Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I have seen A LOT of complaining about elementalists on the forums…and by a lot I mean pretty much every post.

So I tried it out, right now I am level 25. Yeah I started off a little rocky but right now I have taking on 3-4 things 2 levels above me with little to no problems.

The only thing that I could say is annoying is the amount of effort needed to take mobs on compared to other classes, but I don’t really feel as kittened as everyone makes it out to be.

So lets here from everyone, both good and bad.

List something you hate, or list something you love….good experiences and bad experiences.

If you just come in here and go “OMG THEY SUCK” and don’t back it up, no one will take you seriously, so please think about what you type.

Thanks!

I have had problems on and of till i made a new build now it is very fun to play! Still got crap gear. making balanced eq with soldier power vit tough combined with power precision condition using magic find on slots. 30 arcane 30 water 10 fire.

Lots of stance dancing and very high apm(lots of button pressing).

Complicated class compared to other games and classes, but very fun! s/d works best.

But i have several moments when i ragequit cus i hate it, but always come back and keep playing it

What I love? The versatility of the staff build.

Not only do we get a lot of skills but we can use them all in a lot of different ways. It helps me make up a tactic on the fly and I really enjoy that. It also allows me to take on pretty much any role, wheter it be offensive damage dealer, offensive support, defensive tanker or healing support.

Between our own skills and the combo fields/finishers we get, we have acces to so many boons and conditions it’s not funny anymore…but it is FUN.

You’ll want to save your final evaluation until you get higher level and run into a mix of enemies which are ranged and/or run exceptionally fast so that kiting is futile.

Chris.7653:

The only thing that I could say is annoying is the amount of effort needed to take mobs on compared to other classes, but I don’t really feel as kittened as everyone makes it out to be.

See, that’s the thing that we’re all complaining about. Why should one class have to work so much harder to get the same results as other classes? Why should an elementalist player have to attunement dance and plan out combos well in advance to get the same performance as a warrior player who just smashes the 2 button on the keyboard? That’s not balanced.

Need to get my final set of armor for my level 80 still, but this class still does the best for me at present. Love most everything about it… only a few complaints I have.

A) I can’t change range in combat… if I start with a staff then I’ll never melee and as I can’t weapon swap in combat I’ve yet to unlock any skills aside from those for the staff or trident at level 80. It makes sense that the attunement swap is the weapon swap, but being locked in just makes learning the other skills that won’t be useful in every situation a waste of time.

B) People around me never use combo fields I throw out. The auto attacks aren’t bad, but the fact I can drop a lava font that’ll continue to deal damage as I return to attacking makes me cast that anytime it’s not on CD and that’s just example 1. Why does no one else make use of the fact I always throw out combo fields?

C) Not class specific but in general it’s upsetting that ‘in combat’ speed is nerfed. I use signet of air to make up for the fact we move slower in combat than outside of it and there’s still mobs that get to move with a perma swiftness boon. Anet seems to have tried to make up for that by scripting (for example) the Risen Thralls to consistently try and attack my backside so circle strafing is good at avoiding damage… but unless they’re trying to make it easier for slow witted people I don’t get why the pace of the game has to be so slow in combat.

Any other complaints I have, have nothing to do with Ele’s at all so I’ll leave them out. Happy to see I can out damage most the other classes and looking forward to my final gear build that’ll make me a true glass cannon.

Overall, love the elementalist, the awesome spell effects add visual weight to every move. Playing one just looks awesome.

But, there is no diversity in this class, there are currently 2-3 PvP builds that allow an elementalist to survive, even then still barely contributing anything to the team. In PvE it doesn’t even matter what you build, as soon as you pull a mob you’ll know whether you can kite it or whether you’re completely boned. In WvW we are pretty much delegated to sitting on walls and spamming AoEs into a barely discernible mob. For the class with the most skills available at any point and time, those sets of skills are applicable in a disturbingly small amount of situations.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

B) People around me never use combo fields I throw out. The auto attacks aren’t bad, but the fact I can drop a lava font that’ll continue to deal damage as I return to attacking makes me cast that anytime it’s not on CD and that’s just example 1. Why does no one else make use of the fact I always throw out combo fields?

My friend runs a support staff build, I run a condition / supportish / survival build in sPvP. I find his combos very useful, dragons tooth, he drops fire / water field, then I throw my phoenix at it and earthquake into churning earth teleport. With fire that’s between 10 to 15 stacks of might affecting a churning earth.

