Guild Wars 2

Okay, moderator, please lock this thread as it has become non-constructive. I have posted a thread in thief forums on what I feel like is more important.

You dueled a bunker ele as a glass cannon spec and died.

If you were actually playing Conquest mode the way it was meant to be played, you’d realize bunker eles do no damage and you’d just leave if you were in any threat of dying, then come back later or spec appropriately to deal with them if they became a problem.

Instead you blew your shadowstep to go into a chill field, blew shadowstep return to go BACK into said chill, then stood in lava font and died.

So, because you died to a bunker ele, you think that the elementalist class is fine ? They have horrible problems, and it’s mostly because of your class – thief. They are forced into low-damage bunker specs with at least two defensive cantrip stun-break utilities because glass cannon thieves currently possess the burst to insta-kill them before they can even fight back.

You can counter bunker eles by spec’ing appropriately and using different runes/amulet and getting more toughness. This is the same advice you lifetime thieves give to other people when they complain about getting smoked by thieves in a CnD/Steal/Backstab opener.

Once again, if you’re going to post a duel, first spec your thief for duels. The ele spec’ed for the duel and took the water pet elite just for that reason. I doubt you’ve changed your spec in a month, because it’s worked fine as a panacea for smoking everyone when used with a modicum of effort.

tl;dr: You ask where all these complaints come from – the answer is that thief opener burst instagibs reinforce and mandate the bunker meta because all other builds get one-shotted.

Build diversity is stagnated by CnD/Steal/Backstab.

It’s well known that Ele makes a decent bunker class. That’s not saying much though. Engineers and Guardians are still better bunkers, and Ele burst is pretty bad. A lot of people came into the class because it was advertised to be a versatile class that could deal very high damage. Instead most of them are pidgeonholed into being a bunker. \

Did you see how much damage he dealt to you. It was tiny. He basically outlasted you, and you’re a glass cannon thief.

Also, bunkers are OP at this point. Noone is complaining that a thief can kill bunkers in 1 second. They’re complaining that thieves can do that to everyone else.

I think people realized weeks ago that Elementalists aren’t a bad class. They do get pigeonholed into a very specific role most of the time, but they are good. Also, really this video points more to the known fact that bunkers are OP. That doesn’t change that thieves are too…

So, the only viable unfun spec for ele is op because a noob thief smashing 3 buttons all the time cant kill him ?
A good thief can destroy any class in a seconds- What u want to prove with this video…

That duel was a pretty bad example of anything relevant but the general idea is mostly accurate – ele’s are strong in a variety of roles. They aren’t “forced” into anything. Balanced s/d and d/d specs are completely viable and have above average sustain while maintaining respectable spike potential – those builds usually also dominate glass thieves in 1v1’s.

Most of the problems with the class come down to bugs and the resulting lack of consistency with certain abilities.

Just watched again. Not only did you never once dancing dagger him to cripple him while he was kiting you, but you didn’t even weapon swap to shortbow to evade, cluster bomb, nor infiltrator arrow out of AE’s when chilled or immobilized.

You can’t honestly think that you deserve to win that duel when all you did was your opener, then spam 1 when the ele went through 4 attunements and used over 15 abilities along with managing his endurance very well.

Fynd.4890:

You dueled a bunker ele as a glass cannon spec and died.

If you were actually playing Conquest mode the way it was meant to be played, you’d realize bunker eles do no damage and you’d just leave if you were in any threat of dying, then come back later or spec appropriately to deal with them if they became a problem.

Instead you blew your shadowstep to go into a chill field, blew shadowstep return to go BACK into said chill, then stood in lava font and died.

So, because you died to a bunker ele, you think that the elementalist class is fine ? They have horrible problems, and it’s mostly because of your class – thief. They are forced into low-damage bunker specs with at least two defensive cantrip stun-break utilities because glass cannon thieves currently possess the burst to insta-kill them before they can even fight back.

You can counter bunker eles by spec’ing appropriately and using different runes/amulet and getting more toughness. This is the same advice you lifetime thieves give to other people when they complain about getting smoked by thieves in a CnD/Steal/Backstab opener.

