Guild Wars 2

I played caster classes in the last 5-6 major mmo´s and I have always been willing to trade survivability for good damage output since it is the entire nature of playing a caster.

In GW 2 however I found the Elementalist to have mediocre damage which are difficult to control due to being groundtarget or with delayed effects….and ridiculous low survivability.
I understand I could stack even more toughness but that would bring my damage from mediocre to low and the entire idea of playing a caster are gone..and I would be better of playing a mindless zerg/shoutheal warrior
Water/firefields ok..but we still dont have the best waterfield or a decent healbuild..thats again the heavy armor classes you need to turn to for healbuilds.

You might not want the holy trinity in the game but screwing the classic archetypes are a really bad idea.
Tone heavy armor classes down or give elementalist higher default defence.

P.s.
Anet your smallscale pvp will never work…people play GW2 for wvw,face it or die once the next MMO with open world pvp hit the shops.
If you insist on smallscale pvp check out Star Wars T.O.R. and learn,their open world pvp sucked on the other hand…the force of GW2 are open world pvp.

*Tone heavy armor classes down *
I see what you trying to do here
hehe

Ranger isnt heavy and can run a heal build as im sure an Ele can too. This thread is really a hidden cry to nerf heavy classes,

Maximise guard defense, there’s your extra defense right there. In fact I wonder if it was introduced to overcome these balance issues to do with low base health classes.

The problem with Ele is that all the weapons are really pidgeonholed:

• staff has 19/20 AOE skills, and the only single-target skill (earth #1) is really weak
• sceptre has no CC
• M/H dagger has no range
• focus has no heals or mobility

I run around as an ele just fine (even in semi-heavy zergs) in full zerkers due to the large array of defensive skills, permanent vigour, and CC you can apply to stay alive. Not only that but when you inevitably do go down, Eles have the single best downed skill in the game and you can just run home to your friends to ensure minimal rallybotting. I’m sure you can cope in defensive gear.

mjharrison.3209:

The problem with Ele is that all the weapons are really pidgeonholed:

• staff has 19/20 AOE skills, and the only single-target skill (earth #1) is really weak
• sceptre has no CC
• M/H dagger has no range
• focus has no heals or mobility

Well #1 is kinda wrong, cause I’m pretty sure the water #1 skill is also single-target (only the healing is AOE). But the rest is pretty on point.
Eles do need a buff to stuff, even more than the stuff we’re getting Tuesday (if they’re still in there), cause it seemed most of all we’re getting is AOE radius increase, which doesn’t really help us…

yes! buff ele damage : )

mjharrison.3209:

The problem with Ele is that all the weapons are really pidgeonholed:

• staff has 19/20 AOE skills, and the only single-target skill (earth #1) is really weak
• sceptre has no CC
• M/H dagger has no range
• focus has no heals or mobility

*Staff is not designed to be for single target damage. We have a scepter for that.
*Sure sceptre has no cc, but if you were to run a dagger as an offhand…
*Why would you need range on it. Dagger is a close (er) range weapon, ie near melee. A Warrior’s greatsword or a guardian’s hammer have very little ranged abilities, so why should the closest thing the elementalist has to a melee weapon?
*focus is terrible in pretty much ALL aspects of the game.

Now don’t get me wrong – of course the ele could use some improvements. But your complaints seem to have very little logic behind them. Staff is great for big group fighting- static fields, water fields, meteor showers and tons of other aoe to deal decent damage to a lot of people. D/D is viable for group play also, and that or S/D is also good or roaming. The class really doesn’t have as many problems as people make it out to.

Try a signet build based on written in stone.

Ya the OP is pretty much right, especially if the most significant buffs next patch will be whats already been released. It will further put emphasis on making ele healer via waterfields with crap damage. Your cc is basically useless with all the stability around in zergs, or you can try more of a damage aoe build and be tore up by the broken mechanics of Retaliation or anyone who gets near you.
I have lvl 80 ele, guard, warrior and recently a thief. On the heavies I can out heal, survive and aoe better and with less threat from retaliation than on the ele via staff or dd.
Instead of a nerf to the heavies I would rather see a decent portion of the ele nerfs reverted. With those and the non bugged Signet of Restoration, a dd bunker build would fit in there well with the other classes and their new buffs.

Problem with Ele isnt Water- but water line is getting an incoming buff on staff apparently

For survivability the ele has always relied on 2 things. Armor of earth – needs a light buff to duration I would think to be used more. I prefer frost armor presently still though. Hell i’d even think the earth line altogether could use some buffs to more accurately to reflect snare/condi/defense without penalizing the ele (speed)

Get more use out of it. Armor of earth and frost armor are pretty good, just not used enough.

The other favourable survivability should be blinding flash which atm is pretty much useless with the condi removals most classes have.

Don’t know, just how it feels when I’m on my staff ele.

