Guild Wars 2

Ive played several classes to 80 now, heavy, medium and light classes.
And the Elementalist is a freaking JOKE in PVE.

Is this crap gonna get fixed or can i delete this joke class and free up a char slot ?

Go punch a wall if you are so mad.

I’m having fun with my Ele.

OP, you’re doing it wrong.

All there is to it.

F this or F1-4. Your call.

Some of us actually enjoy playing our ele. Go kick rocks somewhere else.

Delete it, FAST.

PS Nobody enjoys Elementalist… truth just hurts them too much so they want to troll you

My Ele is my main and I looove the class. It just takes a certain taste for the ele class.

What some may love is not right for others. Ijs if this class is not right for you then don’t play it and pick a class you like.

The elementalist is my main, but I agree with the OP that it needs some serious work. Most of the other toons are SO much easier to play. They made eles too squishy with a nerf they did during beta and never buffed us back up. I’m sure certain specs are tougher, which is fine, but I’m specc’d as much into healing as I can for support in dungeons/pvp. Many of the medium armor profs have much more dps than the ele along with much higher survivability.

Ele is harder to play. It is a little underpowered, but not that bad. But if you want to faceroll mobs it is definitely a bad class to pick. For that pick warrior or guardian or something like that where you can win with 3 button presses.

You mad coz you bad?

I feel your pain brah, I feel your pain.

Now try Elementalist sPvp…

yeaaah, go to SPvP
Hihihihhihi ^^

Absolutely love my Elementalist. Easily my favorite class.
Once i decided to go away from the traditional “glass cannon” style of spec/stats, it really opened my eyes.
Spec my points into earth, arcane, and water. Throw on some toughness/vitality and now it’s incredibly hard for things to kill me.

I spent last night sitting on points in SPvP and laughed as it took 2-3 guys to take me down. (Though there was a ranger that blew my mind with the amount of damage he kicked out 1v1 haha)

To each his own. Play what class you have fun with I say.

@ Icarium
You said “I spent last night sitting on points in SPvP and laughed as it took 2-3 guys to take me down. (Though there was a ranger that blew my mind with the amount of damage he kicked out 1v1 haha)”

I bet they were laughing at you too, with your 500dmg hits at best! Did you actually kill anyone with those specs? Or you were just standing there testing on how many hits you will be killed? “Yes! It took 8 hits to kill me now, instead of 2! I am ninja” LOL

Elementalist is fine in PvE, where it is struggling is PvP. If you’re failing at PvE on an Ele you’re doing it wrong.

I bet they were laughing at you too, with your 500dmg hits at best! Did you actually kill anyone with those specs? Or you were just standing there testing on how many hits you will be killed? “Yes! It took 8 hits to kill me now, instead of 2! I am ninja” LOL

Perhaps he had something like this in mind – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MOy7ocxa40&feature=plcp

Ele is terrible in PvE, playable, but terrible. Even engineer is easier to play. Bad survivability, terrible auto-attack, very long cooldowns (40 sec vs warrior’s 8 sec), terrible downed state, etc, etc. I like it’s play style, but I’ve deleted second char (to much for my nerves). And 5 cent for guy, who tell everyone to build ele full earth\water:
I choose cloth armor char not for playing him as tank.

I’ve only played my Ele to 70, but have pvpd a decent amount.
I enjoy the Elementalist the most out of all the other classes because of its degree of difficulty, but its extremely frustrating knowing that every other class is simply doing better than me without putting forth even 1/4th the amount of effort I put in.
I made a thief yesterday for giggles and went straight into pvp without even understanding its skills and got to the top of the score list multiple times by just zerging everything I see.

Ele can do the job in pve, but they need too much hard work to accomplish it! This is a serious issue of imbalance and anyone that refuses to admit it, must be blind or enjoy masochism. Hands down. Seriously guys, give me 1 good reason why someone has to put so much effort to kill a simple mob, while he can choose the reasonable way out with another class? Not easy—reasonable! Just because he want to be proud of the hard work? Give me one reason pls!

