Guild Wars 2

Noxrawr.6125:

Cassiel.8762:

Now look again at what happens if you blurred frenzied or even pressed f4, when he lightning flashed.

mesmer: 1 skill goes on cd
ele: all earth and air damage skills and all utilities go on cd

yep, the elementalist is perfectly viable

Funny how you can defend that this type of damage is balanced. It isnt always possible to evade an attack.

Its not that much damage compared to what a zerk thief, mez, or warrior can pull off. Its also pretty much ALL the Ele’s offensive skills going on CD as opposed to one (kill shot) or a couple clicks on other classes.
Also be glad you could SEE the Ele, not like a stealth class that can just blow you up out of no where.
Full zerker yolo ele is possible but its more difficult to pull off the combos and get out alive compared to other classes.

Graendall.4765:

If you sit idle its tremendous.If the dragon tooth/phoenix/fire grab/air burst hits you are most probably dead.

Awesome, so all everyone needs to do is stop moving and go AFK, then Ele’s will be totally viable!
The solution is here folks!

Noxrawr.6125:

Eviscera.9703:

Lmfao! A mesmer that got 2 shotted by an ele?
You have Sword #2 to evade their updraft + burning speed + fire grab combo. Distortion to get your hp up. You also have invisibility skills: Decoy, Veil. mass invis? You could also use blink to escape. You simply got outplayed and need to l2p.

I think you didnt read. There was no battle between me and the ele at all. Because i died in LITERALLY 0.5 sec.

Despite the fact that the damage from that spike is a bit ridiculous, it has clear telegraphs before the damage actually hits. If you know what you are looking at as the ele approaches you, it’s relatively easy to avoid. The build is a one-shot pony in this case. If you didn’t see the ele coming, that’s another story, and you either need to watch the field better or have your team do so. I can pretty consistently avoid that burst if I am paying attention to the ele’s actions beforehand.

You are also using an isolated build that doesn’t really have a lot of team viability as an example for how the ele is viable in the game as a whole.

Wintel.4873:

Graendall.4765:

If you sit idle its tremendous.If the dragon tooth/phoenix/fire grab/air burst hits you are most probably dead.

Awesome, so all everyone needs to do is stop moving and go AFK, then Ele’s will be totally viable!
The solution is here folks!

You read what you want to read.Don’t do this to yourself.I never said Ele is the best proffesion atm.Needs some good tweaking.But its definatly not so bad as most people want it to be.
Landing the S/D combo is hard but hey we are playing a game where you can actualy read enemy movements.With experience and luck(yes you need luck for everything in life) you can land your combos.The ele in this case was lucky.

Damage was not that high

If you are running a build that dies to this, then it also dies to burst thief and is therefore not a viable build (unless you know other team has no reach).

Pretty basics tbh

taking a guess your in a glass build. that ele was likely also in a glass build. In which case he who strikes first wins.

ens.9854:

Damage was not that high

If you are running a build that dies to this, then it also dies to burst thief and is therefore not a viable build (unless you know other team has no reach).

Pretty basics tbh

All ele builds will die to a good burst thief player then that means there is no viable build? The only difference some builds will give you that extra second or two to react and recover while a skillful thief can easily repeat his burst on 1v1 with the broken constant stealth mechanic if you don’t burst him down first. Seriously, there are a lot of builds that are “viable” for each profession in wvw roaming as long as the player is good. Finally a good mesmer will never die within 1 sec time window on 1v1 unless he just finished a hard battle and has all his utilities on cd or got completely ambushed from his blind spot by a bursty player.

LightningBlaze.4913:

ens.9854:

Damage was not that high

If you are running a build that dies to this, then it also dies to burst thief and is therefore not a viable build (unless you know other team has no reach).

