Guild Wars 2

I wanted to share the perspective on the Elementalist as it compares to other classes. I had a conversation with another player who was playing on another profession and he said Elementalists were quite good but that you have to be “good” to use them. I couldn’t help but think that this reminded me of using a spoon for a weapon. Sure, you could kill someone with a spoon, but wouldn’t a knife be easier? When comparing weapons like apples to apples, then some choices are far easier and preferable even though anything will get the job done with enough practice.

That being said, I have played all classes in this game. I do not favor any above the other nor do I “main” any professions and slander the rest. After spending considerable time with all of the classes I was able to average close to 10 kills per game with every class except the elementalist. The weak point was definitely soloing. On games where I was able to sit back with a staff and cast I could easily rack up kills however when put in the thick of it versus seasoned players this did not happen. It did however happen with at least 3 other professions – even as a brand new player I could achieve this.

There seems to lie a problem with the analytical ability of many players and those who are responsible for the development of this character. If you play tournaments or random PvP you will quickly see a deficiency of Elementalists and among those only an extremely small percentage will yield a top score. What this means is that leveling up PvP is easier on another profession. The other obvious sign is that they lack the good survival skills that other professions have. While many professions have their merits, each of which has a strength…most of them can do everything the Elementalist can do…only better.

Even upon browsing the forums there are considerably more topics relating to struggling players using this profession. Just because you CAN get first place or solo a few bad players doesn’t mean that apples to apples it is comparable. In most cases a non-seasoned player might vs an Elementalist and feel that they are overpowered just because he was killed. Does this mean the profession is overpowered or simply that he was not seasoned. So we have to compare all things equal, and if you have played every profession there would be no reason to account for the lack of this profession in many games except for the fact that they are weaker/harder to master/spoon vs knife.

I see an overwhelming amount of thieves, warriors and quite a few mesmers. I see less rangers and necromancers most times. The interesting thing is that this is almost exactly parallel to the amount of kills I would get soloing with each which tells me that the game is set up like rock-paper-scissors. Can anyone tell me why we should even entertain this profession when the other classes are so much easier to gain pvp scores with? This is just my personal experience but I find warrior and thief to be the easiest to dominate with.

If you have a great build where you can down an opponent in 3 skills similar to the other professions, I would be interested in knowing traits, weapons, and skills used to achieve this high damage output on the Elementalist.

Lastly, if they are so viable, why are there so few in number? Every MMORPG I have played I have only seen classes not played because they were a joke in comparison. I have never seen a profession underplayed because it was “too powerful”. Most players actually gravitate towards the easiest, most powerful class so if we were to record 10 matches and list the most commonly seen professions I think it would be no surprise which were the “most powerful” and “most popular” due to the high damage.

P.S. – As I said, I have had good games with the Elementalist, however it seems no comparison to many of the other classes, except as a glass cannon if you stack runes just right…

Reveille.8397:

I couldn’t help but think that this reminded me of using a spoon for a weapon. Sure, you could kill someone with a spoon, but wouldn’t a knife be easier?

Elementalists….The Ginosaji of the gw2 sandbox.

Thanks for your incite. But I’ve read this before the amount of people on the forums who say “Why choose ele when i can choose”… So on and so on, is way to much. This needs to stop we get the point lol.

“Every MMORPG I have played I have only seen classes not played because they were a joke in comparison.”

You got it.

It’s the core mechanics of the game that make balancing impossible, even for the DEVs. The current state of balance resembles alpha-state of a game. Drastically different base-stats, no differentiation between magical and physical damage, no pure rangers, no pure melees, no healers, no supporters – no specific roles for classes, no need to time spells right, too low CD on strong spells, no reasonable CDs on defensive spells, overpowered and unbalanced traits and pet-AI, downed-state, heal on every class, no resources for spells (mana, rage, energy, etc) leading to permanent spamming, …. the list goes on and on. It seems like they roled a dice when defining base-stats instead of play-testing classes and defining their stats and spells right down to the detail correct to a single HP or percent of damage.

It’s a pity that class-balance and -design is so bad in this game since overall GW2 is a pretty solid game with a beautiful environment. They should’ve invested more time to make classes a bit more complex and define their roles. It seems that class-designers where too lazy doing a good job. Where’s the point in different classes when every class can do anything anyway? Maybe they kept it simple to adress more casual players that regard spamming AoEs in WvW as competetive PvP. Maybe they wanted to try something new or revolutionize class-design but in my opinion they failed. Classes aren’t even balanced in PvE – you don’t need a DPS-meter to recognise that.