Guild Wars 2

Summoning an Elemental doesn’t feel very elite, the fiery greatsword requires putting myself in Melee range which is exactly where I don’t want to be, and in PvE the Tornado seems to do really poor damage and, again, puts you in melee range. The latter two also prevent you from using all of your primary abilities, which is obviously a huge disadvantage.

Right now I’m pretty much stuck using the Hounds of Balthazar because at least they draw aggro away from me while I cast spells.

Nope, I barely use mine.

Elemental: Boring, not all that strong. The fire and air versions die when something sneezes at them, none of them deal much damage. None of them feel even remotely elite.

Tornado: Weak damage. Annoying in PvE, easily avoided in PvP.

Greatsword: Trade 20 skills for 5 skills that have little synergy. The sword has 2 gap closers to get in melee range, so you can….use your 3 ranged attacks on the target? It makes no sense, it’s a mid range weapon, why does it have 2 gap closers? I mean sure they can be used to gain distance as well, but they’re clearly designed for offensive purposes (since they deal damage in the process).

I enjoy Elementalist, but things like our terrible elites and terrible downstate really frustrate me with the class sometimes. Makes you feel like Anet doesn’t care about your class at all, to have the released the game with those abilities in this state, and then continue to ignore it.

No you aren’t :/
The Elemental is… ok. But yes, it’s really boring to use and also pretty random.
Tornado… is bad. Dunno, probably there are situations where tornado really helps and not only helps getting you killed. But overall, not that strong.
And ye, the Greatsword… you deal less damage when wielding the Greatsword than you would without it. It’s just bad :/

Earth Elementals are quite good at holding aggro, I haven’t used Hounds, but I don’t see why they would be any better, mostly considering Glyph of Elementals recharges in half the time hounds does.

Glyph of Elementals isn’t without flaws though. Non-Earth Elementals die too fast unless you are heavily focusing on keeping them alive or they have other means of not attracting attention. It could also probably use a slight cd reduction (It is still too long even with glyphs traited), and potentially made to hit a bit harder.

Fiery Greatsword is a short range weapon, not a melee weapon, you can still kite and dps melee mobs with it. But otherwise it still has issues. Namely locking you out of every bit of utility you have while not really being any signficant dps increase.

Tornado has pretty much just 1 use, which is disruption in PvP. It’s garbage in PvE, which is a serious issue, and again locks you out of every bit of utility you have.

Some ideas of things we could use:
An amped up Glyph of Elemental Power ie:
Same conditions on hit, but in an aoe fashion, and boons based on attunement

Some kind of defensive form. And by form, I don’t mean replace our skills.
Give us Protection/Regeneration/Stability/Condition Removal, whatever. Make it unique and not just another mist form/armor of earth though.

Or hell give us an elite skill that reduces the cd to swap attunements to 0-5 seconds (this is pretty much the ONLY way I would ever accept having 0-5 rchg on attunement swapping since having it like that all the time would be OP, even having attunement swapping at 5 seconds would be extremely strong). And then maybe some sort of effect whenever you switch attunements while the elite is active.

At this point you can’t really say, just remove X elite skill since it’s garbage, because some people will inevitable like said elite skill in some form or another. But maybe in another patch additional elite skills will be added to each class where something like this could happen. (IMO all classes could use a good 3 more elite skills to expand diversity)

We have Elites o.O ?

Silly me using Hounds all the time when there were such useful Elementalist elites ….

Hun …everybody hates our elites, they’re useless.
Earth Elemental is good but he has no taunt or fear …soo …useless XD

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

We have Elites o.O ?

Silly me using Hounds all the time when there were such useful Elementalist elites ….

Hun …everybody hates our elites, they’re useless.
Earth Elemental is good but he has no taunt or fear …soo …useless XD

Sure he doesn’t have a taunt? He always seems to hold aggro off me.

I only like the underwater water one

Reckon they should bring in a form of Sliver Armour from GW for an elite option. Chance to block and short retaliation boon. Would be more useful.

The only usefull elite skill that i have is Hounds of Balthazaar and it’s because im human

sadly it doesnt work for SPvP

I think Summoning an Elemental should be up all the time, just like a hunter pet, then maybe we could stand a chance! And then have the elites on top of that!

Tekillya.6529:

I think Summoning an Elemental should be up all the time, just like a hunter pet, then maybe we could stand a chance! And then have the elites on top of that!

Indeed. Would Glyph of Elements allow you to summon Earth Elementals to tank for you it would greatly improve PvE survivability. Other ones than Earth are just… waste.

