Guild Wars 2

Seriously, I’m a bit stumped here. I’ve seen (what I believe) are 2 distinct builds that are hard to counter. I don’t know Ele very well, so I’m going to speak in broad terms – if I’m wrong, please correct me (politely)

“Never say die/never stop moving” – I’ve watched an ele drop 3-4 members of a tourney team (albeit a bit slowly) by being ridiculously mobile, dropping conditions, moderate healing, AoE Chill, and lots of AoE’s with moderate damage. They don’t burst people down, but I can’t get a bleed to stack over 3 or 4 (most players I can get to 10-15 rather quickly), they’re constantly healing small amounts which allows them to buy time for their activated heals, Melee has a hell of a time getting anywhere near them, and I believe they have some KD options.

“Node Denial” – Somewhat similar to the build above. Less tough to drop/get conditions to stick, and not as healy, but they Ride the lightning into the direct center of a cap point and just unleash hell – without stability, you’re getting bounced around, dazed, and taking fairly high damage. I wouldn’t call it true burst, but you’re not sticking around in the center without alot of armor/health and some good heals. Just as much mobility as the above spec.

Of all the classes and specs I’ve seen and learned to counter, these are 2 I still have trouble with. With my screen full of explosions, fire and ice, and the Ele itself sheathed in lightning or fire, its very hard to determine what abilities look like to learn what I should be attempting to counter. I don’t win every non-ele fight (obviously), but after most fights, I can look at what happened and say to myself “kitten I should have used this ability”, or “I wish i had this up”, etc. Against these 2 specs, I’m still stumped.

Node Denial can be dealt with, but all they have to do is pull a team off a node for 5 seconds and that can have a big impact on a game (IE, is useful). While I can kill one, I generally have to yield the point to them, and in a close game, that’s a win. “Never say die” I honestly don’t know what to do about. It’s a war of attrition, but one they win 4 out of 5 times. My experience might be biased, but I’ve watched my team get pasted nearly every time we’ve faced 1 or 2 of these types of Ele’s in TPvP.

Now, the problem might be those are the Only 2 good builds for ele (a lack of build diversity), and that would be a real issue, but I don’t know. So, Whats up?

Eles can’t do anything vs anyone who knows how to avoid attacks. I play an engineer and seriously they can’t do anything I feel bad for anyone who wanted to play the class. I can chain disable knock them down and avoid all their big damage skills. The only time ele’s can every kill me is if they have someone else disabling me for them. They can’t push you out of the center of a node and they cant keep you out long enough to neutralize it. They die extremely fast if immobilized. Their second downed skill is a root that has cast time. so they can be instantly finished by any class 100% of the time adding to their 1v1 weakness. They can’t do anything in a team fight either because unless they are ignored they die instantly.

The staff ele’s dps is really low. I doubt 3-4 people could be that bad and lose a 3v1.

If you are fighting a bunker staff ele you need to stop healing rain. Its a short cast but my mesmer friend managed to daze me every time i used it in duels against him. Probably because I never stand still but you have to in order to cast. It gives amazing regen and cleanses condi’s. The ele has many ways to cleanse in both the s/d and the staff bunker builds so never have a condi player match up against them. Once they switch out of water attunement go for a immobilize and burst. Don’t face them because they will go air and knock you back. You won’t be able to burst them down in one go because of the utility skills they bring, which if spec’d will cleanse the immobilize. So you will have to put those utility skills on cd before you can get the kill. Best to only fight if you have a 2v1 with each being either a power/crit build or cc build.

The s/d bunker is not as tanky, as you noted. They do have instant cast cleanses and heals though (not #6). Once again, these builds don’t do much dps. Yes, I have played many games with them, try it for your self. S/d has two knockdowns. One in air (40s cd) and one in earth(45s cd). You make it sound like its a hammer warrior with the “bounced around,dazed” part. If you really were dazed then thats s/f not s/d which does not have ride the lightning.

The problem isn’t that ele’s don’t have good specs. Its that many play styles are not viable due to poor trait lines or poor symmetry between lines. Looking at you fire! Water,Arcane and Earth work well for bunkers but for dps or hybrids traits just are not that great. That is why people complain. Not everyone wants to be a punching bag. Lots of people had different idea’s of how an ele should play.

