I have played mainly on my necro, warrior, ranger, thief, engineer for most of the time in pvp. I usually use my elementalist for casual dungeon running.
After a while, I felt bored and I wanted to play my mesmer, guardian, ele for pvp.
I hear horror stories about how elementalist are very weak in pvp and that they die instantly. But, I don’t see where is the weak part in elementalist. I can win in teamfights and in 1v1 with my elementalist even if I have very little experience in it in PvP.
Enlighten me and go away trolls.
I have played mainly on my necro, warrior, ranger, thief, engineer for most of the time in pvp. I usually use my elementalist for casual dungeon running.
After a while, I felt bored and I wanted to play my mesmer, guardian, ele for pvp.
I hear horror stories about how elementalist are very weak in pvp and that they die instantly. But, I don’t see where is the weak part in elementalist. I can win in teamfights and in 1v1 with my elementalist even if I have very little experience in it in PvP.
Enlighten me and go away trolls.
Name one role you can try to fill on your elementalist and I can immediately tell you at least two classes that perform that function better.
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.
I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.
So does that mean they are not skilled?
Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits. You are caught between speccing for damage or survivability but no matter how you spec anywhere between these two extremes, eles aren’t viable at a competitive level since any build you make would have a weakness. There’s versatility in the way you can trait but you can’t out-play someone by adapting the way you play since your kit has everything but not enough of it when you need it. Having useful skills bound to different attunements and sustained damage being on one means you are predictable and get into lose-lose situations as soon as you start having to play defensively. Signet of Restoration at eles be able to maintain the upper hand since they could keep dishing out damage without pause but it’s PvP nerf and the shift to condi meta that forces Ether Renewal on eles took this advantage away.
In WvW due to the abundance of stats you can achieve the necessary damage and survivability thresholds that can make ele viable but in sPvP you cannot do this.
In summary:
Zerker/Valkyrie burst builds: heavily reliant on landing high cooldown skills.
Bunker builds: deals negligible damage yet still gets wrecked 1v1 by mesmer, necro, thief, warrior and ranger and can’t hold point against an engi. Exceptionally bad at holding point 1v2. Little to no decapping capability and no presence in teamfights.
Balanced builds: heavily reliant on maintaining high might stacks and burst skills must all be landed perfectly in succession to secure a kill.
It’s abit more elaborate than this but you have to play ele enough for yourself to understand.
(edited by zencow.3651)
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.
I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.
So does that mean they are not skilled?
Probably forgot how to deal with eles since they are so extinct.
Hmm, lets discuss about what will happen again Sword/Pistol Thief with Scepter/Dagger Ele.
I Earthshake + Lightning Flash to Thief (with the assumption that I have the opener on him which only happens %10 of the time) great he is now knockdown I can burst him now Dragoon Tooth (kitten bloody cast time) + Phoenix + Ring of Fire, kitten Thief is up and dodge the Dragoon Tooth no problem I will hit him with Phoenix, what all this evades on the screen, kitten Thief is spamming mindlessly Pistol Wip Dazing me all the time, fuuuck I miss my all burst, no problem I have a Soldier Amulet I am tanky, I switch to Earth I will get more Tanky and get Protection also, what Thief is still hitting me 6-8K kitten I have to heal quick, kitten he get free damage on when I use Ether Renewal for 3s when I run around like headless chicken, kitten he stole on me I am chilled like 10s and I am dead.
This is my scenerio against Thief %90 of time, unless I start running away the second I see them most of the time that will not help also with their auto and nearly free ports to my location.
Or lets fights against a Decap Engi, to be able to force him off the node I have to deliver some of my damage on the node, the moment I got their I will be hit with ton of conditions, AOE damage, CCs then start running away and he will laugh to my range damage.
Do I have to say anything about Hambow Warriors and their unbeatable healing signet?
Spirit Rangers, even that I manage to down them their Pets will res him before I can stomp him so why bother.
And Necro, with my pathetic HP pool and the choice go full damage to be able to kill something and full survivablity to be able to survive 2 hits, either I will be corrupt booned and Spited and die in 2 condition Nuke or I will cleanse whole fight and do no damage.
