Guild Wars 2

I would like the Ele to still be a complex class to play – but give them the payoff to compensate.

One idea I like is to give almost every Ele skill and trait (especially the simple damage or +X% ones) a secondary effect that occurs when some condition is met.

Eg. Currently in Dagger offhand we have “Fire Grab” which does additional damage vs. burning enemies. Since we can cause burning in Flame Attune, you can get this effect in one attunement.

But there should be more!
eg.
Cross-attunement: Ride the Lightning: If enemy has Weakness, they are knocked down.

Cross-class: Shatterstone: If enemy has Poison, the poison is spread to other enemies in the AOE.

Based on Boons:
Drakes Breath: If you have Might, then the breath will immobilise them.

Traits:
Strength of Stone: Deal 10% extra damage in Earth Attunement. If the enemy is blinded, critical hits cause knockdown.

etc.

I’d love for the Ele to have all sorts of crazy complexity with skills that interact with other skills, traits, other classes, etc, and give great benefits to those that can take advantage of those effects.

Elementalist skills have to short range in general. As the squishiest class, Elementalist atleast should have the longest range.

All Staff Elementalist skills are easily avoided, even without dodging.
All number 1 skills travels so slow and have no “homing” system the enemy only have to move slightly to the side to avoid it.

Hmmm only one change? That’s really hard!

I think I’ll just try to go with something that might actually happen and say that a quality of life change would be for positive boons that you give to your party mates having a larger area radius. I feel like you have to stand right on top of people for them to get swiftness or might from you— and it makes my arcane support build kind of useless on most fights.

My biggest gripe right now is that ele is unrewarded for going pure damage compared to other classes.

A general buff to the power ratios on some skills would be great.

More damage… that’s it.

I think the issues with the elementalist could be fixed by redesigning some of the skills. i.e.
-Dragon’s Tooth – needs to be homing on your target so it’s not dodgeable.
-Pheonix – why is this even targeted? it doesn’ need to be.
-Ring skills, i.e. ring of flame and the earth dagger one – useless in a game where we are always moving.

I think the skills need to be changed to focus less on targeting (for staff) and more workable when you are always moving and dodging.

• Same distance with ranger/engineer 1500 with proper traits
• Downed state ability (one that can interrupt stomp)
• In-Combat weapon swap with heavy downside (lock out from attunement/swap for 10 sec)
• Reward for glass cannon (why does war/ranger does same/higher single target dps and have more defensive stats?)
• Elite ability that is worth something (seriously I would rather have another utility in elite slot than elite ability, it’s total crap)

I rerolled warrior and facerolling with rifle, it’s so great walking around with almost double base hp with much more defense and getting 10k crits. One downside is it’s boring as hell, please fix elementalist so i can come back!

a few small fixes to make us more inline with other classes:

- FIX RIDE THE LIGHTNING!
- Arcane wave needs to do more damage or have a smaller CD
- lightning whip needs to hit harder or faster.. and it needs to actually hit the target!
- Fire grab needs to be instant cast so that you can actually hit the target while moving
- please PLEASE give us more useful traits

If you couldn’t tell this is all from a d/d spvp standpoint

Other professions have Minor Traits that are useful all the time. The Elementalist’s Minor Traits only apply when they’re in specific attunements. The only exception is the Arcana trait line, which is also widely viewed as one of our best, if not the best Elementalist trait line

Not only does handicapping the Elementalist’s Minor Traits so severely makes an Elementalist caught outside his traited attunement tree weaker than he should be, it also means that it’s incredibly hard to make well synergized Elementalist builds, because it’s always IF/OR instead of AND.

E.g.

Elementalist Adept level Minor Traits:

• Flame Barrier – You have a 20% chance to cause burning whenever a foe attacks you in melee. Only triggers when attuned to fire.
• Zephyr’s Speed – Move 10% faster while attuned to air.
• Stone Flesh – Gain 1 toughness per level while attuned to earth.
• Soothing Mist – Regenerate health while attuned to water.
• Arcane Fury – Grant yourself fury for 2 seconds on attunement.

Warrior Adept level Minor Traits:

• Reckless Dodge – Damage foes at the end of a dodge roll.
• Precise Strikes – 33% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits.
• Thick Skin – Extra armor when health is above 90%.
• Determined Revival – Gain 5 extra toughness per level while reviving.
• Versatile Rage – Gain 5 strikes of adrenaline on weapon swap.

