Update - January 5, 2012

I accidentally chose the wrong secondary with my perma-pre ele, so I made another one and took that one out as a courier with some miniatures and consumables.

This is a neat councidence, because my first character and my main was an elementalist, and after this changes, the profession feels rejuvenated. So I'll think I'll take the guy for a ride around Tyria helping newbies while I watch some series.
Need help in Kryta? Call Mithran S Arkanere! I love destroying undead and white mantle!


Time to try out some new stuff! Thanks to these doublecast and other changes, I may even start bringing melees again, and earth magic. I can't remember the last time I brough Earth magic!


Lately all the things ANet have been adding make me thing: "I wish they did this 6 years ago!".

Well, better late than never!

So glad that SoS was further nerfed... maybe now more offensive ritualist builds will be able to compete with the SoS rit.

As an Elementalist main, I absolutely love every bit of this update. On the other hand, as someone with nearly 2,000 hours invested in my class of choice, I don't really feel that the Elementalist needed some of these buffs. I've never had trouble finding a group, and I've never had anyone criticize me on my damage contribution. Although maybe that's just me.

Of course, it's always nice to see buffs to some of my favourite go-to skills like Glyph of Energy (on my standard fire bar), Glimmering Mark, Obsidian Flame, and Fireball.

It's also nice to see ANet encouraging elemental mixing a bit more. I now have some ideas for Air/Earth and Earth/Fire mixes.

I am intrigued with the nerf to Destructive was Glaive and Signet of Spirits. That has some potential to hurt Domain of Anguish runs, and the prevalence of Ritualists as a whole. Although it's not really a good thing to see only two builds being really relevant in PvE for a class.

lvl 30 star burst eles - 250 damage. Ran into 3 of these and even ST didn't save me from dying instantly (only soaks up one star burst, other two hit for 500 damage on my whole party).

Forget rits and sos, we came a full circle, it is time for eles to be overpowered.

Never really cared for my Ele, so this doesn't really affect me other than dreading certain Ele-bosses in future adventures. The update makes me optimistic though, maybe Anet is done with bugfixes and can start to tweak my Paragon. Just hope it won't take 8-9 months worth of waiting.

Good update, maybe I now won't be forced to run SoS when pugging Zaishen missions. Wish they would address Shadow Form while they were at it. Rit and mesmer nerfs were justified, I guess we understand now that Anet doesn't want Rits to compete with Eles in dealing lightning damage.

I wrote up a more thorough analysis on Post-Launch Reviews, in case anyone's interested. Didn't cover everything, but just what I found most relevant.

energy boon gives more health, yes, but it also just makes a protter's job harder. see: endure pain.

Ward vs Harm sounds awesome, but will be severely limited by the +25 armor cap bug...right?

I like the ideas and the direction they are going...but when I looked at these skills I thought to myself "that would be cool on a dervish" more than I thought of an ele...

Yup time to delete my mesmers and rits and only play eles.

Thank you ANet for getting rid of all mesmers and rits so eles can now rule supreme! My ele is so powerful now that I can smell solo farming builds in the horizon...

ack makes me wish i did todays zaishen before this update came out lols >>

i think mirror of ice and gust are bugged so that when you target yourself the damage gets applied twice.

edit: ignore this... i think it's how it is supposed to work...

As a long time elementalist player, I am SO HAPPY to finally see ArenaNet try to address the balance issues faced by eles in HM!!!

Several of the skill mods they made look nice. Oddly enough, my preferred element is water, and I often used Ward Against Harm or Shatterstone despite them previously being somewhat sub-optimal skills. With the updates, both of those look to be much improved.

Thank You ArenaNet!!!

While I'm happy some of these changes finally came out...some baffle me....

Second wind?...is anyone going to use this
Cruel was Daoshen?...same deal...no one used it, b4 lowering the dmg? don't get it...maybe it's me.
Ward Against Harm?...doubt it will be used after initial testing

Exhaustion...while it may be a balancing factor for PvP (which is played by only a small portion of the population), it's effects in PvE deter skill use. Chain lightning always causing exhausting will reduce it's use drastically.

