Guild Wars 2

@Galdethriel, “difficult” is an opinion (and it can differ from build to build). Either way, each class clearly needs to be played differently and some builds require more reflexes and good connections in order to be effective.

@(this thread)

I think the focus off-hand is less desirable than dagger as well.

However, the elementalist do have strengths. They definitely can heal more than other classes (e.g., compare with thief), because of traits and water attunement skills. Often time I can heal back to max life (or close to it) in the midst of combat. All the while I can provide support to the team via boons, AOE healing, and auras (if traited). In other words, the elementalist class is pushed a bit towards defense and support.

The only way Anet would boost the elementalist’s other capabilities is if the support capability of the elementalist is reduced or if it is made more difficult to obtain than the current state (or alternatively increase the difficulty to obtain the other desirable capabilities) IMO, since there are so many traits (and weapon skills) that provide support and are easy to obtain.

For all the people here who complain about Elementalists being ‘severe keyboard workouts’…how many of you have played high level fighting games before? Serious question. because the level of execution that comes with playing an Ele is NOTHING compared to even the simpler 2D fighters out there.

The amount of scrubbery I’ve seen around these forums concerning how ‘difficult’ the elementalist is really is pretty disheartening. Is this really the standard that can be expected from western MMO players? I mean sheesh, playing my Grenadier in Dragon Saga Online is harder than doing Elementalist combos.

This game has less keybinds than every other game I’ve played which is one of the things I really like in this game so I’m not sure how people can complain. WoW, Aion, RIFT? I know many of you probably played at least one of those lol.

Last game I played was TERA where you had to keybind everything because the free targeting system means it’s literally impossible to click. Playing a healer meant I had to have fast reaction times and be able to hit every skill or be blamed for a death.
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/9276/terascreenshot201208220.png

39 keybinds in that game (just skills alone) and we have what 14 skill buttons here? I will take 14 and love it, thanks.

People are straying from the OP. Our weaknesses have nothing to do with keybinds or the number of our abilities. It has to do with how weak our abilities are, how low our dps is compared to the other classes, how squishy we are and/or how few HPs we have vs the other clothies.

Edit: we have nowhere near the highest burst and ours is hard to set up and slow to hit.

Most Elementalists have never seriously played another class… So they don’t know what’s really going on.

Lots of these comments really miss the point of what i was saying, so let me clear it up.

1) Im not talking about Keybinds
2) im not saying we are unplayable
3)we arent hard to play

What I am saying is
1)our skills dont have good synergy
2)our traits are worse for synergy
3)compared to other classes our damage, survive, and utility (in pvp) is horrible

I dont mind working twice as hard to get results, but right now there are no results for working the ele how it should be worked.

I literally have over 3k armor (toughness+defense) and just under 19k HP with my new spec/gear in sPvP and a pistol whipping thief still cuts through me, its kitten on a very kitten level.

This games PvP is so bursty it actually makes WoTLK and early Cata look like vanilla/BC WoW.

I understand this is a team game, but that doesnt mean that in a 1v2 you automatically lose, you should have to work for it, kite, keep the enemies occupied. But in its current state there is so much damage going around you can probably kill 1 out of 2 people before they get you to half/kill you.

And seriously, all the people saying “well if you want damage then play a glass cannon dual dagger setup” have you actually tried that in pvp? You die fast with no damage, then you make a thief, who does 2-4 times more damage than DD ever did, and can escape because they are literally built around stealth and mobility.

You guys really dont see the bigger picture.

My suggestion for Anet is really simple, dont bring the elementalist up in terms of damage and survive; bring everyone else down.

The best fights ive had have been weak eles vs other weak eles. Its rewarding, you really need to watch what you are doing because if you do screw up you do lose, and you always have time to react.

A thief however catches you off guard and kills you in a Pistol Whip. Thats not fun, I’m not being out skilled, im being out button pressed.

I agree with you Frodamn and I think you make some good points. I know the game is new and Anet has made some posts recently on the topic of balance where they mentioned a few Ele specs, so I hope we do get some changes for the better soon.

Ele is fine, but with a lot more effort than other classes.
The other classes are also “more fine”.

A good elementalist could be an even better warrior for example.

Stormy O.7025:

@Galdethriel, “difficult” is an opinion (and it can differ from build to build). Either way, each class clearly needs to be played differently and some builds require more reflexes and good connections in order to be effective.

You’re absolutely right. But I think elementalist is notably harder than the other classes. It’s not that I don’t appreciate each class has mechanics – I love all the classes I’ve tried as they’re so diverse and interesting in their own way. But I think that having quite a squishy class with double the abilities to use which also cannot switch range like other classes can, and has cooldowns for its cooldowns, is going to up the difficulty a bit. It’s arguably more difficult than a thief or warrior, who are both fairly effective even if they decide not to weapon switch and fight with just a few abilities. They can also take hits better than an elementalist can.