As you see there are too many hard counter in PVP against Ele, I guess no other class has that much hard counter, may be Mesmer also but at least they have PU build.
In WvWvW is another story, with no PVP restrictions and the ability to customize my stats as I like with gear, I can beat any one of them but in PVP not with these Amulets and PVP restrictions that Ele has.
Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits.
Actually, I do understand this. The thing is, it isn’t ele specific.
Anet took our God Mode away and many players can’t deal with it.
That being said the current meta is the root of all our problems in sPvP.
I must say though if you are having trouble with thieves than either play one or do what I did…..duel em all the time. Once you learn their tricks they become the easiest class to counter
Learn what, they spam all the time their Evades or Dazes, it doesn’t require any brain to press contionously 3 and sometimes 1 to port to their enemy and vanish every 10s.
I mean even AOEing doesn’t work against them, they evade AOE damage also.
I must say though if you are having trouble with thieves than either play one or do what I did…..duel em all the time. Once you learn their tricks they become the easiest class to counter
That reminds me old good WoW days where both mage and thief were high risk – high reward classes and their duels were really spectacular. There you could know enemy’s cds, tactics, countertactics, ranges and every high tier fight was the feast of skill, mindplay, fake opening, kiting, lightning reflexes and strategic thinking. It was a real fun.
Here – nope, sorry! Thief will just spam uncounterable evades, uncounterable stealth and always will be few steps ahead – just because he is better by desing and have more threats than you can answer to. Enjoy!
From my experience in ele’s defence I can only say that it doesn’t have hard counters (depends on build, but mostly). Playing condi grenade engi you can say that you will not won condi necro ever, playing ele you can at least get every fight to draw (if losing a point to engi can be considered a draw) if you can outskill your enemy. So yes, you can kill thief, you can kill necro, you can kill warrior – if they are doing mistakes. but woth equal skills you are inferior to anything. Overall it feels not like pvp, but like hardmode to a slasher game, you should do a perfect streak of moves (evade all the hambowwing, catch thief in 0.05 sec opening between evade frames, CC necro all the way, land the terribly slow burst) to have even a little chance or lose instantly while “boss” isn’t really doing anything special. He is just a boss.
Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits.
Actually, I do understand this. The thing is, it isn’t ele specific.
This IS ele specific. An ele using simply using a zerker amulet without trait damage boosting hits like a wet-noodle, as opposed to other professions taking a zerker amulet and benefiting from it immediately.
Thieves get their damage bonus traits naturally through minor traits that can be obtained through any line.
Warriors don’t even need might stacks or any damage traits to deal high damage, for warriors might and Destruction Empowered are a luxury that makes them stronger.
For Eles on the other hand, their skill damage coefficients are incredibly low; might stacks are a necessity to dent people and can’t afford use damage traits like Stone Splinter and Vital Striking in a healthy way. Due to the multiplicative nature of these damage traits, it’s either stacking them all and be the glass cannon x2.5 damage insta-kill burster or stack none since it’s simply not efficient enough to only have 1 or 2.
(edited by zencow.3651)
Eles have no room for error in pvp and while they can win they need twice the effort compared to a brainless warrior.
And if their opponents are in fact skilled it gets even more complicated. A good thief is a nightmare to deal with, same goes with necros or engineers.
(edited by Razor.6392)
Because elementalists in lore are jacks of all trades and masters of everything, but that would be too much, so they got handicapped down to be masters of nothing in game mechanics.
They got less health because of their great healing potential… but they don’t always bring that potential.
An less armors because of their defense potential, but they don’t always bring that full potential.
And less damage because of their damage potential, but they don’t always bring that potential.
And you can’t bring everything to the max at the same time. So when you focus on doing decent damage, you will be killed in no time. And when you focus on enduring some damage, you will deal little damage, and still get killed in no time.
So, as an elementalist, what’s left is running around finishing combos as much as you can and evading as much as you can and making the enemy waste as much time as you can, and inevitably having to go down or run away when outnumbered.