Our guild leader is a D/D ele and he does very well.

i will just leave this here, like always in this game its about player ability

you got mistform, earth armor and blink all all great survivability skills, together with high mobility = high survivability

every class goes down fast when focused and not using defensive skills.

I will be the first one to support your point that elementalists have received an unfair level of hatred from the developers. The only build I’ve found I can achieve my desired level of play in presently is Phantaram’s WvW build (clerics w/ scholar runes and toughness trinkets). It’s an S/D build with high burst damage and high mobility. I had to practice the timings for hours and hours in sPvP before taking it to World vs World, but since I have I can say that I have not lost any single 1v1 engagement I have entered while roaming.

It sounds to me as if you’re facing a lot of bunkering builds, which is a perfectly legitimate tactic in WvW. If you are unfamiliar with the current meta for player vs. player, the game is essentially divided into three camps for what your build can do:
1) Bunker (most common in WvW because you’re having to engage hordes of people, when individual damage is not as important as surviving).
2) Condition spamming (very, very overpowered at present in sPvP because conditions, unlike direct damage — which is stacked through THREE stats, are stacked off ONE stat (condition damage) and it ignores armour. In WvW necromancers are still beasts; I can’t so much as look at one without getting a million conditions).
3) Burst (rather like the build I use, which is a slightly modified version of Phantaram’s WvW build).

It sounds to me as if your primary problem is that you’re trying to use your armour’s base stats to achieve your damage. In WvW your armour’s base stats need to support you, or you will not have the survivability necessary to engage in ZvZ.

That being said, and I draw your attention back to my opening remarks, elementalists do need some love given back to them. The amount of effort and investment I put into this build is disproportionate to its success — I have seen engineers built to take on more people than I can … and win. Even on my warrior, with his healing signet, with the build and strategy I use, I can engage 2-3 people and win. With my elementalist it’s a more protracted battle because the game mechanics do not allow me to seriously threaten more than one person at a time.

I would suggest the following improvements:

Scepter:
-air 3 should also daze the enemy for two seconds (increase the recharge time to 12 seconds)
-fire 2 should have an increased damage radius
-water 2 should apply chilled for 1 second; OR: reduce frost aura cooldown to allow it to be up more frequently
-earth 2 should provide 6 seconds of stability

Staff:
-fire 2 should cause burning on foes damaged by it
-fire 4 should also provide a fire shield to the elementalist, burning foes who engage them in melee — seriously, it is meant to be an ESCAPE, if a guardian can just use judge’s intervention or a warrior can just sword 2 leap it completely defeats the purpose of having a disengage
-water 5 should be able to be traited so that it cures conditions every TWO seconds instead of every 3

Dagger:
-water 2 needs to apply chilled
-water 5 needs to cure 2 conditions; you created this condition spamming meta, it’s time to give everyone the opportunity to get on a level playing field
-air 3 needs to have no restriction on how many times an attacker can be dazed
-air 5 needs to not punish you for using it; it’s purpose is to give you an opening necessary to make the big attack that needs to land — if you’re 20 feet back from the target and you’re using a dagger in your main hand your options for follow-up are limited
-for god’s sake reduce RTL recharge to 30 seconds already it was the saving grace of using a melee weapon on a character with the lowest hp pool and the lowest armour in the game. I think the nerf to this skill was really kittening stupid.
-earth 1 needs a significant range increase (600 range from 300)

I have played DnD since beta and only in WvW so i will comment on the above suggestion

Dagger and Dagger

“water 2 needs to apply chilled”

• Water 2 has medium/high damage output
• Water 2 should have a 66% chance to chill targets for 1 second
• This will make it inline with Fire 2 secondary effect

“water 5 needs to cure 2 conditions; you created this condition spamming meta, it’s time to give everyone the opportunity to get on a level playing field”

• This would balance out the current stun nerfs to the ele and with the fact that 2 out of 5 will not be overpowered.

-air 3 needs to have no restriction on how many times an attacker can be dazed

• Air 3 is very powerful. It is just that its duration period is very , very short.
• Suggest increase duration to 2 seconds
• But take note A3 is an aura , can be used on muliple teamamtes and opens up fury and speed for around 10 seconds with boons.

“air 5 needs to not punish you for using it; it’s purpose is to give you an opening necessary to make the big attack that needs to land — if you’re 20 feet back from the target and you’re using a dagger in your main hand your options for follow-up are limited”

• A5 works very well.
• You can attune to fire and hit Fire3 and strike the enemy even before they get to move for med/high damage/ Or hit e3 and immobilize or use signet of earth and do a triple immobilize.
• Working as intended
• Suggested improvement, Enemies are blind on next target

“for god’s sake reduce RTL recharge to 30 seconds already it was the saving grace of using a melee weapon on a character with the lowest hp pool and the lowest armour in the game. I think the nerf to this skill was really kittening stupid.”

