Guild Wars 2

I just cleared the first zone as elementalist, level 17 now, and I gotta say, I’m a bit disappointed. I play d/d, and they have like nothing over warriors.

Warriors do higher damage, are much tankier, pretty sure they have more cc, heard their better for pvp, spvp and wvw.

Honestly, all I’m asking is, is there a point to play elementalist nowadays? If all they offer is support, I should have just picked guardian or something.

Eles are the top DPS in the game, they can bring quite a bit to the table in terms of might stacking/fury, their Celestial D/D build is one of the best in PvP these days and they can do some amazing burst damage if they want to.

There’s plenty of reason to play an Ele these days.

When it comes to anything in this game, level it to 80 and equip it with exotics before you judge its viability. The way traits are unlocked really seems to hinder some classes more than others IMO.

Elementalist is difficult to pick up but rewarding once you get good and geared up. It’s not the class to pick if you want leveling to be super easy, but consider this:

Eles have the top long term DPS in the game.
Eles have the largest theoretical burst in the game.
Eles are generally considered as good at or better at bunkering than warriors.
Eles are one of the most desired support classes too, if you want to play that way.

At level 17, you honestly haven’t even scratched the game. Give it until you know what you’re doing personally before you judge the systems.

My warrior tends to kill things faster than my Elementalist, unless I’m focusing on playing the Ele by constantly switching attunements to chew through the 4 attack chains with varied conditions it has to offer. Which order you start in helps too. Water has some nice vulnerability, and I think air does as well (been a long time since I played my Ele… well any character really since I’m in the phase of limbo I get into between an announced update (HoT) and its release), coupled with bleeding from earth and burning from fire can quickly eat through enemies. Not only that, but the fire dash, air charge, air jump back and any other utility skills I’m trying at the time give more mobility to the D/D elementalist than I can get out of my warrior too.

Also, try some of the conjured weapons if D/D isn’t doing it for you. Icebow makes quick work of a lot of encounters if it isn’t on recharge, same with the FGS and lightning hammer. For a while in PvE I ran D/D with the Icebow, Lightning Hammer, Stone Shield, and Fiery Greatsword. The D/D gave me 25% speed boost (trait) instead of a signet, and depending on how I felt I’d kill at range with IB and FGS or get in the thick of it with D/D, LH, and SS. Essentially I had 8 different sets of primary skills to choose from. I guess that’s another thing Ele has going for it over Warrior, just how many different skills are at your disposal.

Dude the ele has Tornado, it throws bolts and stuff… You can even press 3 keys while in tornado form to totally destroy your opponent in just a few minutes.

What an elementalist has over any class is probably flexibility. If all you want is just to stick to one thing then elementalist isn’t a particularly good choice.

Ele is the strongest level 80 profession. Not the quickest leveler, though.

Currently Ele is better than war for meta groups. Meta is 2 Ele and one war. It has higher DPS and offers more utility such as water fields. It also gives permanent fury and nice might stacks.

As others have said, Ele is the strongest class at max level with good gear, typically either full berserker (for DPS builds) or celestial (for condition/healing builds).

Note that due to their high damage modifiers, even on celestial gear the ele will still deal damage similar to other classes in full berserker gear. This means that when you really try to maximise their DPS it becomes absolutely ludicrous.

In full zerk gear on staff with many percentage bonuses from traits, sigils, etc. their damage is about 6k per crit (a level 80 Warrior has only 18k HP and would die in 3-4 hits of arcane power). In celestial gear they do good conditions (with condition duration) with decent access to burning and bleeding, and with the monk runes, sigil of benevolence, aquatic benevolence trait and rice balls their HPS is far higher than any other class bringing staff water autoattack to dedicated healer levels and making their passive Soothing Mist as strong as the Regeneration boon itself.

To fully enjoy elementalist, you will need to invest alot of time to learn all of the various skills, weapons and traits combinations, atunement rotations (or when to camp a single atunement for max DPS), etc. You will also need to understand how percentage modifiers work, and why they are important. The summoned weapons, such as lightning hammer (blast finisher) and icebow (AoE damage) are important to learn as well, as they play key roles in many fights, especially in WvW where a single well-placed icebow can obliterate a frozen enemy within seconds.