Tekillya.6529:

I think Summoning an Elemental should be up all the time, just like a hunter pet, then maybe we could stand a chance! And then have the elites on top of that!

I agree with this,this would change allot for us in good way

I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

First of all, Hounds suck. They die faster than any of your Elementals do.
Fire can evade attacks.. Water can heal itself. Air is ranged. And Earth is a rock..
Hounds are made of squish, and they are melee with no heals, evasive maneuvers, or whatnot.
On top of that, they only lady 30 seconds. Yes, there are two of them, but they don’t tank twice as much as the one would in 60.
On top of that, they have a four minute cool down after dying with nothing to reduce it.
With the lightning Glyph reduction trait, they respawn in a little over a minute and a half.

The only time I would use Hounds is if I’m not tanking and I need to dispatch one thing in 10 seconds. And they are only reliable for 10 seconds since they’ll most likely die soon after. And one more requirement is that there is absolutely nothing else to fight afterwards.

In any other situation, like if there are more than one enemy or you/your summon has a chance of tanking, Elementals are WORLDS better.
One is ranged and stuns. One is rather tanky with AoE slows and heals. One is immensely tanks, provides protection and deals AoE damage. And the last one does huge damage, both single target and even more AoE.

If you want to call them boring, then fine. But they are FAR from useless and MUCH better than Hounds.

If we had Elite Elementals out at all times, it would be overly powerful.
Of course, Eles are lacking overall, but buffing one aspect tremendously is not the solution to that.
I would agree with having the Lesser versions out at all times and only going on cool down when they died.

And I do agree that our other two Elites are crap. But the Elementals are far from it.

Have to agree with this. Summon Elemental is the only land one that feels remotely useful. The summon sword is fun to mess around with but just doesn’t feel very elite. The tornado is so slow it just doesn’t do much use. To make it more useful they need to make it more like the necro lich skill where you can move around and use abilities. Not just turn into a tornado and hope people run into you.

I was expecting a lot more from the elites I’ll be honest. And I totally agree that lesser elementals should be like ranger pets, or maybe the skill should have a short cooldown.

I suppose I was hoping for elite versions of the glyphs, with stronger passive effects and something epic as a useage.
In another post somewhere I suggested 4 elite skills based on transforming yourself into an Avatar of [insert element here] Where transformations last a minute or 2 but have a lengthy cooldown.

I’d quite like an elite called Master of the elements which does something to do with joining all 4 elements together, either as a tansformation or summoning a weapon with skills from each element. Or maybe for a short period of time you have no cooldown between changing elements.

This isn’t entirely an elite thing, but what if all the summon weapon spells were attunement based as well? Or at least the greatsword one?

I could go on for ages with ideas… I’ll stop now

Btw, the sentiment that only Earth is useful is because it is true….at low levels. And it stuck with most people since they don’t give the other ones a chance.
But at level 80, there are loads of situations in which the other three are just as useful.

For example, if I’m getting chased by a group of Risen, which one do I summon? Water.
If I want to take something out quickly, Fire.
If I want to do damage to a boss and there I as Guardian tanking, Air.
The only situations in which I would summon Earth is
1) If I am planning to fight a whole bunch of high damage enemies, or
2) I’m planning to fight a boss and there are no Guardians or tanky Warrior around.

Next time you need to tank something, use Water. Or if you want to take something out quickly, use FIre. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Oh, and btw, Earth is probably the least useful in sPvP.

I use my norn Snow Leopard form over anything else in world PvE, because of the stealth. Makes it much easier to get to some well guarded PoI or skill commune, along with being able to ditch aggro.

I don’t generally like losing my main skill bars, but it’s fine with Snow Leopard because I’m only using it to escape, not fight. It’s not OK for the Greatsword or Tornado, because you lose a lot of utility for little benefit.

I’d probably value the elemental summon (as “bait” only) a bit more if the bloody sound bug is fixed. I’d rather not have my ears blasted by a game bug that ignores all the sound settings on my computer

Edit: corrected typo

Fire elemental hits for huge damage? What?

I do more damage just auto attacking with fireball, and staff auto attacks a pretty weak. The elemental does decent damage, but most definitely not huge, especially not coming from an elite with a decently long cooldown. It also dies in just a few hits from almost anything (unless it’s in the middle of the swoop where it evades).

I mostly use ice. It’s fairly durable, it still does decent damage, and it heals/chills. It’s still nothing great really, but at least that one usually survives to actually contribute some to the fight.

PvE wise, the Elemental is a pretty good skill. PvP wise, its very lackluster. The Ice Elemental is usually the only one worthwhile, and it can be dropped pronto if they enemy so desires.

