Guild Wars 2

There are a lot of posts saying that the elementalist isn’t a good profession. The damage isn’t good, people die a lot, the auto attack is worthless etc … But when I read through the posts, very frequently I learn that the people who are complaining don’t attunement swap, don’t use combo’s, and just stand there and let the enemy hit them. Those people shouldn’t be complaining about the profession, they aren’t even really playing it.

The core of the elementalist is the FOUR attunements and you have to use All of them EQUALLY in a fight. And really you shouldn’t auto attack any opponent. There are 16 skills on your weapon you should be using instead. No other profession comes near that amount.

In PvE, the elementalist can easily take on six mobs at the same time on any weapon combination. Or even ten and more if they are all melee. Why? Because the elementalist is an AoE profession, even with dual daggers. An elementalists can always do a bit of everything (control/damage/support) on any weapon set. That means it’s normal that there is always a profession that can do things more easily then the elementalist. But can those professions do it all at the same time?

So either you use the four attunments and all of your abilities, or this profession is not for you and you’ll be better and happier with an other one.

Just because people are complaining doesn’t mean they aren’t swapping.
Most of the complainers know about and do swap. Its not a matter of whether or not we can do things in pve, but how well we can do it compared to other classes. Yes, we can take on large mobs by ourselves, but other classes *coughs*warrior*coughs* can do the same faster and with more ease. And yes they can do it all at the same time, nearly every profession can.
edit: ex. shout war:has higher dps, is much sturdier, aoe, heals and has some cc.
And on a less important note, auto attack has its place in the cycle too, its not completely worthess expect some staff ones perhaps.

And yet NO other class NEEDS you to use everything they have to be playable.

And if they do use them, they outperform Elementalist.

So no, you are just using the attunements as an excuse when the fact still is that Elementlists is NOT balanced.

Elementalists are underpowered because you must swap attunements, because you must chain you abilities, because you must dodge and kite like crazy, because you must make the best use of your combo fields and because you must interrupt your own burst to survive against pve enemies, which are generally weak, easy and killed in seconds by the standards of the best professions out there, like the guardian and the warrior.

About skill count (weapons + main mechanics), the Warrior and the Ranger have 12, the Thief has 11 (+2 stealth skills? And steal is not a fixed skill), the Guardian has 13, the Mesmer has 14 skills (4 shatters + good auto-attacks), the Necromancer has 15 (DS + DS skills) and the Engineer has between 9 and 29 (?), considering kits are their own version of attunements.

When an Elementalist has effectively 16 skills, and several (= most) of the other professions have more complex and detailed skills than the Elementalist, while having more diversity in range and smaller cooldowns, then I wonder where the advantage is?

Finally, the elementalist is not even the best at AoE. With 3 button presses, a Greatsword Guardian, without weapon swapping (which is as important to them as attunements are to us, but they seem to rely much less on that mechanic) can make a huge aoe burst (burning + symbol tick damage + whirling + leap), stack retaliation from two different sources (for even higher damage), remove conditions twice and blind all foes. 3 buttons. It’s generally enough to take down most of the HP from most pve enemies, and you can pre-use another skill for more damage-over-time (+ interruption), and spam auto-attack for might-stacking and clean up respectively before or after the combo.

Enemies will die before you even have the opportunity to swap weapons.

think about how many times we have seen a thief kill you with 4 hartseekers or just unload on you with pistol shots til you are down…. did they use STEAL, their class mechanic?

ever been crossfire spammed to death? they didnt use their class mechanic either.

i have NEVER….. EVER… been a fight and not switched stances. even if i dont hit all 4, i will AT LEAST switch once before i die. now a days I swap constantly til i die.

I’ve thought attunement swapping wa a problem for quite a while now. It feels to me like someone early on in development had a crush on attunement swapping and just refused to let it go, even as the class moved in a different direction.

To me it feels shoe-horned in and kinda gimmiky, and the class as a whole suffers as a result.

At the very least I feel like attunement swapping should be something you can choose to actively trait for if you want, and ignore altogether if like me, you’re not a fan of it. I’d like to see elementalist given incentives to trait for swapping, or indeed incentive to focus purely in one element. Choice is the name of the game here, and currently, elementalist has very little to work with.

