Guild Wars 2

Is Ele the best class in GW2 for WvW when it comes to multi roles?

[G]old.

Coward Zerg < Competent and coordinated AoE sloots- err, Ele’s.

Can it stealth?

Then no.

Want to know what dominates eles?

Skill lag, inability to switch attunements = worthless ele

Op the answer is undoubtedly yes.

For Manvil Rock

Dawdler.8521:

Can it stealth?

Then no.

I saw a Ele stealth once, then I took a Lightning Bolt to the knee!

I’m terribly biased, as a thief, but I’m going to say thief. Stealth to scout, and can build to burst, your support is sort of limited, but the people you rez tend to be thankful.

Problem is, when you try to be a jack of all, you’re master of none.

Yeah, that was one of the wimpiest zergs that I’ve ever seen, lol.

Like Wyld said, thieves do make really great multi-role classes. We do a ton of damage, but with our high mobility and initiative system…. While that is true for some builds, it isn’t for all. I, for one, belong to the thief system of thought that focuses on building “balanced” or “bunker” builds for thieves, and… They’re impressive, to say the least. I was wreaking havoc with my (secret! :P) bunker build in WvW today on T8… Ferg decided to try and take Umber, and although they were successful, I spent the entire time weaving through them, smashing them, then stealthing before they had the slightest idea as to what was happening.

The point is, though, that thieves are pretty flexible too, when you want them to be. We have some of the best rez’ing for allies via stealth. Throw down SR, then heal them from stealth. We also have a nice ranged interrupt for stompers, via Headshot. We don’t have any direct support (as in boons for allies), but we do have a lot of what I call “offensive support”, meaning that we can take down weakened enemies with ease, deal massive damage to a ton of enemies in bursts before stealthing away, and generally softening up foes before our allies get to them. We can also- as Wyld mentioned- scout via stealth, which has been useful for us on more than one occasion.

The point is that being multi-role is more than about just swapping attunements, it’s about what you actually do. The only thing that the guy in the video seemed to do was AoE enemies and provide a little healing for allies. Any class can do that. What matters is how you use what resources you have to your advantage. That’s what makes you multi-role.

Despite what you guys say thieves are not nearly as versatile as eles.

Darek.1836:

Despite what you guys say thieves are not nearly as versatile as eles.

Eles:
Can heal allies, and choose between doing a lot of damage for little survivability, a medium amount of damage for a medium amount of survivability, or a small amount of damage for a large amount of survivability.

Have mobility via one of their utilities and RTL, as well as some degree of swiftness.
Can’t safely rez allies.
Are as noticeable as an elephant walking through a kitchen.
Don’t have the greatest 1v1 options, relative to thieves.
Aren’t able to escape as easily as thieves.
Don’t do as much damage as thieves.
Have cooldowns on attunement swaps and weapon skills.

Thieves:
Can’t heal allies very well, but has great self-healing. Does a lot of damage regardless of whether you choose to go light survivability (D/D GC builds), medium survivability (pretty much any sword build), or high survivability (D/P bunker builds). Can also apply conditions better than eles.

Have the best mobility in the game, via Shadowstep, IS, IA, tons of dodges, and other weaponset-specific attacks including sShot and sStrike.
Able to safely rez allies.
Are extremely difficult to notice, when spec’d right.
Have stealth, allowing them to switch from the offensive to the defensive (or vice versa) in an instant.
Can 1v1 better than any other class, due to blinds, disabling conditions, high damage, stealth, and self-healing.
Can 1vX very well, simply because they can do a lot of damage in a hit-and-run kind of fashion. With ele, once you get into the fray, you’re not leaving any time soon.
Can escape easily via shadowsteps and stealth.
Hit like a truck.
Are more flexible with weapon skills, due to the init system which gives them the ability to use their favorite skills multiple times in a row.

Mark my words, Eles will be the next “OMG need to nerf class”, as soon as eles get good at the game.

sostronk.8167:

Mark my words, Eles will be the next “OMG need to nerf class”, as soon as eles get good at the game.

Most of them are good. Generally speaking, I find them annoying as a thief, but little else. Staff eles are only any good in a group; get them alone, and they’re dead. D/D eles have a lot of survivability, but they’re far too predictable for me. Anything else is basically just a mix of the pros for staves vs D/D and the cons for these two weaponsets.

I don’t think they should be nerfed. They’re a class that’s getting nerfed into the ground because of noobs who don’t know how to counter them.

Peetee.9406:

Want to know what dominates eles?

Skill lag, inability to switch attunements = worthless ele

True for every profession.