Pretty basics tbh

All ele builds will die to a good burst thief player then that means there is no viable build? The only difference some builds will give you that extra second or two to react and recover while a skillful thief can easily repeat his burst on 1v1 with the broken constant stealth mechanic if you don’t burst him down first. Seriously, there are a lot of builds that are “viable” for each profession in wvw roaming as long as the player is good. Finally a good mesmer will never die within 1 sec time window on 1v1 unless he just finished a hard battle and has all his utilities on cd or got completely ambushed from his blind spot by a bursty player.

not saying in 1v1
dies to thief in teamfight with teammates around = not viable
and yes if you think there are no builds that can survive focus in the current meta then there are no viable builds in the current meta

There was already a lot of talk going on in the sPvP forums about the burst capabilities of an ele. The general consensus is that this burst is very cheesy (speak: not a good gameplay mechanic) but it does not make the Elementalist overpowered because the Elementalist will perform very poorly and lack any meaningful teamplay in between those bursts (if you spec for burst you have to give up a lot). So if you want shock-burst you will be likely better off with a thief or warrior, because these classes survive a lot better on average even when specced for burst damage. Power necros can also do some nasty tricks in death shroud that will get you down very quickly.

how are elementalists not viable?

Let’s first agree what being viable is. Is it being able to do something no other class can do? Or is it being able to achieve a result that helps yourself or your team win a fight that would be otherwise more difficult with you playing another class in that situation? I think of it as the latter, so…

The answer is because ANET reduced us to not being viable in MANY situations. That isn’t to say we aren’t viable in some situations, but generally very few that people enjoy playing.

How many people in any MMO sign up to heal-bot or be perma-support? The answer is a fraction of those that want to do damage. Although we are supposed to be a hybrid, we’ve been stuck into a narrow area where we are considered viable and even that is becoming more and more in jeopardy as patches go on.

Hybrid should mean the class can play however you want to spec, but IMO I hope it doesn’t mean that we aren’t good at anything, which is the current state of the class if you ask me.

A lot of other classes can do as much or more burst than we can, but because ours can be relatively instant, it looks to be worse than it actually is. If you survived that burst with 10% life you would be able to recover and beat the elementalist that insta-gibbed you. That’s why it’s not a viable spec and why the person running it has to target up-levels or those running zerker gear. Not exactly what I call viable even though it can get kills.

Columbo.5924:

There was already a lot of talk going on in the sPvP forums about the burst capabilities of an ele. The general consensus is that this burst is very cheesy (speak: not a good gameplay mechanic).

I really agree with that. I don’t want to call S/D eles overpowered because it’s not that they are stomping all over everything, but their mechanics really are stupid. The entire pvp system in this game is based around tells and reactions, and S/D has neither. There is no counter play to S/D damage. You do your best to read your opponent and guess what they’re going to do, but still the damage is all instant and avoiding it is more luck than anything else. I’m torn between wanting S/D wanting to get a severe overhaul, and not wanting to give Anet the chance to kitten up one of the few things eles have going for them.

dreztina.4820:

Columbo.5924:

There was already a lot of talk going on in the sPvP forums about the burst capabilities of an ele. The general consensus is that this burst is very cheesy (speak: not a good gameplay mechanic).

I really agree with that. I don’t want to call S/D eles overpowered because it’s not that they are stomping all over everything, but their mechanics really are stupid. The entire pvp system in this game is based around tells and reactions, and S/D has neither. There is no counter play to S/D damage. You do your best to read your opponent and guess what they’re going to do, but still the damage is all instant and avoiding it is more luck than anything else. I’m torn between wanting S/D wanting to get a severe overhaul, and not wanting to give Anet the chance to kitten up one of the few things eles have going for them.

IDK, I felt like S/D required RTL->Updraft->Dragon’s Tooth for effective burst. Without that lightning burst alone, or even with arcane isn’t that great. DT is the easiest thing to dodge (big red flag that says get away now) so without Updraft your pretty much without damage that will land.

In small fights it’s just too devastating to miss DT and other spells that you really need to land to be able to get someone down these days. Having gone back to D/D I don’t miss S/D much. But I still don’t feel like any of the weapon sets are effective anymore. I wish every skill on the bar was good at something, and that each attunement for a given weapon set actually worked well together (imagine if Scepter did condition damage across all attunements for example)

Droshi.2730:

IDK, I felt like S/D required RTL->Updraft->Dragon’s Tooth for effective burst. Without that lightning burst alone, or even with arcane isn’t that great. DT is the easiest thing to dodge (big red flag that says get away now) so without Updraft your pretty much without damage that will land.

