Guild Wars 2

I know there’s been a lot of threads already regarding issues and opinions of the elementalist class, this is just another summation of my experiences, in the hopes that perhaps someone else reads this and can vouch for what I will say.

So why am I (and so many others on this particular forum) disheartened by the elementalist? First of all lets start at the very beginning, I think a lot of us who want to play the elementalist have a certain frame of mind, we’re familiar with gw1’s ele, parhaps some other clothier type mage classes from other games. There are certain expectations surrounding this particular type of class. ie. damage output, and to be honest yes ok – the elementalist can pull out a lot of damage – that’s not the problem, its just the way its done, and how much we have to go through to obtain it compared to others …… this is the disheartning thing. I’ll explain further.

Example, been level 80 for quite a bit, skipped some dungeons, done a few in story and explorable … i have died 242 times during the course, my guardian, warrior, mesmer and thief friends have died less than 100…. the guardian has ran dungeons over and over in explorable to farm tokens… so that being said these guys have done a lot more than me, yet ive just killed the end boss and racked up over twice as many deaths…now you may say that im a terrible player but picture this.. im in a dungeon with 5 players, there#s a damage area circle on the floor

a) i realise this, but before i know it my health is more than half gone
b) i can no longer take any hit from anything else – oh wait – i’ve just been hit by the one guy near me. im dead…again…
c) you could say that i should have put defences up, but even something like the armors take time to put on, and by the time you’ve switched and hit the skills (assuming u dont have the reflexes of a god like most people) – your dead.

I just think that a lot of us playing elementalist did not go into this class thinking it was going to be a complete click and dodge fest….JUST to kill “normal” type mobs (not even dungeon mobs) that other classes can kill with a few clicks….yet here we are running in circles (im dizzy half the time), repeatedly dying (almost any time there’s an unpredictable situation other classes are able to take an initial hit and react – where as we end up on the floor for our lives)

Which brings me back to the high damage, what is the point in having it if i cant even stand still for a few seconds to cast some of these spells? I feel like im forced to dodge and react to every. little. thing….or else im dead. Yes I understand we are a squishy class, but i feel like im playing half this game dead in dungeons or story mode missions where there’s things happening fast. The ele just doesnt give me time to react, im dead before i can make a decision.

Anyway after all that, just rolled a warrior, i can now take on two or three guys with gs with ease -__-, press 1 and 2, no need to dodge, or switch two elements just to put up a defense and heal / slow / move around, and do even more damage…. can even take two or three at the same time.

I just hate to see a type of class that i normally love playing, be so frustrating and unrewarding to play, it is physically tiring to play this class (most people dont even switch weapon sets, yet we rely on switching between four elements)

anyway TLDR; cant complain about damage output, exhausting amount of running about and dodging, too much death, comparatively more clicking to achieve what other classes do with ease, no time to react to unpredictable things.

Apologies in advance for my ramblings. I realize that the forums are often the voice of the few, and not the voice of the many, I sincerely hope i’m wrong and for now i’ll play another class whilst I either work this out, or something is done about something that I’ve said here that is very real and very bad about this class.

The play time on my ele is 241 hours. I have died 559 times.
I honestly didnt feel I had problems in pve and didn’t realise people were having them until I started looking online.
I really don’t like the growing perception people are starting to get that elementalist are too weak to run dungeons with – this has been a problem for me at level 80. I don’t mind it in tournaments where people want a perfectly balnced team or w/e but it gets really disheartening when it spills over into pve.

A really good player can go through pve with some ease, but a lot of effort is required to kill even the simpler filler mobs out there, regardless of how good you are. No matter how easy an enemy might be, the solution is always “play the best way possible, or die”.

The elementalist is underpowered. Some people who stick to the elementalist don’t realize this, because they have learned how to master their profession, they have learned how to beat PvE, and they’re going to suggest everyone who finds it weak that they should “learn to play”. Although PvE sure is beatable when you know how to play an Elementalist, those people are under the illusion that the effort for their pro skills is a natural requirement to beat PvE in general. But it is not with other professions.

People start to realize how lacking eles are when they start experimenting with other professions, and realize how everything is easier, even with other hard-to-master professions like the Mesmer. Everything requires less effort, for the same amount of skillful play and strategy/ decision-making. Everything can be done with half the skills, for the same results, if not better. The traits from other professions are better, the elites have bigger consequences. And killing simple PvE mobs becomes as easy as killing simple PvE mobs. And then people get disheartened.

Now, due to the nature of the profession, the elementalist is always going to require more effort than other professions. We do not have that elegant playstyle of other professions, which have a healthy balance between auto-attacking and using other skills when they need to. Elementalists rely little on auto-attacks (they are just a bonus that get activated inbetween our attacks every once and a while – they are even weaker than the auto-attacks of other professions, but maybe that’s one of the problems?), and must instead use double the skills to achieve the same effects. It’s a busy playstyle, where we play piano with the keyboard, and this will probably never change (unless our auto-attacks become strong enough to give us some seconds to relax?). But matters get worse when, in addition to this extra effort to play an elementalist, we have lacking traits, the worst passive defense of the game (and no amount of defensive skills is going to save a one-hit kill out of nowhere), and our damaging skills require too much effort for not enough reward (high recharges, easy to dodge, locked when in other attunements, not enough damage by themselves and must be chained with other skills, no means to defend ourselves without sacrificing our burst damage, etc). There’s almost no room for error to achieve anything.

What could help us:
- Better auto-attacks. Would give us more time to relax during easy battles (general PvE), and would give us something better to do when all our skills are under recharge for long battles (in fact, it would even make us not want to waste some of those recharges unless absolute necessary, unlike now). This would allow Elemenetalists’ playstyle to get a bit more relaxed compared to other professions: you would still have to play it the best you can for the hard fights, but for the easier one inbetween, you would be able to take a breath. If that would make PvE too easy for some of you, the solution is to make PvE harder in such a case, so that other professions could also suffer as we have, working hard to survive against every single bunny.
- Better traits. Nothing to say here, everyone seems to agree.
- Some buffs to elites. But they’re not even that bad, really. They’re decent when you know how to use them, even though they’re not win buttons like a few others.
- Some buffs to udnerused weapon skills. With only 5 skills per weapon for other professions, those skills are tight, and every one of them matters. With 20 skills per weapon for the Elementalist, as it is the norm with any other game, when there’s too many skills, some of them are just filler, and it’s harder to make sure all of them are equally good. Fire’s staff can’t support like the rest of the weapon nor burst like other weapons’ fire skills; Fire’s focus is underwhelming; MH dagger’s air, OH dagger’s water and Scepter’s water/ air/ earth have some questionable skills.
- Bug fixes. It’s annoying everytime my Fire Grab misses or my Ride the Lightning stuns me.