I forgot to note. The only time my mesmer friend beat me (on the staff build) was a well timed moa. The counter to anything strong is always a mesmer :/

I agree with Scaryman, I play elementalist and I rarely land my attacks on good players. In 8v8 I can dish out lots of damage, but in tournaments I just dont land anything.

To clarify I do anticipate where people will go and I have a signet to root for 3s every 20s, but its not enough. The damage being dealt (scepter, dagger) is just not enough even though I run a high damage build.

because ele is one of the most difficult class to master. so assuming equally experienced players against , the one with ele will need more attention and “stress” to win against other classes. if you master ele you are strong because you have 20 skills against 5. but it need practice and time…

People just cry about classes they constantly lose to in hopes they’ll get nerfed so only their class will be good.

that amazing staff elem or whatever you where talking about didnt take down 4 people. he just trained all his cantrips and ran away from them, pretending to be supporting anyone but himself.

Haha…people are really clueless, when the OP said the ele was using a staff?

@Scaryman= On an engineer you will never be able to beat a decent ele, one who dodge your mines-barrel-negate all of your condition- reflect/block projectiles and generally eat you…you’ve never faced a decent ele so far, trust me when I use s/f or staff an engineer is a free kill in 99% of cases, with d/d it become harder because I need to catch you first.

@Nikkle…staff DPS is perfectly fine as everything rest, you should be able to beat mesmers quite easily with a staff because you can pretty much avoid all shutter, reflect illusionist duellist dmg, and snipe mesmer from distance…also you can interrupt MoA form with gust

@evilapprentice- You prob faced a good d/d-s/d ele and let me tell you straight one thing…you can’t negate most attcks coming from a d/d as they’re instant cast, the only ones you could hope to block would be churning earth, for the rest there is no hope for you.
The build you described sound to be like mine, same thing for the playstyle and if you’re a : warrior-thief-guardian you will be eaten alive regardless of your best efforts, it’s an anti-mele playstyle, plain and simple and your only option is to switch to ranged attack hoping the d/d ele can’t react fast enough to catch you with his gap closers

The “I’ve seen this and that profession kill x enemy players without loosing health and hence it is viable/op/whatever” is obviously a rather dull argument.

To understand ele and henceforth its problems you will have to play him thoroughly and as far as it’s possible “competitively” (and yes that is a rather dull answer aswell considering the glorious non-existent rating sytem).

You can obviously built a lot of different builts but it will ultimately boil down to a very few which aren’t quite as horrible as the rest.

Condition builts on ele are pure troll and mainly suffer from earth being the only way to apply bleeds. Now obviously you can’t concept a competitive built around staying in earth 24/7.

Burst builts are far more viable yet have rather huge problems aswell. Most commonly seen is scepter/dagger and dagger/dagger. The main problems with those is that your autoattacks literally don’t do anything (well besides air d/d maybe). While a squishy thief can lay back and hit away 2k+dps with shortbow you’ll end up doing <500dps feeling useless at most while your burst is on cooldown.
Another problem is that you can not finish your target. Besides mist form which is basically the one and only “oh kitten button” on a remarkable 80sec cd for dps eles, they are simply too squishy to reliably finish/rezz anything making them a large liability as rezzing/downing someone is what teamfights ultimately boil down to (yeah thanks for that arenanet).
The liability part doesn’t end here tho, as ele has by far the worst down state skills he’s becoming a liability again when being downed. Ele is the only profession which can not interrupt/circumvent a non-stability stomp right off the bat, making killing an ele extremely easy. The first interrupt is the most precious because it gives you enough edge that you can rezz a player before the enemy is ending his second finish attempt (yeah thanks again for no-cooldown incombat rezz arenanet, great idea! so edgy!).

So that leaves us with the last possibility which is basically a staff heal-ele. Speccing 30 into arcane all the wonderous dodges become blast finishers giving you a nice 2k (4k in water) aoe heal when you dodge into a water field. This built is definately no push-over as it is basically unkillable for anyone besides maybe a decent thief, but usually you can hold 2/3 people easily for quite a lot of time. What it is, is a base-defender spec that is rather boring to play and even more boring to play against. It is somewhat usefull in teamfights as it offers decent healing and condition removal but you might end up lacking too much damage in a 2v2 situation especially if your enemy lacks conditions to be dispelled.
Again the spec is somewhat weak as it has limited finish/rezz potential but both are a lot more possible compared to a dps spec, the weak down state obviously remains.
This spec is great for defending a point but it is actually pretty weak for contesting/capping an enemy point as it offers only a single, long cooldown, easily dodgeable knockback to throw your enemy out of the node. As teamfights with a heal ele tend to simply not end at all for either side you might want to not fight on a point that isn’t yours.

