Guild Wars 2

Simplicity.7208:

I don’t know that they’re harder to learn though. Most classes have a few different builds that work. Elementalist has one.

I just say harder to learn because the average player starting the game will start to understand a class like warrior in a shorter time span than an ele. It may not be a huge difference, but I would definitely say it takes longer.

I dont quite agree that there is only one build for eles though. The arcana bunker is, imo, one of the most effective (if not the most effective). But, I have run other builds and been completely capable doing wvw solo roaming. The one I ended up with was a s/f build with a focus on crit damage and a good amount of fury. Ended up with something like 80% crit damage and 65% crit rate with fury up. Really, really enjoy it but it did take more practice to play/survive than on any d/d build I have tried. edit: Build here The crit rate I remembered was with the sigil of perception. As you can probably tell, it relies heavily on arcane skills. If I can find a couple of people to stack might, the build becomes devastating and uses traits/mist form for tanking damage.

Blackhat.4016:

You forgot to mention CDs during combat, skill rotations, combos, proper engage and disengage, etc.

I think that applies to all available classes, doesnt it?

Saying a profession has a low skill cap because it lacks build diversity is a pretty bad argument imo. Yes, you have to play less builds but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to know about the other traits/skills. If you want to master your profession you need to know all these things.

I know I am part of a minority with this one, but like I said, I feel that eles have several viable builds. The arcana bunker is probably the strongest of our available builds though.

Ideally, all classes would have an enormous amount of equally viable builds. I think thats the “endgoal,” but we will see how well arenanet does towards achieving it over time.

There are more CDs during combat, skill rotations, combos and so on for eles simply because we have more skills to use.

Every profession needs to know how to properly engage and disengage but imo this is especially true for eles because we can be bursted down really fast (unless we use one of our Cantrips). You are right though, this applies to all available classes.

I also think we have more than one viable build but when it comes to traits we are very limited (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Rating-Elementalist-traits/first#post1687234 if you want to know why I think this way).

Btw my post was an answer to Simplicity.7208. Maybe I should have said that.^^

teg.1340:

Its very obvious that you never actually played an ele before.

Yeah that’s a comfortable escape from truth.

The proof Ele is faceroll is my gf.
She’s terrible at PvP, mouse clicker and all that, but when I gave her the cookie cutter D/D spec she’s topping charts in sPvP and plowing through people in WvW.
When a build makes a terribad player into a killing machine that only takes a rotation it’s obviously skill-less garbage that needs to be nerfed.
Thief easymode is getting nerfed this patch, D/D will too.
You can go full dishonestly intellectual on me but it won’t stop Anet from fixing the gimmick.

No, they’re not “hard” to play, they’re overly squishy and have poor sustain while soloing compared to the other classes. My elementalist is the one I dread levelling and have left at around 47 bc it’s just so annoying to have such little sustain and weak or slow attacks.

My necro in comparison just rofled his away across Tyria..

Oxstar.7643:

Hekmatyar.8725:

Shocking suggestion!

It’s true they aren’t that hard, but they’re still harder than most professions.

Oh yeah? Try Engineer.

Why is engi so hard?

Joukehainen.5148:

No, they’re not “hard” to play, they’re overly squishy and have poor sustain while soloing compared to the other classes. My elementalist is the one I dread levelling and have left at around 47 bc it’s just so annoying to have such little sustain and weak or slow attacks.

My necro in comparison just rofled his away across Tyria..

That sounds more like your inability to play the class well than anything else. I’ve had the exact opposite experience. My elem is more effective than any of the other classes I’ve played, being able to take on larger groups of enemies, and down veterans faster, and get from point to point quicker.

[quote=955460;TheGuy.3568:]

I actually think D/D Backstab Thief (the one getting nerfed.) is a lot harder to play then D/D Ele.

It has little to no CC Removal, Low Crowd Control itself, Low HP, Low Armor, Unforgiving Gameplay.