Although it is an opinion, I think it’s a reasonably valid one, considering the complexity of the elementalist mechanics. They’re not bad, they’re just tricky.

Ok, so I agree on most of your points, besides:

You guys really dont see the bigger picture.

My suggestion for Anet is really simple, dont bring the elementalist up in terms of damage and survive; bring everyone else down.

My thoughts: Ele’s do in fact need to be brought up to a higher point than where they are right now. Do I think that EVERY prof needs to be brought down to make ele’s viable? Definitely not.

Why?
Because not every other profession out there is at a level that is considered “OP” from an Ele perspective. Here’s one example: Necro’s. Necro’s have it just as bad, if not worse, than Ele’s. Hell, at least most of your skills WORK properly.

Classes that obviously need to be brought down a peg or 5. (Experiential judgement)
-Thief
-Warrior
-Ranger

See the trend? All burst damage classes. If you fix the ones that are causing issues when it comes to fights ending in a flash, then fights will be extended, but still very enthralling, and you will still have to be an efficient keyboard jockey to win, because that’s the play style of an Ele, quickly switching between elements to meet the needs of what is happening in the fight on a second by second basis, and that’s what makes this profession astoundingly fun, but also difficult.

that suggestion is broader than just the ele perspective. Damage is just flying around randomly, and the fact you dont have mesmers on that list is astounding. They may not be “bursty” but their damage output is extremely high and sustained at a high rate.

This is a team based game and should be focusing on having players really focus down a target, instead of a 5v5 where each person takes on one effectively making it 5, 1v1s. The team aspect isnt here yet other than leaving one person to defend a point (even then that doesnt happen).

I agree on the necro part, and i should of been more specific about saying “bring everyone down” but my point im trying to emphasize is dont bring us up, and dont bring necros up otherwise thats just more random damage being randomly thrown around causing random spikes in peoples health equaling a random and boring fight.

Here is basically the issue with the Elementalist.

Limitations:

Specifically Trait limitations.

Lets say you spend 30 points in Earth to get 3 traits, 20% on bleeds, Faster earth spells regen and 10% more damage while in earth.

That’s 30 points to support exactly 1/4th of your spells.

So now 25% of your abilities do improved damage/recharge ect ect.

Now as great as those abilities may or may not be, an Elementalist can’t survive in one aspect, in fact it’s detrimental to stay in one aspect.

So you switch and those 30 points you spend are now useless.

It wouldn’t be an issue if you could instantly switch back to that aspect.

But you can’t, so how do you deal with this situation?

You pick traits that are generic as possible, that help over multiple aspects so you can at least get the most benefit out of your traits therefore making your build stronger.

When it comes to those generic traits there are only a few in every trait tree which makes are builds exceptionally stagnant.

Personally I would like to see something like this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Where-is-my-Geomancer-Hydromancer-Pyro-ect-ect/first#post356375

But to solve the issue we either need traits to become more generic so that more aspects benefit from them or an ability to become more specialized so there are better rewards to staying within an aspect and capitalizing on our traits.

Stormy O

However, the elementalist do have strengths. They definitely can heal more than other classes (e.g., compare with thief)

This reminds me SO MUCH vanilla WoW, when playing a druid was like playing ele now.

Back then there were two officially, devastatingly UP classes, one was warlock and the other druid.

The most heard excuse for sooking so much was: “hey but you can HEAL and FLEE”.

Imagine that, the others could spam 2 buttons and bathe in kills without any need to flee, but hey we were balanced because we could flee…

Same thing for skill cap and everything. Intricate, less effective classes always get flagged as “high skill cap”, because hey, mr. genius, if you have a very high skill, then they look good.

Anomaly.7612:

Lifelike.5862:

For all the people here who complain about Elementalists being ‘severe keyboard workouts’…how many of you have played high level fighting games before? Serious question. because the level of execution that comes with playing an Ele is NOTHING compared to even the simpler 2D fighters out there.

The amount of scrubbery I’ve seen around these forums concerning how ‘difficult’ the elementalist is really is pretty disheartening. Is this really the standard that can be expected from western MMO players? I mean sheesh, playing my Grenadier in Dragon Saga Online is harder than doing Elementalist combos.

You have successfully compared an apple, to an orange, and told those who think one apple shouldn’t be more difficult to achieve the same end results as other apples from the same tree, to get better because your oranges you have personal experience with are so much harder.

Well sir, I have a bag of lemons that would love to tell you how much harder they are than your oranges, and that you should stop crying about oranges when there are watermelons out there that are even harder.