In small fights it’s just too devastating to miss DT and other spells that you really need to land to be able to get someone down these days. Having gone back to D/D I don’t miss S/D much. But I still don’t feel like any of the weapon sets are effective anymore. I wish every skill on the bar was good at something, and that each attunement for a given weapon set actually worked well together (imagine if Scepter did condition damage across all attunements for example)

Optimal S/D spiking doesn’t even involve DT. It’s a combination of Earthquake+Air Burst/Arcane skills. When executed properly it’s extremely fast and if you are caught it’s hard to get out of, but there are also really obvious tells if you already know what the ele is running. The build is essentially a one-trick pony; it’s almost useless if the spike fails because it sacrifices pretty much all of your possible defensive measures to accomplish its damage.

Leuca.5732:

Optimal S/D spiking doesn’t even involve DT. It’s a combination of Earthquake+Air Burst/Arcane skills. When executed properly it’s extremely fast and if you are caught it’s hard to get out of, but there are also really obvious tells if you already know what the ele is running. The build is essentially a one-trick pony; it’s almost useless if the spike fails because it sacrifices pretty much all of your possible defensive measures to accomplish its damage.

The funny part is that the Air section of that burst is what 2 skills? Light strike and RTL… But yes, I realized OP was getting hit with this combo of mostly arcane skills that insta-gibbed him. Running a build like that wasn’t much fun for me, but to each his own I guess. Builds like this make me think they are the reason ANET created the downed state, because getting the stomp isn’t trivial with a full glass build that has no survivability skills.

Honestly, compared to other classes the ele is over-complicated. For good damage you’re pigeon holed into Sc/D or Sc/F with LH with a predefined rotation. Compare that to my Sw/Sw Sw/F reflection mesmer… its obvious which is more enjoyable to play.

Two major changes I would love to see is less discrepancy between range and melee DPS and less +10% dmg traits, which are boring….

I was two-shotted in WvW yesterday by a thief from stealth. Of course he did have 5 guard power stacks, 25 bloodlust sigil stacks, and realm bloodlust buff .

I do love staff ele in WvW though. It’s so versatile and useful. However when I’m solo it’s a free bag for the other guy.

Updraft-DT doesnt make much sense, the aftercast of updraft is too long to get off DT fast enough, it can be simply dodged. Gale-DT works tho.

I run this build for a bit of fun in hotjoins and I can tell you it is not as simple as it seems…

He zapped at me and killed me with 2 sequential hits.

In fact its not 2 hits its 7:
1. Hurl
2. Lighting Flash
3. Electric Discharge (from attuning to air)
4. Earthquake
5. Lighting Strike
6. Arcane Wave
7. Lighting Strike from sigil will happen somewhere in the burst
This initial burst hits for somewhere around 20K

Also you most likely had a squishier build to be downed from the initial burst because most of the time i need to follow the burst up with RTL > Updraft > Phoenix to down them
The next part for somewhere around 5 – 7K

This damage is only achieved due to ALL of the damage modifier being made, especially from tempest defense trait when using the knock down from earthquake .

The traits and conditions that need to be met are:
Bolt to the Heart – 10% more damage when foe’s health is below 33%
Air Training – 10% more damage when attuned to air
Tempest Defense – 20% more damage to stunned or knocked down foes
Stone Splinters – 10% more damage when within 600 units of target
Enduring Damage – 10% more damage when endurance is full
Vital Striking – 10% more damage when health is above 90%
Scholar Runes – 10% more damage when health is above 90%
Sigil of Force – 5% extra damage
So all up at total of 85% extra damage

Here is the link of the build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmKbzR4gjEAkCoMZESHiHW4gEVBA-ToAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNoYWA

The downside to this build is
– If you miss your earthquake the burst wont be nearly as effective and only take around half of their health
– Lighting Flash has absolutely 0 z axis movement so if you are on a hill or below a tiny ledge and use it you will waste your whole burst
– If the opponent survives the burst for any reason you have next to no sustain to win the fight
– The burst is on a 40 second cooldown so its unlikely to be able to perform it twice in a fight.