It may use 2-3 buttons unlike D/D Ele, but the cost of the fact “YOU MUST HIT” the target and you have to predict where it is going, and must have position makes it that much harder.

As an Ele, I can just rush at a target and spam my rotation, I don’t need to aim, I don’t need to time my dodges perfectly or die instantly, I don’t need to be in melee, and I don’t care if I miss an attack-I have more.

Red Falcon.8257:

teg.1340:

Its very obvious that you never actually played an ele before.

Yeah that’s a comfortable escape from truth.

The proof Ele is faceroll is my gf.
She’s terrible at PvP, mouse clicker and all that, but when I gave her the cookie cutter D/D spec she’s topping charts in sPvP and plowing through people in WvW.
When a build makes a terribad player into a killing machine that only takes a rotation it’s obviously skill-less garbage that needs to be nerfed.
Thief easymode is getting nerfed this patch, D/D will too.
You can go full dishonestly intellectual on me but it won’t stop Anet from fixing the gimmick.

While I don’t think eles are particularly hard to play, I have an extremely hard time believing a clicker is successfully pvping with one. That’s a lot of extra buttons to be moving the mouse around to click on.

Elementalists are definitely one of the hardest classes to play.

Most people that say otherwise are those that take 2-3 cantrips and go 20-30 in water. Ofcourse it’s easy when playing like that having an insane amount of “oh crap” buttons to get back to full health.

However try playing somethign else. Maybe try a glass canon with just mist form as your only cantrip and you’ll think twice for saying that Ele is easy to play. Because not having updraft of cooldown when that glass canon jumps on you, you’ll just be left with mistform as your only option on a very high cd, so you better not make the same mistake twice.

Eles can be very easy to play, sure, but they have a higher skill cap than other classes. A bunker Ele won’t have a difficult time surviving, but that shouldn’t be a surprise.

Being able to survive is just step one. After that you need to learn how to offer the best support for your group and optimize your dps. This is significantly more complex for an Ele than it is for other classes.

It is very easy to tell the difference between an experienced Ele and an inexperienced one.

Red Falcon.8257:

teg.1340:

Its very obvious that you never actually played an ele before.

Yeah that’s a comfortable escape from truth.

The proof Ele is faceroll is my gf.
She’s terrible at PvP, mouse clicker and all that, but when I gave her the cookie cutter D/D spec she’s topping charts in sPvP and plowing through people in WvW.
When a build makes a terribad player into a killing machine that only takes a rotation it’s obviously skill-less garbage that needs to be nerfed.
Thief easymode is getting nerfed this patch, D/D will too.
You can go full dishonestly intellectual on me but it won’t stop Anet from fixing the gimmick.

Killing machine? KILLING MACHINE? lol

Sorry bro, thats hilarious. Bunker ele is indeed great at point defence, so are other bunker professions. But bunker eles are in no way a killing machine. And point defence is only a factor in sPVP. WvW and PVE is totally different.

But you are right, that surviving as a bunker ele is quite easy. you just have to jump around and when things go wrong switch to water then air and RTL away.

The hardest part about playing ele is to actually kill stuff. By killing I dont mean hang around your team mates while they do the damage.

Everyone knows that ele’s burst is better than that of thief, pressures better than condition damage dealers and has sustainability at the top of the chart while at the same time is faceroll to play. Hence, easy to play and overpowered to the degree not even once seen in the history of the mankind.

No, it’s not, but it’s more complex than the other classes.

I agree that ele needs some time to master, but due to the state of all professions Im never impressed when I see eles do some crazy thing. You could claim all day long how skilled you are, but think about it. You fight with a profession which is great at anything, and does alot of things better than anyone else. Im not saying ele is OP or anything, its just that ele is a stronger profession in general, and fighting professions like warrior, which are the weakest pvp class is not equal imo.

ele does nt Excel in anything actually….