Go praise your oranges elsewhere, please. We all prefer apples.

Nope. I’m comparing fruit to fruit. There are people here who are outright saying ‘Elementalists are a huge keyboard workout! I can’t believe anyone could play the class without hyperventillating after a few combos’ or some such rubbish, but the fact is, if you compare the elementalists’s skill pianoing to the level of execution in other genres, or even other games within the same genre…it’s really nothing to make such a big deal about. Somehow, fighting game players can cope with having to memorise every one of their moves, special moves and situational combos. My Warrior in Tera had more skills on cooldown than my elementalist has, and no convenience of them all being neatly grouped up into clickable packets like our attunement system.

Elementalists are not ‘hard’ by any stretch, so blaming the skill cieling on their weakness is not the way to go. Sure, other classes are easier, but considering how simplistic execution in this game is, that’s nothing to be proud of.

Keyboard workout? How can ele be a keyboard workout when you don’t live long enough to become tired. If anything, they have been working out my vocal cords as I cuss every time I’m 1-hit and sometimes 1-hit in the downed state.

Today I ended up in a bad position where I had broken armor and was totally broke. I never dreamed of having a maxed out character in a game end up with such a predicament. Ended up running and teleporting when killed until I got to a map I know I could make back money to get my armor repaired.

ANet just keeps humping the stinking warrior classes and forgetting about the rest.

Here is basically the issue with the Elementalist.

Limitations:

Specifically Trait limitations.

(snip)

This issue should have been taken care of already by [Lingering Elements] which allows you to retain such boni for 5 seconds after you switch Attunements. However this trait is broken and doesn’t seem to affect all possible boni.
If that trait is fixed this issue is gone.

Vaerah.4907:

Stormy O

However, the elementalist do have strengths. They definitely can heal more than other classes (e.g., compare with thief)

This reminds me SO MUCH vanilla WoW, when playing a druid was like playing ele now.

Back then there were two officially, devastatingly UP classes, one was warlock and the other druid.

The most heard excuse for sooking so much was: “hey but you can HEAL and FLEE”.

Imagine that, the others could spam 2 buttons and bathe in kills without any need to flee, but hey we were balanced because we could flee…

Same thing for skill cap and everything. Intricate, less effective classes always get flagged as “high skill cap”, because hey, mr. genius, if you have a very high skill, then they look good.

Well, it’s complicated, because elementalists have AOE healing/support, which means balance (for team battles) can be broken if elementalists were to be strong soloists as well (which seems to be what your gripe is about?); by “strong”, I just mean fast at killing (e.g., compare thief/warrior/ranger versus say guardian). It’s probably possible to make it so that elementalists have the option to be a better soloist, but I think it would require quite a bit of rework for the traits and the weapon skills.

And fleeing is a valid tactic; it doesn’t mean run away completely. My dagger/dagger elementalist wasn’t able to take on a guardian in a direct head on battle. What I did was whittle down his health, and ran (Note: he can’t chase me and he heals slower than me). So I just healed myself back to full health while still in combat mode. Then I came back and beat him (and took the control point). If I distanced and paced myself better instead of just trying to go in and attacking, then maybe I wouldn’t have needed to run far away.

Basically, in a way, elementalists are very much like Necromancers in terms of playing a battle of attrition, whereas Necromancers rely on a large health pool, elementalists rely on healing (along with mobility, dodging, and defensive boons/auras/skills).

Lol @ lifelike for comparing Tera to GW2. You could have bound your various cooldown to 1-5, and then used shift grouping to cycle between however many pages of skills you used… or you could just press Space to chain them as the game’s dev’s provided.

Of course, no one complained about the sorceror in Tera, which was the Ele’s equiv… because it actually worked right and did lots of damge.

The only good heals we have are in water staff, and they have an incredibly long cooldown, with an incredibly un-potent heal, which requires people to stand in it, and really only is good for regen for Cleansing Waters to remove conditions from you/allies when giving regen to them etc.

And all other healing spells are pretty useless in terms of healing. D/D 2 is ok for damage and worse for healing, and 5 is really only for condition removal.

The thing most people need to realize is that GW2 is based on the philosophy of being able to fulfill any role as any other class can.

@Stormy, you could of literally been a thief, done 2 pistol whips and that gaurdian would be dead. And if he had reinforcements, you could of literally escaped with your 25% move speed signet (which baffles me because we get a 10% one and we control air kitten

The problem isnt the “keyboard” work out as people keep saying, I honestly dont know how you can even complain about that, but its the fact we get so little reward out of it.

When you think about it, or combos are really useless. Even if you signet of earth someone and then dragons tooth immediately, they can still dodge it most of the time.

