Guild Wars 2

First of all, I love the elementalist. I love the play style, love the attunment switching, love having double the amount of abilities to work with than the other classes. I love them.

I’ve been on and off trying to level my Elementalist but I’m honestly not to interested in PvE. I’m a BIG BIG pvp’r so I spend most of my time in the mists doing sPvP. I’m usually running a semi tanky D/D build because going glass cannon pretty much means instant death. I love how D/D plays. The knock downs, switching attuments to get your combos to proc. But it pains me to see the damage numbers I’m putting out. The highest I ever hit is like a 3k-4k with my Churning Earth (thats it right?) which has an enormous cast time. It wouldn’t bother me as much however I also have a Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, and a Guardian whom I’ve toyed around in PvP with who put up much higher numbers with much less effort. Which is a common complaint amongst sPvP eles.

Even through all of this I always just tell myself, “Don’t worry you’ll get a buff soon then maybe you’ll be the next OP class and then it’ll all be worth it.” But I haven’t seen Anet address any of these issues. I don’t know why I didn’t see this from BWEs. I read that the Ele’s got nerfed before the game went live? Maybe thats why I had such a blast pvping then. Now I just cringe whenever I play sPvP. When I’m leveling I’m having such a fun time and enjoy Ele, but when I start sPvP I’m just like, “kitten this I’m rerolling.” But then that little voice in the back of my head starts up again, “Hey man just man up and stick it out till those buffs arrive man you can do it, besides don’t you want that kick kitten armor Zojja is waring? Plus you don’t wanna have to level up and build your dye library thing again right?”

FML.

While we wont top the dps charts I think we more than make up for it in survivability. It is sooo difficult to down my elementalist in spvp. The enemy really has to work for it and I put out just enough damage where if they don’t try to take me down then they will pay. I run Dolyaks and 0/10/10/30/20. The amount of healing and condition removal I have is ridiculous. I use Armor of Earth, Lightning Flash and Mist form. I use the traits that give me armor of earth at 50% and arcane shield at 25%. If they somehow manage to get me low and all my heals and elemental is on cooldown I can easily switch to lightning attunment 5, and 4 away or even switch to fire and 3 away until my cooldowns refresh. I almost feel overpowered as it is in pvp. Maybe I just vs really poor players.

Maybe we don’t want to play bunkers? Has anyone thought of that? =\

Instead you want to play a glass cannon that never dies?
I don’t understand your reasoning. People want to play a caster but complain they die when things get within melee range. People want to play a glass cannon but complain they die a lot. Maybe elementalist isn’t a caster. Maybe elementalist isn’t a glass cannon. Have you ever thought of that? You may want to play a glass cannon guardian, but I’m sorry the guardian is just not a glass cannon class. You may want to play a ranged damage thief, but I’m sorry the thief is just not a ranged damage class. Maybe they never designed the elementalist to be a glass cannon caster but instead a hybrid class that requires hybrid stats. Thats exactly how I play it and it works fantastic, both S/D and D/D. I don’t like Staff or Focus so I can’t comment on those. Just because the class doesn’t work the way YOU envisioned it doesn’t mean its broken.

@Wulfrim

Yes we do have a very high survivability when you spec into that however that doesn’t help any if you can’t do the damage. All you are then is just an annoying Ele that just doesn’t die right away.

Sushi.1406:

@Wulfrim

Yes we do have a very high survivability when you spec into that however that doesn’t help any if you can’t do the damage. All you are then is just an annoying Ele that just doesn’t die right away.

Are you honestly saying you just cant kill people in sPvp? How do you think a guardian does it? Their dps is lower than ours even if we go tanky but they are persistant. Other classes can’t heal as effectively as a elementalist can so we outlast them. Apply your burns, your bleeds, your constant poking and he will fall before you. Not every fight is three seconds long nor should any fight ever be three seconds long but there isn’t anyone I can’t kill. Especially with burning. Burning reduces their healing by 50%. All those classes that only have one skill that heals them get destroyed. Especially thief. Fire 5 spikes for a lot of damage if it crits. I assure you I’ve never ran into someone I couldn’t kill because my damage wasn’t enough to beat their healing cooldowns. Not to mention the fact that they CANT run away from a D/D Ele. We have three charges, a root, two slows, two breath attacks, two knockdowns and other things that make escaping impossible.

