Guild Wars 2

Hey everybody,

I’ve been looking to play a new class lately and it’s really come down to Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer and Engineer.

It’s for mainly doing FotM, Arah and WvW Roaming as well as zerging with my Guild.

Elementalist seems to be pretty good however for all of these things. Guardian seems to be better at all of these things, but I really want to master a class and Elementalist seems right.

So what are they like at the moment in the things which I mentioned?

Thanks.

Guardian hands down for FOTM and ARAH.

For WvW, it actually depends on what you want to do, and both Ele and Guard are good there.

Most people would take Guardians over Elementalists because it’s the most balanced class in all aspects of the game. You might get a hard time joining FotM and Arah dungeon parties if you’re going to pug using an elementalist.

Guards and ekitten th have their own special places in WvW. But if you want an easier time in PvE, I suggest you roll a guardian since it’s more balanced in WvW and PvE.

Currently I can’t recommend you the elementalist. I am just and only playing the elementalist because I want to play mages in pretty much every game – that’s just my style. But it isn’t really funny anymore.

The elementalist does suck in PvE, and that is actually an understatement. He isn’t useful anythere and gets outclassed by everything. PvE needs to be completly rebalanced, the content isn’t balanced at all, the classes aren’t balanced at all, traits, weapons, skills, boons and conditions need a complete overhaul. The class design of the elementalist has some extremly weak points that need to be revamped.

Unfortunatly ArenaNet does only care about PvP, so probably he will be even more nerfed to become completly useless. Because in PvP he was once very strong and is still useful, as he is very versatile having more or less 4 weapons.

For WvW I will always prefer Guardian > Elementalist, just because of the AoE cap. Strong protection is more important than some AoE.

Peter Buch.8071:

Currently I can’t recommend you the elementalist. I am just and only playing the elementalist because I want to play mages in pretty much every game – that’s just my style. But it isn’t really funny anymore.

The elementalist does suck in PvE, and that is actually an understatement. He isn’t useful anythere and gets outclassed by everything. PvE needs to be completly rebalanced, the content isn’t balanced at all, the classes aren’t balanced at all, traits, weapons, skills, boons and conditions need a complete overhaul. The class design of the elementalist has some extremly weak points that need to be revamped.

Unfortunatlypave enaNet does only care about PvP, so probably he will be even more nerfed to become completly useless. Because in PvP he was once very strong and is still useful, as he is very versatile having more or less 4 weapons.

For WvW I will always prefer Guardian > Elementalist, just because of the AoE cap. Strong protection is more important than some AoE.

… maybe you’re just bad at elementalist. And more importantly if you’re not having fun, why in Gods name are you playing the game.

in regards to the OPs s question, a guardian and and an ele have competely different play styles. The guardian and ele’s have their place in WvW. Both are needed for large scale fights, though personally I find my elementalist to be a better roamer then my guard.

Don’t even consider pve as part of the equation. PvE is easy in this game, and can be done by any class. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either horrible at the game or a pve elitist who only cares about speed runs with face roll setups.

Basically pick the play style you find more enjoyable. Classes will go up and down the power curve, so play what’s fun.

All of the classes that you listed are completely viable for the things you want to do.

Guardian is a very safe pick if you want to do anything because ANet spent a lot of time making sure they were in a great place in all things. However, to fulfill those different roles well, you will probably have to respec at different times for the content.

Ele and engie are both very similar in that they can bring a LOT of variability for their various playstyles, and because they are jack of all trades can do anything without changing a few bits of gear/utilities. Both ele and engie can have excellent mobility (perma swiftness + leaps). Engie has more flexibility b/c of how kits work, but requires utilities to be sacrificed. Ele has a good amount of variety on its weapons, but usually requires defensive utilities b/c of its inherent squishiness.

Mesmers are in a very good place b/c they have some of the strongest traits spread around their trait-trees, and have unique utilities that are unmatched. The ability to make clones, stealth, portal, moa, illusion of life, and more bring some very unique and powerful skills to your team. Also, phantasm mesmer is still an apex 1v1 predator.

Best advice: try them all and select the one with the play-style (they are all a little different) you prefer. You can’t really go wrong here.

Can’t ever go wrong with a Guardian. It’s like the default choice to be good/decent at everything.

I think people are too picky in these forums. They say one class fails most because of MINOR details. All professions are fine, some just wont fit in certain player’s needs though (I want to see BIG HITS, I want to move fast, I want to look amazing etc).

