Guild Wars 2

Can anyone clarify for me, now that enough time has passed for more people to have experience with the class, what is the actual state of the elementalist in PvP and endgame? Lately I’ve been seeing some positive commentary amidst the complaints, are things genuinely looking up now that people have a better understanding of the class? Or is this more a case of making the best of a bad situation? Objectively, how are things going?

At this point I have some experience with every class and I’ve come to find that I got the most enjoyment out of the game during my time on the elementalist. It was my first character and while it was hard at times, I enjoyed it none the less. While I shelved my other classes for various reasons, I only did so on the elementalist largely because of community perception. The message I was getting was that I would find endgame to be especially painful on an elementalist, and when the time came to do any organized content, I would be looked upon as second rate, trapped in an “Impossible to excel” situation where my best efforts would only be in line with everyone else’s average.

I want to reboot my elementalist, starting from scratch, now with a familiarity with the game. (Also to pick a different order and a charr physique where your fur doesn’t clip through the armor =/) However, I’d probably try to play a class I like less rather than be screwed down the road by the class performance or the community perception of it.

I don’t know about PvP, but for PvE (endgame) I find it a good and enjoyable class to play. Lots of fun to play, can’t complain.

I’m in the same boat here, but I don’t think I’m willing to risk it. From what I’ve seen around here and in game, ele’s are well-designed in general, but poorly balanced.

I’ve been playing the ele almost exclusively since BWE #1. I think i have maybe 40 hours max across all my other characters.

Honestly, we’re not as bad as people are making out. We have some bugged skills, and some bad traits, but thats about it.
Design wise, we’re actually great.

The biggest thing is that we are tough to learn to play well, and there isnt actually a ‘best sequence’ for every fight.

Honestly, once you’ve played it for a while you’ll see we arent that bad, and we’re most certainly the most fun class to play.

Eles do seem to have a bit harder time in organized sPvP … but that doesn’t require you to level. In PvE and WvW I have no problems on mine at all.

It may not be as easy as playing a warrior or a guardian, but it’s still very much viable and can contribute plenty to a group, imo.

Tough to play and learn but so mentally rewarding.. If you are made for elementalist, even losing hard feels fun.
Elementalists .. Well.. Cant say we need some slight tweaks and changes because other classes getting changes and fixes will change things for us to. As it is atm we are kinda hard to play for less rewards then other professions. Nonetheless a very versatile proffesion still capable of dealing devastation in the right hands… Best reason to choose elementalist is if you have fun with it.

But so is every class in my opinion

I played ele from BWE1, due to elementalist not being that well in pvp right after release i went to engineer after release. I have been owning enormous with my engineer.. BUT i barely had real fun during that. Now yesterday i went back to my ele again and thank god i did that. Joined spvp with a very nice homemade staffbuild and after 6 matches (it felt like as if it was only 5 mins) i went to the bank, took all my engineers gold and stuff and now i totally changed back my main to ele

In terms of class/game balance, the Ele needs some work. In terms of ithe classes effectiveness in PvP, I think it is effective in Wv3 with Staff only, and can be effective in sPvP with certain builds and tactics, but it is very limited in its ability to survive which severely hinders the ability to get the damage on the table necessary to make it worth the risk vs. reward dynamic. In other words, the class is very limited in its ability to be effective because it does not produce the kind of spike damage necessary to win close range fights, which makes close range weapon builds a handicap rather than a way to be effective at close range combat, which is what they were intended to be by design. Therfore, the class does not meet design expectations after the many rounds of nerfs that the class was subjected to during the BWE’s.

There are also skills and trats which do not synergize well anymore, mainly because of said nerfs. They seemed to synergize just fine before the nerfs. There are also skills that no longer function properly post nerf period, like RTL.

In essence, I feel the class needs to be looked at again because the nerf bat in essence “remade” the class into something slightly different than what was originally designed.

I think the elemental trait lines are a bit weak, and theres a scattering of (mostly) minor bugs, but on the whole the class is in a good spot. Yes, ele’s have to be true masters of their class and it takes a lot more work then others, but that’s by design. All the scholars are intended to be the hardest to master, and elementalist is at the top. If you put in the work though, you’re rewarded with a class that can adapt instantly to any situation and excel at it. I very rarely say this, in fact it’s the first time, but l2p is definately in effect here; don’t judge by the forums, judge by the ele’s in game who stuck with the class and are dominating high-end content.