Personally, I wish I could replace the elite skill with an extra utility skill slot, I’d rather take one of them…

“the fiery greatsword requires putting myself in Melee range”

You obviously haven’t tried it at all, because the 1 2 and 5 skill are ranged.

1 is also piercing; it is crazy damage.

Morthis.3968:

Fire elemental hits for huge damage? What?

I do more damage just auto attacking with fireball, and staff auto attacks a pretty weak. The elemental does decent damage, but most definitely not huge, especially not coming from an elite with a decently long cooldown. It also dies in just a few hits from almost anything (unless it’s in the middle of the swoop where it evades).

I mostly use ice. It’s fairly durable, it still does decent damage, and it heals/chills. It’s still nothing great really, but at least that one usually survives to actually contribute some to the fight.

My Lesser fire can auto for more than me per hit. DPS wise, it probably does maybe 65% of my auto damage since it hits less quickly.
My Greater fire can auto for about 80% of my damage and his swoop attack can crit for about 3k damage. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty huge in my book.

Fiery greatsword does great damage and skill 2 puts a massive aoe burn down. It is definitely useful for some of the later PVE story quests where you’ve got large mobs of risen to kill and some NPCs to tank for you.

For PVP the use is more limited.

I always thought an elite should leave a feeling of success when you use it properly and tornado is situational, the fire great sword makes me feel limited when I use it especially since it vanishes if I try to get back to my weapon skills, and glyph doesn’t provide the feeling of success imo.

My suggestions would be:
-Instead of limiting the fire greatsword to one set of skills why not rename it elemental greatsword and allow it to be attunement swapped. Also allow it to be dropped and picked up so I can swap between my weapon and the greatsword skills.

-Add the Mind Burn/freeze/shock series and have it based on endurance.

-Provide a signet that grants a passive on attunement swap effect or eliminates the global cooldown on swapping and then have an active like remove all weapon skill and attunement cooldowns.

Edit: For those who don’t know what the Mind series is
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mind_Shock
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mind_Burn
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mind_Freeze

Yer, I find most elite skills very limited in use for pve, thought the fiery great sword does crazy dps.. In pvp almost all elites are useless, the elemental is really the only “good” one, but most elemental are way to squishy and the duration is WAY to short, an easy comparison is to the necro pets! and a very simple fix is to make elemental last until they die then the cooldown timer to start on the elemental’s death.
However, I think an even better way is for elementalists to be able to use a utility skill on the elite slot, I find almost all utilities better than the elem elites anyways.

Darmikau.9413:

Summoning an Elemental doesn’t feel very elite, the fiery greatsword requires putting myself in Melee range which is exactly where I don’t want to be, and in PvE the Tornado seems to do really poor damage and, again, puts you in melee range. The latter two also prevent you from using all of your primary abilities, which is obviously a huge disadvantage.

Right now I’m pretty much stuck using the Hounds of Balthazar because at least they draw aggro away from me while I cast spells.

This class is really broken right now, but you are sooooo using the fiery sword wrong. It does TONS of damage. Try using 3 to cripple groups of mobs and then kite them while spamming 1 and hitting them all as a group. It’s one of the best (if not the best) skills that the ele has.

No you are not the only one. Pretty much every elementalist hates his elite skills (among many other things)

Our elites are not very strong in pvp.

They are of debatable usefulness in pve… very debatable.

And this is coming from a person who really doesn’t think ele is UP.

As far as pve goes the greatsword is actually quite handy.

I use it for mobility whenever I can. And as far dmg, besides being able to stack some good burn duration. If you de-target and charge through mobs, the fire trail does some SICK direct dmg. Even more disgusting if you can use it on a wall and have a mob sit on it. Tears stuff apart.

Same with the whirl, on walls. It’s also evades you. Great against objects as well.

On tougher mobs I tend to, un-target, 4 dash through a mob and quickly hit 3 while dashing so I immediately spin backwards through it again (evade/cripple) and continue pew pewing with 1 til I can do it again. Really nice dmg.

Yeah the greatsword is really awesome in PVE. Massive aoe damage and burning.

Dynamite.6584:

Btw, the sentiment that only Earth is useful is because it is true….at low levels. And it stuck with most people since they don’t give the other ones a chance.
But at level 80, there are loads of situations in which the other three are just as useful.

For example, if I’m getting chased by a group of Risen, which one do I summon? Water.
If I want to take something out quickly, Fire.
If I want to do damage to a boss and there I as Guardian tanking, Air.
The only situations in which I would summon Earth is
1) If I am planning to fight a whole bunch of high damage enemies, or
2) I’m planning to fight a boss and there are no Guardians or tanky Warrior around.

