Guild Wars 2

If you want a TL: DR, it’s at the bottom.

So this is just a crazy theory I’m working on about why people are quite recently claiming ele to be god tier or whatever in Spvp. I feel most people in general just don’t know enough about the class to really fight them well, and because of this assume they are OP. At this point, different people will do different things, some will roll an ele because they want to be that “OP” class they just got destroyed by, others will carry on, maybe try ele to see what it is all about. But those people that rolled the class just because they wanted to be the top dog probably will never truly understand the class enough to play it well and definitely not enough to get better as a player to fight them.

I say this because it seems no matter what build I run, people just have such trouble dealing with elementalists. They either try to burst apply conditions before I enter water, or try to burst me down just as I switched into earth, heck, some just keep firing away after I’ve popped a Magnetic Aura or Magnetic Wave and proceed to kill themselves. Obviously better players won’t be fooled so easily, but at the same time I’m finding incredibly gimicky one trick pony builds to be quite effective. Of course, the people who do understand the class rarely have too much trouble with me.

I’m by no means a great ele, maybe average if we’re being generous. Thieves that use the stolen skill as soon as I leave water and interrupt as soon as they see ether renewal, they kill me easily. Necros that know to wait until I cycle through my blast finishers to corrupt boons and chill, they can usually shut me down fast. Zerkers who burst as soon as I leave water or earth have a much better chance than those who just use their burst because it’s off cooldown.

Only reason I’m bringing this up is because of late I’ve been using a rather one trick pony build using S/F where really my only dps is burns and bleeds. Nothing but signets and I never leave earth( Courtesy to Diva for really bringing the build into creation and coming up with the idea) and yet people still struggle desperately sometimes. Obsidian flesh tricks way more people than it should and the fact that no one bothers to cleanse 15 stacks of bleed on themselves but use a cleanse on a single burn is staggering. This build uses neither celestial or any form of might stacking, with the only might coming from Fire Aura procs.

TLDR

Very long way of saying it with lots of personal examples, but I feel people don’t handle eles well because even when they play the class they don’t play it for the right reasons and just want to be that Fotm build. Sure some things may need to be toned down or fixed, but I think the much bigger issue is people calling something OP, then playing the class for the entirely wrong reasons and still concluded it to be OP and calling for class-wide nerfs despite only trying out the FotM builds.

Just my humble opinion, feel free to attack, just know I’ll be less inclined to answer if you are insulting or rude.

People don’t understand the classes they are fighting against? This isn’t new. It’s why warrior has received so many complaints and nerf after nerf for the last 10 to 12 months.

It’s much easier to complain on a forum to get something nerfed than it is to try adapting your build or game play, apparently.

DD Ele isn’t just OP on a 1v1 scale, it’s OP on every scale. That’s all Ill say.

D/D is a problem due to how imbalanced might stacking is due to runes and sigils. It stands out even more on Ele that say, Warrior because they can stack a lot of might without interacting with the enemy while a War has to gain adrenaline to use Combustive Shot. Celestial is a problem as well. With the variety of healing and both condition and power damage it makes it even more powerful. The ammy now has way more stat points than any other as well. Now, if might stacking is nerfed it might not be a problem, but it is certainly a contributing factor.

Ele as a class is still pretty weak, it’s gear that makes them strong.

Eles can just exploit the game mechanics more than any class.

They pop off 4 or 5 long cooldown burst skills, and then fall back into defensive mode, and pop off 4 or 5 long cooldown defensive skills, and if all that didn’t work, they run away.

…all the while their opponent is pressing #1 as hard as they can.

The celestial ele doesn’t bother me as much as a tweeked one does. Some eles just cant be killed (clerics?) …and zerkers can kill you in seconds, and both builds play exactly the same way.

If clerics used water, and zerkers used air, it would be one thing, but most of the time an ele’s build is a mystery until you check the combat log.

Ezeriel.9574:

Eles can just exploit the game mechanics more than any class.

They pop off 4 or 5 long cooldown burst skills, and then fall back into defensive mode, and pop off 4 or 5 long cooldown defensive skills, and if all that didn’t work, they run away.

…all the while their opponent is pressing #1 as hard as they can.

The celestial ele doesn’t bother me as much as a tweeked one does. Some eles just cant be killed (clerics?) …and zerkers can kill you in seconds, and both builds play exactly the same way.

If clerics used water, and zerkers used air, it would be one thing, but most of the time an ele’s build is a mystery until you check the combat log.

It shouldn’t be too hard to tell what’s happening. No matter the build, most D/D eles have very similar rotations. Saying eles are too hard to predict because they don’t camp in one element just supports my theory that people don’t know nearly enough about eles. In almost all cases, an ele camping in one element is dead against anyone of average skill. Their cds are not designed for them to remain on one attunement for extended periods of time.
Not counting auto attacks, the average cd for staff skills untraited for example, is almost 24 seconds. For D/D it is a little over 24.5 seconds.

It should be pretty obvious from the get-go if the ele is burst or tanky just by how much damage their first skill or your first skill does. In fact, most ele builds are fairly similar, the arcana line as a whole pretty much has 3 traits that are almost exclusively used in each slot and water doesn’t have much variety either.

Only melee focus zerkers with poor anti-boon offense lose and whine about celestial duh. Shatter mesmer does good against them duh. Of all the propositions about the subject the nerfs would have side damage the best was improvement of boon removal.

The well telegraphed skills of d/d faciliates the encounter.

Honestly, might stacking eles and engis as well as guards keep mesmers and necros in the meta. Without those classes to counter thief burst there is no point in taking a mesmer over a thief.

Theives can remove boons as well

As can mesmers?