I find sticking to 1 attunement isnt wrong, especially in staff build, for pure damage, yourll most likely just stick to fire and a bunch of cantrips. as a healer yourll most likely stay in water, and as support probably earth. and switch to air for oh crap situations.

If your a dedicated healer and you are just switching all over the place when you are trying to heal, your doing it wrong.

if you are going to tons of damage, stick to fire spec to keep up the might stacks.

If your doing support, stick to earth for the debuffs or you will lose it.

DiogoSilva you are 100% right.
I hope that someone from ANet will read your post.

Playing Elementalist feel like I was shooting blanks from a machine gun, enemies die strangled by the smoke

I hear A pvmer … lol

noobies opinion dont count bro

The only weapon where I would stick to one attunement is Staff’s Fire, because their 1-3 are on lowish cooldowns and #1 actually does decent damage. And switching attunements doesn’t increase your damage. So at that point switching is only used for survival.

Elementalists are underpowered because you must swap attunements, because you must chain you abilities, because you must dodge and kite like crazy, because you must make the best use of your combo fields and because you must interrupt your own burst to survive against pve enemies, which are generally weak, easy and killed in seconds by the standards of the best professions out there, like the guardian and the warrior.

About skill count (weapons + main mechanics), the Warrior and the Ranger have 12, the Thief has 11 (2 stealth skills? And steal is not a fixed skill), the Guardian has 13, the Mesmer has 14 skills (4 shatters + good auto-attacks), the Necromancer has 15 (DS + DS skills) and the Engineer has between 9 and 29 (?), considering kits are their own version of attunements.

When an Elementalist has effectively 16 skills, and several (= most) of the other professions have more complex and detailed skills than the Elementalist, while having more diversity in range and smaller cooldowns, then I wonder where the advantage is?

Finally, the elementalist is not even the best at AoE. With 3 button presses, a Greatsword Guardian, without weapon swapping (which is as important to them as attunements are to us, but they seem to rely much less on that mechanic) can make a huge aoe burst (burning + symbol tick damage + whirling + leap), stack retaliation from two different sources (for even higher damage), remove conditions twice and blind all foes. 3 buttons. It’s generally enough to take down most of the HP from most pve enemies, and you can pre-use another skill for more damage-over-time ( interruption), and spam auto-attack for might-stacking and clean up respectively before or after the combo.

Enemies will die before you even have the opportunity to swap weapons.

DioGoSylva, this is complete true , and as someone who plays the elementalist and guardian both , i can know it

Have to agree with DiogoSilva, honestly it is so frustrating to play the class. Is it just me?

Dont worry guys, OP is lvl 50 farming some random stuff.

Who the kittenumes other elementalists doesnt swap attunements?

newbies ofc

Reminds me of playing a necro. You have to use every trick they’ve got, just to function. Class abilities and utilities need to be spammed, even just fighting one or two trash mobs that other classes just tear through by pressing 1, 2, 3. Or 2, 1, 1 – but you get the idea.

Sure, when I first started posting to the Ele forum, my ele was only lv.15 and I didn’t understand swapping yet, but now (not so many levels later) I do it like crazy. Some probably learn faster than others, but I can’t imagine getting to 80 without it.

‘You are’ or ’you’re’, pick one.

What was wrong with GW1 elementalist? Focus on what you wanted to play and become good at it. Here its just “QUICK SWITCH TO THAT SO YOU CAN CHAIN THIS THEN BACK AND HOPE YOU DON’T MISS A SKILL!” <<< one mistake and you are dead.

An interview on mmorpg.com

A little extract:

“MMORPG.com: How about the balance team? I love Guardians… but I think we can all agree that certain builds of that profession might be a little bit imba.

Colin Johanson: Our folks working on balance are cranking away every day to make the game more balanced across all the professions. We’ve extremely proud of the relative state of balance of the game on launch, it’s very rare for an MMO to launch in a state where there aren’t constant massive tweaks required balance wise, which helps make our job easier. Of course, as we progress forward and the meta game continues to develop, we will continue to work and keep the game as balanced as possible! "

LOL!!!!!!!!

Switching attunements isn’t the issue, and is infact one of the reasons I play the elementalist. It keeps things active. If you don’t like attunement swapping, the kitten are you playing an elementalist for? They’ll fix us eventually so until then, learn to swap attunements and enjoy it, or play a different class because you’re lazy.