I’m not even cherrypicking here. I just took the warrior’s minor adept traits because that’s another profession I like to play. In truth, you can pick any other profession you want to compare. It’s the exact same story. The Elementalist is unfairly handicapped.

Make pets permanent and introduce a cool down when the pet is destroyed.

having played ele for a long time, i have somehow been led to unconsciously avoid traits with bonuses that are locked to its attunement, simply because they are only 1/4 as useful. traits should be reimplemented.

i’m gonna list more minor changes i would like to see,

-burning speed to home in on target if a target is selected, i.e. works the same as ride the lightning.

-lightning flash works the same as mesmer’s blink but with 50% more cooldown? i would rather have the damage removed for the cooldown. my suggestion -> keep the longer cooldown and give it a range buff of 200-300.

-make firegrab easier to hit, buff it by 100 range.

-lightning touch rework this skill. i don’t see any reason why i should use this skill which has a small cast time, a cooldown, hard to hit, there is an auto attack right beside it that deals more 2 times damage… this is by far the most useless skill on mainhand dagger. in a whole tourney, i would use this skill 0 times. my suggestion -> either make it instant, small aoe, increase its damage significantly or any combination. just buff this skill!

I cannot help but notice how many of the comparisons are to warriors, and it makes me wonder why everyone then concludes that the elementalist is the class the needs changed.

Justified or not, it is, after all, a pretty common opinion that warriors are currently overpowered.

Signet of Forums.4397:

I cannot help but notice how many of the comparisons are to warriors, and it makes me wonder why everyone then concludes that the elementalist is the class the needs changed.

Justified or not, it is, after all, a pretty common opinion that warriors are currently overpowered.

That’s not relevant to this discussion. Like I said in my post, I could’ve easily picked another profession and the point would still stand. Elementalist Minor Traits are lacking compared to all other professions.

Signet, I think it stems from a statement a while back that ArenaNet felt the Warrior was in a good place and hence became the defacto class to measure up against.

1st thing that comes to mind is revamp attunements/weapons altogether. The major weakness of Elementalists is the being locked into a single range with no way of changing it without going out of combat and switching a weapon. Staff is great long range AoE but terrible short range and single target, daggers are great short range single target and terrible at everything else.

I would make Attunements responsible for the range. Like making dagger/dagger Air into a long range skill set, while f.e. leaving earth short range. Staff likewise could use some high dps short range skills.

Traits also need a revamp. Get rid of all the single attunement benefiting traits, introduce something that actually changes the way a given spec works.

@Rieselle I’m not even gonna lie, that sounds awesome. Unlikely to happen, but awesome.

Setting aside balancing issues. I’d like to see traits designed to encourage you to not swap elements when you have abilities on cooldown. So if I want to do area damage, I swap to Fire and stay there. If I want to support I swap to Water and stay there. If I want to do single target damage and kite I swap to Air and stay there. If I’m up against a lot of hard to avoid damage I swap to Earth and stay there. Make the elements options rather than one great long rotation.

Make Staff A3 and PBAoE knockback, and combine the swiftness and escape abilities of A4 into it. Something like:

Whirling Gust
PBAoE Push
Grants 10s of swiftness
Cures cripple, immobilize, and chill
CC Breaker
Whirl Finisher

Because lets be honest, how often do we use staff A4 in battle?

That opens up A4 to be something with a higher damage yield (as per the air attunement description) and gives further utility.

Fix Air with scepter pretty pls. The auto attack ~sticks~? and wont stop casting, makes this attunment really, really annoying to spend any time in.

@Rack, that defeats the entire purpose of the class. With earth you get more than defense, you get aoe bleeds and an aoe knockback, + you have no way of building boons to enhance damage if you cannot switch attunments. Water isn’t the only atunment with support, each of your fields offer support type debuffs-buffs when used correctly, air has some of the best, just not healing.

Efaicia.3672:

@Rack, that defeats the entire purpose of the class.

But does it?

What is the purpose behind attunements? a) To adapt to a situation and stick to it, until the situation changes and you adapt again; or b) to dance between attunements like crazy to be able to do anything?

Because let’s be honest, with the way the elementalist is designed, it seems like the devs wanted at least both situations to be viable, although it seems they focused more on the former, honestly.