Expecially we need a lot of help on sustained dps, reason why you see so few decent elementalists in pve (and no, pve is not easy…expecially if you happen to pug difficult dungeons you get involved in real challenges….).

For me is a little bit difficult especially cuz i’m not good in ATTACK AND RUN or in ATTACK AND MOVE -.- (thank to that mmorpg that healer/mage have to attack standing in the same place) argh is treaky to: move, attack , change the elements but i think with pratice, but thank god that is difficult cuz in that way i don’t get bored and is fun to play with ele.

Its not hard, its just different then all of the other classes, people just don’t know how to get used to it. I started out with it and now im having a hard time getting used to anything else :/

Yeah D/D eles are pretty kitten easy to play. Try playing a staff ele against a good Thief or Guardian. That is a fun fight and takes extremely well placed and well timed uses of your slow/stun fields.

so long as you don’t mind dodging alot while kiting this is very true, but that also means we miss out on attack chances that other professions get.

easiest class to master honestly.
I had a harder time on thief managing my Initiative and on my ranger swapping out pets than my elementalist.

Oh fire grab still down, its cool brah, burning speed ring of fire, earth attunement, magnetic leap, get fire shield, earth #2 earth skill #5, switch to air whack a couple of times with lightning whip, get static shield, attune to fire, breath of fire, burning speed, ring of fire, fire grab

Rizzy.8293:

easiest class to master honestly.
I had a harder time on thief managing my Initiative and on my ranger swapping out pets than my elementalist.

Oh fire grab still down, its cool brah, burning speed ring of fire, earth attunement, magnetic leap, get fire shield, earth #2 earth skill #5, switch to air whack a couple of times with lightning whip, get static shield, attune to fire, breath of fire, burning speed, ring of fire, fire grab

I wonder if there is a study for pressing more buttons will the user the illusion of difficulty.

Oh the other hand, Daphoenix deserve alot of praise for discovering this build. Making builds is difficult. Copying builds is easy

By the time you get to level 80 you have learned all your stuff… so the question is, whats harder to play – a class that has tool for every situation or a class that has less tools and gotta make them work in different situations.
But in the end its just how you play your class, you can always go easy mode or the hard way.

loseridoit.2756:

Oh the other hand, Daphoenix deserve alot of praise for discovering this build. Making builds is difficult. Copying builds is easy

Discovering, right.

Must love all these self-proclaimed pro who keep saying eles are easy blah blah…I keep meeting these r40+ ele in tPvP and to say they’re awful would be a compliment really.

You come, spamm your rotation learned on youtube and then die 3s later against decent players who know eles

I’ll never get tired of these baddies fotm rerolles thinking of themself gods, spamming auras and using bunker build, I sit there with my burst build, they do their rotation that deal 0 dmg, I bait a couple of stun breaker, they mistform immediately…I follow with my burst and kill them…hahaha hilarious

I really hate to play along with another ele….9 times out of 10, they’re kitten awful, button spammers with 0 skills, no idea of what teamplay is, no help when you need, no strategy..nothing, just a fool who play around with his bunker build doing 0 dmg

Rizzy.8293:

easiest class to master honestly.
I had a harder time on thief managing my Initiative and on my ranger swapping out pets than my elementalist.

Oh fire grab still down, its cool brah, burning speed ring of fire, earth attunement, magnetic leap, get fire shield, earth #2 earth skill #5, switch to air whack a couple of times with lightning whip, get static shield, attune to fire, breath of fire, burning speed, ring of fire, fire grab

You got it wrong man.More options= higher skill cap..Not he other way around.Just in your oversimplified post you described more actions than you ever do with other classes and many of them like b speed and firegrab need timing and aiming.
Thats why an experienced ele will most likely outperform you since he knows when its the time for burning speend and when for firgrab etc.
The skill cap in this one is very high imo but the skill floor on builds like 0/0/10/30/30
is low due to many mess up buttons and escapes.Of course theres the attunement dancing thingie you need to figure out first.