It’s not laziness that puts me off swapping, it’s lack of cohesion/theme.

I’m a sucker for a theme, my norn elementalist is called ‘Ursula Stonetongue’, not ‘Swappy McSwitcheroo’. I guess I’d like them to make it a little more optional, like I said above – some way to trait for either a swapping build OR a pure 1 element build.

The biggest strength of the GW1 elementalist for me was that each seperate element played so differently. It kind of turned one profession into 4 possible professions. It was fun for me and I miss it. The jack of all trades theme on the elementalist – to me – leaves the class feeling messy and unfocused.

I’m not against attunement swapping per se, I think it should be a viable option/build path, but not the only viable path. I don’t enjoy when I’m blinkered into playing a profession one way and one way only.

I get the rage for attunement swapping, but I don’t get why people who hate it keep playing the class. I can’t see Anet pulling a SWG-NGE on Elementalists. They’re as likely to just balance the way it currently works and make the kind of single-attunement dedicated roles some people want into a new class. Because by the time they have the resources to do that, the Elementalists will have their established fans.

Gombie.3860:

If your a dedicated healer and you are just switching all over the place when you are trying to heal, your doing it wrong.

Even with water alacrity, how does one stay just in Water to be a healer? Damage would seem to come to fast to stay ahead of it. I ask seriously too, I don’t have a lot of experience with healing so far.

I use attunement swapping in Staff mostly for combo field effects. My usual rotation goes through all four attunements of fields and typically involves blast and projectile finishers. I’m no mesmer of boons/conditions of course But I can’t fathom how someone wouldn’t take advantage of this.

Oh, and yes, PvE only. So, “noob” for the “real gamers” who only PvP I guess?

I don’t think that, when big class balancing changes come, that the elementalist will be brought in line with everyone else. Instead, they’ll be brought in line with us. I don’t think Anet wanted to have 1-button wonder professions. Once they fix our bugs (which will probably happen after they get done fixing bugs in dungeons, world events, etc. so that the game world is playable for every profession) and nerf the other classes a bit, the elementalist will be more fun to play for everyone.

And I hope they keep us attunement swapping because I don’t want another “Fire mage or go home” scenario. And that happened in GW1 when it first came out. Could you play as an Air elementalist? Yeah…but few people did because fire was better.

If you don’t like the class, play something you will like, because it’s play style isn’t going to be for everyone. I will never make a warrior in this game, regardless of how awesome they are at killing things, because it’s just not my play style.

I really fail to see why everyone complains about being forced to swap attunements. That’s just how you play the class. There’s nothing hard or complex about swapping attunements, and if anything the other classes are just too easy. It’s about as hard as swapping guns in an FPS to avoid reloading in a heavy fire situation, or chaining special moves in a 2D fighter.

I totally agree with you. It annoys me when I see people who are like; I LIKE FIRE SO I’M GOING TO PUT ON SIGNET OF FIRE AND ONLY STAY ATTUNED TO FIRE. The worst is those water eles that use staff and stick to water and think they’re a dedicated healer. There is no such thing as a dedicated healer in this game. People need to get over it. I personally use a staff or scepter/dagger, and I’m usually attuned to fire, and I have CoF armor so people mistake me for it, but believe me I use all attunes. If I don’t switch, I’m killing things too fast :P. Dragon’s Tooth is an insta-kill.

Does anyone think that the Engineer is the fixed version on the Elementalists?

Think about it.

• Engineers’ kits are optional, which means their weapon’s skills are inherently strong (including the auto-attack). In comparison, elementalists’ almost never have any time to auto-attack, and when they do, they’re just filler damage you milk inbetween your high-recharging combos.
• You pick the kits you want to equip at the sacrifice of utility skills. They almost work like weapon swaps, o you can have up to 2-4-ish weapons to swap for. If you want more skills to play similar to an elementalist, you can choice it. If you want something more relaxed but equally strong, you can choice it. Your ranged options are customisable as well. In contrast, once you pick a weapon set for your elementalist, you’re stuck into the same 20 abilities, you’re stuck into a specific range and lack power when your opponents take advantage of that, and your conjures break the rhythm of your playstyle.
• With an Engineer, you choose the flavour you like the best. If Engineers were Elementalists, you would be able to pick your favourite elements, or go attunement-dancing crazy and pick most/ all of them.