For point a), each attunement has a very specific role, so if you want to nuke mobs and you are not being targetted, then there’s little reason to leave fire, outside of recharges. Of course, you can switch attunements for CC or party defense, but some of those skills are only truly effective with the right utilities and the right traits. Likewise, air is nice to set up bursts, water is nice when you need to fill your health back in, and earth is nice for when you don’t want your health to go down too fast (or for bleeding as a secondary effect). And talking about traits, they seem to be designed with that in mind, where you directly boost the effectiveness of one or two specific attunements you want to stick the most to. Finally, only one of the five traitlines makes crazy attunement dancing a truly fluid playstyle, while four of them are about the player specializing in their favourite attunements.

There are several threads already that are describing the why’s of juggling attunements, you should go have a look as it is explained quite well there. It is why some of us enjoy the class and others think it is underpowered.

My only ask: fix all the bugs so that the abilities do what they state they are doing (i.e. proper Crit counts).

For churning earth, I keep seeing requests to lower the casting time (which would be nice). I also wouldn’t mind going back to the hold and release method of charging it up.

I just had another thought thought. What if it was (yet another) delayed activation ability. Instant (or very quick cast) and it leaves the animation going on the ground, but you’re still free to do whatever. Then you aren’t left defenseless and can try to lock opponents down in the area so they have to take the blast. I can see this working really well with D/D it lets you stay mobile which is huge and still gives it some much needed AoE. As well as giving it a delayed blast ability which seems to be a theme across a lot of ele abilities.

Can you make the ele not so dependable on group support because it’s kinda been hard to party of late so most of the time is spent solo >.> which is hard for the ele user

when in group ele is okay but your not always going to be in a group so yeah >.<

I have an idea to replace the downed ability 2:

Seppuku
-Since Elementalist is already so overpowered in downed state, Elementalists often rush to kill themselves so they can enter the OP downed state. Once they’re down, they could use the new second spell “Seppuku” to plant the flag on themselves instead of letting the enemy do it. This would spare enemies some valuable seconds, especially pro Thieves.

Actually Sebulon, that would be a great idea. Honestly, if I was good at spvp, I would just try and keep the ele downed as long as possible. Just do a small amount of damage as they try and heal. This keeps them from respawning and it isn’t like they deal damage or anything…. It’s so sad that that is a viable strategy when fighting elementalists. Having the ability to kill ourselves would only be beneficial to the elementalists…. I feel sad knowing that that is true….

Trait re-work.

• Flame Barrier: – Chance reduced to 10%, triggers in any attunement.
• Internal Fire – Attacking in Fire increases your damage by 2% (stacks, max of 5 stacks) for 20 seconds.
• Spell Slinger – 1 more stack of might to a total of 4
• Burning Rage – Changed to ‘Each tick of [your] Burning has a 75% chance to apply 5 seconds of vulnerability’
• Persisting flames Evaporation – Attacking a chilled enemy while in Fire has a 20% chance to grant you and nearby allies regeneration for 10 seconds. 30 sec ICD
• Zepher’s Speed – stacks with swiftness
• Grounded – Deal 10% more damage to Crippled foes.
• Stone Splinters – Deal 10% more damage while in melee range
• Strength of Stone – Take 10% less damage in Earth
• Salt Stone Erosion – Attacking an enemy in earth while you have swiftness has a 40% chance to remove a random boon. 15sec ICD
• Vital Striking – Deal 5% more damage If an enemy has regeneration, and 20% chance to steal it if attuned to water.
• Soothing Wave Extinguish – Attacking a burning enemy(must be your burn) while attuned to water inflicts 2 sec of weakness.
  Windborne Dagger – Cast times are reduced by 20% while wielding a dagger

This’ll increase power and defense a little, increase trait synergy and help make attunement swapping more meaningful

oh and fix the bugs.

I know it only says one per person, but here it goes anyways – I’ll add some more things that might be easy to do, but help playing experience:

Some Autoattacks need help:

- Staff Water needs an increased healing radius, probably also some damage, as of now it is useless in every aspect (or maybe just revamp it – I like the healing portion though)
- Staff Earth is kinda meh, Yes weakness is a nice condition, but the damage is low, and I do not know anyone that would chain weakness on a person if he or she had the choice of just dealing damage instead
- Dagger Lightning needs some usability, it should work like a weapon melee attack, so mostly hitting things caught in the swing. It just doesnt do that, heck often it even misses the intended target if either I or the target move
- Scepter Lightning needs tweaks. You either need to up the damage quite a bit as its dps is not too good (and the set does have nothing else) and/or make it not scale up, so it deals the same damage per tick
- Another problem might have arisen because elementalists have no autoattack-chains. The coefficient on Staff Fire Auto might be good (being the best we have outside of dagger) but many other classes up their dps and also burst by chain attacks, heck I can crit up to 4.5k with thief sword auto, staff fire barely scratches 2k – this might also be grounds for re-evaluation

