Guild Wars 2

I have been playing an Elementalist since the beta weekends, and I knew I was dead set on the profession when the game finally launched. Once I learned how to twist properly, and got my playstyle/build down, I knew I was a force to be reckoned with.

Then we got nerfed, and the game launched.

Since then I have joined the many, many unsatisfied Elementalists who are gathered at the gates of Anet, demanding change. I raged on my guild’s ventrilo server every time I failed to kill someone because, let’s face it, our glass cannon build is nothing short of brittle. I was about to shelve my toon until Anet fixed my profession.

Then something changed. I tried picking up a staff, switching my build to earth/water/arcane, and gave support a try. I was impressed to say the least. Suddenly, I wasn’t dying nearly as much (if at all), I was earning more glory than before because I played defensively, and was almost always a point guard, I even topped the charts for several games in a row. I felt like I found my niche.

But this isn’t a niche class, I am a friggin’ Elementalist. I should be burning, freezing, shocking, and earthin’ my foes to smithereens. Never being one to give up, I decided to branch out and give the dagger/dagger tanky build a try. I was surprised by that too. Needless to say, my rage was subsiding, and I was finding less and less reasons to be mad at the profession. Oh I still have my quibbles, and will until Anet addresses the needs of the profession, but I am no longer raging.

I’m doing loads better than I used to, but something like that doesn’t happen overnight, so I started analyzing my playing time versus when other people would be on. I work full-time so I can only play morning spvp during the weekdays, could this be the reason I am doing so well? Am I just the early bird stomper? Or does the profession simply require a much higher skill to achieve maximum effectiveness?

If the former, hey, I’ll always have my morning domination.

If the latter, we need to be retuned.

I’d like other Elementalist’s opinion on this, now that the game has been out for a while, how is everyone doing? Are we still the weakest profession? Or have we simply not built up the skills needed to play our profession properly?

I’m with you. Most professions can just push in stats and do well. Elementalists have to know exactly what they need to do(stats and skills) to do well. Defense. Without it we feel a bit …dead.

I’ve been playing Ele since the get go as well and having gone around and played every other class as well ( Hell, I’m not sure I’ve pve’d much at all yet >.> ) Ele is by far the most involved class to play. It’s also one of the most unforgiving due to its general squishiness.

My problems began when I took all the blood, sweat and tears I put into Ele and tried applying it to another class. The difference was alarming and pretty disheartening. I have to play balls to wall at all times on Ele to keep up the symphony of the elements required to keep us on par. ( We need a t-shirt that says “I’ll Stop Pressing Keys When I’m Dead” ). It can be satisfying, but also tiring and frustrating when I need 20 keys to fend off some kitten that’s teabagging the numpad. Whereas if I turn around and apply my staff Ele skills to a staff Guardian or Mesmer suddenly I’m a demi-god amongst men.

The satisfaction of the skill and effort required to drive an Ele exists within the microcosm of the Elementalist itself. The only appreciation you’ll derive from it is from other Elementalists. Other classes fighting us never think “Wow look at all the stuff he’s doing! This guy is good!” they think “That was weird, I fought an Ele and he didn’t explode inside of 5s like the rest…..oh well! #2 LIKE A BOSS!”.

I’ve been running a kind of “have your cake and eat it too” glass cannon build, and I’m pretty happy when what I’ve got going. I’ve focused on playing the same weapon set (D/D) for the vast majourity of my playtime and it’s done me well so far. Suprisingly viable in sPvP too.

For those of you that may be curious, it’s a (20 fire, 30 air, 20 water) build focused around cantrips. With the right traits, you can have a cantrip give you vigor, regen, AND might all as a bonus to what your cantrip already does. This stacks nicely, helping to make up for the lack of defense.

I think the main problem people have with this class is they see the insane burst builds the warrior and thief roll around with and get upset because we don’t have anything like that. But, once you realize that these builds fall apart once you counter their one tactic, it’s not bad at all to be a glass cannon.

The Tempest Defense major trait (30 air) is something you just have to see in practice. It’s an incredible counter to any of those multihit spam builds. And if you run like me, with Zephyr’s Boon, it just sets you up with 10 seconds of fury and swiftness right off the bat, giving your coutner attack a nasty opening.