Now, there’s a few advantages to the current elementalist’s design. For example, cross-attunement combos are possible, making the elementalist play like a character from a fightning game. This adds its levels of fun. And you can specc from an “epic” crowd control/ support/ aoe wizard, to a magical “ninja”.

I think one of the biggest problems with the elementalists, and I’m talking about design-wise and not (only) about balance-wise, is that conjures should have be as important to elementalists as kits are to Engineers.

Any solution leading to that could lead you say: but then conjures would be way too similar to kits! And I would add: no, they would be the opposite. While an Engineer starts simple and has the option to become more complex, an Elementalist would have the effective option to become simpler while starting complex. Effective because that already happens currently, but it’s clunky and not strong enough. This way, players who would want to specc for battle mages, for weapon swapping or simply for a simpler gameplay style, they would be able to cast conjures, get locked of their attunements skills, and use their new weapon for whenever they want, without charges or duration. The moment they switched out of that weapon, it would go into a high recharge (60s?), and you would be forced to use normal attunement skills or even another conjure.

Gombie.3860:

I find sticking to 1 attunement isnt wrong, especially in staff build, for pure damage, yourll most likely just stick to fire and a bunch of cantrips. as a healer yourll most likely stay in water, and as support probably earth. and switch to air for oh crap situations.

If your a dedicated healer and you are just switching all over the place when you are trying to heal, your doing it wrong.

lol. Assuming an even 1000 Healing Power (assuming you are a dedicated healer, you should have that much at least). In 18s seconds you can either:

• Cast 12 water blasts and a Geyser for a total of 8814 AoE healing.

Or you could

• Cast Geyser, Combo Eruption+Geyser and trigger Healing Ripple and 9s of regeneration from switching into water (20% duration from runes, 30% from arcane line) for a total of 9831 AoE healing.
• Provide 6.5s protection to your group
• Provide swiftness to your group
• AoE blind the opponents
• Put down a fire combo field…
• …that coincidently deals about the same damage as all the 12 water blasts. (and the same goes for the Eruption)
• And still have time over for a bunch of other stuff such as applying weakness, AoE burning, putting down a Static Field, etc.

DiogoSilva, I haven’t played Engineer but if it is like how you make it sound then I agree with you wholeheartedly.

To all of those who say “play another class”, can you please name another class that does elemental damage from range?

Perhaps we picked the Elementalist because we thought the aspect of elemental damage either sounded cool or is what we’ve been playing in other games.
Perhaps we picked the Elementalist not fully knowing how it played out, and saw the attunements at the start more as a suggestion than a requirement.

Also, who cares if the Elementalist was a magical form of Engineer (having to slot elements) – is a Guardian not just a magical Warrior mechanics wise?

I love the look of Elementalist, I don’t love the mechanics as much.

I honestly enjoy the playstyle of the elementalist. My only complaints are lack of easy survivability, I think our toughness or our base health should get a boost or our damage number should be tweaked. But I like swapping attunements, I like kiting and as I’m currently doing D/D, I like the very swift hit and run style of gameplay. I’m very mobile.

I just think we could use some small tweaks, some better elites, and maybe some tweaks to conjured weapons to encourage ease of use. Our trait line could use a bit of work as well, but overall I highly enjoy my elementalist.

Swap attunments? I dont think anyone can swap attunements FOUR times for a single fight ausing ALL the damage skills available (as the OP is describing) in a single fight against anyone who knows how to play. And even if you somehow manage to survive the fight, you only managed to blow all your cooldowns for the next fight.

It’s funny because over on the engineer forum they’ve said that elementalist is the fixed version of engineer.

Grass is always greener etc.

luchifer.6401:

Swap attunments? I dont think anyone can swap attunements FOUR times for a single fight ausing ALL the damage skills available (as the OP is describing) in a single fight against anyone who knows how to play. And even if you somehow manage to survive the fight, you only managed to blow all your cooldowns for the next fight.

By the time you’ve done a full cycle, your offensive options in the fire tree at least will have been off cooldown.

An example is such for double daggers:

Advance on a target with Wind 4, Wind 3, wind 5. Opponent is knocked down.

