Guild Wars 2

We have a HUGE amount of bugs, known since beta, most of them easy fixes but never fixed. Mistform cooldown reduction for example. We are useless underwater yet not a single change was made there. Our tornado does less damage and conditions than thieves daggerstorm, yet has double the cooldown.

Our teleport – lightning flash- worked to “jump” over gaps in beta, yet now it doesn’t. Engineer rocket jump and thief shortbow teleport still bridge gaps.

And not a single official response was given.

Elementalists are in such a bad place, that they will never be fixed. Their entire skillset would have to be overhauled completely, especially numbers-wise, and that is not something the devs are gonna commit to anytime soon. I doubt a single anet employee even played elementalist, I don’t think they realize how useless this profession is. It makes no sense when attacks like fireball are the lowest dps skills in the entire game, apart from other elementalist auto attacks which are even weaker, up to three times weaker.

Have you seen when an elementalist is unlocking his water and earth skills? The monster’s healthbar doesn’t even move enough for it to be seen visually with each attack.. and that’s not even aoe damage, it’s single target.

It starts right at the beginning when you make your elementalist and start hitting the initial centaurs/fern wolfs with your flame strike, where it takes ages killing one monster, where other professions such as thief, who have the same health but more armor, just tear through literally five times faster.

is ele really that bad >? been playing it for a while and ive been tearing thro mobs like its nothing verry easily with S/D weapon set like so easy the burst damage from it is just rediculous even when attuned to water i still do decent damage and aswell as earth dont even get me started lmao mega damage with its aoe skills its not as bad and broken as everyone makes it out to be if ur really goona say it is why even play it x.x

Lordryux.9785:

is ele really that bad >? been playing it for a while and ive been tearing thro mobs like its nothing verry easily with S/D weapon set like so easy the burst damage from it is just rediculous even when attuned to water i still do decent damage and aswell as earth dont even get me started lmao mega damage with its aoe skills its not as bad as everyone makes it out to be if ur really goona say it is why even play it x.x

Short answer: No.
Long Answer: No. But the class is lackluster compared to Anets holy trinity – Warrior, Thief, Mesmer. Those classes appear to be balanced on a different scale than all the rest. However, Ele compared to the rest of the underpowered classes is not bad.

yea ur right but aside from warrior from wat ive been reading thief and mesmer excell in pvp pretty much as a whole but in pve i heared thier pretty ehh iffy in tht department right thier as we can pve much better imo and ive been doing pretty decent in pvp aswell except yes getting wrecked by a spamming heart seeker thief lol. have yet to face a mesmer tho i tend to keep my distance lmao

They`re not all that bad, sort of.

I do rant at times, especially in WvWs when I`m D/D to stand a chance of doing damage/surviving, then having to rummage through bhags to get staff to event dint a door/wall etc, only for a guard (on the walls) to target me before any action even starts & I can``t et near it, yet there`re other players in between me & it that it ignores.

Our HP for what we do/are isn`t right I think.

I can run around Orr with ease, except for the mobs that just constantly stun you, but the other day grouped with a randomer to down the Champions in the boat.
Warrior, new to the zone, was pounding these things much harder then I ever could, yet I had to constantly await CDs on attunements etc.

Few days before, same place, a Guardian. They were taking 3-4 mobs & asking me to be their healer.

/sigh

well u kno i can understand warrior i played it and its pretty not goona say OP but yea greatsword with them is definitly OP with hundred blades lmao guardians tend to still be great even when using the greatsword since that one nerf they had so meh w.e if ur doing the same quest as them hey why not team up and get it done quicker u kno wat im saying i dont mind at all just im not goona be ur healslave kk xD. but honestly i kinda got mad when i first made my ele as i didnt kno u couldnt swap weapons lmao cuz u had attunements i would say that was my biggest complaint right thier but oh well ive learned to quick swap attunements during battle pretty well so its all worked out.