The only cool thing ive noticed about eles is that we can cast earthquake or Churning earth and use Lightning strike to more pin point it. I love chasing someone and using a Earthquake lightning combo to catch them and kill them.

And don you guys find it really stupid that our attunements base CD is 15 second and weapon swapping is a base 10? We are literally at a disadvantage from then on.

frodamn.3706:

And don’t you guys find it really stupid that our attunements base CD is 15 second and weapon swapping is a base 10? We are literally at a disadvantage from then on.

I feel this is Anet’s way of making us switch between multiple attunements to do our job right, but here’s the kicker (just as Crow stated): Our traits have very poor synergy when you dump 30 into one trait line, to then have those bonuses from the traits be unusable the second you swap to a differing attunement, so it’s quite baffling that they’d make a profession built on the idea of swapping multiple times, but to have them be useless for about half the time they’re alive, granted they spent 30 points in one trait line, and 30 in another, or 20/10, etc.

Having traits in each tree that have generalized bonuses would be very beneficial to our profession. Even the concept of mastering an element, having 30 points in one trait line, would be interesting. For example: (using some names Crow used in the post he linked)

Pyromancer: Master of fire attunement. When attuned to fire, your traits in the fire tree have extra bonus effects, and when attuned to a differing element, the trait bonuses change, making them more generalized, but still keeping bonuses comparable, but not AS good as when in fire, your mastered element.

I think this would be an interesting and beneficial change to see happen.

No one beats Ele at healing currently. :P

No, I say the numbers are fine, but our animations and bugs hinder the class horribly. I never said they were fine, but I kill HS Thieves on a regular, and everyone else besides Bunkers, Necros, and Mesmers.

And yes, most people either didn’t know, or forget the fact that every class is supposed to be able to DPS, support, and control depending on spec. Right now we have decent sustained DPS, but our burst is lacking due to bugs and animation problems, but we have excellent support and tank options. You’re not supposed to be able to do all 3 at once.

fanboism is the crux of every argument that makes ele’s look like they are fine.

anyone with half a brain who has actually played the game can see the blatant balance issues.

^^ the above post for example. We are not arguing to make ele’s easier to use or other classes harder. We are arguing to make ele’s as effective. Because they are not. In dps sense or survivability sense.

I find the elementalist playstyle to be fun and frustrating at the same time (in spvp, haven’t done much pve on mine yet). It’s quite fun to be able to give swiftness or protection to your entire group on a short cooldown, or to lay down some nice combo fields and aoe in the middle of a fight, and yes they are pretty good at running away just like those poor druids in vanilla WoW. When it comes to damage builds however, I feel like Elementalists have to give up way too much survivability compared to other classes without being able to come even close to the burst that a thief or mesmer can put out (granted mesmers have been surprisingly easy to deal with in a staff build for me, probably because their illusions can’t really stand up to all the aoe). I feel like traits need to be looked at too, because it’s very difficult to make full use of many of them due to having to switch attunements so often.

i raise issue with the whole glass cannon concept.

guild wars 2 isn’t suppose to have a glass cannon that needs a healer or tank to stand in front of to soak damage.

The entire point of the game is not needing those things from any other class.

So why is it that the ele needs so much work just to stay alive when other classes can do the same with so little effort and movment.

I would agree with most but the plane simple truth is you can not claim glass cannon is viable in a game that isn’t suppose to have any class as a glass cannon.

I primarily main warrior and ele. I also play engi and necro often. A few comments -

1. Elementalist is definitely not the most difficult class in the game. In my experience, that’s probably gonna go to engineers using multi-kit builds. Staff is absurdly simple to play well, especially the 0/0/10/30/30 triple cantrip variant w/ cleansing fire and sigil of energy. S/d glass and hybrid valk builds also aren’t very difficult to play so long as you are accustomed to high APM playstyles and have the capacity to understand and execute basic multi-attunement combos while maintaining some level of situational awareness – something that any serious gamer is going to be able to do.

2. I’ll agree that there is definitely a strange divergence between the amount of effort required to get something done on an ele compared to, I dunno, a warrior. With the build I typically run (axe/mace + sword/shield w/ opportunist and leg specialist), killing people is usually a matter of smartly rotating cripples and stuns while spamming axe 1 and otherwise not getting kited. Killing people as a rifle engi w/ rifle turret and static discharge is probably even easier so long as I can bait dodges. Playing s/d ele tends to be more involved with results that are sometimes (but not always) less profound. However, I wouldn’t say that this makes ele inherently weaker – it’s partly a difference in playstyle and partly skewed damage distribution across weapon skills for some classes (looking at chop and hip shot, among others). Ultimately, all three classes are very similarly capable with each having their advantages in different situations – i.e. warriors are among the worst duelists in the game atm for a variety of reasons, while eles are probably among the best with the only true hard counters being shatter mesmers and some engi builds thanks to high confusion uptime and other condi spam.