Once again, if you’re going to post a duel, first spec your thief for duels. The ele spec’ed for the duel and took the water pet elite just for that reason. I doubt you’ve changed your spec in a month, because it’s worked fine as a panacea for smoking everyone when used with a modicum of effort.

tl;dr: You ask where all these complaints come from – the answer is that thief opener burst instagibs reinforce and mandate the bunker meta because all other builds get one-shotted.

Build diversity is stagnated by CnD/Steal/Backstab.

…..First of all, this duel was actually me TRYING different builds for running around in sPvP. This build is not even specced into glass cannon full power/crit. I met this ele randomly in a deserted sPvP match and we decided to duke it out a couple times.

….Second of all, I run into one ele and suddenly I think eles are fine? No. I’ve played against loads of bunker eles, I’m just pointing out that everyone seems to think eles are the worst class in the game.

….Third of all, No. I shadow step offensively against this ele, landed a C&D, shadow stepped back out of the chill after a failed backstab attempt.

Haha, you guys need to calm down. This thread is not about how I played during this duel.

After all, everyone is talking about terribad thieves mashing buttons and killing everyone in 2 seconds. Another purpose of this video is to show that’s not the case vs. decent players.

I think the first reply to this thread is the best one. It lays out why the video is anecdotal to say the least. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Atm GW2 only has conquest mode.. therefor you cannot rely on 1v1 to bring anything but sadness atm because its mostly based around.. you guess it.. conquest

P.S. Never agreed with those pesky posts saying “this class is OP, and this one to” … everyone knows 50% of the people arent even above rank 5 and mostly those are the guys who make that stuff .. i mean, come on

Fynd.4890:

Just watched again. Not only did you never once dancing dagger him to cripple him while he was kiting you, but you didn’t even weapon swap to shortbow to evade, cluster bomb, nor infiltrator arrow out of AE’s when chilled or immobilized.

You can’t honestly think that you deserve to win that duel when all you did was your opener, then spam 1 when the ele went through 4 attunements and used over 15 abilities along with managing his endurance very well.

Shortbow was not even my alternate weapon set at the time lol. I’ve been messing around with sword/pistol which was my alternate set.

I have 2x Elementalist lvl 80 characters. lol

Anyways, Elementalist requires a load of effort to be efficient. It’s just insane the amount of time we have to build up the gears and trait for a proper bunker spec by sacrifice so much damages output for survival.

Glass cannon if you don’t time it right, we just die. Or ganged by 2 players pretty much instant death. Even now Elementalist bunker 2000 toughness with 20k HP can only last a couple of few seconds if being ganked by 3 glass cannons. Problem here is, you cannot kill but to die slowly.

Yes, I’ve seen rare Elementalist video vs 3-5 players (those opposing players aren’t even good in PVP) so that defeat the purpose of it.

So my answer to you, Elementalist if VERY fragile if you do not put effort into it (dance attunements and timing).

… Thief -> 1,2,1,2,1,2,2,1,2,12,12,1,2,12,1,2,12,1,2, hell yeah, game is so simple to play with ownage.

And no, I haven’t try much into Thief, aside of that 1,2,12 jokes. I cannot comment how are they played out. But this is my perspective from playing an Elementalist.

But sure, if you would like to see my playing my usual build and me giving everything I have, I will gladly still show you that a bunker ele is extremely hard to take down if even possible. It’s definitely possible, but it requires an abormal higher skill level than a bunker would need to pull this off imo.

+1 for Fynd. All the other posters summed it up too. The biggest issues are eles are forced into bunker specs to be viable and so many abilities are bugged it affects the performance of the class. Thief players love to complain that if they get nerfed they will be all glass and no cannon but an elementalist specced for glass cannon spec currently has no cannon which basically forces everyone to spec bunker spec. Not to mention that most elementalists are also forced into speccing heavy Arcane to get attunement reduction which should actually be standard for the class.

Even without a buff if they just fixed the huge list of bugs in the class it would increase its effficiency by 100-percent.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/NEW-Elementalist-bugs-and-glitches-thread/first#post290693

Ele bunkers are a bit too strong
Ele anything else is a bit too weak

If you didn’t already understand this, you shouldn’t make a thread claiming you do.