Its harder to learn the rotations, but after your fingers got used to it its easier than most classes.
The ammont of AoE, fields, and ground target skills (and the ammount of skills) means that you need to pay more attention on your rotation and CD than on your opponent (not saying that you can just face-roll, but kinda, yea).
Other classes need to pay more attention on the oponents so they dont miss their burst/defense or they are stuck with CD. Eles just have another big set of skills and diferent rotations and combos to go to, and nearly never need to stay on auto-attacks (again, after you get used to your rotations).

I think the props to GW is that, everything is easy to get it working, but most things get some extra effort to master it and make it really shine.

lLobo.7960:

Its harder to learn the rotations, but after your fingers got used to it its easier than most classes.
The ammont of AoE, fields, and ground target skills (and the ammount of skills) means that you need to pay more attention on your rotation and CD than on your opponent (not saying that you can just face-roll, but kinda, yea).
Other classes need to pay more attention on the oponents so they dont miss their burst/defense or they are stuck with CD. Eles just have another big set of skills and diferent rotations and combos to go to, and nearly never need to stay on auto-attacks (again, after you get used to your rotations).

I think the props to GW is that, everything is easy to get it working, but most things get some extra effort to master it and make it really shine.

Other classes can jump from mele to range, changing their tactics on the fly, other classes can have mele/range combos (rangers-necros-warrior-thieves-mesmers) and thus is harder to fight them, an ele..once you know what weapon set they’re using they’re easy to counter.
Given the huge visual cue left by eles skills, it’s very easy to miss with them unless you time: CC-distance and enemy defenses, the idea that you go there and spamm kills on every attunement is simply ridicolous…I mean are we talking about wvwvw or high end pvp?

If the more hotkeys there are equals harder to play…that would mean that games like WoW, Tera, etc. etc. have better pvpers when compared the GW2 player-base. Just for the fact that they have a whole lot more buttons to press. So a really good pvper in one of those games would automatically be better than a really good GW2 pvper. Which of course isn’t the way it works.
It’s practice and patience that determines the good from the bad, IMO.

Bump because thread title is true. This class isn’t hard to play, especially the D/D variant. Healing should have been nerfed in PvE for the sake of WvW just like it was in PvP. I have a D/D Ele and I think that the standard build is way too forgiving for such a small skill demand.

compared to my guardian, necro and my ranger i find ele pretty kitten hard.

compared to my DAoC Cleric and Infiltrator they are all jokes but thats not a class but a game issue in general.

GW2 is pretty easy to learn. Mastering a class never is.

ele D/D is pretty simpke once you got the muscle memory down. playing an ele with that spec is pretty boring in the long run. and only with this spec all the points like easy condition removal and so on are valid.

problem is that this spec is kinda broken.

Yesterday I jumped into sPvP for the first time in months to try PvPing with an elementalist for the first time ever. I’ve levelled one to 31 in PvE, and I’ve fought my share of d/d eles in WvW, so I already knew their general attack patterns. It was cake. On a necro, you can really screw yourself over if you mismanage your life force or pick a stupid time/place to drop a well. On an ele, I could bungle my rotation and still win against guildies with months more PvP experience than me. And I could regen like I was the friggin Wolverine. Impunity is the best way to describe it.

Although it’s true that d/d are so predictable, you can easily avoid their worst attacks. It’s been a long time since I got hit with a churning earth, and my messing around with d/d yesterday taught me to pay more attention to drake’s breath → fire grab as well.

Elementalist does not take a terrible amount of skill to use for the average person. Elementalists however have an extremely high skill cap and a good elementalist is worth many times that of your average elementalist.

Popular OP builds don’t count since by their very nature they are easy to play with simple memorized rotations and reactions.

Hard to play and hard to master are 2 different things.

