Guild Wars 2

Clumsy.6257:

I don’t think your understanding the argument here LordByron. Nobody is saying that mesmer can’t have high dps. Unfortunately to achieve that high dps, a mesmer has to give up the only useful thing a mesmer can contribute. .

I wanted you to get here exactly.

Mesmer can just use mantras to give stability and a decent condition cleanse.
Mesmer can just change utilities and weapon according to situations having a HUGE support versatility.
Mesmer can range from a full dps to balanced with lot of mid ground.
(and i would argue that is exactly the opposite you are saying…)

Ele relies on traits only…
That means if you decide to go full dps you depends on the party and your playstile will be:
52222522222522222 or 111111111111111111
Its more stupid than old 100B warrior while being uneffective against anything with a decet attack ratio.

I tried to play dps ele many times…its more straight than old 100blade warrior…is something unbearable….and i guess unintended…but only the result of the silly PvP “balancing”.
And if you start looking for something less boring your dps plummet.

That also explains why ele has just few onetrickpony builds in every gamemode. (the least build diversity in game i’d say)

P.S. list of support utilities that are frequently used by mesmers in istances……..i wouldn t say you need a focus to support…
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feedback
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Null_Field
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Portal_Entre
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Thievery
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion_of_Life
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mantra_of_Concentration
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mantra_of_Resolve
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Defender
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Inspiration
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mass_Invisibility
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Time_Warp

I think there’s no argument that mesmers are overpowered right now. It’s not so much the clone mechanic in itself, but the combination of clones and invisibility that basically renders them immune to damage. It takes so much time to keep finding the right one over and over again that if they decide to tank, you’ll never get them down. Ever.

But I’d rather see mesmer (and thief) toned down than eles buffed.

The fact remains that FGS Fiery Rush was not intended to be used against a wall to do massive damage. I don’t think it should be used as reference because it will be eventually removed.

Yes, Elementalists are OK in PvE. But what about the other aspect of the game which is PvP? Do they also deal the highest DPS outside of Staff MS + Tornado combo?

The issue here is that all other classes has a built-in compensation for their strong points and weaknesses. If Elementalists deal the highest DPS across all weapon sets both in PvE and PvP among all classes, that would be the compensation for being the squishiest class but that’s not the case here because almost every other class can be specced to deal massive damage.

this is clearly a learn to play issue ele has ridiculous damage and survivability and mobility

could try not using staffs for 1 v 1 combat or pvp

so apparently i was about to post something about ele’s a LONG, Long time ago but decided not too at the last time.. this time i have too…. a Big patch is coming and what better time to get this balance going?

This is mainly about sPVP —-———————-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve been playing Ele since beta, its seems during beta some ppl got kicked by some ele’s and cryed nerf, nerf all over…. those(kind of players) are problably the same persons that in every Elementalist section post about balance get in there… Ele is fine! l2p
Ele has the highest DPS…. lolz( no freaking comment) against who? static oponents who dont dodge or happily (slowly) move out of your red circles with 2/3/4 seconds to actually dmg someone skills, i’ve been playing staff ele recently… you’re only usefull staying back in team fights and waiting for everyone to be distracted to get massive dmg…. yes i’ve said it… “massive damage”… this with a FULL DMG build

now the problem is… you’ll lose every single 1v1 against Every other class that knows what their doing ( unless they disengage… you get a moral win)… its come to the ridiculous situation when you’re a FULL tank Ele and ppl take you down in 3/4 sec
O.o
if you decide to attack then, im not sure but i think ur attacks actually heal your opponents

now the l2p dudes come along and start talking all kind of reasons… let me explain you…
if finished a lot of sPvP matches in top Place both in losing and winning team, you know what 80%, times i feel short to every other class

i’ve played 1 sPvP tournament… ppl invited me to and asked what are you going to play… i said mesmer (was just starting to play mesmer, was lvl 20’s something) we went in there and won 3 rounds

I been playing recently Necro in sPVP…. 1st impressions? OMFG im invincible!!!! SOOOO much sustain and sOO much dmg, want to condition me? take them back!

when i die with those classes i say…. i got outplayed, outnumbered, not why do i die in 2 sec or my attacks heals my oponent as tank Ele (jk… you just need to attack them for 2 min without them attacking you to take them out.. 5 min if they heal by mistake during the test)

so about this patch my question is… why wont those new healing traits also affect the Ele himself? Do we have a lot a armor or HP? can we evade/(shorten distance) to other players better then any one else?
—————— i’ll leave more comments for after the patch —-——————-

i really hope you balance or start balancing Ele this next big patch and stop listening to persons that play warriors/whatever saying Ele’s are fine l2p…. after playing Ele for 2 years and other classes in the off time, after that i can say… Ele’s Really Need a Fix

Rezzet.3614:

this is clearly a learn to play issue ele has ridiculous damage and survivability and mobility

could try not using staffs for 1 v 1 combat or pvp

Damage, I agree if you mean in PvE and staff Zerging with Meteor Storm and Tornado combo.

