Guild Wars 2

Out of the three light armour professions, which is the most complex to level and play in a PvE setting?

I’ve got mesmer, elementalist and necro – all around lvl 15 and wonder if elementalist is as complex as everyone says.

youre lvl 15. you havent unlocked the full potential of any profs yet. But yes Ele and mes are complex depending on how you play ofc.

Generally hang back and range then not so complex. Get in melee range (unless being carried hard) you will notice things

Like guardians with poor aegis rotations, slow condi removal, people not blinding etc etc

Elementalist is some kind of swiss knive. Adaptable like you want/need. If you don´t use its potential — squish with low HP. I had been sceptic is the low HP can survive, and yes it does. But you must move like a crazy chicken ;-).

I’d say as an ele it really depends on how you play. An ele’s complexity comes from your ability to take advantage of your potential combos. While you can combo with all your weapon choices, there are potentially more for some weapon types than others. Also, your playstyle matters also. Do range or melee? You can just press 1,1,1,1, on staff on things all day and that’s simple, pretty boring. While D/D is much harder if you are trying to combo things correctly.

Staff ele is pretty faceroll though. If you want complex, don’t be a staff ele.

Might stacking ele (s/d) used to be pretty complex, lots of attunement swapping and understanding of blasts and cooldowns. In some instances (out of combat) you can also extend the complexity to swapping weapons in order to get the maximum amount of might.

However, I’m not sure if the build is nerfed at all with the recent patch, I haven’t check it out yet. Perhaps somebody else can confirm its status.

Well HoT is going to be changing things a lot. But as of now Mesmer can be challenging to play right but few people play it well. With the new trait lines Mesmer DPS has picked up a bit but staff ele is still higher in DPS. Seriously staff ele gets +30% damage with firestorm and ice bow… Plus some might stacking and 100% fury uptime. Most parties will have at least one warrior and phalanx strength was placed in a even more convenient spot in trait trees so might stacking during the fight isn’t really a priority for ele, just making sure to blast fire fields for fury but a couple blasts does the trick. Although you might want to stack might before the fight with something other than staff

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Might stacking ele (s/d) used to be pretty complex, lots of attunement swapping and understanding of blasts and cooldowns. In some instances (out of combat) you can also extend the complexity to swapping weapons in order to get the maximum amount of might.

However, I’m not sure if the build is nerfed at all with the recent patch, I haven’t check it out yet. Perhaps somebody else can confirm its status.

The S/D stacking build is just as effective as ever, if not more so, since you can now trait into a full water line too to provide large AoE heal spikes too Or just go into air for even more damage via rapid attunement swaps to get extra lightning bolts, or bolt to the heart.

It’s not too complex to get a 25 might rotation though. As long as you have something which buffs might duration (such as runes of strength) you can very easily maintain 25 might/fury without too much hassle if you throw arcane wave and brilliance into the mix.

Mesmer and ele are complex in their own ways. The big advantage of ele is that you will easily find a group because they are very useful in most gameplays. Mesmer is not as strong in DPS (although it got buffed in previous patch) and although it has great utilities it is not irreplaceable for PvE or zerg WvW. All classes are fun and challenging in PvP.

No love for Necro :’(

Cerbeius.7129:

No love for Necro :’(

Necro is the most straight-forward light armor class to use, and the question was about the most complex light armor class.

I LOVE Necro because it is NOT complex. I want to play a caster that goes around and kills stuff, not a Swiss Army Ele that is more support than dps. And the Mesmer’s skill design, while interesting, is anything but straightforward (in fact, I think the point of the Mesmer is to be NOT straightforward on anything!)

I love necro (2nd favorite class) but they are not as challenging because they have more passive defense, no difficult skill rotations in PvE-levelling, and do not rely much on mobility (actually they have none). But as I said, in PvP everything is fun and challenging (except maybe grenades engineers currently :p )

Cerbeius.7129:

No love for Necro :’(

Unfortunately, Necro can’t lay down enough conditions to really compete in PvE. In PvP where they can turn boons into conditions and reflect conditions back on people they are amazing, but PvE enemies don’t use enough boons or conditions to make this very viable.

Necro as a class suffers greatly from the designers attempts to keep things the same between PvP and PvE. It’s already such a powerhouse in PvP that they are terrified of making any buffs for the sake of PvE.