So in the end what remains is a somewhat viable defender spec for ele and damage specs that get outshined in every single category by other professions.
I don’t play ele myself but i definitely think damage-eles need some love, it is nearly impossible for a good player to loose a 1v1 against an ele. It’s basically “dodge the big thing above your head / the ele charge —> you won.”

@Pray you’re quite clueless on ele I’d say..no offense

Condition builds on ele don’t rely solely on bleeding where did you get that?
Do you know you can dodge the interrupt attempt of downed foes?
is impossible for a good player to lose 1vs1 against a good ele…are you serious?
What about you plan your strategies better so that you don’t get downed in the wrong place to start with?

You do really need to play ele extensively before any analysis

Arheundel.6451:

@Pray you’re quite clueless on ele I’d say..no offense

Condition builds on ele don’t rely solely on bleeding where did you get that?
Do you know you can dodge the interrupt attempt of downed foes?
is impossible for a good player to lose 1vs1 against a good ele…are you serious?
What about you plan your strategies better so that you don’t get downed in the wrong place to start with?

You do really need to play ele extensively before any analysis

1) i didn’t say that
2) that does not change the fact that it gives your enemy enough time to rezz the downed player up, just to clarify it takes 4sec to finish without quickness, about 5-6sec when a single player rezzes to heal from “just downed” up to full so you dodging an enemies interrupt will result in your enemy being alive
3) yes, i’m serious
4) don’t know if trolling, bad or most probably both

it is great that you have so much fun with your ele but once you join the rank of the non-baddies you will probably end up having less fun, no offense

I think a major problem is that they have too many skillshots (and ground targeted abilities) which become worse as you vs better players.

“Shukran.4851: because ele is one of the most difficult class to master. so assuming equally experienced players against , the one with ele will need more attention and “stress” to win against other classes. if you master ele you are strong because you have 20 skills against 5. but it need practice and time…”

I feel like this “20skills vs 5 so more hard” is pretty misleading, there aren’t really any specs that would benefit from all of the spells properly, cond dmg comes from only 2 attunements, burst builds use air->fire+arcane spells, once stuff is in cd you just run around like a headless chicken not doing anything meaningful and tbh “mastering” s/d burst is really really simple because you can only do it one way…

“Pray.9751: Burst builts are far more viable yet have rather huge problems aswell. Most commonly seen is scepter/dagger and dagger/dagger. The main problems with those is that your autoattacks literally don’t do anything (well besides air d/d maybe). "

This is my biggest problem with ele, burst build has a 40sec cd on the complete burst and once you are on cd, you are doing VERY low dps, I’ve watched few high skill (98% win rate = pretty skilled imo) teams using eles and basically only time he does damage is once when entering battle with all cooldowns and after 20sec in battle when one arcane spell and phoenix comes up again, air autoattack+second skill does somewhat ok’ish dmg, and churning earth can do some decent high range aoe dmg if you manage to hit it somehow, thats about it…

But the build is still useful because your burst will be up ~every time you roam to next place, actually I would go as far as to say its almost overpowered, dragons tooth + phoenix (you can always hit those two with updraft) + firegrab & arcane spells after the enemy has dodged = pretty much dead enemy, unless it was bunker pally with protection up.

ps. “Arheundel.6451: Do you know you can dodge the interrupt attempt of downed foes?”
So rather than getting interrupted, you would interrupt yourself, yeah that makes sense.

Nyypsy: ofc there are attunements better for some role than others, but they are still 20 skills and for dps you can use all i assume. less damage maybe if not focus-specced, but still damage and i dont think cannonglass ele is the musthave in tourney.

Who in the world is complaining about the ele in PvP?

As for 20 vs 5. The problem is they’ve taken 5 weapon skills than divided them by 4. An Ele has to be constantly rotating and spitting out 20 skills as fast as possible to maintain par with someone just rotating 5. That’s pretty much the crux of the entire issue with the class’s design.

