Guild Wars 2

Played warrior for a couple of months and thief before that.
I recently got back to my ele which i made on my very first day of playing
at headstart. I thought PvP was a bit unbalanced; some classes had a definitive edge but nothing major.

Well, after coming to the realization that I have to play my keyboard as if I wanted to play ‘Circus Galop’ to be as effective as other classes can be with 1/4 of button presses. I wanted to express my respect for every elementalist who decided
to stick to his profession despite being overshadowed by every other profession in the game, having no team fight support other classes can’t do better and laughable survivability/sustain, with staff being a freekill1v1 and rallybait in teamfights.
Less options to disengage than other roamers and being forced at least 20 points in a particular traitline for almost every build that wants to be remotely useful.

That’s all. Thanks.
http://youtu.be/BdUy70dh8LY?t=8s

Ele for life <3

@OP: This made me lol. If you can’t win with an ele, maybe it is more of an indication of you. Not all classes suit all players. Find the one that works best with your play style.

style.6173:

@OP: This made me lol. If you can’t win with an ele, maybe it is more of an indication of you. Not all classes suit all players. Find the one that works best with your play style.

Looking at your previous posts i can safely assume you play a lot of WvW.
I am talking about actual PvP, not blobbing. I also stated that I got back to ele recently which means that I, of course, have not mastered the class properly.
From your posts I can also see that you cry about HS and play thief, the class that can easily catch and shred an ele in a matter of seconds.
‘Dear Anet: please nerf scissors. Rock is fine though. Regards, paper.’ Right? lol

Ps: If I made mistakes in the second part of my first post, feel free to prove me wrong
although I’m pretty sure most of experienced players are inclined to agree.

eles are bad ok. other professions have been there too. pointless thread

ahuba.6430:

eles are bad ok. other professions have been there too. pointless thread

I can’t recall another profession with that little reward for their risk on every build and I have been playing warrior pre HS buff.

Ele still in our Heart , not in anet’s .

its like they have to nerf every thing that requires skill to play , and just up all braindead builds.

Work twice as hard to be half as good.

The Ele Way!

It’s true, I played with a necro, ranger, and mesmer before taking my ele into pvp and to play at the same standard my fingers had to develop new ways to move that human knuckles weren’t designed for! High-ranked ele players have clearly missed their vocation as concert pianists – it’s just a shame ANet is making you play an out-of-tune salloon pianola these days… :p

Two issues with eles:

1. No weapon swap
2. Base health pool is too low

Not having a weapon swap hurts glass cannon builds the most. Taking a look at all professions that play glass, you will notice that they usually have to stay on the outside of the fight until the moment is right and jump in for a kill and then jump out. They either mitigate damage through being able to disengage or through confusion (stealth). Yet, all of them have the option to play at range until the moment calls for them to burst; all except for ele.

Low base hp stops other builds from opening up, like a condition based build. If you build for condition damage, your hps are so low that your toughness barely negates any type of burst from a glass cannon build.

My ele rocks! I have no problem in PvP. Going D/D with water trait solves a lot of the healing issues. It may take longer to kill and you have to constantly cast to get all benefits, I still prefer it over warrior. As for weapon swap. Granted you can’t switch to another weapon but swap works when changing attunement. Very rarely am I in cooldown and I can survive multiple attackers with ease.

eles need protection from his team to be effective. if you have an ele on your team, you make sure it served his purpose well before the enemy team kills him.

Valentin.2073:

eles need protection from his team to be effective. if you have an ele on your team, you make sure it served his purpose well before the enemy team kills him.

While you team mates try to protect the ele from 1 s/D thief or 1 nec or 1 hambow or 1 ranger spaming or 1 enginer ( only guardian and mesmer are ok vs ele ) , your opponents have like 2/3/4 players that can still do dmge/support/assist on everything else.
Then even if you did your job , killed 1 guy or more before u die urself , they jsut come in with the warriors with 2 x stab to rez everything , and if they fail at it , jsut call the spirit ranger.

