GuildWars.com: Elementalist Skill Update (2012-01-05)

[Centaur]

While we're waiting for the public beta of our highly anticipated Guild Wars 2, life in Guild Wars 1 continues, and the previously announced Elementalist skill rebalance has now gone live:

Hard Mode

Reduced the armor level for Hard Mode enemies.
Raised the maximum Health of Hard Mode enemies.

Exhaustion

The amount of Exhaustion caused by a skill is now represented numerically next to a gray dot with a downward arrow.

New Mechanic: Doublecast Skills

A doublecast skill is a new type of spell that casts on you as well as your target. By utilizing proper positioning, skilled players can significantly increase the power level of these skills as well as the area that they cover. Many of these skills were reworked because they were too unwieldy to play normally due to conditionals or poor synergies with other skills. In the case of Mirror of Ice, the skill was providing too much power in PvP without being useful in PvE.

New Functionality

In addition to doublecast skills, we are also allowing some Elementalist elites to have functionality usually covered by other professions. Because these skills are elite, we feel it's OK to blur the role of the Elementalist a bit, as long as this functionality meshes with how the Elementalist normally plays.

Example: Mist Form
While its previous effect was fairly strong against martial professions, Mist Form had almost no effect against casters, and its one-dimensional functionality made it a difficult choice to take over most damage-dealing elites. It could also be very frustrating to use without removal. This update changes the skill into a defensive skill that also provides healing to your allies. In order to emphasize the Elementalist nature of the skill, though, the healing and damage reduction conditionals encourage offensive spell use. To prevent stacking in PvP, this skill has been split.

New Synergies

We're also making a few smaller changes to some skills that we hope will promote some new synergies and help make some previously nonviable builds possible.

... (and much more)

Also, some skill rebalancing was done to address the most powerful Mesmer and Ritualist builds.

You can find the full list of changes here on guildwars2.com or here on the wiki.

[ComplexNuber]

Defintely a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough steps. From what I read, this is the first part of at least two Ele buffs, the second one focusing on non-elite skills instead, so perhaps the second buff will improve things. I'd love to see Eles back in a way that mobs are scared of my Ele as much as I am of theirs. The Mesmer nerf was negligable at most (though I will miss the old Mistrust, it was a bit ridiculous), and Eles still have sub-Mesmer DPS without any where near the amount of shutdown or utility.

It's strange that the Mesmer buff has taken over the Ele nuking role so much, as much as I hate saying it, they went somewhat overboard with that one.

[Vayne]

I'm pretty impressed, overall, with the changes. I also note the slight nerf on destructive was glaive, well overdo in my opinion.

As a first step, this is long overdue, but I have to respect Anet for continuing to update a game that's almost 7 years old, and has no subscription fee. Anet has always been a quality company...and they keep proving that over and over again.

I might have to log in and make some changes to my ele, just to see how she plays. lol

[roshamjoe]

I like that a lot of the changes weren't just: People weren't using it, make it stronger. It's too powerful, make it weaker. It looks like they actually took the time to see why people were choosing to use spells versus other spells and then tweak them, not to make them all equal or one the new must have, but to make them viable and tempting to use. Shows they are more interested in maintaining a good game versus pandering to a crowd.

[Winterbay]

I'm a bit saddened by the change to Mistform but otherwise a nice update

[ComplexNuber]

The mist form update reminds me of the SF update, alot less farming friendly and more usable in casual PvE, but no one will still use it in casual PvE because it doesn't make everything implode.

Maybe someone will make an extremely powerful party healing build with it, but I'm a little skeptic.