I still say necros. I may be biased. But necros can do the following:
Tank
Pure Condition
Support
AOE DPS
Burst
Solid producing DPS

True, necros can not stealth, but they do make up. Also true, necros can not play ALL those at once. But definitely the most versatile class in the game.

I can’t see it for thieves, I’m sorry. The scouting can be done by rangers better and with culling done, there’s little value in real scouting unless you’re shadowing a zerg. But even then, most zergs are competent enough not to be distracted by 1 class.

They don’t have good AE compared to many classes due to the slow travel time of their shot. Their ranged damage is mostly crap compared to other classes.

They have low health and armor naturally which forces them to skimp on toughness to raise their health to the 15+ range (leaving only about 2k armor which isn’t awful mind you).

Their mobility is often over stated because it’s designed more for allowing them to control a fight than actually get around. Thieves that run tend to die. thieves that stay to fight often can’t be caught for example.

They’re great roamers and valuable for small groups. But since the WvW meta has shifted to zerg on zerg and little else, I can’t see thieves providing much but blast finishers and venomshare (which gimps the rogue in return and given the way buffs work the venoms always end up on the wrong classes. Basalisk on another thief instead of a Ranger with longbow for example).

Arganthium.5638:

Darek.1836:

Despite what you guys say thieves are not nearly as versatile as eles.

Eles:
Can heal allies, and choose between doing a lot of damage for little survivability, a medium amount of damage for a medium amount of survivability, or a small amount of damage for a large amount of survivability.

Have mobility via one of their utilities and RTL, as well as some degree of swiftness.
Can’t safely rez allies.
Are as noticeable as an elephant walking through a kitchen.
Don’t have the greatest 1v1 options, relative to thieves.
Aren’t able to escape as easily as thieves.
Don’t do as much damage as thieves.
Have cooldowns on attunement swaps and weapon skills.

Thieves:
Can’t heal allies very well, but has great self-healing. Does a lot of damage regardless of whether you choose to go light survivability (D/D GC builds), medium survivability (pretty much any sword build), or high survivability (D/P bunker builds). Can also apply conditions better than eles.

Have the best mobility in the game, via Shadowstep, IS, IA, tons of dodges, and other weaponset-specific attacks including sShot and sStrike.
Able to safely rez allies.
Are extremely difficult to notice, when spec’d right.
Have stealth, allowing them to switch from the offensive to the defensive (or vice versa) in an instant.
Can 1v1 better than any other class, due to blinds, disabling conditions, high damage, stealth, and self-healing.
Can 1vX very well, simply because they can do a lot of damage in a hit-and-run kind of fashion. With ele, once you get into the fray, you’re not leaving any time soon.
Can escape easily via shadowsteps and stealth.
Hit like a truck.
Are more flexible with weapon skills, due to the init system which gives them the ability to use their favorite skills multiple times in a row.

Ele:

-Staff ele brings fire/water fields for combo finisher equaling big group heals, group might, or area swiftness.

-Scepter Eles for dragon tooth- clearing siege with no line of sight, something other classes can’t do.

-Swirling winds: ability to protect your siege, or whatever it may be from enemy catapults, trebuchets or whatever projectile.

“there’s little value in real scouting”

lol

thieves: die in 2-3 hits unless specced for toughness in which they won’t be doing any damage anyway, and are thus deemed worthless. also what’s your aoe? none. what’s your actual support? none. stability? nope. thieves can be murdered after they use their teleports and get pulled from stealth insanely easily. Honestly not sure how it’s even possible to think thieves are better than eles. Eles can tank and do damage and apply condis and do mass CC while still being able to run away and give tons of support to allies.

for your points
why does it matter if the ele is noticeable? it means he will be attacked and likely won’t die still
1v1s are useless in WvW
please tell me how youre going to Rez allies in stealth while we just put down 2 aoes on you then move along since we know you’re dead

Most every class is versatile of you know what Ur doing. Since ele and thief have been explained I’m gonna say warriors are pretty much the true jack of all trades. Only thing a warrior lacks is Aoe. They have high survivability high burst or sustanined damage, unmatched cc, great long distant mobility and good support abilities.

I’d have to say Warriors. Jack of all Trades, master of none. Whatever role you want to play can be filled by a Warrior. Also Death From Above, best ability in the game for the lulz.

sostronk.8167:

Mark my words, Eles will be the next “OMG need to nerf class”, as soon as eles get good at the game.

People, including Anet, have been saying this for awhile now. The first nerf was to healing in sPvP (this needs to be carried over to WvW as well). The next nerf will be to mobility.

