Guild Wars 2

After spending few hours my favorite Ele in spvp I feel like this class has been forgotten and utterly unbalanced right now. Please note I have played every single class and I am well aware of their strengths and weaknesses and I know other classes need some tweaking too.

Abilities
We are the most flexible class with the longest cooldowns. Yes we have double the abilities, but when you are forced to switch attunement, because everything is on cooldown, in competitive gameplay this is not always something positive. We need some normal cooldowns, especially considering the low damage we do compared to some other classes.

I will start with the popular

Ride the Lightning
Positives – fast gapcloser, fair range, not affected by slows
Negatives – the recent nerf on the cooldown, low damage (I have gotten to around 2k max, and considering I have been charged by a warrior for 4-5k…)

How is this movement ability balanced when multiple other classes have various instant teleports on shorter cooldowns and gapclosers that either do massive damage (heartseeker), or bring a gameplay mechanic (ignore immobilized)? And this is our semi-melee weapon that needs to get close and personal…

FireGrab
Positives – please name some
Negatives- does less damage than a heartseeker, misses easily, 45 second cooldown(wtf??)

Even the name of this is misleading. Before I ever used this ability in beta, I thought it would drag my foe toward me and deal damage after (opposite to magnetic grasp was at release). This simply needs to be reworked entirely.

Churning earth
Positives – Massive damage, combo finisher, okish cooldown
Negatives – Cast time, easy to avoid

I have no idea who put the slowest kitten ability on the most dynamic weaponset for this class… It should be reworked somehow, but I have no solid suggestions.

All Elites
Positives – they look kinda cool, I guess
Negatives – you never feel empowered like a necro transform, your pet sucks at anything than heal or stun, the sword feels useless

The community has had lots of suggestions and no one has listened so far, so I am not going to list them here. I just want ANET to empower our elites on a Mesmer/Necro level

Mist Form
Positives – you can move while taking no damage + all those cantrips bonuses
Negatives – you cannot damage your opponent (unless one useless trait) and you cannot use any abilities except attunements
I will only say – compare this with Obsidian Flesh and tell me if the bonuses and the long cooldown balance it out…

Arcane abilities
Positives – instant and can bring some bonuses if traited, ok cooldowns
Negatives – low damage, relatively useless

So I use a slot in my utility to put a 2000 damage ability on my hotbar… while my lightning whip does almost the same damage… Also very few synergy traits for the arcane, I am disappoint.

I can honestly go on and on, but I feel the most obvious stuff should be taken first. I also encourage any experienced non D/D Eles to have some input on the abilities (I played D/D since beta and staff rarely on WvW)

Stats and traits synergy

I can make an almost random working build with Mesmer and Warrior, but here we seem to be bottlenecked into at least 20 water and 20 arcane. Either a total overhaul needs to be done or some real heavy tweaking.
Our specialty with attunements should be on a shorter cooldown and abilities should be with shorter cooldowns. Right now I do not feel my class gives me any sort of “special” advantage that other classes do not already have(rangers got a pet, necro has a second healthbar etc. etc.)

Our specialty is apparently so good and gives such an advantage that we are cloth armor with lowest HP pool. Any spec I try to make in spvp seems to lack either health or toughness and our “special” defenses have to be specced for to be useful, and we have no room for alternatives if we want to survive more than 3 seconds vs a thief or if we want to be able to tackle a condition master.

I understand this class is difficult to balance, but we need some drastic changes. Right now there are better bunkers, direct damage dealers, kiters, boon masters, condition masters, minion masters, healers. The only thing we can do is cleanse conditions, and even my Warrior does that better right now…

Also for a class that is supposed to be flexible in combat, I can’t find that switch between direct damage and condition damage, or damage and bunker, or anything with anything WITHOUT changing my traits and amulets.

Am I wrong in all this?

Please speak up fellow Elementalists.

TLDR: I feel this class is pointless and we need drastic changes NOW!

Frankly, I’m not even sure how the Elementalist can be considered versatile; the class lacks ranged versatility, and we’re encouraged to swap attunements constantly, rather than to use them for specific purposes (aside from the water attunement, which has a relatively well-defined role of healing).

Not to mention that eles’ defensive mechanic is healing, which pretty much forces us to spec for healing, severely limiting build diversity, etc.

That said, I don’t think any other class has the sustainability of a bunker elementalist.

Chaosky.5276:

That said, I don’t think any other class has the sustainability of a bunker elementalist.

Guardian says hello while holding the nerfbat Immunity Idol.

or you should just go play a warrior and see how good an ele is.

Lighter.5631:

or you should just go play a warrior and see how good an ele is.

Not sure if I’d call them “good”. In my opinion they are just very tanky and have the ability to outlast others in a fight. If you blow all your cooldowns on them and they survive, theres not really any way to escape all the combos eles have.

Kaleban.9834:

Chaosky.5276:

That said, I don’t think any other class has the sustainability of a bunker elementalist.

Guardian says hello while holding the nerfbat Immunity Idol.