Fire Attune – Fire 3, fire 4, fire 2. By now they’ll be able to dodge, attack or move, so we’ll omit fire 5 unless we’re sure they’ll stand still to take it.

Earth attune – wait for them to blow their dodge/disable, then Earth 4 (knockdown), earth 5 (either they get hit or they blow a second dodge).

By now you’ve probably taken some damage, so.

Water attune – Water 2, Water 5, healing signet.

is your opponent still dangerous? Then re-attune to wind and get away with wind 4, or pop mist form and kite for a while.

Ther’es an example of how to use a majority of your offensive skills in a practical situation. And that’s just a simple example.

If you are out to do DPS, there is no point switching to other attunements. Our traits sort of punish us for switching. Our traits are all based on individual attunements.

If I am 30 Fire, 30 Air, 10 Arcane. I will stay in staff, suit up full zerker, stay Fire and do max DPS. I do more DPS than any other attunements. The only time I need switching is the occasional need for some utilities, CC etc. Beyond that it is useless.

Now if I have at least 20-30 Arcane, playing D/D style … you would probably go through a lot of attunements switching.

I have said it before, our traits synergy is weak. It forces us to go a particular attunement. Now if you go 20-30 Arcane, which is sort of the basic requirement of Elementalist, your DPS drops quite a lot. Probably by half. So we are a weird class. We are required to switch attunements. But at the same time the way our traits work doesn’t really help us a whole lot.

When your attunement CD is so long, there’s not much point outside of 20-30 Arcane. I don’t like that our traits are all based on individual attunements. Look at other class. Most if not all traits help the class across the board, and not specific weapons, skill etc. Yes, there are major traits to change for specific weapons, but those are interchangeable. Ele’s is more or less stuck in a particular attunement.

Having to constantly attunement-swap contradicts the point of traits and specialization.

While attunement swapping should have its benefits for maverick jack-of-all-trades type players, sticking to one element should also have its benefits.

I should be able to focus entirely on Fire, and be able to burn through my enemies like butter, just like how Thieves can focus on crit, burst damage, and executioners to cut down targets within 5 seconds.
And I shouldn’t have to swap to Water/Earth just to keep myself alive.

That’s the appeal of concepts like “Master of Fire”.

Christ you guys whine so much.

I’m no expert on the class, but all I did was read up a bit on how to play, what abilities to use, what to use when and I have overall managed to do alot better in SPVP, coming generally top of the board most games yesterday..

I decided not to go for a pure berserker build, trying to gain max DPS, you’ll just die in a couple of hits and wonder why you suck. Get some toughness, use your abilities properly and you’ll be fine.

It’s not hard to swap attunements, if anything the heals with s/d are a bit pony, but honestly you’re a caster, you shouldn’t be godmode.

The only class i’ve struggled with is glass cannon thief, other than that, i can escape, kill, cc all other classes.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Having to constantly attunement-swap contradicts the point of traits and specialization.

While attunement swapping should have its benefits for maverick jack-of-all-trades type players, sticking to one element should also have its benefits.

I should be able to focus entirely on Fire, and be able to burn through my enemies like butter, just like how Thieves can focus on crit, burst damage, and executioners to cut down targets within 5 seconds.
And I shouldn’t have to swap to Water/Earth just to keep myself alive.

That’s the appeal of concepts like “Master of Fire”.

I disagree that swapping inherently contradicts traits, many of them focus on skill families and effects that aren’t tied to any particular element, and a whole line is dedicated to the act of swapping itself. I do however agree that there doesn’t seem to be enough options available for those who want to run in one attunement a majority of the time, driving up its strengths at the cost of versatility. Pyromancer’s Puissance is the only one that really lives up to that. I’d like to see a “snowball”-y trait or two for every element, preferably high up in the line.

And no, our price of being able to do everything at any given time is that we can’t do it all at once. If you choose to go glass cannon and tunnel-vision fire attunement, you should be appropriate amounts of cannon and glass. A single element should never be good at everything or then there’s little reason to even have the whole attunement mechanic in the first place. You might as well play any old generic mage class at that point. That’s the downside, the upside of course is that you’ll always have the option to sacrifice your DPS for a while in exchange for earth/water’s increased survivability.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Having to constantly attunement-swap contradicts the point of traits and specialization.