Ridiculous Survivability and Mobility? /laugh

It is compensated by having great amount of defensive traits, utilities and weapon skills… Including but not limited to: various condition removals, many ways to heal ourself back up to full health, defensive boons, projectile reflection and absorption, blocks, invulnerability, to both physical and condition damage. Let’s not forget by granting us massive amount of burst/dps damage without the need to go full glass (though upcoming patch might change that). The Ele excels in all pve and WvW areas as long as the player is experienced/skillful.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The Ele excels in all pve and WvW areas as long as the player is experienced/skillful.

Does that mean wvw is closer to pve than to pvp?

ThiBash.5634:

I think there’s no argument that mesmers are overpowered right now.

Infact its not overpowered at all….
Stealth is overpowered if paired with prismatic understanding.

Mesmer is fine….

A light profession with stuff like blurred frenzy, shatter, sword 4 block is perfect…it gives mesmer the tools to survive without being OP.

Reactive game that is infact skill based.

Ele is severely underpowered and needs lot of button pressing (not mashing we know what we are doing) but aside that lacks the tools to actually counterplay anything.

They wanted ele to be jack of all trades master of none…thus doubled CD halved effects and called it a day…
That is how you design underpowered professions….

P.S. ele Excels in WWW?….without the meteor shower/tornado trick ele is only a buffbot with a couple of cc….
0 roaming capabilities.

Before that ele was infact disappearing from WWW since anet changed guardians swiftness symbol..

And necro is still better at the same role.

@OP: it’s compensated by being targeted first from your enemies and by being able to boast twice as skills as all other classes while you are getting stomped by a firstimer thief/warrior.

haviz.1340:

LightningBlaze.4913:

The Ele excels in all pve and WvW areas as long as the player is experienced/skillful.

Does that mean wvw is closer to pve than to pvp?

Part of WvW is pve but it is a also a huge pvp zone for both small and big encounters. One of the reasons why Ele excels in all areas within this environment is because of the huge amount of reliable builds for roaming and for zerging. The flexibility to allocate stats to your strong/weak points and in conjunction with player skills make the Ele very robust.

there is no compensation for low hp/low armor. and don’t forget about ridiculously high cooldowns to “compensate” 4 att.

Rezzet.3614:

this is clearly a learn to play issue ele has ridiculous damage and survivability and mobility

could try not using staffs for 1 v 1 combat or pvp

Were did the bad ele touched you?

The problem with the elementalist is their potential.

They are balanced considering their maximum potential… but not many people reaches that.

They can heal more than anyone else. So they get less health. But they won’t bring that healing potential to the max most of the time.
And they can do more damage than anyone else. So they get very long recharges and activation times, and reduced damage per hit on average, as they won’t bring that damage potential all the time, and even if they bring the builds that do the most damage, they have to be used under certain conditions and in certain ways to be effective.
And they have lots of control and abilities to take a beating without flinching like Obsidian Flesh, but how long do they last, and how often can they use them, and do they always bring those abilities with them?

Elementalists have higher numbers, but much lower averages.

It’s like having a 1-150 damage weapon while the rest have a 100-110 one, and a shield with that can absorb 3000dmg on block but only 5% block chance while the rest have a 1000 absorption shield with a 25% chance. The higher numbers become useless in practice, and actually work against the elementalist.

They have been handicapped as if they had their maximum potential in all aspects, all at the same time, but no one does bring all of that. When you bring damage, you sacrifice more survivaility that any other profession. When you bring survivability, you bring less survivability than other professions, and sacrifice more damage than others too.

So when people mix and match stuff and try to find new combinations, they will be underwhelming.

Elementalists need to be brought more in line with the other professions before going further into balance. Otherwise it’ll be like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube with squares of 8 different colors. It won’t match no matter how much you move stuff around.

Thaddeus.4891:

Every profession have his pro and con.

… Ele are good in dungeon and WvW, but not that good in sPvP. Mesmer are good in sPvP or Dungeon, but not that good in Zerg. I’m just saying that i can live with that because i play different profession in different role.

Ehm.. you are telling me Mesmers are not good in wvw?. all those portals for golems… sneaky hidden portal makers in keeps to retake castles.?. option to instantly remove all conditions in a large aoe?, time boost?… good defenses with all the clones/phantasms? chaos storms? chaos armor?

and now they are giving a rather annoying GM trait that blocks use of skills for 10 secs further…. on top of what eles have as cooldowns…..

eles have to survive inmunity skills… obsidian flesh, mist form, vapor form, and the most useless Fortify, but surviving depends more on the play style

Lowest defense is compensated how?

about 750gold and 50laurels should bring you up to snuff

Elementalist can’t be too bad if there are a bunch of videos of them soloing Lupicus. Granted, that is a very specific situation. But what the hell? This is the interwebs. We are supposed to use anecdotal evidence!