Next time you need to tank something, use Water. Or if you want to take something out quickly, use FIre. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Oh, and btw, Earth is probably the least useful in sPvP.

I have tried those numerous times.
The result is the same: In comparison to Earth tanking abilities other just die before I can notice their actions. Never mind they are ranged, they just cannot dodge or avoid attacks and die faster than NPC :|

The ice one is pretty good in PVP for the aoe heal. Most people ignore it and the heal actually heals for quite a bit.

Gw1 used to have some great elite skills for Elementalists. I would prefer something like “Master of Magic -Elite Enchantment Spell. 60 seconds). Your attributes are set to +50” or something like that, over a flashy useless skill like tornado! Also Fire Storm>Meteor Shower, no idea why you picked the second one for gw2….

My main problem isn’t with power so much as feel. The elemental and the great sword just don’t feel “Elite Elementalist.” The Tornado DOES give that feeling, but it’s insanely weak for PvE.

Searing Flames, Shockwave, Invoke Lightning, Ward Against Harm: THOSE were elites. They felt POWERFUL. They felt Elemental. They really gave the sense of “I am the master of elements, behold my power.” The GW2 Ele elites just don’t have that feel, especially since they’re on huge cooldowns. I would have much preferred elites that are low-impact, low cooldown, so long as they really felt Elemental. At the very least something that really exemplifies elemental power, like a glyph that gives double damage for 5-10 seconds or something. Just that huge numbers high. That’s why I played Ele in GW1 and it’s why I picked one in GW2. Elites aside it seems like they tried to take the utility side of attributes like Water flag runners in GvG and force it on me. I like having utility, but not at the expense of feeling like a power elemental manipulator.

The elemental is probably the best.
My only issue with it is that it has a 120 second cd. But when it dies the CD resets. So if yours actually lives the full duration, then the CD is 180, but if it dies in 5 seconds the CD is only 125.
Not sure if that was intended, or a bug, but its a little annoying to see my elite halfway cooled down, only to suddenly go “LOLNOPE, BACK TO 120”

My experience so far as an Asura elementalist:
Tornado is terrible
Greater elemental is decent when soloing
In groups, (and sometimes solo!) it’s fiery greatsword or you’re doing it wrong

If you know how to fully utilize the greatsword skills, you can do some pretty sick things and put out some tremendous area damage. Just as an example, in Twilight Arbor story mode, you can single-handedly keep the second boss room clear of all the spiders with a fiery greatsword, eliminating the need for any silly kiting. If you do it right, it doesn’t significantly impact the damage you do on the boss.

For those of you who hate the elementalist elites: it could be worse. You could be an Asura, too. Every single Asuran elite skill is worse than all of the elementalist elites. They’re good for grins when you first get them, until you realize that the suit doesn’t do much for you and both golems are lower damage/hp/utility, shorter duration, and longer CD than greater elemental.

heh ATM, have you tried the charr elites? A bazooka that’s inferior to the greatsword in every way possible. And summoning 2 charr helpers who died in 2 hits, and got maybe 1 attack off before that.
:(

I really kinda wonder why the elementalist is missing some big cast time, huge burst type skill. It’d be sweet to have an elite that unleashes a massive single target spell determined by your attunement. Something like Ancient Magic in FFXI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU5erJB3-To

Granted it’d be nice if Ele had any damage at all, but yeah.

I never found any elite is usefull in any situation..

Yes, it’s just you. I like the elemental a lot, and it’s very useful too. It may not feel elite to you, but when my Earth Elemental tanks a champion mob, it sure feels elite to me.

It’s not just you. I only use the earth or water ele once in a while, but I usually just stick to the hounds. Kind of sad when a racial elite is the best option.

Dynamite – hounds die easier but they do alot more dmg for short time also when they jump the aoe dmg is more than i can do which is enogh for me to solo a lot of things

Hounds are my “oh sht” button

I’m afraid they’re going to nerf the 10 point sylvari one because I really like the invulnerability (it roots you but sometimes it is really nice to wait out a cd).

Ele elites are worst of ANY class.

Look at mesmer… look at thief…

Only use for tornado is to break the mesmer chicken.

Greatsword is terrible, total waste of a elite.

The pets are ok but hardly “elite”

Elite skills need reworking + conjured weapons need to be removed.

I think we also can summon a bow? I just hit the 50’s I recall seeing it as something I could train for but haven’t bothered to yet as why would I use a bow when I would prefer to throw a fireball