Most professions can just push in stats and do well

And there it is, couldn’t have said it better myself. How many different ways does a greatsword warrior play? A double dagger thief? A staff/sword pistol mesmer?

You will be hard pressed to find two staff Eles with the same build, or two S/D with the same playstyle. Finding a build that works properly with these weapons is justkittenHARD.

I am rolling a lvl 32 Ele. Its actaully great now since im the only one in my guild and that i can see who mastered their abilites and how and when each one is needed.

I’m running D/D ele myself, and was eyeing the cantrip synergies in them. Was planning 30 fire, 30 water, 10 air, going for heavier non-critical damage and survivability.

Will keep that option in mind too, since precision and crit rate on the same trait line (Some trait lines on some classes seem pointless in their stat boosts, or at drastic odds with each other)

Look I love me Ele since BWE1 but after launch I’m the only Ele in my 20 man guild, THE ONLY ELEMENTALIST. I take all the “oh you’re dead again”,“you’re just good for speed buffs”,“I’ll rez you after I’ve finished my tea” jokes and smirk like a kitten when our warriors complain that they’re too squishy.

I work hard and I work fast and chances are good that if I’m in a group with you things will go right but for the love of Lyassa there is squat return on the investment other than the personal satisfaction of knowing that my “skill” turned the tide.

I have a love/hate relationship with my Elementalist, thankfully the love part is keeping me playing her but having to retrait/regear for practically everything is a royal pain in the you know what…

Dungeons – I switch to a 10/30/30 Air/Water/Arcane support staff build
WvW – I switch to a few different staff based builds either “dps” or a support spec
Solo – Either a S/D or D/D condition based build usually with 30 in Earth and the rest changes, into Carrion gear and out of the Valk/Berseker gear.

The bottom line is that apart from feeling like a schizo while playing I feel like a schizo having to manage the different builds and gear I need. I miss the beauty of raw efficient simplicity but the schizo behaviour is what keeps me playing my Ele.

Do we need some improvements? Yes sir we do! Are we entirely broken? No sir we are not!

From my experience this class just requires a lot of experience to be successful. It’s not bad in any sense of the word. It has no more or less glitches than any other class, except necromancer, poor poor necromancer. It requires you to know your opponent. You must have the foresight to predict what your opponent is going to do based on his weapon. Then you must have quick reaction, especially if you are playing D/D. Then you better have all 20 of those skills absolutely memorized to the core. You need to know exactly what combo of buttons to push each scenario. After you reach that level I find elementalist to be extremely powerful in pvp, especially 1v1.

Can I ask you all a question? If you enjoy playing Elementalist, and you think other classes are not as much fun despite getting results more easily — then why are you expecting a reward? Since when has gaming become about being rewarded, rather than playing for fun?

Guild Wars 2, from its inception, had tried to put Fun at the center rather than Reward. Is this not enough?

Amnon, sometimes just playing a class is not a sufficient amount of fun. We are humans. Its human nature to want more. There is no avoiding it. As soon as you have what you wanted you will want something more. We are more in love with desire than the desired. Yes elementalist is fun for me, but I am a elitest. I will not be happy until I’m the best. Fortunately this is a untainable goal so it keeps me preoccupied. Do not mistake me for this little babies crying the class is broken. I’m personally happy making the underdog the best and calling these people out for being poor players.

I get you, Wulfrim, you’re good in my book. But this “reward-centric” attitude displayed by many people, to me, feels like a remnant of “that other MMO”. GW is about having fun playing, it’s about becoming better because you became a better player – not because your character got better gear.

