Guild Wars 2

Sins.4782:

I hate to be the guy who derails the OP-faceroll/not OP-faceroll train, but could someone explain the main strengths/weaknesses/combos of the current D/D ele? They seem to be a pain to fight, but that may just be because I don’t know what exactly to dodge/interrupt and when to unload condis onto them.

The main strength of d/d ele is that it is very well-ronded build, it has decent surviability against both condispam and direct damage paired with a lot of evades, has nice damage, decent mobility, CC and group support. Basically it is good in almost every situation you may encounter.
Weakness of d/d ele is that it doesn’t excel in anything (worse bunker that guardian, worse mobility than thief, worse burst that mesmer, worse all-around roamer than warrior, etc) so in/against team with specialized classes it may run into situation when it doesn’t have anything to do. Since all ele defences are active and boon-based it is also very weak to CC (in particular immobilize and chilling – for some unknown reason chilling increases CD of attunements) and boon stealing. Lazy eles also tends to use same rotations over and over again (ele have a lot of skills combined in complicated system so it can be hard to sustain enough concentration to use them all properly) and can be very predictable.
Edit: and yeah, d/d ele also lacks any ranger skills at all. Everything (apart from mobility skills and useless water autoattack) is ~400 range.

^ +1 this guy knows what he is talking

Sins.4782:

I hate to be the guy who derails the OP-faceroll/not OP-faceroll train, but could someone explain the main strengths/weaknesses/combos of the current D/D ele? They seem to be a pain to fight, but that may just be because I don’t know what exactly to dodge/interrupt and when to unload condis onto them.

I’ll explain the basics for you assuming you’re fighting one on a point. Firstly you need to keep an eye on their attunements, whether it’s through looking at their status or recognising their skills.

Their main burst comes from fire attunement as well as a strong portion of sustained damage through burning. A decent way to counter this is to stay at very close range to them when they’re in fire to avoid being hit by burning speed as well as running through them to position yourself behind them when they start casting drakes breath. Save your condition removal for after they use their burning skills or when they switch out of fire. Fire grab is normally casted at the same time as they switch out of an attunement for fury to increase crit chance so it usually comes late into the fire attunement. Dodging this skill and removing burning before it hits is important.

They are most vulnerable after switching out of water attunement or using their water healing abilities (watch for dodge roll) as this means they have less access to condition removal and healing.

Applying conditions and CC on them during lightning attunement would be wise as this is their main source of CC and sustained power damage with a decent amount of cleave. The reason you want to apply conditions now is because this attunement is normally the only one that is beneficial for them to stay in despite having skills on cooldown and so forcing them to switch back into water to remove conditions or focus on defensive play could prevent some damage on yourself.

When they are in earth you have 2 skills that you should truly watch out for. Magnetic grasp and earthquake are effectively lockdown skills that will make you vulnerable to their fire burst. Earthquake is very easy to avoid by dodging, magnetic grasp not so much. If you get hit by earth 5 though you’re just a noob.

Duran.3196:

Arcturus.8109:

However even there d/d ele isn’t something really great and must have. It is just allowed to play at all now, first time for a while

Can only second that.

And yeah new strength runes are OP, but new strength runes, new celestial amulet and signet of restoration buff are the things that keep Elementalist viable atm (considering Aquamancer builds). And Runes of Strength keep burst builds viable.

And another reason why I think some Elementalists seem really strong is because they still played them while they were not viable and got adapted to having the weaker class. If I look at my Team-Mates often the ppl with the most dumbed down /OP builds and classes(especially before the patch), were the ones playing the worst.
From time to time not even bothering to dodge attacks etc etc.
While Elementalist was underpowered, elementalists(the hardcore ones) had to learn their dodges, their positioning etc, cause one single mistake meant certain defeat against some builds even if they were played by totally unskilled ppl.
And the other thing is ppl didnt meet Elementalists in PvP before the patch alot, so ppl are not adapted to face an elementalist anymore (okay by now ppl should have adapted).
But considering the points above I understand very well why ppl have problems with Elementalists atm.

nice said man, i feel the same

Marcos.3690:

Ele is only viable now because of the awesome celestial amulet and the broken runes of strenght. If they are nerfed the ele will be back to crap lvl

You don’t need to use runes of strength, virtually still works just a well.