Guild Wars 2

So what’s the current state of elementalists in terms of class* balance compared to other classes? From both PvP/PvE perspective (and other aspects) or whether they excel or fall behind in either of them.

My main is elementalist but I’m considering rolling a new character as I haven’t played it for a long time and don’t want to make a “bad class choice”.

So basically I’d like to know is, are they in the same level as the other classes or do they lack in some areas.

*profession

In pvp elementalist are really strong but we don’t have many viable builds.You pretty much have to go 15 water/30 arcane or you can’t survive the rest of the traits points can be spent in air or water depending on if you want to roam or bunker.

Like 20 air 20 water 30 arcane and taking elemental surge if you roam or 10 air 30 water 30 arcane and getting evasive arcana if you want to bunker.

In pve I feel like the class is offers good support.We have access to tons of boons,combo fields and projectile reflection.Elementalist have excellent healing and condition removal.Elementalist also have really good mob control so you can shut down groups of trash mobs while your party kills them.Our aoe damage is also pretty strong.

The downside to the class is our single target damage is crap compared to some classes.Warriors can put out twice the damage we can.We have very low base hp so we’re forced to use a few pieces of toughness vitality gear while other classes can get away with full berserker gear.

From a PvP perspective we really only have one way to go, with minor variations, to be viable. People will try to tell you otherwise, but it simply isn’t accurate. Can you make other builds work? Yes. Will they work as well? No. In WvW you can add staff as viable, but only in certain situations. Outside of those situations, it is pretty bad.

I know people see silly vids of small groups of people destroying large zergs while using a glass cannon staff ele and get the wrong impression. The truth is that for every video these people make, there are 500 other situations where the enemy actually has one competent player that uses a gap closer and 3 shots the 14k hp glass cannon ele.

All in all the ele class is in a fair state. Some abilities and weapons need improvement to break ele’s out of cookie cutters. Some broken things need to be fixed.

The current state of the ele honestly has to do with how you like to play.

There are some unhappy players because they judge the class on a very narrowly defined set of criteria ignoring, or example, support roles of the class and instead emphasizing, for example, certain single target dps failings.

In other words there is always something to complain about. Overall, the class is a blast to play and far better than any other class in this game for me. I have yet to try the messmer yet though.

ele class is fun to play due to colorful skills tried to play warrior/guardian/thief and so far i’ve enjoyed playing a d/d & staff elementalist. always moving around and you can go support/offensive depending on your equipped weapon.