Guild Wars 2

No matter how much APM u have, skill u have, u can switch attunements and memorize the best combos ever,

We will never be as good as a warrior… they tank and DPS way more than us

Go ahead and post your log comparison showing that peak dps between the two classes heavily, and consistently favors warriors.

I’ll wait here for you to post the data you obviously have.

Ementalist sucks period.

Reduce cooldown on skills and animation time and they can be just as good as the others, but for now they suck very very bad

Two spells for elementalist kitten me off. D/D earth 5 (cast timer is stupid long) and Fire 5 (that fricken spell’s cast timer causes me to miss it hitting soooo much)

Those of us who actually care about the class have been beating these drums since launch but so far we’ve been completely ignored. I suggest either avoiding spvp or re-rolling to keep your sanity.

Dude, all professions feel like that atm… Soo much spell/traits bugs for everyone.. Tbh i rather have them fix 3 spells instead of 1 sidequest

I’ve had to stop looking at stats when I play around with other classes. I love my elementalist and it’s my main but when I get bored and log another class I can’t help but notice that I’ve got better stats before I’ve even finished putting in all the traits/runes/sigils.

Not to mention every other melee class isn’t hampered by long animation/cast times.

I repeat. I love my Ele. but by comparison it is sluggish and slow

If you think ele are underpowered your doing it wrong.
I ran into a few in WvW that were amazingly good, high mobility and tricky as hell. I dont have an ele but he was using some sort of lighting to gain swiftness and just be all over the place, it ws 2v1 and we could not kill the guy.

Lowest defense and low DPS: Elementalists are forced to combo in order to output as much damage as another profession (as a result of them having 20 skills available via attunement swapping); the time it takes to swap attunements, execute skills, and wait for their animations results in attack patterns that necessarily take longer than other professions just to equal their damage output hence Elementalists’ low DPS.

Have you tried going into a self healing multi attunement buff stacking build? Because bar huge one shot hits I find I am really survivable.

GenericName.5046:

If you think ele are underpowered your doing it wrong.
I ran into a few in WvW that were amazingly good, high mobility and tricky as hell. I dont have an ele but he was using some sort of lighting to gain swiftness and just be all over the place, it ws 2v1 and we could not kill the guy.

So you don’t play an Ele and with 2v1 you couldn’t kill a solo Ele, but yet everyone else is “doing it wrong” because WvW is obviously the place to go for consistent balance where there is no gear discrepancy to speak of…

lol

I’m not sure how anyone survives in PvP without at least 20 points in water and cantrips filling every utility slot. I’ve tried. Best I can do is slot AW instead of teleport when I feel like running D/D instead of S/D since I need the more immediate burst.

Elementalists certainly gain survivability by traiting into water/arcane, etc, but this only reduces the already terrible DPS. Even a “glass cannon” elementalist does crap for damage and is hit with low DPS due to the necessary combo factor.

Elems maybe be underpowered…but you can’t compare them to warriors. Warriors and mellee in general needs a harsh nerf.

“If you think ele are underpowered your doing it wrong.
I ran into a few in WvW that were amazingly good, high mobility and tricky as hell. I dont have an ele but he was using some sort of lighting to gain swiftness and just be all over the place, it ws 2v1 and we could not kill the guy.”

Really? I can do that as well….

Attunement light , 4 ( speed ) 5 ( stun ) , earth 3 ( Shield ) , 4 ( barrier that slows ) , ice 4 ( slows ).

So basically ur saying just because an Ele managed to escape a 2v1 situation he aint underpowered…

Are you kitten

Masternewbz is right about elementalists being underpowered. I see it every day I log in and play my elementalist. Every other class is able to handle themselves significantly better. We are not glass canons, we lack the damage required to being a canon, we are more like a pea-shooter. As for glass, well we are more made out of a wet paper bag. If I don’t attack a monster properly, I’m barely keeping alive. If another monster jumps me, it is a miracle to survive it.

I’m don’t think we need our damage increased, but more of a reduced cooldown duration on all of our skills. We also need at least more HP, defense or evasion abilities. Perhaps if our summoned element pet were to last a few minutes then I’d say it is fairly balanced. Of course the cooldown to summon should be the same so if it is summoned and immediatly taken out then it be unfair to re-summon it instantly. It would encourage wanting to keep the familiar alive.