You admit yourself that you were testing out new builds for spvp. That ele has probably been playing his spec and skill set for a long time. Hardly the basis for a discussion on class balance is it?

Kudos for posting a video where you get your bottom handed to you but youtube has hundreds of vids of every class owning every other class in 1 v 1s. A good player will beat a bad player whatever class he is using.

A bunker elemental cant insta gib you from nowhere. You have made yor thread, lets see if it gets the same amount of support as the hundreds of nerf thief threads.I know you don’t intend this as a nerf ele thread, more a ‘leave my class alone, it’s fine – see?’ thread, but really it could have been any class beating you in that duel.

“Glass cannon if you don’t time it right, we just die. Or ganged by 2 players pretty much instant death. Even now Elementalist bunker 2000 toughness with 20k HP can only last a couple of few seconds if being ganked by 3 glass cannons. Problem here is, you cannot kill but to die slowly.”

Oh hahahahah, you should try playing a ranger or warrior, you will be in tears after the first 5 minutes if you think dying to 3 glass cannons is an issue.

Elementalist bunkers are nonsense, as is every other bunker in the game. They need to be reworked.

“Ele bunkers are a bit too strong
Ele anything else is a bit too weak”

I completely agree with this statement. Bunkers are strong but boring. The real issue is that going offensive as an ele will result in being unproportionately squishy. The upside just doesn’t outweight the downside.

in my opinion problem is obvious…

both thief and ele have lowest HP in game, so they are meant to be high dmg professions or even nukers…

ele have light armor, thief have medium armor (hmm, ele should have another bonus for this, or?)

ele does less dmg then thief when speced purely for dmg (hmmm, second point for thief, wtf?)

ele have lower survivability (mainly due to stealth) unless he spec for it and thus losing dmg output so he have even less dmg then thief (third one)

ele have worse mobility then thief (who can compare self to short bow port? even on higher places (so imba in pvp)? or 25% speed signet and some others for sure, eles skills cant)

only things where can ele purely win is bunkering (its quite silly that lowest hp prof is one of best bunkers but why not) and support, but again, only if they spec for it and lose some other aspects (mainly dmg)

i didnt mension control, because they are on par imo, ele can do some control, thief have many gap closers and stealth, he dont need control

thief > ele

Oh please.
I’ve met an Elementalist (bunker of course, the only Ele build available atm) also in a desert sPvP match and started to duel.
I was running sword/dagger + pistol/pistol, two builds which thieves usally consider as underpowered, and also I wasn’t even specced as a glass cannon.

I’ve destroyed that Ele with ease 4 duels out of 4 while he succeded to manage a Necro and a Guardian in the same time. I just want to imagine what would happen if I was running the op D/D build you were running.

The truth is that Elementalists and Necromancers need to be tweaked, Ranger also needs tome build tweaked.
Engineers, Warriors and Mesmers (excluding the Moa Morph and Portal) are almost fine.
Thieves need to be toned down, also Guardians need some work.

I think it’s interesting from an objective standpoint, based on what is mentioned by most on the forums people tend say similar things.
Thieves claim they are pigeonholed into a burst build.
Elementalists claim they are pigeonholed into bunker build.
It’s even more interesting it seems from the forums perspective that if a burst Thief fights a non-bunker Elementalist, the Thief will almost always win. But if a non-burst Thief fights a bunker Elementalist, the Elementalist will almost always win.
Whether the player base wants this kinda of dedicated roles is confusing. I tend to see a fair amount of complaints wanting the “Trinity” back, yet many want their role to be able to handle all builds and not have hard counters. These are just my perspectives, correct me if I’m wrong.

Edit: I forgot to ask, at what point does skill factor in?

You didn’t build for duels. You didn’t really use skills (except for the 1). You ran in every AoE attack. And all of this is suddenly proof that eles are overpowered? Do you want to see how an ele fares vs. a thief when he just uses the auto-attacks?

The guy specs full survivability BECAUSE of you thiefs, because as a glass cannon an ele walks around with 10k hp, and now thiefs are fine because you cant solo kill the guy who specs to counter you?

