Guild Wars 2

I have every other class other than Guardian one of which is 80 and the other is on its way to 80 while the rest are a mix. For my last character slot I decided to try Elementalist!

My gaming experience with this class is so negative I have to reach to the conclusion its me not the class. On its own, or in isolation the class seems ok BUT as soon as I reflect to my gaming experience while playing ANY of the other classes in lots of different roles Elementalist appears to be this horrible leveling class that can’t do anything particularly well.

Can any one tell me how can I play this class as ranged/control? Thief, Necro and Ranger all are more than capable of AE kiting and are outstanding single target kiters/control classes. Can Ele do that?

I don’t understand this thread…

From what I read – You feel the class on its own is “ok”, but when compared to the other classes it falls short?

And that this is somehow -your- fault and not the class itself?

If this is indeed the point you are trying to put across, all you need to do to get your answer is read other topics in this here “Elementalist forum”.

Okay, let me go into the details on what you did wrong:

You made an Elementalist.

Cempa.3645:

I have every other class other than Guardian one of which is 80 and the other is on its way to 80 while the rest are a mix. For my last character slot I decided to try Elementalist!

My gaming experience with this class is so negative I have to reach to the conclusion its me not the class. On its own, or in isolation the class seems ok BUT as soon as I reflect to my gaming experience while playing ANY of the other classes in lots of different roles Elementalist appears to be this horrible leveling class that can’t do anything particularly well.

Can any one tell me how can I play this class as ranged/control? Thief, Necro and Ranger all are more than capable of AE kiting and are outstanding single target kiters/control classes. Can Ele do that?

Comparatively, I think Eles are a bit…. weaker than other professions. My first profession was an ele, and it wasn’t until I played a different one that I began to notice that. If you’re playing ele as your ‘last’ profession, then I can certainly imagine that initially it’s going to be a negative experience.

However, I don’t think eles are too bad, and it takes a while to appreciate their (minimal) strengths. Don’t wory though, after you’ve undertaken years of elitist training, you’ll be just about ready to compete with the inexperienced members of other professions.

PvE wise, at least in my experience I found levels 15-30 ish quite a big struggle. I really struggled with the story quests here too. After that though, I’ve found progression quite smooth. Admittedly, you’ll be raking in loot (especially with staff) due to your numerous aoes during group events. I think eles excel here

Providing you can get the balance between raking it in, and not dying (which admittedly can be a pain!) it is an enjoyable profession I think. It will take time to get the momentum going though. It’s not an easy ride initially, but it eases out towards the end. (At least in PvE).

When leveling elementalist i contantly find myself in fights where burst damage is the key to my victory. Pick up a S/D setup and start attunement dancing, also pick up armor of earth, arcane shield, lightning flash for survival. IMO elementalist is not harder to lvl then for instance a ranger and its more fun with the ele.

One area where I think ANet may have done the ele a disservice is that they’ve made the learning curve even steeper than it would be naturally due to the weird level scaling of their healing skills – GoEH, their best self-heal, seems to be viable at 80 but at 20 it feels like slapping a bandaid on a gaping stomach wound. End result is that the time at which you’re really getting to grips with how the elementalist works is the time at which the profession is the least forgiving of errors.

It does get better once you get over that hump. The trick – short of smacking things with lightning hammers – is never to sit in one attunement firing off slot-1 skills unless it’s a battle you can practically sleep through anyway. Come up with a rotation for each attunement, and cycle through the rotations and you can do… decently.

S/D would allow ranged control or more than any other weapon?

Or I need to kill stuff fast or die?

And yes I am lower than 15 and yes I’m comparing to 80 Necro, 60 Thief, 60 Warrior and varying levels of the other professions.

Every other class I have felt powerful right out of the gate except Ele.