Best you can hope for on an ele is to annoy. I just don’t get how this class make it through testing. Do something already Anet.

If you want to spec as glass cannon ele you won’t have more survivability than any other glass cannon specced profession, wiht toughness you melt in few seconds regardless of your profession, if you can’t dodge you’ll get destroyed by sustained dmg or other burst dmg.

Said that, a sustained dmg ele can pretty much wipe the floor with every other profession out there in a 1vs1 scenario even at tournaments levels, I said and I repeat it, the ele is the best roamer atm and many top teams are starting to realize it.

The d/d set is perfect now and doesn’t need any more buffs…or nerfs, on other hand the scepter/focus set and staff still need some help.

Dragon’s tooth-shard of ice and shatterstone need to be looked at, on focus only fire shield need a buff.

On staff they need to look at meteor storm and lightning surge, the first need to hit more consistently and the second need to have 1s cast.

Other than that ele is fine.

Elloni.2473:

Best you can hope for on an ele is to annoy. I just don’t get how this class make it through testing. Do something already Anet.

Clueless. Post is clueless.

If your talking about PvE then the Ele is a great class. If your talking about sPvP then the D/D Ele is a great class. If your talking about Wv3 then the Ele is a great class. All depends on the build and the player behind the toon.

I think most people who think eles suck just need to practice more. I’ve been playing ele since the 3 day head start and the only problems I have had were the horrible downed state and a few very annoying skill bugs with ride the lightning and magnetic grasp. I switch off between staff and dd and you just need to understand what each is for dd is a roamer that basically scouts and takes on 1 or two people and if it’s more you run. In groups you use staff and completely destroy zergs I mean seriously if you’re talking about wvw staff is insanely good. my traits are 0,25,0,30,15 which is my wvw roamer build for dd and when I throw my staff on I get 3k crits with my base fire attack and 4k with meteor shower all with 16k hp and 1800 toughness. spvp I use either bunker scepter dagger or roamer dd and I can also destroy most classes thieves are hard with the rendering and mesmers are just annoying same with bunker specs. As for pve we do just fine with basically any build or weapon set. Personally in pve I use a boon dd build can stack might hella and works just fine. All in all the only things I have a problem with are the bugs in a few skills and bugs in some other class’s skills. Downed state is a little better now that mist form is instant cast. But the real annoying thing is the amount of time it takes to get out of combat so I can switch weapons for different situations but I guess that the trade off for having so many skills. But anyway rant over point is eles are just fine people just need to spend a little less time worrying about whether they are a little weaker and a little more time on finding ways to win.

Killer.4709:

I think most people who think eles suck just need to practice more. I’ve been playing ele since the 3 day head start and the only problems I have had were the horrible downed state and a few very annoying skill bugs with ride the lightning and magnetic grasp.

Yea, and all those just got fixed. The D/D Ele is completely viable now (particularly the Earth D/D is amazing), and I kill people when in downed state after the patch. Damages on the #3 are amazing. Instant mist form is incredible. I think that Staff needs some love mainly in Earth and Water. The build time of Earthquake is terrible and the hang time on that Iceburg is rediculous, although the CD on those two are low. Makes no sense that.

ya haven’t had much time to play since last week stupid midterms… good since I mainly use dd it will be nice not to use ride the lightning to get the jump on someone and end up getting stuck and beaten like a piñata. ya mostly the trick with staff is you can’t just use the iceberg and earthquake you have to plan them. I usually drop my frozen ground skill (sorry don’t remember the name) then drop iceberg and then go to earth and drop earthquake with the crippling skill in their way when they try to move. you can also try to use the static field in lightning first then combo it with the iceberg or earthquake but my favorite is casting static field and dropping a lava front under them lol fun to watch them try to get away and they cant cause they just get stunned and stuck on it.

I think the number one problem with elementalist is that the cooldowns are just too long to justify the weakness of the skills. All of the other professions skills are on much shorter cooldowns but the elementalist has these long kitten cooldowns and their skills aren’t any better than anybody else’s.