This aint even skill, this is build vs build. Build Wars 2.

GankSinatra.2653:

a glass cannon an ele walks around with 10k hp

Most glass ele builds have 16-17k depending on runes. Bunker builds typically have 13k or so.

As an elementalist player who has been watching our profession board and playing the game since late-beta, what first happened is that a lot of people picked the elementalist for their needs of magical destruction.

Elementalists, in both GW1 and GW2, were/ are advertised as a versatile high-damage profession with low defense. In GW1 specifically, elementalists revolve around damage. Large aoe bursts with Fire, single-targetting spiking and control with air, general aoe damage and general crowd control with earth, and lesser damage but more focused (crowd) control with water. With GW2, out of the three mage professions, we have the defensive, long-term condition/ life-stealing/ minion army necromancer, and the frail mind-trickster, clone/stealth-hidden illusionist mesmer revolving around CC and anti-play. And then there is the Elementalist, advertised for destruction, the crazy-minded, hot-heated profession that plays with fire, lightning bolts and meteors. Yeah, guess who the more offensive-oriented spellcaster loves would pick?

While for a Guardian, a profession with a more defensive/ support nature, many of its fans were already begging to be able to create damage builds, due to how paladins are usually treated and represented in several other games – and the paladin is an extremely popular archetype, basically being the “idealistic hero”; I don’t think that many people were going for the Elementalist for their healer/ support builds (I’m sure there’s a fair few, but I don’t think so they are as many, or at least not as loud, as those who want offensive paladin-type of characters).

And it happens that damage elementalists are pretty bad. So, yeah, there was a huge uproar. And damage elementalists really are bad. To give you an idea, they are basically thieves who take more time to activate their skills, said skills are easier to avoid, and once they hit they deal less damage. But it does not ends here: thieves’ stealth works much better as a defensive tool for a squichy class, than 8+ defensive/ CC skills that deal little to no damage and only last for 1s, for a profession that, if spcced to be squichy, won’t have time to spend to burst, defend themselves and survive. Our burst elementalists just can’t do anything. We can’t burst because we get killed before we deal any meaningful damage, we can’t defend without sacrificing our burst, and our defenses last so little that, the moment they are over, we will be back at point 0, where we can’t burst without being killed first.

So, yes, elementalists are pretty bad at destruction. The thing is, their defensive skills work very well because their defensive builds gives them buttloads of regeneration and good condition removal, so even if their defensive skills end up too quickly, they are excellent at delaying our opponent until our HP is back to full health, and basically, that’s one of the essences of elementalist’s bunker builds. Their HP goes in a zig-zag between low and high, low and high, low and high. Whenever it gets high, they have time to use their offensive abilities. When it gets low, they have time to use their defensive abilities, many of them which also happen to have long-term effects like frost aura, frozen ground, etc.

Elementalists are, as to repeat what was said here, very strong in bunker builds and inefficient for burst builds. And it’s also worth noting that traits play a crucial role here. Water cantrip traits give our best utility a lot of regeneration. An earth trait automatically activates a cantrip when our HP falls low, an arcana trait gives us regeneration whenever we change to water. Our healing glyph grants us regeneration on water, Dwayna’s runes grat us regeneration on healing skills and increases its duration, and finally, a water grandmaster trait removes a condition for us each time we gain regeneration. (And btw, I don’t think this last trait is too strong, because we can’t always remove conditions whenever we want it without wasting really important skills for other situations). At the same time, our offensive traits are pretty poor, especially for our fire traitline.

Ele is just like everything else…if you spec on balance or defense (And you KNOW how to play) you live, if you spec everything on dealing damage you’re not going to live for long if someone catches you…..this happens in pve versus ai mobs, so in pvp it’s even more evident

Buchfink.8613:

You didn’t build for duels. You didn’t really use skills (except for the 1). You ran in every AoE attack. And all of this is suddenly proof that eles are overpowered? Do you want to see how an ele fares vs. a thief when he just uses the auto-attacks?