Heh, as a warrior or engineer I could hold points against 3 or more enemies. With an elementalist, all the enemy needs is 3 unblockable marks covering the point, and if I don’t evade them properly, I’ll get loaded with conditions and go down as diamond skin will do nothing because just one mark removes way over 10% HP with max vitality and thoughness.
Sometimes I think there must be a bug or something. No single attack should remove more than 33% HP on anyone that doesn’t have a single stack of vulnerability, even if they don’t have a single point in vitality and toughness.
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.
I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.
So does that mean they are not skilled?
It’s a guardian and a thief those are winnable especially the guardian only med/zerk guardian should give you a though time on your ele but still very winnable.
The soft CC that people say doesn’t do much for ele does alot when your fighting a guardian. I main ele and that is the most frustrating thing when I fight a Ele on my guard is the soft CC I can’t stay on target.
Anyway are we talking about duels or actually a s/tPvP comp designed to win. If it is the latter it is 5 roles 8 professions the other professions fill those roles better then a Ele can that is why they are called weak because they aren’t a must have to achieve victory.
- Elementalist damage is low compared to other classes.
- Elementalist survivability is low compared to other classes.
- Our burst damage is reliant on executing perfect 8-button combos with 40 second cooldowns—and even then, our burst is only moderately competitive with other classes.
- Forced to run cantrips (for the last year)
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.
I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.
So does that mean they are not skilled?
gw2 has been out for over a year and a half, so unfortunately rank means little to nothing. Duels are also a difficult means of accurately measuring “skill” because every and all builds can be countered.
As to why eles are poor in pvp? There are a lot of reasons.
Low hp, low base armor is one most have already stated. But the game revolves around 5v5 and focus’ around capping points. So duels really don’t mean too much in tpvp. Furthermore, the 5v5 emphasizes team fights making ele even more vulnerable with their base low hp/armor.
Another big thing is cooldowns. This is difficult to go into detail, but there are a couple of obvious tells like armor of earth’s 90s cd for 6s of stability and protection in contrast to balanced stance: 40s cd for 8s stab and swiftness. I’d say firegrab, cleansing wave, updraft, rtl(miss), and earthquake need a considerable cdr. There is not much an ele has in a sustained fight and that is exactly what will happen in tpvp matches as players stream in.
And then we have specific roles. People above me have already mentioned this as well, 1-2 other classes can already fill X role much more efficiently than an ele can and more reliably.
Damage coefficients.
Lack of stats.
Traits.
I’m sure I am missing a couple things out and going into detail for everything would take up pages. All-in-all, the majority of underlying problems can all be solved with some form of free additional cdr without having to go 20points deep into X tree and the waste of a major trait. This will indirectly improve ele sustain and dps and maybe the ability to be the go-to-choice for a specific role.
In spvp they nerfed our best traits while at the same time we are unable to cover our stat deficits like we can in WvW. Ah well.
You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.
I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.
So does that mean they are not skilled?
Well, yes actually. It’s not hard to rank up (especially since ranks are account bound). On top of that, high ranks do not imply experience with that class (might not be a main), and duels are pretty low on the list of things that actually matter to class balance in any game mode.
More importantly, the guardian could bunker better than you and the thief could roam better than you if they knew anything about their classes.
In competitive pvp a great thief can kill a great ele easier than the ele can kill him. That is all.
Elementalist has 2 choices.
Take enough survivability to live against thieves, which will reduce your damage to negligible amounts.
Take enough damage to kill tanky specs or any warrior, but become a free 5 points for thieves.
This is why healing staff ele works in a lot of cases because it’s self survivability (healing power) translates into supporting teammates. If the enemy team is running very high damage, your low health pool will still melt without peels but most teams these days are running quite tanky and these tanky peeps are currently much stronger in general than the high damage peeps so staff healing eles weakness isn’t what most teams are running.
Cool downs. Every individual skill means too much on an ele.
Can be focused down and cc’d too easily when bunkering.
Do not have enough damage mitigation when DPS.
