Guild Wars 2

I’ve been torn between Engineer and Elementalist for a while now, as I love versatility and trickiness, and these two seem to be the best providers of that. However, though I feel the Elementalist puts out better numbers overall than Engineer does, and also LOOKS way cooler with its daggers and staves and elements flying everywhere… It just feels so “locked down”.

With Engineer, I can whip out what I need for the given moment. In between fights, I can switch Utilities as well, and I have a heck of a lot of useful ones to choose from.

But Elementalist…? So many of them feel extremely lackluster, a bunch more have absolutely RIDICULOUS cooldowns, and a disgusting number fall into BOTH categories. The only ones that seem remotely interesting, to me, are the Conjures, which I hear are garbage to build around.

Now, this is a “first impression” kind of thing, I’m sure others have different opinions on it and that’s really what I’m here for. I want to hear if experienced Elementalists find they DO get good use out of their Utilities. Because to this Elemenewbie, it seems like they’re for emergency situations only, never for consistent usage.

the only really useful utilities is cantrips with some variations. Elementalist is actually one of the only classes you won’t feel locked down with since you have so many skills you can use.

Since nerarly all elementalists build around water, its mostly cantrips using regeneration, vigor and condi cleanse on regeneration for each cantrip …. This gives exta survivability. And eles have weak elite. For pvp or wvw ist 90% FSG for mobility not like you might expect attack power of a greatsword …. Elites need a serious rework, one elite per type.
Glyphs: Reduce casting time from 1,25 to 1 and the cooldown reduction trait from -20% to -33%. Arcane: also make the trait -33%. Maybe then its worth for some builds.

Greetings
Wolf

Cantrips? I use sigils, glyphs and conjures, arcanes but rarely cantrips, what kitten do you tell him? Or are you talking about PvP?

Lovely to see “newer” players interested in the elementalist’s versatile play styles.

What makes the elementals so unique is its different kinds of gameplay.
A lot of its utilities are in fact useful. The FGS is in fact very useful, not just for mobility. I often use it for additional Dps in PvP and PvE respectively.

As the others have already suggested. It’s highly dependable on the content you’r talking about. For instance frostbow is way too good to not have it in any PvE rotation. Therefore it is possible using conjurers. Also playing Flame Axe in PvP can be loads of fun, if you know you positioning.

It’s more a content thing, when to use what. Don’t forget that you have three weapons at your disposal. USE them.
e.g. Dagger/Focus, Dagger/Dagger, Staff, Scepter/Focus, Scepter/Dagger.

Especially when out of combat, try to play around with these different weapon types – for skipping or giving support to your party members respectively.

I don’t play Cele in PvP. It’s just not fun anymore. As WP already said there is hardly any skill required to pull a successful D/D rotation off. It’s just wait for your cooldowns swap your attunement, wait for the cooldown – swap. It’s too lackluster at least for me.
I would recommend to just play around with it a little bit. Try it in Open World and in Dungeons and or PvP.

Good luck!

Its funny but yes. For PvE cantrips are less useful. there ice bow, storm glyphs and arcane are better …. But the game seems measured 80% on PvP and WvW.
I did leave cantrips and water over a month ago only using cleansing flame ;-).

I can’t speak for PVP that much, but for PVE our utilities are fine. When compared to other classes, we have the roughly the useful/useless ratio. Oddly enough, Engineers are the exception to that rule.

Arcane Set: Shield, Brilliance, and Wave are good. AoE damage, blast finishers, and a stun break. Arcane Blast and power not as much, but on a condi build Arcane Power combined with elemental surge and fire attunement is basically 5 × 5 burning.

Brilliance and Wave being blast finishers is actually really useful. Given the right builds they can stack a lot of might and fury for the whole party, heal for the whole party, and stack swiftness for the whole party.

Conjures: Most conjures are pretty bad, only having a niche use. Ice Bow, however, is really solid. Skill #5 is a long duration stun that is great against bosses, Skill #4 is the highest damaging AoE in the game, especially against large targets, and skill 3 is insta-cast so it does quite a lot of damage in a short time. Lightning hammer also has a use, since it causes blind on auto attack and boosts power quite a bit.

Glyphs: These are half good, half bad. Glyph of elemental power is generally ineffective and shouldn’t be used. Glyph of Greater Elementals is currently the best elite, and it alongside of lesser elementals are alight if you wand additional bodies and fodder. The fire attunement elemental does decent damage, and the earth attunement one can take quite a few hits. Renewal is a somewhat gimmicky rez skill, with its activation time being so long it is better to just rez someone normally. Elemental Harmony is a solid heal.

The best glyph is elemental storms. This glyph does some pretty useful things. In fire attunement it causes burning in an AoE for awhile. In lightning attunement it acts like a secondary ice bow, maxing out vulnerability on an enemy very quickly. In Earth attunement it acts as a blind field and also inflicts bleed. The only one that isn’t really useful is water attunement.

Signets: These straddle the line on being useful. For the most part they are fairly basic, and have little depth beyond what is written on the tin. In PVE you’ll most likely end up using Signet of Fire a lot, whether it is for the crit chance increase or the burn, and restoration for some gradual healing in certain circumstances.

In pve, I typically use glyphs, arcanes, and signets. At least for the open world. I may occasionally slot in a conjure or a cantrip as needed for a dungeon or a world boss, but I don’t use them as a standard in my “every day” play.

In pvp, pretty much cantrips all the way.

As for elites, I’m typically either running the glyph elite for it’s summon or a racial elite. Just depends on what I’m doing.

Survivability: Cantrips.

Damage: Glyph of Storms, Conjure Frost Bow.

Honestly Utilities are one of the major reasons why I love playing my Elementalist.