Obviously that’s a PvP situation, but even in pve with my ranger or warrior I’ll at least use the fields for charge shields where possible, and the coordinated stomp heal. However I have noticed that people around just do their own thing and ignore the fields. Playing with someone over skype or vent is the best way to get your combos effective though.

First off, it will get worse as you progress, about level 65-70 is when I finally ran out of money going broke on armor repair and teleporting after being defeated. By level 80, I found myself with broken armor and no money or stuff to sell to even get my armor repaired. Had to flee Orr completely vulnerable.

I’m pretty much turning it into a mule and using it to as a tailor and artisan. As stubborn as I am (talking constipated mule type stubborn) I’m giving up.

What I hate? The fact our defense is as weak as a wet paper bag.
What I love? How cool the spells look.

There is very good reason for our complaints, they are all well justified. We have every right to be very unhappy with the class.

TGSlasher.1458:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

B) People around me never use combo fields I throw out. The auto attacks aren’t bad, but the fact I can drop a lava font that’ll continue to deal damage as I return to attacking makes me cast that anytime it’s not on CD and that’s just example 1. Why does no one else make use of the fact I always throw out combo fields?

My friend runs a support staff build, I run a condition / supportish / survival build in sPvP. I find his combos very useful, dragons tooth, he drops fire / water field, then I throw my phoenix at it and earthquake into churning earth teleport. With fire that’s between 10 to 15 stacks of might affecting a churning earth.

Obviously that’s a PvP situation, but even in pve with my ranger or warrior I’ll at least use the fields for charge shields where possible, and the coordinated stomp heal. However I have noticed that people around just do their own thing and ignore the fields. Playing with someone over skype or vent is the best way to get your combos effective though.

Yeah when I play with friends they tend to get that there’s almost always going to be combo fields on the mob so they play smarter and I get to see a bunch of those little “burning” “regeneration” “vulnerability” etc notifications… but running solo in the world I run across others and it almost seems like they avoid using the fields somehow.

LightningLockey.5938:

There is very good reason for our complaints, they are all well justified. We have every right to be very unhappy with the class.

No one ever said you didn’t have a right to complain.

This thread is for people to share both good and bad experiences.

I invite everyone to share and maybe Anet will get the feedback they need.

Come back when you’re 80 and tell us what you feel then if you really want to go about this thread seriously. I actually felt I did quite nice damage at low levels.

Ele starts pretty strong compaired to other classes. It’s when those other classes get up to unlocking more and more of their traits that the Ele starts to really fall behind, damage wise.

Should you take up that challenge, please do try out some different styles of builds at 80. Try the one where you try to be high defense, then discover you cannot really kill anything. Try out the high support builds while soloing (You wouldn’t pay to respec every time you wanted to step out by yourself, would you?). Please do this while keeping in mind the part where ANet told us every class would be able to fill every role. Play your own way! Goodbye Holy Trinity! Etc. Once you have an actual grasp on the situation, then you’ll be able to apprechiate the currant viewpoint.

Quite frankittenhough, I could level my Necro to level 25 and not have the slightest grasp of what the level 80 ones are complaining about.

I see your point…but can you share specific cases of where it is bad also where it is good?

Conncept.7638:

Overall, love the elementalist, the awesome spell effects add visual weight to every move. Playing one just looks awesome.

But, there is no diversity in this class, there are currently 2-3 PvP builds that allow an elementalist to survive, even then still barely contributing anything to the team. In PvE it doesn’t even matter what you build, as soon as you pull a mob you’ll know whether you can kite it or whether you’re completely boned. In WvW we are pretty much delegated to sitting on walls and spamming AoEs into a barely discernible mob. For the class with the most skills available at any point and time, those sets of skills are applicable in a disturbingly small amount of situations.

very well said.
it seems that Anet thought AOE was the only thing elementalists needed to be on par with the other classes… even though in 90% of situations, this is definitely not the case.

Reading some of the comments here, I can recommend trying an Evasive Arcana build. That will allow you to spec for defense and still deal good damage due to the 15-20 stacks of might you can get on yourself.

Try it, you’ll like it.

Hi, OP.

Ele is amazing. Anyone telling you otherwise is either bad or didn’t do their homework.

I currently roll two builds. First one is for general solo PvE. Full “Carrion” armour and jewellery set, along with carrion weapons. The set gives condition damage > power = vitality. Traits are 0/0/10/30/30. I usually run earth’s embrace for earth trait, cleansing wave, cantrip mastery, cleansing water for water traits, and elemental attunement and evasive arcana for arcane traits. For the second arcane trait, select the weapon you have equipped (windborne dagger/vigorous scepter/blasting staff).

