Guild Wars 2

I’m not saying ele is terrible at everything and brings nothing to the team, and don’t pretend I’ve ever said that.

1. Ele was designed for celestial stats, so literally any other amulet is inadequate in comparison. Elementalist specs are split in two, air/fire/arcane for damage, and earth/water for susttain. When you trait for damage, you’ll pick air (because fresh air is the only considerable damage dealer) and/or arcane with tempest. That means you have no cleanses at all, no heals, no sustain. If you go bunk, you’ll choose earth/water/tempest. You do no damage, no condi damage, and you have very few CC’s (unless you’re running aura share shocking aura). If you choose mixed specs like air/water(too reliant on a lack of pressure to cleanse) or air/earth (no cleanses since you can’t sustain enough to make DS activate) you’ll die. Water/arcane or earth/arcane and you’re utterly useless. In the days of celestial amulet, mixing up was the best possible thing and you could successfully do damage and sustain at the same time while cleansing. Now, that’s impossible.

2. Glass or gtfo. Meaning, if you run menders and you don’t intend to play bunk, you are useless. If you run marauder/zerk/demolishers, you’re dead after 1 second of focus on you, and you can’t win 1v1s against dragonhunters, scrappers, condi mesmers, revenants, warriors, druids, or good thieves. So 7/9 classes.

3. There are no viable damage builds, condi or burst. For the reasons listed above, there isn’t a single meta or sub meta (i.e. condi mes is meta, shatter mes is sub meta meaning good but not the best option) damage build for ele at all.

4. Tempest mechanics are meant for the pve world, not the pvp world. Just look at the overloads, you are vulnerable for 4 seconds to burst, cc, condi applications, kiting, you name it. There are just not enough defenses on you to make that a viable or safe route to go on.

If you don’t play ele, your opinion lacks empiricism and is immediately taken less seriously.

Poelala.2830:

I’m not saying ele is terrible at everything and brings nothing to the team, and don’t pretend I’ve ever said that.

If you go bunk, you’ll choose earth/water/tempest. You do no damage, no condi damage, and you have very few CC’s (unless you’re running aura share shocking aura).

Why would a bunker deal damage?
You trait to go bunker to bunk, which is not DPS.

Ele has the same problem as necro, what it comes down to is that other classes like DH and warrior are just too tanky which leaves you with a very limited choice of builds to be atleast decent in something.

And then you’ll only be able to do 1 or 2 specific things that your build is focused on.

Just like necro, you actually have to trade damage for sustain unlike other classes which leaves you with twice the effort but the same result.

Celestial was worst thing to happen to this game along with HoT as far as class balance goes. It threw whole trade off logic out of the window since you could heal, bunker and dps as ele back then. It was just wrong.

I agree that eles need better dps build but i think they have bit similar issue as war and DHs. They inherently designed to support and tank for teams and have certain amount of survival. If they can keep their survival and their dps spec gets boosted we will just see more unkillable bruisers dishing out more dmg than a glass cannon (hello warriors).

I think it is hard to buff dps builds for ele w/o creating another bruiser monster.

Also, ele is not only class forced into one role for years. Look at thieves, they have been always and will remain roamers that can’t 1v1 most of the classes in game. I was hoping new spec for thieves would be something like druid that will allow them to play support but naaaah Anet simply nerfed acro and sold acro 2.0 as DD.

And yet a decent bunker Ele can hold a capped point vs 2 players indefinitely while his team mates can 4v3 elsewhere.

Or in a team fight can keep DPS classes alive so well the DPS team mates can smash enemies.

Im personally very happy when I see an Ele on my team and get nervous when I see an ele on enemy team. Doesn’t sound like Ele is the worst class in the game.

Spartacus.3192:

And yet a decent bunker Ele can hold a capped point vs 2 players indefinitely while his team mates can 4v3 elsewhere.

Or in a team fight can keep DPS classes alive so well the DPS team mates can smash enemies.

Im personally very happy when I see an Ele on my team and get nervous when I see an ele on enemy team. Doesn’t sound like Ele is the worst class in the game.

also this^^

If anything more classes should function like the Elementalist. This whole concept of one build being able to have decent damage and decent survival is just broken. Many classes lack trade-offs.

