Update - Thursday, December 8, 2011

So eles are making a comeback...nice to see after many of us made our gwamm+'s on them after picking them as mains (b/c they were supoosed to be the nukers) years ago, thus having not soo much to do on them now. For those new to eles.....rejoice and have fun.

Some of the ele foes should provide some extra fun, as I would assume that their lvls will still be elevated and thus further benefit from some of the new changes.

Not sure why the rit nerfs.. seeing that really wasn't an issue compare to maintainable spell prot, which makes the much faster tank and spank possible in almost every area of the game. Not really seeing much on the side of spike/SC possibilities on the new ele..maybe starburst....not really though.

For the pvp side...tbh idc much nor does most of the population... only a few do, yet they are very vocal...so expect to continue hearing from them.

Well, they do look interesting, and there do appear to be more viable options. I'll withhold judgment until the update is released, and the nerfbat is swung a few months after.

I'm surprised at the doublecast skills. I believe that when Gust was previewed earlier, it had an Adjacent aoe range. After the Dervish Nightfall Beta Weekend Event PbAoE fiasco, I never expected all of these area of effect buffs carrying over to PvP.


Unrelated, but I'm going to laugh (in a sad way) if Ward Against Harm gives only +25 armor vs Elemental damage due to the armor stacking cap, much like the Ebon Battle Standard of Courage and Great Dwarf Armor.

Edit: And yeah, Double Dragon - huh. Balthazar's Aura got whacked fairly hard for the power of its mobile pulsing damage, and it was in an awful attribute line. (I know it used to last 10 seconds, and I believe it had a recharge of 10 seconds. I'm not sure if it used to cost 15 energy, though.)

I'm thinking that with the current SoS builds, people rather bring a Rit as dps than an elementalist.

Although I still have to see how effective ele's will be with the new skill changes, it does seem that the elementalists get some extra's and the rits are nerfed on their dps to make ele's more interesting again.

In essence, the rit has become the ele's biggest competitor for dps and was frankly losing against the sos rit. This could be a way of balancing these two classes.

It's not just the Rit. Almost any class can load a SoS bar and deal more damage than their primary profession skills. This was a nerf to keep SoS in the hands of the rit as well as solo farming.

Not sure if this is has already been answered, but how will Arcane Languor be affected?
Will it still cause a full energy exhaustion, or the amount specified in the skill?

Just off the top of my head, Fragility + Shockwave + Crystal Wave might be fun

AL doubles exhaustion. Ergo, 5=10 10=20. seempulz.

Also; Stone Sheath prot ele, anyone? Would it be able to replace an ST rit? Spiritway wasn't struck much, if you go back to SoGM and Painful Bond on the SoS. Replace mesmers in every team for Double Dragon+Stone Sheath, perhaps.

stone sheath will be (ab)used i think

HA was on it's last legs, anet's unwillingness to devote serious resources and their laughable buffing of invoke and dervs plus flux killed it

I am acctually excited for this update. I get to play more with me ele and maybe bring out my WaR again. Lower armor reduction to HM enemies = higher bigger damage output by wars. Sounds fun, looking forward to it ~

I don't see Stone Sheath in PvE. 40 armor really doesn't do much, that makes you the equivalent of an unprotted warrior and an unprotted warrior still dies really quickly in PvE. Plus, you will need 2 Eles to cover all of the casters in danger.

SY is still going to be the universal norm, with ST or monk prots for the few areas with large armor ignoring damage.

Plus, remember that the +24 +24 ar will be capped at +25....sure, cracked armor won't affect you anymore (the extra armor gets under the cap to cover the loss for CA) but is still lame....

We can only hope that by the time the update gets released Anet has fixed the armor stacking issue.
Else its basically a Ward Against Elements that also gives a partywide mending effect.

An In the Area mending* it's important, that. no good.

We can say that it's whole PvP and not HA only... I let you imagine the consequences in RA of some OP Ele builds that you can already make...In Ha or GvG, i don't believe that we can have worse than big damage + perma blind spammers( i.e invoke eles)

But well, i'm waiting to see.. this update might be interesting as it will create many kind of OP builds and not only 1 single such as today...( that's in theory though..)

^True. Must say, even seeing such improvements in skills, i'm still a bit doubtful on couple of thing that always bothered me when playing ele.

No wards love (intended as mechanic): to justify the static aspect and range of wards (that expose to enemy AoE) those should be very OP - like spirits are in PvE - or will be eventually dropped to traps level (just like they are now: almost unused apart some gimmick/particular situation - like choke point in HA).

Ah, no Glyph love, excluded the elite one.

I would have preferred less power to some skills, but more mechanics reworks apart doublecast, expecially for above 2 things.

And at second glance...there isn't almost any change to non-elite skills, excluded 4 recharge and 4 cast time(there's a mention to "We'll rework, maybe, cross-element spells later", but that's all). Maybe will come with definitive update, or later one.

BTW, improving elites is ok, but if you don't have anything good to pair it with loose a bit of sense (for example: having uber energy with e-boon, Mom or e-prodigy is useless as long as rest of the bar sucks). Still have to see how much AR get scaled down...that may be the answer.

Yep, and Mesmers continue Wastrels spam.

The explanation doesn't make much sense to me. Release it already. Think of it as an holiday gift. Everybody knows about the usual holiday events, it's not like they will distract from the update.

Yea I have to agree. There's not much to do in game. The only thing I can think of to make them wait till after Wintersday is new Wintersday content.

Did eles just became monks' backupguards? Imagine a 500 base hp monk that uses a 72e set that's about 216 extra hp plus 12 energy every 20 seconds.

Speaking purely from a PvE perspective, I think this update is going to be great. Not only does it close the gap between the armour-respecting and armour-ignoring professions it also decreases Mesmers and Ritualists ability to bring a lot of utility while still doing beastly damage.