With ~20k HP, PvE is easy peasy, you can take plenty of hits, same in small scale pvp (wvw roaming or spvp). You will be permanently dealing upwards of 1000 dps in condition damage alone (if the enemy is removing them, you’re on a much shorter cooldown), with some extra damage from all the power on your gear. D/D and S/D is great in this build, but fire staff DPS is a bit lacking, due to not enough burning effects, but in a good group that uses the fields you put down, it’s still not bad at all. The amount of healing and condition removal you can do in dungeons is great, too, thanks to water fields + evasive arcana. Rolling into a water field while attuned to water should heal for ~3k+ from the blast and evasive arcana effect alone.

The second build I use is strictly for group PvE/dynamic events and large scale WvW battles. It’s a 30/20/0/0/20 build with a full set of (lol blue) berserker gear. Traits are pretty simplistic, more damage, even more damage against people under 25%, free might stacks every fire spell you cast, blasting staff, etc. I don’t remember all of them right now.

It deals insane amounts of damage in fire with any weapon set, but is very squishy. Not that it matters, you have plebs… err non-elementalists to act as meat shield. 1200 range should mean you don’t even get shot at in zergs, and meteor shower can extend this range ever further, thanks to it’s huge aoe. Combine the range with frozen ground from water and the crippling line thingy from earth for ultimate lols.

Staff auto-attacks and lava font will crit for ~2k+, meteors will hit for 3k+, clearing any and every enemy you come across in short order. Just stand inside your team’s zerg and spam meteors and lavafonts, while autoattacking during cooldowns. Infinite kills for free. Use fire signet for more crit, mist form for escaping tight spots and arcane wave as a blast finisher for stacking even more might with your eruption+lava font combo.

These are two, pretty straightforward builds. They’re both very easy to use, and work very well in their intended roles.

Truga.5897:

Hi, OP.

Ele is amazing. Anyone telling you otherwise is either bad or didn’t do their homework.

I currently roll two builds. First one is for general solo PvE. Full “Carrion” armour and jewellery set, along with carrion weapons. The set gives condition damage > power = vitality. Traits are 0/0/10/30/30. I usually run earth’s embrace for earth trait, cleansing wave, cantrip mastery, cleansing water for water traits, and elemental attunement and evasive arcana for arcane traits. For the second arcane trait, select the weapon you have equipped (windborne dagger/vigorous scepter/blasting staff).

With ~20k HP, PvE is easy peasy, you can take plenty of hits, same in small scale pvp (wvw roaming or spvp). You will be permanently dealing upwards of 1000 dps in condition damage alone (if the enemy is removing them, you’re on a much shorter cooldown), with some extra damage from all the power on your gear. D/D and S/D is great in this build, but fire staff DPS is a bit lacking, due to not enough burning effects, but in a good group that uses the fields you put down, it’s still not bad at all. The amount of healing and condition removal you can do in dungeons is great, too, thanks to water fields + evasive arcana. Rolling into a water field while attuned to water should heal for ~3k+ from the blast and evasive arcana effect alone.

The second build I use is strictly for group PvE/dynamic events and large scale WvW battles. It’s a 30/20/0/0/20 build with a full set of (lol blue) berserker gear. Traits are pretty simplistic, more damage, even more damage against people under 25%, free might stacks every fire spell you cast, blasting staff, etc. I don’t remember all of them right now.

It deals insane amounts of damage in fire with any weapon set, but is very squishy. Not that it matters, you have plebs… err non-elementalists to act as meat shield. 1200 range should mean you don’t even get shot at in zergs, and meteor shower can extend this range ever further, thanks to it’s huge aoe. Combine the range with frozen ground from water and the crippling line thingy from earth for ultimate lols.

Staff auto-attacks and lava font will crit for ~2k+, meteors will hit for 3k+, clearing any and every enemy you come across in short order. Just stand inside your team’s zerg and spam meteors and lavafonts, while autoattacking during cooldowns. Infinite kills for free. Use fire signet for more crit, mist form for escaping tight spots and arcane wave as a blast finisher for stacking even more might with your eruption+lava font combo.

These are two, pretty straightforward builds. They’re both very easy to use, and work very well in their intended roles.

Thank you for this awesome and constructive post. It really helps when people like you take the time to write something like this.

