 Energy; reduced recharge to 20 seconds; changed functionality to: "For 36...60 seconds, Energy Boon raises the maximum Health of you and target ally by 1...3 for each point of your respective maximum Energy. When this enchantment is first applied, you and your target gain 1...12 Energy. You gain an additional 1 Energy for every 2 points you have in Energy Storage."

Ether Prodigy: increased duration to 8...20 seconds; reduced damage per point of Energy to 2.

Fireball: reduced casting time to 1.5 seconds.

Freezing Gust: increased recharge to 8 seconds.

Glimmering Mark: added the following functionality: "For 10 seconds, target foe and all foes adjacent to your target take 5...25 damage each second. Foes using attack skills are Blinded for 3 seconds."

Glyph of Energy: increased recharge to 25 seconds; now affects your next 1...3 spells; reduced Energy savings to 10...25; added the following functionality: "Your elemental attributes are increased by 1...4."

Gust: changed functionality to: "For 5...11 seconds, both you and target ally move 33% faster. When you cast this spell, all foes near you and your target take 15...70 cold damage. Foes struck by Gust while attacking or moving are knocked down."

Ice Prison: removed the following functionality: "This effect ends if target takes fire damage."

Ice Spikes: reduced casting time to 1.5 seconds.

Invoke Lightning: now always causes 5 Exhaustion instead of conditionally causing 10 Exhaustion.

Lightning Surge: reduced cost to 10 Energy; reduced casting time to 1 second; added the following functionality: "Target foe has Cracked Armor for 5...20 seconds. This spell has 25% armor penetration."

Master of Magic: reduced recharge to 10 seconds; changed elemental attribute scaling to 8...14; removed Energy regeneration; removed the following functionality: "This enchantment ends if you use a non-Elementalist skill." Added the following functionality: "Your elemental spells return 30% of their Energy cost."

Mind Burn: changed functionality to: "Target foe and all adjacent foes take 15...60 fire damage. If you have more Energy than target foe, that foe and all adjacent foes take an additional 15...60 fire damage and are set on fire for 1...8 seconds."

Mind Freeze: increased damage to 10...60; increased additional damage to 10...60; reduced Exhaustion to 5; reduced recharge to 5 seconds; reduced duration to 1...5 seconds.

Mind Freeze (PvP): split for PvP; reduced Exhaustion to 5; reduced recharge to 5 seconds; reduced duration to 1...5 seconds.

Mind Shock: reduced Exhaustion to 5.

Mind Shock (PvP): split for PvP.

Mirror of Ice: reduced casting time to 0.75 seconds; reduced Energy cost to 10; reduced recharge to 12; changed functionality to: "Shatter a Mirror of Ice. All foes near you and target ally take 15...70 cold damage and move 66% slower for 2...6 seconds. If you strike a foe hexed with Water Magic,
Mirror of Ice recharges 50% faster.

Mist Form: reduced cost to 5 Energy; changed functionality to: "For 10...45 seconds, you take 33% less damage from foes under the effect of Water Magic hexes. Whenever you cast an elemental spell, all non-spirit allies in earshot are healed for 50...250% of the Energy cost of the spell."

Mist Form (PvP): split for PvP; reduced cost to 5 Energy; changed functionality to: "For 10...45 seconds, you take 33% less damage from foes under the effect of Water Magic hexes. Whenever you cast an elemental spell, all non-spirit allies in earshot are healed for 50...250% of the Energy cost of the spell. This spell does not heal allies above 80% Health."

Obsidian Flame: reduced Exhaustion to 5; reduced casting time to 1.5 seconds.

Ride the Lightning: reduced Exhaustion to 5; reduced damage to 10...70; you can now teleport to allies as well as enemies; added the following functionality: "All adjacent foes are Blinded for 1...5 seconds."

Ride the Lightning (PvP): split for PvP; increased cost to 15 Energy; increased recharge to 10 seconds; reduced Exhaustion to 5; reduced damage to 10...70; you can now teleport to allies as well as enemies; added the following functionality: "All adjacent foes are Blinded for 1...5 seconds."

Sandstorm: reduced recharge to 25 seconds.

Second Wind: reduced casting time to 1 second; reduced Exhaustion to 5; changed functionality to: "You gain 1 Energy and 5 Health for each point of Energy restricted by Exhaustion. You lose all enchantments."