Everything can be split into three categories, Damage, Support, Sustain. If any one build excels too much in 2 or more of these areas, it becomes too strong. A high damage build should not have high sustain or support. A high support build should not have high sustain or damage and so on. Without forcing professions to trade one area of effectiveness in for another when making a build, things will continue to be unbalanced.

Spartacus.3192:

And yet a decent bunker Ele can hold a capped point vs 2 players indefinitely while his team mates can 4v3 elsewhere.

A decent ele can’t do that. If an ele can hold a capped node in a 1v2 forever, he’s outplaying the crap out of these 2 plebs. Or he’s playing against 2 bunker stupid enough to +1 another bunker.

But to get back on topic, i think ele has the exact same problems as all the other classes : they simply lack build diversity.

Sadly, because of the lack of build diversity, we need to move beyond the idea of a single class filling multiple roles based on different builds.

Ele is a good example. It can deliver a lot of damage, but it is far more effective as a bunker. Playing it as anything but a bunker is not efficient. Each class has a role where it excels.

Support ele is in a good place, although it is really tough in soloQ. How good a support ele is simply ampilified by the skill of his team-mates. With great teammates, support ele is an unstoppable monster than wins you every teamfight and makes your team nearly unkillable. With bad teammates (who die instantly and have no idea how to play defensively or effectively deal damage), support ele is basically worthless and turns the game into 4.5 vs. 5.

DPS ele is just bad. The damage is too easy to mitigate (in the case of staff) or just on too long of a CD with too little mobilty (fresh air scepter). It can survive quite well and play +1 pretty well, but its so far behind what a thief/revenant/mesmer can do in terms of burst frequency + mobility that its just a direct down-grade. It needs a bit more map mobility somehow (FGS on a 45 or 60 s CD) and more frequent burst capability (phoenix on like a 10s CD).

imo tempest is great and necessary in every team comp. Even at the highest levels of pvp nearly every pre-made uses a tempest. Tempest has incredible sustain and the ability to do 200k + damage per match if using menders. The key to bunking with an ele is not just your heal skills, its constantly switching attunments, overloading them, and keeping auras up (which will also give you perma protection. So to say ele cant bunk or cant deal damage is inaccurate and i think you will be hard pressed to find a veteran pvp’er who will agree with you. I desent.

Another one of these threads. It always complains about his class being the weakest while all the others are op. Interestingly he has only been around 24 days on the forums. See prior posts:

“Devs, may we have a discussion about ele”
“Celestial Avatar needs a nerf”
“It’s time to change the meta with eles”
“Rebound is the worst elite in the game”
“Tempest sucks and anet doesn’t care”

Tempest is one of the best classes this season, however some trolls will always insist that their class is the weakest. I’m tired of seeing these threads from this guy.

Let this thread die by not posting anymore.

It’s certainly the most boring class. Eles have to trait in water/earth just to be viable in pvp.

Half of you seem to miraculously miss the VERY FIRST SENTENCE. Bunk ele is great! Water is wet! Move on!!!

How was ele designed for cele stats when cele stats were put into the game after release?

Problem with ele right now its that only bunker ele works well, but its boring to fight against and if you arent a fan of healing + nearly null damage, its boring to play.

The dps builds need to be better to support more playstyles. Support ele is perfectly fine as it is.

hihi i had that 3 bunker trying to get me off a node …. Problem of ele is his best option is support and losts of traits and utilities are to weak and thus useless. You often have a clear best pick and questio nwhy do you have 9 traits i na line when 90% always pick the same three …

Terrorsquad.2349:

Poelala.2830:

I’m not saying ele is terrible at everything and brings nothing to the team, and don’t pretend I’ve ever said that.

If you go bunk, you’ll choose earth/water/tempest. You do no damage, no condi damage, and you have very few CC’s (unless you’re running aura share shocking aura).

Why would a bunker deal damage?
You trait to go bunker to bunk, which is not DPS.

What a concept!

Eles won’t be satisfied until the can not only bunker against 3 guys but also kill them before they finish their fries.

I’m not saying ele is the worst class, but all these guys saying can 1v2 indefinitely is either 1. Terribly bad 2. Delusional 3. Talking out of their kitten .

Unless it’s against 2 other bunkers, ele cannot 1v2. Hell, i don’t even like to take 1v1s unless it’s on my point, considering I’ll never be able to kill anyone half decent. Plus i should be in team fights anyway.