Guild Wars 2

I have seen many posts that elem’s don’t do damage, or they are complicated to play.
I decided to make a test. I created an elementalist, went to PVP, chose traits and equipment. I decided to kill Svanir without using any evades, standing still and just pressing skills. What is more I decided to not use elite skill, nor any minions that would absorb damage. I decided to make this warrior-style.
Then, I decided to limit the elementalist to just 2 elements because that what warriors have available -> 2 weapon sets.

In the below screenshot you can see that:
1) elem deals damage (probably has even better dps than warrior)
2) elem doesn’t have to switch attunements to be effective
3) elem is not hard to play. (I just pressed few buttons while standing still -> doesn’t seem hard to me) (Granted -> it is hard to master, but any proffession is.)

[img]http://i50.tinypic.com/2d9biu.jpg[/img]

Have fun!

EDIT: Does anyone know why the [img] tag didn’t worked?

How did you hit him twice with your arcane wave?

Image tags don’t work because you can’t post images on this forum. You can either attach one from your computer or just put in a link.

Also that combat log doesn’t mean much unless we have something to compare it to. So go get on your warrior or some other class and then post that.

Not sure of troll or just ignorant. If you’re not a troll, I’ll indulge…

Congratulations!

You just successfully proved nothing.

1. Yep Elementals definitely deal damage. In other news the sky is blue and water is wet. No one has said they don’t deal damage, they just dont deal competitive damage and have to work 10 times harder than every other class to reach marginal returns.

2. I can take an ambiguous screen shot with me in 1 attunement and then say “LOOK! I just did all this damage in 1 attunement! Ele is fine.” That proves nothing.

3. You’re just a flat out liar or a troll. You pressed a few buttons on 1 mob and managed to kill him before he killed you? I see you conveniently waited until your health pool was back up to full before you took your screenshot. Was that to avoid showing us that you were probably at close to 0 health left at the end of combat 1v1? What happens when the next mob comes and 3 of those “few buttons” you pressed are still on CD and and you’re still standing still?

After typing all this, I’m 100% sure you’re just a troll.

Silly me for feeding you.

Mayhem.5324:

Not sure of troll or just ignorant. If you’re not a troll, I’ll indulge…

Congratulations!

You just successfully proved nothing.

1. Yep Elementals definitely deal damage. In other news the sky is blue and water is wet. No one has said they don’t deal damage, they just dont deal competitive damage and have to work 10 times harder than every other class to reach marginal returns.

2. I can take an ambiguous screen shot with me in 1 attunement and then say “LOOK! I just did all this damage in 1 attunement! Ele is fine.” That proves nothing.

3. You’re just a flat out liar or a troll. You pressed a few buttons on 1 mob and managed to kill him before he killed you? I see you conveniently waited until your health pool was back up to full before you took your screenshot. Was that to avoid showing us that you were probably at close to 0 health left at the end of combat 1v1? What happens when the next mob comes a 3 of those “few buttons” you pressed are still on CD and and you’re still standing still?

After typing all this, I’m 100% sure you’re just a troll.

Silly me for feeding you.

Well the damage he takes in that small screenshot alone is more than his max HP so yea, he was probably near death the entire time. Especially considering a few of those attacks are back to back so he’s taking 6-9k damage in a matter of seconds.

@Melkiach → There is a bug in description → Second Arcane Wave is Arcane Shield. But goes to combat log as Wave.

@Leiloni → I saw statements that warriors can defeat Svanir alone, standing still and just mashing buttons as a proof that elementalist is not so powerfull. I just did the same with ele to proove them wrong. I believe any class can do this.

@Mayhem:
1) If the damage done to Svanir is not competetive that what dmg is? I saw no other class able to deal that much in such short time. Please note that this is not a Dummy but boss monster that has some toughness on it and a lot of HP. I have also proven that they don’t have to work at all, because i was just using 2 attunements and standing still pressing buttons. Can’t imagine what does it mean work harder in this case. Doing this easier means you do this while being afk and I don’t know any proffession that can beat Svanir while being AFK

2) Don’t understand what you mean

3) I don’t know why you are calling me a liar or troll. I pressed few buttons on a boss mob and managed to kill him before he killed me. Same strategy that the warrior does. You can compute how much health I had from the screenshot. Damage done to me is also logged. I did not intended to hide the amount of hp that left. It wasn’t much. I don’t think warrior has much more hp when he does dmg using the same strategy.
After all that was what my test was about to do → check if elementalist can kill the target faster than the target kills elementalist. I chose hard target with a lot of toughness, huge damage and a lot of HP, which I’ll not encounter in PVP.

