Guild Wars 2

Bad as they say? I wanted to roll one due to their uniqueness but alot of people said don’t bother with them because they are weak. What are your thoughts on this?

P,S I’m sorry if this has been discussed before.

In solo PvE I feel fine, although taking a bit more effort to kill things than a warrior who can facetank everything I need to avoid.

In dungeons I feel very useful, although with a glass cannon build it’s not uncommon to get downed in 1 hit, so you need to be on the ball with avoiding things.

In sPvP I feel extremely limited in what builds are actually viable, because anything that’s not built for durability feels like a free kill.

In WvW I feel like a monster with staff AoEs.

I don’t think it’s as bad as people say. There’s some issues that I think need addressing, our boring and mediocre elites, our terribly downed state, etc. Overall, I think the class is quite fun.

Awesome! thanks for the quick response and just the feedback i needed)

Elementalists are insanely fun, but have a bit of a learning curve. Take a look at the many videos online on how to use an elementalists to get an general idea. Swapping between elements is key to do good damage and have good survivability.

I always run around with a staff and 2 daggers. My main style is D/D because I do insane damage and love it but during events with people, I swap to staff for AOE.

Elementalists need some work, but nothing that’ll change them drastically. Several of their skills are bugged, their traits are generally ineffective, their elites are average at best (when you know how to use them), and they don’t deal enough damage to compensate for being the profession with the worst passive defense of the game (although they have fairly good defensive skills).

For all those reasons, playing with an Elementalist might be underwhelming for many players. They require too much effort to kill (you pretty much have to master the profession to survive later on, while for other professions, you can kill easy enemies by only using half of your skills available), and they don’t get significantly better with their traits, outside of a few exceptions (unlike, say, Mesmers or Thieves, which get some massive upgrades there).

However, if you’re really interested, I recommend you to try it. It IS a very fun profession to use, it IS unique, it IS strong enough for you to go through PvE (as long as you’re willing to learn it) and GW2 is a game that will constantly get updated with profession changes and bug fixes, so many of the issues players have with the profession now might not exist in the near future.

I absolutely love playing elementalist, however you have to be able to play it right. From what I’ve heard it takes more skill to play it properly, which I like to think I do. I just want to say if you do role ele, my advice is remember to pick traits which allow you to swap between attunements easily, as many elementalists seem to overlook this (as I did initially, and since completely changing my play style it has made a huge difference to my effectiveness). Also I love the arcana tree as the 30 trait point skill turns your roll into another attack, and this mixed with an earlier skill in that tree (something about chance for extra vigor on crits, which basically increases roll recharge rate) means that you can just keep dodging and rolling out of danger while still landing dmg.

It is a class all about constant movement and knowing how to flow between dmg, defence and healing and back through again, but once you understand it, it is so rewarding. Even if it is underpowered like some people claim, for me, when I successfully nail some epic combo and dodge stuff it looks so cool and feels so good I couldn’t play anything else.

Arcane trait in 30 points if very very powerful if you know how to time and master it. You really need to be on your toe and think fast.

It really depends what you want to do.

The profession excels in WvW. It’s the premier AoE class of the game with superb mobility and support options. I would stay the hell away from melee generally for WvW, but even among the ranged options, this profession stands out.

It’s probably the worst solo PVE profession in the game; anything it can do, somebody else can do far more easily, with more survivability. Damage is lackluster for single target outside of combo moves, which are not always easy to pull off. It’s a finicky profession with Rube Goldbergesque levels of button pushing to achieve moves that others can do in one or two buttons. This can be fun…or tedious and exhausting. Mileage definitely varies. I will not farm mats in Orr on my Elementalist, let’s just leave it at that. Boring and repetitive tasks are better suited for simpler professions.

It’s starting to get a rather bad rep in dungeons and sPvP due to its fragility.

For variety, after finishing up my ele at 80, I’m working on a war now, which is almost the polar opposite of my ele in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

You will simply find yourself playing at 200 APM just to do the same dmg a Greatsword Guardian does when he presses 3.

The class IS fun and you will be able to solo till’ 80 but then you will have to wait for a buff, because if Eles don’t get buffed eventually they wont be accepted into groups for PvE dungeons or PvP tournies because they really don’t do anything other class can do way better pushing half the buttons the Ele has to push, making it more reliable to bring a warrior than an ele because if the warrior is bad it doesn’t matter because it requires no skill to do damage, while a bad Ele will just get blown up.

Rithral, on the other hand, my warrior feels like cannon fodder in WvW. That toon tears it up in solo pve, but my elementalist hardly ever dies in WvW. I can disengage from almost any bad WvW situation on the ele in a way my warrior cannot.

Cheers for all the replys guys!