I found playing ele is not that difficult. Staying alive is not hard, getting boons up is childs play, …
BUT… Actually dealing DAMAGE with an ele is so friggin hard, it’s not funny. Really. You can f aceroll over the keyboard and you will have 6 boons up 100% of the time while moving all across the battlefield like a headless chicken on crack. But you will deal 0 damage. Getting out a damaging combo is not as easy as it looks. Many skills got their quirks and are actually quite hard to manage against moving targets.

And yes, ranger is probably harder to master… But easier to do “fine” with. At some point, the ele’s learning curve will get ridiculously flat, while the ranger learning curve will almost go vertical. That is the insurmountable wall called stupid pet ai.

Uberkafros.5431:

Hard to play and hard to master are 2 different things.

Then technically you can play anything. Either hard to play means hard to get most of the potential out of or the term hard to play is completely meaningless. Most times I hear it used however people are talking about getting the most out of a class.

Arheundel.6451:

Must love all these self-proclaimed pro who keep saying eles are easy blah blah…I keep meeting these r40+ ele in tPvP and to say they’re awful would be a compliment really.

You come, spamm your rotation learned on youtube and then die 3s later against decent players who know eles

I’ll never get tired of these baddies fotm rerolles thinking of themself gods, spamming auras and using bunker build, I sit there with my burst build, they do their rotation that deal 0 dmg, I bait a couple of stun breaker, they mistform immediately…I follow with my burst and kill them…hahaha hilarious

I really hate to play along with another ele….9 times out of 10, they’re kitten awful, button spammers with 0 skills, no idea of what teamplay is, no help when you need, no strategy..nothing, just a fool who play around with his bunker build doing 0 dmg

Sign

I am them same meaning about the new era of reroller elementalist.
I play ma ele as an Glascannon build an i laugh every time i see this bunker build ele that means they are so good. Some times but really rare i found on that really knows what he does and dont only smashing buttons that the time i lose the fight versus them but the button smasher come here i lough and after finishing you i will jump near your corpse.

naphack.9346:

I found playing ele is not that difficult. Staying alive is not hard, getting boons up is childs play, …
BUT… Actually dealing DAMAGE with an ele is so friggin hard, it’s not funny. Really. You can f aceroll over the keyboard and you will have 6 boons up 100% of the time while moving all across the battlefield like a headless chicken on crack. But you will deal 0 damage. Getting out a damaging combo is not as easy as it looks. Many skills got their quirks and are actually quite hard to manage against moving targets.

You may be having difficulty doing damage because you aren’t building damage. The current bunker playstyle is something that came out of the frontline/backline zerg meta early after release. People were doing the math on our base heals and finding out that with just a little tanky stat addition we ended up with top-of-the-game fight sustain and line pushing ability.

It is NOT a tanky-dps bruiser build, like warriors or guardians can pull off. It is a straight up “soak your kitten and heal through it” build. That’s why nearly every current d/d build ends up giving you at least three instantaneous condition removals, and probably a hell of a lot more. It depends on coming out on top over time, hoping that you can build yourself back up faster than they can wear you down. Combined with the handy rapid escape tools on dagger, you end up with enough tankiness to match those classes with double your base stats, but no real damage to speak of.

If you want to see numbers and faster kills, you need to get good enough with blocks/dodges/blinds/protection to move into damaging armor. Zerkerz and Cavalier’s are my personal favorites. After that, you get even BETTER at playing, and then you can move traits out of water/arcane and into percent damage traits for the big kill speed.

TL,DR: Don’t say the class is easy when you’re playing a conservative build that sacrifices half your damage just to stay alive.

Ralathar.7236:

Uberkafros.5431:

Hard to play and hard to master are 2 different things.

Then technically you can play anything. Either hard to play means hard to get most of the potential out of or the term hard to play is completely meaningless. Most times I hear it used however people are talking about getting the most out of a class.

Hard to play means that if you don’t know the class you’ll just die (good example is low level ele when you aren’t familiar with attunement swapping), something like Dark/Demon’s Souls. Hard to master is more getting the absolute best out of something. Like playing tetris, it’s easy to get the hang of, but mastering it? Ridiculously hard.