Not enough sustained DPS when speced for burst.
Often require more skill to play than other classes.
Other classes do everything the ele can do better with less effort.
Like above the cool downs are awful. You can’t get a proper gear set up in pvp with the choices they give you. All the heals are awful by far worst heals of any class. Take singet of restoration for example. You have to cast a spell to get half of what a warrior does with healing singet passively wtf. Ride the lightning is the only skill in game that penalizes you for not hitting a target and gives you a 40 second cooldown while warrior savage leap is 8 seconds whirlwind is 10 seconds and rush is 20 seconds. None of them require you to hit a target.
Yup, cooldowns are awful just like the two above posters stated. I can understand the cooldowns of most weapon skills since we have more of them but the cooldowns of our utilities are ridiculous.
I usually compare ele heals and utilities to those of a warrior to get my point across since warrior is my 2nd most played class and I know more about it than the others.
Here is how it is.
In terms of heals a warrior has HS which is superior to every heal an ele can get. Even with the 8% nerf and the revert on the nerf on SoR, SoR still won’t be nearly as good. In terms of utilities just compare these little gems here.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Balanced_Stance
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_of_Earth
—-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endure_Pain
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mist_Form
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Shield
Now I know that utilities are not completely balanced between professions because different professions offer different tools and are balanced with ALL of their capabilities in mind. However, one would think that the class with the lowest armor and health would get defensive utilities that are at least equal to those of the class with the highest health and armor.
(edited by Ganathar.4956)
Its a combination of high cooldowns and COMPLETELY worthless auto-attacks (outside of staff fire, staff water if you are bunker, and dagger air). In fact, if you aren’t playing fresh air, I’m not sure auto-attacks would do anything. They certainly can’t out-dps healing signet. To kill someone, you have to land quite a few telegraphed bursts, but they can kill you easily with untelegraphed bursts (from stealth for instance) or just whittling you down with autoattacks that actually do damage.
Yeah, i found this too, Ele auto attacks are like non-existant, would be nice if Anet would actually take time to rebalance the class in some aspects, like the actual spells, and damage ratio’s on the ele spells, maybe tweak cooldowns a bit as-well as some people mentioned, because most of our kits, deal negligible to no damage at all.
There are viability tests for instance:
Does ele pass thief test? No
Does ele pass condi test? No
Does ele pass CC test? Not really
I’m not sure how many you can fail and still be considered viable… but ele is way off the chart
Its really annoying how people just scratch off elementalist as a viable class, sure its viable, its not perfect but its versatile, which is always good in my eyes, you can throw a heal here and there and do some pretty decent burst and aoe.
Its really annoying how people just scratch off elementalist as a viable class, sure its viable, its not perfect but its versatile, which is always good in my eyes, you can throw a heal here and there and do some pretty decent burst and aoe.
You are hard-countered by thieves, still, so you aren’t viable (unless you aren’t dps, in which case you are a really bad imitation of what other classes can do).
I usually compare ele heals and utilities to those of a warrior to get my point across since warrior is my 2nd most played class and I know more about it than the others.
Here is how it is.
In terms of heals a warrior has HS which is superior to every heal an ele can get. Even with the 8% nerf and the revert on the nerf on SoR, SoR still won’t be nearly as good.Now I know that utilities are not completely balanced between professions because different professions offer different tools and are balanced with ALL of their capabilities in mind. However, one would think that the class with the lowest armor and health would get defensive utilities that are at least equal to those of the class with the highest health and armor.
If you know that, why didn’t you also factor in Soothing Mist, signet traits, regeneration and heals present in just about every weaponset?
Because you can also look at it from the Warrior’s perspective: all they get is a single passive heal that ends if they trigger their panic button, while eles get weapon heals, a 5pt auto regen trait, can get protection while triggering their active which they can trait to not even disable their passive.
As for the main discussion, I think part of the problem is that people are trying to make the ele work by performing a single role. But it may be that you can only be effective if you don’t focus on any role, but adapt to the circumstances.