In general light armor professions are weak against damage. this makes you adapt alternative ways to survive instead of facetanking with a heavy class.

Here’s what I think about these:

Guardian – As the name suggests, a guardian that protects your teammates by hoarding all the damage to himself and giving useful protective boons/heals on allies.

Elementalist – Fun nicely looking spell animations wizkid that can do offensive support, healing, speed bonuses, control effects and even protection. Not the best in any of these but still IT HAS THEM ALL. <3

Mesmer – The best jumping puzzle profession ever.

Engineer – Haven’t played yet but throwing grenades and using flamethrower seems nice and not depending that much on your actual weapons.

Granted I have not leveled my guardian to 80, but in my experience he is in melee combat most of the time. I have seen guardians take a considerable amount of damage over a sustained period of time in Pve, but they stand still doing it, lol, (which is great for confined spaces.) My elementalist has to dodge and roll to evade the damage and is constantly changing attunements, procing combos, and rotating condtions to do well.

The elementalist takes a considerable amount of more work in some peoples way of seeing things. I just happen to like the ranged options of the elementalist and that “work” over standing still or chasing targets to get in melee range, and stand still again.

I have both classes at 80 and I like them both. The Ele has more interesting build possibilities and takes more time to master. Currently my Ele does more damage than my guardian in zerg battle and mist form is probably the best/most useful WvW skill along with guardian Aegis/regen/retaliation.

For pve guardian is arguably the most optimal choice, but it sounds like you’d have more fun rolling an ele – my advice is go for ele! They are not the very top in any of the game types, but they are solid in all. Unless you are wanting the absolute most optimal class for FOTM 48, there’s not much reason to pick guardian over ele beyond personal preference.

Mesiphidon.8324:

Peter Buch.8071:

Currently I can’t recommend you the elementalist. I am just and only playing the elementalist because I want to play mages in pretty much every game – that’s just my style. But it isn’t really funny anymore.

The elementalist does suck in PvE, and that is actually an understatement. He isn’t useful anythere and gets outclassed by everything. PvE needs to be completly rebalanced, the content isn’t balanced at all, the classes aren’t balanced at all, traits, weapons, skills, boons and conditions need a complete overhaul. The class design of the elementalist has some extremly weak points that need to be revamped.

Unfortunatlypave enaNet does only care about PvP, so probably he will be even more nerfed to become completly useless. Because in PvP he was once very strong and is still useful, as he is very versatile having more or less 4 weapons.

For WvW I will always prefer Guardian > Elementalist, just because of the AoE cap. Strong protection is more important than some AoE.

… maybe you’re just bad at elementalist. And more importantly if you’re not having fun, why in Gods name are you playing the game.

in regards to the OPs s question, a guardian and and an ele have competely different play styles. The guardian and ele’s have their place in WvW. Both are needed for large scale fights, though personally I find my elementalist to be a better roamer then my guard.

Don’t even consider pve as part of the equation. PvE is easy in this game, and can be done by any class. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either horrible at the game or a pve elitist who only cares about speed runs with face roll setups.

Basically pick the play style you find more enjoyable. Classes will go up and down the power curve, so play what’s fun.

Perhaps you need to play some other professions…

My mesmer kicks the crap out of my Ele in PVE, it’s not even close. Ele in PVE is either: squishy or does crappy damage, whereas mesmer does great dmg, is hard to kill when played well, and has great utilities.

e.g. I could solo fully upgraded camps in WVW on my uplevelled mesmer in blue/green zerker gear.

Ele is better than mesmer at support and sustained AOE damage, that’s it. Mesmer is better at everything else.

Anet have shown clearly that they only balance around performance in sPVP (despite hardly anyone playing it, but that’s another matter), which works against Ele badly because they can fulfil many roles without changing traits. They have basically designed Ele into a corner where it underperforms at anything less than the highest skill levels, where it debateably overperforms.

I’d also say Ele has some of the overall worst-designed weapons and traits in the game, here’s a shortlist:

• 20+ arcane is practically required to play
• 15+ water is practically required to play as anything other than lolglass.
• fire and earth lines lack compelling traits (understatement).
• there’s no real way to play Ele that doesn’t involve frequent switching
• there’s no real way to play Ele as a condition spec.
• staff has 19 of 20 AOE skills & is consequently terrible solo when not bunkering.
• sceptre has some of the worst-designed skills in the game: fire #1, fire #2, water #1, water #2.
• focus has 2 strong skills in earth and sucks everywhere else.
• conjures. what were they thinking/smoking?