And out of curiosity, which build was it Daphoenix discovered again?

Linnael.1069:

naphack.9346:

I found playing ele is not that difficult. Staying alive is not hard, getting boons up is childs play, …
BUT… Actually dealing DAMAGE with an ele is so friggin hard, it’s not funny. Really. You can f aceroll over the keyboard and you will have 6 boons up 100% of the time while moving all across the battlefield like a headless chicken on crack. But you will deal 0 damage. Getting out a damaging combo is not as easy as it looks. Many skills got their quirks and are actually quite hard to manage against moving targets.

You may be having difficulty doing damage because you aren’t building damage. The current bunker playstyle is something that came out of the frontline/backline zerg meta early after release. People were doing the math on our base heals and finding out that with just a little tanky stat addition we ended up with top-of-the-game fight sustain and line pushing ability.

It is NOT a tanky-dps bruiser build, like warriors or guardians can pull off. It is a straight up “soak your kitten and heal through it” build. That’s why nearly every current d/d build ends up giving you at least three instantaneous condition removals, and probably a hell of a lot more. It depends on coming out on top over time, hoping that you can build yourself back up faster than they can wear you down. Combined with the handy rapid escape tools on dagger, you end up with enough tankiness to match those classes with double your base stats, but no real damage to speak of.

If you want to see numbers and faster kills, you need to get good enough with blocks/dodges/blinds/protection to move into damaging armor. Zerkerz and Cavalier’s are my personal favorites. After that, you get even BETTER at playing, and then you can move traits out of water/arcane and into percent damage traits for the big kill speed.

TL,DR: Don’t say the class is easy when you’re playing a conservative build that sacrifices half your damage just to stay alive.

TLDR, you didn’t read my post at all.

All proffessions are to easy.

Skill floors and caps for every proffessions are FAR to low.

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

I find Guardian and Warrior to be about the same difficult level as riding in a stick-shift car.

Necromancer is like driving a luxury sedan with a really complicated stereo system. Certain things are a pain, but who cares because everything else is automatic.

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Since this game is mostly micro-based, ele’s are real hard to play along with engies and mesmers. Managing bars never got any game any harder.

Aether McLoud.1975:

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Hey, people like what they like. If they want a toon with a zillion bells and whistles to fiddle with just to get the simplest things done, then there’s Ele and Engi. If they want a toon that can go on autopilot and do really well, then there’s Warrior and Guard (and Ranger, I hear….don’t play them though).

Aether McLoud.1975:

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Honestly I’m kind of tired of people saying this, whether it be true or not, and using it to justify all kinds of things.

Maybe it’s true that most players suck (which means you really have to define what ‘suck’ is, because then almost everyone sucks, which doesn’t make sense) but don’t forget that it’s a game too.

Maybe Arenanet could make an exceedingly difficult dungeon, that only elite players could complete. As a Dungeon Master (with the stupid pre-nerf Simin), it probably wouldn’t be too hard for me to complete it, but the majority of the player base would complain. Now that in itself wouldn’t even be so bad, but what if you put it in as time-gated, and part of the living story? This is basically the Aetherblade dungeon.

Alternatively, take Thieves (#1 example because everyone complains about them). I decided to play D/P and started destroying everyone with 3 buttons. Now at the very highest level of play, they might be balanced, but for everyone else it’s simply not fun to deal with someone who stabs you for half your health and keeps going invisible, with massive regen+condition removal. At most players’ skill levels (according to Thief community, 90% of people suck. Their words, not mine) the class is stupidly OP even though neither player is ‘better’.

Basically, what I’m saying is that for this game to be popular, you can’t just balance around the highest levels of play and tell everyone else to “deal with it”.

I’m not gonna “deal with it”, I’m going to play LoL where they actually balance around all levels of play so that it is actually fun instead of thinking “wow maybe if I practice for two months this game might become fun”.

