Guild Wars 2

Until we get decent active defense/disengage potential. Until then. nothing but bunker will be really viable.

The two closest classes in terms of statistical squishiness, that have acceptable melee builds, are mesmers and thieves. Why do they get to play in melee (better than most other classes actually) with high damage builds while elementalists are essentially required to bunker for optimal playing?

-They can both engage and disengage a fight quickly.

Thieves get all sorts of shadowsteps. Stealth on demand for both stomping and leaving. It’s easier for them than for any other class to get in, and out quickly.
Mesmers get low cooldown leaps that don’t require them to blow damage cooldowns for distance. Combined with portal and distortion (Mist Form built in on a 60s CD)the fact that mesmers also have stealth makes them powerfully effective at entering, stomping, and exiting fights fast.

-They have real active defense baked into their weapon sets.

Thieves can instantly teleport away, cleanse conditions, access stealth, and rely on a myriad of evades and controls even before counting utility slots.
Mesmers also get an instant cast teleport, evasion built into weapon skills, the boggle factor of clones, and distortion for invuln no matter what weapon they take.

So why doesn’t D/D ele have a viable spec outside of tank-it-all-up?

-Long cooldown mobility.

RTL on 40s if used to disengage. Lightning flash on longer cd than other profession’s alternatives. Magnetic grasp slow and unwieldy. Burning Speed needed for damage.

-No real active defense outside of utilities.

One evading skill (40s CD) on offhand dagger, that usually gets used to engage anyway. No handy distortion. No clones. No stealth. Want damage soaking cooldowns? Take focus, which has 0 mobility, and then become entirely unable to engage OR disengage.

-Lack of stomp options.

We can take Mist Form/Armor of Earth. Both on minute plus cooldowns, whilst Armor is vulnerable to boonstripping. Thieves, while admittedly less capable of unstoppable stomps, can try with stealth every few seconds. Mesmers get Distortion and Portal, not to mention stealth and stability from a mantra. Want to take the stability on-swap to earth trait? Go deep into a heavy condition damage tree (which D/D barely scales with) and then leave a quarter of your weapon skills out of the fight until your first enemy actually goes down.

So anybody have any ideas for fixing this problem? All I can see is changing a few weapon skills around. (Evasion on Burning Speed/RTL, Lightning Touch granting a 50% bonus movespeed effect for four seconds per target hit, Magnetic Leap allowing one to leap with no target, then if it hits an enemy being able to pull the enemy to you), but ANet doesn’t often change skill functions.

elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

i can’t stop laughing everytime i read it XD

we are the best bunker in the entire game, and we are the worst dps in the entire game…

anet know what is coherence XD

edit: ofc,
rtl to 15 sec again, -50% damage
lightning flash 30 sec cd, remove the damage
attunement standard cd to 11 sec

and for d/d you are ok.

for staff need complete reworking, but with a single trait where:

staff do 100% plus damage, aoe radius of the skill is reduce by 50 %

can do a ‘normal’ caster damage..for escape ability burning retreat with 10 sec cd(remove combo field), frozen ground with 20 sec cd(with less aoe radius), gust 15 sec cd, or 30 sec but with a faster projectile, (now is really a joke) and so on..

i mean come on..we have 10 k base hp, and 900 base armor..give to us or a high damage, or a high mobility..righ now we ‘only’ have exceptional bunker ability. period.

i mean, we are a mage..bunker..mage..bunker..never see a bunker mage before xD

i made an ele because i would really high damage from the distance, at the expense of the defence..

now i’m a really good melee bunker XD

Our supposed defence should be auras. But they’re not all as easy accesible als for example stealth on thieves and clones on mesmers. Maybe if we get an aura based on attunement switch that doesnt interact with traits and has a 20% chance to go off or something might help. in that way we have a kinda in build defence. But anet will prob never do that. Also its just an idea that just popped up so i have no idea if it would have a big impact

That pretty much sums it up.

There are no game mechanics like stealth, (short CD) invulnerability, illusions, etc. to back up such high risk/mediocre reward builds. For mesmers and thiefs it’s possible to go for high damage builds since they got all those defensive mechanics (which don’t need any extra stats to work properly) build in their kit.

The only ones eles have are boons which you can get by – surprise – using tanky builds.

In the end I wouldn’t expect any melee high DPS builds for eles until new weapons are released. A complete dagger/scepter/focus rework is very unlikely which means we can only wait and hope for something new.

titaniumm.2983:

we are the best bunker in the entire game, and we are the worst dps in the entire game…

Are Ele` best bunker though?
Whilst I`ve not gone full bunker (I want some fun in this game <cough> ;p) I`ve ran into Guardians that can out bunker me easily whilst still throwing higher dps.

They can even bubble/heal <cough paladins cough> & we can`t even mist/heal any more lolcry.

Everything else on this thread so far I agree with, which is such a sad state/shame.

I think you make an interesting point about auras being our supposed defensive cooldowns. I get the feeling that they’re supposed to discourage people from hitting us, but right now what they’re really for is getting some benefit out of all the aoe you have to wade into as a melee. Not fun to use, because the benefits of the skills themselves are so minor, and not fun to play against, as its nearly always better to just hit through them and deal with whatever minor impediment it slaps on you.

I feel like they should all provide a percent damage reduction, say 30 percent, that doesn’t stack with protection. thus, we get to feel good about using them when engaging, and bunker builds don’t get buffed hard. Would provide utility apart from boonsharing, which is going down the drain with the new persisting fire for aoe fury anyway.