The healing issues were already adressed by many people, let my clarify on that a bit: I know that you wanted damage to always be higher than healing. That you achieved, but the consequence was that the usefulness of Healing Power as an attribute is severly kittened in comparison to other attributes, as it only attributes to very few skills, and then on most skill only amounts for very little (And as far as I know the elementalist ist the most efficient at that).

I think a interesting possibility would be to up the healing power coefficients on many skills but compensate by healing reductions – maybe introduce some other mechanics/skills or just increase poison heal reduction to 50%? That would make for more rewarding play. I’m not working in your QA department, but crunching the numbers should not be hard (You might already have done that for current numbers, so sorry for sounding redundant).

My last point of info is:
- 0.1 on most skills and blast finishers (Should be more depending on skill, at the moment healing power makes no difference)
- up to 1.0 on main healing skills (Could also be more since you can rarely use them)
- 0.125 on regen per tick, this I am actually ok with
- .084 if i remember correctly on soothing mist/virtue of resolve (this one is tricky, as it is passive healing – but I feel It could also be more)

There is much else, but I’ll leave it at that for now – I hope this helps.

If anyone wants to do a well thought-out compendium or something, like teamleads in Dark Age of Camelot-times: I’m up for that, just send me a message Also not afraid of some number-crunching, kinda proficient in statistics :p

Rieselle.5079:

I would like the Ele to still be a complex class to play – but give them the payoff to compensate.

One idea I like is to give almost every Ele skill and trait (especially the simple damage or +X% ones) a secondary effect that occurs when some condition is met.

Eg. Currently in Dagger offhand we have “Fire Grab” which does additional damage vs. burning enemies. Since we can cause burning in Flame Attune, you can get this effect in one attunement.

But there should be more!
eg.
Cross-attunement: Ride the Lightning: If enemy has Weakness, they are knocked down.

Cross-class: Shatterstone: If enemy has Poison, the poison is spread to other enemies in the AOE.

Based on Boons:
Drakes Breath: If you have Might, then the breath will immobilise them.

Traits:
Strength of Stone: Deal 10% extra damage in Earth Attunement. If the enemy is blinded, critical hits cause knockdown.

etc.

I’d love for the Ele to have all sorts of crazy complexity with skills that interact with other skills, traits, other classes, etc, and give great benefits to those that can take advantage of those effects.

I would love to see those things. Many GW1 Skills had such interactions – BUT, and here come the buts: The interactions on your own skills would just encourage another skill rotation, while in GW1 they mostly promoted cross-profession interaction. In Gw2 they were going for a simpler, more accessible approach and thus introduced combofields. Not as meaningful mostly, but more accessible. So while you and I want to see this, it might not fit into their concept of gw2. :/

Whoever said that elemental traitlines should half the cooldown of their respective attunements, I completely agree. Either as a grandmaster minor trait, or fused with the master traits that reduce skill cooldowns by 20%.

I would say that our minor traits need to be looked at, pretty much all of them but Arcane and Water are very mediocre.

Just comparing the Ele and Thief minor traits together (since I have experience with Thief, no other reason,) the Thief traits all tend to synergize and give each trait line a playstyle goal. Deadly Arts rewards you debuffing, specifically poison, and gives you an active way to apply poison. Shadow arts rewards you going into Stealth, very heavily with two stacks of might at the end. Seeing the Ele traits based around a logical goal instead of just (rarely) useful buff in attunement, very bad damage when attuning, random buff.

Probably an unworkable idea, but perhaps they could introduce a way to “tune up” the cooldown on an elemental attunement in exchange for higher burst damage/higher healing/more boon or condition stacks or duration where applicable for all skills under that element. It would be a way to dynamically balance the power vs. flexibility equation, so someone who wanted to be able to sit in fire D/D and do excellent glass canon damage could boost the CD on that attunement to the point that if they switch to something else they would be waiting a minute to get the fire attunement back. Maybe do it in pairs so that “tuning up” fire “tunes down” water, for instance, increasing the CD and power on one in exchange for decreasing them for the other.