If ANet gets their head out of their A with this, then the elementalist will be one of the most favored classes to play in this game. As of now I’ve given up on the elementalist and undecided what to play as next so just not playing.

GW2 has become too frustrating for me to play after coming home from an already stressful job.

What is APM?

Do you play this game? This game forum is for GW2, and the class is called an Elementalist. An Elementalist is not a Warrior. Those are two different classes. An Elementalist wears a dress and runs from Warriors.

I think your confused about this game.

Ele’s are weak if by weak you mean can’t take a lot of burst damage and don’t output massive damage. That isn’t what they are meant for though. They are one of the best support classes in the game.

When i bought this game i read that support classes were not needed and any class could do anything..
So that is the actual proof something is wrong……

Ill keep posting thins everytime i read that to play this game i have to play a support ele 0/0/10/30/30 and such -.-

I want to customizemy playstile as they promised…..and btw i can wait for patches just i hate people constantly sayng “you can heal and spam fields” its not called HEALER its called an elementalist…..

I think a distinction needs to be made between being underpowered no matter the build and being underpowered in all but one build. An ele using a water build focused on support is a valuable part of any viable tPvP team. So ele’s are not shut out of tPvP provided they use that specific build.

Our problem is that the water build is our only viable build. A bunch of threads are devolving into “ele’s are broken” versus “no they’re not, plenty of ele’s succeed in tPvP”. Neither side is wrong. We are broken and we are succeeding in tPvP. An ele versus any other class, 1v1, should lose. For anything besides support, an ele is the last class a team would want. The reason we have a spot in tPvP is that for support, we are arguably the best class in the game.

They need to at least fix us in 1v1, because every class needs to have a chance of winning those fights. It is a real balance problem that we are as pitiful as we are 1v1. And if they want to give us more than a single role to choose from, they need to give us much stronger offensive abilities. (That doesn’t equate to more direct damage, though. It probably means changing some cooldowns and reducing some cast times. The actual damage each given spell does is fine.)

2.1k power, and hitting 1.5k burning speeds normally is fine? I hit that much on my auto att with axe warrior with same power.

2.1k power, and hitting 1.5k burning speeds normally is fine? I hit that much on my auto att with axe warrior with same power.

The huge difference is that we have four attunements we can switch between. Meaning we (theoretically) have twice as many damaging abilities. That assumption really is true for D/D builds, it’s sort of true for S/x builds, and it’s absolutely false for staff builds.

If you play D/D, where that assumption does hold, we do great damage. You just have to be using all of your damage abilities on cooldown. If you play staff, just hope Anet realizes that Air, Water, and Earth combine for just three damaging non-auto attack abilities. Which is way too few considering we can’t weapon swap. Not to mention that, even including fire, staff has only two direct damage non-auto attack abilities. Which is comically short of what we should have. We can’t switch weapons for direct damage, after all.

zilcho.7624:

2.1k power, and hitting 1.5k burning speeds normally is fine? I hit that much on my auto att with axe warrior with same power.

The huge difference is that we have four attunements we can switch between. Meaning we (theoretically) have twice as many damaging abilities. That assumption really is true for D/D builds, it’s sort of true for S/x builds, and it’s absolutely false for staff builds.

If you play D/D, where that assumption does hold, we do great damage. You just have to be using all of your damage abilities on cooldown. If you play staff, just hope Anet realizes that Air, Water, and Earth combine for just three damaging non-auto attack abilities. Which is way too few considering we can’t weapon swap.

we would be fine if they reduced cooldowns and Casting animations…

or buff damage or HP…

something has to be done

How about PvE?

Rise.9702:

How about PvE?

can u farm faster than a warrior?

no…

warrior is clearly OP in PVE they farm fast as hell

zilcho.7624:

2.1k power, and hitting 1.5k burning speeds normally is fine? I hit that much on my auto att with axe warrior with same power.

The huge difference is that we have four attunements we can switch between. Meaning we (theoretically) have twice as many damaging abilities.