LightningBlaze.4913:

It is compensated by having great amount of defensive traits, utilities and weapon skills… Including but not limited to: various condition removals, many ways to heal ourself back up to full health, defensive boons, projectile reflection and absorption, blocks, invulnerability, to both physical and condition damage. Let’s not forget by granting us massive amount of burst/dps damage without the need to go full glass (though upcoming patch might change that). The Ele excels in all pve and WvW areas as long as the player is experienced/skillful.

Defensive traits- Assuming you mean protection I will give you this one (for select builds)
Utilities- the same number of utilities as everyone else -_- .
Weapon skills- Yes but with on average 2-3 times the cd renders this moot.
Conditional removal- debatable but I will give you that one.
“many ways to heal ourself back up to full health”- Heals sure, to full not even close, 1 is auto attack (staff), 2 are fields (requires others to blast to do the healing.), 2 don’t heal you but heal others, leaving only 2 others each only healing 1.3k base. That’s far from healing to full, even for our low health.

defensive boons- Only so long as one specs to get protection on attunement.
projectile reflection and absorption- 2 reflects (each on different weapon) and 1 absorption. That not a whole lot considering others can reflect whole areas not just self.

“blocks, invulnerability, to both physical and condition damage.”- let me guess vapor form? and diamond skin? first one you are unable to do anything while in mist form, making it pointless and no more then a stall. Diamond skin can be good so long as you remain about 90%, meaning any 1-2k hit and its gone and pointless.

“granting us massive amount of burst/dps damage without the need to go full glass” -please show me where, DON’T SAY FGS its a bug, and will be fixed so that doesn’t count. (besides the fact it all works when target is against wall.) And MS only does high dmg/sec on targets will large hit boxes, and don’t move.

StrykerMagnus.4120:

Elementalist can’t be too bad if there are a bunch of videos of them soloing Lupicus. Granted, that is a very specific situation. But what the hell? This is the interwebs. We are supposed to use anecdotal evidence!

Look at what the ele used, the fgs bug. Now that we know from the livestream that it is in fact a bug and WILL be fixed. People need to stop using this to say we have highest dmg.

Our low defense is compensated by the aggro system to make you the primary target for mobs because minus times minus equals plus.

MasterMc.7543:

LightningBlaze.4913:

It is compensated by having great amount of defensive traits, utilities and weapon skills… Including but not limited to: various condition removals, many ways to heal ourself back up to full health, defensive boons, projectile reflection and absorption, blocks, invulnerability, to both physical and condition damage. Let’s not forget by granting us massive amount of burst/dps damage without the need to go full glass (though upcoming patch might change that). The Ele excels in all pve and WvW areas as long as the player is experienced/skillful.

Defensive traits- Assuming you mean protection I will give you this one (for select builds)
Utilities- the same number of utilities as everyone else -_- .
Weapon skills- Yes but with on average 2-3 times the cd renders this moot.
Conditional removal- debatable but I will give you that one.
“many ways to heal ourself back up to full health”- Heals sure, to full not even close, 1 is auto attack (staff), 2 are fields (requires others to blast to do the healing.), 2 don’t heal you but heal others, leaving only 2 others each only healing 1.3k base. That’s far from healing to full, even for our low health.

defensive boons- Only so long as one specs to get protection on attunement.
projectile reflection and absorption- 2 reflects (each on different weapon) and 1 absorption. That not a whole lot considering others can reflect whole areas not just self.

“blocks, invulnerability, to both physical and condition damage.”- let me guess vapor form? and diamond skin? first one you are unable to do anything while in mist form, making it pointless and no more then a stall. Diamond skin can be good so long as you remain about 90%, meaning any 1-2k hit and its gone and pointless.

“granting us massive amount of burst/dps damage without the need to go full glass” -please show me where, DON’T SAY FGS its a bug, and will be fixed so that doesn’t count. (besides the fact it all works when target is against wall.) And MS only does high dmg/sec on targets will large hit boxes, and don’t move.

StrykerMagnus.4120:

Elementalist can’t be too bad if there are a bunch of videos of them soloing Lupicus. Granted, that is a very specific situation. But what the hell? This is the interwebs. We are supposed to use anecdotal evidence!

Look at what the ele used, the fgs bug. Now that we know from the livestream that it is in fact a bug and WILL be fixed. People need to stop using this to say we have highest dmg.

Defensive Traits – You need to get more familiar with the defensive traits earth, water and arcana tree offer.

Utilties – True but I find our captrips utilties to be a lot more helpful specially when they work together with our defensive traits.

Weapon skills – There are many more… I just feel lazy to list them all.

Condition removals – Even without traited, we have more than needed.

