Guild Wars 2

I have an asura elementalist but when ever I play pvp I always DIE! Someone might come in and say “dude u just suck” well I don’t care I feel that the elementalist is under powered and arena net should do something about it.

….sigh….yet….another….one…of…these….
Just take a glance at first page and go post in those threads….

^ Getting rather boring innit

And why is that Mr.Strang?

It’s for two reasons:
1. Elementalists are underpowered.
2. Elementalists require far more effort/skill/learning to reach similar but mostly lower
levels of success compared to other profession.

To further explain there is currently one viable Elementalist SPVP build, the Bunker Staff Elementalist. This is likely to get nerfs sooner or later, because all but Thieves have a great difficulty killing a player of moderate-high skill using this build.

There is no option to change between Melee and Ranged for the Elementalist.

The utility skills are better on other professions.

Summoned weapons are weak and extremely gimmicky.

The Elementalist elite skills offer very little impact, with the Elemental being the only seriously viable elite for SPVP.

The trait’s on the Elementalist are more situational and less useful than those on offer to other professions.

Imagine an Ogre, lets call him Blobby. Blobby gets kited by an Elementalist for a good period of time, with the Elementalist doing complex spell combos and frantic attunement swapping to slay poor misunderstood Blobby. A warrior could simply run up to Blobby, press one button [one hundred blades] and do the same if not more damage than the Elementalist did to our now dead friend Blobby, but in half the time. A thief could run up and press 2 with his daggers out, leading to blobbys face being dissected into tiny pieces of ogre meat in a matter of seconds. All while our Elementalist is running around in circles trying not to get stood on by Blobby.

You needed not elaborate, there’s a billion other threads on exactly the same topic. I’m certain the devs know all of this by now. They wouldn’t make a game, release it, then wipe a whole class from their memory.

Atrixer, D/D Zephyr’s Boon power/healing build is excellent. Huge teamfight presence, and excellent at backcapping with permaswiftness + RTL. AoE might, regen, protection, and condition removal, decent AoE damage, spike potential with Fire Grab/Churning Earth, and personal 80% uptime on protection with 13k worth of heals. Pretty sturdy, slippery, and great map mobility.

Mainly the number 2 Atrixer.
Ele might be a bit on the weaker side, but far from the amount of sheer hatred it seems to attract.

I refrain from saying anything about pvp, but i can point out that people have been using other builds with and seemingly have been succesful with them.
Also will be nice once the paid tournaments come and we can finaly see how it fares in the top levels.

Unlucky for Blobby he went against an elementalist that apparently didn´t know what to do, and ended up suffering. Had he face one particular Asuran elementalist carrying my name, he´d had much cleaner death in matter of seconds.

Yeah, there are quite a few similar threads going around in the ele forum, and at some point you just have to wonder why. But I have a few thoughts as a former elementalist that checks in frequently hoping I can go back to my favorite class that I set aside due to frustration.

There are definitely three camps. One says we’re fine, they can pwn any other class at will. Those who disagree are just whiners. The second says they’ve tried their best, looked up all the relevant info and just simply cannot make it work. Too squishy, not enough damage, what have you. Yet a third says with all the bugs still present how the kitty-cat can you even tell at this stage. If everything worked….. new ballgame.

As someone from the second group (I did run away screaming waving my arms in the air after all), the elementalist support group mentality has set in i think. “Hi, my name’s Funk. It’s been 2 weeks since I last played my ele… and… sniff… I miss it soooooo much!!!”

I’m starting to think all three groups might actually be right. A tiny fraction of the population can play ele to it’s full potential. They actually can kill and not be killed. They can make use of all the tools and feel good about it. We mere common folk must accept that we’re not all elite gamers with superhuman twitch skills/muscle memory/reaction time.

How can you balance a class when the top few % will simply melt faces with it? If we’re buffed they’d be nigh unstoppable. They already defy common wisdom with there feats of magic/skill, or, less common I think, they just act like it on the forums.

I’m now thinking group three has the right idea. Fix the puppy kitten bugs already! If what we had worked as it should, we might actually know where we stand. Instead of nerfing underwater abilities, fix some of our air ones. Not complicated, but Anet seems to have gotten distracted along the way. 2 second cast spells that take 6 seconds to land isn’t gonna work. Oh, and the downed state. Oh yeah, and the trait (lack of) synergy). Oh…..

Rambling now…. good luck to you. Stay strong. Or give up (sounds bad at first, but you do play this game for fun I assume). More discussion is needed, it should not be discouraged. Sure wish someone with the power to fix this mess was listening though, and would even pop-in occasionally. The community that chose this profession is (by-and-large) not happy. That should be addressed.