What..? Can you read..seriously. I made this thread to question why eles are considered weak by their players. I never said they were OP…

All this video shows is that a thief can’t kill a highly skilled Elementalist when only spamming auto-attack, not utilizing weapon swap, and standing in AOE fields.

GOOD, IT SHOULD BE THIS WAY!!

Nothing to see here folks, move along….

What..? Can you read..seriously. I made this thread to question why eles are considered weak by their players. I never said they were OP…

most good players DON’T consider Ele’s to be very weak, they just spec bunker and live forever. Players complain about the Ele because many rolled the class to be long range damage dealers as the class description implies, and the class is quite ineffective at that role, hence the QQ’s.

Ele bunker spec is great, no one disputes that.

Full bunker Ele (Staff) is a bit overpowered for tourney play and needs to be mildly nerfed.

D/D aura Eles are amazing at survivability, group utility (aura sharing), do respectable damage, and are amazing at 1v1 or 1v2.

Scepter/Dagger is mildly underpowered, but is still pretty good. A couple minor tweaks to some key abilities and it would be very strong.

Eles are in a much better spot than they’re being given credit for. They do require more effort to play than a lot of other classes, but they’re also much more versatile than a lot of other classes.

mouse.1689:

Full bunker Ele (Staff) is a bit overpowered for tourney play and needs to be mildly nerfed.

D/D aura Eles are amazing at survivability, group utility (aura sharing), do respectable damage, and are amazing at 1v1 or 1v2.

Scepter/Dagger is mildly underpowered, but is still pretty good. A couple minor tweaks to some key abilities and it would be very strong.

Eles are in a much better spot than they’re being given credit for. They do require more effort to play than a lot of other classes, but they’re also much more versatile than a lot of other classes.

This. I am absolutely tired of elementalists on this board complaining about how weak they are, and how difficult the class is. This class is easily one of the most fast paced diverse classes in the game, and they’re constantly quoting the class description of how they can’t “deal massive damage with one button”. After the initial learning curve of learning how to adequately swap attunements, the class isn’t really that difficult.

The class isn’t without problems, fire and air trait lines need to be improved, same with bugs. I think the arcane tree’s attunement swapping cooldown should be removed in favor of a widespread attunement cooldown reduction, because swapping is the lifeblood of this class. Is it “underpowered”?

Hard to say and I don’t really think so. Staff bunkers are borderline overpowered, scepter/dagger eles provide great AOE point pressure and support with some sustain, and dagger/dagger auramancer eles are easily one of the strongest 1v1 classes in the game. I lose to very few classes in any single engagement, and backstab thieves blow up by simply being in my proximity.

So could ele be better? Sure. Its not in a bad place now, however.

TL:DR Eles have one good build, the rest are still weak.

Duckzor.4327:

Buchfink.8613:

You didn’t build for duels. You didn’t really use skills (except for the 1). You ran in every AoE attack. And all of this is suddenly proof that eles are overpowered? Do you want to see how an ele fares vs. a thief when he just uses the auto-attacks?

What..? Can you read..seriously. I made this thread to question why eles are considered weak by their players. I never said they were OP…

The following phrase is what people could misinterpret as eles are OP.

Eles have no reason to complain in my eyes, this build is just an example on how they can be insanely good

First of all, I’d like to say, its not that thieves are OP, backstab was just bursting too well (compare to ele burst which was nerfed into oblivion). Too well as in too fast, not too much damage. And for many other builds (not just thieves) quickness is the problem.

Second of all, yes bunkers are very strong, especially elementalist bunkers.

However, that doesn’t make the class OK. Why? Its pretty much all they can do. That’s why people say they’re so bad. If they want to do something, they just can’t do as well as other classes, unless its a tank build. It’s not an issue of L2P (bunkers are pretty easy to use), its that people want to be able to do what they want.

A lot of the complaint is also from PvE, where bunkering doesn’t really get much done for the most part. The main problem is just the lack of damage compared to our survivability, when our fire and arcane damage was halfed we didn’t get compensation in buffs anywhere else. (If we don’t spec for it, survivability is very low. Light armor, low health, and no inherent defensive abilities like stealth or clones to make up for it.)