Now I assume that if anybody states like the Mayhem, that “other” classes can deal more dmg in a simpler way, he needs to stand before Svanir with that class and post a screenshot here. We can then count the number of buttons needed to be pressed and the time it took to execute.

Regards

How did you hit him twice with your arcane wave?

Shhh…
I think that’s a current bug where Arcane Wave can hit more than once (one of the few that benefits us). I haven’t tested it myself, but I’ve heard others mention it as well. I’m sure it’ll get fixed eventually, but in the meantime…
Shhh… Rule #1 is you do not talk about “good” bugs

Edited to add: I stand corrected, Raka claims that the 2nd “wave” was arcane shield going off. This is more likely.

@ Leiloni → yes, it looks that the damage I took was 16k, but I rallied so fast I didn’t notice it. The svanir was killed by burn after taking fire grab this is why I rallied instantly.

Raka – it doesn’t matter what you say or show, the fact is that Elementalist is not X class, and therefore worse. The damage is fine, the utility is fine, the mobility is fine (save for the earth dagger 5 ability, which I routinely kill myself while trying to cast).

The only thing that routinely surprises me with my elementalist is how fast I can take damage at times, and how there doesn’t seem to be a fundamental trade off on any level for wearing light armor and having lower base HP.

I have a screen shot from WvW pvp where my fire grab crit a player for 15k+. I’ll post it when I get home.

Grats Eicherjw, you are a glass cannon who managed a big crit on a very debuffed target, but guess what? Other classes have done a lot more than that, and they can do it way more often than Fire Grab which has a 45 sec cooldown by default.

The only thing elementalist is really good at (compared to others) is healing (if done right), and this in a game where they are trying to remove the healers. Yay!

Grats Eicherjw, you are a glass cannon who managed a big crit on a very debuffed target, but guess what? Other classes have done a lot more than that, and they can do it way more often than Fire Grab which has a 45 sec cooldown by default.

Hell, Arcane Shield has a 75 second cooldown by default, and that accounts for a big damage item and a couple of adsorbed hits (it must have taken 3 if it set off the wave).

This post, while well-intentioned, does nothing to prove that Ele’s are not underpowered, although I personally believe the class to be fine…

@AvaAzul → I have faced glass cannon thieves and warriors, and trust me → they are not challenge at all. You just walk through them. I had a fight where I instantly downed 3 ppl out of 5 alone. All of that while being nOOb lvl 9 elementalist that can’t really play on pvp (notice my rank ) You should start worrying what experienced elementalist can do to you

Anyway, this is just a simple test you can do with any profession to compare their relative survivability/dps. The mob AI has nothing to do here, because I was not trying to abuse it. I stood still taking all the damage the mob had.

@Kellhus: Thx. I think the tradeoffs are 3.
1) Your earth Traits make your light armor a heavy armor, as well as in earth attunement there are many defensive skills that other professions don’t have on their weapons unless sacrificing dps. So 10 more skills on weapon, part of which are defensive makes it having more defensive abilities.
2) Elementalist have their Crit Dmg and Precision on the same trait line. Most other professions need to take 2 different trait lines to make their glass cannon build. This means you have 30 more trait points in your dps build that you can use to compensate for lack of HP or Toughness. You can also put these in fire to make the ultimate glass cannon build.
3) Mobility, amount of CC, range, skill activation time with a lot of instant cast skills you can cast even if you are under CC.

@Eicherjw → yes, but that doesn’t count since you probably targeted player that was upscaled which means he had very low defense. Impossible on sPvP.

@Bsquared:

I look at it this way:
Class balance is not final but is very good. Designers that have over 10 years of experience in developing good combat systems tested it for 5 years.

