Guild Wars 2

I often wonder what our real role as elementalist is. I have been elementalist since day 1. Been 80 for few weeks now. I love my class but sometimes it still frustrates me to play this class. We shine great as support, beyond that yes we are somehwhat decent but nothing overly good.

Are we really meant to contribute purely as support class?

Our traits line pigeon to a few attunements. We are jack of all trades master of none due to 4 attunement based. To survive and kill we are required to have attunement dance. Yet at the same time we have to spec traits that split up into Fire, Air, Earth, Water and Arcane.

Our traits synergy is weak. Each line only has very few minor and major traits to help the entire class. Once we put in points, esp 30 points, our other line looks weak. If we don’t put in points to Arcane, we are even worse at attunement dance.

Warrior’s traits on the other hand don’t pigeon hole into specific weapon base. In fact NONE of their minor traits are weapon specific. They have traits that benefit their class across the board and can be customized to suit them. Their major traits can be switched to weapon specific if needed. Ours? 8 of our minor traits from each attunement lines are attunement specific. None of them quite benefit each other attunements. A 11s++ CD does not help attunement switching too.

Just compare our traits line to Warrior or other class:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_traits
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_traits
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_thief_traits

No matter how we spec, we are continuously kittening ourselves. We tell ourselves to attunement switch. But at the same time the attunements traits are not helpful across the board. We gain specific bonuses to the traits leaving our other lines weak when we switch attunement.

Other classes like Warrior, Many of their traits benefit them across the board whichever weapon they use. Their major traits can be changed on the fly.

Lets look at a similar trait line of Warrior and Ele that focuses on crit.

Air Magic
Air Magic is a trait line of the elementalist that focuses on use of air magic and additionally glyphs, movement speed, and spike damage.
Per point: Precision +10, Critical Damage +1%

2 minor traits are Air specific only — run speed and when we switch to air we get lightning. The 3rd minor trait for vulnerability is actually good.

Arms
Arms is a trait line for the warrior that focuses on critical hits and use of bleeding as source of damage.
Per point: Precision +10, Condition Damage +10

Warrior’s all 3 minor traits really boosts crit and Warrior’s dmg as a whole. 33% chance on bleeding on crit, Burst skills increase 10% crit, Dmg to bleeding foes 10%

So basically they way our traits are designed require us to fully be traited and attunened to make that line useful. Our traits to help us across the board. Whenever we spec towards a certain attunement, we kitten ourselves.

Suggestions? LOL not without having a major traits redesigned. Which we wont see anytime soon.

Perhaps our traits needed to be redesigned to be more playstyle specific rather than attunement specific. Or maybe even weapon specific since we can only use so few weapons. I.E -a crit based actually have traits that Improve crit spells across ALL spells rather than few specific ones. Increase 10% dmg to all staff spells instead of just fire, air, earth … Or increase crit chance to all projectile spells so all staff benefit from it.

So in the end every weapon, playstyle or attunement is viable. And not just forcing us to go specific traits and weapons for particular activity. A warrior wants stun based playstyle, he switch hammer without having to respec. Pulling out greatsword, just flip the major trait. No matter how we flip traits our attunements are generally weak.

TL;DR

• Weak traits line synergy
• Jack of all trades, master of none
• Traits don’t benefit class as a whole unlike traits of other class
• Requires Attunement dancing yet, slowed but attunement CD
• Traits generally benefit only the specific attunement you are in
• Switch attunement to untraited = weak
• Suggestions for traits to be designed for specific playstyle or even weapon rather than attunement specific
• Traits that benefits attunement across the board rather than just a specific line

Cannon fodder
That’s what we are

Real role would be in PVE. We are very strong in PVE combat to deal with adds + AoE Healing.

2 Professions can be called a healer; Engineer and Elementalist. They have the most healing abilities. Also we are decent in support.

LOL Snaple. I love your skill #2

we got the importent part of making other classes feel really good and powerfull. :P

Great post! I’ve been trying to put together a post very similar to this for a while but couldn’t quite find the right words. I wholeheartedly agree that there’s really not enough synergy with ele traits. There are a few really good looking combos on paper such as an Air + Water vulnerability/crit build but at the same time, half of the traits in a build like that are better for daggers and half are better for staves meaning you don’t use your traits to full effect.

The way I look at it most classes have two categories of traits: ones that are general buffs that help regardless of weapon choice, and ones that are weapon specific. As elementalists we have general traits, weapon traits AND attunement traits. If like in your example, a warrior switches from a greatsword to a hammer, they just have to swap out a major trait, we can’t do that since even if we swap out our weapon we’re still using our elemental attunement.

A good way to put it is that being a complex class, we have more choice but don’t have an increased choice capacity to reflect it. We have the same number of traits and same number of slots as everyone else but more diverse options meaning as a whole they become a little weaker.

To be clear, I’m not saying I think ele’s are “OMG SO UP!!” I love my ele and at least in PvE I kick a lot ofkitten and don’t have much trouble if any at all, but I do think that the traits (along with elite skills) are pretty weak and could use a little love.