Guild Wars 2

Whine, whine, whine, whine…whine. The class…is….fine. Go play it some more.

Selix.5670:

Whine, whine, whine, whine…whine. The class…is….fine. Go play it some more.

Water/ arcane traits (the good traits that synergy with other good traits and with good utilities) with D/D (the most polished weaponset, S/D as a secondary option) is fine.

;) That being said, I’m happy that I have a polished set up to use with this profession. Better than nothing!

It’s not the damage that is lacking. If you build full glass cannon, then equip Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave. RTL – Updraft – 123 on Lightening -switch to fire and you will burst for 10k+.

The thing is thief will always have more survibility when building FULL glass cannon became of stealth. It’s innate in their class, their strength. Why would you want to be a full glass cannon, instead of playing each class to their own strength?

Tip, equip a solider ammy. You will still maintain 2.8+ power, with 19kHP, and aruond 1.7k toughness. Seems like a win to me.

Yea Diogo. Eruption. There are no issues with the damages other than the bleed should tick for about 15% more than it does. The build time on it is overly long and using it as a blast finisher is not a bad thing. I have no issues with earth really other than that. Water is lackluster dps. Air spec is seriously lackluster with just 2 attacks – one auto and the other on long CD and the rest is all utility and CC. Air is supposed to be the big single target damage line and its not. That line needs to be revamped or damages greatly increased since it is just single target. I suppose it could be turned into our utility line and just dump everything but Chain Lightning, but w/e. I would not oppose replacing Air 2 with something that does no damage but applies an extra long blind and cripple.

All I see is “I can’t play this class by pounding a single button, so something must be wrong with the DPS.”

Ele is not a DPS class. Ele is a combo-oriented versatility class with tons of utility. The classic MMO mage tends to do a lot of SPIKE DPS but rarely ever actually matches up to melee classes in terms of raw overall DPS and power. They also tend to rely on big, slow attacks with large AOE’s to get the job done.

Elementalists have middling power, tons of utility and tons of mobility. In a game where everyone has a dodge, this is actually pretty good. A thief can do an 18k crit over the course of one attack. We can do 18k over the course of several attacks while simultaneously showering our opponents with hard CC, keeping them from doing anything else unless they blow their dodge/stun breakers.

Ele players really need to learn that damage is not everything. In 2-3 skills we can force an opponent to dodge or eat a hefty upfront chunk of damage and 8 stacks of bleed, followed by a burn, followed by a chill, then a launch. If they do dodge, then they blow their second dodge or they eat a burn followed by a chill followed by a launch. If they decide to eat it all and then clear their conditions with a skill, they’re going to get interrupted and/or probably damaged even further by the ele’s constant flow of attacks until they do wise up and start blowing dodges/evasive cooldowns.

If this were a fighting game, Ele’s would be that one guy who doesn’t hit hard, but has a ton of different option selects for just about every situation he can put the opponent in. If we consider that a dodge is like an air tech or a ground tech, and that dodges aren’t invulnerable from the very start of the animation, then it becomes easy to put a single opponent into a bad position after landing even one of our crowd control abilities, and from there we are at an advantage and can act based on how the opponent chooses to react.

And if your rotation hits a snag? Just turn around and run/heal to safety. Ele’s run better than almost any other class, arguably better than any other class (I still think Thieves outperform them slightly).

