Guild Wars 2

I was thinking of running an ele, but based on what some people are saying on here, it sounds like it’s not even worth my time. I’m just not good as a tank, and I already have an engineer, mes and ranger. Looking for something different, that still fits my play style.

Are these the ramblings of a few disgruntled players that don’t want to put in the time to make an ele great, or is it really this bad?

Its good the problem is their used to play pvp with some blinding surge build which defeat all melee players without a condition removal. now that there is no such build they get mad. aswell as having good monks on their team.
In pve its decent but if your unsure if it fit your playstyle i suggest you play around with it in the mists.

The elementalist requires effort to play, like the Mesmer, but grants you lesser results. It’s a bit weak because of that. It also has several other problems, like an almost meaningless downed state, weak traits, poor trait synergy, weak underwater combat, and mediocre elite skills.

Taking all this into account, it seems to be a deal-breaker, but do not get disheartened by that: elementalists are very fun to play, and are strong and “complete” enough for you to go through pve.

You’ll soon realize that the elementalist feels like an “almost-complete” profession that just needs to be tweaked at several points to be fine. It’s not game-breaking to some people, but it might be to others.

No he isn’t that bad. And Elementalist is really fun to play… achieving stuff will probably be easier with other professions, but these aren’t as fun to play

It is a very fun profession to play, but it does get a little frustrating at higher lvls due to poor scaling of our abilities and hp. The Elementalist is a very versatile profession that when played correctly can yield good results, however it also means you have to work twice as hard as others who can just spam one or two abilities for the same affect.

Just remember to experiment with your abilities and you will do fine

tom.7468:

In pve its decent but if your unsure if it fit your playstyle i suggest you play around with it in the mists.

Yes, I would definitely play it PvE. Never been much of a PvPer. Thanks for the feedback!

Takes alot of trial and error to play ele great and its not as facerolly as some unmentioned professions. But honestly, its in my opinion one of the best professions if you have time and willpower to learn to master it. Took me way past 80 to actually fully use all the available resources and im still learning new tricks here and there and fully figuring out other professions as to what to avoid and what not.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The elementalist requires effort to play, like the Mesmer, but grants you lesser results. It’s a bit weak because of that. It also has several other problems, like an almost meaningless downed state, weak traits, poor trait synergy, weak underwater combat, and mediocre elite skills.

Taking all this into account, it seems to be a deal-breaker, but do not get disheartened by that: elementalists are very fun to play, and are strong and “complete” enough for you to go through pve.

You’ll soon realize that the elementalist feels like an “almost-complete” profession that just needs to be tweaked at several points to be fine. It’s not game-breaking to some people, but it might be to others.

I don’t mind putting in the effort so long as I feel like I’m getting some results out of it. haha. Do you have any suggestions for a particular trait to increase to help balance out some of these deficiencies?

Nelona.8745:

Takes alot of trial and error to play ele great and its not as facerolly as some unmentioned professions. But honestly, its in my opinion one of the best professions if you have time and willpower to learn to master it. Took me way past 80 to actually fully use all the available resources and im still learning new tricks here and there and fully figuring out other professions as to what to avoid and what not.

Did you find that it was harder to get to lvl 80 using this profession?

I have no idea since i haven’t had the willpower to get anything else to 80 than my ele. I’m just playing other professions in mists. But i can say that with correct traits and skill slots, i kill stuff faster than any of my friends. Gonna give you a one tip, make good use of arcane blast and arcane wave while leveling and you will kill the monsters before they get to even hit you.

TAllstun.3081:

DiogoSilva.7089:

The elementalist requires effort to play, like the Mesmer, but grants you lesser results. It’s a bit weak because of that. It also has several other problems, like an almost meaningless downed state, weak traits, poor trait synergy, weak underwater combat, and mediocre elite skills.

Taking all this into account, it seems to be a deal-breaker, but do not get disheartened by that: elementalists are very fun to play, and are strong and “complete” enough for you to go through pve.