By himself yeah.
But an ele outclasses probably everyone except maybe a guardian in PvE parties.
5 fire fields, on 3 weapon types, all of which last for a pretty long time. I can give my entire team 9 stacks of might, fury, and protection within ~5 seconds of the fight starting. That’s a fairly large amount of extra damage (say we’re in an SE run so we’re 65, that’s 29 power per stack, or 261 additional power, not exactly chump change)

I keep trying to start an ele but cannot get past the bad auto-attack.

I often stop to watch eles in pve with my other toons to see how they deal with it and it always seems to reinforce the problem.

@ Literatii (does anyone know how to fix not being able to quote? I swear, half the time I look at a thread I cant quote anyone…)

The difference is ele’s have 20 skills, so our auto attacks arent always needed. AS for practical ones, the D/D fire or earth are pretty good, and the water one is great for when you need that extra range and party support.

Roll a Necro and Ranger and level them up like I did.
Then come tell how you find your Ele 80 compared to them.

My Warrior can solo ome of the Norm stories where there are 6 mobs at the same time. Later boss appeared and summon 2 more adds, most of them ranged. If I have been playing my ele, I think I would have quit. It was challenging, but I actually defeated all of them without having to restart from checkpoint. Amazing!!!

I can easily kill 6 opponent in a row in PvE (yet i m just 65)….
And many ppl claim this….
The problem is i can do that only on passive opponent, if i get attacked by surprise by more than 1 (see story for example) i really have to struggle to stay alive, all tactics are replaced from “try to not die first” thing that require lot of time and lot of skills cancelling your dmg output because you need the attunement dance to stay alive….

That means you cannot explore alone caves or any place with high respawn rate.

Also positioning and recharge before starting ANY fight makes the ele not suited for solo PvE

In parties instead he is too slow against normal enemies and effective but too squishy in dungeons…
It shines in events btw

I made Elementalist my main character because it was my main in Guildwars 1. I would say that I do feel weak at times when theirs a warrior or gaurdian around me. Once I hit 80 I crafted every set and spent a few days just respecting and trying out different specs that fit the gear set. If you go glass-cannon you die almost instantly, I even built my self in cantrips to boost my survivability but its just useless. You do TO LITTLE damage while dieing in a few hits. I must of respect atleast 50+ times..I’ve finally found a spec that I am happy with, thought I wouldnt say its the strongest. I consider myself being able to put out decent damage, but consistently. I wear full exotic Knight’s/Valkyrie gear/jewelry. I’m basically running 2500 armor, 39% crit/45crit damage, 16k hp, and 3400 attack. I decided conditions are just pointless for PvE while the max stack is only 25 on one mob, while, I think, every class has condition applying skills? I’d rather not put time and money into condition gear when I have to wait my turn to apply conditions on a target. Back on subject, ele is not the best choice. Every time I see a guardian that knows half of what there doing, I say to myself “Whens that nerf coming, or wheres my buff?”.

DoM

Every time I see a guardian that knows half of what there doing, I say to myself “Whens that nerf coming, or wheres my buff?”.

The most logic approach would be to tone down the 2 shot => dead classes, in order to finally create one MMO where all the classes need tactical, planned gameplay and where you lose because outplayed and not outclassed.

It’s going to be a rough ride though, because this would require a mass nerf on most classes and it’d be quite unpopular.

I’m (as per usual it seems) in the minority. ‘Cause I actually like to play my Elementalist, granted I’m only in the mid 30’s, so havent seen late game content yet.
My playstyle ( my friends would say) is a bit ‘Zerging’, but I dont die to much, it happens but not so much I get frustrated ;-) (ah well from time to time in special areas it can ;-))
I use Dual Daggers, Fire all the way mostly. And almost all of my opponents seem to ‘melt’ before they can kill me. Even 3 or 4 opponents at a time.
So to be honest I’ve kinda dreaded and waited for the Nerfbat to hit the Elementalist class.
Granted that the warrior Proffesions with their heavy armor and stuff probably can survive longer, and be more reckless and stuff. But isnt that to be expected? I mean Caaam oon you did seriously not expect a Cloth wearing, handwaving, ‘weakling’ would be able to tumble around like an “Ox in a chinastore”…
Elementalist is a Magetype toon, and should be played with a touch of class and intelligence. Not bruteforcing or ‘Zerging’ (even though I’m doing that at times, not above that ;-)).
Respawn rates can be annoying someplaces aye, but time it right and you can do it. Maybe not by killing your way in and running out, you might have to wait and kill your way out again (but hey double xp and loot chances ;-)).
Not all classes (Proffesions here) are created equal, thank AN for that. Would be seriously sad to have 1 Proffesion and nothing to toy around with.