Come on, we’ve seen ele’s performing well in all kinds of PVP lately, including WvW. Everyone is aware of this classes’s issues, but it’s time to start properly exploring their strengths.

psonally with the fix to the downed state im happy. with my build i got 41% crit with fury most of the time so 61% i got 16k hp and 2k toughness and i hit 9k crits with churning earth and im 0,25,30,15 so if i actually speced into some damage and changed my gear to full glass cannon i thin it would be a little op lol consider the 9k crit then has a 3kish bleed. plus with my staff i get 3k crits on my bas fire attack, about 8k from all lava front hits and 4k crits with meteor shower which is a huge aoe. personally other than the fact that i have to run out of combo to gain any ranged attacks im fine. has anyone else noticed that while ele is supposed yo be the most versatile its really not. for example with a staff you have no close range skills… while other calsses can switch to ranged and mele while fighting. with dagger you have no ranged skills. the only time your versatile is with maybe s/d. so thats the only real problem i have, take forever to run away to switch cause the two guys you were fighting turned into a zerg and with dd your useless so now you run halway back to spawn to switch to staff to try and help your team… gets annoying but w/e thats the price for being such a fun class lol. ele since day 1 and never changing

I run a D/D Ele and carry Flame Axe or Ice Bow as one of my skills (ohmagerd, those useless conjured weapons!) which allows me to go ranged with ease for a short period whenever it’s necessary. However I rarely find it necessary since Ele’s can get in and out so quickly. Since my Ele’s damage is a mixture of power and condition damage which comes mainly from the armor, burns inflicted by the Flame Axe still hurt enough to make hit and run tactics worthwhile.

Dagger/Dagger feels much more responsive after the patch. I’m having more fun with those compared to Staff for WvW.

Staff abilities are really bad. I would at least give it some single target burst potential.

Staff needs some tlc and scepter/dagger is almost there, just needs some small tweaks.

WvW, I roll with a staff and get probably 25-40 kills every death. WvW is not dependent on single target DPS, in fact I get credit for kills that I did not have to really do much for, just AoE and you’ll get credit.

Minis are different, and I roll Scepter/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger, but Elementalist is a strong class. The problem is that PvP is not a 1v1 game, and unless you roll with your team GW2 is not the game where you will able to kill 3v1 as an Elementalist. Your best kiting and contributing to the kill, or standing back and taking advanatge of AoE while contributing to healing/buffing those on your team who are kiting.

If you want to go it alone though, you might think this class is weak. I think it’s very strong class, people just need to learn how to play in groups.

Gombie.3860:

I dont get it, why should we be top damage?

because we are at the bottom of what concerns defense.

Grevender.9235:

Gombie.3860:

I dont get it, why should we be top damage?

because we are at the bottom of what concerns defense.

Ele is one of the three bunkers in tPvP, defense-wise they’re more than fine (in fact they’re in the top three).

Bunker build is NOT what the OP was discussing. In fact, the OP said survivability-wise, eles are fine with the one exception that our cannon is lacking for the amount of glass we are.

This is a true statement. People can deny it all they want but it still takes a long time to kill someone compared to other classes that have the same level of survivability as we do (spec-wise). Now, I personally like how long it takes an ele to kill someone. I actually think it is the right level 10-15 seconds assuming ur not hitting a bunker build. I think the other classes that can kill someone faster without as much effort are the ones that need fixing. But since there are several classes that can do that (warr, thief) and you’ll be pissing off more people that way, give eles the boost.

100% our damage is still crap for the amount of work a player puts in to do it.

The problem you people are forgetting is in the very description of the Elementalist class

“What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”

It’s settled then. Let’s change the description so we can end this discussion.

Or you know, they could un-kitten our damage and actually make us a desirable class to play.

I’m going to play regardless because I love the class, but for being a mage class our damage is horrible.

ThiBash.5634:

The problem you people are forgetting is in the very description of the Elementalist class

“What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”

It’s settled then. Let’s change the description so we can end this discussion.

Or let’s fix the fire and air traitlines so we can end this discussion and have more available options to our class.

Can someone explain to me why Eicherjw is so upset about spvpers vs wvwers? If you 1v1 someone in wvw and 1v1 someone in s/tpvp what’s the difference if both players are fully geared? And wouldn’t the spvp prove to be a much clearer distinction of who is better in that 1v1? Or is Eicherjw just a whiny baby.

