Guild Wars 2

After hitting level 80 with everything unlocked I can now say that, elementalist is not a weak class if used correct.

I will admit, at first, I had difficulty leveling this class. I think the reason for the difficulty was, I gave up at least 4 other times and leveled different professions and it took a moment to get used to attunement swapping and finding the correct weapon set that fit my play style.

The more I play this profession and get useful information from experienced elementalist, the easier this profession is to play.

If you’re just starting off and feel frustrated by the profession, have patience and it will pay off.

After leveling a warrior, guardian, mesmer to 80 and thief to 71 ( I’ll get around to the thief one day ) elementalist, for me, has been the most enjoyable thus far.

It’s great in PvE, but I don’t think people are complaining about PvE.

Chaosky.5276:

It’s great in PvE, but I don’t think people are complaining about PvE.

I wouldn’t say all PvE, instanced PvE and open world PvE play completely differently. And there are plenty of reasonable complaints about how tough it is to find an ele build that holds its own in dungeons. Though I think a lot of it is greatly exaggerated or exclusive to speed running, I run 30 minute or less CoE runs almost daily with a full-on condition build.

There is a steady stream of warrior players that come to the Ele forum to make a public announcement that the Ele is a strong class, to paraphrase: “if played skillfully.” Go home warrior. No one wants this sly trolling.

Ah Okay, I’m speaking from a pve point of view.

What is your outlook on wvw ?

Conncept.7638:

Chaosky.5276:

It’s great in PvE, but I don’t think people are complaining about PvE.

I wouldn’t say all PvE, instanced PvE and open world PvE play completely differently. And there are plenty of reasonable complaints about how tough it is to find an ele build that holds its own in dungeons. Though I think a lot of it is greatly exaggerated or exclusive to speed running, I run 30 minute or less CoE runs almost daily with a full-on condition build.

Second that. You can contribute plenty of damage to a dungeon group simply by running soldier’s gear, a staff and a fire magic build. The finesse builds can do a lot more things in terms of support, but the basic fire build’s certainly not worthless or weak in damage.

There’s a grey area between perfect and useless, and most people tend to exagerate to either one or the other. I agree that it’s somewhere in between.

My only complaint about Ele in open world pve is that the gameplay feels restrictive between the lack of available weapons and the lack of competitiveness of the different attunements – Fire is far and away better than the other 3 80% of the time when you are solo. Earth can come close with a heavy condition build, but the utility on Air and Water doesn’t compensate for their relative lack of damage or AoE capabilities when there isn’t a party involved (it’s questionable even then).

Professions like Ele and Engi, which require some serious traiting and skill unlocks to fully realize their potential, are often abandoned early. I remember both were among my 1st to try at beta and both were quickly abandoned once I realized that Ranger and Guardian were much stronger. Only later did I understand that was because those professions are less defined by their traits.

Now of course, I prefer the classes that are defined by their traits. More depth.

The issue with them being weak at lower level is part of an overall design issue in the game that’s questionable at best – the classes vary significantly in their defensive potential but not nearly as much in their offensive potential, which is very noticeable right out of the gate at Level 1 and makes the squishier professions (thieves and eles in particular) very tough to play at low level.

Instead of having some baseline compensation for their relative lack of defense (stealth and range don’t really cut it), the compensation is built into their stronger utilities and traits. This means that until they get some of the better tricks in their kitten nal (usually by level 20 or so) they are less than mediocre, and then they are mediocre until they get some of the higher level traits (around 60).

In a nutshell, neither class is good enough at mitigating damage to compensate for their squishiness, at least in lower level PvE. On Eles, the problem is largely that their control abilities are not as good as you’d think and they consequently lack the ability to keep themselves out of harm’s reach. On Thieves, the problem is that Stealth is very lackluster as a defensive tool (it’s designed to work more as an offensive one when it should be an even boon to both).

frost aura mitigates damage. . .

sorrychief.2563:

frost aura mitigates damage. . .