While attunement swapping should have its benefits for maverick jack-of-all-trades type players, sticking to one element should also have its benefits.

I should be able to focus entirely on Fire, and be able to burn through my enemies like butter, just like how Thieves can focus on crit, burst damage, and executioners to cut down targets within 5 seconds.
And I shouldn’t have to swap to Water/Earth just to keep myself alive.

That’s the appeal of concepts like “Master of Fire”.

Right now our traits punishes us for switching traits for those focused on DPS. I agree that if we want to do DPS, we should be able to do it across all traits especially with Fire.

I disagree on how we shoudn’t switch to heal. Water traits are precisely exist for it. How then would you expect to survive? Stand there and get kill?

I still want to see traits that has synergy throughout all 4 attunements. I.e. Instead of Fire traits we have Explosive Trait Line – Focus on Burst Dmg or Long Range Dmg. Ex: 10% dmg to all Staff spells. Remove the minor traits that has to do with getting hit in melee only. Why give us such a situational trait? Right now if you take Fire trait, to have most DPS you need to stay in fire. No point going to other attunements.

While we are encourage to switch attunements, if you don’t take arcane it is useless. I lose more DPS by switching.

Most of the minor traits too are attunements related. Look at Warrior or Thief’s minor traits. All of them benefit them regardless of what weapons they use.

Don’t really get what y’all are whining about, elementalist is high skillcap sure, and slightly(!) underpowered, but ele does a lot of things better than any other class. Healing comes to mind, you can heal aoe for like 7k and still do amazing aoe dmg..

sure other classes are easier to get comparable results, but it’s a high skillchamp profession for a reason -_-

PS if you think that staying in one atunement does the most dmg, incl fire, you’re deluded. swapping quickly is the key to a good ele

Personally im having time of my life with the ele, pvp scepter/dagger having so much utility is amazing and using D/D for pve is just so much fun with the possible combos/auras.

People are getting hung up on what numbers you are putting out when what you should be looking at is are you effective at what you want to do and are you having fun doing it, I can answer a hell yeah to both so I pray they dont change ele too much in the future.

Love the active playstyle of attunement swapping as you have to be on the ball which gives a sense of achievement when you do nuke that group of 10 mobs down and finish on full hp, yes guardian could do that with ease but that just makes it a boring class unless your into hitting your 3 buttons and coming out a ‘winner’.

ele is good support other than that every other class beats it with 1-2 buttons use only

This topic kind of made me wonder…I thought attunment swapping was supposed to be done with a reason…but most here claim the pro way is to just race through every cd you have, completely disregarding the situation you are in… Am I really doing it wrong when I put thought into playing an ele?!

TWMagimay.9057:

This topic kind of made me wonder…I thought attunment swapping was supposed to be done with a reason…but most here claim the pro way is to just race through every cd you have, completely disregarding the situation you are in… Am I really doing it wrong when I put thought into playing an ele?!

Yes and No.
There’s often a most efficient order to use your skills, and once you’ve found out this order you only need to think about which string of skills you should use next.

There doesn’t seem to be a quote button…anyway…
But the most effeient way would very much depend on traits, 6-0 skills and weapon choice., doesn’t it? The reason I find it weird is…I don’t swap very often when soloing(air for running aroun, fire for killing, water when I feel i might have underestimated the mobs and earth…because it’s just fun) and, frankly, I love it. I kill fast, I survive without a problem and it’s just lovely. Ofc, that only happened after I got semi-decent gear. 2 days ago I couldn’t even get close to a certain event. Last night I solo’d it withotu breaking a sweat…which makes me feel like the class might be more gear dependent(because i most definitely didn’t become a much better player in 24h…)

What kind of discussion is this supposed to be? Whatever your opinion is you cant argue that our spells are situational and so in turn is attunement swapping. Wanna deal maximum damage in staff? Looks like the best way to go is to stay in fire.

I agree that in a PvP environment all skills ranging from heavy nukes to long ccs will aid you in every situation so if that is your goal, to be a top pvper, you cannot stay in one attunement and still use the profession to its full potential.