But I’m sure you’d rather discuss how the ele should be a profession that can only do 1 role at a time, and how single skill x is so much better than single skill y.
The problem is that eles are just like a really bad heavy armor class, they don’t get any special stuff like the rest of the non-heavys. They don’t have pets (elementals don’t really count), conditions, invisibility, etc… Ele elites are trash and their stats and traits are subpar. They don’t really have a direction or role, it would be nice if ArenaNet put a little work into balancing the class out and adding a little flavor to their existing playstyle.
I usually compare ele heals and utilities to those of a warrior to get my point across since warrior is my 2nd most played class and I know more about it than the others.
Here is how it is.
In terms of heals a warrior has HS which is superior to every heal an ele can get. Even with the 8% nerf and the revert on the nerf on SoR, SoR still won’t be nearly as good.Now I know that utilities are not completely balanced between professions because different professions offer different tools and are balanced with ALL of their capabilities in mind. However, one would think that the class with the lowest armor and health would get defensive utilities that are at least equal to those of the class with the highest health and armor.
If you know that, why didn’t you also factor in Soothing Mist, signet traits, regeneration and heals present in just about every weaponset?
Because you can also look at it from the Warrior’s perspective: all they get is a single passive heal that ends if they trigger their panic button, while eles get weapon heals, a 5pt auto regen trait, can get protection while triggering their active which they can trait to not even disable their passive.
As for the main discussion, I think part of the problem is that people are trying to make the ele work by performing a single role. But it may be that you can only be effective if you don’t focus on any role, but adapt to the circumstances.
But I’m sure you’d rather discuss how the ele should be a profession that can only do 1 role at a time, and how single skill x is so much better than single skill y.
It’s a pretty big deal when, even after getting all those forms of regen you mentioned, Warriors still passively heal for more. And so what if Ele’s get protection? Warriors get Heavy Armor and much much higher base Health.
Also, multiple roles just don’t work for sPvP. You need your own defined role, and nothing Ele can do can’t just be done better by some other profession. Roaming? Thief. Bunker? Guardian. Conditions? Don’t make me laugh. AoE? Necro Staff brings considerable pressure without being even a fifth a squishy. Hambow is still strong AoE with just longbow.
(edited by Ryld.1340)
Only from a D/D or D/S point of view.
I’m a rank 41 elementalist I can fight against rank 40+ guardian and thief as a bunker. But the other team’s warrior/guardian/ranger/mesmer can fight like 3 other guys just like me with less effort. I mean eles are fine but not face roll delicious like a some of the other classes. I’m looking at you rangers stop whining you’re tanky fine.
We just need the healing power corrected, CD fixed on some utilities and have stun breakers back on cantrips.
An easy fix would be giving us a Sword (main hand) and design it as a melee 1v1. Its damage would be between staff and scepter level single target damage and much more delicious. This way basic attacks can be corrected while not being too overpowered via multiple attacks. If you want to make it fun give us a 10 second cloak in between as a skill 3.
(edited by Waisenpai.6028)
It is not really a problem with the ele class. I’ve seen eles that are as good as any class. The problem is that the skill cap is so high. An average player using xxx class can beat an average ele.
It is not really a problem with the ele class. I’ve seen eles that are as good as any class. The problem is that the skill cap is so high. An average player using xxx class can beat an average ele.
No. Its the fact most of the skills are nothing more than average with insane cool downs. Just look at Utilities. Mist Form and Armor of Earth for example. Insane cool downs, lower duration than other skills and one even locks us out of EVERYTHING while we still die thanks to all the conditions we have been given and can’t get rid of as our condition removal unless specifically built for it is terrible and when like that we will die to direct damage builds and wont have the damage to be a threat to anyone, bar maybe uplevel people.
Chill my friends, chill. That’s the biggest killer of our class.
I agree eles have one of the highest skill caps, and I don’t exactly want to change that.