Shatterstone: reduced cost to 10 Energy; changed functionality to: "Target foe is struck for 25...100 cold damage and is hexed with Shatterstone for 3 seconds. When Shatterstone ends, that foe and all nearby foes are struck for 25...100 cold damage."

Shockwave: changed functionality to: "All foes in the area take 15...60 earth damage and are Weakened for 1...10 seconds. Nearby foes also take +15...60 earth damage and have Cracked Armor for 1...10 seconds. Adjacent foes suffer the previous effects, take +15...60 earth damage, and are Blinded for 1...10 seconds."

Star Burst: reduced recharge to 7 seconds; changed functionality to: "Target touched foe and all foes in the area are struck for 7...112 fire damage and set on fire for 1...4 seconds. For each foe you hit, gain 2 Energy."

Stone Sheath: reduced recharge to 12 seconds; changed functionality to: "For 5...20 seconds, you and target ally have +1...35 armor and are immune to critical hits. When you cast this spell, all foes near you and your target take 15...70 earth damage and are Weakened for 5...20 seconds."

Teinai's Prison: removed the following functionality: "This effect ends if target takes fire damage."

Thunderclap: reduced recharge to 8 seconds; reduced damage to 10...50; added 25% armor penetration; changed functionality to: "Create a massive shockwave at target foe's location. Deals 10...50 lightning damage to target and all adjacent foes. Struck foes are interrupted and suffer from Cracked Armor and Weakness for 5...20 seconds. This spell has 25% armor penetration."

Unsteady Ground: reduced recharge to 15 seconds.

Ward Against Harm: changed functionality to: "Create a Ward Against Harm at this location. For 5...15 seconds, non-spirit allies in this area have +1...3 Health regeneration, +12...24 armor, and an additional +12...24 armor against elemental damage. This spell is disabled for 20 seconds."

Ward Against Harm (PvP): split for PvP; increased recharge to 30 seconds; changed functionality to: "Create a Ward Against Harm at this location. For 5...15 seconds, non-spirit allies in this area have +1...3 Health regeneration, +12...24 armor, and an additional +12...24 armor against elemental damage. This spell is disabled for 30 seconds."

Water Trident: changed functionality to: "Send out a fast-moving Water Trident, striking target foe and up to 2 adjacent foes for 10...90 cold damage if it hits. If it hits a moving foe, that foe is knocked down."

This 'update' makes me want to punch a little baby.
why do they buff ele's for pvp, instead of tone them down slightly? people have been asking for that for awhile.
As far as pve is concerned... mother of god. shockwave spike makes me want to punch a fetus.
I get the feeling the krew doesnt have the slightest idea about the current state of guildwars, the types of people this update will affect and why are they trying to introduce new concepts, when all ele's needed was a little bit of armor penetration in PvE.

You already like eating babies, so the update lessens your desire to hurt babies?

On a separate note though, this does somewhat help physical damage dealers, such as rangers. The lower armor should help them cause more damage. I understand that the buffs they receive generally come from armor ignoring damage skills, but still every bit helps.

Too bad I don't play my ranger anymore.

Well, no, you are forgetting they plan to compensate the reduction in armor by increasing their health

Currently, yes. The point is that this is going to change. Right now we look at "What's your bonus from SoH/Orders/GDW etc.?" and "What's your bonus from attack skills and on what recharge?" and pretty much treat the base as zero. If weapons start doing their list damage all of the sudden, then it's going to matter whether your average base damage is 37 (hammer, custom, 15^50) or 17 (dagger, custom, 15^50). Now, I'm not saying that's it's going to be such a strong factor that it outweighs every other concern; but it will finally stop being a non-factor.

That, without knowing what the hp increase will be, gives us no way of knowing whether we're looking at a net buff or net nerf -- or even a balanced outcome. My point was that Mireles's comment was totally unsupported by the information I've seen so far. And it still is.

This is true but it makes sense. It would bring elemental damage back up to compete with spirits and Mesmer damage.

The only concern I have is its a nerf to HM mob healers, unless HM mobs get 20% more from healing or something.

Like Chthon and I have already said:

For armor ignoring damages, however, it would obviously be a net nerf.