In WvW with your Staff build, do you usually get a lot of kills (meaning loot bags) cause I have been having trouble getting them without a siege weapon.

I just hit 30 and placed my first 10 into water, and second 10 into Earth which gave me more hp and toughness and have been trying to mix my gear between power/vit/tough and I run scepter/dag.

Do you see anything wrong with scaling my gear like that stat wise?

Chris.7653:

Hey all,

I have seen A LOT of complaining about elementalists on the forums…and by a lot I mean pretty much every post.

So I tried it out, right now I am level 25. Yeah I started off a little rocky but right now I have taking on 3-4 things 2 levels above me with little to no problems.

The only thing that I could say is annoying is the amount of effort needed to take mobs on compared to other classes, but I don’t really feel as kittened as everyone makes it out to be.

So lets here from everyone, both good and bad.

List something you hate, or list something you love….good experiences and bad experiences.

If you just come in here and go “OMG THEY SUCK” and don’t back it up, no one will take you seriously, so please think about what you type.

Thanks!

Everyone can kite PvE mobs, its another deal to be just plain worse than most classes at just about anything. WvW and SPvP wise its a nightmare.

Rezo could you expand on what makes it a nightmare?

Is it our skills or because we die fast?

If it is the die fast part, would stacking vitality and toughness work? Or is the class more of glass cannon or no damage.

If it’s the skills what do you think is wrong with them?

I am not gonna lie when I first made my Elementalist I shelved it quick cause at the time I was not used to the whole “changing up elements on the fly” and stuff, funny enough it took me playing my Mesmer to get the whole idea behind changing up weapons and stuff. From this point on my Mesmer has been sitting at level 17.

I read a few post on the forums with people saying it would take time till I got a few skills under my belt. Then one day after dying a ton of time I hit level 25, picked up my new trait skills, then BAM! Something happen, it just all clicked, I could take a hit and dish it out, and it was GREAT! Elemenalist for life!!

Then something happen again as I got near 55, I was still dishing it out, but it felt like I had to put so much work into it. Now I have seen that said a lot but no one really goes over what it means. When you hear someone post how they need to use 10 skills to kill a mob, what they really mean is they needed to use 5 skills to not get hit, or take less damage, get out the way, or set up for a shield. The other 5 skills got the kills. This isn’t or should I say wasn’t a big till to me at first till I started running into mobs that seem to do nothing more then to kick you down on the ground. This makes it a joke most of the time to even get an attack off when I spend 95% of the time rolling out the way, only to be out of energy and now spend half my power just trying not to get hit as hard.

This is even made more painful when another class runs out to pull your bacon out the fire with one auto attack that hits like 5 guys in one go, and another skill or two that really drops the mobs before the fight even starts. Like others I find this painful, but not cause some other person can do it, easier, but cause I KNOW I can do that too…if I didn’t have to play super flip out the way and try not to get kicked to the other side of the map time.

I can’t say out class so much sucks or is under power, as much as it is a game of, keep everything perfect, mess up one timing, one skill, doge at the wrong time and eat dirt. Yeah I get the players that like this cause of the challenge, but it feels like that very challenge is one 100% and for some of us that challenge becomes a being put on the edge 100% of the time.

I don’t hate the class, gonna keep playing it, heck my friend text me this morning asking how I felt about the changes? I told her the really didn’t bug me at all, and I get why people are made, and trust me it has NOTHING to do with a nerf to a water skill, as if everyone is in the water 90% of the time!

I don’t want the class to be easy, buy going into every fight using 10 skills to stay alive and 10 more to get the job done is a bit much, I can only picture my Elementalist sitting down after every fight to have a smoke break!

Oh well I am sitting on 61 right now with a new set or two of armors to try and a new build in mind, sorry for the long post!

You lack defensive reliable skills and a decent downed state.
WIth staff all is good till level 70 where you begin slightly to notice even in PVE solo there are serious issues.

I.E. you probably learn how to control enemies, but you can control them for a limted time, afetr wich if they didn t die already you risk to find yourself stuck without utility/cntrol spell…And due to the low dmg output it happens most of times.

At 80 it becomes a nightmare.

Also if you need to slow opponents with water and then switch to deal some dmg you are no more able to access your regen spells for some time (and i have 20 arcana).

With dagger it seems lot better, because you are able to escape fast controlling your movement rather than opponents (and you have access to some good knockdown spells also), but then you probably risk to be oneshot in dungeon :| and by larger bosses.