I would if one thing wish for better syncronisation across our trait trees, and to be a little tankier by default so going heavy into water and arcane wont always be the best choice.

ele is good support other than that every other class beats it with 1-2 buttons use only

This is pretty much my beef with a number of classes in this game. When I play Engi constantly switching between kits, or an Ele constantly switching attunements, and then watch a guardian/warrior/thief do the same content in less time without even swapping weapons once, this is fundamentally broken.

Why is it broken? The game is supposed to be, on some level, an eSport? So how can you pit a class that performs just fine (note: not great, not fantastic, not pro, but fine) without even swapping weapons into the same battleground as someone who has to use significantly more skills and swaps and still performs worse (DPS-wise)? It’s like putting a 90lb nerd into a ring with Mike Tyson and expecting there to be “competition”.

ANet really needs to make a call on this. Either classes are meant to be complex and very skill-dependent. Or facerolls. Right now, we have about 1/2 of the game as faceroll to semi-faceroll, and the remaining 1/2 that feel like an order of magnitude more difficult. Just can’t put these two groups together into the same ring and expect it to be competitive.

Think of ele as an out-fighter and warrior would be a swagger(taking your boxing analogy to the level of smb who actually knows box). Yes, out-fighters have to work more, throw in more punches while evedaing the opponent better. A swagger pretty much stands there, soaks the hits and delivers a K.O when he gets the chance. Are out-fighters UP because they have to work harder? Before you answer, Muhammad Ali is an out-fighter.

This is why our trees need an overhaul. It is ridiculous expecting us to spec Arcane 100% of the time.

OP, thanks for revelation. We, miserable mortals, didn’t even know about attunement swap. But now, after your great post, we will use this great and wonderful attunement swap. And not just stuck in fire attunement using auto-attack like completely idiots.
P.S. Sarcasm

I only spec 10 points arcane >.>
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcazM9molvMMolvMM0pVxaoaVcsV

TWMagimay.9057:

Think of ele as an out-fighter and warrior would be a swagger(taking your boxing analogy to the level of smb who actually knows box). Yes, out-fighters have to work more, throw in more punches while evedaing the opponent better. A swagger pretty much stands there, soaks the hits and delivers a K.O when he gets the chance. Are out-fighters UP because they have to work harder? Before you answer, Muhammad Ali is an out-fighter.

Oh talk about summing it up. This guy is good. He is right the people who say ele has to use all there stuff to compete against a class such as warrior who can just use 1 skill. Clearly warrior is an easy class. A no brainer class. A class that probably is unfair at the moment due to being so easy to survive and deal massive damage. It’s not eles that need there auto attack to be more dmg output to equal a warriors skill less ability it’s warriors who need to become more challenging to play to obtain there high damage.

Challenge is fun. Skill less and button mashing blindfolded is boring and repetitive childs play. The people who play Warriors are not to blame it’s the people who choose how warrior should work.

I only spec 10 points arcane >.>
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcazM9molvMMolvMM0pVxaoaVcsV

Really bad spec.

• The points in air are wasted on inferior traits.
• You split points between two bad minor traits instead of going for a good major trait
• Wasting the 30 point water trait on cantrip mastery is a sin, especially considering cantrip mastery doesn’t even work with mist form.

Wildclaw.6073:

I only spec 10 points arcane >.>
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcazM9molvMMolvMM0pVxaoaVcsV

Really bad spec.

• The points in air are wasted on inferior traits.
• You split points between two bad minor traits instead of going for a good major trait
• Wasting the 30 point water trait on cantrip mastery is a sin, especially considering cantrip mastery doesn’t even work with mist form.

It does work for mist form 75-60s cooldown
The reason for the air is because it gets me to 40% crit chance while my gear stacks vit, power and some toughness.
I didn’t go 30 in air because 5 in earth gives 130 toughness instead of 50 any other stat and the 10 in arcane give a really useful team/rotation trait.

My build is all about rotating defensive CD’s to mitigate burst while going through standard dagger offensives/elemental/ Firewall+ Arcane Proj

Not to mention I start in air, from there I either mitigate ranged/thief elite with 4. Open with a 5 CC which is where LW and Lightning Touch come in.
Also lightning whip has longer reach then the fire spammer?

After that is when I decide whether to go Fire for damage, Earth to survive an opponents burst or Water for Chilld/Daze/Heal/Cond remove.