Guild Wars 2

I’m kinda confused to what ppl complain about regarding the Elementalis (this is for PvE issues). I posted this in another thread but hey discussion is fun!

Just to explain my 2 cents; I played a Warrior to level 30, Thief to 21 and a Guardian to 50 as my first characters.
While these classes managed to entertain me for the first 20 levels or so they got old really fast; in short I found them extremely boring to play whatever weapon set I tried to make use of they were more or less one trick ponies with boring design and boring skills/utilities (my opinion and ofc everything written here is my opinion).

- This weekend I started a Sylvari Ele and with a combination of having “no-life” as you say and also being a student who currently studies from home at 50% speed I managed to get my Ele to 55 very fast. Now forgive me because 1.) I’m only level 55 and 2.) I never play PvP but this is my feedback so far from the PvE experience I’ve had:

The least issue I ever have had with the Ele is damage and I find it weird that there are so many complaints on the forum regarding that topic because there are even topics complaining about Eles PvE damage.

I started out with staff and stuck with it until level 50 and during that time what I found personally to be the staff Eles biggest issue was immobilizers. In essence with staff I want to keep mobs stunned/slowed etc for as long time as possible so I can put a lava font below them followed by the ignite skill and get might stacks on burning while auto-attacking and kiting the mobs around in the lava font.
While there are several immob skills at your disposal, switching between the Elements that much actually costs me a lot of damage potential and is just not worth it when fighting trash mobs.

When grouped or duod with ppl who can stand in front of you or having a pet out that distracts the mobs to attack them I can really just burst away old-school mage style with staff.

While I did enjoy Ele staff until 50 I thought of; why not give dagger/dagger a try?
Ride the lightning to the mob > the electric rollback with knockdown > fire slide skill through mob > electric shield for stun > extra earth pull/knockdown if needed sounded to me like a really fun concept and to my delight this combo has so far shown to be extremely efficient because mobs just can’t walk out of it like they could with lava font. They just melt in seconds.

Also my experience with dagger/dagger is that it’s a more “lazy” weaponset then staff (only my opinion) and what I mean is that I when I get tired and unfocused in front of my monitor after playing for a couple of hours dagger/dagger is so much more forgiving then staff because the ways to do dps with d/d is so easy because you don’t have to rely on keeping mobs in lava font since with the fire slide mobs will “perma-walk-through” the fire and get burning when they chase after you.

I have not used any damage tooltip comparison and whatnot but my experience between Ele and Warrior is that everything went faster for me with the Ele even if damage may or may not be lower because and esp with d/d there is so much action going (it’s like watching a Hong Kong movie) so I just don’t get bored and start playing as crappy as I did when I played warrior which just bore me to death.

This is my 2 cents;

• Eles is not lacking damage (prob though is that fire is the only element that really do damage and some of the other elements lack a good full set of abilities) however:

• The implementation of the dodge system somewhat may or may not screwed some Ele builds over and therefor some weapons are more viable then others (my opinion).

• The lack of having a pet out 24/7 à la Ranger may or may not create some issues with forcing mobs into “the danger zone” and therefor some weapon sets seem more efficent then others.

• People seem to want to play their Eles like WoW pew pew Mages but due to the lack of pets 24/7 and the forced-to-dodge system that kind of playstyle where you just stand still and throw nuke after nuke just don’t work. You can still pew pew but it’s handled a little different here.

~ GreenZap

While Elementalist IS a fun class, there are still some things wrong with it when compared to other classes. Considering their damage, they are still far too squishy compared to other DPS spec’s and in sPvP they’re really only good as Bunker Staff.

My aura/boon focused d/d build crits 4k with burning speed on light armor. 40% crit chance

It will sound cliche, but wait till you’re in Orr. Every single Risne will be a treat for you and the only choice you’ll have is to go as far as you can.

Oh yeah sure, you’ll be able to kill some of them if you unleash “the terrible earth storm of the elemental dragon tooth ride the lightning overload”

But yeah, you’ll have to run. A lot.

I just reread your post and do you seriously think that every elementalist who post complaints are noobs?

