Guild Wars 2

Or should I just go something like engi or ranger and save my time leveling up a character I’ll hate.

Not sure what you’re asking. Are you asking if Eles are glass cannons because that’s what you want to play (i.e. WoW Fire/Arc mage)? Or are you asking what Eles are all about?

It’s worth for WvW sieges with staff or instances (with staff again).
I do PvE in Orr now in glass cannon with D/D and mastering Yoda style =). Yep, it’s some kind of masochism, buts it’s only way to see interesting damage numbers, like ~10k crits with fire grab.
Just get valkyrie gear to get some survivability and berserker accessory.
P.S. In glass cannon D/D spec earth armor is your best friend for PvE IMO.

I think he’s asking if someone who has built a Glass Canon Ele thinks the DPS is worth dying in 2 hits…

I’ve yet to finalize my Glass Cannon build, and when I go afk I die in 2 hits. But when I’m trying to play I don’t feel as weak as everyone else claims to be and certainly find it fun. Are guardians and other classes easier to play and do more damage with less effort – sure. I enjoy seeing enemies chase me down and ignore guardians and others because they don’t try and I do more damage than them – always.

Not sure if I helped you any Dom, GL deciding.

Was more along the lines of what Bvhj said. Just trying to see if it’s worth the time.

I’ve spent a.. well, far too long in pvp since the game came out, and I’ve been infinitely frustrated with it there. Want to do damage, but it just seems like an uphill battle if I want to do it with scepters and staves like I would enjoy.

Glass cannon PvP experience has been extremely frustrating for me. Most of the damage came from positional or unreliable (I am looking at you, Fire Grab) abilities which required utilities to land most of the time. So point for point I felt that I was dealing less damage than other glass cannon builds while being squishier and giving up much more survivability.

So in my opinion – glass cannon build is not worth the effort for Elementalists the way they are now.

Sure it’s worth it if you compare it with other elem builds, imo the best builds for elem are just either dps or tank/heal.

But if you compare it to other classes, you will see that if you want to be the glass cannon type of class you better go for warrior or thieves. When GC eles are compared to these 2 classes, they have far more superior damage and even have more survivability than glass cannon eles.

IMO if you want to enjoy playing the class you have no other option but to go tank/heal or add a little damage but keep in mind to always put toughness/vitality as your secondary stat.

To make it short:

PvE? Yes! you will rock the kittening kitten out of every dungeon mob in about 2 seconds!

WvW? A lot of fun to nuke ppl on Castle walls but you’re pretty much kittened up in
any 1v1 Situation (had a thief killling me in 2 seconds allready >.> )

sPvP? simply no! you will just cry…

Schwip.5738:

To make it short:

PvE? Yes! you will rock the kittening kitten out of every dungeon mob in about 2 seconds!

WvW? A lot of fun to nuke ppl on Castle walls but you’re pretty much kittened up in
any 1v1 Situation (had a thief killling me in 2 seconds allready >.> )

sPvP? simply no! you will just cry…

Dungeon mobs….how would that go….well, thinking of AC, it would be “ele casts a spell, ele is one shotted”. Dungeons are not about damage, they are about durability as you cant deal damage if you are dead. Also – we dont get the damage dealing either.

I’m having a lot of fun as a scepter/dagger glass cannon in landscape PvE, relying heavily on Fire. I have negligible kiting skills, so if I get ganked by too many enemies at once I’ll probably die. But so what?

A single enemy will typically be dead in a few seconds. If I don’t have any pets out to tank, I can blow up a few meleers fast thanks to AoE. Then I heal in Water, and if the ranged attacks aren’t too fierce I have a good chance of beating them.

I’m most likely to die either when I’m faced with a ridiculous number of attackers, or when I do a poor job of noticing that it’s time to somersault out of red circles.

Yes, very worth it especially on WvW, events and certain dungeons. COE, SE, COF, HOTW … You can pretty much go 30 Fire 30 Air with full zerker gear and blast away. You can pretty much do it all esp if your awareness is good. Dodging etc.

Seeing your meteor shower crit for 4-5k and every fireball is 2-3k is quite delicious. Best is in WvW during keep defense. One time the enemies managed to break in the first gate. I proceeded to AE through the hole at the top. Seeing lots of 5k dmg pop up is so much fun.

chronometria.3708:

Schwip.5738:

To make it short:

PvE? Yes! you will rock the kittening kitten out of every dungeon mob in about 2 seconds!

WvW? A lot of fun to nuke ppl on Castle walls but you’re pretty much kittened up in
any 1v1 Situation (had a thief killling me in 2 seconds allready >.> )

sPvP? simply no! you will just cry…

Dungeon mobs….how would that go….well, thinking of AC, it would be “ele casts a spell, ele is one shotted”. Dungeons are not about damage, they are about durability as you cant deal damage if you are dead. Also – we dont get the damage dealing either.

Huh… I’m not going to lie I did die a few times more than my PuG when I first did TA. But I’m confused as to why you claim we don’t get the damage dealing since even though I died more I still killed more than anyone else on my party. Only reason I died more was because I did deal more damage and the mobs decided I needed to die.

Also there was two times our warrior decided he didn’t need to wait for the party to be ready so I went and saved him resulting in my death… needless to say next time I go through I’ll know what’s going on – die less – and as a result kill more.

Durability is for those unable to mitigate/avoid damage… and since this game’s not about tanking mobs I’m quite fine going Glass Cannon PvE and giving them less time to attack overall.

Btw, if you set up your Ele for durability and get one shotted you should probably watch for the animations leading up to major attacks, since I can set up as Glass Cannon and still take 3-4 hits before I die all I can assume is you let the hits that can one shot any class strike you.