All that aside I am very glad for this update. It has been a long time comming. Although I fear PuG's using doublecasting skills (pug eles hate casting on allies....much like asking pug rit for splinter weap or a rage) I'll definately enjoy playing with them.

I used it before the update, I'll sure as hell use it now =D

This doesnt change much until the rest of the update is released.

Since when is promoting the skillful use of skills a bad thing? PvE needs balance too you know . . .

When there are other options that don't. It would be one thing if the benefit of a skill truely outweighed the compounded exhaustion cause by repetitive use, but sadly in PvE it doesn't. So inturn players will simply resort to other options and the skill newly changed for "hopefully" invigorated usage...won't.

I enjoy how it is now possible to get to the 20 Attribute level of any Element now with Elemental Attunement + Glyph of Elemental Power.

Double Dragon= Portable AoE. Probably my favorite visually and for lulz.

Gale= I just saw someone score a triple KD in a GvG match. OMG. I love this skill already. Anyone for full team/mob KD's?

Star Burst= The new way to farm/ the new HA/GvG spike for use by farming [PvE] noobs.

I brought my perma-Pre Ele out for this (LDoA, 2.5 years old). The change is disappointingly very slight, but at least Eles are a lot more fun than they used to be. That being said, I don't see how the non-elite skills will require much change, if any...

Past that, what I'm really, and more so, interested in is how/if it will play into those with Ele as their secondary profession.

People thanking Anet should really try somewhere as innocuous as Wajjun Bazaar in HM before they do.... seriously. Thank frak I got 50/50 already because finishing VQing Elona can take a long walk off a short pier in concrete boots now.

Once again, the "balance" team prove they have absolutely no idea what the word actually means.... I weep for GW2, I really do.

don't really want to make another thread asking this question, but you can change razah's profession more than once? i knew there was an update where you could change his profession. i thought that profession change would be permanent and fixed.

but you can actually change it anytime (non permanent) like you can switch secondary professions?

back to topic, i'm glad we have an ele skill update. my main is an ele, and i got bored with limited builds that had to deal with SF, invoke or ether prot/heal.

This doesnt bother me one bit because I know what prot spirit and spirit bond are. Also a soul twisting rit with shelter would still make everything easy. You can still vanq Cantha before doing WoC, if someone plans on vanqing then its their mistake if they start WoC before completing a factions vanq.

Mist form is no where near as good as an E/Mo protter, or E/Rt healer, but dont confuse this to be a complaint, it isnt.

My only complaint would be that if this update finally makes HM harder, everything will end up being nerfed until it is easy again due to people complaining about their lack of skill (Like how BFLA was completely ruined).

If the armour stacking bug with Ward Against Harm can be fixed, theres your counter to enemy elementalists in PVE.

What's quite annoying is that the logic screen clearly says that this update is oriented to make the elementalist more viable in PvE...So, a few questions are arising :

- Basically, was all this made not regarding PvP ? Whatever, it's clearly not going to change the activity in organized PvP in a positive way and i'm pretty convinced people will keep same builds

- Did we really need an elementalist buff in PvE ??Surely, we might be told that water ele in PvE was underrated, but then ranger and paragon especially are too..All this big work was really cool and i appreciate the effort to see they're still trying... but it's once again work that could have been invested in what was really needed, aka activity in PvP or at least ALL those heavy farms in PvE...

- Flux were supposed to be an alternative for skill updates, so if we get this big one, does that mean flux are a big fail ?

- The last part of the update is a clear nerf to DwG for DOA( going with the HM changes), close to the ursan one, but what's the point of keeping shadow form then..