A lot of them are level 80 since at least 2 weeks. They know how to play and they have extremely valid points. The more you’ll play, the more you’ll realise that your damage is kitten. Even is you spec full fire-air-earth.

I seriously don’t know what people want to achieve by saying Elementalists don’t need tuning.

Mornin y’all

@ Ryld : I’ve not played PvP but I understand the complaints regarding it, my post was about PvE and only up the point where I currently am; level 55

@Scarface: I’ve heard about the terrors in Orr but what I’ve heard and I’ve only got to level 55 so far so I have no knowledge about the last levels. Regarding Orr though (and correct me if I’m wrong here) is that every class have complaints about Orr and esp I’ve read a lot of complaints regarding the mob respawn timers which apparently make a lot of ppl trying to skip Orr altogheter.

Risen is annoying already and this may be a little QQ on my part; but I personally believe that the Risen is badly designed when we have a game that is based around a dodge-n-kite system.
They are kinda like a issue of Superman; you have a invincible guy but to make it interesting (because it would be boring if he could never get beaten) you have to pull out weird situations where his invulnerability is compromised. How do we nullify the ability for players to dodge and kite? We make super fast mobs who you can’t outrun, why not let them stack conditions on you when they hit you also? And have a good setup of different classes in a mob group as well so they can knock you down and swarm you? Fun :P

@ Scarface again: I agree that Eles need tuning but personally don’t agree with some of the playerbase opinions that I’ve read so far (there have been a lot of opinions that I agree with as well but most of it no). And no I don’t think people are noobs, noob has been turned into a very patronizing, why would I be sniffy against ppl I don’t even know in the first place? o.O

I don’t believe that Eles need to up their fire damage, however Arenanet have got to start to look into the elements that are not Fire because with a lot of weaponsets there as just so many pointless skills there that just waste a lot of space.

I spec Fire 30 -Air 20 -Arcane 20 ATM:

• Fire: (VI, VII, XII)
• Air: (III, VII)
• Arcane (I, V)

Dunno if that’s good yet but so far I don’t feel kittened but I’m still in mid levels so might have to change when I get higher :P

Earth so far have been a pretty meh experience (Scepter seem to have some interesting setups but I have yet to be a fan of Scepter) for me so far and nowadays I usually only use Earth to summon my Earth Golem or Magnetic Grasp and sometimes If I’m grouped I use Churning Earth.

I think that Arenanet kinda dropped the ball on Earth altogheter which is sad since they could really have had gone wild with the imagination of Earth based powers.

The other way to think of it since everyone seem to like to compare Ele to Warriors damage for some reason is that maybe Warriors is overtuned in their current state? That’s a interesting way of looking at it and who know what will happen with PvP balancing if Warriors are tuned?
It would be interesting to hear some opinions on what Arenanet should do with Eles because “they need more damage, more survivability” is not really a valid feedback. What exactly do you think that the Ele lack (I have no experience with PvP as I said before so keep it to PvE) to be able to compete?

As it kinda is now you have Warriors and Thieves at the top of the DPS charts and Necro at the very bottom. Warrior/Thief has a lot of burst going while Necro doesn’t really burst but can outlast things for like forever.
Ele is kinda in between (in my opinion) they can’t outlast long and have medium-to-high damage. Give them more deeps but what does that solve really? That just sound like you would end up with an FOTM class since Eles have so much utility already that with more deeps sounds like you would end up with a class that has just too much things to its disposal comparing to other classes.
I might be wrong but that is how it looks for me on paper: Give Eles more deeps and keep their current element trees; who is going to stop a constant; Flashing/Blinking/Knockdown/Stunning/Burning “pain train” that can use mist form while waiting for CDs?

That sounds like a real problem with balancing :P

GreenZap.1352:

When grouped or duod with ppl who can stand in front of you or having a pet out that distracts the mobs to attack them I can really just burst away old-school mage style with staff.

Amazing..