Quantity does not mean quality. Warrior can have 3 skills and do more DPS and burst damage then elementalist with 20 skills.
For example PvE combo for pack:
Elementalist: Burning speed > Ring of fire > Arcane wave > Earthquake > Armor of earth > Churning earth. 45 second cooldown combo (if not count 90 sec CD for earth armor).
Warrior: Gather pack > Hundred blades > 8 sec wait > repeat if needed.
And warrior does same or more damage per combo, but much more damage per second.

Ementalist are very very Underpowered

No.

Ele’s are weak if by weak you mean can’t take a lot of burst damage and don’t output massive damage. That isn’t what they are meant for though. They are one of the best support classes in the game.

Believe it or not, Elementalist can do plenty of burst damage, can tank amazingly well, can support, can heal. They just won’t do all that at once – just like every other class. People go full berserker, fire/air then they’re amazed when a thief twoshoots them. No way, how could this possibly happen? :p

For example PvE combo for pack:
Elementalist: Burning speed

Why are you using double daggers for a pack? It’s great for a single target burst, but the AoE is attrocious compared to Scepter-Dagger, Lightning Hammer or Staff.

D/D isn’t very good at aoe shocker @Kreit

I mean really, D/D has worst AoE the ele has. And even D/D is very good, stack some condition damage on your gear and dragon’s breath + churning earth melts everything.

Switch to S/D and suddenly everything dies before you even have to switch out of fire, and the combo has a 15 second cooldown or something close to that.

And staff is hilariously good when you need long range, large AoE or combo fields.

If this is not the case for you, you’re doing it wrong.

@OP, my elementalist tanks better than any warrior I’ve ever seen. Are you sure we’re playing the same game?

Elementalist is better in most aspects of tPvP than Warrior… better deff-build, better off-build. The statement of the OP is untrue.

/thread

All ANet has to do is buff our damage (it’s pitiful right now) and give us some more EVASIONS skills. Ele is supposed to be the most mobile caster, that’s why we’re made of wet paper and get killed if we get sneezed on. I don’t have a problem with this as long as they give us 2 things: Add more evasion skills like the Thief has, and let us use at least 85% of our skills while moving. Right now doing solo PvE with a staff is kittening stupid because I get mostly 1-3 shotted by trash mobs, yet a good portion of skills require me to stand still for 3 seconds or more. In dungeons this is especially bad.

honestly i find myself having to use earth attune and putting a bunch of points into water just to solo in pve. doesnt help that our aoes have a bad tendency to aggro unwanted mobs either..

Ele needs Earth att boost, at least main hand does for scepter and dagger, cuz its lame… I rolled Ele as alt and its really disappointing to see comparing to Ranger how low dmg si in proportion with survive-ability, ur glass with dmg or without it, but even if u concentrate on earth/water ur still glass…

In PvE, my original opinion on the Ele was that it was extremely underpowered and that I was dying in like 2 hits. In the middle of dancing around like a mad man trying to kill a wolf, I’d roll into the aggro radius of another monster and normally die due to paper thin defenses. When playing with other professions, I never experienced that level of difficulty.

As time went on, things definitely got better. I’m currently around level 60 and I do feel that my damage is less than other professions, but I’m playing much better. I’m not dying and fights with randomly aggored Moa’s are no longer stressful fights to the death. I used to play s/d, but due to me normally rolling into multiple mobs, I changed to staff. It works pretty well! I’m happy. I’m still trying to work out effective builds, but I’m definitely not finding it too difficult now that I’ve given it time. Glyph of Storms (earth) is an amazing utility skill. Evasive arcana also goes extremely well with staff.

Having said this, whenever I watch other professions killing mobs, especially ranger/warrior they slaughter them effortlessly. A notable moment for me was… Bloodtide Coast I think it was. There’s a part of the island where large groups of risen randomly spawn, and I accidentaly ran into their path. I got slaughtered. However a guardian then came along, and proceeded to destroy most of them. He took down several, before more risen joined the battle. He got downed, and then managed to rally after killing risen in the downed state. Then killed several more, before downing again and then eventually dying. I wish I took pictures, but it was amazing to see! So I don’t know what to make of that really. Other than I could never achieve that on an ele (unless I had glyph of storms perhaps).