Couldn't agree more. Not changing Shadow Form was cited by the devs as not getting changed because it was a team build. Isn't what Rits do in DOA a team thing? I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

I like the update. I like the versatility in build crafting I will get with it for sure. I played RA for about an hour and only rolled my Mesmer though because of all the Eles

Because it's a fib. They won't nerf SF because of the age old reason that sin nerds will rage into a virtual lynch mob.

Anyway I am glad I finished my set of Q9 ele froggies and CCs before this update hit. High end Ele gear is going to go up.

It is easy peasy if you play an ele. Master of Magic and Mist Form are 2 overpowered elite enchantments that I use right now, add in arcane mimicry and you are set.

I just logged in to check it all out, and Armor of Frost still gives +40 armour on top of the +1 water magic, so thats nice.

I played my ele for a lot of hours yeasterday and captured a lot of elites...the update came out the second I logged off, so I've had the time to try out soem elites before seeing the difference, luckily :P

My ele uses air and I'm not impressed by changes to that element, but it's really really making me wanna play water. Shatterstone anyone?

I still have to try everything, including new HM, I'm really curious to see how's teh difference. And I hope they change the rest of the skills as well, cause for sure good elites aren't enough to make a whole bar good..

Underwhelmed. The amount of time it's taken, they should have changed more non elites. Elites don't make a build, they're important to it but as it stands there's not that much you can try out (besides new gimmicky support builds)

I don't know where you have been but there's a part 2 ele skill update coming after this. It will focus on non elites with maybe a few more elites.

You also forget they are working on other projects as well.

I'm glad they finally opted for a substantial rebalance, instead of the usual linear buffs.

Eles needed tweaks, but more importantly, the competition needed some toning down in effectiveness. Mission accomplished.

This update won't change my opinion about eles: tried vanquishing an area and while yellow numbers are indeed bigger, my ele still feels rather slow due to the HP increase, but then again, I'm pretty sure, all professions are now more or less affected, which is no bad thing in my books.

Ward Against Harm works correctly. It doesn't appear to suffer from the armor stacking bug from the test I did. Trebuchet in Isle of Nameless was the test I used. 707 @ 60 AR was reduced to 319 @ 106 AR on my warrior with normal gear and no ward, and then reduced further to 149 while in a ward at 13 Water Magic, which is expected for 150 AR.

It's still an elite ward in Water Magic though, so I still don't care if it's buffed.

Theorycrafting here, but not only does nothing much seems to have changed, Elementalists may actually have gotten weaker since the best attribute line, Air, got nerfed. There're plenty of good skills in this update now, but overall they're still bad. Shatterstone is great, but there are no good Water spells out there to back it up. Ice Spikes and Maelstrom don't go far enough to cover Water's sorry array of spells. Now if you could run Shatterstone + Water Trident + Mirror of Ice, Water would suddenly become good, but of course they're all elites, and similar problems apply to the other changes.

The most significant changes (PvE-wise) seem to be:

Nerfs to Invoke and Chain Lightning - this will in all likelihood kill Invoke as a template
Churning Earth's 2s cast makes it much better with AP
1.5s cast Fireball - not sure how much more viable Fire is now, but this would be good to have
PBAoE spells might have some potential
Master of Magic might take over as elite of choice. Sucks though, I doubt any new MoM build will overpower pre-nerf Invoke in PvE

EDIT:

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!

I'm aware of the '2nd part', but the fact is they delayed this 1st part and could have used the time productively to implement more non-elite changes. As has been pointed out, you can't buff a class just by doing elites. What they should have done is do a few elites per attribute line as well as non-elites, then they can tweak other elites needs be. As it stands nothing has really changed, other than nerfs.