Dear GreenZap,

The problem most people have with elementalists is their broken role in he game. Up to about level 60-70 you’ll pretty much have no problems surviving in most zones and areas. However past that level its a death sentence no matter what build you use or if you make one or two mistakes.

High-level people in here (including myself) have is the ele is broken by design in its conception. See in most games (GW1 included) wizard types (especially with fire) classes do massive amounts of damage while being easily killed. In GW1 this is most clearly visible when you do some exploring around the shiver peaks region (Droknar’s Forge areas), an every day normal player with a party of henchmen could roam the area and do okayish without dying. The henchmen would take most of the direct hits and he’d just sit back and pump out damage, if he was an inexperienced player he’d pull too much and have his party die.

In GW2 thats the core problem people are experiencing, they play the class that should do the most damage without crazy ninja moves and incredible luck(lets face it everybody makes a mistake from time to time). At the moment if you make ONE little slip and you die no question about it.

play D/D in dungeons
tell it its more lazy than staff.
I dare you
I double dare you.

The fact is, you’re in pve right now, and you’re in easy pve where monsters dont cluster much at all. Or pull you about and knock you down.

Do a few dungeons as d/d or even staff and compare yourself to your party members. Unless you’re much more skilled than them (which may be possible) chances are you’ll probably feel weaker than them.

@ Ravenheart

That’s what I’ve heard as well but my post was more about discussing the issue ppl seem to be having before you get to high level since there have been a huge influx of those kinda of threads.

Since I do not have insight from level 60-70 I’ll trust your experiences with the class and I never tried Ele in GW1 (Got addicted to Ritualist and Paragon) but, and again correct me if I’m wrong if the biggest issue is between 60-80 isn’t it more of a faulty game design as a whole at end levels then a fault that lies with the class itself?
That’s atleast what I don’t like and I will QQ a little now; with the Risen cause they obv was put into the game to screw over the classes that has low hp/def and relies hugely on kiting.

The opposite would be to have ranged mobs screw melee classes over but atm that is not the case since when you get in melee range, the mob damage drops and for both War and Guard getting into melee range at least at mid levels is not a problem.

I’m just wondering how you would “remake” the Ele because if they get a damage buff wouldn’t they be a little too good considering the skills at their disposal?

@Zenyatoo I haven’t experience dungeons in GW2 yet mostly because I have done dungeons so many times over and over in games pre GW2 (ToR was the last dungeon game) that I just can’t muster doing it again. I’m fed up with dungeons but ofc “being fed up with” isn’t a valid argument from my side in this discussion.
I just haven’t done dungeons and I have no knowledge about dungeon setups and how the Ele perform in those situations.

I think my question was if it might not just be so that the game design in itself is flawed and not so much the classes? Maybe instead of nerfing and buffing away, ANet should look into balancing areas in the PvE enviroment (again only talking about PvE here) so that more classes and more “builds” can enjoy it.
I do not mean dumb down but maybe take a look at respawn timers and mob mechanics in paralell to how the different classes should work.

In a strictly PvE enviroment I do in fact not believe that everything “has to be balanced” I believe that you will have more diversity if you think more of concept then balancing.

When it comes to competitive play against other players though there has to be some sort of equalizer between either player skill or class mechanics/potential and since this is a PvP game firstmost I understand complaints about the performance in PvP but again from a PvE (solo) experience I have yet to run into trouble but taking Ravenhearts insight in mind trouble might be brewing on the road ahead .

To me the whole class is broken, in all RPG/MMOs I’ve played I ALWAYS play the heavy damage fire wizard type. In GW2 the most broken part for me personally are the traits, distribute them all you like they barely make a difference. In GW1 it was much more important to distribute your attribute points correctly depending on what you wanted to make as a build.

And I’m sorry but removing ALL the skills from GW1 and replacing them with a total of 25ish skills in GW2 is just plain wrong. The amount of diversity is very limited no matter what weapon combinations you do and lets face – there are only two that work to a point(staff and d/d).

Perhaps I’m too used to the old ways of wizard classes, but the first thing that came to mind when I rolled my elementalist is “Jack of all trades – master of NONE” and it certainly holds true the more you level up.