Peetee.9406:

Want to know what dominates eles?

Skill lag, inability to switch attunements = worthless ele

Eles can just use the heal signet.

And then they’re probably the only ones making use of their 6th heal slot when there is a skill lockout. :P

Elementalists in WvW

Siege offense: Open siege damage at 1200 range, Packs wall CC and water fields and heals on rams. Scepter has an ability to hit siege through walls. Fiery GS trick. Has excellent condition removal against siege and high protection uptime if traited for it.

Siege defense: Swirl Wars 2. Excellent drop down trait that allows for drop stacking and spamming CC. Frost bow 4 WTFBBQs Siege. Can PBAOE through doors. Can use Stability and invulnerability for repairs in hot zones. Can safely Zerg dive and mist/vapor form through door portals.

Scouting: Top notch mobility on land. Great condition removal against immobilize. Has access to invulnerabiliy, blink and stability for escapes. Eles even have the capability to stealth in water and has a “Shadowstep” with lightning 3.

Havoc squads: D/D eles are great in small fights, most eles pack natural group utility. PBAOE works great for capping camps. Provides moderate burst combos. Bunker eles have great survivability and mobility in one; which is great for contesting camps. Access to Immobilize, Blowout, Knockdown, cripple and chills in a weapon set for chasedowns. Downed state can only be countered with a well timed immobilize and staggered stomp. Has access to most stomp combos: Block, stability, blind, invul and blink stomps.

Large open field skirmishing: Packs the fire and water fields. Packs the only lightning field in the game for kiting groups. Has access to a few blast finishers, one being a dodge in earth when traited. Deals with conditions and CCs well with cantrips and certain water traits. Has excellent AoE CC skills. Has a downed state that can move you to a safe zone. High protection uptime when traited. Natural mobility that will never allow them to become stragglers. Most AoE skills are single hits that arent susceptible to proccing large amounts of Retalliation damage against Retal stacking groups.

Closed Skirmishes: Similar to the above and Siege defense. Has the mobility, Stability and invulnerability to get to a position (eg. high groud/up walls). Has line/passing skills that procs burning/cripple. Has AoE Blowout for enemy displacemnt.

Random Funnies: Eles can heal themselves using the Signet passive when there is skill lag. I’ve given a Dolyak 1m+ of swiftness with a blasted lightning field. With the dropdown trait, I can RTL from the SMC ramparts down to the outer wall (I actually landed on a Kaineng stack on the outer wall once, proccing the stun field on the stack huehuehue). Insert ele vid of knocking 5+ players off the cliff on Hills or Cragtop/dawns using tornado/updraft.

ShiftSide.3645:

Arganthium.5638:

Darek.1836:

Despite what you guys say thieves are not nearly as versatile as eles.

Eles:
Can heal allies, and choose between doing a lot of damage for little survivability, a medium amount of damage for a medium amount of survivability, or a small amount of damage for a large amount of survivability.

Have mobility via one of their utilities and RTL, as well as some degree of swiftness.
Can’t safely rez allies.
Are as noticeable as an elephant walking through a kitchen.
Don’t have the greatest 1v1 options, relative to thieves.
Aren’t able to escape as easily as thieves.
Don’t do as much damage as thieves.
Have cooldowns on attunement swaps and weapon skills.

Thieves:
Can’t heal allies very well, but has great self-healing. Does a lot of damage regardless of whether you choose to go light survivability (D/D GC builds), medium survivability (pretty much any sword build), or high survivability (D/P bunker builds). Can also apply conditions better than eles.

Have the best mobility in the game, via Shadowstep, IS, IA, tons of dodges, and other weaponset-specific attacks including sShot and sStrike.
Able to safely rez allies.
Are extremely difficult to notice, when spec’d right.
Have stealth, allowing them to switch from the offensive to the defensive (or vice versa) in an instant.
Can 1v1 better than any other class, due to blinds, disabling conditions, high damage, stealth, and self-healing.
Can 1vX very well, simply because they can do a lot of damage in a hit-and-run kind of fashion. With ele, once you get into the fray, you’re not leaving any time soon.
Can escape easily via shadowsteps and stealth.
Hit like a truck.
Are more flexible with weapon skills, due to the init system which gives them the ability to use their favorite skills multiple times in a row.

Ele:

-Staff ele brings fire/water fields for combo finisher equaling big group heals, group might, or area swiftness.

-Scepter Eles for dragon tooth- clearing siege with no line of sight, something other classes can’t do.