Still a nice try )

The problem with the elementalist is pretty easy to see: Instead of making the attunements based on situational usage (much like how you’d swap to a ranged weapon from a melee weapon), they designed the attunements and skills to be spammed constantly in order to be effective. So now you have to hammer the keyboard in a frenzy to accomplish what most other classes can do in one or two button presses.

Having the yoke of attunement swapping isn’t an issue – ele has worked before even with it.

The issue with ele is, and always has been, survivability. Before cantrip ele (and bugged Evasive Arcana all-blast-finisher ele), the class was considered a joke b/c your role was just pop in, dump damage, and die. Then someone (or a group) figured out that if you gave up on doing on-par damage and just put all your eggs in the survivability basket you could survive for a really long time. Then the “ele is OP” meta happened.

Since that time, ANet has nerfed everything about ele survivability, such that even putting all your eggs into the survival basket ends up being worse than baseline survival on other classes. This made the choice only logical: go back to just dumping damage and dying. The problem is, even that is done worse than other glass classes.

If you want to see eles in play, they need to have some aspect, or combination, that allows them to survive: superior mobility to gtfo when things go bad (nerfed to crap thanks to RtL), superior healing (nerfed to crap with EA dodge roll, and water swap,), superior cleansing (nerfed to crap with 5s icd on cleansing water), a superior number of stunbreaks (nerfed to crap by putting stunbreaks on long CDs and useless skills), and/or superior damage to just kill before dying. All of these aspects are currently sub-par, and no combination gets you a whole that performs equally well to another class for its role.

The best solution is probably to nerf eles more. Elemental attunement is so strong, it should probably be moved up to grandmaster (even though so much of the class’s power level was balanced around it being adept). I mean, a class with a stat-disadvantage that was designed to rely on boons to survive shouldn’t have easy access to boons. What kind of sense would that make?

Balancing an elementalist is a paradox.

If you make it about as strong as any other profession, the higher skill ceiling will increase the margin for error (or make errors far more punishing), and players will reroll “easier classes”.

If you make it slightly stronger than any other profession, top ele players will dominate the meta, because the slight advantage will be worth a victory, and in turn will justify the effort in playing with one effectively.

Ultimately, an elementalist will never be balanced until the skill ceiling of most of the other classes is greatly increased and made to be on par.

The buffs to all other professions, that have been coming since June, should have been tied to or promote higher skill ceiling. But they mostly weren’t. They were tied to passive effects. Passive healing, passive AI, passive critical triggers.

Besides, core profession mechanics being so drastically different from each other is also part of the problem. By having four attunements, an elementalist must work harder and use twice the skills to be as effective. That means it’ll take longer for them as well. Meanwhile, at the opposite end, thief’s initiative promotes using the same skill several times in a row, demanding little to no skill dancing and for little to no time investment. Conclusion? A thief can kill an elementalist with half the skills and half the time than an elementalist can to prepare a defensive sequence to defend themselves.

i for one LOVE my ele in pvp.
it really is the mage class right now, you can dish out a colossal amount of damage but you’re extremely squishy to compensate.

theres nothing quite as epic as melting the faces of every enemy on point within seconds…
4k meteor shower ticks, 3k lavafont ticks, 3k fireballs all at the same time.
its ridiculously high aoe damage, and it comes at the price of being ridiculously squishy, fair trade
or pull out the ole’ fiery greatsword and let your enemies watch their healthpools evaporate like butter in a frying pan. >:-3

ofcourse its only for those of us who like the playstyle that massive damage and low survival offers.

i can’t speak about bunker specs because i don’t play my ele for that, but for glass cannon ele is the king of damage

I really like my elly in PvP!

Obviously I work harder, and obviously I’m at a disadvantage to other players, but still. Compared to my other professions (Necro and Mesmer being the main two) it’s 10 times more fun to play.