At lvl 25 you cannot probably understand what isn t working…..i found the spike in difficulty at around 70 when i really had to put down staff because i run out of spell while opponent was still at 60% life.

Kills in wvw with the staff build depend a lot on luck and whether the enemy commits to a battle or not. For example, yesterday I only got like 30 kills in a whole hour of play, but 20 of those were in the course of a minute, when the enemy actually committed to attacking the gate (and thus ate the full meteor storm+lava font they were standing in, and all of the ones that didn’t roll out in the first 5 seconds died).

Ed: When battles happen on choke points (bridges/valleys), you’ll also be able to get loads of kills if you time your meteors correctly.

FatalQuin pretty much sums up the problem with the Elementalist. When comparing us to other classes, what they can get done in 10 skills, takes us a good 20 skills to complete. Once you get to Orr, it is terrible for an Elementalist. The mobs seem to hit like a truck and run so fast that kiting is nearly impossible. It’s so frustrating watching a warrior run through a group of mobs and kill three mobs and is sitting at 70% health when I’m sitting at 40% health after just soloing a single target. We get so little reward out of so much effort.

Saturday night, I was one shot by a thief in WvW for 14k while wearing full epic gear. Granted, I am specced glass cannon, but I have NEVER dealt 14k damage on a single attack.

I killed a group of 3 people as they were trying to rez someone with a meteor shower/lava font and everyone in TS was laughing hysterically because the “idiots” were too stupid to move. I’m glad our only saving grace (AOE attacks) work on the “idiots” on the other servers.

From the GW2 website about the elementalist: “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.”

The key part of that is the massive damage in a single attack. Outside of my meteor shower (which kills “idiots” only apparently), it doesn’t exist. This class is quickly becoming a joke in the community and the failure of ANet to even address or look at it is becoming quite pathetic. I shouldn’t have to be a pro at this class to take down an average/below average player playing another class. I shouldn’t have to be a pro at this class to duo a pair of mobs in Orr.

Truga.5897:

Kills in wvw with the staff build depend a lot on luck and whether the enemy commits to a battle or not. For example, yesterday I only got like 30 kills in a whole hour of play, but 20 of those were in the course of a minute, when the enemy actually committed to attacking the gate (and thus ate the full meteor storm+lava font they were standing in, and all of the ones that didn’t roll out in the first 5 seconds died).

Ed: When battles happen on choke points (bridges/valleys), you’ll also be able to get loads of kills if you time your meteors correctly.

Pretty much. Staff is great in WvWvW when you’re fighting idiots that stand in fire. Any enemy with two neurons to rub together, however, will see the big lava font on the ground or meteors raining from the sky, dodge roll back out, and laugh at your cooldowns.

I’m sorry, but builds who’s strategy boil down to “stand in your zerg and hope the enemy is too stupid to target you” aren’t ‘amazing’. They’re trash.

Well, you show me a build that works better when in a zerg then. Oh wait, yes. Yes, you can’t, because DPS is the only thing you should be doing in a zerg, and DPS is the one thing an ele does better than any other class when it comes to AoE.

Not to mention if you time your lightning field correctly, they won’t even be able to roll out of your lava font in time, much less the meteor storm, unless they use their stun breaks… Which means they won’t have them cooled down on the next push.

Oh and, meteor storm has a 24 second cooldown and lasts 15 seconds. That is a 62.5% uptime. Lava font is even better at 66%. What cooldowns are we talking about again? Oh yeah, just enough cooldown for the enemy to try and use their battering rams on the gate again, this time with their escape mechanisms on CD.

Truga.5897:

Well, you show me a build that works better when in a zerg then. Oh wait, yes. Yes, you can’t, because DPS is the only thing you should be doing in a zerg, and DPS is the one thing an ele does better than any other class when it comes to AoE.

Not to mention if you time your lightning field correctly, they won’t even be able to roll out of your lava font in time, much less the meteor storm, unless they use their stun breaks… Which means they won’t have them cooled down on the next push.

Oh and, meteor storm has a 24 second cooldown and lasts 15 seconds. That is a 62.5% uptime. Lava font is even better at 66%. What cooldowns are we talking about again? Oh yeah, just enough cooldown for the enemy to try and use their battering rams on the gate again, this time with their escape mechanisms on CD.

And those people hang back, letting their escapes recharge, while the folks that didn’t use their escapes come up to take their place. Most stun breaks have less than 60 seconds of recharge. This is all assuming, of course, that you actually have position to channel the full cast of meteor shower from a spot that has LoS on the enemy side of the gate and that they’re not doing the smart thing and spamming that part of your walls with arrow carts and other siege.