Improve underwater.
This means Evasive Arcana should have underwater effects and there should be auras underwater.

Longer range on the scepter so I can just ditch the staff completely.

I would love cross-elemental synergies, but I’d prefer more subtle ones, instead of “if weakened: burn”.

For example, cross-elemental strategies that would make Churning Earth more effective. We have utility (lightning flash) for that, but what else? Shocking Aura, from MH air daggers, is cool. It interrupts whoever hits you, I believe, although the range is unfairly tiny. With Earthquake, the cripple from Churning Earth’s channeling, and S.Aura, I think the opponent is only left with dodging away, unless their range is far enough, I suppose, to bypass the aura’s stun.

But what else do we have? Frost Aura is within the same set, but does nothing. In fact, by itself, it’s already highly conditional, it’ a poor 2s chill skill that requires you to get hit, mostly useless for pve where you don’t want to get hit and enemies are slow to attack, and rather mediocre to great for pvp when enemies attack too fast, but even then, it’s not like you’re going to let yourself eat away a Hundred Blades so the warrior can be chilled out for a good amount. Chilling Aura is a long-term investment, more fitting of a necromancer than an elementalist. And for Churning Earth, it just won’t do no matter what. We have also Blinding Flash from Scepter, for an instant single-target blind. Still, it would be interesting if we could get some extra interaction with C.Earth, maybe more utility skills that indirectly help it out, or traits. Stability for auras, in addition to protection?

Uhmm, slightly increase the dmg of the autoattackskills of staffspec and also slightly increase the healing done by geyser.

Im not 100% sure what to do about daggers/scepters… they need to be able to still do nice amounts of dmg, while not having to go 100% glass cannon for it.

I think the biggest divide in the player base is the debate of whether or not “attunment dancing” or being able to stay in one attunment should be viable. I personally would rather see both as an option.

So my suggestion would be to buff all abilities in damage, sync the animations a little better (meteor storm for example) and give solid reason to go into each attunment. I would make it that the more points you put into say earth attunment the cooldown on that attunment is reduced. Arcana would be a universal cooldown for all elements, but if you put 20 points into earth you gain additional cooldown on top of that.

Further giving a stacking or renewing buff for staying in an attunment longer would give more reason to staying in that attunment. So with earth again perhaps giving defense for 3 seconds per 10 seconds in earth. Or maybe giving 20 toughness per stack for 5 stacks every 5 seconds in earth. This could be further reinforced by traits.

This way if someone wants to keep “dancing” they can, but also rewards those who wish to stay or be able to quickly return to an attunment. So I still have the option to go to air or fire, but if I start taking to much heat I can switch to earth quicker then I could if I didn’t have any points invested.

Roziel.5720:

I think the biggest divide in the player base is the debate of whether or not “attunment dancing” or being able to stay in one attunment should be viable. I personally would rather see both as an option.

Shameless self reference: I posted thoughts about just that on page 2, about trait lines reduces the cooldown on their respective attunement. Check out the issues I mentioned and let me know what you think, since I think we’re after the same thing.

First off, I love my elementalist and do enjoy the class but it does need more balancing.

We need to be on a fair playing field as far as burst damage high dps is concerned to other classes and have the ability to survive so we can build either way and have both effect us. As it stands, if we build dps we’re not putting anywhere near as much damage out as other classes, nor as survivable can we take the hits.

I’m not even sure how they would specifically balance it out, but I almost say a complete rework of the class so if you are glass cannon, yes you die fast but do more damage (as it should be, as other classes have when spec’d that way), and as support, it would be more tank-ish.

I’d like to see Burning Speed work somewhat like the warrior’s Rush / Ride the Lightning, where it follows the enemy and stops IN FRONT of them so the PBAOE attack can be delivered on the target instead of us running through the target.

I would be happy with a little bit more damage in auto attack and survivality
and fix several things like.

Why daggers spells with small cone attacks are casted? In melee range both (me and the target) are moving. try to land Lightining Touch, or Fire grab.
Lightining whip will fail a lot even if I’m moving (strafing) if my targets moves.. well good luck to hit something….

And some cooldowns are too big for example frost aura… 40seconds? really? why? its not a A5

The scepter/focus set is my favourite set against engineer/rangers/mesmers because the gap closer on d/d are kinda of bugged, said so I’d be very happy if the scepter/focus would be granted a fast movement skill.

