Guild Wars 2

I’m having the hardest time deciding between an elementalist and an engineer….and please dont tell me to level both like with are all unemployed and living with our parents.

A few things about me….I love 1v1 pvp and could really care less about the group.

Ive heard elementalist have to stance dance. Is that annoying? I guess its better than useless level 80 turrets.

It’s not better than useless level 80 turrets. Attunement swapping should be compared with the engineer’s tool belt.

Honestly, at times I look at the engineer as a “better” version of the elementalist. They are very versatile but can also focus on one area and really shine. Unlike the elementalist, which is locked into their attunements, the engineer can pick and choose what ‘extra’ skills they want through their kits.

You don’t have to level up anything to experience it at 80 in pvp. Just play for a few hours on each in the mists before you even get to level 3. I wish I had.

thanks for the feedback…at least someone gave some feedback

Maybe with a more friendly post more people would provide feedback.

How is the post not friendly…please tell me how I can appeal more to the masses.

Kaine

and please dont tell me to level both like with are all unemployed and living with our parents.

Didn’t like that part for example.

If you don’t want to support at all then don’t. Pick the engineer because they are not a broken class.
/solved

First off, the Elementalist is not a class that I would call “broken”. Broken means not working at all, which is not true here. Some aspects of the class are not up to par with other classes, but that does not meet the definition of “broken”. What the Elementalist needs is some dps boosts in some area’s that are weak, some traits need to be fixed, and the downed state is horrendous. Worst in the game.

There are some area’s where an Ele seriously shines however, and any team would be ignorant not to take one especially for Wv3 and for Dungeon crawling, they are absolutely essential IMO. I also think that certain builds are nigh unbeatable in sPvP 1v1. There are alot of whiners and cry babies on these forums who will tell you otherwise, but there are also alot of people who play this class who are absolute GODS in sPvP.

Never the twain shall meet. Either the class is “broken” as the whiners and cry babies claim, which means that the class should never be able to win under any circumstances in any arena – sPvP, Wv3, and PvE, or the class is not “broken”, and can do well in some area’s. You can not logically have both situations existing at the same time. My experience with this class is that it is definitely and absolutely NOT broken. This can be quite easily proven by simply rolling a new Ele, going to the Mists, gearing yourself out, and then go into a few matches and giving it a go. If you can win even one single fight 1v1, then the class is not broken. Simple test. I strongly encourage you to do exactly that before rolling one and levelling it up to 80.

Engineer is better. I have both (and working and have a family etc.) and right now engineers can do everything ele’s can, but better with more tricks, more survivability and more damage.

When I think of broken I think of all of the bugged skills that are unusable, all of the traits that have no synergy and just plain suck, and all of our weapon skills that are both weak and, sometimes, on the wrong weapon. I realize that they are good at some things but that doesn’t outweigh the state of everything else. Just my opinion. I still say go with the engineer because, as of this post, they are much more playable.

Ok so your saying that some things about the Ele do not work as you would expect them to, and I would agree with that. Do not agree that all of our weapon skills are weak and on the wrong weapon. Staff = range but less single target damage, WAY better AoE and combo fields that are the most OP in the game without question. S/D = shorter range, awesome burst dps in Fire and Earth. Supposedly better ST burst with Air but I dont see it (Air needs fixing TBH). D/D = very short range, highest burst potential (not seeing it, needs fixing). Then there is the Focus = utility, CC, and defence. So you see there I outlined some of our shortcomings with the game design in mind. But, you first have to understand the intent and design of the Ele to know what it needs, and I am not sure you do based on your posts.

If you play a Staff Ele and think that your going to burst people down 1v1, then you are clueless about this class and it is not a good fit for you.

If you play a S/D or D/D Ele and think that you are going to faceroll the keyboard on people, then this class is definitely never ever going to be a good fit for you. Delete now and save yourself and the community some pain.

If you play S/F or D/F and think that your going to faceroll the keyboard and unkillable, then probably this game is not for you. Forget about the class, the game itself is beyond your understanding.

So yea, there is a large grain of truth behind what alot of people are saying about the whiners. They do need to L2P. But it goes beyond that. Way beyond that. The problem is that the Ele is an incredibly complex class that is way out of their league. How can you hope to do well on a class that you will never understand? This is the real problem here because to do well on this class you have to spend an awful lot of time testing, studying, and learning just to become mediocre at it. And then countless hours more to become good. Just look at Kyros’s thread and you will see after 4 pages now that he has just got started on the learning curve and has a long ways to go yet (kudo’s to him for sharing his experiences with us, it has helped me).

So, should Anet “dumb down” this class so the WoW kiddies can faceroll on it? That is the real question here before us all.

If you’re talking about 1v1 in WvW than neither, I would recommend warrior, ranger, or thief.

If you’re talking about 1v1 in sPvP than I’m not very helpful since I spend most of my time in WvW.

Ele’s advantage in WvW comes from our AoE damage, we are inferior to other classes in all other aspects of the game.

Please, for the love of the omnipotent being that you believe in, tell me that you aren’t generalizing me with the “wow kiddies”. I had a lot of respect for your post and was about to rebuttal with logical reasoning and a respectful tone, as I always like to do, when I saw those comments about L2P and “WoW kiddies”. Even if those comments weren’t made towards me, they are still negative and don’t add constructively. Just because someone doesn’t like something or isn’t good at something (there are people who just aren’t good at something, it doesn’t mean it needs to be changed, but it also doesn’t mean that they deserve some rant against them) doesn’t mean that their opinions aren’t any more valid than the previous person’s.

That being said, I will actually rebuttal because for the most part your post was well thought out and I respect that.