-Swirling winds: ability to protect your siege, or whatever it may be from enemy catapults, trebuchets or whatever projectile.

1. That’s only half of the deal. You can’t have a combo without both a combo field and a finisher. Staff eles are limited almost completely to the field, and not the finisher. On the other hand, other classes can create both fields and finishers. My favorite is stealing from a ranger, laying down the AoE healing field, and then HS through it for awesome healing. I feel indestructible when I’m in the field. Anyways, we also have access to dark fields, smoke fields, and poison fields, too.

2. Pretty sure Scepter requires LoS just like any other weapon. I’ve tried to use Flame Strike on enemies that were on higher ground than I was, with a very small barrier between us before (ex. Raid on the Capricorn: at the dock, there’s a small platform near the spawning point for blue team where you can leap down to land on the dock. Surrounding the platform is a very, very small wall). The attack missed because it was “obstructed”. Not sure why DT should be any different. Also, you still have to get pretty close to the siege in order to do this, so you’re not any less vulnerable than before. Either way, CB on the thief’s SB has practically the same effect, due to its projectile movement, except that it also includes an aimed AoE instead of the automatic AoE provided by DT.

3. Focus OH has very long cool downs, and makes dagger or scepter much less mobile. SW doesn’t last particularly long, either. Sure, it’s a decent attack, but you have to give up a lot if you want to use it.

Darek.1836:

thieves: die in 2-3 hits unless specced for toughness in which they won’t be doing any damage anyway, and are thus deemed worthless. also what’s your aoe? none. what’s your actual support? none. stability? nope. thieves can be murdered after they use their teleports and get pulled from stealth insanely easily. Honestly not sure how it’s even possible to think thieves are better than eles. Eles can tank and do damage and apply condis and do mass CC while still being able to run away and give tons of support to allies.

for your points
why does it matter if the ele is noticeable? it means he will be attacked and likely won’t die still
1v1s are useless in WvW
please tell me how youre going to Rez allies in stealth while we just put down 2 aoes on you then move along since we know you’re dead

Lol. You haven’t played against any of my thief builds before, obviously. I’m part of the thief camp that focuses on 0/0/X/X/X builds- the thief build category that goes by the name “balanced” or “bunker”, and for good reasons. I can also tell you that a good bunker thief is like a guardian on steroids; insane survival, but also amazing DPS. We have all of the mobility, DPS, and stealth that a bunker guard wishes they have, and we have insane survivability, like they do, via evades, high toughness and vitality, great healing, stealth, and teleports.

AoE: Shortbow. Sure, cluster bomb moves a little slowly, but it has never failed me in doing the damage I want for it to do. And it hits like a truck. And we can use it multiple times in a row.

Our “actual” support: To quote myself (since this is something I write about often),

…We don’t have any direct support (as in boons for allies), but we do have a lot of what I call “offensive support”, meaning that we can take down weakened enemies with ease, deal massive damage to a ton of enemies in bursts before stealthing away, and generally softening up foes before our allies get to them. We can also- as Wyld mentioned- scout via stealth, which has been useful for us on more than one occasion.

and

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

Stability: hardly need it. We have stealth stomps, which make it a lot easier for us to stomp. On the other hand, somebody with stability won’t get interrupted, but is susceptible to damage. We also have blinds. For guards, necros, warrs, rangers, and engis, I just lay down Black Powder on top of a downed opponent, HS through it for stealth, and then proceed to stomp. Safe and sound.

Anybody can pull a bad thief from stealth easily. A good thief will be gone before you can even try to pull them.

Thieves can do far more damage than eles, can tank easily (via the style of builds that I run), apply conditions far better than eles can (Caltrops, venoms, CB, etc), and provide support, not through boons, but by, y’know, actually killing enemies.

It matters if an ele is noticeable because it’s more easy to kite that ele, as well as avoid attacks from that ele.

1v1 is not useless, particularly when you’re like me and you rush to the back of an enemy army, pull one weak player away from the rest of the groups, and then slaughter them. Then you move to the next easy picking from the back of the group.

I’ll rez allies for various reasons:
-you won’t realize that I’m there because I stealthed prior to coming to save my downed ally
-you’ll pursue your stereotypical “LOL TOUCH A THIEF AND HE DIES” perspective, which will be completely wrong due to my high vitality and toughness, as well as my healing in stealth
-in the chaos of battle, you’ll be more concerned about stomping my friend than about the SR that I just layed down nearby

Either way, I’ve done this multiple times before, which (whether you like it or not) stands as a testament to just how easy this is to do.