I also dislike when people say ‘Ok, if you want to faceroll PvE play warrior, don’t play ele’. There’s nothing wrong with a learning curve, I enjoy the challenge as an ele. Ele was my main in gw1, which is why I keep playing the profession. I just don’t like complexity where the only reward is ‘you survived, but all your skills are on cooldown k sorry’.

I don’t think this class needs a major rework- well maybe the traits do because they’re absolutely dire. A few tweaks to damage/cooldowns in combination with traits that encourage viable flexibility would be awesome

As someone who has a thief, warrior, ele, ranger all at 80 or extremely close to cap, I can say fairly that Ele is vastly underpowered as anything but a combo field generator/executor.

I think in a game like GW1, where a vast portion of the game is soloable (i.e., does not explicitly require a party), being able to DAMAGE in addition to support/control is a necessary aspect of every profession.

Every other profession can short-cast time or instant-cast a rotation that does similar if not significantly greater damage than the elementalist. (We assume equal gear dependent on your build, don’t quote a condition damage rifle warrior for instance.) And if does have a long cast time, the skill will at least home-in (can still be LoS’ed) and not depend on opponent immobility, nor hamper your own mobility.

They need to fix the attunement system. It FORCES Anet to balance the Elementalist around the fact that (s)he can cast any of the 20 weapon skills at any given time. So if half the weapon skills are support (more like 75% with staff), then she is forced to become a support. Neglecting support skills to focus on dps at any given significant period of time means you are not playing your class to its full potential.

The ATTUNEMENT SYSTEM FORCES EVERY ELEMENTALIST TO PLAY SUPPORT AT LEAST 30% OF THE TIME.

I don’t want to HAVE to play support to play my Elementalist to its max. Just like I don’t want to play a mobile spirit build on my Ranger except when I feel like it. Just like I don’t want to play a shout specced heal/condition removal build on my Warrior except when I feel like it. Just like I don’t want to play a combo field/perma-weaken build on my Thief except when I feel like it.

I can opt not to play those builds in dungeons and still be contributing extremely well. If I choose not to use most of my support skills as an Elementalist, I’m hampering my party output by more than half.

D/D Ele is unnecessarily dangerous in dungeons and is still less single target dps than Thieves/Warriors/Rangers, and is far less 2-3 target dps.

All other professions can contribute support for 4-5 seconds every minute, and they’ll last. We have to circle jerk around our damage spells’s cooldowns and fiddle with support spells in the mean time.

Honestly, they should force you to specialize in a specific attunement meaningfully like in GW1.

I’d much prefer only being able to use 2 attunements in any given combat period (as every class is stuck with their current 2 weapon sets in combat), but allowed a weapon swap.

Thus if you want to primarily damage with some control, you can, instead of having to primarily support with some damage.

I really think that simple change will fix most Elementalist problems.

Okay, I’ve been tinkering with burst D/D and S/F. They’ve both performed pretty well and each tend to be pretty devastating if used properly. I don’t know what this underpowered nonsense is when we can send an entire team reeling.

The main thing I’ve had to learn is “when.” When to unload, when to wait. Both weapon sets perform at their best when both you and the other team have established a battle. You don’t want to be part of the team initiating the battle; you come in immediately afterward or when the opportunity presents itself.

S/F tends to have steadier damage output, but DT requires that people stay relatively still, making your spikes less reliable. D/D has been, in my experience, extremely effective in making sure that the group of people running in circles around the point dies immediately.

I don’t bother engaging in much small-time fighting when running this spec. It sacrifices too much survivability to go toe to toe with anyone, but it does so to a tremendous advantage. Know who to attack and when. Pick out the important targets when they’re vulnerable.

Just FYI, when D/D I run arcane wave/shield plus mist form, and I use ether renewal. Once you unleash the burst, if things are too hot, mist form out and use ether renewal to clear conditions. This gives you a reset, and you can start the combo over shortly thereafter (minus updraft).

I only have a few complaints, none of which are new. Dragon’s Tooth needs to drop faster so that it’s more urgent people run away (currently, they can slowly meander). Ride the Lightning also needs to hit every time. No excuses. This is a tremendous skill when it works and absolutely horrible when it doesn’t. I can’t count the number of times a botched RTL has resulted in mediocre damage output and my death.