I really dislike the class Mesmer , Everyone knows they are to Overpowerd, And they can confuse you like nothing and just walk away. I think ArenaNet, Should NERF these characters abilitys because it is unfair. None of my characters can kill them…? I GUESS WE, ARE ALL GONNA BECOME A MESMER. You guys mest up there ArenaNet.

Absolutely ridiculous. Elementalist is the most overpowered profession in the game, followed by Necromancer. All elementalist builds are viable and OP, insane damage, insane survivability, and an insane bag of tricks and utility. Thieves are the kitten brother of elementalists.

@Arhendul; Im going to have to disagree with you. My warrior is pretty much glass cannon (20/30/0/10/10) Full exotic/runes of lysaa Axe/Axe. I burn things down so fast is unreal. All my traits are specced to increased damage/crit/crit damage in same way shape or form also.

I think the thing is I played an Ele for so long I find myself playing warrior the same way. Im always circle kiting, never standing still, which is why I choose axe/axe over greatsword seeing how HB roots you.

I’ve soled the quaggon champ Group event in frostgorge sound with my warrior as well as soloing the champ up north toward to lone ori node, I have also soloed other champs depending on their attacks.

In orr I can take on 4-6 mobs at a time. Warrior is pretty epic.

10-12k Eviscerates, 10k killshots, 12-15k volleys. Auto Attacks that crit 1.5-2k (80% crit chance) while adding bleeding/vulnerability and lighting strikes for another 1k (duel runes of air)

I feel my eley is cheated in the DPS department.

EDIT: This post is meant for PvE, however, I had a full defense specced warrior (0/0/30/30/10) get 16 kills in SPvP awhile back, I routinely get 8+ kills also. =/

please just stop talking

O hey aether. Was wondering if you were on the forums outside of guru :p

minion.6245:

@Arhendul; Im going to have to disagree with you. My warrior is pretty much glass cannon (20/30/0/10/10) Full exotic/runes of lysaa Axe/Axe. I burn things down so fast is unreal. All my traits are specced to increased damage/crit/crit damage in same way shape or form also.

I think the thing is I played an Ele for so long I find myself playing warrior the same way. Im always circle kiting, never standing still, which is why I choose axe/axe over greatsword seeing how HB roots you.

I’ve soled the quaggon champ Group event in frostgorge sound with my warrior as well as soloing the champ up north toward to lone ori node, I have also soloed other champs depending on their attacks.

In orr I can take on 4-6 mobs at a time. Warrior is pretty epic.

10-12k Eviscerates, 10k killshots, 12-15k volleys. Auto Attacks that crit 1.5-2k (80% crit chance) while adding bleeding/vulnerability and lighting strikes for another 1k (duel runes of air)

I feel my eley is cheated in the DPS department.

EDIT: This post is meant for PvE, however, I had a full defense specced warrior (0/0/30/30/10) get 16 kills in SPvP awhile back, I routinely get 8+ kills also. =/

Well, yeah. Relative to a warrior, every other class in the game is cheated, except for certain engineer or guardian builds.

I really don’t understand where the flood of tears originates. In PvE I feel several times more effective than my Mesmer. Oh, woe is me and my 8k Churning Earth crits. ;_;

Cristina P.6241:

I GUESS WE, ARE ALL GONNA BECOME A MESMER. You guys mest up there ArenaNet.

So I guess we should rename the game Mesmer Wars 2. :P

I was a Mesmer and I became Elementalist.. far more I can add to a battle and 1-1 isnt bad either, even though its a bit more work I get a lot more effects out. Now that downed state is buffed I even have the survivability, better if it hits the downed state. Mesmers? Aoe negates illusions just fine. Dagger w5 if you get confuse stack. Dodge shatter (when they all run at you).