Seen as we can’t change weapon set during combat, I don’t see why the scepter/focus set is the only one which lack speed boons/spells.

Make whirling wind a combo field light or that grant a 10s swiftness, or give us a focus trait, just give us something

We need a healing signet like Warrior’s. Current healing signet is horrible because your damage are mostly DoTs and you hit much less, thus hardly giving you any heal at all. It should work on a X heal per damage dealt basis. In that case, it helps a lot when you are dealing with a group. With your AoE, the more damage you deal, the more aggro you get and you end up tons of mobs chasing after you. Even you can outrun them with speed, you can hardly hit them to gain any heal with the current signet. If it is a heal per damage dealt basis, you can place GTAoE while running away from them, still receiving heals from the damage deal and the fight would be drastically balanced.

ANet needs to study how mage and priest works well in WoW even with squishy armor and health. This is the part I find really inferior in GW2 comparing to WoW.

Ok, I’m sorry but I can’t just post one. I will keep it as concise as possible.

1. Bugs
This is, of course, priority one. Check out the bugs and glitches thread. There are a lot.

2. Long Animations
Dragon’s Tooth, etc. By the way, Dragon’s Tooth should be ground-targeted, and Phoenix should be player targeted (swap them).

3. Arcane Required
As someone stated before me, needing 30 points in a tree for the class to work correctly is ridiculous. How many different builds can Elementalist have if each one requires such a huge investment in Arcane? Not a lot. I’m also not crazy about needing to throw 20 in to get Blasting Staff.

4. Downed State
This has been talked about by previous posters in depth.

5. Bad Traits
Elementalist traits are just bad, especially Fire.

6. Underwater
Our underwater is also just bad. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Better wait around for that elite to come off cooldown folks.

7. Offhand Dagger Cooldowns
Offhand Dagger is limited by extremely long cooldowns. To kill a single player or mob in D/D, you need to RTL, Updraft, switch to fire, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, and Fire Grab. With S/D, remove Burning Speed and add Dragon’s Tooth (ugh) and Phoenix both after the Ring of Fire for the might stacks. Updraft cooldown is 40 seconds, Earthquake and Fire Grab are 45 seconds, and Arcane Wave is 30 seconds. If these abilities are on cooldown, you are completely useless. Compare this to a Hundred Blades Warrior, who will be doing more damage than your entire combo with one ability on an 8 second cooldown. (All cooldowns listed are before 20% decrease traits, including the Warrior’s)

8. ST Staff
Staff desperately needs a good single target damaging ability. No idea why it doesn’t have one. Replace or modify Air 2 to just hit a single target, for good damage, at 1200 range. Right now the only way to even have a good single target damaging ability is to take Arcane Blast. From a class with the lowest health and armor, who benefits the most from being at range, but does not have a single good ST range attack. I have a Warrior alt like many Elementalists who posted here. This is because I wanted to know what it was like to do good ST ranged damage. I didn’t even know some attacks had 1500 range before playing Warrior. Unbelievable.

9. Conjured Weapons
Conjured Weapons go against everything that is Elementalist. “Hey I got a great idea for some Ele abilities! You know how Ele is all about swapping between 4 attunements to use the right skills for the situation? Well how about some abilities that make them NOT do that? Wouldn’t that be great?” I applaud all of you who have been posting your ideas about how to improve them, but seriously, just get rid of these. And replace them with what? I’ll pull some new abilities completely out of my butt right now that would be better in every way:

Fire TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Burning.

Air TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Stun.

Earth TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Immobilize or Bleed.

Water TURBO LASER: Shoots a TURBO LASER at a target, damaging anything in it’s path. Causes Chill.

10. Elite Abilities
The Elementalist seems to have a theme. Ranged damage (mostly being AOE), CC, and healing. None of the Elites reflect this or feel Elite in any way. I will pull some more great abilities out of my butt for you:

Meteor: Calls down a Meteor, dealing AOE NON-RANDOM damage.

Good Gust: PBAOE pushback. (why don’t we already have an ability like this?)
Taze: Tazes a bro, stunning for a long time.

Earth Shield: Obsidian Flesh from Focus, or if that’s too redundant,
Earth Shield: Creates a protective rock barrier/bubble around yourself and nearby allies, negating damage for a short time, or giving protection for a good amount of time.