Heal ourself back up – With the right build and playstyle we can heal ourselves back to full, even without investing stats in healing power. (aside of the amount granted from putting points in the water line).

Defensive boons – Protection is only one of the defensive boons that is very easy accessible as an ele.

projectile reflection and absorption – It is actually 2 absorption (Dagger and Focuss) and 1 reflect skill (focus)

Invulnerability to both physical and condition damage – You need to get familiar with focus weapon set.

Granting us massive amount of burst/dps damage without the need to go full glass – The fgs + lf combo has been around since early stage of close beta. I find it odd that just now it is stated as a bug. I guess the developers took their time to really diagnose this useful technique. Our burst comes primarily from stacking the damage increase percentage traits. Thanks to that we can invest more points in something else with our gear to survive long while dealing high burst. There are a couple of youtube videos as proof. Very few knew about this until fresh air trait was introduced.

I could annoy you explaining point per point..

But as people should ve realized is

We either go full DPS via trait and we have 0 survivability, condition cleanse etc.
Or
We go full bunker and we are just worse than any other bunker build from other professions.

And we can go balanced to understand how badly designed ele is because withotu stacking every single DPS trait our dps is possibly the lowest in game paired with absurd coodowns.

So on the paper we have stuff, when you start building to play you discover why ele is considered bad.

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x. With this build not geared for defensive stats and not using captrips utilities, only then we have 0 survivability. I have motivated so many players in WvW and still do in this new tier I’m in to play Ele. All by simply playing very well with this profession and defeating players that they thought it was impossible to defeat as an ele. So I have yet to discover iff my Ele is ever considered bad. As harsh as it might sound it is not the profession, it is always the player.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x. With this build not geared for defensive stats and not using captrips utilities, only then we have 0 survivability. I have motivated so many players in WvW and still do in this new tier I’m in to play Ele. All by simply playing very well with this profession and defeating players that they thought it was impossible to defeat as an ele. So I have yet to discover iff my Ele is ever considered bad. As harsh as it might sound it is not the profession, it is always the player.

You are half right. As harsh as it might sound, you probably haven’t met many good players of classes like Mesmer, so you are probably not as good as you think you are.

Also there are way better ways to do a DPS build than 30/30/xxxx

@lightning
As harsh it could say, you are saying WWW is balanced…and that is alone disproving your Whole theory……

L2P is the best way to avoid any possible technical discussion……
You can see tons of threads about the most OP stuff GW2 ever had full of “L2P”, “its the player” etc.

And unfortunately doesn t add anything useful ….
Personal skill is OT in a discussion about balance

p.S. and there is a thing that put ele at disadvantage in a glass build.
Its the only glass build totally depending on opening the fight….because differently from mesmers, warriors and thieves if you are hit first you don t have anything to recover the momentum and get on the offensive.

Gearbox.2748:

Ehm.. you are telling me Mesmers are not good in wvw?. all those portals for golems… sneaky hidden portal makers in keeps to retake castles.?. option to instantly remove all conditions in a large aoe?, time boost?… good defenses with all the clones/phantasms? chaos storms? chaos armor?

and now they are giving a rather annoying GM trait that blocks use of skills for 10 secs further…. on top of what eles have as cooldowns…..

No no. I’m not saying that Mesmer are bad in WvW, but they only have a niche role like a Thief can have in Zerg. The Mesmer can do all the things that you said, which are powerfull, but in a Zerg of 15-20 you won’t bring more than 1, maybe 2 Mesmer. They are far more powerful in roaming than zerging.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x.

That’s not really a full DPS build for Ele. 30/20/10/10/0 or 25/10/10/25/0 or something like that, but not 30/30/x/x/x.

Thaddeus.4891:

Gearbox.2748:

Ehm.. you are telling me Mesmers are not good in wvw?. all those portals for golems… sneaky hidden portal makers in keeps to retake castles.?. option to instantly remove all conditions in a large aoe?, time boost?… good defenses with all the clones/phantasms? chaos storms? chaos armor?

and now they are giving a rather annoying GM trait that blocks use of skills for 10 secs further…. on top of what eles have as cooldowns…..

No no. I’m not saying that Mesmer are bad in WvW, but they only have a niche role like a Thief can have in Zerg. The Mesmer can do all the things that you said, which are powerfull, but in a Zerg of 15-20 you won’t bring more than 1, maybe 2 Mesmer. They are far more powerful in roaming than zerging.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x.

That’s not really a full DPS build for Ele. 30/20/10/10/0 or 25/10/10/25/0 or something like that, but not 30/30/x/x/x.

no, the highest EP build is 0/20/25/25/0. of course, the build is a complete leech and is completely reliant on the rest of the party (eg other eles) to buff yourself, and has some other flaws like having dmg modifiers that are reliant on full endurance. however this is the build you will see the biggest FGS rush ticks on.

but if you’re in a dungeon where you aren’t rushing everything staff 30/20/10/10 probably will do more damage overall.

