Guild Wars 2

My lvl 12 warrior , decided to try him out in Wv3.

Hes wearing all lvl 8-12 white items.

And he is better 1v1 than my elementalist Wearing Full exotics , can tank way way more, and I havent put any trait points in him ( had only 2 anyways ).

Lol.

So since you play warrior better than elementalist it means that the profession is kitten?

It may be a bit, ore bit more than a bit on weak side in pvp, but certainly far from what some people would want everyone to believe.

Strang.8170:

So since you play warrior better than elementalist it means that the profession is kitten?

It may be a bit, ore bit more than a bit on weak side in pvp, but certainly far from what some people would want everyone to believe.

Naw, i play elementalist pretty well.

Class is really really broken, but its still fun.

What experience do you have in Wv3 to clain such things?

I got over 500 badges on my Elementalist… Almost never die and i am running glass cannon build or condition tanky dmg build d/d or s/d

Wait…..

You say you´re good with elementalist, almost never die, and you sometimes go glasscannon, which suggests you know how to do active defense pretty well.
And are upset that your warrior can …tank more? As in take more beating?

Strang.8170:

Wait…..

You say you´re good with elementalist, almost never die, and you sometimes go glasscannon, which suggests you know how to do active defense pretty well.
And are upset that your warrior can …tank more? As in take more beating?

again , whats ur experience?

I see that most ppl that defend elementalists either :

Have a low lvl one.
No experience in Wv3 , sPvp, Pve.
Dont have an Alt.
Want to look good.

I got 180 hours in my elementalists, Pve is doable but underperform when compared to warriors ( Farm twice slower ), and in Pvp Wv3 is just a support class. S/D and D/D u wont beat a good player on the other side who knows what elementalists tricks are.

Warriors are the least bugged and one of the most played classes.

afk testing mesmer.

Masternewbz.4953:

again , whats ur experience?

I see that most ppl that defend elementalists either :

Have a low lvl one.
No experience in Wv3 , sPvp, Pve.
Dont have an Alt.
Want to look good.

I got 180 hours in my elementalists, Pve is doable but underperform when compared to warriors ( Farm twice slower ), and in Pvp Wv3 is just a support class. S/D and D/D u wont beat a good player on the other side who knows what elementalists tricks are.

Can´t be bothered to check my hours, and i haven´t done much pvp, but what i´ve done i haven´t felt as underpowered as people seem to feel they are.
I´m not saying that ele isn´t on the weak side, like i said, it might be a bit more than a bit.
And sorry if i don´t buy your i´m pro so you can s t f u attitude.

But i´m quite lost on what´s the logic of your complaint….care to explain?

Do tell, whats broken?

Try this and see if you still think its broken:
Spec traits to full lightning – Grand Master Trait +50% increase damage to knockdown foes, also take +10% damage in air, +25% damage to enemies with low health,
Take full arcane, take the trait that gives buff on attunement swap, and decrease %C D on attunement swap
take runes, sigils etc that increase stun and knockdown time on enemy
Take runes that increase base power and boon duration = increase damage
Take Cantrips grant stacks of might
=Blow Em Up Time

Utility skill needs at least 1 stunbreak, lest the 100 blades bullkittens start messing with u.

Thats a build that works for me. The traits have synergy – you will be putting up tons of might stack and other buffs which increase outgoing damage, and you can start off with knockdown and stuns and then hit with lightning for +50% damage.

Also, staff auromancer where you are support, cc, buf, debuff and heal is a great spec-throw out heals and auras to the whole group makes for an easy win in SPVP

noobdestroyer.4271:

Do tell, whats broken?

Try this and see if you still think its broken:
Spec traits to full lightning – Grand Master Trait +50% increase damage to knockdown foes, also take +10% damage in air, +25% damage to enemies with low health,
Take full arcane, take the trait that gives buff on attunement swap, and decrease %C D on attunement swap
take runes, sigils etc that increase stun and knockdown time on enemy
Take runes that increase base power and boon duration = increase damage
Take Cantrips grant stacks of might
=Blow Em Up Time

Utility skill needs at least 1 stunbreak, lest the 100 blades bullkittens start messing with u.