At last, some changes to ele skills Liking the first wave and looking forward to the second/non-elite rework. Can't see this as being game-breaking, more like game-changing.

Bring it on!!!!

This update looks great so far(especially what they did to HM enemies).
Although i didn't use most of those skills i might start using them now .

And one more thing, what about the WoC part 3?

there was no new announcement about it whatsoever and I'm dying to get my Imperial Weapons .

The ele and HM update didn't go live. It won't until after the holidays.

Yeah - but you're on the wrong forum for that!
But seriously: What did you expect from ANet skill balancers?

Much of the update is very interesting and I'll withhold comment until actually trying it, but ... I think we really didn't need more power creep on skills like Shatterstone and Water Trident. They're already good skills, have been used in the past before until they were outdone by ever more powerful skills. Just keep them the way they are and nerf those more powerful skills imo.

Also new Water Trident for 90 damage in AoE for 5e + 1s cast + 3s recharge, looks overpowered, and why is ANet saying things like "undesirable" builds ~_~

I better finish my vanquish before the update, HM updates are good but I'm way too lazy to change my builds

I wonder how this will effect intensity, I hardly use this skill now.

You said you would withhold comment yet you still gave one?

They are trying to give Water Magic the buff it needs for PvE. If someone wants to run Water just because they like the element they can now without seriously gimping their damage. Skills like Water Trident were not even used very much in PvE back in good ol' prophecies 2005.

PvP is a different story. It may suffer, it may not. Most of the skills are about positioning and if your party is clumped then you do deserve to lose the match.

Nerfing the Elementalist skills now would only prove fatal to the class.

Tell me if im being stupid but would the amour decrease buff whirling because if it does Anet are so dumb

^ For "much of the update", obviously. I'm not commenting on Energy Boon, Ether Prodigy, etc.

And it's got less to do with nerfing Elementalist skills now than nerfing other stuff.

Every update is good if it makes more people come back to PvP cuz HA is dead now.

No, since it would take longer for enemies to die with whirling it would rather seem a nerf. A small one since I have no idea that the new health gain in HM is.

The armor/HP swap in stupid mode (known to some as "hard mode") does considerably nerf all degen skills for those who play it.

Just as my current Warrior build is set--standard HB, the only difference in game play I see is that instead of the damage numbers being 9 + 9 then changing to 17 + 17 once cracked armour is applied, I get to see 17 + 17 from the get go.

Maybe they did this to change the " kind of gameplay" on antimelee and i can agree on it .. However, i will sum up my point towards this in two points :
- Ele didn't really need a buff
- what is a pain for dervishs is a nightmare for warriors( especially those easy blind spams)

Derp I know this, which is why we probably won't be using armor ignoring damage anymore. My point was we use armor ignoring skills NOW, making armor not matter that much in current HM. Excluding classes like the elementalist of course.. which is basically what this change to HM is for. Probably going to see a LOT more ele's and such in PvE now.

I'm just interested to see how they balance out the -armor/+hp ratio and what effect it has on certain skills, some probably be OP as hell, might do too much damage depending on how much they nerf enemies armor unless they're adding a ridiculous amount of HP which imo is what they will have to do.

Also, is this armor debuff going to be in effect for all HM bosses as well? What about things like dhuum? Does he even have traditional armor or a set % damage reduction for all skills even armor ignoring? His 80k life turning into 300k would be uh..idk.

This is a joke, bring it out before the Holidays and people will come back to check it out most probably. Otherwise most people don't bother for recycled festivals. It's been far too long since we've had a skill balance that wasn't and overhaul. Could you also for the love of gods get round to rangers within the next millennia, they're weaker than eles in pve.

Sounds like a strong candidate for meta builds. Cracked Armor will still be viable in HM since I'm sure even after the armor reduction since they still have well over 60 armor. Targeting balled up melee ensures they're neautralized with blindness, followed by perhaps Stoning on nearby casters/healers who now take +41% damage from Cracked Armor. Ranged damage not hit by blindness is hopefully hit by weakness to reduce their damage.

Good to see that this update didn't take a year like the derv one.