LordByron.8369:

@lightning
As harsh it could say, you are saying WWW is balanced…and that is alone disproving your Whole theory……

L2P is the best way to avoid any possible technical discussion……
You can see tons of threads about the most OP stuff GW2 ever had full of “L2P”, “its the player” etc.

And unfortunately doesn t add anything useful ….
Personal skill is OT in a discussion about balance

p.S. and there is a thing that put ele at disadvantage in a glass build.
Its the only glass build totally depending on opening the fight….because differently from mesmers, warriors and thieves if you are hit first you don t have anything to recover the momentum and get on the offensive.

Never have I mentioned WvW is balanced. You just did. When I said it is about the player and not the profession I didn’t mean to say L2p. I meant that there are members that have different playstyles. Based on that playstyle there are strengths and weaknesses against other professions/builds. If it was the profession then every single Ele player would complain about not bing successful in WvW/pve. That is just not the case. There are many enjoying this class because of how awesome it can be at the hands of experienced players.

Swim.6830:

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x. With this build not geared for defensive stats and not using captrips utilities, only then we have 0 survivability. I have motivated so many players in WvW and still do in this new tier I’m in to play Ele. All by simply playing very well with this profession and defeating players that they thought it was impossible to defeat as an ele. So I have yet to discover iff my Ele is ever considered bad. As harsh as it might sound it is not the profession, it is always the player.

You are half right. As harsh as it might sound, you probably haven’t met many good players of classes like Mesmer, so you are probably not as good as you think you are.

Also there are way better ways to do a DPS build than 30/30/xxxx

I don’t consider myself as good as people tell me I am. I do know for sure that many of the players other Ele have trouble defeating because of the builds/playstyle they are running can be counter by one of ours. I have faced tons of good players across all the professions including well known ones that have even won their profession tournament… If that is not many then yea I will meet many more as time pass by. Good Mesmers are very challenging I give you that. Of course there are way better dps builds but that wasn’t my point. I was just giving an example of a build that has 0 survivability after using dodges to Byron.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

no, the highest EP build is 0/20/25/25/0. of course, the build is a complete leech and is completely reliant on the rest of the party (eg other eles) to buff yourself, and has some other flaws like having dmg modifiers that are reliant on full endurance. however this is the build you will see the biggest FGS rush ticks on.

but if you’re in a dungeon where you aren’t rushing everything staff 30/20/10/10 probably will do more damage overall.

Ok ya but that don’t seem to be a good build at all. With what weapons will you use that? No might of fury stacking, you will do kitten DPS with the Staff, you won’t have enough charge to use conjure weapons constantly so you are stuck with D/F?

LightningBlaze.4913:

Swim.6830:

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x. With this build not geared for defensive stats and not using captrips utilities, only then we have 0 survivability. I have motivated so many players in WvW and still do in this new tier I’m in to play Ele. All by simply playing very well with this profession and defeating players that they thought it was impossible to defeat as an ele. So I have yet to discover iff my Ele is ever considered bad. As harsh as it might sound it is not the profession, it is always the player.

You are half right. As harsh as it might sound, you probably haven’t met many good players of classes like Mesmer, so you are probably not as good as you think you are.

Also there are way better ways to do a DPS build than 30/30/xxxx

I don’t consider myself as good as people tell me I am. I do know for sure that many of the players other Ele have trouble defeating because of the builds/playstyle they are running can be counter by one of ours. I have faced tons of good players across all the professions including well known ones that have even won their profession tournament… If that is not many then yea I will meet many more as time pass by. Good Mesmers are very challenging I give you that. Of course there are way better dps builds but that wasn’t my point. I was just giving an example of a build that has 0 survivability after using dodges to Byron.

So an honest question, where would you put Mesmers vs Eles with average players and skilled players? I’d also like to ask the same about Guardian as those are the 2 “boon dependent” classes so to speak (mesmer less so, but still a caster).

I also feel like your experience comes from WvW where the stat variations are much better and you can make a much more balanced build to compensate for innate weaknesses (but then again, other classes can too but maybe they don’t need to, to be as effective?).

If I put it bluntly, in spvp our class feels kitten stat wise, while elsewhere it is workable.

Thaddeus.4891:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

no, the highest EP build is 0/20/25/25/0. of course, the build is a complete leech and is completely reliant on the rest of the party (eg other eles) to buff yourself, and has some other flaws like having dmg modifiers that are reliant on full endurance. however this is the build you will see the biggest FGS rush ticks on.

but if you’re in a dungeon where you aren’t rushing everything staff 30/20/10/10 probably will do more damage overall.

Ok ya but that don’t seem to be a good build at all. With what weapons will you use that? No might of fury stacking, you will do kitten DPS with the Staff, you won’t have enough charge to use conjure weapons constantly so you are stuck with D/F?

