Guild Wars 2

Basically, having to change between 4 attunements to suit different situations scares me. Ideally, I would prefer to stay in 1, and switching, especially later in the game, rather confuses me. For example, if I am specced to heal, is it viable to stay in water attunement primarily, unless something goes horribly wrong and I have to switch to earth to tank until I can get my friends up?
Certain things I understand. I have experienced weapon swapping to switch from single-target to AOE and vice-versa when adds came or everything was down except a veteran/champion. But to have to essentially cover 4 different roles at the same time is not something I think I can handle.
Is that really something you guys do? How hard is that to keep track of?

It’s no harder than driving a manual transmission car. Even easier really, since you only have to use your fingers, and if you crash you can just respawn.

Practice, it will get easier.

You don’t really “have to” switch attunements all the time, but to play optimally you’ll need to learn the right times and reasons to switch.

If you really don’t want a challenging class to master though, elementalist probably isn’t a good choice, or you are choosing it for the wrong reasons.

Attunement swapping is like my manual trans car to me now. Its just part of what I do and I don’t even have to think about it most of the time.

Yeah after awhile, you don’t really have to think anymore, you just know what you are doing, and keep swapping with no problem. At around level 30 i had no more problems with the swap.

You should adjust your hotkeys, cus for me it was hard to tell the diference beetween f2 and f3 without looking, so i changed them – F1=\ , f2= Mouse 3, f3= Mouse 4, F4 = middle mouse, now i am pretty used to it, and have no problems at all.

Playing an ele and only using one attunement means you are only using 1/4 of your skills, and the class is balanced around you using all of them. That’s like playing another class and never weapon swapping and only using 1 and 2. Can it be done? Well ya, I’m sure it could, but should it? There’s no point rolling a class knowing you are going to be playing it nowhere near its full potential. Try playing something like a necro for a fairly straight forward mage.

Keeping track of the attunements is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. Different situations require different attunements, you’re not so worried about swapping to access any specific skill.

For example, with my D/D Ele I use Air for travelling/initiating combat, Earth for the toughness buff and CC, Water for healing/chill/elemental, and Fire for spike damage. If I’m in combat and I need to heal up a bit I switch to water and use any applicable skills. If it’s time to spike I switch to fire. So on and so forth.

It’s easy when you remember the theme of each attunement.

Am I trying to do damage? = fire

do I need to heal? = water

do I need to move faster? = air

do I need to knock someone down or slow a group of enemies? = earth.

If you start out slow and experiment with all of your skills, you’ll eventually memorise which ones mean what, and be able to switch to them on will. It also helps if you practice certain combos. No harder than playing a 2D fighting game.

I’ll give you a practical example of how a healer-specced elementalist would switch attunes tactically.

Say you start out in water mode and you are supporting yourself or the team. In this mode, you really can’t do damage, so you’ll be using 3 to freeze a mob, then perhaps 2 and 5 in that order for a quick healing burst. This puts both 2 and 5 on a fairly long cooldown. You have no reason to stay in water tree because you’ll literally have only one offensive move up. So while you wait for your healing skills to recharge, you’ll attune to something else.

Depending on the situation, you’ll probably want to go with earth or lightning. Earth will give you the option to cripple, bleed, or knock down the enemies you’ve just frozen, and will give you protection if you’ve traited for it, making you tankier for a little while. Your water skills are still on cooldown, so now you can either contribute to DPS by switching to fire, or play it safe and escape from danger by attuning to lightning.

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.
Regardless if the average MMO baddie believes # of button equals skill ceiling, Ele is probably the second easiest class (Ranger takes first by far).
My little nephew plays an Ele very good, and fails to understand other classes because they are not as straight-forward and simple.
Worry not about Ele difficulty OP, class is pretty easy to play so far.

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.

So basically, you just stand in one spot with your eyes closed and spam fireball? I can see that working, sure. :p

Ele is by far the most difficult class to master and it has nothing to do with the number of abilities but with the fact that if you want to be good with them, you have to know when and where to use each one, you have to learn your self and group combos, plus you have to be constantly moving and be aware of your surroundings because you won’t last long otherwise. And actually yeah, you do have more skills to juggle too.