Thats a build that works for me. The traits have synergy – you will be putting up tons of might stack and other buffs which increase outgoing damage, and you can start off with knockdown and stuns and then hit with lightning for +50% damage.

Also, staff auromancer where you are support, cc, buf, debuff and heal is a great spec-throw out heals and auras to the whole group makes for an easy win in SPVP

thats almost a glass cannon spec unless ur gear is full of tough/vit?

A glass cannon thief on stealth can easily knock this down.

Not if I blow him up before he blows me up

if u have a better build, im all ears. Ive been trying out as many different builds as I can.

noobdestroyer.4271:

Not if I blow him up before he blows me up

he can 2hit Ko u, and he has stealth….

-.-;

fail build

Strang.8170:

Masternewbz.4953:

again , whats ur experience?

I see that most ppl that defend elementalists either :

Have a low lvl one.
No experience in Wv3 , sPvp, Pve.
Dont have an Alt.
Want to look good.

I got 180 hours in my elementalists, Pve is doable but underperform when compared to warriors ( Farm twice slower ), and in Pvp Wv3 is just a support class. S/D and D/D u wont beat a good player on the other side who knows what elementalists tricks are.

Can´t be bothered to check my hours, and i haven´t done much pvp, but what i´ve done i haven´t felt as underpowered as people seem to feel they are.
I´m not saying that ele isn´t on the weak side, like i said, it might be a bit more than a bit.
And sorry if i don´t buy your i´m pro so you can s t f u attitude.

But i´m quite lost on what´s the logic of your complaint….care to explain?

I dont need to explain, play 15-20 hours of Wv3 after lvl 80, play 15-20 hours of sPvp, play some PVE lvl 80 , do some arah runs and you will fully understand what I am saying.

…..ah, let me reword my question.

What does the thing in your OP have to do with any of this, it basicly reads:
Warriors can take more beating, and therefore elementalist is broken.

I can speak about pve though, as i´ve done that more than enough.
And it´s not broken. It might not be what people think it is, but it´s certainly not broken. You won´t find better support than well played ele, huge events are another thing eles shine in. Soloing is perfectly viable and if you can´t kill stuff just as fast as warrior then it´s not far behind, certainly it won´t take twice as long.

Masternerbz (oxymoron? lol), i’ve seen alot of your posts like this one which say pretty much the same thing, and again, i disagree.

We have some bugged skills, some crappy traits, but overall we’re pretty good. Our one let down 1v1 is we cant swap out weapons (which would be imba). If you’re in staff, just expect to lose. If you’re in D/D, dont go to a keep siege.

I have 126 hours over the betas, and almost 300 now on my ele and im still no where near as good as i’d like to be with her. I feel like i can improve plenty after every fight.

My warrior is boring because mistaks dont matter.

Then again, i only played Diablo on Hardcore. Im masochistic. hehe

@noobdestroyer
Whe did you find 50% damage? Air major trait gives you 20% damage. Your build is glass cannon, so you die in few second against thief. And do you rly think guy with 80 level elementalist in full exotic gear, who spent lot of time in WvW and sPvP didn’t try different builds?
@Strang
So why do you speak about PvE if OP said about PvP? Mobs can be facerolled most time with any class.
@Anlyon
Not all people are masochists =).

I found a “good” sPvp build, the only one thats good lol

the ones they said they have an “eye” on it… its pretty good.

Kreit.4709:

@Strang
So why do you speak about PvE if OP said about PvP? Mobs can be facerolled most time with any class.

Masternewbz.4953:

I dont need to explain, play 15-20 hours of Wv3 after lvl 80, play 15-20 hours of sPvp, play some PVE lvl 80 , do some arah runs and you will fully understand what I am saying.

There you go, i highlighted the part i was commenting on.

I say its the theif and warrior classes that are messed up in pvp. They should balance the game by lowering their dps output. Then everyone will stop complaining about getting blown up by 100 bullkittens and kitten seek spammers.

Kreit – u were right. its only 20% to knockdown enemies..

