Guild Wars 2

witcher.3197:

Yes, 2 weeks after release (sept 12) people thought warrior was OP because of the frenzy + 100blades combo.. but as people got better at the game and Anet did a bit of balancing ele was in a great spot until ~2013 summer when anet overnerfed them. After a hiatus, they became kings of PvP after the 2014 april patch.

Nothing you said is true. warrior was actually weaker at the start of GW2.
And Elementalist did not become PvP kings after April 2014.
We certainly became a better class, but to be called PvP kings, would be pretty bold.

There are like, two fractions on the Elementalist forums, the people that blindly believe what anyone tells them and are blinded by the current (viable) ele cele meta build that for once is actually good enough to be in competitive pvp but they keep hearing and bringing up these mythical LCS players that said to be ruling over PvP as elementalists and so they think the class is super broken, but where are those players?
And the people that can actually arguably process the facts and see how things really are, that elementalist is still not the tip of the food chain, but just finally a “good” skill based class, emphasis on “skill based” , finally where its supposed to be, but still lackluster in a lot of aspects.

Elementalist has great healing? Well dog, sure we do, and so does Warrior and so does Necromancer, and so does Guardian, your point is?
But unlike them, we have to take literally every healing trait to be like that, and run +HEALING gear, how many other classes focus on running healing gear, to be viable?

Mesmer doesn’t have healing? Are you for real now? Mesmer has a million illusions so soak up damage, and juke people around, jerkin them left and right and what does elementalist have among those lines? Nothing, healing.
How do we survive? Every possible defensive cantrip and healing.

Do you want to see mesmer heal like elementalist, while always making extra illusions? I want to see people whine about “Broken” then, hah

I honestly shouldn’t get rustled so much, but people that come here and say ignorant things like : “Well duh, elementalist is broken, i hope he gets nerfed since he is the King of PvP!” really rustle my jimmy’s .

Lawful.5314:

Nothing you said is true. warrior was actually weaker at the start of GW2.
And Elementalist did not become PvP kings after April 2014.
We certainly became a better class, but to be called PvP kings, would be pretty bold.

The elementalist profession was top tier till mid 2013 when there was two patches that nerfed ele severely in survivability department.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-04-30#Elementalist
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-06-25#Elementalist

Anet added and buffed a lot of things back then but nerf to survivability was all they had to do in order to make elementalist non-viable in pvp.

rotten.9753:

Lawful.5314:

Nothing you said is true. warrior was actually weaker at the start of GW2.
And Elementalist did not become PvP kings after April 2014.
We certainly became a better class, but to be called PvP kings, would be pretty bold.

The elementalist profession was top tier till mid 2013 when there was two patches that nerfed ele severely in survivability department.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-04-30#Elementalist
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-06-25#Elementalist

Anet added and buffed a lot of things back then but nerf to survivability was all they had to do in order to make elementalist non-viable in pvp.

We lost stun-breakers and cantrips were nerfed.
Thats just the tip of the ice-berg, elementalists were always lacking survivability by default just from the base low HP and armor.

After those patches we just became more subsceptible to CC, we couldn’t heal in mist form and signet of restoration became useless in PvP.

Sure that hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much, to say that we were from TOP tier, to trash tier.
Elementalist was never that good to begin with in PvP, due to its low innate survivability and mediocre damage.

I started playing around late 2013, which was the Era when elementalist was at its lowest point, on the PvP food chain.
And i’ve browsed countless topics and reasons why elementalist was weak in PvP, and i have never, literally not seen a topic prior to 2014 april, that said “Elementalist is top tier, one of the stronger classes in PvP.”
There was literally only objective explanation on the forum, how the class is lackluster.

whoever

Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits. You are caught between speccing for damage or survivability but no matter how you spec anywhere between these two extremes, eles aren’t viable at a competitive level since any build you make would have a weakness. There’s versatility in the way you can trait but you can’t out-play someone by adapting the way you play since your kit has everything but not enough of it when you need it. Having useful skills bound to different attunements and sustained damage being on one means you are predictable and get into lose-lose situations as soon as you start having to play defensively. Signet of Restoration at eles be able to maintain the upper hand since they could keep dishing out damage without pause but it’s PvP nerf and the shift to condi meta that forces Ether Renewal on eles took this advantage away.
In WvW due to the abundance of stats you can achieve the necessary damage and survivability thresholds that can make ele viable but in sPvP you cannot do this.
In summary:
Zerker/Valkyrie burst builds: heavily reliant on landing high cooldown skills.
Bunker builds: deals negligible damage yet still gets wrecked 1v1 by mesmer, necro, thief, warrior and ranger and can’t hold point against an engi. Exceptionally bad at holding point 1v2. Little to no decapping capability and no presence in teamfights.
Balanced builds: heavily reliant on maintaining high might stacks and burst skills must all be landed perfectly in succession to secure a kill.
It’s abit more elaborate than this but you have to play ele enough for yourself to understand.