So it’s not easy to master, but not that terribly hard to pick up either. It is, however, fun as no other class. And it can be rewarding once you learn all of the above and, you will learn it by the time you hit max level. As others have said, I don’t even have to think about which skill should be used when. Muscle memory.

it kinda depends on what you plan to do with your ele, pvp or pve. in pvp you will need to react fast and addapt to the situation or create your own situation so the others will have to addapt to you. on pve you can pick a staff and play the more suportive class while standing in the back not taking any damage. you can throw out aoe heals and put down combo fields for others to use or you could use some amazing blast finishers from your earth atunement for aoe combo’s for your team. i realy want to make my ele to lvl 80 in pve but im having way to much fun in pvp even tho im still a rookie (rank 14). the possebilitys are endless.

srry for my bad english.

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.
Regardless if the average MMO baddie believes # of button equals skill ceiling, Ele is probably the second easiest class (Ranger takes first by far).
My little nephew plays an Ele very good, and fails to understand other classes because they are not as straight-forward and simple.
Worry not about Ele difficulty OP, class is pretty easy to play so far.

everyone has an opinion. I would personally say playing a thief is by far the most simple in the game since you can effectively mash one button and function in combat. You would probably say something about it takes skill to be a good thief, but for some reason it wont register that it takes skill to be a good anything… but blah blah.

.
As far as the OP goes I would say its not really that bad, but you do have to remember more than other classes to operate at full capacity. I mean when I play D/D I do the most damage by a large margin with fire and a person could simply stay in fire and play moderately well. However you have a lot of good abilities like the charge in air, or the knockdown in earth, or how water heals, so you have to remember which abilities are where so you can use them quickly. You also have to take into consideration you cant switch right back to fire either once you switch and it is a good bit to keep track of. However, I personally find most classes a bit boring. I mean most classes don’t weapon swap very often and only have a couple good skills with long timers, and thieves can effectively be 1-button wonders, at least the elementalist keeps you busy.

Gaudrath.6725:

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.

So basically, you just stand in one spot with your eyes closed and spam fireball? I can see that working, sure. :p

Ele is by far the most difficult class to master and it has nothing to do with the number of abilities but with the fact that if you want to be good with them, you have to know when and where to use each one, you have to learn your self and group combos, plus you have to be constantly moving and be aware of your surroundings because you won’t last long otherwise. And actually yeah, you do have more skills to juggle too.

So it’s not easy to master, but not that terribly hard to pick up either. It is, however, fun as no other class. And it can be rewarding once you learn all of the above and, you will learn it by the time you hit max level. As others have said, I don’t even have to think about which skill should be used when. Muscle memory.

I totally agree with Gaudrath, this is definitely one of the funnest class to play ever but just be warned that once you rolled an ele, you’ll grow bored of the other classes easily.

Not to mention, its not just 4 attunements x 5 sets of skills, but 4 attunements x 15 sets actually especially in WvW (Dagger/Dagger weapon set, Staff weapon set, Dagger/Focus weapon set – leaving out scepter sets cause i haven’t really find a good situation to use it yet).

So yeah, i think you shouldn’t worry about juggling the attunements/skills, just play, have fun and you’ll grow into the ele you think you can’t be

It is harder than most classes (engineer being similar I guess), in that you just have to remember so many skills. By the time you hit 80 you will easily know your chosen weapon skills and combos (both skill sequence and fields). Some weapons will take longer to master if you don’t use them often.

The worst part about ele is underwater. You rarely get to use the skills so when you do have to use them you can’t use them as easily since there’s so many. It’s just practice liek anything else but it takes more practice than most classes.