Them having other projects is irrelevant, they don't work on them simultaneously. Not managing resources well enough to be able to finish one is just another problem, and anet's biggest one. They have decent ideas and put a respectable amount of work in but they don't manage time and resources well.

a few things: (no anger post or nerdrage)

good:

- i love the doublecast skills and the idea behind it, so the eles can really use "teaming" in 2 ways

- i love lowered exhaustion, as this has been 1 problem in pve, as most skills just did nice dmg in NM and a lil in HM, but now they can be used better and more often

- reduced armor + increased HP for HM monsters, thats really great, as i barely used any armor ignoring skills on my own chars, heroes do, but i couldnt do much dmg at all
not mentioning me trying to do dmg, before the enemy died.... which sucked

- the weakest elements air and water magic, got a whole new meaning, they actually became useful in pve, especially in HM now

- synergy eles are great now, i can use my non-roleplay ele now as air+water if i want to, and i do

- eles can both deal dmg AND be assistance of the team itself, again: eles can use "teaming" in 2 ways, by healing the target allies AND dealing dmg around them

- new functionalities are made to get more out of eles, especially cuz most skills updated now are elites

- better energy management, synergy with exhaustion, which got halved alot now

- last but not least (for sure): as a pve-er, i love seeing skills getting more useful and/or useful at all, and so i think more pvp splits will come, which is a great thing, due to pve and pvp being too different

other: (not calling em bad)

- by increasing strong skills in pve, monsters will be almost impossible to defeat, while in HM, they already were a pain
examples are "mind burn" and "mind freeze"
sure, not much enemies throughout the game use them, but vqing certain places will be very hard now, even with prot spirit

- SoS nerf? again? i dont mind, but i hope it wont keep getting nerfed, as its 1 useful skill for heroes to use
if SoS really is too good for any prof, make it fail with less than 5 spawning power, and change attribute to spawning power
i dont mind, but i hope its not going too far, cuz rits still are dmg dealers, partly, especially with channeling + spawning power

last own opinions: (bit offtopic too)

i hope for meteor and meteor shower to get buffed, like MS having 3 casting time and 5 exhaustion, and maybe 30 recharge, energy cost is good

meteor should have 5 exhaustion cuz its weak in pve, and i'm only talking about NM, lets not even start about HM
this 2 casting time is good, but wish for 20 recharge as it'll be better to use with 5 exhaustion

tbh, i think even with these changes, those 2 will be used rarely by players, as most only care about direct dmg, not MS's over time dmg and sometimes miss enemies as they walk
but they at least could try to make em used more
they dont even need more dmg

oh yea, before i forget: why removing "invoke lightning" conditional exhaustion? its an elite skill, and most already rather used chain lightning instead, to keep open an elite slot, so it stays the same now, unless one based on exhaustion will use both, lol, but i think most wanna use different skills, so doubt those 2 will be in 1 build

so far my opinions

conclusion: anet does great, but makes me wonder about some smaller points

note: that roleplaying ele i have uses big and direct dmg only, and just earth and fire, so cant do much atm.... its not the only reason why i mentioned meteor and MS, its just that i think they are even less useful compared to the updated ones

and yes, i know they'll look into non-elites now, i just wanted to mention them

now we just gotta wait and see

I generally agree with your assessment. The main problem Eles have historically had have been not weak elites, but poor and/or costly non-elites; since this update only really targeted elites, it won't be surprising if little changes. Player bars in particular won't change away from Assassin's Promise, indeed at best the Earth build is slightly stronger and I guess a Fire variant with Fireball and Rodgort's is perhaps viable now.

I can't think of anything satisfactory for a hero, certainly not enough to displace a Mesmer or Necro in any of my teambuilds.

Looks like I have to play my ele again to see how good these changes are...

wow
everything causes weakness and blind.
this is not pve only O.o

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Arcane_Mimicry

It wouldn't allow you to run all three, but two out of three isn't bad. Run one on your bar and the other two on hero bars and let us know which combo works best

Arcane Mimicry simply allows you to commit more resources for mediocrity.

Yes this is true. Meteor Shower is a perfect example. You would think 25e, a five second cast time and a one minutes recharge would be punishment enough for such a skill.

Your better off just bringing Shatterstone + Arcane Echo.