Only a bad mesmers lets all his illusions get hit by aoe. A good one spreads them around so you have to focus them 1v1.

Do elementalists bring a lot to a teamfight? Yes, Staff ones do, every other ele not.
Do mesmers bring a lot to a teamfight? Hell yeah. Every single one of their elites is insanely useful in tournaments, they have buff sharing, aoe condition removal, etc.

There are a bunch of people opn this forum that either don’t know how to play Ele well, or keep trying to force a spec (glass cannon) onto it that just isn’t going to work in its current state.

My advice would be to play the class with a working spec. Maybe one day, glass cannon Ele’s will work, but for now I don’t think they are a good idea, so just don’t spec glass cannon.

As for my experience, I think Elementalist is excellent, I can beat most other players 1v1 in WvW, I can chase down anyone…even a thief so long as they don’t stealth and lose me, AND I feel useful in just about any scenario.

What’s not to love?

@Aether McLoud.1975

Sounds like the Ele is just sitting still and waiting for the mesmer to perfectly position his clones/phantasms.

A good mesmer will admit that he has 0 chance against a competent Ele unless he gets a lucky stealth moa off.

^Glass cannon does not work. It’s my holy grail that I have been unable to achieve.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Only a bad mesmers lets all his illusions get hit by aoe. A good one spreads them around so you have to focus them 1v1.

Do elementalists bring a lot to a teamfight? Yes, Staff ones do, every other ele not.
Do mesmers bring a lot to a teamfight? Hell yeah. Every single one of their elites is insanely useful in tournaments, they have buff sharing, aoe condition removal, etc.

A correctly specced D/D elementalist can stack around 15 stacks of might on their entire team relatively quickly if they are positioned right, can CC mobs or players, can provide boons like protection and regen to the entire team with elemental attunement, and can purge conditions from the team and provide limited healing.

I think that’s pretty useful for team fights…

Eicherjw.3926:

^Glass cannon does not work. It’s my holy grail that I have been unable to achieve.

Then I would just say play another class for now…

Ele can do great spike damage with daggers, but you need to be in basically melee range, so glass cannon is not advisable with a cloth class for that. With staff, you have the range, but most of your abilities have wind up times, so you don’t have that immediate spike damage like thief.

So yeah, Ele is just not a really good class if you want to do 7K hits, be made of paper mache, and still survive.

But tossing out brutal bolts is fun as hell!

It’s been 2 month since launch. I’m simply getting sick and tired of not having 90% of our bugs fixed, and being the class with least damage, hp and armor, and apparently for Anet that’s ok. But when rangers have an itch a dev comes flying and gives them an answer post ASAP.

But not ele, ele can suck it.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Only a bad mesmers lets all his illusions get hit by aoe. A good one spreads them around so you have to focus them 1v1.

Do elementalists bring a lot to a teamfight? Yes, Staff ones do, every other ele not.
Do mesmers bring a lot to a teamfight? Hell yeah. Every single one of their elites is insanely useful in tournaments, they have buff sharing, aoe condition removal, etc.

I’m on top of him aoe-ing, how is he going to spread them around? They either spawn where he is or where I am, and aoes are going out every couple seconds. I have more mobility than he does. He may get away from me temporarily via stealth or cripple but I’m likely still connecting.

Also, whats with our drowned state? We are masters of fire, water, air and earth, but the only thing we can think of when drowning is kicking like a baby? Even thieves underwater drowning kick has a knockback. Our just does damage. Simply shows how much kittens arenanet gives about ele: zero.

Kilger.5490:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Only a bad mesmers lets all his illusions get hit by aoe. A good one spreads them around so you have to focus them 1v1.

Do elementalists bring a lot to a teamfight? Yes, Staff ones do, every other ele not.
Do mesmers bring a lot to a teamfight? Hell yeah. Every single one of their elites is insanely useful in tournaments, they have buff sharing, aoe condition removal, etc.