Again, it works great if you’re fighting idiots. Not so much when they actually have a clue what they’re doing.

Truga.5897:

Not to mention if you time your lightning field correctly, they won’t even be able to roll out of your lava font in time, much less the meteor storm, unless they use their stun breaks… Which means they won’t have them cooled down on the next push.

It’s only a 2 second stun. Enough time for 1, maybe 2 ticks of lava font and possibly one tick of the meteor shower. Unless we are dealing on an idiot who just stands there.

Truga.5897:

Oh and, meteor storm has a 24 second cooldown and lasts 15 seconds. That is a 62.5% uptime. Lava font is even better at 66%. What cooldowns are we talking about again? Oh yeah, just enough cooldown for the enemy to try and use their battering rams on the gate again, this time with their escape mechanisms on CD.

What idiots are going to stand in a lava font or meteor storm for that long? Wow, what great up time, except for the fact everyone moves away from it and really only gets one or two ticks of damage out of it. It’s real purpose comes in choke points where people are terrified to run through it when you have 3-4 eles pouring it on the point. That and seige. We excel at hitting stationary objects. Great, our class has been pigeonholed into killing seige and AOEing choke points. May as well give us 4 skills: Meteor Shower, Lava Font, Static Field and our heal.

Siege weapons don’t ever work in actual sieges from my experience, if the people you’re fighting are at least half competent. They simply don’t have the HP to survive anything, and they’re immobile so they can’t dodge the AoE the enemy is spamming at you. The most I ever got out of a siege weapon/arrow cart was when defending, not attacking. And even then, you need a spotter, because if you’re somewhere where you can see the enemy they’ll just destroy you first. Which makes arrow carts pretty bad in a lot of cases, because they’re harder to hide well because you need LoS.

Fortunately, most enemies are dumb, and don’t use siege weapons when defending, and arrow carts are a joke 95% of the time. One meteor storm with enough might stack will take down both the operator and the arrow cart by the time you’ve finished channeling it, if they’re just sitting there on the wall, trying to kill you. The fact that you can’t move arrow carts really hurts, otherwise I’d probably bother using them more.

Oh, and, I can cast meteor showers without even a LoS to the enemy because it’s AoE is so huge with blasting staff trait. It’ll be a bit (say 10-20%) less effective but with 3k+ per meteor, I’m really not bothered.

Burl.9567:

What idiots are going to stand in a lava font or meteor storm for that long? Wow, what great up time, except for the fact everyone moves away from it and really only gets one or two ticks of damage out of it.

Cool, that means they’re not actually fighting 80% of the time but just sitting there watching my AoEs go by, hogging spots for people in queue that might actually do something. Mission accomplished. See my point about actually committing to combat a few posts up.

Truga.5897:

Siege weapons don’t ever work in actual sieges from my experience, if the people you’re fighting are at least half competent. They simply don’t have the HP to survive anything, and they’re immobile so they can’t dodge the AoE the enemy is spamming at you. The most I ever got out of a siege weapon/arrow cart was when defending, not attacking. And even then, you need a spotter, because if you’re somewhere where you can see the enemy they’ll just destroy you first. Which makes arrow carts pretty bad in a lot of cases, because they’re harder to hide well because you need LoS.

Fortunately, most enemies are dumb, and don’t use siege weapons when defending, and arrow carts are a joke 95% of the time. One meteor storm with enough might stack will take down both the operator and the arrow cart by the time you’ve finished channeling it, if they’re just sitting there on the wall, trying to kill you. The fact that you can’t move arrow carts really hurts, otherwise I’d probably bother using them more.

Oh, and, I can cast meteor showers without even a LoS to the enemy because it’s AoE is so huge with blasting staff trait. It’ll be a bit (say 10-20%) less effective but with 3k+ per meteor, I’m really not bothered.

What are you even talking about? Why are we on this tangent on the importance of siege all the sudden? Do you even WvW at all? I’m not going to go into the importance of siege when attacking/defending, but you clearly aren’t on a top tier server if you aren’t understanding the importance/impact of siege in this game.

In the rest of your post, you basically made my point. Elementalists are pigeon holed into focusing down siege and idiots who stay in one spot. Fix the broken class already.

Truga.5897:

Burl.9567:

What idiots are going to stand in a lava font or meteor storm for that long? Wow, what great up time, except for the fact everyone moves away from it and really only gets one or two ticks of damage out of it.