I know that each weapon has it’s own niche objectives and that would work well if only we could change weapons mid-combat like every other class. Now, I don’t want to debate whether we should be able to change weapons as that is another story altogether and I’m still up in the air about it, but without weapon swapping we are stuck at one range per weapon and one play style per weapon. This hurts us a lot as to play a lot of pve you need burst, which in turn requires us to be within, at least, 600 (units…) of the enemy. This puts us, the class with the lowest armor and health in the game, in a bad spot. That spot though isn’t the worst part. At the moment we can’t even utilize the burst damage well (if you notice, the S/D build (to get a proper ST burst) requires a LONG rotation and also requires your enemy to stay in one spot AND THEN requires you to get in punching range to use Fire Grab… and honestly, after all that work we are lucky to do half of the damage that any other bursting dps class can do with much less effort). I love the challenge of the elementalist, but with so much risk involved and so much effort that I have to put forth, I expect to do good damage and not this pitiful damage. I’m very confused when you say that the ele has “awesome bursts dps in fire and earth” as that is most certainly not true. Fire is ok (as I noted above with S/D) but earth has next to no burst dps. Earth is a condition build and it is in fact a half decent one. One last note, I really dislike it when anybody says that the elementalist has 20 skills and so they are much more versatile (not saying that you did this or anything). It just isn’t true. We have twice the skills to use but we make up for it in our crappy utility skills, our LONG LONG LONG cooldowns, our traits that are designed for staying in a single attunement, and of course, the LONG LONG LONG attunement cooldowns that also seems designed for staying in one attunement.

I’m not a great player and I’m most certainly not some masterful elementalist, but why in the hell should I master my class just to perform on par with half-as-skilled players in other classes?

Simple answer to ask yourself :
1) Do i want to use various F1 through F4 to switch between skills to attack
or
2) Do i want carpal tunnel syndrome from the Engineers best DPS skill combo which would be : 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 <- you get the picture, namely using Grenades or bombs.

I have both, and while the engineer puts out more DPS and has more survivability, to get most out of the class you need to use either ’nades or the bombs, both are clunky and you will use 1 button 95% of the time.

With the elementalist you will press 24 buttons for every fight.

Engineers are better at turtling cap points in sPvP.

That’s about it though.

The Elementalist is not a broken class, though it feels kind of schizophrenic. As if a dozen developers all tried to create the profession and they all had a different vision of how the profession should work.

I think the skills can be dealt with. They’re mostly okay if you don’t count bugs and the sort.

The real problem I feel are the traitlines. We have so few good builds. Nothing really synergizes well. The minor traits are particularly terrible as they’re generally only effective about 25% of the time (considering you spend equal amounts of time in each attunement).

Most classes have recieved a traitline pass during the BWE events that streamlined their traits. Cut out or improved the bad ones, merged together a couple of meh ones to increase their appeal, etc etc. AFAIK this didn’t happen to the Elementalist. So we’re kinda due a traitline pass.

and those 24 buttons will be equal to 2 on another class. >.>

Ele vs Engineer is a curious combination. Engineer is much easier to tank it up with and has more ready access to some exotic conditions than Ele. But kits are prettykittenat the moment with the autoattack bug and not gaining any stats from your equipped weapons. That aside, Engineer is very much a jack of all trades sort of class whereas Ele is always going to be an angry dude in a dress.

In a nutshell, Engineer can do anything any other class can do but it will take 2 more button presses to do it. Engineer has some more breathing room and a bigger margin for error than Ele as well. With Ele you’re going to be basically balls to the wall at all times in PvP. If you stop pressing buttons on Ele, you’re going to die shrieking.

Both classes are quite adaptable to any given situation, though I would say Ele is ultimately the more adaptable class on the fly. Engineer has an easier time with survival however. Both classes require you to REALLY learn your kitten in this game. Engineer because its best bits are often buried beneath several layers of abilities and kits and Ele because you have to really learn your attunements. Ele I would say requires you to pay more attention to other classes as well as its pretty easy to burst down an inattentive Ele.

If you want to learn and make calculated decisions in pvp, go Engineer. If you want to learn and rely on intuition, snap judgments and muscle memory in pvp, go Ele. Engineer can stop and smell the roses a bit and has more readily available hard counters. Ele you have to remember where your counters are and you sort of have to get into a button rhythm and keep it up the entire time you’re in combat. If that makes any sense.

I’ll make this simple for you.

Engineer > Elementalist.

It is literally a direct upgrade in all aspects. Anyone telling you otherwise is just arguing for the sake of arguing.

Razarei.2809:

I’ll make this simple for you.

Engineer > Elementalist.

It is literally a direct upgrade in all aspects. Anyone telling you otherwise is just arguing for the sake of arguing.

Plenty of Engineers would say it’s the other way around, grass is always greener on the other side.
To me both professions are equal to be honest, only when you start pidgeon holing the engineer to ‘Nades only he pulls ahead.
Personally i’d rather play a Elementalist due to the carpal tunnel syndrome of the exciting Grenade combo of 111111111111 deadmob, 1111111111111111 deadmob 1111111111111 deadmob.

But that’s me
If that’s what your looking for you might aswell make a D/D thief and spam number 2, which is by far more effective then any ’Nade spam.

Having played both extensively in sPVP, I’d say Engineer > Elementalist. No grass is greener there, as I’ve played both. Alot. Ele seriously needs fixed.

Having played both extensively in sPVP
Lol, stopped reading there, no use comparing sPvP against PvE/WvWvW, which is what i use as my standard

Dunno about PvE, but in sPvP Engineer is stronger and one of the main reasons is: He has got the way better ult (and the better downed state).

Engineer will be more enjoyable and better in competitive play.

Just make a character of both professions, take them to the mists and try a couple of builds against the stationary golems and the profession NPC’s. Then play whatever profession you enjoy most.