At the moment only Proffesion I havent tried is the Ranger. And the only Proffesion that I’ve not fallen for is Warrior (not sure why, but it didnt ‘feel right’). And yeah my Guard is wading through content that I have to play more ‘stealthely’ through with other classes. But isnt that what you could expect from a heavy, brawny ‘dude’?

Just my tidbit of ‘wisdom’, gleaned this past fortnight.

Actually I tank on my elemental so maybe you should try to research builds and keep playing the class until you find the best way to play it. It is not a weak class at all but it takes time to learn and is more complex and that’s why I enjoy it.

All the classes can’t be the same or the game would be boring.

Icarium.1308:

Absolutely love my Elementalist. Easily my favorite class.
Once i decided to go away from the traditional “glass cannon” style of spec/stats, it really opened my eyes.
Spec my points into earth, arcane, and water. Throw on some toughness/vitality and now it’s incredibly hard for things to kill me.

I spent last night sitting on points in SPvP and laughed as it took 2-3 guys to take me down. (Though there was a ranger that blew my mind with the amount of damage he kicked out 1v1 haha)

To each his own. Play what class you have fun with I say.

Agree Icarium! I have insane survivabilty and do constant dps and literally chase people in pvp.
I use an earth/water build with 15 points in fire with the scepter and focus for pvp and tanking and I can keep mobs away in earth with my staff. Earth atunement is where it’s at and I just keep switching atunements when using a staff.

Drew.1865:

Earth atunement is where it’s at and I just keep switching atunements when using a staff.

This imo is where Eles need a review. Earth attunement shold NOT be “where it’s at”, it should be one of four free choices of risk / reward.

Instead, be earth or die seems the mantra for us. I really really wanted to go fire + air and have high risk for high reward but that just does not happen. Fire + air give some better numbers, but not noticeable enough to justify the vertical drop in survivability.

Vareah is correct. I played fire+air but the damage isn’t good enough for the amount you give up in survival. I have 0 stats in earth though. I do not use earth, I hate earth, I hate conditions. I cant stand sitting there on a boss having only 1/4 of my conditions applying on the target. I went fire with 20 arcana and I switch between water and air depending on what I’m going to do. All my gear is power>toughness>precision=crit damage = vita. Meaning I’m basically half Knight’s and half Valkyrie. I’m most pleased with this. Until more insight can be shed on the elementalist class, I will play like this. Doing good damage, taking good amount of damage, rage free.

Drew.1865:

Agree Icarium! I have insane survivabilty and do constant dps and literally chase people in pvp.
I use an earth/water build with 15 points in fire with the scepter and focus for pvp and tanking and I can keep mobs away in earth with my staff. Earth atunement is where it’s at and I just keep switching atunements when using a staff.

So you think playing only one viable build (tank… as cloth armor mage class :facepalm:) is fine…
When ppl choose elementalist to play, I doubt that they think “what a great tanky class”.
P.S. Thousands of hamsters say “ele is bad”. Thousands of hamsters can’t be wrong =)

Darkeh.4539:

Ive played several classes to 80 now, heavy, medium and light classes.
And the Elementalist is a freaking JOKE in PVE.

Is this crap gonna get fixed or can i delete this joke class and free up a char slot ?

PVE for ELE isn’t hard.
Maybe it just doesn’t suit your playstyle?

The role of ele is limited. No matter what weapons you choose, it can’t be as powerful as other classes. During PvE, I play ele as a combo field supporter. Not desirable. For WvW, I use staff for cc and aoe. On sPvP, it is not favorable to play. It can’t roam alone or overcome other classes by itself. It always need someone.

