When I was examining the professions before release, deciding which to main, I decided at some point it was between Thief and Elementalist. I picked Thief.
I leveled to 80, did a lot of PvP, and generally enjoyed playing Thief.
However, it wasn’t till recently I decided to actually try Elementalist, after getting bored with Thief, and hearing everyone cry “Elementalists are underpowered!”
I thought to myself, “pfff, how hard could it be?”
Well, it wasn’t TOO bad, but it definitely wasn’t easy. Beforehand, I watched a few videos of what are to be considered “good” Elementalists, and started to understand how the class works. I really liked the play style of Scepter/Dagger and basically copied someone’s build until I got a better understanding of the class. Also, being very tired of PvE, I went straight into PvP, that way I could use all the traits and such and not worry about leveling.
Anyways, I did a bunch of testing on Golems and tried my best to grasp some important combos that could be pulled off. The hardest part initially was remembering all the different skills and their function. It seemed a bit mind boggling at first, 20 skills to use, along with utilities. Something I bet many grasp just from playing PvE, but nonetheless it was pretty fun to have the variety. Coming from Thief, I was used to a much higher damage output for significantly less effort, and I was a condition/control Thief, not even high damage burst. While I kept telling myself, it’s most likely because of my lack of experience, I eventually felt comfortable enough to do some sPvP.
So I jumped into sPvP. The first match went ok. I struggled with switching attunements at the right time and trying not to get overwhelmed in the heat of combat. The second match I played went very well. I started to get the hang of how things worked, and I even killed someone 1v1. Though many of the problems from the first match still remained. I kept thinking, “What am I doing wrong that prevents me from doing significant amounts of damage?” So I went back to the training golems to see what I could do. I further experimented and tried many combos, eventually building a fairly long combo of damage dealing moves. Though, it wasn’t long before I realized how much work it required, just to do decent amount of damage, let alone pull off the combo. I reentered sPvP and really focused in. I soon realized the importance of well timed skill usage as well as attunement changes. Sometimes I would accidentally switch to the wrong attunement and the consequences were harsh, and it was difficult to recover from. The harder hitting moves had a long windup time, and were very easy for the opponent to avoid, so long as the kept moving, which they usually did. I was however thankful for how much longer I could last in battles openly thanks to water and earth, something not easily achieved as Thief.
After a few days of sPvP as Elementalist. I started getting better and better at switching attunements and getting the combos off successfully. I started to see smaller connections with combo fields that became useful, along with the synchronization of utilities. Unfortunately, I still had some issues, some I’m almost positive are bugs, and the timing on attunements definitely needs work on my end. Though in the long run, I couldn’t help but get the continous thought of “My Thief can do damage more efficiently in almost every way, or so it seems.” I want to believe I’m just awful at Elementalist, and with time and practice I’ll be able to say Thief and Elementalist in particular are on equal grounds, but I honestly cannot say it be. I’m going to keep working on Elementalist, and start doing more experimentations with other weapon sets. Hopefully I’ll get better, because Elementalist is a lot of fun to play, but it does get discouraging to lose in battles time again to other “easier” classes. I still feel as if there is hope though. I can somewhat see the high potential the class could have with someone who is very talented and dedicates a lot of time to get good. It’s a class with a fairly high skill cap, as well as high minimum to play effectively.
On a different note, I noticed that I became a magnet for melee classes. Many other classes would single me out in combat and focus fire on me. I thought it felt unusual as I don’t have as much issues when I play other classes. Perhaps people think Elementalists as easy targets, and seem to go for them first?
TL;DR: My impression of Elementalist goes simply as: It’s fun, but much harder than most of the classes I’ve played. The DPS seems weak even when pulling off larger combos successfully. This is especially so when comparing to my main, Thief.
Thanks for reading.
Thief – Radderic
Mesmer – Smash Kablooey