Not at end game nor still playing my ele but, from my perspective, the class has a lot of versatility and is pretty complicated. The problem most folks seem to have is they think that because they are “working” harder than other classes, they should be performing better than said classes. Not a dev but, I don’t think that was their intention (the performing better part.) I think they want the challenge of playing the class to be the reward

Just my 2cents

We are perfectly viable for most things, but other classes can do it just as well if not better with a lot less effort.

I’m doing fine everywhere tbh.

As Pawstruck said. Well-designed but poorly balanced. In PvE I find that the class can contribute with some interesting buffs, healing and combos. Damage-wise they are alright when dealing with large packs in a tight spot, although mobs can be hard to control at times. Otherwise it is a really fun and hard to master class, as it has at least twice the amount of skills than other classes do. PvP it does not do very well either, except the occasional party buff and AoE heals. But despite the severe lack in damage, it is a fun and very challenging class to play, which it great. Perhaps people from the team will look at the class again in a while. Hope so.

Vayra.3290:

We are perfectly viable for most things, but other classes can do it just as well if not better with a lot less effort.

Exactly.

Design-wise? We are very well-designed, but our traits are not. We have a few skillsets that overall feel a bit unfocused/ shallow/ lacking, and the mechanics for conjure weapons are not polished well enough to flow well with the class, but overall we’re at a pretty good spot here. But traits do need to be rethought a little.

Balance-wise, we’re mediocre. I won’t say bad, because we’re viable enough to achieve all the goals we can set to achieve. But still we require double the effort and double the time to achieve the same thing as other professions. That’s why we have to work so hard for spvp, and then any profession can come in and beat us, sometimes even without swapping weapons, while we must swap between all four attunements like crazy. When you lose in pvp and check the battle log, and you notice that one or two skills took out 6k-8k out of your HP each, including auto-attacks, then it’s very disheartening.

I have levelled to 80 and finished all the high level maps and I am r11 in pvp.

Elementalists are in a workable position in pve. We have good aoe with fire but I think single target damage is below other classes. A water spec ele can provide a lot of support to team mates with regen and condition removal. We can aquire and spread boons quickly.

SPVP is a more hostile environment as our strengths are lessened and our weaknesses highlighted. The large amount of burst damage quickly eats through our base 10khp if our dodge and defence skills are on recharge.
Our own damage spells are not suited to fast moving pvp. Fire aoe skills take too much time before they start doing damage. Condition damage is below necro and engi. Burning is very easy to remove.

Elementalists are in a somewhat weird place at the moment. On one hand, we can do excellent damage in PVE group situations and on the other our low base HP can’t survive burst damage from other professions. I think the first thing that needs to hapkitten that our base HP needs to be raised and be comparable to the other professions, or have our burst damage increased.

Overall, it is a very fun and rewarding class to play once you get the hang of it.

If you’re the top 2% hardcore gamer, you can do just as well as with any other class. If you are part of the other 98%, the elementalist is unplayable in PvP and frustrating in Pve.

However, I still think it’s fun in PvE and wouldn’t want the ‘flavor’ of the class to change. But the class undeniably needs some minor work for PvE, and a lot of work for PvP.

I don’t think a purely objective view is actually possible – even if you could look directly at ArenaNet’s statistics, that’s just an impersonal aggregate of thousands of subjective experiences.

From what I’ve seen people saying, it seems that elementalists are good to have when there’s someone else around to take the proverbial heat and to make use of the combo fields they have the ability to place, but perform poorly when they don’t – which makes them very hard to solo.

People kittenject them for dungeons are, IMO, making a mistake. Partly this is because this is the sort of situation where elementalists have more of an opportunity to shine, and partly because an elementalist who gets to AC, let alone further, really has to be doing something right. I’d rather have a good player playing a weak profession than an idiot facerolling a strong profession that gets everyone killed. it’s a pat line that keeps getting rolled out, but if you’re rejected from a group because of your profession, you probably didn’t want to be in that group in the first place.

From a d/d Spvp point of view, I love it.

No other class has such fast paced combat besides maybe thieves, but their combat is much more thoughtless.

I don’t have problems with anyone that hasn’t learned how to counter our class so far.(besides tank guardians) In fact I can usually chew them up and spit them out. The issue I am starting to see is the other players on other classes that have learned how to counter our class. I am having to break old habits of using my burst combos when I switch to fire/air, good players will know exactly whats coming. Its when you fight these players that you start seeing the shortfalls of our class.