The idea is that fury is coming from another elementalist. You would more than likely use either s/d or s/f + LH. And if 10 auto chains with LH isn’t enough to kill the pack of trash or boss then you shouldn’t be using this build. (Assuming it is the highest EP then I wouldn’t see a use for this build in any situation outside of record runs.)

So back to the original question:
Why so little defense.
True we have the lowest hp and armor but. We have perks, lots of perks, way more perks than any other class and if executed correctly it can make us the tankiest class in the intire game.

As for dps since alot of people are talking about that too. We have conjures and more perks that up our damage capacity by a ton.

But. even after 1500 hours of playing the ele I can only get a measly 17 kills in pvp match ups while I was able to get 22 kills with a mesmer within the first hour on my first match with a build that I as a noobie made. Same goes for the thief doing 6k dmg with no CD compared to the fire grab on a 45sec CD… its ridiculous.

Swim.6830:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Swim.6830:

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x. With this build not geared for defensive stats and not using captrips utilities, only then we have 0 survivability. I have motivated so many players in WvW and still do in this new tier I’m in to play Ele. All by simply playing very well with this profession and defeating players that they thought it was impossible to defeat as an ele. So I have yet to discover iff my Ele is ever considered bad. As harsh as it might sound it is not the profession, it is always the player.

You are half right. As harsh as it might sound, you probably haven’t met many good players of classes like Mesmer, so you are probably not as good as you think you are.

Also there are way better ways to do a DPS build than 30/30/xxxx

I don’t consider myself as good as people tell me I am. I do know for sure that many of the players other Ele have trouble defeating because of the builds/playstyle they are running can be counter by one of ours. I have faced tons of good players across all the professions including well known ones that have even won their profession tournament… If that is not many then yea I will meet many more as time pass by. Good Mesmers are very challenging I give you that. Of course there are way better dps builds but that wasn’t my point. I was just giving an example of a build that has 0 survivability after using dodges to Byron.

So an honest question, where would you put Mesmers vs Eles with average players and skilled players? I’d also like to ask the same about Guardian as those are the 2 “boon dependent” classes so to speak (mesmer less so, but still a caster).

I also feel like your experience comes from WvW where the stat variations are much better and you can make a much more balanced build to compensate for innate weaknesses (but then again, other classes can too but maybe they don’t need to, to be as effective?).

If I put it bluntly, in spvp our class feels kitten stat wise, while elsewhere it is workable.

It is very hard to say to be honest. There’s always the main variable of the type of player. As an example, I have met mesmers using the fotm builds and are very easy to defeat yet others using the same build and are extremely hard yet beateable and some even impossible to bring down with my ele. However, those same mesmers that were easy become a challenge when they use their main build, weapon set and playstyle. As a matter of fact as you spend more time in wvw roaming or dueling you start meeting players that specialize in certain builds, weapon sets, playstyle within their class yet are very amateur when playing anything outside of their standard. Of course there are always the exceptional players that play very well with all type of builds and weapon sets for their profession.

My experience does come from wvw roaming and zerging (Spvp/Tpvp completely bored me long time ago) and I believe that’s what the Op wanted comments about since he mentioned briefly his wvw experience.

I agree, for spvp/tpvp ele does need a bit of help. Even when there are players doing well, the amount of effort is greater within this setting. Goes to show spvp/tpvp isn’t as balance as some player believe it is. It might change with the upcoming patches to spvp where we are allowed to use our pve gears. Who knows, it might actually become an environment where it has as many build diversity as WvW.

This is my biggest woe when playing a classic glass 0/30/10/0/30 glass S/F Elementalist in PvP. With Zerker amulet and Runes of Ogre, you’ll have roughly 14k HP and the total damage of this thief combo over 15k. My fault here was I failed to recognize that there was a thief lurking around. What was not my fault was that I died without any chance to react.

Some people may say it’s just L2P, but IMO there’s no L2P when you die against a pre-cast CnD + Steal into Backstab combo with Basilisk Venom.

What I’m trying to point out is that even though Mesmer and Necro are in lowest Armor tier, they still have medium/high HP. Guardians have the lowest HP but they have High Armor. If this happened to a glass guardian/necro/mesmer, they’ll pretty much have some amount of HP left to be able to pop defensive skills.

I’m well aware that Elementalists, especially Focus Off-hand, has decent amount of active defenses but they’re pretty much useless if you don’t get the chance to activate them.

If you compare Elementalist damage to other classes in zerk gear, they’re pretty much equal aside from Meteor Storm + Tornado combo.

LordByron.8369:

A light profession with stuff like blurred frenzy, shatter, sword 4 block is perfect…it gives mesmer the tools to survive without being OP.

Yes, which is exactly my point…they get all of those, on top of their stealth/clones. That means that if you finally find them, they get a bucket of defensive skills to use…after which they hide again, and the thing starts all over. And they get 5k extra health too.