Micro Hard.3601:

Can someone explain to me why Eicherjw is so upset about spvpers vs wvwers? If you 1v1 someone in wvw and 1v1 someone in s/tpvp what’s the difference if both players are fully geared? And wouldn’t the spvp prove to be a much clearer distinction of who is better in that 1v1? Or is Eicherjw just a whiny baby.

Why do you care so much? Congrats on making a totally useless post. His point is Ele’s need more damage and he’s right.

Loosifah.4739:

Or you know, they could un-kitten our damage and actually make us a desirable class to play.

I’m going to play regardless because I love the class, but for being a mage class our damage is horrible.

I know that I can heal as an elementalist far better than a mage in WoW or a wizard in EQ could. I am also much faster than both of those classes, and have significantly more survivability and melee capability.

So since it’s fairly obvious that we can do a lot more than a traditional “mage” class…why oh why would you expect us to do the same damage as them?

Leiloni.7951:

Micro Hard.3601:

Can someone explain to me why Eicherjw is so upset about spvpers vs wvwers? If you 1v1 someone in wvw and 1v1 someone in s/tpvp what’s the difference if both players are fully geared? And wouldn’t the spvp prove to be a much clearer distinction of who is better in that 1v1? Or is Eicherjw just a whiny baby.

Why do you care so much? Congrats on making a totally useless post. His point is Ele’s need more damage and he’s right.

I’ll be honest…I’m D/D mainly defensive specced, and I feel like if I did significantly more damage, I would be OP.

I dunno, I feel like Ele requires a different thought process in your build and playstyle than most other classes. With most MMORPG classes, you build to specialize. You pick specific traits, equip, and utilities that all complement each other, and work towards some (typically) fairly specialized goal.

For example, a thief would go D/D, zerker’s gear, trait for high damage and stealth, and pick some escape utilities like blinding powder. The goal of this build is clear…to do very high damage, and escape before you are killed. That is what it is supposed to do, it is highly specialized

But elementalist is different…with elementalist you ALWAYS have several different “roles” you can play with each weapon set because of your attunements. You will ALWAYS be able to heal, CC, and AoE DPS…regardless of what you have equipped.

So I really feel like Ele benefits from more hybrid builds, simply because they ALWAYS have a large amount of skills available to them…unlike other classes that will be highly specialized in one area. If your build/playstyle utterly ignores healing or other defenses in favor of damage…then that may be your problem. You’re not taking advantage of what the class offers, and you’re trying to focus on a small subet of its abilities.

When I play Ele, I always use ALL of my skills, and my build (really DaPhoenix’s build) enables them to all be effective.

I don’t spec my Ele for damage, I have a Staff/Cantrip support/survivability build and I always use all my skills and I get actually a decent amount of damage out of it. I can do a lot with my Ele and it’s a lot of fun. But our overall damage doesn’t compare to other classes. My spec works quite well for me, but it’s one of the few builds that works for Ele’s (or likely a variation of the builds that work, my build is not any of the ones posted on forums). Not everyone wants to spec the way I do, so why should they be punished for wanting to do something else?

Leiloni.7951:

I don’t spec my Ele for damage, I have a Staff/Cantrip support/survivability build and I always use all my skills and I get actually a decent amount of damage out of it. I can do a lot with my Ele and it’s a lot of fun. But our overall damage doesn’t compare to other classes. My spec works quite well for me, but it’s one of the few builds that works for Ele’s (or likely a variation of the build that works, mine build is not any of the ones posted on forums). Not everyone wants to spec the way I do, so why should they be punished for wanting to do something else?

Hmmm I agree with this post. I do think that some of Ele’s traits could use some work, but an overall damage increase is not required.

@ Crunchy Gremlin: I completely agree, if I’m in some type of enclosed space or in limited space, my ele can get boned pretty hard.

We need to kite to be successful.

I’d still say comparing to every other class, ele is still a jack of all trades, but master of none. Good mobility, good cc, good damage, but elementalists don’t really shine on one of them.