They need to take each and every class and break them down into a simple equation based around an average damage number. If 2000 damage is what you want the average ability to hit for, then players who hit for 4000, should have their defensive abilities cut in half. If they hit for 1000, they should have twice the defense.

The current state of the game is broken because so many classes are able to deal double the damage and keep their defense. The reason Elementalist seem broke, is because they are the only class that follows the equation I mentioned.

tufy.7859:

For example PvE combo for pack:
Elementalist: Burning speed

Why are you using double daggers for a pack? It’s great for a single target burst, but the AoE is attrocious compared to Scepter-Dagger, Lightning Hammer or Staff.

Because all used skills in combo are AoE, fast and give 3 stacks of might after first skill.
and @Truga
I don’t like scepter, it’s slow, for dragon tooth you need to stay at one place for a long time, bugged arc lightning is annoying and fire auto-attack is only good for condition build. I have 80 lvl elementalist, in Orr for solo you need fast instant skills, because mobs have to much CC. D/D is good for solo AoE if you have good survivability.
Btw, I didn’t said this combo is bad or weak (it kills packs) . I said for same and more damage warrior needs 1-2 buttons, not 6-7. And cooldown for warrior most damage skill is not 45 seconds.
P.S. To kill someone in Orr with only fire attunement I need ~10k damage per skill with scepter and this is not possible.

I laughed when people said D/D has the worse AoE.

It actually has the best, since its far more instant and deals more damage (total).
Lets look;
Drakes Breath – decent damage + burning AoE… amazing.
Burning Speed – AoE blast + short wall of Fire – amazing
Ring of Fire – AoE blast + wall of burning – amazing
Fire Grab – Small cone of high damage vs burning (see Drakes breath) – amazing.

What does S/ bring? long animations for slightly less damage.

Yes the ele needs a bit, but just a few bug fixes and a few traits re-worked and we’ll be fine.

I wrote a really long retort about balance, and utility and such but really it comes down to.

If we are patient there will be a bit of a buff, but anet is rushing and we just have to play the class for what it is nto what we want it to be.

Anlyon.8375:

I laughed when people said D/D has the worse AoE.

It actually has the best, since its far more instant and deals more damage (total).
Lets look;
Drakes Breath – decent damage + burning AoE… amazing.
Burning Speed – AoE blast + short wall of Fire – amazing
Ring of Fire – AoE blast + wall of burning – amazing
Fire Grab – Small cone of high damage vs burning (see Drakes breath) – amazing.

What does S/ bring? long animations for slightly less damage.

Yes the ele needs a bit, but just a few bug fixes and a few traits re-worked and we’ll be fine.

Burning speed also causes burning. My rotation is RTL->Lightning skill 2->updraft->switch to fire->burning speed->ring of fire->fire grab->arcana wave if they are still alive after that I follow up with switch to earth->earth 4->earth2->earth 3->earth 5. If they are STILL alive after that then I reroll thief and delete my elementalist.

FYI, updraft throws you back the perfect distance from your target so when you hit burning speed, they are right in the damage sweet spot of it.

Anlyon, the problem I have with dagger is that the only high instant damage aoe (i.e. not condition damage), fire grab, is on a ridiculously long cooldown. With a S/D, I just walk around and spam 4 3 2 every 15 seconds or whatever the cooldown is. If they don’t die from direct damage, they’ll die to burning from ring of fire/dragon’s tooth in a second or two.

Yes, D/D is amazing damage. I’m carrying a full carrion set atm (20k hp, yum), just two dragon breaths down anything that isn’t veteran/champion, and all the dps skills are on short CD. But apart from fire grab, practically all of it is condition damage, rather than instant, which can be seriously annoying at times, when just trying to farm PVE.

I wish people realized that due to Elementalist’s complexity statements like “Ele sucks, we deal no damage or Eles are fine we deal a lot of damage and tank better than a Warrior” are worth next to nothing without a build link.

I’d be glad to see how those who say “profession is fine” spec: if it’s working for them it might help people having problems.

As for me, I’m experimenting as much as i can, right now I’m using D/D and my traits look like this and so far it’s been a blast for pve (in a dungeon i’d swap signet of air/water for arcane shield). Using a combination of equip with vitality, power and condition damage i can take a couple of hits while dealing some nice damage.