Hmm, well let’s see. 7 seconds of 10% protection on a 40secs CD against heavy armor of some other classes which is permanent, that does not bode well for our class

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

After hitting level 80 with everything unlocked I can now say that, elementalist is not a weak class if used correct.

I will admit, at first, I had difficulty leveling this class. I think the reason for the difficulty was, I gave up at least 4 other times and leveled different professions and it took a moment to get used to attunement swapping and finding the correct weapon set that fit my play style.

The more I play this profession and get useful information from experienced elementalist, the easier this profession is to play.

If you’re just starting off and feel frustrated by the profession, have patience and it will pay off.

After leveling a warrior, guardian, mesmer to 80 and thief to 71 ( I’ll get around to the thief one day ) elementalist, for me, has been the most enjoyable thus far.

I agree, i have so many friends that tried to play an ele but gave up before they really gave them a chance . Sadly most of them quit before 20 xD

I also think the mechanics of Ele can be too complex for someone just picking up GW2. As I said, it was one of the first classes I tried and couldn’t grasp it. I eventually played ranger & guardian, learned how combat & build mechanics work in this game, and could then move onto engineer and elementalist.

Elementalist can be strong, but in general they need to press long chains of combos to achieve what other classes can do in one or two clicks. For instance, we can hit 10+ might stacks through a long rotation of attunment changes and blast combos, but Guardians just press 2 buttons viola 15 might stacks.

I have so far levelled a Warrior, Mesmer and Ele to 80. Warrior was by far the easiest to level and was almost effortless. Mesmer was pretty easy. Ele was hell.

And even today, with my full exotic zerker DPS build, I still have trouble fighting in PVE. It’s useless in PVP. WVW it’s useful in certain situations — so I built it into a nuke cannon that can kill en masse, and just run away to avoid dying. I literally can’t afford to get hit or I die.

So right now in WVW, all I can do with my Ele is kill a ton of people in Zerg, then run away from everything else like 1v1.

It’s the most problematic class I’ve encountered so far, but nothing can kill loads of players in WVW faster than Ele. You just need to sacrifice a lot and play really well to do it.

What I will said now will sound weird, as the most versatile profession in the game, to be able achieve its versatility it really need support from traits and most of the time I have a feel that Ele need more then 70 trait points.

If you play Warrior, you can sell to hell with Toughness because you have heavy armor or go high in the healing trait line well you have a large HP pool and you can spend your traits power/crit line, wear power/crit gear.

As an Ele I always feel I have to stay in Water Trait line or Arcana and wear PVT gear so I can survive and do something useful, then nothing is left to take from other trait lines.

Ele is versatile but is also boring because of these restrictions, I see they are trying to put some nice traits in fire to cleanse and so but kitten CD will be enough to ignore 30 points to water.

They put this nice trait to the water that we get regen when we are critically hit but Cleansing Water is still at Water 30 as only trait that synergies with it, so I again I am stuck.

posthumecaver.6473:

As an Ele I always feel I have to stay in Water Trait line or Arcana and wear PVT gear so I can survive and do something useful, then nothing is left to take from other trait lines.

This is the exact reason why I am so against moving Cleansing Wave to Master tier. I feel that I personally need at least 15 points in Water in order to be able to survive. However, that does leave me with some points to spread around (not many, but at least some). Moving our main condition removal up means less points to use on different builds.

posthumecaver.6473:

As an Ele I always feel I have to stay in Water Trait line or Arcana and wear PVT gear so I can survive and do something useful, then nothing is left to take from other trait lines.

Ele is versatile but is also boring because of these restrictions, I see they are trying to put some nice traits in fire to cleanse and so but kitten CD will be enough to ignore 30 points to water.

This statement scares me more than any others in terms of looking forward at my new Ele. I hate boring. It’s why I stopped playing ranger and couldn’t get a warrior past lvl 18. And while I think Ele is dynamic and fun to play, I really hope creating builds doesn’t become boring when it seems everyone is forced to take so many Arcane and Water traits just to stay alive. And while I understand Anet’s resistance to making really strong traits Adept, they gotta see the trend that everyone is taking them not just because they’re awesome but necessary to living long enough to kill something.