Masternewbz is just a troll, he keeps posting the same threads and saying the same stuff over and over and you can sum up pretty much everything he says as “no u”.

I have a lvl 80 ele. I also have a lvl 80 warrior for comparison. I have 181 hours on my Ele and 323 hours across all characters. I have 100% world completion, have done sPvP, WvW, and Dungeons on my Ele. In all sense of the word ELEMENTALISTS ARE FINE, in everything except sPvP. I prefer my elementalist over my warrior for everything except sPvP, where my warrior is entirely head over shoulders better than my elementalist. However I would attribute alot of Elementalist’s difficulties in sPvP to their lack of quickness, which I’ve said before.

Now before you jump on me for saying Elementalists are fine, that does not mean there are certain things that I would not adjust, other than bug fixes, which have nothing to do with class balance. There are actually alot of things that I would tweak on the Elementalist (there are alot of things I would change about other classes as well), but that does not mean they are unplayable, which alot of people, especially Masternewbz, seem to think.

LOL, love how you say that Elementalists are fine, but Warriors rock the crap out of the Mentalist in SPvP.

If Elementalists are “broken” in SPvP then they are broken elsewhere aswell… You just don’t seem to notice it…

Luterin….no, just no.

If ele is broken in spvp, it´s broken in spvp, not in other completely different situations.

That´s like saying that because sugar tastes crap with steak, it always tastes like crap

Hey noobdestroyer, know that 20% damage to knocked down super cool and strong trait you were using as an example to say eles are fine?

Yeah. Doesn’t work with updraft (blowback not KD, test and see), and you have nothing in earth that can do a big hit to take advantage of a 2 second KD. Your big hit is a 5 second cast.

Kind of kills your point. IF updraft was considered a KD (as I feel it should be), and the intelligence sigil for a guaranteed crit worked for ele (which it doesn’t. Still broken), then yes, that would make VERY nice burning speed+arcane insta cast crits.
As it stands though neither case is true, and the trait is worthless. Being in air I suspect it was intended to work with updraft and is yet another bug though.

If, by not ‘fine’ means very hard to play, then YES the Elementalist is far from fine.

My Ele is lvl 80 now (Yea!) and along the way I must have died at least a million times >.< Anyway, I am a just a casual gamer (working adult), so I tell myself probably I am really bad at gaming. Well, that is until recently I decided to try out a Warrior.

Although my Warrior is only lvl 8, I have no problem taking out 3 mobs at the same time even if they are up to 2 levels above me. I am able to tank their hits and wiped them out with at least half of my HP still intact. And my warrior is poorly geared o.o

As for my lvl 80 Ele, I will be very happy if I am able to take out 2 SAME LEVEL mobs at the same time. And my Ele is fully 42k karma geared with decent damage output. Well, I think as an elementalist you have to stay full alert all the time and press many more buttons than other professions just to be on par with them. That’s just too tedious for me to consider fun lol.

If I knew this from the beginning, I would not have picked the Ele even though I feel that this profession is more suitable for girl player.

I have never gone into WvW or PvP with my Ele, yet. But I don’t like PvP and I think I will be ‘squished’ out like a bug in Pvp. But that’s just me

I’m 5 levels away from 80 yay!

In my PvE experience:
I found levels 1-10 fine.
From about 15-30, I struggled significantly, in comparison to my Mesmer.
30-40 things improved for me.
40 up until now I’ve been great!

Especially those later personal story quests, maybe with the exception of the Skritt Destroyer quests (which are awful!), ones such as ‘battle for claw island’ and ‘fort trinity’ I actually found quite enjoyable. I think those maps where you have a significant number of allied npcs, just seems to suit the ele playstyle much better.

Having said that, I would definitely make changes. Things like extremely uninspired and highly chance-based traits (flame barrier!!!). Comparatively, I think eles have the worst traits. Some of them are quite good, but you compare things like the ‘20% reduction traits’ from other professions and they receive an additional bonus. I’d like to see more synergy other than the aura traits, and maybe less attunement specific and chance-based traits. On my mesmer, engineer and thief I often feel spoilt for choice. On my ele, I feel funneled into taking very specific traits, because only a few of them are worth taking. Otherwise, fire focus skills, some minor staff tweaks… and of course the crazy bugged skills should be looked into.