3. The worst thing about ele’s right now is the bugs. Hands down, the one thing that gets me killed the MOST when I’m playing s/d is RTL bugging out and sending me nowhere. Fix RTL and general consistency of the class will see a noticeable increase.

Anyways, I dunno. I have perspective from a variety of other classes in and out of tourneys, and elementalists are fairly strong. Yeah, you need to push more buttons faster than some other classes/builds to get results, but this doesn’t make the class weaker – it only means that you have to push more buttons to get to the same place. There’s a difference.

Personally, playing s/d is way more fun to me than anything else I’ve played with the exception of probably full glass rifle engi which is just lol.

None of this is to say that adjustments aren’t needed. I think some things could use changing. However, there’s a lot of over-exaggerated drama about ele’s being ineffective which is, for the most part, completely wrong.

I have many characters across many levels with an 80 eng/necro/mesmer. Lately I’ve been leveling an Ele and a Guardian in tandum or so (keeping them within 10 levels).

The core of my frustration with the Ele is that in order to do anything similar to any of my other characters I have to work 10x for it. There’s a huge, GIGNORMOUS disparity between the requirements to do well with an Elementalist and any other class.

A lot of this has to deal with the differences between a 2 weapon swap and a 4 aura swap. Even an Engineer typically will swap only between 1-2 other kits and their main weapon depending on spec. Even then on those other classes I play, I rarely need to swap to a second weapon type usually in cases of emergency for cool downs and not normal game play. Not only that, but traits tend to really limit how effective other weapons ultimately are by comparison.

What really needs to happen to bring the disparity down in the current system is general game play should be encouraged to focus on two attunements while still preserving the “advanced” game play style of swapping all attunements. This can be done by encouraging deep spec’d traits/benefits in the various lines (such as bonuses like Stoneflesh giving 1 point per level 1 point in the tree) while also building on the main focuses of each line (IE: More tanky in Earth, more in combat maneuverability in Air, more control in Fire and less in others to offset these changes, etc).

Again I’m not arguing to lower the high skill cap currently in place. I think it’s great that the better you are the more you can get out of the character. What I am looking for and am arguing for is trying to reduce the disparity between that skill cap and the required skill to play the class even somewhat competently.

Lowest defense + lowest DPS make elementalists a real charm. (Low DPS arises through the necessity to execute combos across the various attunements in order to equal damage output of other professions, but it takes much more time to achieve.)

Kittens.

Noctred.6732:

Anyways, I dunno. I have perspective from a variety of other classes in and out of tourneys, and elementalists are fairly strong.

Balancing shouldn’t be done based on tournament players, it should be based on the average player because right now balance changes affect all aspects of the game not just tPvP. It occurs to me that maybe this is anet’s mistake with the Ele that they nerfed it based on a very narrow sample.

Of course if, as was implied before the game came out, sPvP could be balanced separately from PvE then it would mitigate some issues but they can’t or won’t do that at the moment.

What I think they should concentrate on is fixing bugs (as opposed to making stupid changes like the nerf to Glyph of Renewal) then look at maybe things like cool downs and casting times and see what happens then.

Kodiak.3281:

I have many characters across many levels with an 80 eng/necro/mesmer. Lately I’ve been leveling an Ele and a Guardian in tandum or so (keeping them within 10 levels).

The core of my frustration with the Ele is that in order to do anything similar to any of my other characters I have to work 10x for it. There’s a huge, GIGNORMOUS disparity between the requirements to do well with an Elementalist and any other class.

A lot of this has to deal with the differences between a 2 weapon swap and a 4 aura swap. Even an Engineer typically will swap only between 1-2 other kits and their main weapon depending on spec. Even then on those other classes I play, I rarely need to swap to a second weapon type usually in cases of emergency for cool downs and not normal game play. Not only that, but traits tend to really limit how effective other weapons ultimately are by comparison.

What really needs to happen to bring the disparity down in the current system is general game play should be encouraged to focus on two attunements while still preserving the “advanced” game play style of swapping all attunements. This can be done by encouraging deep spec’d traits/benefits in the various lines (such as bonuses like Stoneflesh giving 1 point per level 1 point in the tree) while also building on the main focuses of each line (IE: More tanky in Earth, more in combat maneuverability in Air, more control in Fire and less in others to offset these changes, etc).

Again I’m not arguing to lower the high skill cap currently in place. I think it’s great that the better you are the more you can get out of the character. What I am looking for and am arguing for is trying to reduce the disparity between that skill cap and the required skill to play the class even somewhat competently.