I also have extra bag slots on my ele and carry multiple gear sets so that I can fine tune my role for the situation – DPS for experts and healer carry for newbies.

They are the hardest class to level. Expect to die every few minutes as a newbie. You can survive longer by wearing tanky gear like power/vitality, and taking advantage of their numerous heals and CC. Some specs also has access to evades.

I’m currently levelling a D/D ele, and it does just fine. I prefer it to my warrior (undecided on if I prefer it to my guardian, but I might just) - which was fun to level, but ultimately lacking in style and panache for my tastes. I main a mesmer, though, so I like a bit of showmanship.

The current meta on the ele PvE wise is D/F, so maybe you want to look at that if D/D isn’t working for you. Although I’m too in love with my offhand dagger to contemplate regular focus use myself, I still have a focus (and a staff!) handy in case I run in to anything that doesn’t compute; plus switching out to a conjure weapon in a pinch works too.

At level 17, you can’t be a zerker, but you can wear basic Power stuff, so do. It’s good to get used to it early on where mistakes aren’t the worst. Also, look at Haviz & Zehlyn’s PvE ele guide, where you can see the rotations the D/F ele would do, which you can adapt for the D/D - levelling is a good time to experiment and see what works for you, and the guide is excellent for the information it provides.

If you want the D/D Roamer build instead, it’s here. You might not want to take your ele into WvW just yet, but it’s useful to have a look at where the D/D is currently shining brightest.

I used to play warrior for a good 1,000 hours before swapping to an ele. Never regretted.
You get a much richer playstyle and ele is indeed better(at least right now) when you do everything properly – although doing things properly on ele is much harder than on a warrior.

If you want the D/D Roamer build instead, it’s here. You might not want to take your ele into WvW just yet, but it’s useful to have a look at where the D/D is currently shining brightest.

I’m really sensitive on a subject of D/D roamer ele I suppose, and I can’t help but frown at metabattle.
First of all, Cleansing Wave trait which will remove a condition when attuning to water.
While roaming it would be better to run a cantrip trait which will give you vigor/regeneration when using a cantrip.
Extra vigor will be useful although you already have a decent uptime through Arcane trait, but getting regeneration will also remove a condition due to water GM trait, making it a far superior choice for roaming(Even if you do group roaming. Yes, cantrip trait will only remove condis from you and not the people around you. But the AOE condi removal has 240 radius. Too small to reliably help allies).
Sigils and Runes are well covered, I can agree with everything written. I wonder why Energy isn’t a staple, but the guide mentions it’s probably the best choice if you’re good so… yeah. Traveler might be an option to consider too, Hoelbrak is mostly meh when you have a lot of active condi removal.
Also, the gear choice is mildly suspicious. A mix of Celestial and Knight’s?
Celestial is wonderful, maybe wonderful enough to go full Celestial. But if you want to complement it, I would look at Cleric first, then at Zealot. That’s because precision isn’t very powerful of a stat when power mildly equals precision, you better focus on POWER>Toughness>Healing power>Condition Damage(in this order) if you want to complement celestial(you have enough precision from cele, a ton of vitality from wvw bonus/traits, and critical damage is $&%* in general) Food recommendation is really @?# #$&%*! . My two suggestions for cele d/d would be:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Seaweed_Salad
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Cactus_Fruit_Salad
We’re looking at very bad@ss Salads here. One gives you 10% direct damage boost(Ele is always on the move, not to mention 10% is definitely better than 100 power+70 precision which is one of the choices on metabattle) and allows you to make builds without perma swiftness uptime(can be huge), the other gives 40% condi duration and leech on crits. Far superior choices, but also far pricier I suppose.
I guess that’s about all I disagree on. So… yeah.

I just cleared the first zone as elementalist, level 17 now, and I gotta say,

You can’t be serious… right?

Eles are the best OP class in GW2.

Curently, ele is a double-edged blade. It is, indeedly, the most versatile (And by that, people say most op) profession in game (At least until revenant enter in scene).

But, on the other side it is also the hardest class to learn and actually know how to play it. You need to know every set of combos and timing for each skill, and of course, the main gameplay of elementalist : Element rotation.