As many of people in this thread have said; it’s a one trick pony. The reward for succeeding with the burst is a close to guaranteed kill but if you mess up the burst it’s a close to guaranteed kill for the opponent.

Requiem.8365:

Updraft-DT doesnt make much sense, the aftercast of updraft is too long to get off DT fast enough, it can be simply dodged. Gale-DT works tho.

True, that’s one of the reasons why I am loving roaming with s/f now.

Noxrawr.6125:

Cassiel.8762:

Now look again at what happens if you blurred frenzied or even pressed f4, when he lightning flashed.

mesmer: 1 skill goes on cd
ele: all earth and air damage skills and all utilities go on cd

yep, the elementalist is perfectly viable

Funny how you can defend that this type of damage is balanced. It isnt always possible to evade an attack.

First… Any class can putt together a burst combo, most more better than ele.

Second… This has already been nerfed with the changes to arcane blast it’s harder to land, not impossible just harder.

And last I’m going to agree with the large majority here and say that you just got out played, if you saw him/her coming then as a Mesmer there were a dozen moves you had, but you just sat there and are his burst. If you didn’t see it coming then his/her build did what it was designed to do… The only thing it can do… Kill nubs

katniss.6735:

Because 3.25s cast time is instant, right?

Use eyes.

Except the Elementalist doesn’t actually have to be sitting on top of you to use that skill and still have it damage you. Thanks to a little feature the Elementalist has known as Short-Range Teleportation the Elementalist can start channeling Churning Earth some distance away from the intended target, and then when the Channel is at about 95% complete they can select and target a Lightning Flash, get in close to their target, and 1-hit-K.O. their target. Cause no one can dodge a Churning Earth that they don’t see coming.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

katniss.6735:

Because 3.25s cast time is instant, right?

Use eyes.

Except the Elementalist doesn’t actually have to be sitting on top of you to use that skill and still have it damage you. Thanks to a little feature the Elementalist has known as Short-Range Teleportation the Elementalist can start channeling Churning Earth some distance away from the intended target, and then when the Channel is at about 95% complete they can select and target a Lightning Flash, get in close to their target, and 1-hit-K.O. their target. Cause no one can dodge a Churning Earth that they don’t see coming.

Churning earth is simply not capable of one-hitting anything other than a zerker thief or zerker ele.
If it is going to do any serious amount of damage, you could easily burst the ele down within that time period with any class that could be threatened by it.
Seriously, mesmers and thieves are vastly better at bursts and can do them on shorter cooldowns, with better sustain, more team utility, and defense as well.

Not to mention we need to use two skills to get that skill off effectively during a fight.

Pretty much. Churning Earth + Lightning Flash into an enemy group could almost be considered suicidal, because if you happen to get caught even in a single CC (knockdown, immob, stun, etc) in the chaos then it’s all 100% of your health gone in the blink of an eye.

It’s quite possible to die to random AoE damage flying around that wasn’t even targeted at the Ele. The other day I pulled a meteor + tornado setup over a node just as enemies ran in, the very first thing that happened was 2 enemy Ele’s went down INSTANTLY (must have been full zerker) + a downed thief. I just laughed XD

Part of the elementalist’s poor reputation comes from threads like this, where whenever someone posts something positive about elementalists, people are quick to list all possible counters to explain why it won’t work. However, apparently it does work…but of course it won’t work all the time. Nothing does. Realistically you have a 50% chance to win any 1v1 fight…there should be 0% chance to win 1v2. Any build can be countered, and any spike interrupted. So maybe the expectations are simply to high…any build can be countered.