• RTL defitnely needs either the CD reduced to 20/30 second
• Or RTL remains this way but distance increased back to its original 1500

“earth 1 needs a significant range increase (600 range from 300)”

• Not recommended
• Given that there is a Earth 3 immobilize and that E1 bleed effect stacks duration
  i see no reason for a buff

mjharrison.3209:

The problem with Ele is that all the weapons are really pidgeonholed:

• staff has 19/20 AOE skills, and the only single-target skill (earth #1) is really weak
• sceptre has no CC
• M/H dagger has no range
• focus has no heals or mobility

This is why I stopped playing Ele and rolled a Mesmer. You are stuck with slow & clumsy ground cast AoE on the staff or you have to duke it out at close range in melee without any armour (d/d).

That said, all classes have their downsides (except Warrior) so I guess it’s just a matter of picking the least worst.

Staff ele is fine in zergs.

d/d, x/d ele was overnerfed in general. They were OP, then Anet went crazy on the nerfs.

A boost to defense? You’ve never seen a defensive ele play then. They are insanely hard to kill.

style.6173:

A boost to defense? You’ve never seen a defensive ele play then. They are insanely hard to kill.

I feel that I am a competent staff using ele, and I have carefully chosen traits to increase my survivability. I do feel that I am difficult to kill 1 on 1, however this comes at the expense of power and utility.

Playing as an ele is very involved, if you slip up or switch to the wrong element at the wrong time it can mean you die very quickly, the only reason I can stay alive as long as I do is because I focus on ensuring I am healed and only focus on attack when I am comfortable that I will not be gibbed in a couple of hits, and when I do attack, my attacks are usually intended for aoe support or a bit of control rather than straight up dps, and it often mean me and my opponent will get into a complete stalemate, unless they are really stupid, or a beserker, in which case I will just melt in a few hits.

Next time you face an elementalist that seems difficult to kill, take a look at their health bar. You will notice your attacks make a huge dent and they keep topping themselves up/avoiding attacks like their life depends on it, because it really does.

They have very minimal health and toughness, and to get the basic survivability afforded to other classes they have to pay for it. I agree that eles need more base defence or hp to allow a bit more switchup with traits, otherwise we are mostly shoehorned into specific builds. (Just for arguments sake, I have 15k health despite being specced as a bunker and max water trait for hp, and my attacks deal around 600 damage despite my armour being specced for extra power.)

Saying that though, aside from perhaps mesmer or thief I wont play another class. You are all too boring.

0/0/10/30/30: Cleric equips, although im transitioning into full celestial to see if it gives me some different trait options.

Fuzzion.2504:

I have played DnD since beta and only in WvW so i will comment on the above suggestion

Dagger and Dagger

“water 2 needs to apply chilled”

• Water 2 has medium/high damage output
• Water 2 should have a 66% chance to chill targets for 1 second
• This will make it inline with Fire 2 secondary effect

“water 5 needs to cure 2 conditions; you created this condition spamming meta, it’s time to give everyone the opportunity to get on a level playing field”

• This would balance out the current stun nerfs to the ele and with the fact that 2 out of 5 will not be overpowered.

-air 3 needs to have no restriction on how many times an attacker can be dazed

• Air 3 is very powerful. It is just that its duration period is very , very short.
• Suggest increase duration to 2 seconds
• But take note A3 is an aura , can be used on muliple teamamtes and opens up fury and speed for around 10 seconds with boons.

“air 5 needs to not punish you for using it; it’s purpose is to give you an opening necessary to make the big attack that needs to land — if you’re 20 feet back from the target and you’re using a dagger in your main hand your options for follow-up are limited”

• A5 works very well.
• You can attune to fire and hit Fire3 and strike the enemy even before they get to move for med/high damage/ Or hit e3 and immobilize or use signet of earth and do a triple immobilize.
• Working as intended
• Suggested improvement, Enemies are blind on next target

“for god’s sake reduce RTL recharge to 30 seconds already it was the saving grace of using a melee weapon on a character with the lowest hp pool and the lowest armour in the game. I think the nerf to this skill was really kittening stupid.”

• RTL defitnely needs either the CD reduced to 20/30 second
• Or RTL remains this way but distance increased back to its original 1500

“earth 1 needs a significant range increase (600 range from 300)”

• Not recommended
• Given that there is a Earth 3 immobilize and that E1 bleed effect stacks duration
  i see no reason for a buff

After re-reading my previous post, to which you commented (and which I had written at 6 in the morning), I find all of your fine-tuning of my suggestions to be exactly what I would hope for in an elementalist love update.

Also, I had forgotten about dagger E3. When I did D/D all the time my strategy was exactly as you laid out above (air 5, fire 3, fire 5 and 4, ???, profit!), thank you for reminding me.

One other major thing about elementalists right now is that if you aren’t running at least 20 in water and arcana you’re pretty much toast. Earth and fire need drastically improved traits that can also lend to survivability, either through straight superior fire power or something else to improve the class’ mechanics if you branch off into other trait lines.