im playing ele in pve for a while now and i must say that “just playing” isnt as hard anymore as when i started. however if you want to pack a punch you do have to pay attention to what you are doing. getting in and out fights is very easy and also chasing people down is very easy. for example if you are using dagger dagger you will have moving speed in the fire atunement. in the water atunement you have your heals wich you will probably use when you want to move away from others. than there is also a aoe chill and a frost aura wich slows people so you can get away more easy. in air you have a shocking aura that will stun people if they hit you thus slowing them down, also ride the lightning gets you away or up close to your enemy quickly. updraft can push your enemys away from you and it also gives you a swiftness boost. than earth, it has a cripple, it has magnetic grasp wich will immobilize your target and pull yourself towards him, you can also use this skill to get away, for example in WvW just target a bunny. also you have a aoe knockdown. these are all skills to chase, get in-out combat.
the best advise i can give you is: just start playing an ele in pve in lvl 1-15 maps. there you can get used to the skills without worying about dieing to much. also carefully read every skill’s information so you know exactly what they do. i hope you’ll have fun playing

It’s not for everyone. Probably the biggest misconception is that you can stay in one attunement and be fine. That works to a certain extent but you are really not playing to the elementalist’s strength – it’s versatility. It can damage, heal, control, all on its weapon set!

With that said it isn’t too difficult to get the hang of; you will understand when to use which skill in what attunement as you keep playing around with it.

Ele is difficult to get into, but if you have the passion and really work hard at it (assuming you’re brand new) you can pull off some really amazing stuff in combat.

I wouldn’t advise trying to play ele by sitting in one attunement, it might work, but IMO you’ll never be nearly as effective as those who can swap with purpose.

The 10 point trait elemental attunement in arcane is reason enough alone to not stay in one attunement.

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play..

yeah sure

Jonathan Sharp (Game Designer of GW2) said December 14, 2012:
We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.

didn’t bother reading every response so if this is a repeat, apologies.

Ele is a difficult profession to learn, harder to master, but once you get there you may never go back. I’ve got about 600 hours logged on my ele, multiples any other character, and been playing her since the beginning. It took a while to learn how (I think) it’s meant to be played, but attunement dancing is all it’s about.

Consider investing in a good gaming mouse, one with at least 4 thumb buttons. I use a razer naga, overkill I know, but I use 9 of the 12 thumb buttons, and have all my attunements there. Very easy to switch.

During BWE I played ele and I quit it at lv 6 because of how I hated switching elements. It was confusing and I couldn’t get my head around. Fast forward to release and I play a guardian for 200 hours and a necro for 700. Earlier today I switched to ele to main. I don’t look back. Switching elements and juggling them is incredibly fun and not as hard as you think. Think of it like a weapon switch combo. lay down a combo field in one weapon, finisher with the other. Same concept here. Lay down a fire field, earth finisher.

Apart from unlocking skills, I’ve barely touched the autoattack button in pve.

I did not read all the posts, but I have to say that ele is NOT an easy prof to master! I think it is almost collectively agreed that it is one of, if not the most difficult professions to master.

I know why changing attunements seems intimidating. But as most everyone has said, once you get used to it you don’t even notice. I think your question is that if you’re building for support and healing, do you have to stay in Water? Or whatever. No. You need to utilize all your skills. But if you’re built for healing, then you might tend to be in water most often. The real damage of an ele is done by swapping. I start in fire, then use air, earth, and finally water for healing if I need it, and switching back through the cycle if necessary. I spend the most time attuned to fire, and that is b/c I’m specced for power. If I have only one, two, or even three enemies on me, a lot of times I don’t ever have to change attunements b/c I kill them so fast. It’s when you’re in a bigger group, or have a big boss that it will become more crucial.

Things about eles: You will need to learn to kite and you are squishy. I, like SlimGenre, love my ele. Probably don’t have THAT many hours logged into it, but I really love this prof. I don’t have a gaming mouse and I have no trouble swapping attunements and cycling spells speedily. It is probably easier, no doubt, but not necessary.

Good luck!

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.
Regardless if the average MMO baddie believes # of button equals skill ceiling, Ele is probably the second easiest class (Ranger takes first by far).
My little nephew plays an Ele very good, and fails to understand other classes because they are not as straight-forward and simple.
Worry not about Ele difficulty OP, class is pretty easy to play so far.

The ignorance in this post is ridiculous! Are you even playing the right game?

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.
Regardless if the average MMO baddie believes # of button equals skill ceiling, Ele is probably the second easiest class (Ranger takes first by far).
My little nephew plays an Ele very good, and fails to understand other classes because they are not as straight-forward and simple.
Worry not about Ele difficulty OP, class is pretty easy to play so far.