ThiBash.5634:

Part of the elementalist’s poor reputation comes from threads like this, where whenever someone posts something positive about elementalists, people are quick to list all possible counters to explain why it won’t work. However, apparently it does work…but of course it won’t work all the time. Nothing does. Realistically you have a 50% chance to win any 1v1 fight…there should be 0% chance to win 1v2. Any build can be countered, and any spike interrupted. So maybe the expectations are simply to high…any build can be countered.

When something “works” with Ele, it’s primarily due to skill gap and out-playing the opponent. Build plays a very small role, people adapt builds to their specific requirements/playstyle and after that it’s all skill + out-playing.

Wintel.4873:

When something “works” with Ele, it’s primarily due to skill gap and out-playing the opponent. Build plays a very small role, people adapt builds to their specific requirements/playstyle and after that it’s all skill + out-playing.

True, but if you phrase it like that it sounds like you’re actually asking ArenaNet for a build that gives you an edge rather than having equal builds and getting the edge from being the better player. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there are NO issues. But I do feel the elementalist’s poor reputation results in a more negative attitude towards anything positive. The positive aspects of the elementalist are being scrutinized more closely as opposed to, say, a warrior build because everyone feels they’ll be powerful regardless. The elementalist is then compared to the best aspects of the other professions and has to measure up to all of them. Sometimes, it appears as if people WANT the elementalist to fail, rather than succeed for whatever reasons they may have.

Noxrawr.6125:

I play mesmer and i once again got instantly killed by an ele. He zapped at me and killed me with 2 sequential hits. I am not exaggerating here, 2 hits is all it took and they both occurred within a 0.5 sec time span. So what part of instagibbing, or in other words, a damage output that equals 23 k in 0.5 sec => 46 k/sec is not viable in pvp?

Stop running around naked and go get those other 79 levels before going into WvW?

I play a mesmer and absolutely destroy elementalists.

ThiBash.5634:

Wintel.4873:

When something “works” with Ele, it’s primarily due to skill gap and out-playing the opponent. Build plays a very small role, people adapt builds to their specific requirements/playstyle and after that it’s all skill + out-playing.

True, but if you phrase it like that it sounds like you’re actually asking ArenaNet for a build that gives you an edge rather than having equal builds and getting the edge from being the better player. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there are NO issues. But I do feel the elementalist’s poor reputation results in a more negative attitude towards anything positive. The positive aspects of the elementalist are being scrutinized more closely as opposed to, say, a warrior build because everyone feels they’ll be powerful regardless. The elementalist is then compared to the best aspects of the other professions and has to measure up to all of them. Sometimes, it appears as if people WANT the elementalist to fail, rather than succeed for whatever reasons they may have.

Let’s compare to the usual suspect: the warrior. Warriors have a built in advantage of 800 vitality and 300 armor. Now compare the average damage on the skills. You will hardly find anything with the same damage/damage per second of the warrior skills outside of fire attunement. Even if all the skills are equal in damage and both players have the same heal per second, elementalist always starts with a disadvantage due to the armor/hp disparity, making it more susceptible to burst/focused damage.

Columbo.5924:

Let’s compare to the usual suspect: the warrior. Warriors have a built in advantage of 800 vitality and 300 armor. Now compare the average damage on the skills. You will hardly find anything with the same damage/damage per second of the warrior skills outside of fire attunement. Even if all the skills are equal in damage and both players have the same heal per second, elementalist always starts with a disadvantage due to the armor/hp disparity, making it more susceptible to burst/focused damage.

But what about the additional heals, the combo fields, the extra range or the larger AoE that you DO get? Not everything is directly measured in stats or damage.

Noxrawr.6125:

Cassiel.8762:

Noxrawr.6125:

Cassiel.8762:

Noxrawr.6125:

I play mesmer and i once again got instantly killed by an ele. He zapped at me and killed me with 2 sequential hits. I am not exaggerating here, 2 hits is all it took and they both occurred within a 0.5 sec time span. So what part of instagibbing, or in other words, a damage output that equals 23 k in 0.5 sec => 46 k/sec is not viable in pvp?