If anything has to be proven, it is that elementalist ARE underpowered, not that they aren’t

I just removed the argument from ppl on this forum that are stating, other classes can deal more damage in shorter time, while their damage is not as complex to execute as an elementalist. I shown a simple way to deal tons of damage with elem. Period.

Luterin.9876:

Grats Eicherjw, you are a glass cannon who managed a big crit on a very debuffed target, but guess what? Other classes have done a lot more than that, and they can do it way more often than Fire Grab which has a 45 sec cooldown by default.

The only thing elementalist is really good at (compared to others) is healing (if done right), and this in a game where they are trying to remove the healers. Yay!

Not true, why I die when a stiff breeze rolls through WvW, I can still hold my own. I got a 12k crit on a thief lastnight that was not scaled. When I go staff for keep defense I can auto attack crit for 3k-4k on true level 80s. This class requires a lot of gear and spec to show results. While I do agree our timers are a bit crazy, I feel our class can shine if speced, geared, and played well.

RakaNishoo.6071:

@Bsquared:

I look at it this way:
Class balance is not final but is very good. Designers that have over 10 years of experience in developing good combat systems tested it for 5 years.

If anything has to be proven, it is that elementalist ARE underpowered, not that they aren’t

I just removed the argument from ppl on this forum that are stating, other classes can deal more damage in shorter time, while their damage is not as complex to execute as an elementalist. I shown a simple way to deal tons of damage with elem. Period.

That’s fine, I happen to agree with you that Ele is not underpowered. I think the class is pretty fine (bugs notwithstanding, but none of them at this point are gamebreaking).

But melting down Svanir pretty quickly doesn’t really prove this point and others will troll you hard for your original post. Not saying I necessarily agree with them, just be prepared for it

RakaNishoo.6071:

I have seen many posts that elem’s don’t do damage, or they are complicated to play.
I decided to make a test. I created an elementalist, went to PVP, chose traits and equipment. I decided to kill Svanir without using any evades, standing still and just pressing skills. What is more I decided to not use elite skill, nor any minions that would absorb damage. I decided to make this warrior-style.
Then, I decided to limit the elementalist to just 2 elements because that what warriors have available -> 2 weapon sets.

In the below screenshot you can see that:
1) elem deals damage (probably has even better dps than warrior)
2) elem doesn’t have to switch attunements to be effective
3) elem is not hard to play. (I just pressed few buttons while standing still -> doesn’t seem hard to me) (Granted -> it is hard to master, but any proffession is.)

How are you actually trying to call this reliant data for any sort of a test?. You realize that around 99% of the fights, nothing is actually standing still right?.

An Elementalist has trouble dealing damage due to the fire abilities dealing damage in a specific location when the target just walks out of it, so a 10 second AoE will generally get 2-3 seconds of damage on the target.

On top of that, the Earth (aside from bleeds not setup as individual stacking) is designed around AoE bursts, where the heavy damage abilities, your target just walks out of it as well.

In addition to these as well, most of the high damage fire and earth builds (D/D or S/D) you have to be in a relatively close proximity in order to use them. In some cases this is not a issue, but others you may die before you can ever use one of the abilities in that close of a range.

If you had actually has tried to level up your Elementalist you would see where the majority of the major problems are. You have many location based attacks but no way to keep your target in the location. You have great Utility attachments in concept… but don’t actually work really well in play. Almost all of the Utility slots are gimmicky with to many traits that cause burning/slow etc. stacked with on use utilities doing the same thing…. When most of the abilities on these attachments do this already. Not only do you have enough conjured weapons to supply a full team with their own weapon… but you do this while only using half of the options of conjured weapons available!.

When a Warrior as the other comparison of your test goes only has to hit a couple of buttons and the target either cant get away or has to dodge/CD. This does not apply to an Elementalist when your target can just simply…. walk out of your attack. This is why the damage is not so great and this is why they are hard to play.

Eicherjw.3926:

While I do agree our timers are a bit crazy, I feel our class can shine if speced, geared, and played well.

And if specced/geared/played well all other classes shine even more than us…

Luterin.9876:

Eicherjw.3926:

While I do agree our timers are a bit crazy, I feel our class can shine if speced, geared, and played well.