Cool, that means they’re not actually fighting 80% of the time but just sitting there watching my AoEs go by, hogging spots for people in queue that might actually do something. Mission accomplished. See my point about actually committing to combat a few posts up.

You aren’t getting it. There aren’t many idiots out there playing. This works on maybe 5% of the population. So again, we are pigeonholed into taking out siege and facerolling idiots (the 5%).

You obviously haven’t read any of my previous posts. This is a build that I use for zergs and zergs only. You know, for the times when all you need to do is dish out DPS, because you aren’t getting hit anyway. And for those times, an all out dps/zerker build works best, no matter what others try to tell you. If you get focused by 50, you will die, 10k hp or 100k hp doesn’t even matter. Might as well bring something to the table that will actually help, like, say, huge aoe damage, chills and cripples that will kill every kitten and their dog around without as much as a sweat, while lolling at the enemies trying to build siege weapons, when all you have to do is drop one or two spells to take them down. All this while the plebs… err, meatshield.. err, other classes try to act relevant.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

TGSlasher.1458:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

B) People around me never use combo fields I throw out. The auto attacks aren’t bad, but the fact I can drop a lava font that’ll continue to deal damage as I return to attacking makes me cast that anytime it’s not on CD and that’s just example 1. Why does no one else make use of the fact I always throw out combo fields?

My friend runs a support staff build, I run a condition / supportish / survival build in sPvP. I find his combos very useful, dragons tooth, he drops fire / water field, then I throw my phoenix at it and earthquake into churning earth teleport. With fire that’s between 10 to 15 stacks of might affecting a churning earth.

Obviously that’s a PvP situation, but even in pve with my ranger or warrior I’ll at least use the fields for charge shields where possible, and the coordinated stomp heal. However I have noticed that people around just do their own thing and ignore the fields. Playing with someone over skype or vent is the best way to get your combos effective though.

Yeah when I play with friends they tend to get that there’s almost always going to be combo fields on the mob so they play smarter and I get to see a bunch of those little “burning” “regeneration” “vulnerability” etc notifications… but running solo in the world I run across others and it almost seems like they avoid using the fields somehow.

For this reason, I always place my fields so everyone else will use them… weather they mean to or not.

What I love: The huge options of combo fields, the great utility of our conditions, the frost bow, pre-nerf glyph of renewal.

What I hate: The fact that every other class has more utility in dungeons and can still do much more of both burst and sustained damage.

As much as I hate to say it, we’re pitiful. We COULD be good, we could be great. With some numbers tweaks we’d still be the hardest class to play as far as manual dexterity goes, but we’d actually get rewarded for it. Our damage is abysmal, our control is so-so, our healing is nothing to write home about, our survivability ranges from non-existent to meh…

My guild runs dungeons with me because they know I learn, adapt, and communicate over ventrillo, not because my ele had anything special to bring to the party (the one exception being AC where the frost bow murders burrows, but hey the way things are going next week they’ll nerf that skill so you cant give one to your allies, cant have the elementalist being useful at anything now can we?)

Christ, the current state of our class is pathetic and AN is either blissfully unaware or they simply dont give a f.

Truga.5897:

You obviously haven’t read any of my previous posts. This is a build that I use for zergs and zergs only. You know, for the times when all you need to do is dish out DPS, because you aren’t getting hit anyway. And for those times, an all out dps/zerker build works best, no matter what others try to tell you. If you get focused by 50, you will die, 10k hp or 100k hp doesn’t even matter. Might as well bring something to the table that will actually help, like, say, huge aoe damage, chills and cripples that will kill every kitten and their dog around without as much as a sweat, while lolling at the enemies trying to build siege weapons, when all you have to do is drop one or two spells to take them down. All this while the plebs… err, meatshield.. err, other classes try to act relevant.

I use the same exact DPS build in epic zerker gear. The build is fine for choke points and taking out siege, but that is it. I can drop down a meteor storm on the enemy zerg and maybe get two ticks of damage out on someone but that is it. I get tons of bags, but it is more because I’m tagging tons of people while everyone else is doing the true work. I do enough of that in PvE when farming already. Frankly, I’m not OK with that. I want this class to carry it’s weight not be carried by everyone else. I want to have more of a role outside of casting a meteor storm and lava font on a choke point/siege. Most of all, when people group up, I want them to say, “Crap, we need an ele. Let’s grab one.” rather than “Crap, we have an ele, lets get someone else.” It is quickly becoming the second and not the first.