End of rant….(if it sounded offensive then I apologize because it wasn’t directed at you).

Edit: It doesn’t mean that hard content shouldn’t exist. It just means that there should be easy content too, for the less hardcore players, and that PvP shouldn’t be balanced only around the best players.

Sorry I went really far off topic.

Sunflowers.1729:

Aether McLoud.1975:

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Honestly I’m kind of tired of people saying this, whether it be true or not, and using it to justify all kinds of things.

Maybe it’s true that most players suck (which means you really have to define what ‘suck’ is, because then almost everyone sucks, which doesn’t make sense) but don’t forget that it’s a game too.

Maybe Arenanet could make an exceedingly difficult dungeon, that only elite players could complete. As a Dungeon Master (with the stupid pre-nerf Simin), it probably wouldn’t be too hard for me to complete it, but the majority of the player base would complain. Now that in itself wouldn’t even be so bad, but what if you put it in as time-gated, and part of the living story? This is basically the Aetherblade dungeon.

Alternatively, take Thieves (#1 example because everyone complains about them). I decided to play D/P and started destroying everyone with 3 buttons. Now at the very highest level of play, they might be balanced, but for everyone else it’s simply not fun to deal with someone who stabs you for half your health and keeps going invisible, with massive regen+condition removal. At most players’ skill levels (according to Thief community, 90% of people suck. Their words, not mine) the class is stupidly OP even though neither player is ‘better’.

Basically, what I’m saying is that for this game to be popular, you can’t just balance around the highest levels of play and tell everyone else to “deal with it”.

I’m not gonna “deal with it”, I’m going to play LoL where they actually balance around all levels of play so that it is actually fun instead of thinking “wow maybe if I practice for two months this game might become fun”.

End of rant….(if it sounded offensive then I apologize because it wasn’t directed at you).

Edit: It doesn’t mean that hard content shouldn’t exist. It just means that there should be easy content too, for the less hardcore players, and that PvP shouldn’t be balanced only around the best players.

I don’t really get this at all.

I’m not a hardcore player in the slightest. I get a couple of hours a day (maybe) of casual play in. I do a variety of activities, depending on what I feel like in all parts of the game (besides dungeons, because I hate them).

The classes in this game are not hard at all to play. Even Ele/Engi is not hard. They are harder than the others, but that’s not saying much. The most difficult content in the game for me is sPvP because I’m just not all that good at dueling. It doesn’t upset me in the least, though. I pick my role, do my job, and die a lot. It’s not like I lose anything from dying. So, where’s the difficulty?

And on your point about Thieves. Thieves usually build for dueling. They practice dueling. They form their build around winning 1v1, and splitting groups into chain-1v1 encounters. Most people are bad at dueling, don’t practice dueling, and don’t build to win duels. I know I certainly don’t. So why is it a surprise that Thieves are so great at ganking people 1v1? That’s the entire focus of their build and playstyle! It isn’t difficult. It’s just common sense.

Just for fun, I tried a S/F build and a S/D build designed purely for 1v1 duels. With no practice at all, and an admittedly non-optimal build, I did ok against Thieves. I gave up a huge amount of utility, AoE, and support to get there, but the build did roughly what I wanted it to. With practice I’m sure I could have gotten quite good at the 1v1 game, but I found it of very limited use and ditched it.

omg thats the most stupid topic i’ve ever seen..

I would love to see these self-proclaimed “I find eles easy” put out some videos of their amazing skill – especially the ones poo pooing daphoenix.

Anyone who said they copy pasted the D/D rotation and face rolled people with it, are either lying, were against someone who was AFK, fighting someone who was distracted by another player, or someone who just picked up the game less than a month ago.

You make it out like enemy players are just NPCs that just stand there and let you execute an entire rotation on them. It’s not that hard to hear/see the big ball of light going BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSHT towards you to figure out, “hmm now might be a good time to dodge”.

Nice troll thread though.