The fact that we have aoe doesn’t make up for it much(stronger classes, mainly war, also have aoes, but do much higher damage) except events, where very large aoes are needed. For normal situations, we’re kill things slowish and our weapons are stuck with a certain range, no ability to swap to higher range spells. And most of all, our combos just take more effort in order to dish out the same effect as other classes.

Basically, we’re a little forced into tankier builds just like thief is forced into(?) more gimmicky builds.

We’re certainly unplayable, far from it. All we need is slight buffing across the board, minus tanking (its reasonable to nerf bunkers imo). Dagger buffs were a good start to what eles want to see on the rest of their weapon. Of course they’re are other things, but you’re better off posting in the ele forums if you want to see all the reasons.

edit: Also, I hate when people say “just dodge” for back stab. No thief should be backstabing without either devourer’s venom or basilik’s venom on their bar. If you say stun break, then ok, but dodging isn’t possible.

Due to me publishing a video of me “not giving enough effort” and “playing terribly” and “noob thief”, I decided to contact the ele today and ask for a reduel. I put a lot more effort into this duel and survived quite longer, yes. I also changed my spec into a more appropriate one for dueling. I found this duel very entertaining.

Now I’m not trying to prove bunker eles are too strong. But seriously, this ele still came out with 100% HP when I died.

Considering backstab build is all about surprise and quick kills, why not just leave? He’s a bunker, so he can’t really chase you down and kill you. A bunker’s job is to just waste your time anyway (usually while holding a point though…)

Ele is strong. Always was, now that people learned to play it just shows.

My first character was a mesmer and I remember when people of all professions were complaining about mesmers being “overpowered.” They are at the point now where they are barely used for tournament play and only for the utilities of time warp and portal. The reason mesmers used to be so difficult for people and why the fight with the ele is so tough for you is rooted in a deep lack of understanding of the class you are fighting. GW2’s pvp system is interesting in that you are more viable in pvp when you understand the way your enemy plays and how their profession works more than knowing your own character. In that specific duel setting, you would benefit greatly from playing a staff ele for a week or two to understand exactly how their skills work. I’m not going to sit and rewatch/analyze the whole fight, but some things that really stuck out to me is that you shot into magnetic aura several times, didn’t seem to acknowledge his cantrips when they were up (or unavailable) and you didn’t really capitalize on your burst opportunities very often. A lot of times I would see you immobilize him and wonder why. I really feel that people need to take time and play all of the professions thoroughly before they can comment on how broken or well off they are. It makes a world of difference.

“Build diversity is stagnated by CnD/Steal/Backstab.” – Fynd

My new sig.

Duckzor.4327:

Due to me publishing a video of me “not giving enough effort” and “playing terribly” and “noob thief”, I decided to contact the ele today and ask for a reduel. I put a lot more effort into this duel and survived quite longer, yes. I also changed my spec into a more appropriate one for dueling. I found this duel very entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxGe7LlSHo

Now I’m not trying to prove bunker eles are too strong. But seriously, this ele still came out with 100% HP when I died.

Give me a kittening break….the ele use 20 skills while you spamm the bow auto-attack for most part of the match and you expect to win?
I think what people have noticed is the 4k-6k hits on the ele and its struggle to survive and better performance in outlasting you, basically you’re crying about a guy who completely outclassed you on a profession which deal far less dmg than your own..

Arheundel.6451:

Give me a kittening break….the ele use 20 skills while you spamm the bow auto-attack for most part of the match and you expect to win?
I think what people have noticed is the 4k-6k hits on the ele and its struggle to survive and better performance in outlasting you, basically you’re crying about a guy who completely outclassed you on a profession which deal far less dmg than your own..

Well in actuality, staff is the elementalists worst 1v1 weapon by far. A well played dagger/dagger or scepter/dagger ele should stomp a thief build like this thoroughly if played correctly.

Ele is not hard to play, all you need is just a good build a learning hot to use skills and switch F1-F4…that’s all…..oh and, the most difficult thing, have some brains…

This ele seems to be healing well over time! I’d better shoot some 400s at him and hope he can’t keep up with the damage…