Anyway, i'm sure will shift a bit the meta re-introducinig eles in quality of caster dmg in regular pve....but pvp balance is almost screwed as when derv updates came out.
I'd prefer to see moar splits, or we'll just have the usual : Months of god-like just adjusted class -> endless sequance of minor tweaks never hitting the trouble -> anet giving up after having just toned down the issues.

Anyway: like a lot the innovations (double cast, new water line and some nice ideas out of there looks interesting) and will surely bring me back on my ele. Don't know where and doing what, but will.

Double Dragon looks like a nice skill to help make the only good non-PvE only Paragon thing viable "They're on Fire!". You've got Blazing Refrain and Blazing Finale already, but this will help alot too as it basically works similiar to Blazing Refrain with bonuses and without the silly health limitation. 'course, I'd rather they help the Paragon by adjusting the Paragon, but alas...

I like the Water changes for the most part, bringing Waters more into line with Guild Wars 2 Water seems like a good idea to make the line stand out a bit more. I know it was already decent in PvP, but was incredibly rare to see one in PvE. This update, when it comes, will now hopefully change that.

But, Water Trident looks kinda ridiculous now. I already thought it was superior to "Coward!", now it be even more so. No sense a physical bringing "Coward" once this is out as their elite, just spec Elementalist secondary and bring Water Trident instead (it gets the knockdown without any attribute anyway, right?), which will also give you a good excuse to also bring Conjure Frost, and maybe one of the Water +AL w/other bonuses skills, if you plan to invest some attributes. It will be pretty fun though.

Finally, about the hard mode changes...I don't think the effectiveness of physical classes will be changed much. I mean sure, the armour ignoring damage they do from attack skills will be less relevant with increasing health on enemies, but their regular damage will become more relevant due to the armour decreases so the two should balance each other out for the most part hopefully.

Plus, as has been mentioned, this might have the net affect of making Rangers and Paragons a little more potent as physical damage dealers, seems while their weapons (Spear and Bows) both have rather high base damage per attack, armour made this irrelevant and their attack skills just couldn't compete damage wise with those of Warrior, Assassin and Dervish, meaning they underperformed. While they probably will still underperform compared to those classes at damage (which they probably should seems they attack at range instead of in dangerous melee range, though right now the difference is too large), the gap between the two physical attack ranges should hopefully be somewhat closer after this update.

People really need to get their heads screwed on straight and stop flipping out so much.

Case in point: let's look at Shockwave. Completely unused skill, in both PvP and PvE. So, they add a few conditions to it, and suddenly it's game-breaking? It will do the exact same damage after the update that it does now, but it will reward good positioning with conditions, a reward that is sorely necessary because, as I said, no one is using the skill in its present state.

Bull. Crap. If eles want to play in melee range, they're going to be relying on enchantments to stay alive. That makes them fragile. Blow them up like you blow up everything else, and stop complaining that the mage class might actually get a chance to shine as a damage dealer (particularly in PvE) that isn't based on Mind Blast.

Anyway, I like how they're basically taking the GW1 ele model ("pick one element, use it exclusively, mostly for damage with a bit of control thrown in") and turning it into the GW2 ele model ("do lots of things with lots of different elements").

I am somewhat unimpressed (w.r.t. PvE). Predictably they focused on the elites and I've commented before that the core problem isn't the lack of impressive elites. Although the reduced cast times on some skills are nice I guess.

Stop doing things backwards.

Depending on where Cracked Armor takes effect in the chain it could be a huge buff to damage. If that isn't the case then I don't see much improvement really. Weakness and Blind are both things you don't care about if they are on your squishies, all they do is let the RC insta-counter this spell. Though if physicals are training someone it might be decent on them if the Blind is covered by other conditions.

On the PvE side though, its a great way to open up on an already balled group. Not obscenely OP, but a good choice of buffing. Spreading lots of cracked armor around is a somewhat hard thing to do otherwise that pays a lot of benefits.

For PvE keeping casters alive on the frontline is at most roughly 5% harder than keeping warriors alive. Both die in 2s from 300 damage attacks, both survive forever with stuff like SY or PS.

For PvP, HA has always been a clusterRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO where positioning means a lot less. Won't have many problems there. GvG is certainly going to present a much larger obstacle, but Eles have pretty good IMS options that can be put to use.