I’ve been an Elly since Beta <3

Liewec.2896:

i for one LOVE my ele in pvp.
it really is the mage class right now, you can dish out a colossal amount of damage but you’re extremely squishy to compensate.

theres nothing quite as epic as melting the faces of every enemy on point within seconds…
4k meteor shower ticks, 3k lavafont ticks, 3k fireballs all at the same time.
its ridiculously high aoe damage, and it comes at the price of being ridiculously squishy, fair trade
or pull out the ole’ fiery greatsword and let your enemies watch their healthpools evaporate like butter in a frying pan. >:-3

ofcourse its only for those of us who like the playstyle that massive damage and low survival offers.

i can’t speak about bunker specs because i don’t play my ele for that, but for glass cannon ele is the king of damage

try to meteor shower as full gc ele vs decent teams , you will eat the ground before one meteor hits one target.

If a team doesnt punish ele in everyteam fights , they deserve to loose badly.

DrLane.5248:

try to meteor shower as full gc ele vs decent teams , you will eat the ground before one meteor hits one target.

If a team doesnt punish ele in everyteam fights , they deserve to loose badly.

B….b….b…but what about that one time you can get a thief/engie to stealth you then you drop meteor shower/tornado and down their entire team? Or what about 2x ice storm wrecking a team’s face?

What was that, the team will just have their thief/mesmer focus you and instagib you whenever you show up? Well, I be…..!

I think the real problem with ele’s in pvp comes down to their two main weaknesses: (a) they are the squishiest class in the game and (b) nearly all of their damage is telegraphed AoE.

Those two weaknesses interact with each other, making life miserable for ele’s. A thief is almost as squishy as an ele. They would be exactly as squishy if you exclude stealth. But a thief doesn’t suffer from weakness (b).

If you want to mitigate a thief’s burst, you have to predict it. Nothing telegraphs it ahead of time. There is no giant circle on the ground, flashing fire and screaming “don’t stand in this”. There are no fiery boulders raining from the sky. Everything an ele does is lit up in neon lights and telegraphed one or two seconds ahead of time.

So what you end up with is a class that can only survive long enough for one round of burst, whose burst is easy to avoid. People dodge the burst, then kill the ele.

just had tpvp with an ele from the opposing team. he became a free kill until the game ended. he was able to help his team finish us all at the first battle at midpoint but that didn’t happen again. a team that actually thinks would make killing a zerker ele top priority.

Ele’s are just for highly skilled piano players…

Elton John rocks as a Ele…

Valentin.2073:

just had tpvp with an ele from the opposing team. he became a free kill until the game ended. he was able to help his team finish us all at the first battle at midpoint but that didn’t happen again. a team that actually thinks would make killing a zerker ele top priority.

^This is so true, if you see a Ele on opposite team, melt them 1st, they melt really, really easy…then you enjoy a 5vs4…its really very, very rare to see a Ele now in sPvP.

Attunement weapon swap is nice and I’d hate to lose it but other classes weapon swaps let them go from short range to long range.

We should be able to pull out our staff when needed and go back to dagger or sceptre for closer combat.

It’s annoying seeing other classes that seem to be both tough and high damage.

Still love playing the Ele but it’s intense to make it work.

I used to play Ele with icebow with current meta.You can own scrubs with it , but every decent team will dodge/imune the burst.And even if you succeed once , they wont get caught a second time.

Liewec.2896:

i for one LOVE my ele in pvp.
it really is the mage class right now, you can dish out a colossal amount of damage but you’re extremely squishy to compensate.

theres nothing quite as epic as melting the faces of every enemy on point within seconds…
4k meteor shower ticks, 3k lavafont ticks, 3k fireballs all at the same time.
its ridiculously high aoe damage, and it comes at the price of being ridiculously squishy, fair trade
or pull out the ole’ fiery greatsword and let your enemies watch their healthpools evaporate like butter in a frying pan. >:-3

ofcourse its only for those of us who like the playstyle that massive damage and low survival offers.

i can’t speak about bunker specs because i don’t play my ele for that, but for glass cannon ele is the king of damage

I’ve played with a few eles consistently in tpvp and spectated them on a regular basis. Both zerker staff, and the numbers are pretty nice.