They should have either, not both. Especially since other professions only get one of these mechanics.

You get compensated with fgs rush fire trail and frost bow aoe… until they get nerfed. fgs rush with teleport is already on the chopping block for the 15th and I believe they are planning to get rid of the fire trail completely at some point.

For pvp… nothing really. In the past, healing was the excuse, but it always took 30 points in water and arcana anyways so terrible damage (and even worse damage today after bountiful power nerf). In the current meta ele doesn’t even last long enough to heal, and if they do they probably aren’t doing anything useful.

Thesiuss.2679:

I’m probably not going to lay this out in a coherent manner but oh well…….

I’ve been playing since release my first 80 was an ele and since then I’ve played most other classes to 80. Of those classes I’ve done a great amount of WvW roaming with warrior, mesmer, guardian and ele.

I’m trying to understand what’s the compensation for the ele for having the lowest defense in game passive and active. Let’s face it, every class in this game can do great damage, every class can heal, and most classes have great defense….most.

Of the light armor classes (and maybe of most the classes) we’re the one lacking a class defining defense mechanism that properly compensate for our lack of passive defense.
Of the classes that I roam with warrior has great armor, great hp, great active defense (too numerous to list), and great damage; guardian has heavy armor, moderate hp, has great defensive mechanic (boons), very good damage, good hp; Mesmer has great damage, low armor, moderate hp, awesome active defense (clones, stealth); elementalist has great damage, low hp, low armor, and at best a moderate defensive.

So why does the elementalist has the worst defense in game again?

Maybe I’m missing something here and maybe some of you can shed some light on the matter for me.

Then again maybe I’m not making sense……

In PvE their sheer damage output gives them enough reason to be squishy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnPui3MAx8Q)

In sPvP however, they could use some love. Right now eles aren’t capable of doing a whole lot, unless they go staff ele (And 99% of the time they’ll end up getting trained by thieves/engineers.) a slight nudge to their ACTIVE defenses would help out eles a lot.

In WvW it’s kind of a double edged blade. Elementalists are mediocore in small scale roaming, but they excel in backlining at large zergs, throwing down meteor showers, water fields and static fields everywhere. Buffing eles too much may make them too strong in these situations.

For staff, fixing the broken stuff like Gust activating way too late and being way too slow would go a long way towards fixing without changing our large group effectiveness at all.

xsquared.1926:

In WvW it’s kind of a double edged blade. Elementalists are mediocore in small scale roaming, but they excel in backlining at large zergs, throwing down meteor showers, water fields and static fields everywhere. Buffing eles too much may make them too strong in these situations.

it’s not that hard to contain a specific weaponset efficiency (staff). The current state of Elementalist for what concerns small scale fights and solo roaming is TERRIBAD

Clumsy.6257:

Thaddeus.4891:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

no, the highest EP build is 0/20/25/25/0. of course, the build is a complete leech and is completely reliant on the rest of the party (eg other eles) to buff yourself, and has some other flaws like having dmg modifiers that are reliant on full endurance. however this is the build you will see the biggest FGS rush ticks on.

but if you’re in a dungeon where you aren’t rushing everything staff 30/20/10/10 probably will do more damage overall.

Ok ya but that don’t seem to be a good build at all. With what weapons will you use that? No might of fury stacking, you will do kitten DPS with the Staff, you won’t have enough charge to use conjure weapons constantly so you are stuck with D/F?

The idea is that fury is coming from another elementalist. You would more than likely use either s/d or s/f + LH. And if 10 auto chains with LH isn’t enough to kill the pack of trash or boss then you shouldn’t be using this build. (Assuming it is the highest EP then I wouldn’t see a use for this build in any situation outside of record runs.)

Which is why I said that it’s a leech build and is only really good if you want to screw around and see massive fiery rush ticks (4.5k+ on alpha in casual runs).

And by the way, 15 charges on conjures is more than enough to kill almost every boss in organised groups. The only times where the lack of 10 charges is annoying are in long fights like TA Wurm.

xsquared.1926:

In WvW it’s kind of a double edged blade. Elementalists are mediocore in small scale roaming, but they excel in backlining at large zergs, throwing down meteor showers, water fields and static fields everywhere. Buffing eles too much may make them too strong in these situations.

not if they start reverting nerfs to skills and buff other skills.

They already pushed traits with no result…we can t live with our mediocre skills on HUGE cd without using cheap situatinal tactics.

We need some serious skill buffs to be viable.

Utility cooldowns need a significant recast reduction, they are outside of the attunement rotation but still suffer from the same recast penalty.