The long CDs on our CC skills, the fact that even with soldier amulet and protection up 50% of the fight we take crazy damage, the fact that we need 15+ stacks of might to get up to the same damage output of some other tankier classes, the fact that after downing an opponent 70% of the time we have to run away and LOS instead of stomping them because they can easily down us before we can get the stomp.

I don’t mind having to press 18 more buttons than other classes to win a fight, I DO mind that other classes can do much more damage AND have better survivability.

But I will keep on trucking because no other class in any other game I have played is this fun.

OP, you pointed out yourself that you had fun playing as your elementalist, why would you even consider switching to something you don’t enjoy? I’ve been playing mmos a long time and that is a disturbing trend. Classes get tweaked and adjusted all the time, what may not seen up to snuff one month, is the flavor class of the next. Rather than worrying about what the community thinks, continue playing the game how you see fit. I would love a game to come along some day where people play what they wish rather than worrying about what someone else wants them to play.

Guess it’s why I haven’t bothered with much endgame since the burning crusade in wow, “community expectations”

In my experiance, Elementalist is a money pit. I’m unable to earn enough gold to train and use any more trait points. Can only put 20 in each and I have Fire, Air and now Arcane maxed with some in Water.

If you’ve done every class, then my suggestion is to wait six months before trying elementalist. It is too frail and on the level 70+ maps 1v1 is very difficult, 2 ore more and either run or die. On monsters that are level 64 and up they are significantly harder.

I’m about to declare Straights of Devastation unplayable as the elementalist.

Elementalist is the crystal meth of Guild Wars 2. If you started with it before trying anything else, you’ll never really be able to quit it. Even though you know its horrible for you and will lead only to misery and frustration. Oh, sure, you’ll go cold turkey. Get yourself clean.

But it’ll always be in the back of your head. Tempting you with just one more hit of that sweet sweet Earth. Come on, baby. What’s one more spvp match? You can quit if you want too! What’s the harm?

…..(sob)

Ahhh, when not being able to do single burst damage (ranged) nearly as well as a warrior. You know something is wrong, haha.

Can anyone clarify for me, now that enough time has passed for more people to have experience with the class, what is the actual state of the elementalist in PvP and endgame? Lately I’ve been seeing some positive commentary amidst the complaints, are things genuinely looking up now that people have a better understanding of the class? Or is this more a case of making the best of a bad situation? Objectively, how are things going?

I can’t comment on PvE, but in PvP it’s mostly a case of players finding the one niche we are good at: conditional removal. So ele’s can get in to tPvP using a water build. We’re just confined to a single role.

I also think that people have adjusted to our flaws in sPvP. We’re still subpar, but people gave up any hope of being glass cannons and started including more defense in their builds. (An ele should still lose every 1v1 against a competent player, but we stopped losing 1v1’s to bad players once people switched to more defensive strategies.)

Diablerie.5296:

OP, you pointed out yourself that you had fun playing as your elementalist, why would you even consider switching to something you don’t enjoy? I’ve been playing mmos a long time and that is a disturbing trend.

It’s a concern because when WoW launched i fell in love with the druid class, and stuck with it despite my better judgement, and it took YEARS (one of the major BC patches) for the class to be ‘tweaked’ enough to be accepted outside a healer role or backup tank. It didn’t matter how much you liked the class or how good you were at it, because if literally ANY other class was avaible you were riding the bench and playing alts because your main just wasn’t good enough. I just really don’t want to subject myself to that again, not that much of a masochist.

Luckily, from the sound of things elementalist aren’t as bad off (impotent) as I was lead to believe, so I’ll hopefully throw myself back into class, since I did like it quite a bit. I’ll probably still try to keep a guardian or engineer on the side as something to fall back on if things go bad. Thanks for all the info everyone.

from objective view of someone who used to play ele, now play mesmer and tried to play ele again…

i think that ele have way too low dmg compared to other profession… maybe support/control on staff is +- ok with its dmg, but other weapons are more nuke focused instead of control/support and they lack dmg… even my mesmer who is more defensive does more dmg, no need to mention thief who have same hp, more armor, stealth, ports (this is why his melee range doesnt really matter, he can easily get to his target) and does 3x more dmg then ele, i could go on, but i think its not needed… and his downed state is heavy focused on team support, without team, ele is only one profession who is already dead, not downed… that doesnt seem to be balanced to me :/ poor ele

Oh I don’t think its as bad as the WoW Druid your describing, but the Ele is badly handicapped compared to almost all other classes. This is not to say that it does not have its strengths, because it definitely does, but you will be doing no facerolling the keyboard with it, that’s for sure.