S/D does not allow for the most ranged control but it does allow for the fastest burst aoe damage with skills like dragons tooth, ring of fire, pheonix, churning earth, ride the lightning, earthquake and if sequenced correctly (making use of combofields) gives you a great potential to stack might even further increasing this damage. It also gets you a decent amount of survival mainly from the two blinds, lightning flash and dust devil, but skills like rock barrier and frost aura help out alot aswell, i do also find the many heals you get access too in water attunement to be of use from time to time.

But if you really want control i would suggest the staff since it does not only have the longest range of any elementalist weapon but also the most cc/protective/escape spells in total.

Its all a matter of preference really, but imo the S/D or D/D is ideal for normal PvE content since it isnt really that hard and they allow for the fastest kills which gives you faster progression. I find the staff lackluster since most of its abilities are fairly slow casts and as i said more oriented toward support, kiting, survival, then just pure damage. Staff is ideal in a dungeon i would say but for PvE, S/D|D/D all the way.

Just changed to S/D and got used to Element swap, it works and works really well BUT is so hectic, no way I can do 80 levels with this intensity. Some guildies tell me they never swap, and if they do its into water for a heal and then back to fire!

On my necro used S/D and just drop AE that snares and kills stuff.
On my Thief spam C&D and if its AE spam dagger throw and strafe.
Mesmer is about as hectic as ele.
Ranger send pet and kill stuff lol.

Cempa.3645:

On my necro used S/D and just drop AE that snares and kills stuff.
On my Thief spam C&D and if its AE spam dagger throw and strafe.
Mesmer is about as hectic as ele.
Ranger send pet and kill stuff lol.

That’s the main issue I have with this game in general. It totally lacks “bang for your buck” element.

What I mean is, in many other games, if you play mediocre – you perform mediocre. And if you play flawless, the payoff is that you totally annihilate whatever is in your way. That is, player skill pays off. The better you play, the better you perform.

In GW2, this is really not the case. I can roll my face on the keyboard, or mouse-click, and perform better on a warrior than I can working my butt off on an Elementalist. Which is really, really sad. Some classes (Ele, Engi, etc.) have to work very, very hard to even approach the performance of some other classes played mediocre at best.

Cempa.3645:

Just changed to S/D and got used to Element swap, it works and works really well BUT is so hectic, no way I can do 80 levels with this intensity. Some guildies tell me they never swap, and if they do its into water for a heal and then back to fire!

It’s fun, but I do think there are problems with it, and I’m a bit of an altaholic so I generally don’t do it enough to get tiring before switching or taking a break anyway.

I’d say, for instance, that the slot-1 skills probably could do with some improvement. Not so much that you don’t get rewarded by doing the stance-dance, but they could probably be improved so you don’t need to cycle attunements all the time without significantly increasing the power of an elementalist that is cycling to their full potential (since they won’t be slot-1ing often anyway).

Sharpe.1485:

I don’t understand this thread…

From what I read – You feel the class on its own is “ok”, but when compared to the other classes it falls short?

And that this is somehow -your- fault and not the class itself?

If this is indeed the point you are trying to put across, all you need to do to get your answer is read other topics in this here “Elementalist forum”.

What the OP was saying was that Elementalist as a class is okay if considered in a vacuum, as if it was the only class to play.

This is true. You can get things done with Elementalist, if you know how to play and you play well. The problem is that there are other classes in the game, and every one of them outperforms Elementalist while simultaneously requiring less effort and skill on the part of the player. The only way that Elementalist stands out as worth using over any other class is in the combo field department, which is honestly not a great place to be — a class that excels at buffing everyone else’s stuff in a game where everyone is self-sufficient by design. They don’t need the Elementalist to function.

@Isilia: I think Sharpe was simply making the observation that more than half the forum is full of threads saying “Elementalist is underpowered” “Elementalist has a problem” etc, so, thinking the problem is with the player entirely rather than the profession is a mistake.

Because, frankly, compared to the other professions, it’s pretty easily apparent that Elementalist has problems. I believe it was a more rhetorical: “How did you miss this fact when clicking on the forum to make your thread” kinda post.