There are some problems with the elementalist that are hardly deniable:
*downed-state of elementalist is just useless and painful to watch
*many of the traits and skills are broken or terrible – you have to use the few good ones
*there is no way a glass cannon build can work
*elite skills are meh
*staff projectiles are amazingly slow and therefore miss at longer ranges

The elementalist is still a fun class to play but some traits and skills could definately use a buff/fix. Otherwise you will be able to pick traits and skills according to preference but just the few one that are not utterly useless.

I know the feeling. the fact of the matter is that the ele … at least so far that i have found… is not a good solo class.

I generally get in the top half of 8 man pvp with a few days of playing the ele.
Yes the ele is squishy. I use offhand focus to help with that.
I think that once i have some skills down that i could get off the focus and learn to survive in other ways.

Nevertheless its not often i win a duel but i do win matches.

So my advice… dont solo. Find someone and follow them.
make sure you know your defenses so that heartseeker doesnt make you rage quit.
there are a few times that i almost gave up learning the basics of ele because of that one move.

When i stay with a group and i spam boons i do a lot better. When i really want to kill something i use fiery great sword.

i have been using this build lately.
http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/1827-supporty-greatsword

i have tried a few different setups and i like this ones survivability.

They really do need to fix as many bugs as possible before even starting to balance. Balancing a broken game just means it’ll break again when you fix it.

Yip, retired scenario 3 player here. I don’t know how long it will take for the game to stabilise but I’m out for a bit.

@funkin

Discussion is all and fine, and there´s plenty of it going around.
Posting new thread about same issue while half the frontpage is full of them, to me soundsjust “I can´t be bothered to read oter peoples opinions so i just state my own as a truth”

2. Elementalists require far more effort/skill/learning to reach similar but mostly lower levels of success compared to other profession.

Of course a class with a mechanic like the elementalist has is going to take more effort and skill… The point of attunements is to have a wide range of abilities that you can use for a wide range of scenarios. To play at the best level for any class you should know what all of your abilities do and when to use them. Since elementalist has more abilities, it is inherently harder to play.

As for your “Blobby” scenario, if you want to play like a warrior and only use a few abilities all the time then just play a warrior. And you are grossly under exaggerating the damage and survivability of an elementalist. If you seriously have this much trouble against a normal mob you should try equipping your armor instead of leaving it in your backpack while you run around naked.

Far from underpowered http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBDpx3UtCao&feature=em-uploademail-new

RamataKahn.4283:

Far from underpowered http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBDpx3UtCao&feature=em-uploademail-new

Oh of course. that makes a lot of sense. Maneuverability.
Plus tank and dps.
oh wait no focus…
the tank is maneuverability.

i get it. this scepter dagger seems to be the next level of these builds. maneuverability tank… more difficult.
I just got not bad at scepter/focus.
scepter/focus is/was useful for me to learn to play. get my finger skills going.
i can see that dagger off hand is pretty good.
dagger/dagger may be too offensive for my blood.

yeah once i get the basic finger mechanics needed in pvp scepter/dagger has some good fighting ability.

I think i still recommend scepter/focus for people that need things to go a little slower. Focus doesnt need quite so much work to use.

but wow scepter/dagger is… well fun.
the mobility is outstanding. at least in burst it is. i still get locked down and hacked to pieces sometimes but taking out noobs is much much easier with this setup.

Since when has WvW been a argument for class balance.

Look at Starcraft 2 – What is the game balanced around? 1v1. 2v2 and more is unbalanced because throwing more and more opponents into a battle can cause for balance issues that simply cannot be balanced.

In the case of Guild Wars 2’s 5 man “esports” SPVP, you simply cannot compare that to roaming around against mostly clueless/careless players, who are more often than not using poor builds/gear and are in most cases up-scaled, which is WvW.

You have to remember that there is a very, very vocal minority in online ‘communitys’ that feel the need to deny any balance issues exit. Everything is fine, let things flow and ignore every criticism with any aspect of the game because these people either 1. don’t care, or 2. cannot think objectively. Alternatively it could be people who truly excel with a class compared to other classes, because it is their specific play style, then causing them to become biased within that argument.

You have to remember though that if ANet truly want Guild Wars 2 to become a successful Esport, then the large majority of balancing will be placed around SPVP. Alternatively they could go the GW1 route and have the abilities do different damage and have different effects in both PVE and PVP. All the same this is a freshly released game and are there are, without question, many issues with class balance.

Simply look at the performance of Thieves compared to Elementalist. Tournament games are “they have an Elementalist, one point in our favour” or “they have two thieves, GG”. Is that really good balance? To be able to 80% of the time predict the outcome of the game based on what classes are picked? It’s a far cry from the 45-65% average wins for race match ups in Starcraft.

I dont think ele is under powered at all. If you genuinely enjoy the class you’ll make it work, trust me.

Atrixer.9275:

Simply look at the performance of Thieves compared to Elementalist. Tournament games are “they have an Elementalist, one point in our favour” or “they have two thieves, GG”.

Your post is a whole lot of “rabble rabble”, but that bit above is probably the worst.

http://twitch.tv/phantaram