Often times the skill combination or rotation you want is littered across 2-3 attunements and you need to stuff the 4th in just for survivability.

Nyypsy.1830:

ps. “Arheundel.6451: Do you know you can dodge the interrupt attempt of downed foes?”
So rather than getting interrupted, you would interrupt yourself, yeah that makes sense.

I had to lol, lol.

@Arheundel-6451, Did you know that if you never login to the game, you can never get interupted?
Also the PvP experience seems to be alot better when you dont play further than the loginscreen.

ps. Before even thinking about balancing anything, fix the whole PvP in general. Yack!

Ele’s are actually good at stomping. The mist form trick is nice but it is on a long cd. Scepter/dagger ele’s have access to two instant cast blinds on short cd’s. They can be used while stomping without interrupting the stomp. You should never get knocked while stomping as a scepter/dagger ele.

I’ve been playing the Ele alot in tourny’s. And it comes down to this:
I can do much more with a different class. Running away and trying not to die
is not all that great for team play. As soon as the other team see’s me i’m primary, and i cant blame them, they and i both know that i am the easiest to kill or they will make me run away. Either way i’m out of the fight.

Someone skilled enough to not die on a Ele would be 10x better playing any of the other classes. This is speaking from a 5v5 perspective not lol8v8.

@ Nyypsy.

So you rather being kded by warrior/guardian, crippled by thieves stunned by rangers?
Do you know the amount of dmg you recieve while kded or knocked back? Do you know by doding the guardian bubble you guarantee to down him before he get ressed by his teammate?……really got no clue isn’t it?

keroksi.3076:

@Arheundel-6451, Did you know that if you never login to the game, you can never get interupted?
Also the PvP experience seems to be alot better when you dont play further than the loginscreen.

ps. Before even thinking about balancing anything, fix the whole PvP in general. Yack!

You should play more PvP in general..you’d spend less time complaining in general

@Arheundel If you litterally mean dodgerolling the guardian’s bubble, then no, you won’t kill him b4 he gets ressed – provided his teammates actually have decent reflexes and don’t start the ress half an hour after he’s downed.

As for my opinion about ele? Not nearly as bad as people are making them out to be, but they seriously need to fix their downed state. That and a few trait tweaks and they are pretty much fine.

Arheundel.6451:

@Nikkle…staff DPS is perfectly fine as everything rest, you should be able to beat mesmers quite easily with a staff because you can pretty much avoid all shutter, reflect illusionist duellist dmg, and snipe mesmer from distance…also you can interrupt MoA form with gust

I thought what I wrote was clear but I guess it wasn’t. Im not complaining about the dps. Considering how tanking staff ele’s I think its fine. But I was saying to the op that they don’t kill anything. As long as you don’t stand on the lava font and you dodge the eruptions. Which are very easy to do. And I only lost one v one to the mesmer once, which I said was a well timed moa. Started casting during a dodge roll. And no, I couldn’t interrupt it with gust. The fights did last for a very long time though. I am curious to whether you actually play a staff ele or not. “Snipe mesmer from distance” sounds like you don’t even play the game. Snipe with those 500 damage fireballs? Because mesmers don’t have range right? Or a 15s cd heal for that matter :/

But as I said at the end of the post. There are some strong builds. Just not everyone wants to be a punching bag.

No idea, they should be kittening about how ride the lightning barely ever hits them if anything.

I did see one good ele spike, but never seen it again and he only got me once with it that game, dropped me dead real fast before I knew what hit me (was like a trebuchet hit me or something) but it was a phoenix/rtl type spike, not sure what he did there. I never even seen the ele or anything before I died, just poofed to the ground while running.

I don’t know Ele very well,

I stopped reading at this point…

Vandal.8029:

Ele’s are actually good at stomping. The mist form trick is nice but it is on a long cd. Scepter/dagger ele’s have access to two instant cast blinds on short cd’s. They can be used while stomping without interrupting the stomp. You should never get knocked while stomping as a scepter/dagger ele.

why bring an ele to stomp when you could bring a mesmer or thief to deal damage AND stomp from stealth+stability?

I’ve played and elementalist since release and recently switched to a ranger… But I felt underpowered and went back to my ele..;P