Hyena.2037:

It’s a concern because when WoW launched i fell in love with the druid class, and stuck with it despite my better judgement, and it took YEARS (one of the major BC patches) for the class to be ‘tweaked’ enough to be accepted outside a healer role or backup tank. It didn’t matter how much you liked the class or how good you were at it, because if literally ANY other class was avaible you were riding the bench and playing alts because your main just wasn’t good enough. I just really don’t want to subject myself to that again, not that much of a masochist.

Ha!

I was in your same situation. I was one of the “famous, handful feral druids in the whole world accepted and able to main tank Zul Gurub and Naxxramas”.

It took 10 times as much dedication than playing any other class but the rewards were worth it. People would stand absolutely stunned seeing the 1 of max 2 druids on the servers standing in Orgrimmar with raid looted feral gear. Looted in the face of rogues, warriors etc. who would quit the guild when the “guild breaker” Molten Core STR + AGI ring dropped (twice a year) and the druid would be allowed to roll on it.

Was a fun but very rough ride, I just don’t have that mental strength any more (got more priority stuff to think about in RL than a game), so since then I exclusively rolled super precise, totally 1 dimensional classes that would never, never put me again in that situation. Mage was a good choice (was my other main in WoW and many games like Baldur’s Gate, NWN etc) as it’s traditionally the pure DPS non melee class.

But no, in GW2 there’s no mage class, elementalist is a “monk” hybrid class a bit like druids.
The bad thing is, it’s also as compelling to play, so even if every single of my other characters is vastly, absurdly easier (and I am also talking of necro, as my second main, imagine that) I can’t stop playing it.
The good of GW2 is that when I want to switch to god mode I have just to log my ranger and warrior, no real grind needed. Heck, for a while I did not even remember to choose the major traits for the warrior, they are not even needed to melt faces.

Another factor I have not seen brought on the table: connection latency.

Almost every “pro elementalist” video out there shows some insanely, maniacally good guy playing J. S. Bach harpsicord scores with no single fault, no single delay.

Now, most of the world does not allow for such fast gameplay. Even if I live in a so called “first world country” (a minority), close to the best ISP data center and pay a “double premium gaming connection”, I just can’t get below 150ms latency. Non double premium gaming connections easily go up to 200, sometimes 250ms.
This means that players from many countries, may be competitive in PvP games featuring “Global Cooldown” (usually 1-1.5s) but not in GW2. Not on Elementalist at least.
This is quite an aggravating issue, completely detached from player skill yet heavily affecting them. Some skills require “return feedback” (the server acknowledges the player move and the client waits for its response) effectively doubling those 200ms into 400ms. A Global Cooldown MMO would still keep playability since the GCD is still bigger than 400ms, but not GW2.

I am enjoying my time as Ele, just boost our damage and give us a decent downed skill and we’re perfect.

I think its a better duel class than most people give credit for, especially with all 3 cantrips up. However you might expect an elem to be a real presence during teamfights, but that is actually where i feel that our highest damaging teamfight spells start missing or forcing you into bad spots, and is extremely easy to blow up with a little focus fire.

I’d say we’re a little too forced into cantrips to survive serious fights, and that those cantrips have rather long cooldowns and inferior effects at the same time. I think our ‘base power’ is just a tad too low, that is auto attack / base stats / survivability without utility slots taken into account.

I mean whats the point in speccing for near permanent 33% less dmg taken when both your armor and hp are 50% less than other to begin with. Now if we had close to 30% more dmg than others it’d be ok but its more like we have 30% less. It just doesnt add up.
We lost all our damage in the BWE nerfs but kept our worst survivability. Effectively failing at a very fickle balancing task. Power – Survive Ratio. Giving worst hp and armor to the same class will simply require also giving it significant advantages in other fields.

we need an buff to our dmg and fix some of our traits AND THAT ANNOYING MIST FORM 20% less cd bug

The class is very well designed but not rewarding at all to play. That is my opinion on it after around 200 something tournament games. The only actually viable role in high tier tournament play is to be a water staff tank/support ele. Your d/d burst is easily avoidable for a good player and scepter tank/condition builds are pretty iffy compared to lets say a condition ranger. Focus is not even a viable offhand in competitive pvp because dagger outmatches it in almost everything other than the ability to make yourself unkillable for a few seconds.
It has its ups and downs but i personally find myself to be less frustrated by all the other classes. Having to manage all you have as an elementalist to get even close to killing a pistolwhip spec 1v1 no matter what kind of a trait/weapon combo you go is ridiculously frustrating.
Edit: Also ever since they nerfed Dragon’s Tooth and Flame Grip playing a burst elementalist feels very, very underpowered. Used to be that you could 1shot a bad player with berserkers when you did your full burst. :/ Now only every other damage spec is able to do that. Also not having access to quickness forces you to take 2 arcane spells for doing burst damage, which is the meta right now, making it annoying as hell.