I’m just afraid to wake up next year and see a GW expansion featuring Pandas -_-

MMOs have really gone down hill over the years. I really miss the monster grinding over quest grinding. FFXI was one of the best MMOs I’ve ever played because it required actual skill to reach a high level. You were required to know your class by the time you reached 75. You were punished for failing by losing experience. It took a very long time to reach the max level and forced communitive play building relationships better than any MMO I’ve ever played. Every game since then has been such a dumbed down version of a MMO it’s getting more and more insulting. Warhammer was a copy of WoW. Easykittenmode classes. Rift was a copy of Warhammer. Age of Conan had unique traits but requires zero skill to play. WoW 2.0 is a childs game. Diablo 3 made me cry when it was decently challenging then they dumbed down the game for kids within 3 months of release. Now any sign of challenge they can’t quickly overcome and people result to crying until they get them to make it easier for them. There is no desire to improve in video games anymore. Everyone just wants to be handed the shiny weapon as long as no one else can have it.

Perhaps it isn’t about a shiny spoon Wulfrim, perhaps the issue is a spoon that needs some polishing in order to shine. I’m not one saying we’re broken however there are many issues that need to be looked at starting with the many bugs, poorly executed elite skills and somewhat disheveled trait lines.

Once those issues have been addressed I’m fairly certain we’ll be in a good position to talk about further balance changes. The complexity of our class is unique and I would hate to see this taken away from it but sometimes you have to climb off the pedestal to smell the roses.

I do however agree that MMO’s and gaming in general has taken a nosedive over the last two decades.

Nobody is arguing that bugs shouldn’t be fixed, and numbers “tweaked”, MarzAttackz. I only want to keep the level of complexity of the class.

Me too Amnon, me too. I know you’ve been saying this from day one and I agree 100% with you and Wulf to a large extent, the silence is what is frustrating me and I’m a patient guy. But I’ll wait longer like the rest of us dedicated to this class and have as much fun as I can while doing so.

You’ll have to excuse them for the time being, I’m certain the developers are working very hard these days. Not many people have noticed that, over the first couple of weeks, we had regular updates – even on weekends. This means there were people sitting and working on Saturday just to make sure our game experience ran smoothly.

And besides, if you were an ArenaNet developer, would you really want to start a discussion with a militant kitten like myself? Heck, I wouldn’t want to

I also want the elementalist to remain as complex as it is at the hands of someone who has mastered it. But I also want the elementalist to be more rewarding. When we work hard for something, part of the pleasure that comes from the effort is the reward. This is not a MMO mentality, it’s a winning mentality in real-life, and for a reason.

If I’m dodging, swapping attunements, timing my defenses, bursting, applying conditions, all while playing piano with the keyboard and sweating myself, and then see a warrior or a guardian breezing through the same level of pve content by spamming 2345, or a thief hitting me 8k damage with heartseeker, and more 8k with pistolwhip, it’s really disheartening. I should be dominating the field against those kind of players, but instead, with all my effort, I can barely defeat them, or worse, should I create a single mistake or poorly time a single skill, and all my effort is rendered useless, while those players can create mistakes all the time. I should go through pve blazing faster because I’m working hard for it, not watch a random warrior spamming 234 for half an hour and get twice the loot I get.

Effort for the sake of effort is pointless. Effort should be a tool to get better results, not a necessity to get the same of slightly worse results.

Overall, I think the people in this board want the elementalist to be balanced compared to other professions. There are two ways to do this. You can nerf other professions strongest spammable skills, or you can give the elementalist a few of newb-killing skills, or even a healthy combination of both solutions. Keep in mind that this won’t dumb down the elementalists. It’ll simplify battles against newbs, yes, but that’s because they are newbs. At the hands of a good player, against another good player, you’ll have to play the elementalist at its max regardless of a few buffed skills.

I think Churning Earth is a pretty big noob killing ability.
I’m not sure what kind of matches you are in but when my opponent makes a mistake I’m sure to exploit it and one mistake can just as easily cost my opponent the match as it would me. Of course if a guardian makes a mistake it doesn’t matter, but that’s expected for a tanking class. If a thief or mesmer makes a mistake I assure you I’m going to win. The reward being I just took down the top dog as a underdog. That’s generally reward enough for me, especially if I get it on video and ESPECIALLY if they QQ.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I also want the elementalist to remain as complex as it is at the hands of someone who has mastered it. But I also want the elementalist to be more rewarding. When we work hard for something, part of the pleasure that comes from the effort is the reward. This is not a MMO mentality, it’s a winning mentality in real-life, and for a reason.