You’ll soon realize that the elementalist feels like an “almost-complete” profession that just needs to be tweaked at several points to be fine. It’s not game-breaking to some people, but it might be to others.

I don’t mind putting in the effort so long as I feel like I’m getting some results out of it. haha. Do you have any suggestions for a particular trait to increase to help balance out some of these deficiencies?

Earth, water and arcana traitlines are usually the best, as they have several traits that are good for you regardless of your attunement. Earth’s Embrace, Soothing Disruption, Final Shielding, Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement are interesting adept major traits, especially the last one. Earth traitline also increases condition damage, so if you’re with scepter or dagger MH, you’ll still do plenty of damage this way, while still having decent defense. Fire’s and air’s traits are kinda lacking. :/

No the Elementalist is not that bad. I’m having a lot of fun and am not experiencing these troubles that others claim to, like being kicked out of dungeons and etc etc. I do think some people over dramatize things quite a bit! All the dungeon groups I’ve been in they really enjoy me being there as I heal and do damage, so I’m switching back and forth between Fire/Earth/Air/Water etc.

I’m Fire/Earth/Water and use a Staff for solo and group and have no problems. Sure we ALL struggle from time to time in the game. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own take on what is best for Elementalist gameplay, but no one person is right. It just really depends on your play style and for some people they just don’t have the patience for classes like the Elementalist or the Mesmer.

Here’s the deal: elementalist is very fun to play as long as you don’t have a warrior, guardian, thief or ranger alts. Once you play those the elementalist becomes extremely frustrating.

The Elementalist takes a lot more work than other professions for often less return.

In PvE, we are admittedly weak in most situations and have to handle every situation (even the “easy ones”) with care.

In PvP, the correct builds can make your Elementalist a potent team-player and duelist. However, it will require more work than any other class.

Yes and no. The class has rough edges and could do with some serious tuning especially with its Trait lines. But ultimately the core of its issue is with its base stats. Its super squishy, but doesn’t really gain anything as a trade off for its squishiness. If it had higher base HP or higher base DPS it’d probably handle better. But as is, its not really better at any given area than any other class and if you go from Ele to something like a Mesmer, the difference is stark and quite disheartening.

Zetta.5102:

The Elementalist takes a lot more work than other professions for often less return.

In PvE, we are admittedly weak in most situations and have to handle every situation (even the “easy ones”) with care.

That’s a pretty fair assessment IMHO. Ele isn’t a terrible, unplayable class. You can play it, and have fun. But, how shall I put this . . . I go places with my other characters that my Elementalist would fear to tread! Basically, it behooves you to adopt a more cautious play style with an Elementalist, for they are squishy and die very quickly if you aren’t careful.

That said, I still play my Ele. In my “head canon”, she is meant to be weaker and less powerful than her siblings (a Warior and a Ranger), so it works for me. And it is pretty fun to use all the flashy spells, plus in group situations Ele + staff = awesome.

Flennel.9524:

Here’s the deal: elementalist is very fun to play as long as you don’t have a warrior, guardian, thief or ranger alts. Once you play those the elementalist becomes extremely frustrating.

This is true. I became frustrated with my ele early on, asked a few questions and ended up rolling a warrior. My warrior is ezmode in PVE (I don’t pvp) and I take him on journeys where I would never think about taking my ele.

But having said that, it isn’t nearly as fun as my ele. When I am on my warrior and see an ele killing mobs, it is like GW2 ele ballet. It is a beautiful thing to see an ele at work and I usually immediately jump on my ele. I can only hope I look as smooth and graceful when I play mine. Then I get killed 15 times die to a lack of kiting space for veteren mobs and die cause I pulled 2-3 normal mobs while kiting. When I could kill them all on my warrior.

Elementalist has severe problems and needs to be fixed, stay away!

You pretty much need 3 stun breakers, also the elites are worthless.