And if specced/geared/played well all other classes shine even more than us…

I think this is the argument a lot of people have. An Ele can shine and do well in various ways, but other classes often do it better and easier.

Leiloni.7951:

Luterin.9876:

Eicherjw.3926:

While I do agree our timers are a bit crazy, I feel our class can shine if speced, geared, and played well.

And if specced/geared/played well all other classes shine even more than us…

I think this is the argument a lot of people have. An Ele can shine and do well in various ways, but other classes often do it better and easier.

I agree but if you can shine with an ele now, once they fix them, you’ll kick butt.

Best thread I’ve seen in a month. Congratulations on proving ele is not worthless by hitting on ai standing in front of you.

My quote function isn’t working.

Anyway, I don’t understand this:

“And if specced/geared/played well all other classes shine even more than us…”

What is this based on? Non-existant damage logs? Anecdotal ‘grass is greener’ observations? The problem is that every class thinks they are weaker than X, and has literally no evidence by which to prove the statement.

Kellhus.8071:

My quote function isn’t working.

Anyway, I don’t understand this:

“And if specced/geared/played well all other classes shine even more than us…”

What is this based on? Non-existant damage logs? Anecdotal ‘grass is greener’ observations? The problem is that every class thinks they are weaker than X, and has literally no evidence by which to prove the statement.

Well I don’t know what his reasoning was but my reasons for agreeing with him were personal experience. I have an alt of almost every class and most are easier to do well with and seem more effective with less effort. I still enjoy my Ele and it’s my main and that is not going to change (mainly because I like the style), but that has been my personal experience and I’ve seen a lot of other people say the same thing around here.

1)Curious why you did not hit Arcane Wave before he had crossed the Ring of Fire for the Combo Finisher.

you know poeple who play mezmers say they are UP as well, turns out they are just bad like 50% of everyone who plays a class, they also tend to whine more.

I fought an ele 2v1 and we could not kill the guy, he was very mobile and very good. i was with a random that he downed 3 times (that guy was horrible).

This is what it boils down to:
Good Players > bad Players

Likely most complaining on here are bad players that can’t admit it because of their fragile egos.

LOL, try to do that much damage @ Keep with everyone AoEing on the Node….
I’m sure you will kill everyone and walk away like a boss.

GenericName.5046:

you know poeple who play mezmers say they are UP as well, turns out they are just bad like 50% of everyone who plays a class, they also tend to whine more.

I fought an ele 2v1 and we could not kill the guy, he was very mobile and very good. i was with a random that he downed 3 times (that guy was horrible).

This is what it boils down to:
Good Players > bad Players

Likely most complaining on here are bad players that can’t admit it because of their fragile egos.

That is true, however. Good player on a ____ > good player on a Ele.

(please fill free to fill in the blank with class of choice…other than ele)

Kaona.9105:

An Elementalist has trouble dealing damage due to the fire abilities dealing damage in a specific location when the target just walks out of it, so a 10 second AoE will generally get 2-3 seconds of damage on the target.

On top of that, the Earth (aside from bleeds not setup as individual stacking) is designed around AoE bursts, where the heavy damage abilities, your target just walks out of it as well.

This was my experience exactly. I once went to the mists and tried to get the most dps out of an ele, just to see what he could do. There I found that (at least as good as I could judge it) the builds with the best dps throughput where aoe condition based, utilizing eruption and burning for damage. A single eruption can be traited to be a ~4 second cooldown large aoe that kills a large golem with a single cast if you stack durations, and you can easily maintain bleed cap aoe, should anything live that long (actually, the golems die to fast for even one abilities dot to tick down, it can do quite a bit more if you factor in might stacks, consumables etc., depending on circumstances you might get 1.5-2 large golems worth of hp from one cast aoe), and it only gets better if you stack a burning glyph etc. on it. Awesome, I thought, and brought that build to pvp.

There I had to realize, that none of this ever works on anything but golems/pve mobs, because real players are just not dumb enough to stay and sit in the big red circle that gives away all of your good attacks.

