Guild Wars 2

…but losing all of my health in under one second? This is just ridiculous.

I can’t even try to fight back against this. (Me=Elementalist, competitor was Thief)
Am I supposed to invest heavily in the toughness attribute as Elly?

PvE and sPvP are two totally different things, expecially in this game.

In PvE you fight boss that you know, that hit at regular times and have only few skills. You have time to prepare, dodge, use long time defences and also boons like regen can grant you a good amount of hp because you have time to fight and don’t need too much reaction (unless against some boss).

In that “meta” the damage is out of control, you Need to be fast, act quickly and have tons of defensive ability to save yourself. If you come from PvE without any knowledge of what sPvP is and how it work, you can’t also know that in sPvP atm the ele is a Support class and also the best support possible. Maybe you tried a DPS build and then got killed easy and fast, expecially by a thief (in this meta nothing can kill you fast as a thief if you don’t have active defences like block/immunity/movement).
Sadly, the ele is forced to play support but if you learn how to play you will make your team win supporting, reviving, healing your team while becoming really hard to kill.

The actual meta is based on Direct Damage with a lot of Power builds that can Burst you down in few seconds, plus some condition builds that only need few seconds more to kill you (expecially because the ele is the class with more condition clean skills/traits of the game). There’s not long fights, everything can end in few seconds if the enemy focus you.

There’s a good build on metabattle, if you want to try, but the only thing I can tell you is: don’t play ele in this meta if you want to inflict damage or kill people (unless few classes/builds if you are good enough to last longer than them).

Anyway, that “meta” isn’t so bad, you only need a lot of practice and knowledge of how the other classes works and how to play your class/role.

If you’re trying out PvP, the meta is very different from PvE.

Ele is pushed to play a teamfight support role with Menders Earth/Water/Tempest Dagger/Focus. It’s been recently nerfed in terms of sustain though.

While it is perfectly fine to play Fresh Air Scepter/Focus with Marauder stats, it’s fairly high skill cap and not recommended until you know every class. Don’t play Staff Ele. Don’t.

If you have problems with any class, like a Thief, you should get to know that class so that you can try to counter what they do. I don’t play Tempest at all in this expansion, so I can only give you rudimentary advice.

Someone experienced can pipe in anytime.

Ele vs Thief you aim to stalemate. Thief won’t usually go for you though.

In your case, you don’t want the Thief to interrupt your key skills like your heal after the first spike. After they Steal-daze you, the handy way to interrupt you will be to use Headshot. For Steals combined with Basilisk Venom, you can choose to stunbreak, then pop Magnetic Aura (reflect) and try to get your heal off; you can choose to follow up with a Comet daze which would be easy to interrupt outside of reflect; you can also cast it out of Line of Sight, such as behind a wall or obstacle.

You can also wait for them to autoattack then pop your Shocking Aura which will stun them and give you time.

Save your Obsidian Flesh for the moment when you really really need it. Don’t panic and pop all your defensives. Eles spew boons like a fountain so the sustain should keep you alive.

Well, the current meta doesn’t fit my play style and if the current state of the game does not allow much build diversity I’ll have to live with less-than-optimal results. Thanks anyways.

TheQuickFox.3826:

Well, the current meta doesn’t fit my play style and if the current state of the game does not allow much build diversity I’ll have to live with less-than-optimal results. Thanks anyways.

current state of game actually has quite a bit of diversity in the mid and low tier pvp…. Its really not until the you get to higher tier, and honestly its more specifically tournament play 5v5 full teams where its becomes less diverse.

So yes you are correct since you are a pro level player and have no room to improve it is most definitely the builds fault and nothing else.

I’m sorry but if the current meta doesn’t fit your play style than it hasn’t since heart of thorns came out.

The biggest difference this season is the amount of corrupt necros and condi revs running about.

If a thief can kill you in 1 second he:
1. +1’d a fight at the right time
2. Is hacking
3. You have a berserker/murauder amulet on and no ways to avoid damage

The only builds ele can play reasonably is the d/f menders (i’d personally go magis this season) or S/F FA ele (Decent in low-mid tier play but struggles in high tier play, not recommended unless you are experienced with ele).

You might get away with a d/d build if the other team has no necros.

Still, I wonder: What happened to the promise that Elementalist would be one of the most versatile professions out there? An excellent healer when into water, decent survivability when in earth, top-notch damage when in fire?

I always liked this versatility and this is one of the reasons why I play S/D Celestial in both PvE and WvW.

TheQuickFox.3826:

Still, I wonder: What happened to the promise that Elementalist would be one of the most versatile professions out there? An excellent healer when into water, decent survivability when in earth, top-notch damage when in fire?

I always liked this versatility and this is one of the reasons why I play S/D Celestial in both PvE and WvW.

This versatility got ele nerfed in pvp. There was a build like this, the D/D cele ele right before hot, but it was so powerful that pro teams used the 4 ele 1 thief composition, and the thief was just there to ress eles with stealth if the enemy team somehow managed to down 1.

The Ele used Celestial and was barely unkillab.e You needed a burst focus of 4 players to take 1 down. And also was able to inflict a really high damage with both power and condition, spamming 25 stacks of might all the time.
Then got nerfed and the celestial amulet removed.

The promise of make every class able to do everything was really good at the start of the game, but isn’t possible to make every class really able to do everything in all the game modes.

If you want to be useful for your team you can be a support or you can learn how the sPvP work and how the other classes work and then play the Fresh Air build that is a pure dps class, as you wish.

Different classes can play different roles if they want but in an Extremely Competitive Enviroment like a Structured Player Versus Player there’s Always a build that come up to be the best for that class. In every game I played i found that and GW2 have the same “problem”.
Every class have skills to do better a set of roles and not really every role, but when a class shine in a specific role and become so good that no other class can be at his level no one want you to play it differently.
In that case the ele is the best support you can chose. Heal, Condi clean, Might spam (not always) and is really hard to kill.
The thief is chained to a decapper role since ever but is also a really good tank to hold a point, but inflict lesser damage and lose some stealth ability, then no one want a thief to hold a point if it is the best decapper of the game, everyone will chose another class that can’t be a decapper and make it the best point holder.
Necromancers are struck into a Boon Corruption role so much that ANet continue to change skilsl to make it able to corrupt even more boons. That was made before HoT release only to Kill Elementalists because they heavly rely on Boons and corrupt them into conditions made then vulnerable and killable. And there was a lot of other classes able to spam boons, then the necro obtained his role where there was no one able to do it. Actually no one want a necromancer in team that don’t corrupt boons because is useless.

You can play as you like but there will always be a Best Build for your class, something that only that class can do so good, and that everyone want from you.