Freeze: Freezes single target for a long time, like #5 on Frost Bow.
Good Heal: A big heal that doesn’t require a blast finisher to not suck.

Here are other ideas:

(Any one of the three)

A) Firegrab/Lightning touch:
1)Increase area of effect
2) Reduce Cd
3) Increase dmg

B) Glyph of storm :
1) increase dmg
2) Add burning to fire storm and weakness to lightning storm
3) Reduce Cd

C) Glyph of elemental Power :
1) increase proc rate
2) remove internal CD
3) Reduce CD

D) Tornado:
1) Increase damage
2) Increase speed of movement
3) Reduce CD

E) Fiery Greatsword :
1) Weapon change on attunement
2) Reduce CD
3) Grant 15s Protection while wielding it

I would remove the cooldown for swapping atunements. If we are supposed to be swapping to make the most of the class, then we shouldn’t be penalized for it.

Put it on the same timer as Engineers swapping kits! :P

Add 2000 points to our level 80 base health.

Outside dungeons, it would make speccing for defense an alternative rather than a must-do.

Inside dungeons, it might help a toughness specced Elementalist with 2000 armor survive a hit instead of being instantly killed.

Give the ele a nice new elite.

Asteroid.

Change the course of an asteroid from space, causing it to crash down and send enemies into oblivion.

Cast Duration: 3 seconds while an asteroid is dropping down.
Damage: 9000
Causes burning, 5x bleeding, weakness, cripple for 5 seconds.
Radius: 1200
Ground Targeted.

If interrupted, only deal damage equal to time casting. If max dmg = 9000, a 2 sec cast will cause 6000 dmg. Conditions still apply.

Offering up one change is quite difficult but I can offer up the following changes:

• Maintain the HP of the Elementalist
• Defense can go either way. It should either be buffed or stay the same.
• Make the attunements more “specialized.” This means to encourage attunement swapping while not requiring doing so or pressing seventeen keys. It’s obviously clear that with the staff at least Fire is offensive, Air is a psudo-AoE, Water is healing, and Earth is control.
• Significantly buff the DPS the Elementalist does. Right now the Elementalist is not a threat whether that be in sPvP, WvW, or PvE on a one to one basis (note: AoE is fine; I’ve seen “zergs” back off to Meteor Shower and Healing Rain make a difference on a siege assault). I can blindly go up to the Elementalist as nearly any other class and not be afraid of the repercussions because unless the other class is built like the Titanic, it’s not going to be your iceberg.
• DPS should be as followed against a singular target: in melee range, the melee class has the advantage against the Elementalist; in medium/medium-long/“approach range” the Elementalist has the advantage; at long range/AoE range the long range classes should have the advantage while Elementalist has the AoE advantage.

The Elementalist is a spell caster class and was essentially overly nerfed after BWE #2 for being what the spell caster archetype typically is: devastatingly powerful while being incredibly weak. Now, we are devastatingly weak and if we get sneezed on we die. Our attacks are supposed to be devastatingly powerful – the balance is offered up by the devastatingly low defense that allows the spell caster to be picked off easily.

[b]In addition, I should not be required to get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and push seventeen keys perfectly in order all the time. This is not skill as some claim. This is a precursor to a medical condition. Every other class puts out the same damage you did in seventeen keys in three keys – oh, and it took you significantly longer to do so meaning they’ve already out damaged you some more.

Oh wait, are you still alive? That means you faced a horrible opponent and pressed seventeen keys perfectly. Guess what? That’s not skills. I say this after winning 15 of 16 games as an Elementalist before trying to the other classes in sPvP.

One (of many things) I would like to see improved is the flexibility and user friendliness of Elementalist.

When i have D/D out and I need to use my staff for a certain boss and some bright spark pulls before I am ready. I am stuck with D/D for that boss fight. Can’t swap. Or some phases I can’t effectively use my close range abilities but in other phases I can. I have to decide before the fight which weapon to favour and therefore which phase I will favour.

I can’t seem to get a build I like where I can use both D/D and staff, and be effective in dungeons and solo. Always seem to be having to sacrifice something.

You might say, I ask to much from the profession. Maybe, but when I play my guardian who has a large range of weapon choice, large range of play-styles and a large range of viable builds to choose from, I find myself asking, “Why can’t my Ele be a bit more like this?” Just a tad more flexible and user friendly would be nice.