I don’t think the ele is in too bad a place, but I sincerely hope Anet takes priority in fixing skills/traits which are broken, over nerfing niche skills to pad out the patch notes.

the problem is people perceive “fine” with perfect.
The class in itself is “fine” it is not perfect it has room in areas to be improved in and adjusted.

I almost exclusively play sPvP and tPvP and I still say our numbers our fine, and when played/built right an Ele is a force to be reckoned with. Warriors are easy-mode for me, most Thief builds, too. I rarely, if ever, die in a match.

The problem is just the bugged traits/skills, and the fact that our only good traits tend to fall into Water and Arcana, with a couple sprinkled throughout Air and Earth. No trait variation, unreliable spikes (require a lot of setup to maximize damage, and to even land them), and bugged skills make us feel underpowered. If you run anything but 20 Water/Arcana you’re pretty much kittening yourself. Never mind our utilities where only Cantrips and mayyyybe Signets are viable.

That said, we excel with heal builds if you’re looking for survivability. Healing power scales with the amount of healing skills you have, and toughness tends to make it scale well – focus on those 2 for survivability. The fact that we have 1-3 healing skills on each set kind of points us in that direction.

Mindshard.3572:

Hey noobdestroyer, know that 20% damage to knocked down super cool and strong trait you were using as an example to say eles are fine?

Yeah. Doesn’t work with updraft (blowback not KD, test and see), and you have nothing in earth that can do a big hit to take advantage of a 2 second KD. Your big hit is a 5 second cast.

Tip: Use Earthquake, immediately swap to fire/air then burn CDs. Swapping doesn’t cancel channeling.

Taikanaru.5746:

Mindshard.3572:

Hey noobdestroyer, know that 20% damage to knocked down super cool and strong trait you were using as an example to say eles are fine?

Yeah. Doesn’t work with updraft (blowback not KD, test and see), and you have nothing in earth that can do a big hit to take advantage of a 2 second KD. Your big hit is a 5 second cast.

Tip: Use Earthquake, immediately swap to fire/air then burn CDs. Swapping doesn’t cancel channeling.

This. Doing it this way will also trigger your Arcane Fury (which everyone should have traited) to add to your burst damage. Then you switch to Air if you have at least 15 points in Air so you can double Lightning Strike them, or Fire and pop them with Fire Grab or Phoenix. That’s how the trait is meant to be used, although I still don’t think it’s that great, at least it’s not worth putting 30 points into Air to get and Air already has alot of other good traits to pick up like Bolt to the Heart, Inscription, Quick Glyphs, Tempest Defense, and Zephyr’s Boon depending on your spec.

Anlyon.8375:

My warrior is boring because mistaks dont matter.

I doubt this comment could be any more wrong.

Against players who know how to capitalize on mistakes, making a mistake on a warrior can be far more damaging than making one on an ele. Warriors usually have very small windows in which they can do any kind of significant damage, lackluster healing, [relatively] poor condi removal, very limited access to defensive boons, and no reliable way to disengage from fights because all leaps and charges are impacted by roots and snares (mobile strikes being the sole exception). If you make a mistake, you’re stuck face tanking whatever you got yourself into with a very limited set of tools.

That’s not to say that making mistakes on ele isn’t deadly as well – it can be (I play both classes extensively); but saying that mistakes on a warrior don’t matter is beyond laughable.

I run D/D aura/cantrip/dance+dodge build (can link build if requested). Only time I have an issue in sPvP is against good guardians, really good mesmers, and good thieves. Everything else is relatively cake. It might take a little bit to kill people (as it’s not a glass cannon build), but it gets the job done.