TAllstun.3081:

I was thinking of running an ele, but based on what some people are saying on here, it sounds like it’s not even worth my time. I’m just not good as a tank, and I already have an engineer, mes and ranger. Looking for something different, that still fits my play style.

Are these the ramblings of a few disgruntled players that don’t want to put in the time to make an ele great, or is it really this bad?

Except the complaint about few bugged skills, the rest can be intended as the rambling of a few disgruntled players that don’t want to put in the time to make an ele great, both in PvP and PvE , if we talk about potential the ele doesn’t lack anything at all, with efforts you simply obtain greater results than on any other profession, being allowed to dance between 4 different stance is amazing.

It’s not a straighforward profession, so people who are used to WoW frost mage or similar can’t grasp yet the potential of the ele, give it some time and the number of complaints will drastically decrease but in the meantime I’d suggest you to go out there and die 1000 times , trying different builds and use all traits,amulet and trinket you can think; this is the best way to master the ele

Seriously, can we stop shoveling that bs already? The Ele needs help and it has nothing to do with people playing WoW before this or not playing the class to its “potential” or any of the other bizarre array of assumptions a select handful of people keep repeating on here. The fact of the matter is you play twice as hard to keep this class at par when you could be playing practically any other class and keeping it at “amazing” with the same skill level. Save maybe Necro. The only class I pity when playing my Ele.

The complaints have increased over time not decreased and Ele’s are slowly vanishing from the realm of spvp/tpvp. Hell, I’m surprised when I run into another one in spvp lately. Aside from liking the look of it, there is pretty much no practical reason to play an Elementalist right now. You can and will do better on any other class with the same level of skill required to keep an Ele just on an even keel.

The “Meta” game has developed and it says “reroll”. -.-

Maybe some players like to play twice as hard as other professions to achieve something? I couldn’t main Warrior, because I would get bored pretty fast. So I play Elementalist.
And I won’t agree, that Elementalist should be better than Warrior, just because he’s harder to play. Some people, like me, like this playstyle. And if you feel like you’ve gotta invest too much efford to achieve stuff… roll an easier class and be happy, that Ele isn’t way stronger than you, just because he’s harder to play.

Gelrod.1295:

Maybe some players like to play twice as hard as other professions to achieve something?

Mesmers. Kit Engineers. They are about as hard to play as the Elementalist, and they’re noticeably stronger. Noticeably stronger.

The argument that we are dumb wow players is weak, has always been weak, and will remain as a weak argument. If you want to work harder because you like the challenge, pick a strong profession that requires effort. Don’t pick a weak profession that requires effort. There’s more to this game than Elementalists and Warriors. Elementalists are not the only profession that are hard to play/ master in Guild Wars 2. There’s alternatives, and there’s dedicated players getting good results with the alternatives.

To point out, before anyone calling me a noob, that I’ve been having midly success with my elementalist for pvp, I have been killing several players on 1vs1, and I sure know how and when to dodge, attunement swap and time my defensive skills. And I can safely say that the effort to play an elementalist is not rewarding enough.

EDIT: The fact that some of you “must master the ele and die 1000 times” before standing a chance against HBers, heartseeker spammers, pistolwhip spammers or even spatial surge spammers, shows that the elementalist is not properly balanced, no matter how much you attempt to twist reality under an elitist point-of-view.

DiogoSilva

Mesmers. Kit Engineers. They are about as hard to play as the Elementalist, and they’re noticeably stronger. Noticeably stronger.

Mesmer? The class thats way easier to play than any heartseeker Thief? Very bad example. On Engineer I agree. Harder to play than Elementalist but also more rewarding… still theres only a small gap between them that won’t be that hard to balance out.

DiogoSilva

And I can safely say that the effort to play an elementalist is not rewarding enough.

For me it is (sometimes more, sometimes less)

No, they aren’t that bad. The problem is that they aren’t good and to become a adept, let alone a master, at elementalist is a difficult and time consuming process. Then even good elementalists will make more general Guild Wars 2 game play mistakes than other classes because of the limitation of our cognitive processing.

They don’t do anything better than any other class. They have no mentionable comparative advantage.

Below I touch on just a few problems they have.

What aren’t they good for?
————————————-

Point Holder
Water builds are really hard to kill. Probably even the hardest thing to kill in the game. However, being hard to kill alone isn’t particularly useful., and they aren’t enough harder to kill that they can on an entire extra opponent and live. They sacrifice so much damage to be hard to kill that they also can’t really kill anything (part of this is due to how attunement swapping works and the Arcane Trait lines effect on that). When compared to Point Hold guardian builds they are probably harder to kill but they lack versatility. They lack some of the ally support that Guardians have, they lack some of the damage output that Guardians have, they require more space to survive than Guardians (often resulting in them having to move off a point for a short time, which good players will take advantage of and start taking/neutralizing the point) and most importantly they lack the pushes that Guardians have. These pushes allow Guardians to not only defend a point well but also take points. The Point Holder Guardian build is also one of the best Point Capture builds in the game as well. This is not true of the Water-Point Holder Elementalist build.

Burst damage
Simply they don’t do the same burst damage as Warriors or Thieves. They also can’t do their bursts as often nor as reliably and it is easier to avoid. All the while they are easier to kill.

Their advantage in this area is that a lot of their damage is AoE. Which sounds goods but due to various game mechanics and decisions isn’t particularly useful.

AoE damage, in other games, can be great as it creates a difficult situation for healers. They have to spread their heals around to try and keep all of their allies alive which puts more pressure on them and makes it more likely for them to make a mistake. Obviously in this game there isn’t a healer role, and everyone has a self heal. So instead of AoE damage putting a lot of pressure on a single enemy it puts a little pressure on lots of enemies.

However, it also doesn’t frequently hit lots of enemies for a significant effect. The dodge mechanic greatly reduces the efficacy of AoE, especially Elementalist AoE which generally has a delay from cast to damage. I could get into this more but it is pretty self explanatory. Dodge avoids damage and moves you out of AoEs.

There is also no reason for enemies to bunch up. The only time enemies should bunch up is if they are both melee and hitting the same target. Capture Points can be held by a single enemy (I’m not saying this is a bad decision, I’m saying it is a decision that is an indirect nerf to AoE damage in general). They only need one player to stand on the point to maintain its capture level. If they the team with more players started changing the capture level players would have a reason to bunch up and AoE would be more effective.

Support
Support is a word I cringe at. It isn’t specific enough in meaning but unless I want to write a few more pages on various ‘support’ mechanics I’m stuck using the word and being a bit vague. Support actions protect allies or enable allies.

Elementalists look like they should be pretty good at protecting allies. Their Water build. has lots of AoE cleanse and condition removal. However, because of the various reasons I mentioned, it is pretty much never ideal nor easy to group up so this gets lost in how the game flows.

As for enabling allies, they have very weak CC. They are probably the weakest class in regards to holding in enemy in place allowing allies to beat them up. While their AoE can be dodged out of it can also be very easily walked out of, so they aren’t particularly great at getting people to spend dodges either. The area in which they are supposed to excel (combo fields), don’t really function as I think they hoped they would. They certainly don’t create the situation like Set and Spike like they stated they would be. While its true they can drop a fire field and get 1, 2, 3 or even more spells off to stack Area Might they are using really big spells to do so. They can drop Dragon’s Tooth (assuming the target is in the field when i cast), Phoenix and Arcane Wave to stack up some good area might. The cost is just all there of those spells probably not hitting or if they hit then you probably had an ally hold the target in place, and now that you have a lot of might stacks some of your biggest damage spells are down and your ally has less ability to hold them in place so the target an run while you have your might up.

Their fields end up being a bit of burning damage and some times a bit of might. Fire is the only field (besides arguably water) they can regularly lay out and none of them have a particularly large effect anyway, just a small bonus on top of what the skill does.

Without going into to much detail as this is getting long they are overshadowed by most classes both in protecting allies (even thieves with shadow refuge is generally far more useful than anything ele’s can do) and enabling them.

Play complexity affects skilled players as well
Their difficulty to play doesn’t just affect new players either. Humans have a limited capacity for attention and memory. Elementalists take more of it than other classes.

For example: A dagger thief (I use thief as they are the other extreme, the class that requires the least cognitive processing – this doesn’t mean they are thoughtless to play) only has to worry about pressing a single button while chasing a fleeing target. During this time the thief’s player has more attention to allocate to other important aspects of the game, such as: the mini map, which capture points are being contested, looking around to see what other threats exist in the immediate area or paying attention to the animations of the threats in the area so they can be ready to avoid certain abilities.

Good players will interiorize much of the elementalist as they play the more requiring less active thought. Our brains will short cut some commands.

For example: I notice that a ally is being stomped and I need to interrupt that. Most players will have to think about how to get to a interrupt before then using the interrupt. This process can cause a delay due to both the thinking aspect and the motor function aspect. Better elementalist players will short cut this and instead of going through a process of “ok switch to earth so I can then earthquake” they will essentially automate the ‘switch to earth’ step requiring less thinking to execute this task.

However, there is a lot to interiorize in this game, and a lot of things that will demand attention despite that interiorization. Because elementalists demand that attention it will, even for master elementalists, be harder to play well than other classes. They will be more prone to error as the number of actions they have to take is greater and their are more process in which they need to allocate their thinking.

Blind Cooldowns
Another aspect of them being difficult to play that doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention is their blind cooldowns. All classes have these due to weapon swap, however elementalists have 4 aspects to swap between and each of those aspects has higher than average cool downs and the class itself is largely dependent upon switching elements.

In the above scenario where I want to swap to Earth to Earthquake and interrupt I also need to consider when I last used Earthquake and estimate what its cooldown is now, as I can’t see it. With a 45s cooldown it is hard to be precise in this estimation. Being off by 1 second can completely negate the entire purpose of switching into Earth and it will lock me out of the element I left for 9-15 seconds.

This isn’t just true of Earth spells, most elements have long cooldown abilities.

It’s not so much that you need 3 stun breakers Mekboss, it’s more so that your stun breakers have the best side effects and usefulness of any other Elementalist utilities. Removes all conditions and AoE burns, 8 seconds of protection and stability that overlaps with a 10 point earth trait, and a 4 second immunity to all damage (sadly conditions applied before still tick you down for whatever unknown reason).

They require a lot more work than every other class to achieve success, and even then that success can range from above average in some areas (only if you’re exceptional at the class, specifically in group healing) to mediocre at best/slightly below par in others (even if you’re exceptional, your damage will never rival a Ranger or Warrior).

The class could use some tuning, I’m already impossible to kill 1v1 in the spec I run, most times I can get away with a 1v2, depends on the classes/specs (good shortbow Ranger or a Mesmer + anything other class usually spells doom if the +1 isn’t totally god awful), but it takes a helluva lot more effort to actually bring someone down (particularly if they’re running away from the fight). I’m not saying I should be able to kill everything in my wake if I can’t be killed myself, but I certainly should be able to punish someone who ignores my AoEs or tries to run away like a sissy. Unfortunately this is not the case; I’m not saying we should get an instant win button like shortbow Rangers do if you try and run from them, but having CC that didn’t last half the duration coupled with twice the cooldown length of other classes would be nice.

Maybe change the “reduces CD of X attunement’s spells by 20%” could be moved to 10% to make sure we can’t permanently kite or lock a fleeing opponent down. Also, it would be nice if Gust and Shockwave followed targets and didn’t just dumb-fire whatever direction you were facing. Would also be nice if the travel time on them was negligible but hey, one step at a time.

@zhi on AoE’S:

AoE’s are pretty good in teamfights or even 1v1’s when it comes to killing Mesmer phantasms, Nekromancer minions, Thiefs Guild, etc without having to focus on killing them.

Arheundel.6451:

Except the complaint about few bugged skills, the rest can be intended as the rambling of a few disgruntled players that don’t want to put in the time to make an ele great, both in PvP and PvE , if we talk about potential the ele doesn’t lack anything at all, with efforts you simply obtain greater results than on any other profession, being allowed to dance between 4 different stance is amazing.

It’s not a straighforward profession, so people who are used to WoW frost mage or similar can’t grasp yet the potential of the ele, give it some time and the number of complaints will drastically decrease but in the meantime I’d suggest you to go out there and die 1000 times , trying different builds and use all traits,amulet and trinket you can think; this is the best way to master the ele

This is just a load of BS. I agree that Ele’s aren’t anywhere near as bad as some people make it sound, but there are some issues. To say that with some effort Ele can obtain greater results than any other profession is a flat out lie. We will never touch the burst dps of some other classes. We will never touch the 1v1 ability of some other classes. Those two are two that come to mind, I’m sure there’s more.

Are ele’s unplayable? Of course not. They just suffer in certain areas. Our traits are mostly bad, focused on a specific element without secondary benefits (which all the weapon specific traits get for other classes), our elites range from mediocre to terrible, our downed state is bar none the worst in the game, and our underwater combat seems to do about 1/10th the damage it should be doing.

Gelrod.1295:

DiogoSilva

Mesmers. Kit Engineers. They are about as hard to play as the Elementalist, and they’re noticeably stronger. Noticeably stronger.

Mesmer? The class thats way easier to play than any heartseeker Thief? Very bad example. On Engineer I agree. Harder to play than Elementalist but also more rewarding… still theres only a small gap between them that won’t be that hard to balance out.

DiogoSilva

And I can safely say that the effort to play an elementalist is not rewarding enough.

For me it is (sometimes more, sometimes less)

Yes, the Mesmer is definitely one of the hardest professions to master in this game, and possibly the hardest to learn too.

The shattering system leads to complex decision-making for several reasons (should I sacrifice all my illusions?, when is the best time to use this effect?), the clone management demands more area awareness than most other professions, and the skills and the traits are less focused on direct effects, and more on anti-play, abstract mechanics, interrupts, etc. They’re also almost as squishy as the elementalists.

In comparison, elementalists utility is straightforward, elementalist’s traits are straightforward, elementalists skills are straightforward and some of the simplest and easiest to use for all the professions, and their complexity comes almost exclusively from attunements which, much like shattering, demands you to sacrifice your defense for damage, or your damage for defense; demands you to time your skills properly, and demands you to chain skills in different combinations for unpredctable effects.

An elementalist is easier to play than a mesmer, and possibly, about as hard to master.

However, Mesmers are currently one of the strongest professions in this game, and Elementalists are one of the weakest. Mesmers are strong enough that you can facestomp newb players by spamming illusions and your damaging skills. Elementalists are weak enough that you must milk the best out of the profession to gelt mild results.

Let’s use our imagination, and think about a future update that would overnerf mesmers and overbuff elementalists. Suddenly, Mesmers forums would be filled with players complaining about how it requires too much effort to even take down your HS spammer, and elementalists would fill out pvp arenas and be regarded as an easy-to-play profession.

This should give you an idea how being too strong/ too weak sometimes gives us the wrong idea that it is directly related to how hard to play a profession is.

The elementalist is harder to play not only because of the attunement swap. It’s harder to play because it’s weak. In comparison, Mesmers have much stronger auto-attacks, much stronger elites, much stronger downed states, much stronger traits, less bugs to deal with, and their damage is simply, plainly, a bit higher than it should, imo.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Yes, the Mesmer is definitely one of the hardest professions to master in this game, and possibly the hardest to learn too.

The shattering system leads to complex decision-making for several reasons (should I sacrifice all my illusions?, when is the best time to use this effect?), the clone management demands more area awareness than most other professions, and the skills and the traits are less focused on direct effects, and more on anti-play, abstract mechanics, interrupts, etc. They’re also almost as squishy as the elementalists.

Usually people are talking about a cookie cutter phantasm build. Summon both your phantasms and watch them kill for you. Throw in moa if you’re losing.

That build really isn’t terribly hard to play, you don’t need to shatter, you just summon phantasms and stay alive, and yet it’s incredibly effective.

Every player can create a new Mesmer, copy&paste a good build and be pretty effective using it. You can’t do that as Elementalist.
And sure, a strong profession is easyer to play, because you can afford more mistakes and still be good. But leaving that aside, I still feel like Mesmer is one of the easy classes in this game. The shatter mechanic really isn’t that complex. Hardest class both to learn and to master would be Engineer.

Shatter is complex, but mostly only against good players, because mesmers are so strong at the moment that they usually don’t need to care about shatter against newbs, other than using Mind Wrack as a simple finisher.

If elementalists were as strong as the mesmers currently are, a newb could kill another by only using, what, two attunements? Likewise, if mesmers were as lacking as the elementalists currently are, then I assure you, hitting that f4 for self-defense or hitting that f3 for a rupt, at the cost of sacrificing all your illusions, in order to survive, is something that casual pvpers can’t do at all, and everyone would be claiming about how mesmers require too much effort for too little reward (using three skills to generate three illusions so I can defend myself by using a 4th skill, and only if the illusions don’t die beforehand? Wow!).

In fact, that’s exactly how it used to be during beta. Thieves and Mesmers required too much effort for lacking results, and elementalists still required you to attunement swap and chain skills, but could get excellent results against newbs when you did that. But since then, Mesmers and Thieves were buffed, Elementalists were nerfed, and the general consensus is that they were overbuffs and overnerfs respectively.

Tone down thief and mesmer a bit, buff a little the elementalist, and things will get more fair.

Morthis.3968:

Arheundel.6451:

Except the complaint about few bugged skills, the rest can be intended as the rambling of a few disgruntled players that don’t want to put in the time to make an ele great, both in PvP and PvE , if we talk about potential the ele doesn’t lack anything at all, with efforts you simply obtain greater results than on any other profession, being allowed to dance between 4 different stance is amazing.

It’s not a straighforward profession, so people who are used to WoW frost mage or similar can’t grasp yet the potential of the ele, give it some time and the number of complaints will drastically decrease but in the meantime I’d suggest you to go out there and die 1000 times , trying different builds and use all traits,amulet and trinket you can think; this is the best way to master the ele

This is just a load of BS. I agree that Ele’s aren’t anywhere near as bad as some people make it sound, but there are some issues. To say that with some effort Ele can obtain greater results than any other profession is a flat out lie. We will never touch the burst dps of some other classes. We will never touch the 1v1 ability of some other classes. Those two are two that come to mind, I’m sure there’s more.

Are ele’s unplayable? Of course not. They just suffer in certain areas. Our traits are mostly bad, focused on a specific element without secondary benefits (which all the weapon specific traits get for other classes), our elites range from mediocre to terrible, our downed state is bar none the worst in the game, and our underwater combat seems to do about 1/10th the damage it should be doing.

To the OP. This^

Unfortunately, most of the people posting on this forum are:

1) Supposedly E-leet players who are saying it’s perfect and that you’re just a scrub.
2) Supposedly bad players who are just scrubs and need to L2P.

Serious constructive feedback is going to be lost in threads because of all the crap that comes from certain players.

Gelrod.1295:

Maybe some players like to play twice as hard as other professions to achieve something? I couldn’t main Warrior, because I would get bored pretty fast. So I play Elementalist.
And I won’t agree, that Elementalist should be better than Warrior, just because he’s harder to play. Some people, like me, like this playstyle. And if you feel like you’ve gotta invest too much efford to achieve stuff… roll an easier class and be happy, that Ele isn’t way stronger than you, just because he’s harder to play.

Exactly. Every MMO has classes that require more buttons to press to do the same job as the EZ mode classes in the game can do with one button. That’s WAI.

Sometimes you just want to relax and /faceroll. Sometimes you want to do something that requires more thought and more situational awareness, or that’s a bit more complicated and risky to pull off.

So at one end of the spectum you have Warriors and Rangers, at the other end Mesmers, Elementalists and some Engineer types.

(But even having said that, there’s quite a bit of depth in GW2 even in the faceroll Professions, if you want it. It’s just that some classes are more noob-friendly than others.)

Different strokes for different folks – and different strokes for the same folks at different times (hey, I have a Warrior too, for when I just like to kick back and mash! ).

@Razareii, im waiting for your ‘feedback’. You seem more keen on giving feedback about other people than the class itself

Elementalists are good in the hands of a good or great player. However, that same player would be more effective choosing almost any other class.

The major exception is WvW sieges, where staff eles are fairly powerful.

yes.. they are bad.. very bad compared to other classes…

yes.. they are bad.. very bad compared to other classes…the skill lvl compared to what you get is way out of wack.. you need to be MUCH more skilled rl to acquire same results you could do with alot less skills on any other class.

yes.. they are bad.. very bad compared to other classes…the skill lvl compared to what you get is way out of wack.. you need to be MUCH more skilled rl to acquire same results you could do with alot less skills on any other class.when that is said if you say you could hit everything perfect aka we let a bot/ai controll both classes and they controll 100% perfectly then the ele can do some cool stuff but even with the numbers his gonna end up losing big time…

yes.. they are bad.. very bad compared to other classes…the skill lvl compared to what you get is way out of wack.. you need to be MUCH more skilled rl to acquire same results you could do with alot less skills on any other class.when that is said if you say you could hit everything perfect aka we let a bot/ai controll both classes and they controll 100% perfectly then the ele can do some cool stuff but even with the numbers his gonna end up losing big time…i love my ele, but i do hate anet for making it so nerfed compared to others, i have to constantly use perfect dodging skill combo’s attunement switching etc. do perform my role while it seems other classes can use halfkitten skill and mindless zombie mode and still perform their role quite effectively.

yes.. they are bad.. very bad compared to other classes…the skill lvl compared to what you get is way out of wack.. you need to be MUCH more skilled rl to acquire same results you could do with alot less skills on any other class.when that is said if you say you could hit everything perfect aka we let a bot/ai controll both classes and they controll 100% perfectly then the ele can do some cool stuff but even with the numbers his gonna end up losing big time…i love my ele, but i do hate anet for making it so nerfed compared to others, i have to constantly use perfect dodging skill combo’s attunement switching etc. do perform my role while it seems other classes can use halfkitten skill and mindless zombie mode and still perform their role quite effectively.

Erebus, why are you still posting crap?

Except the complaint about few bugged skills, the rest can be intended as the rambling of a few disgruntled players that don’t want to put in the time to make an ele great, both in PvP and PvE , if we talk about potential the ele doesn’t lack anything at all, with efforts you simply obtain greater results than on any other profession, being allowed to dance between 4 different stance is amazing.

It’s not a straighforward profession, so people who are used to WoW frost mage or similar can’t grasp yet the potential of the ele

lol lol lol

You are really full of yourself. And may i say, judging by your grammar, unfairly so.

‘Being allowed to dance through 4 different stances is amazing’ .. discussion that you’d hear in kindergarten. Dont you see that your argument is… its AMAZING. AWESOME. ITS COOL YO.

Christ, dude.