It needs serious tweak or nerf others.

I ran my first ever dungeon with me ele yesterday, CM Story, and good god am I turned off from ever doing a dungeon run again. People argue that you have to choose between DPS or Survivability for the class, but that isn’t the case. I’m built for DPS, but I do terrible damage compared to everyone else around me, and whenever I get targeted by any mob, it’s instadeath unless I can run away and pray that it switches targets.

Ele does need a serious buff. I wouldn’t mind crap HP and defense if we got the DPS to back it up, but the fact of the matter is we don’t. Everyone on this forum says “Ele has it’s strong points, you just need to learn to play the class”, or “Complaining? You’re obviously terrible at playing ele, go play Warrior”, but that’s the thing. We shouldn’t have to swap to a new character to get a better experience playing, we should be able to play the class we love to play in order to have fun. I have a lot of fun playing my ele, there’s no doubt about that, but I’m getting tired of spending 1-2 minutes fighting one or two things, just to see ANY other class run up to the same type of mob and down it in 10 seconds, it’s ridiculous.

Now, before everyone starts bashing me for being bad at the class, I’m not. I’m admittedly bad at PvP, but I’m not talking about Ele’s role in PvP in this post (ele’s are actually pretty decent in WvW, but that’s because you have 50 other people all killing the same target lol). I’m actually pretty good at PvE. I’ve learned a lot in my 60 hours and 47 levels as an Elementalist, and I’ve progressed a long way with the class. I don’t die nearly as much as I used to, I’ve learned to utilize all four elements instead of relying only on Fire to kill stuff, etc etc. But the fact is, anyone who plays this class should be able to see that it needs to be reworked in some way. We have no survivability, terrible dps, some of our skills are terrible (stupid long cooldowns, extremely long casting time for low DPS output, etc), and overall we’re just not that good a class. No one is going to say “Hey, we need an ele so they can die 1000000x times and we can wipe trying to res them”. Ele needs change.

several professions to 80 O_O

i got my warrior to 80 and was dead set on getting world completion with her.
atm i’m trying to complete malchor’s leap, which ends in me being bored/annoyed by the map and playing something else.

as it took me over a hundred hours for my one char to get to 80, i’m quite impressed by your tenacity.

given that the game lags like hell for me, for the past two weeks and has become nigh unplayable in the last three days, i only enjoy brief moments of proper game play recently.

now enough of my rambling and a bit on topic:
ele is the profession i have the most problems with.
having 20 skills per weapon set is a bit mind boggling for me.
it might be because i didn’t play ele very extensively and it could get better in time…

but

even with my inability to play ele to the fullest extent i find that profession far from being weak, although i got to admit that the traits are not as straightforward as they could be.
mainly because they are seperated into the four attunements and arcane.
from what i’ve gathered, the ele is supposed to be played with switching the attunements constantly in mind.

the reason why i think ele is far from weak, is due to the fact that i can stack bleeding faster than my sword warrior and at the same time can provide a far more diverse set of combo fields.
signet of storm in earth attunement is not a god sent in dungeons.
summoning up to two elementals is no joke either.

the only gripe i have, is the fact that savannah heat is nowhere to be found.
i love that spell to pieces.

Simply put, no reason to play an ele when you can play a warrior that does better at ranged, melee, survivability, damage, and learning curve.

If Ele needs triple as much efford to achieve the worse results than it is called underpowered… Call it “complicated class”, but also notice that 3 times more skill needed takes 3 times more time to cast. Add to it lower armour. That’s why something is not ok :<

Personally I think the Ele is perfectly fine when it comes to PVE – I have noticed people complaining about “How difficult it gets past level 20-30”… I am level 63 and I still don’t have a problem with owning mobs, be it two veterans or just a few normal creeps (Obviously I die quite quickly against a champion). Granted a few skills are useless and the Ele is still slightly bugged and PVP is tough as hell but overall – I love my Ele (I suck at PVP though)… I am no pro either and I run a Scep / Dagger combo … I just attunement dance like a MOFO… I haven’t experienced any level 80 content – So I can’t comment on that.