Ele was fun while leveling. I enjoyed being able to cycle through a bunch of abilities to kill an enemy. I felt clever when i figured out all of the might-stack build combos (with cantrips and sigil of battle, S/D can hit 25 stacks without help). But then I made some other classes and looked at their stats and capabilities.

I do not think my build is optimized, but if I unleash the full combo of my 25might build (using glass cannon gear) on an opponent in pvp it will not be enough to finish them. Then I have to strafe around trying to hit autoattacks for the next 30 seconds for my long cooldowns to line up again, 50 if i want the cantrips back for stability/might/teleport.

I compared this to my ranger. In pve, I send my pet out and aggro 2 or 3 mobs and use mainhand axe (bouncing attack on 1 and cone bleed on 2). I just stand still and wait while my autoattacks kill the enemy, then move on. In pvp i use shortbow and spam 1k crits from crossfire, with a swiftness and cripple to help kite. It is not as much fun, but in my experience it is a lot more effective.

I think this can all be summed up by saying that the ele skills 2-5 are the source of his damage, and 1 is filler. But other classes (ranger in particular, i also felt this way with guardian and warrior) have damage on #1, with 2-5 as utility to make sure that damage lands. This setup makes ele more fun, in my opinion, but less effective. Once we drop our long-cd 2-5 spells we have to sit and wait. (this part really only applies to scepter and dagger ele, since staff has pretty short cd’s for the primary damage sources)

wow this post got out of hand…. tldr; i think elementalist #1 skills are not a big enough part of their damage, but that is part of what makes them fun.

I don’t really mind people saying “crap, we have an ele, let’s get someone else”. Just means we’ll get buffed sooner. Unless, of course, Anet has a clue (which apparently it does, they’ve actually nerfed some stuff).

I don’t really share much of your experience though. Yes, meteor storm and is great for choke points. It’s also even more awesome when flanking, when “backstabbing” and when defending. Basically at any time you can channel the entire cast time before people figure out where you are, and what’s going on. Couple it with the AoE chill from water and the lightning field and it’s really hard to avoid getting hit for at least 10k of damage. The fact that our autoattack works at like 2000 or something range when on a higher ground and crits for 2-3k makes finishing off people that got hit bad by the snares+storm a real pie, too.

Though, I do have to say running my usual build (i.e. carrion) in WvW and just owning everything with S/D or D/D is more fun. Since I’m mobile, I don’t care about zergs, I can just run away and move onto other things to capture, rather than be a part of the zerg and keep doing the same thing MS thing over and over.

1 – Downed state is the worst in the game.

2 – Auto attack damage, pets do more auto attack damage than ele attacks.

3 – One viable elite (the pet) as the others are a painted ‘kick me’ sign

4 – Another patch, another nerf (been this way since launch)

5 – One single viable build, where every other class has multiple

6 – More work for less payout than any other profession

7 – Too many worthless traits and utilities

If you argue that elementalists don’t suck pewter cowkitten sacks, you don’t main an ele, or you haven’t tried other classes. Ignorance is bliss, but doesn’t make your view the truth.

Playing S/D condition spec in Arah, TA, SE, CoE explorables. While it’s true that condition damage does suck in massive groups/world events, it’s SO good in dungeons where (in a solid group) I’m maintaining 10-15 stacks of might 24/7, my 15-20 stacks of bleed hit for 160-170 each. Being able to solo-farm all of Orr, taking down champions solo (yes it takes a while, but condition spec at least lets you DO it by maintaining constant damage when you’re kiting.) I love my ele, and wouldn’t trade her for the world.

What do I love?

Glyph of Storms. Probably next in line for a nerf, Glyph of Storms is completely amazing in PVE. It blinds and reapplies for about 15 seconds in Earth and does very respectable damage in other elements. Brilliant, skill, great fun to use and really feels it earns the long cooldown it has.

Ease of removing conditions when specced in water. As an S/D it feels great to blow off a condition just by swapping to water, and having access to a second condition removal spell on 5.

What do I hate?

We have abilities with longer animations than some films. It really sucks to fire off some attacks, your opponent kills you, wanders way slowly and then an attack lands in the space where he was. If a crippled enemy can just walk out of the blast of an attack then that attack should be bloody spectacular, not “eh, alright”

Our downed state. We just don’t have one. Doesn’t seem quite right somehow.

Our underwater combat. We just don’t have one. Doesn’t seem right somehow.