Peter Buch.8071:

Currently I can’t recommend you the elementalist. I am just and only playing the elementalist because I want to play mages in pretty much every game – that’s just my style. But it isn’t really funny anymore.

The elementalist does suck in PvE, and that is actually an understatement. He isn’t useful anythere and gets outclassed by everything. PvE needs to be completly rebalanced, the content isn’t balanced at all, the classes aren’t balanced at all, traits, weapons, skills, boons and conditions need a complete overhaul. The class design of the elementalist has some extremly weak points that need to be revamped.

Unfortunatly ArenaNet does only care about PvP, so probably he will be even more nerfed to become completly useless. Because in PvP he was once very strong and is still useful, as he is very versatile having more or less 4 weapons.

For WvW I will always prefer Guardian > Elementalist, just because of the AoE cap. Strong protection is more important than some AoE.

In WvW, it completely depends on what you have on hand. They’re both essential in a good mini-zerg, and they’re needed in multiples in large zergs. I think they’re both in the top 3 needed classes with mesmers. Guardian support is also aoe capped. aoe cleanses are capped, all field finishers are capped. I’m not sure about sanctuary and line of warding. Ele also provides needed support.

Ele’s don’t SUCK in pve either. You can do pve with anything. Guardians and maybe thieves in rare occasions are the only professions you EVER need and that’s only for high level FOTM. Mesmers are great for QoL but ele’s are not worse than the other professions in most situations. For speed clears you have lots of fire fields and blast, though less damage than most other classes in full zerker. Also even your most zerker builds provide good heal support with water fields or aoe healing. For more difficult dungeons you provide good support, and the best healing. Only guardians outclass your support.

Guardians make things easy, frankly too easy. If you care about efficiency/work done ratio it’s the best class. Eles require a bit more input to be even partially effective as guardians.

Did anyone remind what developers said of PvE elementalist PRE rtl/mistform (and following) nerf?

Now unless you believe they buffed PvE elementalist consistently to make up for that you have an official answer on elementalist current state.

Every profession in a party have a role.
What role does an elementalist have currently so you would choose him over a warrior/guardian/mesmer/thief?

The only i saw was condition cleanser…and for that is possibly the best.
Unfortunately dungeon don t need that :| except cliffside and aetherblade retreat.

LordByron.8369:

The only i saw was condition cleanser…and for that is possibly the best.
Unfortunately dungeon don t need that :| except cliffside and aetherblade retreat.

Add to that volcanic fractal if someone gets hit with an arrow, runs near you while screaming “IT BURNS!!”.

haviz.1340:

LordByron.8369:

The only i saw was condition cleanser…and for that is possibly the best.
Unfortunately dungeon don t need that :| except cliffside and aetherblade retreat.

Add to that volcanic fractal if someone gets hit with an arrow, runs near you while screaming “IT BURNS!!”.

in volcanic fractal if an Arrow hits you you are dead anyway :| i don t think burning is an issue.

Also you are supposed to evade them 100% at higher levels expecially with the future particle effect review.

LordByron.8369:

in volcanic fractal if an Arrow hits you you are dead anyway :| i don t think burning is an issue.

Also you are supposed to evade them 100% at higher levels expecially with the future particle effect review.

You can survive arrow at 79 with quick immunity skill and condition removal. Maybe with enough AR once anet releases additional ascended gear, it won’t be even needed. My comedy act is still possible.

no wait >.> quick immunity stuff was mostly patched afaik.
I also used to Blurred franzy and stuff but doesn t work no more since months.

And btw is way easier to just not being hit ._. unless the boss start his stupid focus that means you are dead because RNG decided so.

LordByron.8369:

no wait >.> quick immunity stuff was mostly patched afaik.
I also used to Blurred franzy and stuff but doesn t work no more since months.

And btw is way easier to just not being hit ._. unless the boss start his stupid focus that means you are dead because RNG decided so.

Blurred frenzy grants evade since 25th June. I’ve seen warriors kiting him for 2 minutes without getting downed on lvl 79.

haviz.1340:

LordByron.8369:

no wait >.> quick immunity stuff was mostly patched afaik.
I also used to Blurred franzy and stuff but doesn t work no more since months.

And btw is way easier to just not being hit ._. unless the boss start his stupid focus that means you are dead because RNG decided so.

