I would like to make a serious topic about the state of the ele and put together all the concerns we have about the profession maybe also to have an answer from anet. I tried reading this forum but i probably missed something from fellow eles so please post here to tell me about your concerns in a constructive way and i’ll try to keep original post updated for ease of reading for developers. Also possible solutions to the concerns are welcome.
As for me, i’m mainly a s/tpvp player so if i say something wrong feel free to correct me. Please do so in a nice way since i admit i’m no expert about pve.
1) While eles seem to have a place in WvW (even if maybe a little pigeon holed to staff) they feel sub par in pve environment (cause the only viable spec is lightning hammer which makes me say: why not take directly a war?) and totally unviable in s/tpvp. While we are ok with the low armor, low health we are not so ok with the low damage. Quite honestly as for pure dps output many professions can do better. But that’s not the main problem in fact.
2) Most of the eles in fact feel like we miss something to make us decent glass cannons. Basically other glass are not so glass. Wars are beefy and have excellent control, necros are king of control (oh, u have stability? nice, i corrupt boon u!), thieves have stealth and evade, mesmer have clones, invisibility and access to better utility (portal/time warp/moa). This is for glass cannon, if u go for a mixed approach then u have spirit rangers that are better at support while doing good (rightfully so not fantastic) damage and evading and are becoming a must have for every team.
3) I didnt mention guardians cause they have a different role in the current tpvp meta which is THE bunker. No other profession seem to rival that. And what makes me really really sad i did not mention engis not for the reason they are not good but for the reason they stole our place as jack of all trades but having a more reliable damage output and survivability. Basically why take an ele when u can have an engi in your team?
4) Eles are too depending on their mechanic and this makes the arcana tree quite compulsory therefore making 30 pts there a must have. Also Evasive Arcana is almost unskippable. Which other grandmaster trait is so good? Now before u nerf evasive arcana it would be nice to give us some serious fire traits for example cause right now, at least in a s/tpvp nobody in his right state of mind would pick even 1 of them.
5) Many people feel like the problems of the ele right now is not it’s underpowered but that other professions are overpowered. Many feel (me included) recent buffs to some professions were way exaggerated (necro in particular) therefore pushing out ele
6) Some nerfs were uncalled for. A 20 sec ride the lightning could not ever rival the mobility of a war or a thief.
7) All in all we suffer from identity crisis as mentioned in point 3: what’s our place?
8) Some weapons sets lack synergy among skills and arcana tree just alleviates the problem.
(edited by Fiery Lily.8046)