This. Something like buffing all of our damage could easily go out of control. Forcing us to focus on two elements is a very good idea. Plus it would smoothen the fact that we currently have to go deep arcane in order to rotate properly.

Elementalist is fun class, but there needs to be something done, especially in PvE, if you want to dish out damage. Currently running instances as a damage dealing Elementalist is just a joke.

No, please no. I don’t want to be pigeonholed into two elements. Elementalist is already remarkably easy to play and combo with, dont make it kitten easy by dumbing it down.

If you want simple stupid, go pick up a warrior or mesmer. I enjoy elementalist because I have to press more then 2-3 buttons to play. The class is balanced, you can destroy any class in the game if you understand how they work. Mesmer is a joke when you dodge the shatters and dont throw burst into distortion. Thieves are a laughing stock. Warriors are only a pain if your cantrips are on CD. Engis are completely garbage, and necros dont stand a chance with 30 points into water. Rangers are a joke because their only viable builds revolve around conditions, just like necro. What more do you possibly want????

Most Elementalists have never seriously played another class… So they don’t know what’s really going on.

I’m playing 5 classes. If you count beta, I’ve played 6. My Elementalist is the clear under-performer of the lot.

She’s still fun to play, is certainly viable, and she does have niches in which she shines… but she just doesn’t reach the same performance levels. And apparently she can’t, no matter how much tweaking I do.

It’s not about the complexity of play, either, because my Engineer is just as much of a juggle; more so over the long-term, due to switching around skills and weapons, which can completely change the way she plays. My Elementalist only ever switches weapons, and rarely does so.

Ironically, my Elementalist feels static, my options more limited, when contrasted against other classes. And that’s the measure, isn’t it? Sure, people can do amazing things with an Elementalist. The point is they could do even more amazing things with every other class in almost any given situation. That’s the sticking point.

I think the class needs some love.

morrolan.9608:

Balancing shouldn’t be done based on tournament players, it should be based on the average player because right now balance changes affect all aspects of the game not just tPvP.

The whole point of tPvP is that it’s balanced. If ANet makes the ele what people in this thread want it to be, you’ll not see anything at all in tPvP except eles. Unless the player is really bad. Like, really really bad.

Kodiak.3281:

The core of my frustration with the Ele is that in order to do anything similar to any of my other characters I have to work 10x for it. There’s a huge, GIGNORMOUS disparity between the requirements to do well with an Elementalist and any other class.

I need to hit three (3), or sometimes four skills to instantly (i.e. within 3 seconds) drop a 5 size mob in PvE at level 80, with pretty much any weapon set. Does your guardian do this with just auto-attack or something, that hitting 3-4 skills is considered GIGNORMOUS disparity in “work”?

So the bottom line is that individuals feel the Ele is not balanced equally with other classes for PvP and maybe PvE?

I have found that after going pretty much full water spec on my ele that I just cant keep up with the AOE spammers farming in Orr… but whereas everyone else just wants the massive loot, im satisfied for now to assist, be support, heal people, and get at least silver medal on the events, usually gold on the abomination.

I will admit that because I chose to go water spec (for the good of the other squishy glass cannons in my guild) I have nerfed myself… but im ok with that. not every profession can do anything and everything. Except of course they redefined what everything is.

Can every single profession provide healing support in some way.?.. yes it would seem so..

can every single profession be called a healer?.. not so much.

can every single profession DPS? yup,
are some better than others? yup
are some skills and professions going to always congregate more players? yup

I think I was just about the only elemenatalist out in Orr this morning (meh, it was early, had a few minutes to kill before work, got about 4k karma, yay me)

Why should the competitive value of a class be based on non-competitive players? If you play a character seriously, you should be expected to learn and master that character to the best of your ability. That’s why a class should be balanced around skilled players who can unlock the classes potential in a practical high level situation, not around the average joe who isn’t going to be playing seriously anyway.

However, a class that takes more effort to learn should have greater rewards and versatility than a low skill cieling, high-rewards class.

Lifelike.5862:

Why should the competitive value of a class be based on non-competitive players? If you play a character seriously, you should be expected to learn and master that character to the best of your ability. That’s why a class should be balanced around skilled players who can unlock the classes potential in a practical high level situation, not around the average joe who isn’t going to be playing seriously anyway.

However, a class that takes more effort to learn should have greater rewards and versatility than a low skill cieling, high-rewards class.

You don’t balance around the best players in any game. You balance around the average player because they make up the most of your playerbase. Besides that, tPvP is such a small part of the game. If every class was balanced around the most skilled players in an instanced 5 man PvP scenario, that would be utterly ridiculous. What is everyone else supposed to do, be ok with a class they can’t do well with unless they invest more time to learn it better in a game that is centered around the idea that you can pick up and play anything at any time without having to put in the tons of time other games require? No, sorry.

