The more I play with this class, the more I think its direly needed in the current state of the game and actually not all that strong in the grand scheme of things. Its fine as is.
(and got nerfed (probably) before release, changing Fire tree to Storm tree to prevent burn and being able to 3x skull hit by itself?)
Class Purpose:
It attempts to counter out the current meta of teams which consists of board control, loops, and empowered. It attempts to stop hero book looping troops which don’t function well with Entangle. Looping and skulls are a popular style to play currently, but its not the only way Gems of War can be played.
Downside:
It doesn’t stop troops from collecting mana or casting, basic traditional Gems of War. When a troop cleanses, all effects come off at the same time so you’re safe from things until… well, you’re not. It doesn’t stop exploders from generating mana, losing their turn, then high powered spells coming out and killing things.
You notice this heavily during the high levels of a Journey event when an enemy just cleanses after 2-3 turns and you might not be able to reapply the effects to the right troop in time.
The Elementalist class is just another thing to actually pay attention to when fighting team comps.
are in direct opposition with each other. How can something that is not actually all that strong counter the current meta? Wouldn’t something be strong exactly because it can counter the current meta?
Your perspective is focused on building offensive teams, and I do appreciate the fact that this is a very effective counter against Beetrix.
However, what I am more concerned about, and what Mithran has already described in this thread, is that Elementalist widens the disparity between offense and defense by significantly reducing the defense’s extra turn potential. Losing an extra turn is a big deal when most meta matches are already decided by the second or third turn, and trying to counter this trait—you can’t use immunity to freeze or even something like Beetrix, you really need an empowered cleanse option or impervious troops—significantly restricts defensive options available.
Not necessarily. Undine is designed to counter Blue troops and for awhile it did. It still wouldnt be considered a strong troop even when it was overly effective in its original release.
They’re mutually exclusive events. Its effective but not that strong, but serves to function in a niche where it provides value.
“current meta” is just a narrow pool of the gameplay in Gems of War.
Sure, but Undine is much more specialized and less effective a counter than Elementalist: it takes up a troop slot and requires significant mana to cast. Elementalist is a decent class even without its third trait and works from turn 1.
Does “they” here refer to “effective counter” and “strong troop”? I certainly disagree that they have to be exclusive.
I don’t understand how you are defining strength. I define it in terms of how constrained the defensive options become with the object in question and without, which is why I view Elementalist as strong.
A narrow pool of the gameplay, but certainly a dominating aspect of the PvP gameplay, which is where my contentions lie.
Instead of nerfing Elementalist, I’d rather they buffing some other weaker classes. Hierophant’s 3rd trait is a good contrast to Elementalist’s 3rd one, also Doomsayer’s 3rd trait.
They really need to revisit some useless classes like Diabolist, Doomsayer, Knight, Oracle, Warlord, etc.
I disagree with the ‘significant’ part.
Most of the time, you already want an ‘Impervious’ troop in first slot.
Monk and Elementalist are immune to ‘Stunned’ and ‘Frozen’ and will mostly shrug off the Elementalist’s traits.
Heroes rarely sit in first slot, they’re largely indifferent to ‘Burning/Entangled’.
Sister Superior and Mercy will continue to be excellent choices for GW defences.
Empowered converters will rarely prevent an extra turn, at least not on the AI’s first turn.
Subsequent AI moves are usually attempts at refilling its book or skull matches anyway.
I believe any potential shift in win/loss ratios in Guild Wars will be minimal.
I doubt this was the devs’ intention, but if this ends up invalidating the Thief-Book meta by accident - all the better.
Sometimes you need to be more restrictive to force more creativity.
It replaced Obsidius for me in PvP offense, explode based teams with new heroic gems ensure Elementalist disables the whole defense in a couple of actions. Loving it against goblins mainly. Not so much with Obsidius in the opponent’s team.
Sorry, it seems that I didn’t make myself clear. The text you quote is referring largely to PvP defenses, not GW defenses.
That being said, with regards to GW, doomed books are already the dominant meta, and it seems to me that the introduction of Elementalist will make them even more dominant, since Elementalist’s third trait is such an efficient form of control.
Perhaps on the offensive side, but if on the defensive side you’re just replacing all thief-books with elementalist-books…
I don’t think that’ll happen. Elementalist being a non-trash class has allowed me to transition two book days to non-book days. Thief I feel like is still stronger on the other days. But we’ll just have to wait and see!
Goblin teams were already annoying enough in standard PvP. The whole Forest Troll / Queen Beetrix (or King Gobtruffle or both) paradigm was already annoying enough in standard PvP.
Now they’re even worse with the Elementalist’s third trait. Because even if you don’t get looped to death, the Elementalist probably does the equivalent of binding and gagging your entire team and stuffing them in an automobile’s trunk somewhere by hitting them with freeze/stun/entangle while they’re looping you. And that gets really aggravating, really quickly.
I agree with the notion that this trait needs to be amended for balance issues. I can also agree with the notion that a significant nerf would probably be taken poorly by the community, especially on these forums. (And from the usual suspects who can be expected to complain about everything).