It’s not a problem with player skill when other classes refer to eles as “free points”
Its hard to fix the elementalist because its mechanics to stay alive is obsolete. For example, the typical ele must be able to fend off potentially 2 enemies at once. Having a low health pool means 2 things; our theoretical survivability goes down (based on pure numbers and not player skill) and we have to compensate damage for more defensive stats. The good thing is that we have the most boon upkeep aside from guardians. Here is where I think the problem lies. Our defensive boons are harder to upkeep and our class mechanic forces us to switch attunements to obtain these benefits. Instead we should have more boon based utilities and not be restricted to gaining protection from investing in earth or gaining heals by investing in water. Add skills in earth that give might or add skills in fire that can heal or give protection in air.
Another issue is our utilities. We have some amazing utilities but have the longest cooldowns for them. I’ve said this before and I will say or again, arcane shield should change mechanically to be more like berserk stance. Its cool down reduced a ton. Armour of earth needs lower co oldowns. Signet actives need rework.
Another thing about balancing the ele is it needs to stay in the "good at it all and master of none " category. It can’t do one thing better than another class can do it. For example, necros are meant to be the “kill or be killed by” class. They have strong 1v1 capabilities but lose the ability to run from battle. Guardians are meant to support allies through b oons and damage mitigation but they lack the ability to be powerhouses like warrior. The elementalist kind of acts as subpar substitutes in groups. There really isnt anything definitive that makes it an asset to the group. Auras are unique to an elementalist and I feel they should be explored much more such as allies gain the same boons you do from auras without aura share. Or add a master trait that gives you that elements aura on weapon swap.
Also, multiple roles just don’t work for sPvP. You need your own defined role
It doesn’t work for you. Which probably indicates why you’re having issues with the elementalist.
It’s not a problem with player skill when other classes refer to eles as “free points”
It’s always easier to ‘blame the class’ than to actually improve player skill.
Another thing about balancing the ele is it needs to stay in the "good at it all and master of none " category.
Currently it is “average at all, master of none”
Everything we can do – can be done quicker, easier and more effectively on other classes. Part of this problem is our defensive skills are nothing more than a joke. Insane cool downs, lower durations than other classes and in one we get locked out of EVERYTHING.
What build you using?
Also, multiple roles just don’t work for sPvP. You need your own defined role
It doesn’t work for you. Which probably indicates why you’re having issues with the elementalist.
It’s not a problem with player skill when other classes refer to eles as “free points”
It’s always easier to ‘blame the class’ than to actually improve player skill.
It’s also easier to blame player skill than accept that the class doesn’t function correctly. I love my ele, he’s my main and it sucks that I’m considering giving up on pvp with him. I do really well as my ele but I always end feeling that using another class would have helped out my team more and been more fun. The ele takes more skill than other classes to use but there’s no reward for it, even at the top of your game you still aren’t quite as good as another class’ average.
Eles also lack the flexibility to change their style in battle, sure you can change attunement (and need to just to survive) but your skills are still the same type, other classes can switch from melee to ranged but eles are stuck with one option.
(edited by Kyban.4031)
It’s also easier to blame player skill than accept that the class doesn’t function correctly.
I suppose that can go two ways, depending on your point of view. In my personal opinion, whenever something goes wrong, I can trace it back directly to something I did wrong personally. Other professions do have gear or stats to fall back on, but with eles, if you make a mistake, you’ll notice.
As for the role performance bit, I doubt I’ll ever see eye to eye with most people here. I’m good at making up tactics and tricks on the spot, and thus having a wide array of options appeals to me. However, I realize more and more that it’s not a common playstyle. I can’t play single strategy builds like warriors or thieves well, and I’m afraid that if what the majority would want the ele to be gets implemented, we’ll end up with a simplistic, boring profession that’s just no fun to play.
other classes can switch from melee to ranged but eles are stuck with one option.
As I’ve written many times before, I do not agree with the traditional ranged vs. melee division when it comes to the elementalist. It’s not what defines their weapons in my opinion. At least, the way I play staff, it’s as much a melee weapon as it is a ranged weapon.
Eles also lack the flexibility to change their style in battle
I use glyphs for that. You’d be surprised how changing the combination of GoEP and summoned elementals can change the effect of your skills and thus gameplay.
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