Huh, I found mesmer the slowest to level (still haven’t got it to lvl80). Already created a second ele and got it to lvl 38 faster than I did with the mesmer I think.

Mesmer has very little in the way of ooc movement enhancement, while Ele has plenty of access to swiftness, RTL, 25% speed signet, and a blink. Makes running around the world and doing events/hearts much faster.

Whether you find Ele easier than Mesmer is subjective. I feel that since they’re both very reliant on traits, they both kill at the same speed whilst leveling. But Ele is a faster explorer.

This is the one class I keep deleting! Maybe it is time for me to try again.

jazzllanna.1278:

This is the one class I keep deleting! Maybe it is time for me to try again.

Usually people stick it out after they either get bored with the professions they stuck with or simply looking for something new. I too deleted this profession a few times before finally sticking it out and now, this is the main profession I play out of the 4 professions I have leveled to 80…..go figure.

I’m fond of D/D and Staff. D/D seem to be the most exciting out of the weapons and staff is great for group play. Some even say staff is great for pve soloing.

Seras.5702:

Mesmer has very little in the way of ooc movement enhancement, while Ele has plenty of access to swiftness, RTL, 25% speed signet, and a blink. Makes running around the world and doing events/hearts much faster.

Whether you find Ele easier than Mesmer is subjective. I feel that since they’re both very reliant on traits, they both kill at the same speed whilst leveling. But Ele is a faster explorer.

Both of these professions took getting used too after mainly playing guardian and warrior.

I guess it took longer for me to catch on with the elementalist over the Mesmer because of the attunement swap.

Seras.5702:

posthumecaver.6473:

As an Ele I always feel I have to stay in Water Trait line or Arcana and wear PVT gear so I can survive and do something useful, then nothing is left to take from other trait lines.

Ele is versatile but is also boring because of these restrictions, I see they are trying to put some nice traits in fire to cleanse and so but kitten CD will be enough to ignore 30 points to water.

This statement scares me more than any others in terms of looking forward at my new Ele. I hate boring. It’s why I stopped playing ranger and couldn’t get a warrior past lvl 18. And while I think Ele is dynamic and fun to play, I really hope creating builds doesn’t become boring when it seems everyone is forced to take so many Arcane and Water traits just to stay alive. And while I understand Anet’s resistance to making really strong traits Adept, they gotta see the trend that everyone is taking them not just because they’re awesome but necessary to living long enough to kill something.

A lot of people say warrior is a boring profession. I’m the opposite. Warrior has so many weapons to choose from, I never get bored with the profession. I will admit, warrior is kinda easy to play and doesn’t take much skill to survive in pve.

Ele is by far best for PvE but as said, no1 complains about pve.

Yeah PvE is easy when your dealing with stupid AI. Have you ever noticed that the only time over is hard is when the boss can one shot you? Try playing elemntalist with the lowest health pool, lowest armor level, and lastly ArenaNet hounding every good skill or trait in hopes it doesn’t seem to powerful. Imagine how hard it is to kill someone else who has actual intelligence with all these things already against you. Elementalist fighting anyone is a up hill battle..

Seras.5702:

posthumecaver.6473:

As an Ele I always feel I have to stay in Water Trait line or Arcana and wear PVT gear so I can survive and do something useful, then nothing is left to take from other trait lines.

Ele is versatile but is also boring because of these restrictions, I see they are trying to put some nice traits in fire to cleanse and so but kitten CD will be enough to ignore 30 points to water.

This statement scares me more than any others in terms of looking forward at my new Ele. I hate boring. It’s why I stopped playing ranger and couldn’t get a warrior past lvl 18. And while I think Ele is dynamic and fun to play, I really hope creating builds doesn’t become boring when it seems everyone is forced to take so many Arcane and Water traits just to stay alive. And while I understand Anet’s resistance to making really strong traits Adept, they gotta see the trend that everyone is taking them not just because they’re awesome but necessary to living long enough to kill something.