If I’m dodging, swapping attunements, timing my defenses, bursting, applying conditions, all while playing piano with the keyboard and sweating myself, and then see a warrior or a guardian breezing through the same level of pve content by spamming 2345, or a thief hitting me 8k damage with heartseeker, and more 8k with pistolwhip, it’s really disheartening. I should be dominating the field against those kind of players, but instead, with all my effort, I can barely defeat them, or worse, should I create a single mistake or poorly time a single skill, and all my effort is rendered useless, while those players can create mistakes all the time. I should go through pve blazing faster because I’m working hard for it, not watch a random warrior spamming 234 for half an hour and get twice the loot I get.

Effort for the sake of effort is pointless. Effort should be a tool to get better results, not a necessity to get the same of slightly worse results.

Overall, I think the people in this board want the elementalist to be balanced compared to other professions. There are two ways to do this. You can nerf other professions strongest spammable skills, or you can give the elementalist a few of newb-killing skills, or even a healthy combination of both solutions. Keep in mind that this won’t dumb down the elementalists. It’ll simplify battles against newbs, yes, but that’s because they are newbs. At the hands of a good player, against another good player, you’ll have to play the elementalist at its max regardless of a few buffed skills.

The funny thing what you’ve described was exactly the ele pre- BWE nerfs, a noob stomper with rtl/updraft/DT/phoenix/flamegrab combo.

A shame Anet has decided that the ele cannot have any noob stomper skills, I have already resigned myself..may you should too, I really loved the 4k base dmg of flame grab as it’s a 45s CD skills at mele range but I doubt Anet will ever re-introduce the dmg back so I’ll have to keep using the current version at 1.7k base dmg…

And what you’ve stated Arheundel is what I just cannot get my head around.

We ripped things apart in BWE1&2 UNTIL players learned to recognise the attacks and avoid them but we still got nerfed and things were made more difficult by taking away things like Dragon Tooth ground-targeting.

However Warriors and Thiefs are bursting fairly close to what we were doing in BWE1&2 and haven’t been changed as drastically as we have (thieves more so since warriors attacks are easier to recognise) so where is the balance in this?

Surely the measuring stick should apply equally to all classes?

But I too have resigned myself to the state we’re in and will continue playing with my eyes looking to the future.

Wulfrim.4793:

I think Churning Earth is a pretty big noob killing ability.

Unfortunately, unless you have the right utility skills, Churning Earth is a pretty dead skill against good players. At least Meteor Shower can be cast from afar during group play, and is less noticeable until it’s too late. Churning Earth will simply beg for your opponents you burst do down and/ or rupt you as fast as possible. I do love CE, though, but I wouldn’t mind half a second less (how much time does it take to cast? 3s? 2.5s would be cool), or if it has extra trait/ weapons skill support.

I picked ele from the get go and I never looked back.

Sure I stick with fire mostly when im running around just for the quick kills and damage before I get agro’d. But depending on the monster it depends if I start to switch attributes, I most go for air but I have started to use Earth a little more.

Water is rarely used unless under water where its most useful, yea I die a lot like other elementalists but not as much as everybody makes out. I tend to be downed by Vets or Champions and very rarely by any other creatures.

Im only level 42 atm so maybe im missing something, but I don’t regret my choice and I don’t think it needs changing.

“Elementalist
• Fixed bugs with Flamestrike and Ice Shards so they can’t be fired behind the player.
• Quick Glyphs: This Air Magic trait has been updated to apply 20% recharge reduction to the elite skill Glyph of Elementals.”

Yeah not enough Arenanet. Not even close. The least they could do is give a PVE buff. I do not mind being squishy, but i then again i do have my moments. However Damage as is is unacceptable for us being squishy.

Now that we’ve seen what an elite level Elementalist can do, which is simply hang with the rest of them, how can Anet go about balancing them on the low-skill side that doesn’t make the high-skill side just wreck people?

Idea’s? Thoughts?

I can tell that balancing our class is not going to be easy, but I admit i’m more than a little burned at today’s patch notes.