From a WvW perspective, I have to agree with Red Falcon, D/D Ele is one of the easiest classes to play, especially healing/tank builds, but all D/D builds are nonetheless. Staff Ele on the other hand is a little harder to master to actually feel effective and work with your group, I mean small skirmishes not sieging. If you watch some of the posted D/D Ele videos you will see they miss half their fire grabs, burning speed, and so on, but so what, they just switch to the next attunement and carry on, if they get low they run away, this is all the same for any Ele, not picking on them. This is something you can’t do with many other classes. If you miss one of your main attacks you can’t just swap to another 3 sets. With the ability to constantly move back and forth the D/D Ele does not need to worry about positioning as much as most classes. I do agree however, that once you play Ele all the other classes seem fairly boring. I have played ele since beta and do use D/D for WvW and am no different then what I have described. On a side note let’s be honest, the easiest way to win a 1v1 in WvW is to be the person countering and not initiating, especially against another D/D Ele, unless you catch said person by surprise.

aathomas.4638:

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.
Regardless if the average MMO baddie believes # of button equals skill ceiling, Ele is probably the second easiest class (Ranger takes first by far).
My little nephew plays an Ele very good, and fails to understand other classes because they are not as straight-forward and simple.
Worry not about Ele difficulty OP, class is pretty easy to play so far.

From a WvW perspective, I have to agree with Red Falcon, D/D Ele is one of the easiest classes to play, especially healing/tank builds, but all D/D builds are nonetheless. Staff Ele on the other hand is a little harder to master to actually feel effective and work with your group, I mean small skirmishes not sieging. If you watch some of the posted D/D Ele videos you will see they miss half their fire grabs, burning speed, and so on, but so what, they just switch to the next attunement and carry on, if they get low they run away, this is all the same for any Ele, not picking on them. This is something you can’t do with many other classes. If you miss one of your main attacks you can’t just swap to another 3 sets. With the ability to constantly move back and forth the D/D Ele does not need to worry about positioning as much as most classes. I do agree however, that once you play Ele all the other classes seem fairly boring. I have played ele since beta and do use D/D for WvW and am no different then what I have described. On a side note let’s be honest, the easiest way to win a 1v1 in WvW is to be the person countering and not initiating, especially against another D/D Ele, unless you catch said person by surprise.

This my dear is BS.

Different elements are for different things and if you screw one of them not only you miss out your combo , you also miss out 1/4 of your pottential utility. And those ~10 secs for attun to recharge is lots of time if you are bursted by 2 thieves.

when you play D/D ele
roll your face on the keyboard and things die.
Just make sure that you are keeping track of your catnips and dodge like a monkey, before you know it you’ll be soloing champions and be unkillable in wvw unless you get chained cc beyond reasoning.

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.
Regardless if the average MMO baddie believes # of button equals skill ceiling, Ele is probably the second easiest class (Ranger takes first by far).
My little nephew plays an Ele very good, and fails to understand other classes because they are not as straight-forward and simple.
Worry not about Ele difficulty OP, class is pretty easy to play so far.

When you say “easiest” you have to compare with the other classes.
I haven’t tried Necromancer and Engineer yet, maybe they are harder than Ele who knows, but compared to a Guardian/Warrior in PVE, Ele is a lot harder to play/master, since with them you just stand still, spam 1 and your worst enemy is falling asleep while playing. Guardian and Warrior are easy mode in PVE, there is a reason everyone is rolling one…
Mesmer and Thief are “easy mode” as well, very easy to play (but very hard to master) as Mesmer even a real noob can spam illusions/phantasms if he googles a nice build and be semi-decent. A newbie Thief on the other hand can be semi-decent while not doing much… just learn one combo (backstab) and if it doesn’t work (1-shot) come on forums to ask for nerfs….
Unfortunately there is no faceroll with the Elementalist in either PVE or PVP. You can argue that you can just stand still and spam AOE with a staff when you are attacking/defending a keep in WvW but in general facerolling = dead ele, unlike any of the above classes… So no, you might say it’s “easy” but compared to the others it’s a lot harder.
Eles rely on reflexes and timing to play properly, they have lots of combos and lots of utilities, in order to take advantage of them you got to learn them, learn to use them properly, long CDs and short durations mean using them at the appropriate moment is key, and since Eles don’t have any easy “passive” defense, unlike the above profs – heavy armor – hit points – stealth – clones, if you miss the timing you are dead.
Ranger is indeed the easiest profession to play, I agree with that, that’s why I left him out of the above :P

swapping atunements is the only way for us to provide the group with boons.