The thing about Elementalists that kinda makes them boring is limited build options. Imagine:

• We technically only have 3 weapon loadouts. Staff, Scepter/Dagger(or Focus, not much diff), and Dagger/Dagger (or Focus, and yeah nobody uses that). Since we can’t weapon swap, that means we really only have 3 weapon sets, period, and you can’t mix two different sets to swap between (like say a Warrior can keep a Great Sword for melee and then swap to Long Bow for range).

• Because of our kitten poor survivability, we are often forced to take points in Water.

• Because of this squishiness, we tend to be awkward in different combat situations, so we have to rely on attunement swapping to get utility when switching — so because our normal attunement swap cooldown is so freaking slow (like 16 seconds compared to weapon swaps which are like 8 seconds) we need to take points in Arcana to facilitate faster switching.

• In addition, some of our best traits are in Arcana — which is sad because it really means our traits in other lines tend to suck — so people go into Arcana anyhow.

So yeah that means most Eles go heavy in to Water and Arcana, that coupled with our very limited weapon load outs make Eles kinda boring.

I mean, when I rolled a Warrior, it was like going into a candy store. I could choose so many weapons and mix and swap to my hearts content! Why couldn’t Eles have this kind of freedom? Sigh.

On the Mesmer Ele thing, yeah you are so right in that. Mesmer is “slower” to level because it takes so freakin long to run around the map. Ele, just pop a signet and 5 points in Air and you are the fastest thing on land. Mesmers however are SOOO much easier to use for killing monsters while still surviving without any difficulty. I felt like Mesmer was easy mode after playing Ele. I was soloing Ettins and smashing them way faster than when I was an Ele, I had nightmares fighting Ettins as an Ele while levelling.

Mochann.5298:

• We technically only have 3 weapon loadouts. Staff, Scepter/Dagger(or Focus, not much diff), and Dagger/Dagger (or Focus, and yeah nobody uses that). Since we can’t weapon swap, that means we really only have 3 weapon sets, period, and you can’t mix two different sets to swap between (like say a Warrior can keep a Great Sword for melee and then swap to Long Bow for range).

I was thinking about this also, this is a part of the problem.

In every other profession you can combine your weapons to have melee and range combination.

As an Ele only with attunements, the moment you select the weapon, you are either range or melee (ok with S/D and S/F you neither range nor melee…)..

In my opinion, it would be nice gimmick, depending on the weapon selections one of your attunements becomes range or melee…

Lets say you play D/D, Earth becomes your ranged attunement, you play Staff fire becomes your Melee, you play S/D Water becomes your melee and Air full ranged (not really deeply thought about but you get the idea)….

Just to have some option, like I see a Necro, no way in the hell I want to go melee with him with a D/D, so switch to Earth kite and bomb him…..

Would be a nice change I think….

I never even thought about the limitations of the weapon/attunement variety for Ele. You think you’ve got 20 skills per weapon set-up so that’s awesome, twice what any other professions has. But then you realize that it’s the same 20 skills the whole way through. You can’t change it up a little because staff, scepter, and dagger work so vastly different that it’s not a small tweak but a full build change. Conversely, a warrior can use an axe and still vary his off-hand to mace/axe/horn as the situation requires, and still have another variable 2nd set to swap to. So while Ele has more weapon skills available at any one time, the variety is still lacking.

This is something that is unique to Ele, despite its similarities to Engi. Because while Engi also has no weapon swap and limited weapons to use, kits can be swapped in & out to provide added weapon skill variety. A grenade Engi can bring bomb kit or toolkit or even elixir gun for variable utility/attack styles.

I’m guessing our solution to this issue is our Conjures. Unfortunately, there’s little synergy between our Conjures and…anything else. One trait. We give up a utility slot to bring a Conjure Weapon, unlike Engi who get toolbelt skills to make up for that. Conjures need another trait or 2, a signet like effect when not being used, and/or additional utility when used (like a ward around the 2nd conjured weapon).

Only thing connjure is able drop it do something else (like water healing) and taking back still having charges (I am not speaking about 2nd conjured weapon actually using some charges drop it take it back and continue using charges…..)