Whats worse, I found all the attunement swapping nonsense that gets forced onto eles does not really make them more versatile, quite the opposite in fact. You are rarely specced to really take advantage of more then one element, especially if you’re still levelling, most people will have a “primary” element and use the off-attunements to fill the gaps in their rotation, when nothing that fits their specc is off cooldown.

What’s worse, all the different elements besides fire come with an assortment of mostly utility/support spells. Thats nice in theory, but in practice I always get the feeling that even when I might want to switch to an element to use one of those utilities now, being locked out of the attunement I was in afterwards does me more harm then good.

Also, probably most importantly, elementalists are probably the only profession unable to change their engagement range on the fly, which I consider especially punishing for a class that goes down so fast if it doesn’t adjust quickly.

Svanir was hit by your Shatterstone
Svanir was hit by your Dragons Tooth

“We’re fine”!

Ohkay den.

I think we need a few bug fixes and a trait rework, but thats about it. :p

Weapon X.5163:

That is true, however. Good player on a ____ > good player on a Ele.

(please fill free to fill in the blank with class of choice…other than ele)

quoted for truth and for making me literally laugh out loud.
as I have said before… playing an ele in guild wars is like how I feel being black in america. sure i CAN become president, sure I COULD be a pro golfer but look at how much EASIER everyone else got there with half the effort?

Umm, how exactly does this prove anything? I’ve seen warrior solo svanir with an enemy player hassling them and still kill him without going down. This proves, if anything, that the elementalist class is underpowered. Yes, we can do just as much damage as most classes, but if two characters face each other and deal exactly the same amount of damage, the tankier one wins, and we are the least tanky class in the game. On equal footing, we always lose.

Your arguement is invalid because Svanir stands still. Warrior’s damage is instantaneous where as a good majority of Ele skills have windups (i.e., Dragon’s Tooth) and all the cast times. In actual PVP, this is a huge noticeable problem, as a warrior can downstate you before Dragon’s Tooth even lands, and if he downs you, Dragon’s Tooth suddenly doesn’t do any damage even if it was fully casted while still up.

Also comparing Ele DPS to others via the use of NPCs is hardly a good comparison. Any class can kill the NPCs.

Westley.4716:

Your arguement is invalid because Svanir stands still. Warrior’s damage is instantaneous where as a good majority of Ele skills have windups (i.e., Dragon’s Tooth) and all the cast times. In actual PVP, this is a huge noticeable problem, as a warrior can downstate you before Dragon’s Tooth even lands, and if he downs you, Dragon’s Tooth suddenly doesn’t do any damage even if it was fully casted while still up.

Also comparing Ele DPS to others via the use of NPCs is hardly a good comparison. Any class can kill the NPCs.

Good points. Also, he used phoenix 3 times in a row, 20 second cooldown each. Hmm yeah, just stood there and pressed a few buttons. I’m calling BS on this guy.

Challenge accepted.

Took less than 10 seconds to kill him, and of course I didn’t bother kiting. Just did a backstab combo, then Haste and PW spam. Didn’t even use the proper build for this.

@Zatria.5783:

You should try to play an Elementalist before you say a nonsense like that
Phoenix can hit you 3 times per cast, if you know how to use it….

Phoenix does projectile damage, blast damage, and then returning projectile damage. This is basics when doing close combat with scepter, come on.

Play it to 80. PvP isn’t the be all end all of the game. Stop doing these “I tested xx in PvP and it seems fine”.

Go to sparkfly den/SoD or any of those areas with large numbers of underwater skill points.

This guys thinks hes good because he killed something…

Ive killed things too and for all you know, I could be the kittenest player playing gw2 thats died 500 times!

What we are basically trying to say is “digging a hole in the ground with chopsticks is much harder than using a shovel”.
In the elementalists case, they are the chopsticks… they can do a job, but just not as well as other professions.

Fact of the matter is, Svanir can’t dodge roll. Pretty hard to hit a moving target that can dodge roll with just the blast portion of Phoenix much less both movements to and from the target area. Oh, and Dragon’s Tooth *Donnie Brasco voice* Forget About It

I’m still waiting to see that 15k fire grab screenshot. I don’t believe it exists.

And even if it does I bet the character doesn’t have more then 20% crit.