So here’s an idea to chew upon: Instead of that trait activating when the player matches 4+ gems, why not borrow an idea from Nyar’mel and have it activate when the enemy casts a spell? It transforms the trait into a defensive maneuver, something intended to slow/stop looping by hammering the enemy team when they’re trying to get rolling.
It would have a significant speedbump effect on a goblin team, because goblin teams don’t usually have much in the way of cleansing and freezing them is an absolute counter to what they’re trying to do. And it might serve as something of a hindrance to enemy teams that use Empowered converters as the pressure won’t be on the human player to activate the Elementalist’s third trait to try and stop the other side in its’ tracks; rather that trait should activate as soon as those Converters cast on the enemy’s first turn.
Alas, it probably doesn’t serve as much of a deterrent for Beetrix teams – especially teams that use 2x Beetrix – as Beetrix’s third trait is likely to kick in and cleanse everybody. And it wouldn’t slow certain teams that use converters to fill up Impervious troops – e.g., Arachnean Weaver or Zuul’goth.
But I believe it would be a step in the right direction, and do so without hitting the Elementalist’s traits so hard with the nerf-hammer to offend a ton of people.
Your suggestion would make Elementalist many times more mandatory on defence than Thief or Orbweaver ever were. Why would I ever want to defend with any other class with this change? You just killed any hope for a more diverse defence meta.
This change doesn’t make sense.
The Thief-Book meta is beyond stale. We’ve been fighting the same nine and a half teams for an entire year. Elementalist has the potential to open up the meta for at least one or two days - maybe… if we’re lucky?
‘It’s different and my favourite team is ill equipped to deal with this.’ is not a valid argument for drastic rebalancing IMO.
You’re not adding to the game’s pool of viable choices unless the thing you are adding is at least in the ballpark power level of the best of those that came before it.
So what’s the baseline for how powerful a new class needs to be? Monk? Monk’s pretty powerful, right? I’ve been playing 95% of my GW games with Monk. Please keep buffing Elementalist until I want to play 95% of my GW games with that class.
Someone call the nerf police? Monk’s way too powerful. Nerf Monk and all other classes along with it until every class is on Sorcerer’s level?
Balance passes for the game’s older classes are not very likely at this point; I believe the developers are quite happy to have 28+ classes ‘so bad and boring, most people will want to spend gems to speed up the levelling process’.
That leaves us with a handful of viable choices. Why would you want to detract from that small number just because it’s different?
I still don’t believe this class needs rebalancing.
Interesting thread, I’m not an end game player but I will add my view on elementalist. This class will be replacing every instance for me of Titan, Monk and pretty much everything except where I have to use a class for an event. Because for ALL of my teams this class is more powerful than existing classes.
However, I don’t have to deal with these meta teams you are talking about. At level 20 this class has already replaced my Monk class in T12 explores.
Having vsed the class a bunch more times since my initial post, I want it to freaking end. I think for the sake of balance that the trait could stand to be a 50% chance or even a 25% chance. Its just so far above rate for all the other similar traits.
I understand if that’s your preferred playstyle, but Elementalist is not a contender for the difficulty-12 throne if efficiency is your primary concern. Slayer remains the only option.
I played this week’s World Event as Elementalist. I ended up losing a Raven - a Raven I would’ve caught had I picked any of the classes with a 50% mana start. No biggie.
I don’t see myself using Elementalist in events going forward. It’s not a bad choice at all, it’s just not THE best choice and I don’t think it’ll be the best choice, ever, unless that event specifically synergises with elementals.
I think you know perfectly well that changing the trait to a %-chance will condemn yet another class to our Everest-sized mountain of dead-content classes.
Daily tasks: No hero / Class doesn’t matter.
Pet rescue: No hero / Class doesn’t matter.
Low level exploring: No hero / Class doesn’t matter.
Explore 12: 100% Slayer.
Events: 100% not Elementalist.
GW attack: 95% Monk. Might actually play Elementalist on some days though.
GW defence: 4/6 Thief.
PvP defence: Firebombs. Thief is still a better choice for most teams?
PvP attack: ?? No idea, Elementalist might be useful to some if you find a kickass team with a 50% mana start? Too slow for me.
Where are you guys getting the idea from that Elementalist is so good it’s the premier choice for all content and game modes?
If anything, this reads to me like Monk, Titan, Thief, and Slayer need nerfs. And once those have been nerfed, start looking at Archer. (Nah, just kidding)
This thread might have a bit of Stockholm Syndrome or something of the sort.
We’re so used to every bit of content added to GoW being dead on arrival that the idea of a NEW class that SOME people might actually want to play SOME of the time seems so outrageously abnormal and heretical that any trace of viability needs to be snuffed out by the game’s players if the devs won’t come out and do it themselves.
I think it’s clear that the different opinions represented in this thread are from players interested in different aspects of the game, and you can only speak for yourself when you claim whether or not a class is overpowered.
If your PvP defense is Fire Bombs, then I gather that you are not interested in making effective PvP defenses, and my contention that Elementalist restricts defensive options far too much is immaterial to you.