Lifelike.5862:

Why should the competitive value of a class be based on non-competitive players? If you play a character seriously, you should be expected to learn and master that character to the best of your ability. That’s why a class should be balanced around skilled players who can unlock the classes potential in a practical high level situation, not around the average joe who isn’t going to be playing seriously anyway.

However, a class that takes more effort to learn should have greater rewards and versatility than a low skill cieling, high-rewards class.

Well Lifelike said my point better than I did lol. I especially agree with the last paragraph. The complexity and versatility is not what people think is wrong with the Ele, it’s actually what keeps things fun and interesting for many of us. It’s just that the rewards for that are not always enough to make up for all that.

This class is just weird with skills, I do have a clue how you should use them though but they are very ineffective compared to the other classes.

You have for example when running a scepter/dagger set up ride the lightning. This isn’t viable at all to use with anything I come up with other then to escape or chase a fleeing foe. Blinds are pretty terrible in this game and fade away to quickly, so your blinding flash and dust devil aren’t pretty useful in a fight either. Then you have 4x auto attack which all do something different but they aren’t that significant. You have earthquake, which I also find useless. Yes you can go ride the lightning + earthquake but either you are very low when you did that or you got crippled and aren’t in target’s reach. Ok so you did it and are at full health, let’s do churning earth oh wait it’s barely worth it considering the damage.

Then your protective skills, pretty lackluster a few minor heals in water specc and a slow that is also easy to not walk into and dodge. Lightning strike is the only guaranteed hit and if you want to do a high burst with fire you need to hit your skills which is hard and unrewarding considering that one hit does the same damage as freaking hearthseeker.

As bunker I don’t find them viable at all, guardian is much better at that. Elementalist are a liability and useless compared to other classes you can take. You should never take an elementalist in this game as they just suck and I do know how to play them but their skills just don’t match at all.

You get owned owned and owned by so many classes that it just isn’t funny anymore and your damage figures are way to low compared to a warrior just bursting hundred blades. Elementalist is crap.

You specced for toughness and had 1800 toughness?! I have no idea what you’re doing. Are you sure you don’t mean 2800? If I go tank spec, I go Fire 20, Air 10, Earth 30, Water 10 and build the spec around signets and auras. I have ~2900 toughness and quite literally constant protection, fury, and swiftness. I deal moderate damage and take a very long time to kill. There are other specs which focus more on regeneration and do something similar.

Nico, I can’t quote right now for some reason. Can you elaborate on how you got 2800 toughness? Do you have base vit? I think base toughness is 900 with 30 in earith that gets you what 300 more right? So that’s 1200….so how are you getting 2800 with gear, runes, accessories and weapons? TIA

As far as damage output goes against a single target, my damage can surely be a bit underwhelming in the start of the fight. However, as a staff elementalist, I am THE buffing class – granting fury, frost armor, might, protection, swiftness, and regeneration to my allies – and that’s just with self-combos. I also cleanse status effects and can dish out some tremendous healing.

In regards to conditions, I can cause nearly all of them by myself: several AoE blindness, decent bleeds and burns, cripple, immobilize, daze, stun, knock backs, and weakness. All these are on demand and I don’t have to hope RNG favors the condition/buff I need.

Now, I haven’t tried completely speccing for damage because I just love my utility. I occasionally throw on some +XX% damage buffs and those are nice (like the +20% on vulnerable while attuned to water), but I’m not sure whether they work with Lingering Elements.

Agreed to OP’s post : get the other class to require more skill to beat eles, or easy our way to beat other classes.

Selix.5670:

No, please no. I don’t want to be pigeonholed into two elements. Elementalist is already remarkably easy to play and combo with, dont make it kitten easy by dumbing it down.

If you want simple stupid, go pick up a warrior or mesmer. I enjoy elementalist because I have to press more then 2-3 buttons to play. The class is balanced, you can destroy any class in the game if you understand how they work. Mesmer is a joke when you dodge the shatters and dont throw burst into distortion. Thieves are a laughing stock. Warriors are only a pain if your cantrips are on CD. Engis are completely garbage, and necros dont stand a chance with 30 points into water. Rangers are a joke because their only viable builds revolve around conditions, just like necro. What more do you possibly want????

We’ve kinda stated what we wanted repeatedly. We don’t want to constantly have be at the top of our game to get results. As it stands as an Elementalist you’re either going to play perfectly or you’re going to suck. There’s zero middle ground and zero forgiveness.

No one is asking to simplify the current advance play styles of the class. No one expects that if they aren’t playing at the top of their game that they should be able to still dominate everyone. To put it visually:

Elementalist Player Skill level:
|——————————-|——|—|
(Worthless / Decent / Great)

The bar at which we are worthless is vastly larger than any other class and that is what we’re looking to address.