We can compete. It just takes a LOT more effort on our part. My left hand often starts to hurt after a couple hours of sPvP. I am in no way saying the class doesn’t need work, because it does need some help:

-RTL needs to be tweaked. I use it more as an escape/travel option than I do for offense, as it’s very unreliable (unless you’re perfectly lined up for it to hit)
-Downed state. Completely defenseless, rely 100% on team mates to make sure you don’t get stomped.
-Some traits need to be tweaked. ~Half of our traits are focused on sitting in specific attunements, making them go against what is largely considered our class’s core philosophy of stance dancing
-Timing for spell effects (Shatterstone, Dragon’s Tooth, etc)
-Everything in the updated bugs list thread.

I don’t think complaining about Elites is really helpful, because most classes’ elites are bad, with the exception of one for some classes (I’m looking at you, Time Warp/Supply Drop). The same goes with utility skills. A lot are garbage, but a lot also find a place in specs and do well.

Also I feel like a lot of people don’t understand the importance of running away. As foolish as it sounds, if kittentarts to get hairy, you need to get out ASAP. As I said above, our downed state is terrible, and it’s almost certainly a death sentence when you go down. Once you’ve recouped, head back in (if you left allies to fend for themselves). We have plenty of ways to travel quickly (lightning flash, RTL, plenty of swiftness), and can jump to water for keeping ourselves alive while running. This also serves as a GREAT distraction if you have allies with you.

All in all, it takes some getting used to.
-Practice your dancing, know your skills and when to use them
-Be cognizant of your enemies, the options available to them, and terrain around you. Study your enemies each match and adjust your strategy accordingly. Ex: If enemies know to rez their allies and beeline for your downed teammates, save your hard CCs/Armor of Earth for those moments.
-Churning Earth + Lightning Flash is an excellent gib, use it well.
-Do NOT Xv1, unless you’re defending a point and holding out for an ally that’s on his/her way. You will die.

The big one is knowing your enemies and acting accordingly. If you can do that with any class, you’ll be (mostly) successful.

For PvE, I love staff support in PvE, and run fire/water/dodge build. If I’m solo, just switch to D/D and swap out some major traits. Very little complaints in this area.

No comments on WvWvW because quite frankly I’ve not done enough of it since Beta to come up with a guild build/strategy that works.

tl;dr – yes, we’re really fine. The class takes practice. Once you get it down, it’s uber fun

Elementalists are screwed up balance wise almost beyond fixing. Seriously, how do THIEFS have more survivability? We do less damage than thiefs or even warriors even if we spec heavily into pure damage. Why is that? This class has just become a hassle for NO GAIN and I am kind of dropping it.

People say bring a stun breaker, so I need to bring three to stay alive? My experience is, get immobilized, cleansing fire-break stun, get immobilized again, dodge, dodge, frantically switch to fire for the staff #4 dodge… die.

Awesome balance. Ele is a class that punishes you for playing your kitten off and I am kind of sick of it. And you know what, judging from how Anet balanced GW1 they are never going to fix it so it is probably better to abandon ship now and just roll a stupid thief than go through even more frigging nerfs.

No, they are not fine. However, neither is your example.

i agree with luterin. the OP seems to be saying that elementalists are unplayable. they certainly are playable. even though every other class ATM do things more easily and faster than an ele, it doesn’t detract too much from the fun if you’re not just constantly thinking and complaining about the disparity in the difficulty of the game.

heck, if you’re not into competitive sPvP and just use the browser, a well played elementalist is actually considerably better than a FotM thief from my experience.

edit: i have 400 hours on my ele, have had 100% world completion for several weeks now, and rarely lose 1v1s in WvW or hot joins in SPvP.

@ OP

Shot answer: yes, ele is fine

Long answer: yes, ele is super-fine

High skill curve, high reward

How is there a debate about this?
The class is broken period.
When the class is fixed ie when the abilities perform as described by mousing over the abilities an intelligent discussion about the class take place.
Anet, edit the descriptions or make the abilities performed as described.
A build is like a recipe. The recipe turns out better when the ingredients are properly labelled.
FIX THE LABELS.
This forum is full of kittened eles talking smack about their workarounds.
People bragging about how they managed to drive across the country on a flat tire.
LOL, seriously?
FIX THE TIRE.