Wulfrim.4793:

Sushi.1406:

@Wulfrim

Yes we do have a very high survivability when you spec into that however that doesn’t help any if you can’t do the damage. All you are then is just an annoying Ele that just doesn’t die right away.

Are you honestly saying you just cant kill people in sPvp? How do you think a guardian does it? Their dps is lower than ours even if we go tanky but they are persistant. Other classes can’t heal as effectively as a elementalist can so we outlast them. Apply your burns, your bleeds, your constant poking and he will fall before you. Not every fight is three seconds long nor should any fight ever be three seconds long but there isn’t anyone I can’t kill. Especially with burning. Burning reduces their healing by 50%. All those classes that only have one skill that heals them get destroyed. Especially thief. Fire 5 spikes for a lot of damage if it crits. I assure you I’ve never ran into someone I couldn’t kill because my damage wasn’t enough to beat their healing cooldowns. Not to mention the fact that they CANT run away from a D/D Ele. We have three charges, a root, two slows, two breath attacks, two knockdowns and other things that make escaping impossible.

I’m not saying I can’t kill people 1v1. Normally I can, however I can do it faster and easier with other classes. I really don’t think Guardians have a lower damage output especially when you go Greatsword. I think the only class that MIGHT have a lower damage output would be Necro but thats because they are condition damage.

The only classes that actually give me trouble are Engineers (highly underrated if you ask me), Mesmers (who doesnt?), and Ranger that knows where there doing.

We have some of the best o snap buttons in the game, and we do have the potential to be good once we get somekind of rework because quite frankly I agree with the people who say this class in sPvP is too high of a skill cap for the little reward we get.

Burning reduces their healing by 50%.

no it doesn’t oO

@topic:

If you like playing Ele continue… but if you don’t like him reroll. That simple^^ I don’t think Elementalist will get any huge buffs, maybe some minors but not much more. So if you you’ve got to force yourself to play Ele… go reroll.

Just play an engi. Do everything a ele can do (point defense/roaming with permanent swiftness) and has a crapload more utility, auto attack, damage and choices.

Or you can keep playing an inferior class, confusing it with ‘requiring most skill’ and just chalk it up to ‘i didnt have all my cantrips’ when you die a horrible, zerged death. At least you can feel amazing sometimes when you beat a bad player in a duel after popping all your cooldowns.

We have some of the best o snap buttons in the game

I seriously disagree. Only RTL used for escaping is better and has lower cooldown than what other classes get.

Our o snap buttons are mediocre really. RTL in a random direction is prolly the best… Mist form doesn’t last long enough and too many classes have closers that will kill you when u reappear. You won’t get out of range in mist form. All a thief has to do is invis to go full speed and they’ve got you.

Teleport (blink, whatever) is very limited range. And I’m not sure if the people attacking you loses their target. It would be useful if they did but I doubt it.

All other abilities are short ranged and you are STILL in combat moving slow as slug snot.

Hope it helps:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/elementalist-1v1-and-1v2

Wulfrim.4793:

While we wont top the dps charts I think we more than make up for it in survivability. It is sooo difficult to down my elementalist in spvp.

Uhm lemme guess..

I use Armor of Earth, Lightning Flash and Mist form.

Yep i was right. I love fighting those elems that think they can survive really well, while in reality they are simply chaining every cantrip and utility slot they have in a single fight, and are then free food for my dumb kitten auto attack rigle engi for 90 seconds after.

Ele isn’t nearly as bad as people are making them out to be.

One common mistake I see is building compeltely glass cannon. You have some of the best healing in the game, but it’s completely wasted if you get instagibbed By everything.

I can’t speak for D/D, but support/bunker Staff is very good, and S/D works really well for me. Elementalists need to be very picky with builds though, since a lot of out traits are weak.