The sad part is my power necro has all that damage and twice the survivability and health pool. Lich form is just unreal with Death Shroud. Piercing life blasts for 7k, I laugh at most elementalists since they have to run or die in two shots. It’s way too forgiving for the damage output.

That being said, good eles are definitely players I respect.

Liewec.2896:

i for one LOVE my ele in pvp.
it really is the mage class right now, you can dish out a colossal amount of damage but you’re extremely squishy to compensate.

theres nothing quite as epic as melting the faces of every enemy on point within seconds…
4k meteor shower ticks, 3k lavafont ticks, 3k fireballs all at the same time.
its ridiculously high aoe damage, and it comes at the price of being ridiculously squishy, fair trade
or pull out the ole’ fiery greatsword and let your enemies watch their healthpools evaporate like butter in a frying pan. >:-3

ofcourse its only for those of us who like the playstyle that massive damage and low survival offers.

i can’t speak about bunker specs because i don’t play my ele for that, but for glass cannon ele is the king of damage

Try playing against people who don’t eat crayons for breakfast and stand in telegraphed aoe and red circles.

Crovax.7854:

ahuba.6430:

eles are bad ok. other professions have been there too. pointless thread

I can’t recall another profession with that little reward for their risk on every build and I have been playing warrior pre HS buff.

i had been playing warrior pre healing signet fix too.
died quite easily since they all like to kill me that badly.
after healing signet fix, my warrior dies not so easily now. much happier!

i tried playing an elementalist.
i died within seconds. not fun at all.

It’s okay, thief is about to finally meet ele in the tier where profs go to die as well.

Arganthium.5638:

It’s okay, thief is about to finally meet ele in the tier where profs go to die as well.

Sadly this will never happen, because thieves have a lot of uses, and they can still be pretty good, and to make it even worse; eles are thieves’ favorite prey..

Fortus.6175:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s okay, thief is about to finally meet ele in the tier where profs go to die as well.

Sadly this will never happen, because thieves have a lot of uses, and they can still be pretty good, and to make it even worse; eles are thieves’ favorite prey..

Thieves have literally two useable builds right now, given that Sword has been killed, weaponsets like P/P or P/D are weak or extremely gimmicky, and SB is only good for utility.

Basically, thieves have fewer useable builds than eles have useable weaponsets. That should tell you just how bad the situation has gotten.

As a result, rather than having “lots of uses”, thieves are stuck to basically just stealth and single-target damage, both of which in this meta are either easily counterable or just weak (since AoE, cleave, and condis seem to be the main dishes for the current meta). And while staff eles may be thieves’ favorite prey (only because they’re weak at short distance), S/X builds are on equal footing because they have a large capacity to absorb burst damage, and they do some pretty great AoE damage too in spite of all of their weaknesses.

Just because thieves pick out eles doesn’t mean that thieves are great compared to eles… It means that eles are the only class we are on equal ground with. I cannot think of any other class (outside of ele, possibly) that is weaker than thief in this regard.

Arganthium.5638:

Thieves have literally two useable builds right now

Eles have 0

Thieves have been winning tournaments, latest one was won by Caed. Elementalists had 0 representation at the last MLG and near 0 as well every where else….. you literally have nothing to complain, no more than an ele anyways.

DrLane.5248:

try to meteor shower as full gc ele vs decent teams , you will eat the ground before one meteor hits one target.

If a team doesnt punish ele in everyteam fights , they deserve to loose badly.

Lol, its easy to survive as ele

Just ride the light…oh
Ok then, just mist form and heal yourse…oh
Well at least we can still keep our protection and regen up for a long…oh

Screw it just ask your engi, mesmer, or thief for a stealth and stun and run like hell.

Funny that they give engineers invisibility but not the class that actually needs it.

What do you call a team of 5 Ele’s?

Breakfast
Brunch
Dinner
Tea
Supper

Yum, yum!

Playing a zerker ele in spvp is for sick masochists.

Like myself.

Work twice as hard to achieve half as much