Let’s look at Cantrips:

Eg 1: Balancing Invulnerabilities: Mist Form vs Endure Pain
Mist Form’s recast is far too long compared to to Endure pain. Our ignore CC and movement speed buff is more than balanced by our locked action bars and point capture prevention effectively removing us from play, and having 3s vs 4s uptime. 45sec to keep the same % uptime on invulnerable seems more balanced. That’s just comparing the skills, completely ignoring the context of war having far more access to stability, and higher passive defence, so if anything the comments above have a mild anti-ele bias.

Eg 2: Balancing Stabilities: Stand your ground vs Armour of Earth
Shout has a 1 in 6 uptime, Armor of Earth has far lower 1 in 15 uptime.
Shouts are AoE 5 people, Armor of Earth is just 1 person.
Protection vs Retal seem equivalent because of relative passive defences.
Armor of Earth recast should be 36s to give same stability uptime. Whilst some may argue Protection is more useful than Retal, Ele needs the extra defence, and Guardian is still getting away with it’s shout being a 5 target AoE.

Oddly enough, the non defensive cantrip is relatively balanced (comparing to to Blink, for closest match in utility) although arguably the radius should be bigger (180-240) to allow more use to be made of the damage spike rather than just dropping the Ele straight on top of the target. As with Endure pain, this is a utility for utility balance, not taking into account the rest of the class.

Although a standard response on these forums is that you can’t do this, you can to get a rough grained idea of whether or not two utilities are balanced, before fine tuning, taking two abilities with rough grained equal recasts of 45sec and 36s, and in trying to account for lower passive defences increasing them to 75s and 90s is not fine tuning, it’s poor balance.

Given that ele needs positioning and some skills such as Burning Speed or Churning Earth are hard/impossible in certain situations to hit w/o LF I’d say reducing its cool down to 30/35 sec pre trait would not be op – seeing how it is no longer stun breaker.
Armor of Earth, Mist Form, Arcane should should not have cooldowns longer then 1 min, possibly shorter given how squishy eles are.

Also elite that is you know… actually useful outside of pve would be lovely.
Oh and fixing RTL so it actually is useful again would be good step too.

These changes would have been way more useful then adding dodge to BS – which is often used on stunned target anyways or blast on Frozen Burst which usage will put us on heal and/or condi removal CD.

No problems here honestly

Ele my 5th class to reach 80. I have to say im struggling. . . . I see that diamond skin build that guy is good I will never be like him.

I wanna work to get something out of it but at moment is tough and celestial is going to sux well

I’ve always been going D/D healer ele since y’r able to give your allies boons and heals continually without having to stop doing dmg however puny our damage may be. Went through HotW with 4 zerker warriors and me as a healer and nobody died and we finished in just a couple minutes.
You could argue that it was because of the zerker warriors but I like to thing that me being able to keep all of ’m from being downed thus gimping our damage helped alot too.

I did some spvp last night. Started out on my glass cannon ele. Running full glass might stacking build. With 12+ stacks of might I was able to do some decent dmg and get some kills but died alot. A guildmate comes in the match on his mes and died a good bit I asked him why he is dieing so much. I said a good mesmer/thief will pretty much never die even full glass ones in spvp. He asked if I ever play glass mesmer. I said all the time and got on mine. Running full glass gs sword pistol build. Played 5 matches straight with no deaths before I quit for the night. The difference was just insane to me how much easier it is for mesmer. With 0 might stacks throw a clone form 1200 range away and do the same kind of damage on my ele’s high cooldown easily dodgeable skills plus I actually have a defensive mechanic clones plus stealth if I am ever in trouble.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I did some spvp last night. Started out on my glass cannon ele. Running full glass might stacking build. With 12+ stacks of might I was able to do some decent dmg and get some kills but died alot. A guildmate comes in the match on his mes and died a good bit I asked him why he is dieing so much. I said a good mesmer/thief will pretty much never die even full glass ones in spvp. He asked if I ever play glass mesmer. I said all the time and got on mine. Running full glass gs sword pistol build. Played 5 matches straight with no deaths before I quit for the night. The difference was just insane to me how much easier it is for mesmer. With 0 might stacks throw a clone form 1200 range away and do the same kind of damage on my ele’s high cooldown easily dodgeable skills plus I actually have a defensive mechanic clones plus stealth if I am ever in trouble.

That’s what I have with engineers. With my regular build when I’m on a roll I get 12-20 kills in a single game and 0-1 death every other game. Engineer doesn’t even have any of those survivability mechanics…

I don’t know, I feel like people are exaggerating just a tad. Don’t get me wrong, Ele’s are not on any kind of sweet spot. And if we are talking about pvp, I’d say there is no exaggeration being made. But when it comes to WvW and PvE I don’t think we are in too bad of shape. I’d say the biggest thing we lack is merely build diversity. Over half of our utility skills are useless. Ultimately we are being forced to go full tank or full dps and that just sucks. Any in-between is ten times worse than another class’s in-between.

Once we get some build diversity going and some lovin’ in Spvp, I think we’ll be in good condition.