What I’m currently running is 0/20/0/20/30, Valkyrie’s Amulet with Berserker’s Jewel. Runes of Divinity/Ogre… not decided on sigils though – I like crit + fire, but %dmg and might when I switch attunements is really strong as well.

You really don’t need to run glass cannon in order to do good dmg, people will stop laughing at you when they realized you just built 15 might stacks yourself.

Not saying Ele is in a perfect spot though, but fix some traits, improve some skills (main hand dagger, fix some buggs) and buff our downed mode, and we’re pretty much fine.

I know this is primarily aimed at sPvP, but I just want to add regarding Guardians that their downed state attack was hitting me for 1300 and critting around 2400in WvW (I had to check my combat log to understand why a Guardian I had downed was able to kill me from 3/4 health then come back up and wtfpwn me so easily).

I’m in the same boat that I keep trying to love my Ele but every time I play another alt I just shake my head in exasperation. PvP of any kind is almost always about burst, and the only way to really get that is d/d while being a master with attunement switching (that means hotkeys and a gaming mouse of gtfo). If you go s/d you need to take the necessary signets to keep them relatively in place. I’ve tried the heavy defense bunker build and all it does is delay the inevitable. So I’m great at running away, yay?

I’m trying not to be bitter but finding it nearly impossible. I don’t want to reroll; I didn’t spend all that time leveling just so I could tell myself I chose incorrectly. I keep reading the forums hoping to find that one build that will finally give me a comfortable playstyle where I can do decent damage and have decent survivability and utility. So far it doesn’t exist. WvW is glass canon siege build and sPvP is heavy defense bunker-hope-for-a-good-team-to-assist build. PvE is just sort of “meh”.

The more you play other classes, the more you’ll see they all have to make the same sacrifices — but keep in mind that melee will generally hit harder per hit than ranged, since they have to, you know, melee in melee range.

To have high dps, you can’t take a hit. If you shrug off hits, you don’t have higher dps. Now there are caveats to this, and little subtle differences, but the general rule stands.

In theory Kellhus you are correct. In practice (regarding the Ele), not even close.

A glass canon Warrior still has higher survivability (and damage if talking Staff) than my Ele, and a defensive Warrior still has higher survivability than my Ele (and does more damage). The balance with the profession is simply not there. It is also far easier to pull off the damage and use the tools to survive the encounter with most other professions.

If there was a middle-ground build that allowed good, sustainable DPS with a decent level of survivability, I would be all over it. As it turns out I have to (again in regards to Staff, the playstyle I prefer) either build glass canon to do respectable damage, or build full defense just to be able to run away successfully from a Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, etc.

The reason we probably haven’t seen a buff yet is because the game has only been out for little over a month now. You can’t expect all the problems of a large scale MMO to be fixed that fast. The devs might be giving it time to see how all of the classes fail over the long run once more people have level 80s, have done more dungeon runs, etc. We might not even get a buff if the other classes get a nerf or other aspects of the game change.

I’ve been tryin’ the ele since the BWE. I’ve tried all the specs I can get my hands on, I’ve tried pve just leveling, grouping, sPvP, WvW, everything. I enjoy this class, and it’s attunements, but I get -so- frustrated with how easy other classes can do my job, that it just ends up making me want to smash my keyboard.

I don’t think that the ele needs sweeping changes, but they need bug fixes, and tweaking. Bad. Until they get it, they’re always going to underperform. And I don’t want to be playing a kitten bunker spec if I want to do anything, or be forced into using a weapon I don’t want, cause the one I -do- want is completely worthless in one aspect.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.11.0.32.0.3.15.12.14.25.6.6.29.0.0.0.0.0.0.35.34.42.50.55.56.65.0.0.0.0.30.30.10

Easy to play build and the D/D can be replaced with S/D easily if you so wish. Much prefer D/D though.

Plenty of heals through signet passive (which is up 100% through traits) many condition removers buy swapping water, water 5 and water signet. High healing with shaman gear.