I don't really see whats so great about Water Trident TBH. All they did was add adjacent AoE. How often do you see multiple players running in the exact same direction close enough to be adjacent to each other? Thats a very hard condition to satisfy.

Coward is still an instant knockdown while Water Trident lets a smart enemy stop moving before it hits or otherwise dodge the projectile.

Personally... I like the idea of making skills more strategic and having to be positioned and aimed... the whole target and push skill bar button is to simplistic to be called skill... yes these skills got a big up in power but u have to know how to use the skill for it to be effective.

*PvE-wise*

What I like the most about this update, is that it is buffing the elementalist's unused options, not make the class directly stronger than they already were (excluding the much-needed HM changes).

Through the entire update text, the staff team reminded us how skills like Savannah Heat and Searing Flames will keep being some of the best options, and they made an effort to make "equally good" skills, that either have higher damage potential for a much higher risk, or deal less damage for more utility and party support.

Some people say the eles don't need a buff. But let's not forget that before HM came in, most of their PvE builds were: Searing Flames and Savannah Heat. And Unsteady Ground as an alternative, especially in HM. And Invoke Lightning sorely for the lack of better HM options, AP caller aside.

And with the exception of Invoke, those builds will surely get back and regain meta status.

Let's see what elementalists will do after christmas:
- Savannah Heat will be back as one of the best;
- Searing Flames will be back as one of the best, and might have Fireball as an option to Liquid Flame.
- Unsteady Ground, which used to be slightly weaker than the two above, will be back and now with a slight boost to recharge and a slight boost to the Churning Earth's casting time.

And in regard to new elites:
- Blinding Surge builds might still not be very viable, if not for the lack of better non-elite air skills.
- Glimmering Mark is going to the better Blinding Surge. You won't care much about spiking armored foes, so damage is irrelevant... unless it is armor ignoring, and it keeps generating while you focus on the casters. This way you can keep high damage to both an adjacent group of physical attackers and to your target casters, all the while cycling blind. So, you put the Mark on the physicals, and then spike the casters with lightning Orb + something else.
-Gust might be an alternative to Psychic Instability for AoE knockdown, but you need to be near the mob.
- Lightning Surge is really strong for single-target spike, but what good non-elite air skills are there to follow? Lightning Orb is redudant, but you'll at least have Chain Lightning.
- Ride the Lightning is fun, but for PvP. Or maybe for the day better non-elite air skills come up, like, say, improved tenai's wind and the like.
- Thunderclap, the skill that is going to put air builds top tier, alongside Savannah/ Searing. Spammable, ranged, AoE rupts/ cracked armor and weakness. Too easy.
- Double Dragon is an enchantment and it can be stripped. It'll probably require the elementalist to have a cover enchantment ready to cast on the ally target, and some armor boost so they themselves can come close to the enemy.
- Mind Burn, spammable fire adjacent-range spike? Maybe.
- Star Burst will be the new Mind Blast. Touch range, but stronger.
- Mirror of Ice is cool to use on tanks and then bombard the mob, but you have Deep Freeze for that, with no attribute investment. Because you're going to invest on fire or earth in this case.
- Shatterstone is the new and better Energy Surge, guys. +100 single target damage instead of -9 energy. It might still require some better non-elite water builds, though.
- Mist Form might just do fine for those hybrid damage/ healer builds that is so popular nowadays, especially for heroes. Your Mist Form + Deep Freeze + Ice Spikes + Maelstrom Vekk might just do great all the while your centaur hero bombarbs with area-of-effect spells and your mesmer panics them all.
- Shockwave, high risk, high reward. Thunderclap seems less risky, but Shockwave deals huge damage, has a bigger area range, and neutralizes the melee more, in exchange of melee range and no rupt. Might just be about equal.
- Stone Sheath might just make some new defensive meta builds, I think.
- Energy Boon will probably make Monk Heroes more efficient, but the builds I can imagine with this would probably be weaker than anything with Ether Renewal.

EDIT: Taking a vague conclusion from this, air and earth builds will arise and gain meta status alongside Savannah/ Searing; some more specific and alternative builds will be strong enough but depend a little on the party synnergy, and several potential builds will be hindered by the lack of non-elite options.

I guess you dont do RA (which is the sole more or less active 'pvp' format left) that often - shockwave is usually the elite of choice for most stoning spammers.