Truga.5897:

I need to hit three (3), or sometimes four skills to instantly (i.e. within 3 seconds) drop a 5 size mob in PvE at level 80, with pretty much any weapon set. Does your guardian do this with just auto-attack or something, that hitting 3-4 skills is considered GIGNORMOUS disparity in “work”?

First I have a hard time believing you with that “any set” comment but we’ll look past that for now. Second, Guardian is kinda a poor choice because it’s defensively oriented class that is designed to just outlast things. I mean you could send endless streams of 5+ mobs and the Guardian would just plow through them without even trying. They are the choice of farming class so comparing them is pretty tough cause it’s literally the other end of the spectrum. If you’re really interested in how this is done I will happy to list it to ya but not sure listing the self combos (guardians also have a stupid number of fields) and other tricks is really appropriate on the Ele forum.

Morguean.6041:

can every single profession be called a healer?.. not so much.

This is actually how I plan to do my Guardian for WvW, all support. Best of all I will still get loot on events because I can use a staff and it’ll just keep auto tagging 5 targets at a time while I AOE support my allies with strong heals and regeneration.

The only people in denial haven’t played the other professions yet, that is all.

Those of you “speccing water” to “play healers” aren’t neglecting your DPS stats I hope. Keep in mind that mitigation is superior to healing in this game, and dead mobs are about as mitigated as you can get.

I dunno. I thing bug fixes will go a long, long way for eles. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but I keep discovering more and more nuances the more I play. Eles have a TON of insta-cast skills. They have attunement swaps (and properly specced, accompanying buffs) that can be cast during anything including fears/KDs etc. We have lots of channels, but lots of insta-defense that doesn’t interrupt that (and can be used from flat on your back). We have access to lots of protection, lots of condi removal, lots of mobility. We have a lot of ways to recover from a mistake.

I’m sure there are some people out there who have a far better grasp of the class than I do. For me, it began as learning skills > chaining attunements effectively > learning how to combo well > tweaking my spec > realizing I was missing nuances such as swapping to fire at the end of my Churning Earth channel for the extra stack of might + fury, increasing my chance the skill will crit. I feel certain I still have a lot to learn about my own class alone — let alone what others are capable of when I PvP against them.

I’d consider myself pretty mediocre, but people claim to have “mastered the class” yet struggle with multiple mobs/say D/D can’t be successfully run in dungeons. Either people are a lot further from mastering in than they think, or they’re flatly exaggerating. (And these comments aren’t directed at anyone in particular.)

TL:DR
Can other classes do things like dish out more damage with less effort? In many cases, yes. But imo much more straight damage on an ele will run the risk of it becoming disgustingly OP in the right hands (note right hands, not my hands ).

Fey Zeal.7032:

So the bottom line is that individuals feel the Ele is not balanced equally with other classes for PvP and maybe PvE?

That seems to be the theme.

I’d refine that, though, and say that Elementalists are viable as they are, but tend to the low range of the spectrum, and they seem to have to sacrifice flexibility to remain competitive. There’s very little diversity to be found in workable builds and play styles.

I’d like to see the overall spectrum of class viability narrowed a bit and have the Elementalist get some breathing room. Personally, I’m not really interested in very precise and equal balance, because I’m old and slow. High performance will always be beyond my reach.

But I would like to see the ballpark all the classes are in to be smaller: a tighter range of performance, with approximately equal flexibility in options.

/thread

@RamatanKahn : cute story, you find a group of noobs/lowbies just by looking at their gear. You kill em all and thats your opinion.

Tonight, on too kitteny to realize.

Uh only one or two them weren’t 80, and how can you tell what gear they had other then the warrior and his exotic sword? Sorry kid, try again.

RamataKahn.4283:

Uh only one or two them weren’t 80, and how can you tell what gear they had other then the warrior and his exotic sword? Sorry kid, try again.

You are absolutely right, they are all 80s on exotics, in fact you are so amazing they called a Dr. to fix their soar kitten called a lawyer and created a petition to nerf eles and created a fan club called “OMG dat guy Ramata, OMG”.

Get real dear child, just take a look at their gear, you posted the vid for crying out loud.

What? I just said that they weren’t all 80.
I never said they were all in exotics.
You seem to think I’m the ele in that vid but I’m not and never said I was.
You seem to know exactly every piece of gear all of them are wearing, please tell us each piece oh great one…

Cipoet, please stop. You’re wrong in so many ways. Had a glorious 1v1 with a good backstab Thief tonight, ended the fight with full HP.

Feel free to roll a Thief or a Ranger and add me if you need lessons.