I’m on top of him aoe-ing, how is he going to spread them around? They either spawn where he is or where I am, and aoes are going out every couple seconds. I have more mobility than he does. He may get away from me temporarily via stealth or cripple but I’m likely still connecting.

Don’t you know? All theorycraft assumes that everything goes absolutely right for your opponent, but absolutely wrong for you, so of course that Mesmer was able to spread his phantasms all around you in a nice little circle pattern while you sat there repeatedly falling over since he tied your shoelaces together before the fight.

In all seriousness though, Mesmers can be problematic for me because they ARE confusing. If I see the real one moving around, I know who he is really fast, but a clone/shatter Mesmer pumps SOO many clones out in a short period of time, and usually has decoy as well, so it’s really easy to lose track of them.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Also, whats with our drowned state? We are masters of fire, water, air and earth, but the only thing we can think of when drowning is kicking like a baby? Even thieves underwater drowning kick has a knockback. Our just does damage. Simply shows how much kittens arenanet gives about ele: zero.

Hahah really? I don’t really think the drowned state is all that good, but I think it’s funny that you think that ANet hates Ele’s when they just made our downed state (which happens like 95% more than the drowned state) arguably the best in the game.

Yes they made our downed state really good. That doesn’t change that we still have a bajillion bugs that are there for MONTHS, do subpar damage, are extremely squishy and outperformed in everything but support (if we HEAVYILY spec for it) by other classes.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Yes they made our downed state really good. That doesn’t change that we still have a bajillion bugs that are there for MONTHS, do subpar damage, are extremely squishy and outperformed in everything but support (if we HEAVYILY spec for it) by other classes.

I…disagree.

With the outperformed in everything part of your post at least. We have bugs, I will freely admit that…RTL and magnetic grasp bugs drive me CRAZY.

Despite this though, I still feel like I can beat probably 80% of the people I find in WvW 1v1…and many even 3v1 (sub 80’s, or bad 80’s).

And PvE wise, I think Ele is amazing. Tons of might stacking, healing, condition removal, good damage, almost all AoE, boons…who could ask for more?

LOL WVW. If you don’t play ele in tourneys where balance matters your opinion is invalid. In WVW gear and level matters way more than skill or class or build.

Also pve is easy as hell who cares.

@Aether McLoud, a good ele simply need good map positioning, if you fight a mesmer you should pick carefully your battleground, the larger the space the better is for the mesmer…therefore I make sure mesmers haven’t got enough space to spread illusion=dead mesmer

Mesmer may be good in pvp but in pve they suck. They are not ‘Orr Viable’ as i call it. They die so fast, it’s ridiculous. Sure i don’t have max gear yet with will improve it but still. Damage to low. ‘proc on dead clone’ stuff is way to bugged. Mobs rarely get the nasty effect they shoudl be getting for dead clones. Etc.

Guardian is nice. When i’m not in the mood for challenges, broken equipment, being bankrupt, then i’ll just farm guardian in Orr. And smash everything. And rarely die.

Soon i’ll level my elementalist again. I’ll probably use crafting for leveling because soloing mobs is so slow with ele. And i’m not gonna invest in the super necessary equipment for ele to be viable, until level 80. Will see how it goes. If it sucks i still have guardian, and Warrior later.

“LOL WVW. If you don’t play ele in tourneys where balance matters your opinion is invalid. In WVW gear and level matters way more than skill or class or build.”

Except anyone who’s made even the vaguest effort has at least one level 80 in good gear by now. This game isn’t WoW with it’s months of raiding, you can hit 80 in a week and be fully geared a few hours afterwards.

The class ‘is’ severely broken, there’s no denying it by anyone with even a fraction of common sense. We have among the lowest surviveability and require a huge effort to do even close to the damage other classes can do without even trying (and even then it’s basically impossible against anyone with anti-CC abilities. So, you know, everyone). The only thing we have going for us is standing in the back of a large group and spamming AOE.