Relying on enchants to stay alive? You mean, kinetic armor and armor of earth..? If so then I can't say its worth replying to any part of your inane post. I recommend you rethink what you've posted.
Your 'mage class' is already one of the most frequent classes in RA/gvg/HA, so it's time to wake up from your delusions and look at things at face value.
Given that I see a minimum of 1-2 invoke/mb/earth/water eles per mission enter in RA, i wonder what game you're playing. As far as I'm concerned, I cant stand seeing eles everywhere anymore.

And they're missing the fact gw2 is a whole diff game than GW1 and in effect use a sledge hammer to crush those few remaining pieces of so-called balance left scattered around.

I'd rather have a full revert to proph days instead, tyvm.

On a side note, I don't understand how you can call it a skillful use of a spell if the req to make it skillfull is a range as huge as 'in the area'. It's obviously going to be completely stupid on many maps.

Shockwave builds aren't that great in RA, really. Both the elite and the 1-dimensional KD chain can be easily avoided. Shockwave is only there for the lack of better options, but the weakness from the new version will help the build a lot. Someone said the new shockwave only needs weakness of the three conditions for PvP, and I might agree, especially because of this build.

RA water eles are also outclassed, but maybe they can find their place back with the improved elite skillset and the slightly more efficient Ice Spikes.

To be honest, I usually only see MB and Invoke at RA. The mindless Blinding Surge is going to come back, unfortunately, even though it requires more skill for the new extra damage. Invoke will not be as mindless, but might just get outclassed by newer options.

I bet the 2x Nearby ranges are going to be even worse than the In the Area spells. Keep in mind that if 2 enemies are X distance away, an AoE spell cast on an enemy needs to have a radius of X to hit both, but an AoE spell cast on an ally needs to have only a radius of X/2 to hit both. Being able to directly aim where it hits with your positioning will have large benefits.

Hitting 2 people per AoE is going to be the absolute minimum with these spells. 3 people if the enemy positioning is even slightly bad or the map isn't an entirely open area. With 2 AoEs at once thats 6/8 of the enemy team getting hit in an 8v8 situation.

I'm betting we see these dual-AoE spells get the Ancestor's Rage treatment in a short time. 1s effect on self that then creates the appropriate effect when it ends, to both prevent stacking the effect for spikes and to let smart players have a chance to get away.

@urania: No, sorry, I didn't take RA into account when making that post. I wasn't aware that RA was now a significant concern for balance. Oh, wait, it's not.

Almost ditto for HA, with the caveat that AoE has always been big there. That's what 8v8(v8) king of the hill maps do to a format. FWIW, you now have Ward Against Harm to give all allies +48 armor against ele damage and +3 regen; seems like a pretty decent hard counter to this nuttery.

well looks like my sin will have assassins remedy on her bar at all times.

At best WAH will give you only 50% uptime though. It also requires you to stand right in the middle of the fight which opens you up to an easy interrupt.

I'm hoping this means that Anet fixed this armor stacking bug (with other skills that have similar effects to WAH the +24 and +24 stack to make +25 )

Oh wow, look at all those comments!

I mainly pvp so ill only look at that

Hmm ride the lightning, trolololol i just blinded your whole team! Even with the split i don't like it, more blind is not fun, bflash should already be nerfed let alone making 5 other skills too disable your frontline.

Bsurge, nothing changed tbh.

Shockwave, lolololol i just blinded+ weakened + reduced armor on your whole team, now lets spam that 100+ damage stoning!

Second wind- this skill now has no function would do the same, i srsly won't ever use it, i think almost no one will

Shatterstone is nice, 1 ball up, partyykilllllll. The reason i really don't like this is that with a 40/40 set and 2 fronts next too each other you can spam it 1 for 1 (not on the same target cuz it's still a hex) and you still do LOTS AND LOTS of damage. Especially with the energy cost.

Water trident....
....
Lol kd your frontline 24/7 if they accidentally ball up! Water trident was a strong skill already, it didn't need a buff for pvp.

Double dragon has been said already.

In pvp you don't need invoke skills, not that 100 damage spam shit. Damage buffs for ele's in pvp are just not needed imo....

At least I'll still have my imbagon build. :forever alone: