Guild Wars 2

I wish i knew before i made my character that i cant be that if i choose elementalist :/

Get
a
staff.

Problem solved.

Yeah I was about to say, I thought Elementalists get 1200 range on staves. And probably 900 on scepters, right?

Selo.1250:

I wish i knew before i made my character that i cant be that if i choose elementalist :/

Yeah, a lot of the complains about the Ele come from the misleading profession description.

Staff is not a dps weapon. You get 1 situational AoE (Meteor shower) that arent good for anything else then keep attack/defence and clustered enemies in dungeons.

The rest of the AoEs are condition damage based (earth) or crit based (water)
both with long activation hanging in air or building on ground for hours before it does its damage.

The rest is CC, healing, or extremly crappy ST skills that takes ages to reach it targets, and they never hit becouse if the enemy moves, it will miss the target.

Elementalist is a melee char in cloth using elemental attacks, not a “wizard/sorcerer/mage”

You can go 30/30/0/10/0 plus full berserker set with berserker staff.
It is possible to do decent dps just with fire.
For PvE and Dungeons it works pretty well. But only if you got a good positioning.

Selo.1250:

Staff is not a dps weapon. You get 1 situational AoE (Meteor shower) that arent good for anything else then keep attack/defence and clustered enemies in dungeons.

Staff is DPS weapon, but mainly in fire attunement and for standing targets (yes, to many “but”) if you are in power spec. End earth for condition spec.
@Selo
Staff is only good for dungeons and WvW. S/D or D/D is more universal set.

Problem in WvW is that enemies never stand still, so staff isnt to good there either

@Selo
Staff is great for siege, defense or attack. And very good in zerg for AoE damage and CC, plus combo fields for group and ~40 second mass swiftness. For small fights and 1v1 it’s bad.

Only skill good in siege is meteor shower, a couple more skills in defence

In zerg you hold enemies back more then you damage them

@Selo
You know… I have 80 level elementalist and know, what I’m talking about, because I spent much time in WvW. Meteor shower + lava font = few downed enemies with high chance. Of course if you have berserker/valkyrie exotic gear.
Why do you argue, if you don’t even have elementalist? :/

@Selo(because the forum disagrees with quoting): I’ll have to assume that what kreit said is true. Because I refuse to believe smb who plays ele wouldn’t know what skills do…or at least bother checking before posting on a forum. All fire staff skills are aoes. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

And I see nothing wrong with being able to hold a bunch of people back by yourself. Actually, that sounds quite OP to me.

The term Damage Per Second means exactly that and trust me it does not have great DPS however it does have a lot of AoE which is great for zerg situations ect but DPS usually is considered one target based and thats where D/D is far superior.

Staff is as close as you’ll get to DPS. If you focus heavily in Fire (10% more, quicker recharges, Might on Fire cast) and combo (Blast Finisher on Fire Field for Might) you can get the damage up. I just don’t compare the numbers to other professions and enjoy my damage =P

Although, I will say that Ele can be a bit misleading since a lot of players expected higher damage from it. While I don’t know much about DPS for each class, I’d say make a ranger and use shortbow and just dress it like a mage XD

Staff is awesome.
It might be worse for 1v1 than Scepter/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger, but is sure is doable. You only have less skills that do targeted damage.

For WvW, Staff shines. I’ve been playing for some hours now and I’m still having a blast. Attacking, defending, zerg x zerg, or even small skirmishes in sentries… it’s all a matter of how you wield it =p

Got someone down? See the huge pack of enemies rushing for a ress? Try a Lava Font + Burst and Auto Attack… chances are you’ll get a few more down!

A bunch of enemies meleeing your gate? Nothing a Meteor Shower + Eruption and Glyph of Storms can’t do for massive area clearance.

Sure, staff skills are ground targeted, but there’s not only you playing WvW. They can’t avoid everything, and a couple 4k~ hits from a Meteor Shower is enough to make some people back off already.

Plus you can heal, buff, snare, a bunch of stuff.

In my opinion Elementalists are totally OP in the fun part.

TWMagimay.9057:

@Selo(because the forum disagrees with quoting): I’ll have to assume that what kreit said is true. Because I refuse to believe smb who plays ele wouldn’t know what skills do…or at least bother checking before posting on a forum. All fire staff skills are aoes. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

And I see nothing wrong with being able to hold a bunch of people back by yourself. Actually, that sounds quite OP to me.

I have an ele with full dungeon exotics and weapons.
All staff skills are not AoE, Stoning and Water blast is ST.
Fireball is small radius AoE. Its also really crap to use on the move, its slow traveling speed makes it easy to avoid.

Ive done more WvW with my Ele then both of you, AND i play on a more populated server with more skilled WvW players, people that arent stupid and just stands in your aoe circles. You cant hit targets with fireball if their using stealth cover to ress. Also most of the time the distance between you and target is to far for fireball to reach.

The ones near the gates are usually high hp players, your meteor shower + lava font wont kill them, and gl getting them all of, youll get sniped by rangers long before that.

Meteor Shower is NOT gods gift to elementalists, its not an aoe pulse, it only hits where the meteors lands. Sometimes you hit many, sometimes you dont hit anything.
Hitting one person for 5k means nothing, that will be healed up quickly.

@Selo Because you have full dungeon exotics that doesn’t mean that you have the right gear for your class or to do max DPS in WvW. Also TWMagimay said that all FIRE skills are aoe not all staff skills. Staff for WvW is PERFECT. End of story. I also have ele full exotic but not from dungeons (I simply don’t care what dungeons give with tokens) and the zerg doesn’t dare touching the door. Everything that comes near just dies from meteor shower + lava fond. Also you mention that noone will stay in meteor shower and in the lava fond to take damage. Oh yeah, they will. With the combination of frozen ground and static field and an unsteady ground behind them they really don’t have a choice. I don’t make this post to prove you that I’m the best ele in the universe but to prove you that with the right combos and the proper traiting, eles can do everything and they can do it pretty good. Of course we need a little boost cause we have the lowest hp and def in the game but we can still do some serious damage and really make them focusing on us so they can stay alive to destroy that door.

The only elementalists that almost scare me are D/D. Even they are usually dead meat.

TWMagimay.9057 says “…All fire staff skills are aoes. Every. Single. One. Of. Them…”

Selo.1250 replies: “…All staff skills are not AoE, Stoning and Water blast is ST…”

Sigh… Kids these days.

Learn to argue! How can you expect to be taken seriously if you can’t even properly argue?

(do I have to point out your mistake?)

If your rhetorical skills are any indication of your elementalist skills, then it’s no wonder you think eles are underpowered.

It’s fine to argue eles need tweaking or buffing. It’s not fine to use fallacious or otherwise nonesnsical arguments to do so. It only forfeits credibility and causes the devs to roll their eyes and avoid threads.

Grenade engie deals more AOE damage than staff ele for example, with longer range (1500 traited). And to have decent damage on staff ele you need to have crap defence which means when push comes to shove you’ll be a prime target for a permastealth thief that can and will hit you for 8-10k+ (up to 16k…highest I’ve been hit so far and I checked) and can and will down you before people can rez you. Taking that in to consideration, dead ele=0 DPS which means ele is bad unless you can avoid damage and can nuke, which is pretty kitten hard when you have opponents that actually push not just kitten around with range and thieves either swirling and twirling or having fun with stealth.

And to be honest, staff AAs suck, low DPS, low AOE, low projectile speed.

ASelo: So, which fire staff skill isn’t an aoe? Name one. When you fail to do that, you can go back to being “awesome”. Oh, wait, you actually failed at 1st grade reading comrehension. Interesting….

Staff is not a DPS weapon, it’s a support/aoe weapon. Yes it would have been nice to have 1-2 staff skills out of 20 (eg, air 1/2) that could be traited to do decent ST dmg.

Selo.1250:

I have an ele with full dungeon exotics and weapons.
blah blah blah

If you have 80 level elementalist in full exotic gear, how can you explain this?

I wish i knew before i made my character that i cant be that if i choose elementalist :/

If you are so pro and play on pro server (and you spent time in WvW more then both of us)… so wth do you ask for advice at forum? Your sense of grandeur is to big.
P.S. I got it, it’s troll topic…

Nick Danger.9821:

TWMagimay.9057 says “…All fire staff skills are aoes. Every. Single. One. Of. Them…”

Selo.1250 replies: “…All staff skills are not AoE, Stoning and Water blast is ST…”

Sigh… Kids these days.

Learn to argue! How can you expect to be taken seriously if you can’t even properly argue?

(do I have to point out your mistake?)

If your rhetorical skills are any indication of your elementalist skills, then it’s no wonder you think eles are underpowered.

It’s fine to argue eles need tweaking or buffing. It’s not fine to use fallacious or otherwise nonesnsical arguments to do so. It only forfeits credibility and causes the devs to roll their eyes and avoid threads.

Learn to read the whole sentence. I said that fireball is only small radius AoE, i didnt say that fire arent AoE. I knew wordretards like you would jump directly on it, thats why i added it. You do realize only spamming fire isnt a viable way to go?
What does fireskills beeing aoe have to do with anything in the first place? Just becouse they can AoE doesnt mean their awesome.
Theres plenty of other classes that have better AoE.

Im also quite certain im older then you.

Kreit.4709:

@Selo
You know… I have 80 level elementalist and know, what I’m talking about, because I spent much time in WvW.

yea..

@Novalight.7568

You are right

@Selo: 5/5 fire aoes, 4/5 water aoes, 3/5 air aoes(and 1 muplitple target skill), 3/5 earth aoes. I’d say that’s a pretty good ratio of aoes to ST, especially for water(the one you’ve only seen autoattack from, dear pro ele). I’d also like to have a look at your crystal ball. You know, the one that tells you what server ppl play on, how much pvp they do, how old they are.

Go mesmer. You can’t go dps ranged as an elementalist (the burst dmg kind). Well you can, but if you compare to other classes you are going to suck regardless of how well you play. Our dps right now is crap. Those who say DPS elem are beast most probably doesnt have any other level 80 characters or just want to comfort themselves so they won’t feel bad they chose the wrong class to go DPS with.

If you want to do damage as an elementalist only 1 path is available for you. Go condition damage build but again, it sucks compared to burst types.

Selo I have a hard time believing you are in optimized gear on a level 80. I am not the person to be defending the state of the elementalist, but you are flat out wrong.

Staff is prime for WvW and It’s all I use there. You know how many sieges I’ve defended once they broke through using frozen ground, ice spike, meteor shower, lava font, unsteady ground, eruption, static field? I find it impossible that you’ve ever used that combo on a geared elementalist because you would not be here saying you cannot do damage.

I am not saying other classes don’t do better damage, I’m saying you don’t know how to play this class. Try telling me you have more WvW experienced than me, a WvW guildleader and previous Titan Alliance leader.

Selo.1250:

Nick Danger.9821:

TWMagimay.9057 says “…All fire staff skills are aoes. Every. Single. One. Of. Them…”

Selo.1250 replies: “…All staff skills are not AoE, Stoning and Water blast is ST…”

Sigh… Kids these days.

Learn to argue! How can you expect to be taken seriously if you can’t even properly argue?

(do I have to point out your mistake?)

If your rhetorical skills are any indication of your elementalist skills, then it’s no wonder you think eles are underpowered.

It’s fine to argue eles need tweaking or buffing. It’s not fine to use fallacious or otherwise nonesnsical arguments to do so. It only forfeits credibility and causes the devs to roll their eyes and avoid threads.

Learn to read the whole sentence.

I quoted your whole sentence. In response to TWMagimay talking about fire staff skills, you argued against it by talking about all staff skills.

Either you misunderstood him, or you think it’s ok to argue against ‘apples’ by arguing ‘oranges’.

I said that fireball is only small radius AoE, i didnt say that fire arent AoE.

lol

No one said you did — yours here is the Fallacious Argument ‘Strawman’.

What I did say is that in response to TWMagimay talking about fire staff skills (‘apples’), you argued against it by talking about all staff skills (‘oranges’).

Obviously I do need to point out your mistake to you.

You made a rhetorical mistake, either intentionally or unintentionally. When it’s pointed out, instead of acknowledging it or letting it go, you compound it.

Kids these days…

I knew wordretards like you would jump directly on it, thats why i added it.

Ah… it’s the “Selo is just a troll and did it on purpose” defense.

Kids these days…

Eles do need some tweaking and bug fixing. After that, we’ll see if more changes are needed. To get eles to where they need to be it’s important to discuss things logically, accurately, and honestly. Too many posts here are less than helpful in this regard, and that’s why I’m pointing out your rhetorical lapses. Hopefully a better discussion will result and the devs won’t have to wade thru so much dross, making their job easier and our class better.

TWMagimay.9057:

@Selo: 5/5 fire aoes, 4/5 water aoes, 3/5 air aoes(and 1 muplitple target skill), 3/5 earth aoes. I’d say that’s a pretty good ratio of aoes to ST, especially for water(the one you’ve only seen autoattack from, dear pro ele). I’d also like to have a look at your crystal ball. You know, the one that tells you what server ppl play on, how much pvp they do, how old they are.

staff:
5/5 fire AOE
5/5 air AOE
3/4 earth AOE
4/5 water AOE

There’s only 2 ST damage skills in Ele staff, and they are both (earth 1, water 1) very low damage.

IMO it’s a terrible design to have an essentially AOE-only weapon on a class with no weapon swapping.

Nick, you should prep Obama and Romney for their speeches tomorrow.

Elementalists are in an awful state right now. That’s just the reality of it. Once Anet fixes them, something other than a D/D elementalist will be useful. I will admit that a staff ele is useful in defense against scrubs.

Good thing you staff eles don’t play on my server though. We’re not going to stand in your AoE. Hell, we probably won’t let you get off more than one spell. Staff eles are zerg food.

Staff eles in wvw are about controlling the field. Of course you wont stand in our aoes, thats the point. Drop an air 5 field in the middle of a group and the unlucky chaps in front wont see it in time and continue running forward. The rest of the enemy group will either be stunned or attempt to run around the air 5 field.

Dropping other precisely placed fields causes dodging and hesitation, taking away endurance and time from enemies thinking about joining the ballista-fodder that made it through the fields.

My warrior thief and mesmer bros proceed to rip apart the poor saps cut off from the zerg by my fields, reducing the aoe potential and numbers of the enemy group. Enjoy the walk back Leeroys.

Whats that? All your hard earn silver bought you that snazy arrow cart? Oops I seem to have misplaced my meteors. Have you seen them? Oh! My word! I do apologize for that smoldering mess that was your new toy, these meteors practically have a mind of their own!

But other than that wvw support as staff, go glass cannon with any weapon set and get wrecked by the wind, all while every other class but necros out damage us.

Go bunker spec and be as annoying as herpes. Won’t really cause much physical harm but good luck trying to get rid of one. Guardians do it better though.

Go balanced and enjoy mediocre (at best) burst and sustained dps, above-average healing that doesn’t really overshadow our inherent squishiness, and just about the best mobility you’ll find. Assuming you have a dagger offhand.

Yes thats our saving grace aside from aoe. Decent healing. The ability to run away, If equipped with a dagger.

You’ll probably misread this sentence as well Selo but…

…if you’re good with a staff, you can deal good AoE damage at 1200 range. Not decent, not acceptable, not a lot compared to other Elementalists. But really good dps. Of course, you being the pro and all, you already know how so I’ll not trouble you by repeating it here. As for the rest of the pro WvWers…good that you can avoid an Elementalist’s attacks. That means they’re doing what they aim to achieve.

ThiBash.5634:

. As for the rest of the pro WvWers…good that you can avoid an Elementalist’s attacks. That means they’re doing what they aim to achieve.

I agree! A lot of people miss what a Staff Ele can and is supposed to do in WvW. It’s not all about killing people. If I can force the guys on the edge of a fort to back up, then my team is safer standing there taking the door down. Or if we need to push people away on a ground fight somewhere, what better way then to throw down a bunch of AoE’s. Either they get caught in them and take damage/get slowed/etc., or they back up. Either way, I have achieved my goal. Of course there’s more than that that we can and should be doing but the benefits of AoEs are undervalued by some I think.

Leiloni.7951:

I agree! A lot of people miss what a Staff Ele can and is supposed to do in WvW. It’s not all about killing people. If I can force the guys on the edge of a fort to back up, then my team is safer standing there taking the door down. Or if we need to push people away on a ground fight somewhere, what better way then to throw down a bunch of AoE’s. Either they get caught in them and take damage/get slowed/etc., or they back up. Either way, I have achieved my goal. Of course there’s more than that that we can and should be doing but the benefits of AoEs are undervalued by some I think.

Do players get rewarded for doing that? I don’t play WvWvW but as I’ve heard you only get rewards if you damage/kill something, you don’t get anything for area control.
If that’s the case the problem lies more with the reward system than the profession mechanic.

@DesertRose
You get reward only when you kill someone, solo or with team mates when you did more then 1 hit. So good luck ppl with your wonderful support of team, when everybody get more karma/badges, except you. Because you don’t get reward for support (I know, it’s stupid).
In glass cannon build every meteor crits for 4-6k and lava font crits for ~3k. So 2 skills when defending gate and you killed (or knocked down) few people. And in support/defensive build you damage at sieges is just funny.

DesertRose.2031:

Leiloni.7951:

I agree! A lot of people miss what a Staff Ele can and is supposed to do in WvW. It’s not all about killing people. If I can force the guys on the edge of a fort to back up, then my team is safer standing there taking the door down. Or if we need to push people away on a ground fight somewhere, what better way then to throw down a bunch of AoE’s. Either they get caught in them and take damage/get slowed/etc., or they back up. Either way, I have achieved my goal. Of course there’s more than that that we can and should be doing but the benefits of AoEs are undervalued by some I think.

Do players get rewarded for doing that? I don’t play WvWvW but as I’ve heard you only get rewards if you damage/kill something, you don’t get anything for area control.
If that’s the case the problem lies more with the reward system than the profession mechanic.

Well yea there’s a huge problem with the WvW Badges of Honor system but don’t get me started on that. I just finished a crafted cloth armor set and am working on accessories and staff so I don’t really need the WvW stuff. Although it would be nice if I actually had a chance at working for it. They should do it like Gory points in sPvP and give us points/badges for doing all sorts of activities (and drop the currency directly in our bag instead of making us pick it up mid combat).

My favorite parlor trick with staff is to spot people who’ve just been downed, are trying to rez someone that’s dead, or are manning an arrowcart. Basically you just take advantage of the fact that they’re probably not paying much attention to what’s around them, and they can’t move that fast because they’re locked into some other task.

Start in Earth. Cast your Immob followed by Eruption, swap to Ice and cast the shard on #2, swap to Fire and Lava Font + Whatever (I like Arcane Blast + Lightning Attunement nuke if you’re specced for it). If you time it right your Immob (since it travels slow) will land right before your Eruption, which will hit at the same time as Shard and Lava Font. It outright kills most people if it hits them. BIG IF! But it’s hilarious when it works.

I went 1v1 against a glass cannon staff Ele who thought the class could do competitive damage. Sure, he crit me for 1800 with fireballs, but that took a whopping 8% of my hp (and he didn’t do it often enough), but that didn’t do him any good when I was hitting him for 1100, which took 13% of his hp. That tank build……imagine if I had played the class right and reflected his stuff or set him up for AoE chains and healed myself using water attunement.

Seriously though, Ele’s do awful DPS, I purposely let D/D Ele’s unload their burst on me and then just swap to water and heal it up with a couple dodge rolls, even though I could have easily dodge rolled the RTL —> Updraft —> random fire spell burst. It’s a lot funnier if they see me heal that “awesome damage” then run away because I hit them nearly as hard as they hit me.

Ele can do tons of damage at ranged, granted, it can take a few seconds.

On my level 71, almost 72 Elementalist. I like taking on several mobs at once using Eruption twice then switching to fire for Flame Burst and Lava Font. Then the foes are taking tons of damage at once. Also since I’m an Asura I use Radiation Field, which lets me do AoE poison/bleed/burning.

If you think Staff does anywhere near the DPS Dagger/Dagger or Scepter/Dagger does, you haven’t played as those at all.

In WvWvW If you want to play it safe hide behind walls and toss out AOEs staying behind your allies and hoping they protect you sure you can go Staff and Honestly I carry a staff in my inventory for situations where it can be helpful or I feel like being lazy.

But dont say its more DPS than Dagger/Dagger or Scepter/dagger because we all know it simply isn’t. Even if you fight a target that just stands still you aren’t going to get the same DPS out of Staff. The OP is right. Long range DPS Spellcaster the Ele is not. Melee DPS with great CC and tools yea. Long range support yup but not long range DPS.

@GekoHayate.2451

Your entire post proves what I already said. Staff is good in keep defense against scrubs. Please keep using your staff and touting it’s glory though. It makes you easier to kill when there is absolutely no chance that you will be able to kill me.

If the metoers are easy to avoid and they waste a dodge on it. isn’t that a good thing for your team? since there’s less chance they can avoid a more damaging or debilitating attack?
sorry guys but i’ve just skimmed through what people are saying, i’m only a staff user never had daggers don’t really want to either.

i have over 2k rounds with my elementalists and i can assure you that staff is the most reliable and highest dps you can possibly get.

lol at the joke guy whos claiming s/d or d/d have any dps at all

staff in pve > 20% less cd on fire spells = 24 sec meteors = beats churning earth beats everything tbh. lava font w/ 90% uptime (+the combo field with which u can get 3 might stacks for 20s which is a lot for pve)

staff in pvp > much more reliable damage compared to the joke that is dagger or scepter or focus

90% of the elementalists in tournaments use staff cuz its superior, the other 10% blow and get carried by their team

and staff is still in a desperate need of a boost

incisorr.9502:

i have over 2k rounds with my elementalists and i can assure you that staff is the most reliable and highest dps you can possibly get.

lol at the joke guy whos claiming s/d or d/d have any dps at all

staff in pve > 20% less cd on fire spells = 24 sec meteors = beats churning earth beats everything tbh. lava font w/ 90% uptime (+the combo field with which u can get 3 might stacks for 20s which is a lot for pve)

staff in pvp > much more reliable damage compared to the joke that is dagger or scepter or focus

90% of the elementalists in tournaments use staff cuz its superior, the other 10% blow and get carried by their team

and staff is still in a desperate need of a boost

What’s your DPS build? The only build that’s worked for me as a Staff Elementalist is a bunker build. I only die when I get swarmed or my stunbreakers are on CD… or do something stupid.

It gets boring though not being able to kill stuff…

@Zonzai I disagree that Eles are in an awful state right now, if anything, they’re not what the players/devs expected, a mage. They ended up being a tanky self-sustaining monster, with no spike damage whatsoever, of course you can build damage and do damage but it’s not nearly as effective since you’re gonna contribute much less in the long run.

Staff ended up being a support weapon both control and damage wise, unlike the common mage concept staff users don’t have a single target nuke to rely on, to burst down single targets quickly, rather they get a bunch of aoe spells that are supposed to make up for the lack of burst.

S/D filled this role the most, and it was effective the first few weeks when people didn’t know what the hell was going on, and rarely dodged anything, but right now it’s not viable, it doesn’t have enough mobility or sustained/reliable damage, so hardly anyone uses it anymore.

Eles are not gonna change or improve unless they do a skill overhaul for staves, tweaking numbers isn’t really gonna solve anything either, the problem right now is that staves are our only long-range weapon but it was designed to be a SUPPORT weapon as well. They need to change that, or allow us to use pistols :]

tl;dr: people rolled an Ele wanting to be a mage, and they got stuck with a ‘monk’.

I’m reading a lot of “grass is greener” style arguments in this post. Personally I have an 80 Guardian, 80 Necro, 80 Mesmer, 80 Engineer and 80 Elementalist.

Engineer seems like it has more AOE with it’s Grenadier spec but there’s some caveats you don’t really plan for. For example the huge arc on grenades make them the most telegraphed and easily avoidable projectile (meaning subject to reflect walls like Feedback/Wall of Light) in the game once you realize you’re getting hit with them. Oh sure you can get some amazing damage in if you catch people flat footed but it’s much better in theory than actual practice. Their survivability isn’t much better than the Eles either primarily relying on a few cool downs to survive (especially since 1 utility is gone). Damage isn’t that much better (grenades can crit x3 for around 2400 total damage in full glass cannon gear) which we can easily do with fireball auto + ground field damage. Their spike never really goes up from that strong start and kinda plateaus from there.

From a defensive angle, the only classes I’ve found to be truly strong are classes with numerous “active defenses” and by that I mean classes like the Mesmer who can create clones, blink, invis and have constant vigor for more dodges all on low cool downs or have a lot of CC. That’s probably the one area I find in a huge discrepancy compared to other classes, the cool downs on all our defensive abilities is huge and a lot of skills that are on 60s timers they’re on 90s timers for us. Armor of Earth vs Stand Your Ground or Lighting Flash vs Blink kinda says it all.

Damage wise I can say we’re not bad. We’re not pulling huge thief or warrior numbers but then again no one else really is. My Mesmer in full Knight Armor + Berserker Weapon/Jewelry auto attack (Spatial Surge) can crit up to 1600 each second or so. It’s really not that high. Even Beserker as Phantasm spec will only deal around 6000 damage if every spin actually hits (which is rare) and crits (rarer).

I wasn’t that happy with my Ele in beta which caused me to make so many other characters but in the end here I am back on my Ele playing it on up. The first 20 levels or so were still pretty awful but in the end I still enjoy it over my other dudes.

Lokki.1092:

If you think Staff does anywhere near the DPS Dagger/Dagger or Scepter/Dagger does, you haven’t played as those at all.

Well, maybe that’s because I’m counting all the added damage from combo fields as my own, even if it only shows up on other people’s screens.

Or maybe I just consider the 20 stacks of might I get by comboing myself.

Could be either I suppose.

One of the reasons I love Ele is that everyone else seems to think they suck lol. I really have no issues with my Ele, and can beat most people 1v1 in WvW…even do pretty well in 1vMany scenarios…usually able to do some damage and survive to get away. Can even kill a weak player in a moderate zerg and mist stomp him, then escape sometimes.

But I feel like since the perception is that Ele’s are weak, that they will wind up getting buffs instead of nerfs, so it will only get better. At least that’s what I’m hoping lol.

I would be nervous playing something like a Guardian that a lot of folks perceive to be OP, because it would seem like the nerf bat would be coming.

ThiBash.5634

Well, maybe that’s because I’m counting all the added damage from combo fields as my own, even if it only shows up on other people’s screens.

Or maybe I just consider the 20 stacks of might I get by comboing myself.

Could be either I suppose.

buffing other people’s damage isn’t your DPS. Sorry it isn’t. there has never been a situation in any MMO where a support class with support skills was considered DPS because the buff damage. But you are right Staff provides great support, damage increase, conditions, healing, its awesome. but that still doesn’t make it DPS it makes its support. and don’t get me wrong I love it when a staff ele extends my fire conditions with flame burst and fields. In fact when I’m teamed with a dagger/dagger I will swap to staff for that very reason. Less damage myself but great buffs for the team and overall better for the group.

As for Combo fields you should take a look at some of the ?/Dagger ele vids bro, We regularly have 15+ stacks of might. I can get up to 20 if I’m trying to stack might. But 15 is generally where I sit just from general fighting. 2 weapons = twice as many sigils and battle is often one of them. ?/Dagger does not suffer from lack of self combos at all in fact they can self combo great.

No one is saying that Staff is useless… well some people are. they are wrong. But staff does not dive you the same or even nearly the same DPS you get from ???/Dagger. Staff is still a good weapon but you don’t need to defend it on every turn. But that isn’t what the OP and many ElE’s (Myself included) expected from the class. If you’ve played a mage/wizard from other games or an ele from GW1 you expect long range high damage glass cannons. instead we have mid range glass cannons, melee glass cannons, and melee tanks. a lot of people drawn to the achetype feel lied to because of that. Look at the main site, check the videos that they put out about Ele’s do you see them charging into melee flipping, rolling, and wielding daggers like some sort of magical thief? Then look in game and see how many dual dagger Elementalists you find doing exactly that. Personally I was surprised that the staff wasn’t our nuke weapon. But I do like the dagger. Either way they both have their purpose. I’m not sure which bunkers better but I’m inclined to lean towards staff. but you definitely get more damage out of ???/Dagger

Lokki.1092:

If you’ve played a mage/wizard from other games or an ele from GW1 you expect long range high damage glass cannons.

If you have played GW1 you have already experienced that all kinds of mages are support while the physicals are the damage dealers; I am wondering why you expected that GW2 would totally break with its predecessor’s general profession designs.