Lol

Back in January our worst utilities (spirit weapons) got nerfed. From there on out I can not recall a single nerf to our class. If anything, we got some pretty massive staff buffs.

Edit: January

sPvP guardian is trash compared to the WvW guardian, but even sPvP guardian is strong. That really says something.

Swim.6830:

FireGrab
Positives – please name some
Negatives- does less damage than a heartseeker, misses easily, 45 second cooldown(wtf??)

Even the name of this is misleading. Before I ever used this ability in beta, I thought it would drag my foe toward me and deal damage after (opposite to magnetic grasp was at release). This simply needs to be reworked entirely.

It’s AoE and depends on an easier circumstance to control (your opponent being on Fire rather than below 50% health). I agree that it needs to miss way less often, though. I’m hoping it gets fixed in the upcoming bug patch. It’ll be hard to tell whether it needs a lower cooldown until it stops bugging out.

Swim.6830:

Churning earth
Positives – Massive damage, combo finisher, okish cooldown
Negatives – Cast time, easy to avoid

I have no idea who put the slowest kitten ability on the most dynamic weaponset for this class… It should be reworked somehow, but I have no solid suggestions.

I actually really like Churning Earth, even the long cooldown. It gives it gravitas, swagger. It hits hard and the animation backs that up. The Lightning Flash trick makes it really strong. It could, perhaps, use a slightly lower cast time.

Swim.6830:

All Elites
Positives – they look kinda cool, I guess
Negatives – you never feel empowered like a necro transform, your pet sucks at anything than heal or stun, the sword feels useless

Yeah, our Elits suck. Glyph of Elementals is great for tanking mobs in PvE and has a bit of versatility to it, but i’d still rather have the Necro’s Flesh Golem. The sword is actually good for mobility but it, like all Conjures, need serious changes before they’ll be actually good. Tornado is worse than useless. You’re just asking to die horribly if you use it, even in PvE.

Swim.6830:

Mist Form
Positives – you can move while taking no damage + all those cantrips bonuses
Negatives – you cannot damage your opponent (unless one useless trait) and you cannot use any abilities except attunements
I will only say – compare this with Obsidian Flesh and tell me if the bonuses and the long cooldown balance it out…

Invulnerability is really, really strong. Mist Form makes you immune to any amount of damage and CC, in addition to stunbreaking, and you can even stomp enemies or go through WvW keep portals. The cooldown is totally warranted.

Swim.6830:

Arcane abilities
Positives – instant and can bring some bonuses if traited, ok cooldowns
Negatives – low damage, relatively useless

So I use a slot in my utility to put a 2000 damage ability on my hotbar… while my lightning whip does almost the same damage… Also very few synergy traits for the arcane, I am disappoint.

Arcane skills actually hit extremely hard if you go glass (plus they always crit, so they work extremely well with Valkyrie gear) and three of them have combo finishers, but you’re right that they’re a bit lackluster. They need more and better traits.

Swim.6830:

I can honestly go on and on, but I feel the most obvious stuff should be taken first. I also encourage any experienced non D/D Eles to have some input on the abilities (I played D/D since beta and staff rarely on WvW)

I play most S/D or Staff Ele and mostly in WvW and PvE. I tried D/D and it’s fun and all but I like Scepter skills and their commensurate kiting ability a bit more. I love the staff but it’s just impractical in close-range situations.

Swim.6830:

I can make an almost random working build with Mesmer and Warrior, but here we seem to be bottlenecked into at least 20 water and 20 arcane. Either a total overhaul needs to be done or some real heavy tweaking.

Agreed.

Swim.6830:

Our specialty with attunements should be on a shorter cooldown and abilities should be with shorter cooldowns. Right now I do not feel my class gives me any sort of “special” advantage that other classes do not already have(rangers got a pet, necro has a second healthbar etc. etc.)

Attunement swapping should be on a base 12 second cooldown and Arcana should lower it by 1% per point. Also, the Elemental Attunement trait should be inherent because, let’s face it, it’s kinda mandatory.

Kaleban.9834:

Chaosky.5276:

That said, I don’t think any other class has the sustainability of a bunker elementalist.

Guardian says hello while holding the nerfbat Immunity Idol.

^ this.

I`ve ran into three very good Guardians that were throwing out more dps then my Ele` D/D (surprise surprise ;p), they have natural blocks & their heals can be insanely good.

One of them splatted someone from my server in WvWs in 2-3 seconds they said. (also an Ele`, staff I think) then me & it fought. 10+ min` fight where I fluked at the end, didn`t down & /bow & /party, nice chat afterwards.

P.S. Earth 3 I still don`t like. At least it doesn`t stun any more, but the cast is now two casts, extending the time, & the lea kitten till clunky.
If lucky I tend to Earth 3(first cast only)/CE/Earth 4.
Would prefer Earth 3 be more like Thief wire-pull that stuns when pulled to you. (stuns them not us ;p)

Yes, this class needs a serious revamp.

But I don’t think it will happen any time soon. As long as enough whales and casuals are shelling out for RNG gambling boxes, there’s no pressing need for the developers to fix the fundamental deficiencies in our class. We are simply not an economic priority.