Blurred frenzy grants evade since 25th June. I’ve seen warriors kiting him for 2 minutes without getting downed on lvl 79.

yeah i can do that too unless rng decide to Arrow=>aoe=>Arrow=>aoe
Since they don t share CD you run out of evades….

Also Aoe with lag is hard to completely evade and a single crit can down you at 1st meteor. :/

Shouldn’t be frequent but we know this game has a not so random rng.

If no one melees him, he always do arrow→arrow→aoe→arrow→arrow→aoe etc. After 2nd arrow be prepare for aoe. This video shows it in practice.

Blurred frenzy isn’t a immunity anymore, that’s why Agony gets trough – you’ll have to use distorsion.

On topic: it’s down to how/with who/what you play.

For wvw, all the 4 classes you mentioned are viable. Ele staff is required for group play, guardian is the backbone of any zerg and mesmer…i just say “Veil”.

FoTM/arah, on paper Guard and Mesmer are better. I say “on paper” because if you pug or speedrun it then ppl are going to force you over those 2 compared to ele/engi.
But if you have 4 friends to play how kitten you want w/o hassle of carrying pugs or speedrunning in full kitten serker, then go for whatever you like to play and don’t care.

ps: Ele players are the ones who cry the most. Try out the class by yourself.

ps: Ele players are the ones who cry the most. Try out the class by yourself

This is like saying your opinion is the only that matters and Others are just complainers.
You are just disrespecting many players without anything to support your point of view.

For the pattern thing i could swear i saw more than one time Arrow-aoe-Arrow-aoe i stopped to play lvl 48 fotm recently :/ because i can t find pug parties lately.
And this is OT so i ll check again when i ll find a pug party.

LordByron.8369:

This is like saying your opinion is the only that matters and Others are just complainers.

The only opinion that matters is the player’s one – and he’s going to get it only by trying himself the profession, not by reading this subforum.

Simply put, he tries ele, he likes play it?

Then yes, his opinion > all the QQ or “reroll ele is s*it” here.

/thread

so many excuses to discredit anyone not agreeing with you.

You know what people usually do on a profession forum?
They ask for opinions and suggestions, maybe because trying everything is not the best idea in the world…….

I dont think elementalists are a bad class, but i dont think its a fun one. This is obviously very subjective, but since its the reason i stopped playing it after getting to lvl 80 i would like to explain my feelings on the class:

1 – Staff is very useful for WvW and PvE, since you have a lot of AoE healing, CC and Dmg. However, it is pretty boring to play WvW (oe PvE) this way. You go to a castle / castle wall, use AoE on walls / enemies, switch to water and AoE heal and dodge heal. Repeat. You will generally stay away from close combat because you are a lot more valuabe with long range AoEs than doing single target or small skirmishes.
2 – Dagger/Dagger was fun for awhile, untill its mobility was nerfed to hell. The fact that you have to faceroll you keyboard (change attunements every 3 seconds and madly press skill buttons) to do something also becomes a little frustating. There are so many cooldowns you have to be looking for that i found hard to actually pay attention at what was happening, and found myself looking at cooldown times for a lot of the time. It feels like when you are learning how to drive and keep staring at your velocity trying not to go over the speed limit.
3 – I found myself dealing very little damage against my targets. I wanst easily killed (i was using a 0/10/0/30/30 spec), but it took a lot of time to kill veterans and other players. It also isnt a very forgiving class, if you mess up your rotation you will be killed (for example getting all your attunements on cooldown and be stuck on earth with low health)

I didnt play around with Scepter/Dagger much, and will probably try a fresh air build to see if damage has now improved and if its fun.

I currently play thief, which basically has everything i would like an elementalist to have: high mobility, high damage and survavibility at close range, and no cooldowns on skills, just use whatever you want at any give time and pay attention to the game. Im not saying i think thiefs are better, but it fits my playstyle better, and i have a whole lot more fun.

Another issue i have with elementalists is that fire traitline is really bad, which limits by a lot the number of viable builds. It basically means you have to chose 2 trait lines out of 4, wich allows for 6 different decent combinations. Because evasive arcana is very hard no to get (since its arguably the best elementalist trait) the number of different combinations gets down further to 3.

Since elementalists also dont have many weapon choices, most eles play very alike in PvP, with same weapon, build and rotation.

Oh, and elite skills are really bad in comparison with other classes. You can become a tornado and do nothing for 15seconds, summon a pet that can easily be killed, or conjure a sword thats super fun but doesnt lasts long and has a 3 minute cooldown.