Gaudrath.6725:

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.

So basically, you just stand in one spot with your eyes closed and spam fireball? I can see that working, sure. :p

Ele is by far the most difficult class to master and it has nothing to do with the number of abilities but with the fact that if you want to be good with them, you have to know when and where to use each one, you have to learn your self and group combos, plus you have to be constantly moving and be aware of your surroundings because you won’t last long otherwise. And actually yeah, you do have more skills to juggle too.

So it’s not easy to master, but not that terribly hard to pick up either. It is, however, fun as no other class. And it can be rewarding once you learn all of the above and, you will learn it by the time you hit max level. As others have said, I don’t even have to think about which skill should be used when. Muscle memory.

This is very true, I also believe Ele’s have the most flexibilty of any class out there, with 4 attunements plus various builds that you can swap on the fly makes game play very fun. Just last night during a run, I noticed we didn’t have a lot of condition damage so I ran outta combat, swapped equipment to a bleed build and jumped back in.

Thrashbarg.9820:

You don’t really “have to” switch attunements all the time, but to play optimally you’ll need to learn the right times and reasons to switch.
.

and with that statement everything you just said is invalid -_-

to play ele you need to switch attunement constantly and you need to know when to switch to what which can be a freaking plague to do, playing ele is like taking another game from easy to hardmode.. the difference is HUGE in the difficulty.

ele is generally much weaker as well and you will need to be few lvls above in rl skill compared to other people to have the same impact.

when that is said, the effects look very nice and its a fun class, you really do feel like a mage/ very weak one but a mage.

void.6705:

Gaudrath.6725:

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.

So basically, you just stand in one spot with your eyes closed and spam fireball? I can see that working, sure. :p

Ele is by far the most difficult class to master and it has nothing to do with the number of abilities but with the fact that if you want to be good with them, you have to know when and where to use each one, you have to learn your self and group combos, plus you have to be constantly moving and be aware of your surroundings because you won’t last long otherwise. And actually yeah, you do have more skills to juggle too.

So it’s not easy to master, but not that terribly hard to pick up either. It is, however, fun as no other class. And it can be rewarding once you learn all of the above and, you will learn it by the time you hit max level. As others have said, I don’t even have to think about which skill should be used when. Muscle memory.

This is very true, I also believe Ele’s have the most flexibilty of any class out there, with 4 attunements plus various builds that you can swap on the fly makes game play very fun. Just last night during a run, I noticed we didn’t have a lot of condition damage so I ran outta combat, swapped equipment to a bleed build and jumped back in.

they are not more versitile then any other class, the difference is that other classes use the same skills for multiple purposes since it got several effects or usages, while the ele have split each use up in different spells meaning you need to constantly cast 2-3 spells to get the same effect you would from 1 of other classes.
its simply just a harder way of doing the same thing…

as said it looks very cool though

Lalangamena.3694:

swapping atunements is the only way for us to provide the group with boons.

Auras and runes can also provide the group with boons.

this seems like the perfect thread to ask my question.

im new to ele lvl 9 atm and wondering what gear would be best for a staff ele that likes to blow stuff up with fire (and yes i know use the other attunes for support).

now i have a lvl 80 thief in full zerker gear with 11k hp so im used to playing extremely fragile classes in pve and pvp.

now will a ele in full zerker gear with a staff focusing on fire be a heavy hitter ranged class or will it just be a small spark. or should i get zerker armor and valkyre trinkets etc. i was thinking of getting ruby orbs like my thief has or is there any recomended runes for Direct Damage staff ele (ofc using support when needed its fun using water in wvw as lvl 9 )

i am mostly after a long ranged caster class but i dont like mesmar or necro and always liked the “mage” type classes for its direct dmg and CC.