This is basically how elementalist was for the longest time, ever since i can remember the class.
At the moment we have “barely” enough of everything, if we bunker into the Cele DD meta build, and that makes us averagely strong, because of the spell versatility of the class, but that can change anytime if celestial gets nerfed, we will be back to being jack of all trades, adept in none.
And this is probably back where we’re heading with all the “whining” on the forums.

And don’t start me on “But D/D Cele isn’t the only viable build! There is 6 fresh air and zerker scepter/focus”
Those builds in my opinion, are just “fun” builds, which are neither viable nor strong, but they are there, they are the same builds we used to have back in 2013, and where we were considered the “free kill” because of how easy it is to burst the ele down if he is running those.

Lawful.5314:

We lost stun-breakers and cantrips were nerfed.
Thats just the tip of the ice-berg, elementalists were always lacking survivability by default just from the base low HP and armor.

After those patches we just became more subsceptible to CC, we couldn’t heal in mist form and signet of restoration became useless in PvP.

Sure that hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much, to say that we were from TOP tier, to trash tier.
Elementalist was never that good to begin with in PvP, due to its low innate survivability and mediocre damage.

I started playing around late 2013, which was the Era when elementalist was at its lowest point, on the PvP food chain.
And i’ve browsed countless topics and reasons why elementalist was weak in PvP, and i have never, literally not seen a topic prior to 2014 april, that said “Elementalist is top tier, one of the stronger classes in PvP.”
There was literally only objective explanation on the forum, how the class is lackluster.

Then why are you even arguing with others if you haven’t played back then? It’s a common knowledge (and logic) that you nerf a profession that’s performing too well.

Ele went from the place it’s now (almost always present at least one in a team) to trash tier (not a single ele in any tournament). It was in a worse position than necro and ranger are now. The meta changed from boon stacking to heavy condition and guess what was nerfed. Sustain.

To illustrate:

launch -> late 2012 – meta is still developing and ele is considered trash
late 2012 -> mid 2013 – ele is top tier
mid 2013 -> april 2014 – ele is trash (raise of necros, spirit rangers and hambows)
april -> now – ele is top tier

you guys are really missing the point when ele became trash it was after the first (?) revamp of his traits, because until then he was able to have most important traits by investing mostly only for a first tier… after this revamp, most important traits were moved to higher tiers resulting in a semi-bunker valk meta builds… and then came the mid 2013 change which took away some survivability and made ele trash… also before the first revamp, ele got also a huge nerf of dmg, especially in scepter if I remember right (because scepter + earth signet was too OP for noobs, who cares thief can oneshot glasscannons even now and from stealth, ele had just too OP dmg)

MaXi.3642:

you guys are really missing the point when ele became trash it was after the first (?) revamp of his traits, because until then he was able to have most important traits by investing mostly only for a first tier… after this revamp, most important traits were moved to higher tiers resulting in a semi-bunker valk meta builds… and then came the mid 2013 change which took away some survivability and made ele trash… also before the first revamp, ele got also a huge nerf of dmg, especially in scepter if I remember right (because scepter + earth signet was too OP for noobs, who cares thief can oneshot glasscannons even now and from stealth, ele had just too OP dmg)

The point is that ele was a trash tier, not when exactly. After the dhuumfire patch it just disappeared from pvp except a rare occurance of the fresh air build.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Pretty much all the elementalists I encounter do RtL – Updraft – BS … Whyyyyyyy? It’s the most predictable move ever! It’s super easy to counter or dodge, and in addition wasting updraft for this is terrible. There are so many better ways to land BS, and you should always keep updraft for when it is actually needed.

So I asked my ele master for a duel yesterday when I was on my d/p thief. If I open in stealth, he would open in Air → Shoking Aura → dodge in Air → Lightning Whip. If I ever disengage, Burning Speed+ Lightning Flash → Ring of Fire → Frozen Burst. And with chill, I would get stuck in my short bow forever and it’s the easy win for the ele who keeps on pressuring. 10/10 I lost as a d/p thief when the ele hardly needs any healing outside of regen and signet of restoration. The burning condition from d/d ele is very very strong that most d/d ele I won against don’t even have a good use of it. Instead their moves are very predictable. I could dodge the updraft, earthquake and even evade magnetic grasp with positioning.