I play mesmer and i once again hit sword 2 and evaded for 2.5s, mitigating the 115k damage zap zap that the omgwtfpwnOP ele was trying to do. Then i dodged twice and hit f4 and mitigated another 138k damage. Then he ran away. omg. dodge button op. must nerf!

Its hilarious how you think im exaggerating in my post. Im not. I died within 0.5 sec time, period. And if that guy can do it, others can do it too, hence my question, what exactly is not viable about ele’s? But i guess the post above this 1 sums it up.

Go make a full glass ele and run around trying to burst people down. Oh, save up some gold for your repair fee hmm?

So the fact that you supposedly die relatively fast justifies the damage output that equals 5 hambow warriors?

I say yes, lowest armor, lowest health in the game, paired with the simple fact if they went total glass a passing glance can kill them ele absolutely deserves to be able to 2 shot someone (in all realism it was likely him using an arcane build and popping everything he had).

I’m gonna assume it’s just a new variation of the S/D build where the ele divebombs some poor kitten using RTL and blows them up while they’re being launched by updraft.

ThiBash.5634:

Columbo.5924:

Let’s compare to the usual suspect: the warrior. Warriors have a built in advantage of 800 vitality and 300 armor. Now compare the average damage on the skills. You will hardly find anything with the same damage/damage per second of the warrior skills outside of fire attunement. Even if all the skills are equal in damage and both players have the same heal per second, elementalist always starts with a disadvantage due to the armor/hp disparity, making it more susceptible to burst/focused damage.

But what about the additional heals, the combo fields, the extra range or the larger AoE that you DO get? Not everything is directly measured in stats or damage.

All that doen’t matter if the sum of it doesn’t bridge the obvious gap. And by the way: Additional heals? You obviously have no idea how much a warrior/guardian/engineer/anything can heal when traited for it. And don’t tell me you get those heals without traiting and speccing for it. Almost every competitive build i’ve seen uses water traits and something like 500+ healing power. And I doubt the competitiveness of the builds that don’t.

Combo fields? Only staff has a decent amount of them and it is lacking combo finishers. So it all depends on your team what you get out of it. All other weapon sets only have one (if you count burning speed which is far too finnicky to combo from: maybe two) combo fields. And if you are looking for a fire field: warrior longbow brings a much better one and two blast finishers on top of it.

Larger range doesn’t mean much because of the abundance of gap closers/other ranged professions/stealth.

Larger AoE? That only applies to staff, even then you would be surprised how large a combustive shot field can be. I’m making these longbow comparisons because hambow warriors are pretty common right now.

Noxrawr.6125:

i died in LITERALLY 0.5 sec.

Less zerk, more toughness.

Columbo.5924:

All that doen’t matter if the sum of it doesn’t bridge the obvious gap. And by the way: Additional heals? You obviously have no idea how much a warrior/guardian/engineer/anything can heal when traited for it. And don’t tell me you get those heals without traiting and speccing for it. Almost every competitive build i’ve seen uses water traits and something like 500+ healing power. And I doubt the competitiveness of the builds that don’t.

You’ll get those heals without traiting or speccing for it. You’re comparing the ele damage to a full zerker warrior, then compare the healing to a full zerker too. And the inherent condition removals. And whatever else comes on the table.

Combo fields? Only staff has a decent amount of them and it is lacking combo finishers.

Stoning, Shockwave and Eruption are on every staff. You can expand it with utilities if you like.

So it all depends on your team what you get out of it.

Duh. It also means that combo fields get exponentially more powerful the more people are around to make use of them. Meaning you can get far more mileage from a water field than those pitiful warrior shouts can ever do.

Columbo.5924:

And if you are looking for a fire field: warrior longbow brings a much better one and two blast finishers on top of it.

Warrior doesn’t get fury with that, and an ele can match it with just their healing skill and a rune of altruism.

Larger AoE? That only applies to staff, even then you would be surprised how large a combustive shot field can be.

The AoE and range of dagger attacks is generally larger than that of typical melee weapons.