So, yes, there are multiples reasons to play ele nowadays, you just need to take some more time to learn to play it very well. And for the other question, yes ele have some things that warrior doesn’t have. It indeedly have party support, it also have more ways to clean conditions than warrior, it also have best burst dps (Warrior have heavy damage, but ele wins in terms of burst), eles have massive ammount of AoE damage, a point that warrior lacks ind, and finally, we have the versatility – You can change you way to play to pretty much be anything you want (Except condition applier, seriously, don’t do that with your ele), from pve to pvp and world x world, you can be what you want. Dps, Aoe zerg dealer, Healer, Knocker/cc, Party support, Tanker (Diamond skin ftw).

Imo ele is one of the hardest classes to master. It is unforgiving – especially in zerker gear but you will adapt and get better, you get used to your squishiness. Once you did that you notice how much DPS you can dish out, you also are a master of might stacking and other buffs with a kittenload of utility thanks to 4×5 weapon skills and even more summon weapons.

In short: Warrior is super forgiving and easy to play, does nice damage. It’s really a beginner class (no offense though there are very good warrior players). Ele is hard and you have to learn all the combo fields and skills etc. Not that you don’t need to know this for other classes, but with Ele you simply have to use all you can to reach the goal and survive. You will learn a lot about this game and its mechanics.

If you wanna have fun and ease leveling the ele, Just run full power gear/staff put fire sigil with bloodlust stacks and stuff dies within seconds. I’ve tried d/d and its fun but imo its alot better just running staff while leveling.

Ele is the top dps class in PVE and dungeon. They also provide numerous support, such as high stacks of might, fury, fire field, cleanse, and healing. They’re a must have in any serious team who want to have max efficiency in dungeon.

Ele is also one of the most important cannons in WvW, with staff doing massive AOE damage to full group of enemies. It also has some of the best support, able to leave almost all types of field for the group to blast, and can disrupt a group of enemies’ movement through lightning field and earth wall.

Ele is also the Top class in PVP too. D/D, D/F are some of the best dueling builds out there in conquest. Staff is one of the strongest weapons in team fight when fighting on a node.

Basically Ele is the Top class in all game modes, and one of the most played classes currently.

Here’s a research done just a few weeks ago about the percentage of classes that people play in each game mode: (Anet’s data is completely outdated, like 2 years ago)
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TrzMdL1gaT88VjusGSPPikM4R4thsD_pXpIDVQvasWA/viewanalytics?usp=form_confirm

I’d like to add one last note:
Ele and Mesmer are two of the most noob unfriendly classes, and 2 of the weakest classes before level 80. Your impression of Ele at your low level is very natural, but 100% false.

Also as you are doing D/D I would recommend you to use Superior (or whichever you can) Sigil of Stamina. It will recharge your stamina whenever you kill an enemie. Especially when you fight multiple foes and perhaps use Firestorm (or any other skill), you will be able to dodge 2 times for each enemy you kill. The enemies will just chase you around while you hit them.

Also note that firestorm will change into sandstorm when you switch to earth, making enemies blind and not able to hit you.

Elementalists can become absolute powerhouses in the later levels if you build it right. Before you hit the later levels you’ll find yourself too squishy and lacking in the damage department which really does suck when you first start playing, but take my character as an example:

My level 80 has all Bezerker armour, a Bezerker Staff, with superior runes of the scholar on all of my armour (Which i don’t believe you can use until your level 80, not to mention how expensive they are ) and having a signet of fire boosts my critical hit chance to 55%, and 201% damage. This is truly devastating when you get the AoE’s down, especially in tandem with the Ice Bow’s AoE, it downs people so quickly its disgusting.

The thing is, to start racking up those kinds of stats on your character, you have to build it up. They aren’t very good off the bat, but when you’ve maxed them out you get access to stuff that really benefits the class, more than it does for others in my opinoin.

Hope this helps

More like Elementalist has every thing over warrior…

new players these days..

Quick answer: Yes, there is.

Everything at that level equally sucks, even warriors. Have a little history with your profession before you judge it unfit. I can clear a starting zone roughly in a half hour. That’s not nearly enough time to really get a feel for an elementalist, much less one that sticks to D/D.