Little burst but plenty of condition damage so earth and fire are for offense. Burn bleed and kite. Weakness and stuns CC in lightning.

I swap out water signet for cantrips occasionally but they rarely save me as much as the signets do. Plus the earth signet and water signet are great kiting / anti kiting tools, supplement D/D very well.

Have had quite a few whispers of people coming up to try and kill me because thinking ele is easy kill and are like ‘wtf why dont you die’

Great solo, support and WvWvW. People are too obsessed with Power / pre / crit, and hey, you are all adding to my kill count so I cant complain

Edit: this is aimed at the person who said they could not find a build they were comfortable with.
If you go glass cannon and expect to be able to hide in the background and blow people up left and right its time for a reality check. Go Pow/pre/crit and you will die alot unless supported so deal with it, or change your playstyle.
Those easymode thieves I hear mentioned oh so much get eaten alive by this build, or at worst, they disappear and run off, im satisfied either way.

The greatest build wont make a bad player good though, so dont be so quick to blame the profession when plenty are getting great use out of it, and excelling at it

If you don’t like playing the profession, then don’t play the profession.
It’s not UP. There are plenty of people who do fine with it.
And being an OP class is bad because it means that you’ll be nerfed into oblivion.

I’m not a bunker build and I am surprisingly hard to kill in PvP. (unless I get swarmed…but 3 or 4 people on anyone is going to win). On top of that, I do TONS of damage. Not as much as a glass canon, probably, but my build isn’t a glass canon build, so that’s not to be expected.
No matter what you do, though, Anet will not buff the Ele in any significant way. They might fix glitchy issues with RTL or Lightning Whip, but other than that, they’re not going to do much because the game is already balanced fine.
Honestly, that’s what I love about Anet. They know what parts of their game are working and what parts aren’t better than you do. Blizzard or Bioware (Bioware especially) might look at these posts and say “oh no! People are mad! Buff it!!!” Not Anet. Just like with the explorable dungeons, they’re gonna just say “Shut up and play the game! It’s fine! You just don’t know it yet.”

If sPvP is your main thing, I’m not really seeing the issue. Go ahead and level your ele in PvE, and play whatever other class is doing it for you in the meantime in sPvP when you get frustrated with ele there.

Wulfrim.4793:

How do you think a guardian does it? Their dps is lower than ours even if we go tanky but they are persistant.

You must know some very poor guardians, then.

So what you’re saying then is that a class that includes in its class description , and I quote: “What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack” cannot be a glass cannon? Sounds fairly contradictory to me. Just my opinion, of course, but it seems to be shared quite a bit…

I kinda cringe when I see people going “You’re going to get owned as a glass cannon.” Yeah, that’s the friggin’ point. Squishy, but they hurt.

The ele doesn’t hurt COMPARED to other classes, then they’re even squishier than their other ranged counter parts. Not everyone wants to play a d/d bunker character. Some of us want to blow kitten up, but because of buggy traits -and- abilities, it becomes incredibly infuriating to do in nearly any circumstance.

elementalist in GW2 = no power
full power precision crit build /-2300 power 3300 attack +-50% crit chance, +- 80 % crit dmg scepter +dagger or staff my hit Hmmm 800. im paper mage , all class hit me 2, 4, 6, 7k (+- 13k HP) . Why i dont have dmg ? Why elementalist class is that weak ?(((

I switched to guardian and the difference is unreal.

I loved the idea of my elementalist and I still play him once in awhile. As far as “sticking” it out. I shouldnt have to stick it out I should have fun.

I was getting really frustrated. Switched, having a blast, still wish I had a caster player though. Thinking of rocking a mesmer.

it’s simple: don’t play another class and you never know what you’re missing out.

ELEMENTALISTS 4 LIFE, and even if all the other classes deal much more damage with much less effort… let them. i’m still steamrolling HS spamming noobs in SPvP anyway.

I already left once after BWE 2. Not leaving again. There simply isn’t another class that can provide the same sort of entertainment an ele does. Just gotta stick by my new (old) favourite profession.