I have full berserkers with only 12k hp. I can kill DOT elementalists with just fire and lightning. RTL hits for 2k non crit, 4k crit. burning speed hits for 2kish non crit, 5k crit. Ring of fire is 2k non crit, 4k crit, fire grab is 4k non crit, 8k-15k crit. I can push that out in about 5 seconds.
I have 61% chance to crit with 89% crit damage.

Yes please buff Ementalists. Ementalists are suffering badly. Ementalist need much love. They suck at Ementaling.

I suggest people playing Ele’s go mess around with a mesmer for an evening and draw up a new list of demands. I know I have. And I used to say Ele’s were fine…

@hackks
And whats wrong with messmer? It’s best PvP class, that’s why he is not so effective in PvE (except fat elite mobs). Only annoying thing – illusions are linked to target, thats why PvE is not comfortable.

there’s nothing wrong with Mesmers. That’s my point.

Roll with a GS and you never even have to engage in the fight. Just keep sending in Phantasms and clones that drop 5k crits over and over again. Dagger skills all work well. Pistol skills work even better. They’ve also basically got the equivalent of every Ele cantrip (and then some! their utility skills are ALL awesome!) but with half the CD times. Better base HP means not having to sink 20-30 points into a vitality tree and can focus on dmg or other utilities. The elites are 2nd to none. And the list goes on…

seriously, it was the most fun I’ve had playing PvP so far. No stress about anything. Just pewpewing and laughing my kitten off at all the stupid kitten I could do. So far I’ve played Necro, Engi, Ele, Theif, and last night was Mesmer. I’m PvP rank 23. I know now why some people have put aside their class of choice to play a mesmer when playing competitively. No other class can bring as much as they do to a team. Not even close.

Agreed.

The glass is there in spades.

The cannon is grossly missing.

Most decent ele damage attacks require specific placement, positioning, stationary targets, and a lot of work to pull off and they still don’t do damage worthy of the hassle and glass nature of the class.

I honestly don’t give a crap about PvP. PvE games like MMORPGs should never be balanced around PvP.

So if you do great in PvP, neato. I do fine in WvW too, because players are a lot easier to screw with in that environment than something like the overaggro heavy hitting mobs in Orr that move faster than monkeys on crack and hit like trucks.

I’m fine with the glass nature of the class, I just think that the heavy hitting abilities should actually do more damage to justfiy how much of a pain it is to stay alive.

Try a warrior if you haven’t. It’s comically sad how much damage they do, while being able to take on multiples, champs, and/or barely take damage. Compare slot skill selection to ele. Compare elites to ele. Compare trait talents to ele. Warrior is a complete and glorious profession. Ele is a joke by comparison.

These threads always end up having two sides:

1). ‘Elementalists are underpowered, our DPS sucks’

and

2). ‘Elementalists have crazy good amounts of utility’

Which makes it more or less about what you want from the class. If you treat the Elementalist as the most powerful support class in the game, it’s phenomenal. Trouble is most players didn’t roll an Elementalist for strong utility, but because they wanted the ‘full ’zerkers sooper nooker’ and are disappointed they have all these utility skills (which they don’t care about) instead of l33t d33pz.

It’s a rough spot because the class is fairly strong at the moment, even if it isn’t what people want it to be.

The problem of classes is the problem of their traits not being available from Level 1; skill points should continue to be gained in the normal way.

I think ArenaNet should consider 30 points being available from the moment you start the game.

The biggest scope of the game is those class traits and imagining what you could do with them from the very beginning of class creation and having various combinations with the various weapons you could use right there in every situation from Level 1 through Level 40.

This process of class graduation is just interrupting class dynamics from early on so that by the time you get to the actual class you wanted, it has worn fairly thin. It’s the dribbling single point by single point trait access which is affecting the classes from Level 1 through level 40.

Any adjustments needed because of that change is at the purview of Arenanet considering whether a difficulty curve should be adjusted in the normal Enemy NPC and Events that are going on around classes with 30 points in their traits from Level 1.

Players want Power: And a tough challenge at the same time.
I don’t want to fall into a swimming pool; I want to dive into it from 50 feet and surprise a flock of seagulls whilst shooting them in mid-air.

I think everyone here and ArenaNet know what I am getting at here.