I’ve leveled 3 warriors, and 3 elementalists to 80. I like both professions quite a bit. But, they are two completely different animals, even in various setups, and in varying environments. The most glaring difference between the two professions is that Warriors have a stupidly low skill cap, and Elementalists have a ridiculously high skill cap.

Pro-tip: Use your conjures as you level in PVE, they will hit harder than daggers and don’t require constantly flipping through your attunements.

Don’t underestimate elementalist. In the hands of someone who knows how to use it, elementalist is a very deadly weapon.

Case in point, the warrior vs elementalist question. I haven’t lost a 1v1 vs a warrior in sPvP in ages. Most of the time I’m able to kill them before their team mates show up.

At first I thought this was another whine thread but instead I found a newbie!

Ele is the best class in all game modes so yeah… Best DPS, best soloer, best pvper, best wvwer

the list goes on lmao. Anet gave ele way way too many tools and didn’t realize that making use of them all would make for a ridiculously good class.

Anything does alot of dmg with might stacks, ele needs might stacks to do the kind of dmg all the other classes do without said buffs.

so no there really isn’t anything over warrior.

ps. ive played ele from the launch, you might not feel the nerfs yet since you just started, but after HoT youll feel it, make a warrior.

Both ele and warrior are great in all game modes. DD ele might not be as dominant as they were in pvp before, but they are still quite good

In PvE, they are top dps plus some support and wanted highly in both coordinated and pug groups.

In WvW, they are the essential component in any organized raid groups. They also have decent potential in roaming.

All in all, ele is still one of, if not the best class in the game atm. It will definitely take a bit more time to learn than warrior but you should by means give up if you like the class.

are you kidding me d/d elementalist has everything over warrior, this profession is stupid

vespers.1759:

At first I thought this was another whine thread but instead I found a newbie!

Ele is the best class in all game modes so yeah… Best DPS, best soloer, best pvper, best wvwer

the list goes on lmao. Anet gave ele way way too many tools and didn’t realize that making use of them all would make for a ridiculously good class.

Hardly, ele has only one viable (as most of other classes) spec in pvp and that’s getting replaced by shoutbows anyway.

Devilmonk.8163:

I just cleared the first zone as elementalist, level 17 now, and I gotta say, I’m a bit disappointed. I play d/d, and they have like nothing over warriors.

Warriors do higher damage, are much tankier, pretty sure they have more cc, heard their better for pvp, spvp and wvw.

Honestly, all I’m asking is, is there a point to play elementalist nowadays? If all they offer is support, I should have just picked guardian or something.

I personally play the dreaded D/D celestial ele in PvP ^ ^
so yes I think I can say they don’t completely suck. I can typically hold a point against 2 for a fair amount of time, and can hold against one player almost indefinitely. For PvE, Eles can stack might like crazy. Don’t tell me that isn’t useful in dungeons for the almighty stack.

Tl;DR yes eles are usefull, just only at one thing at a time.

If you find Ele to be weak or uninteresting, don’t play it. The world has enough Eles as is. Just play what you think is fun or strong.

Even if Eles are very good, if you were motivated enough to go out onto the forums and complain about how weak they are, chances are, you will not enjoy the class.

MauricioCezar.2673:

Curently, ele is a double-edged blade. It is, indeedly, the most versatile (And by that, people say most op) profession in game (At least until revenant enter in scene).

But, on the other side it is also the hardest class to learn and actually know how to play it. You need to know every set of combos and timing for each skill, and of course, the main gameplay of elementalist : Element rotation.

So, yes, there are multiples reasons to play ele nowadays, you just need to take some more time to learn to play it very well. And for the other question, yes ele have some things that warrior doesn’t have. It indeedly have party support, it also have more ways to clean conditions than warrior, it also have best burst dps (Warrior have heavy damage, but ele wins in terms of burst), eles have massive ammount of AoE damage, a point that warrior lacks ind, and finally, we have the versatility – You can change you way to play to pretty much be anything you want (Except condition applier, seriously, don’t do that with your ele), from pve to pvp and world x world, you can be what you want. Dps, Aoe zerg dealer, Healer, Knocker/cc, Party support, Tanker (Diamond skin ftw).

A solo roaming condition ele can be extremely strong. Though it is absolutely useless in pve. And after the burning changes Condi dagger mainhand could be really strong.