Good that you mention our only burst utilities – these two have been nerfed for BWE3: 20% higher cooldown and 30% reduced damage. Just un-nerf Arcane Blast and Wave and make one of them elite…

I think Elementalists are a ton of fun in PvE. We have great damage, burst and support. Where Elementalists start to have issues is when we move away from the AI of PvE and move to playing against real people in WvW and SPvP.

The issues that Elementalists face are mostly due to the poor synergy of Attunements with the Trait system. Most professions have weapons that fit the role that they are building via items and traits. The Elementalist has all of its roles tied to their attunements and their traits. What happens is that a Elementalist puts points into say the Earth Trait line and now Earth Attunement has all of these great improvements but if the player switches to Fire Attunement it is all lost. There is no Protection Boon unless you are in Earth Attunement. So while most of your damage comes from Fire and Air Attunement, if anyone tries to really focus you down, you have to switch to Earth Attunement. Other professions don’t have this issue. Their weapons give them a decent balance of damage skills, defensive skills and support skills. And they don’t lose all of their damage because their traits aren’t tied to a specific system like the Elementalist’s attunements.

Elementalists also face a very small health pool and low Toughness. I think their health pool needs increased a small amount. They don’t have as many defensive skills and are limited by Earth Attunement for defensive traits. If this profession is meant to be a glass cannon then Elementalists need a significant damage increase across the board even if they are in a non-damage focused Attunement.

Non-objectively speaking: omg ele so weak buff plx! nurf 100 blades n spamseekerz! (I could ramble on doing idiotic stuff like this all day but nobody wants to see that)

Objectively speaking: It certainly requires a metric ton of effort to play the Elementalist and do well with it. However, the ‘risk’ (as you could call it) for doing so is not even remotely close to worth the reward (wait, there’s a reward?). Put a different way, there are several classes I could name that comparatively are 100% roll-face-on-keyboard mode and get as good as (if not better) results.

As it’s been said in this thread already, the only way to really play an Elementalist to maximum success in any form of PvP is Staff with a Water/Arcana/Earth build. The bigger problem with this situation is that you already have the lowest armor and base hp in the game, and because of ridiculously amazing traits like Staff Blaster (or the other passive weapon oriented traits) and Evasive Arcana coupled with the mandatory need to reduce your attunement recharges to at maximum 10 seconds, you give up 200-300 of a stat.

That doesn’t sound that bad on paper, but consider this: our large burst, front ended spells are ridiculously long to cast and have very, very telegraphed animations to them. Meanwhile, 100 Blades (while also gloriously animated) starts its damage almost instantly and between Bullrush and Bola, it is easy to lock someone in place consistently. Even Heartseeker and Pistol Whip builds are well animated (you see something flash at you, notice you can’t move and scream kitten) but are fairly difficult to get away from.

An Elementalist trying to do comparable damage would need to either give up what I consider mandatory utility (Cleansing Flame, Mist Form, Armor of Earth) for trash utilities like Signet of Toughness or one of the Arcane Wave to either set up or supplement his ‘burst’ or go with a non-Staff weapon set. Even after all of that set up and sacrificing survivability and utility for the ultimate burst potential, it becomes obvious all the opponent needs to do is literally S-key out of Dragon’s Tooth or strafe the big fiery bird flying at the speed of molasses at them.

Back on topic, it’s designed well and balanced poorly. I don’t mind doing less damage because I have a 1200 range with my staff (ironically the weapon with the highest DPS auto-attacks), but Mesmers get than fancy Greatsword and do quite a bit more DPS with that #1. Notice how I used damage per second and not damage per hit. More so to the point…melee classes often have abilities than grant quickness, something we don’t get short of a terrible rune/sigil set or a time warp. Their auto-attacks also fire off close to twice the rate of ours, and still do almost double the DPS (pre-quickness); post-quickness it’s basically Bullrush + Quickness → 100 Blades → me screaming bloody murder because I’m at 50% health if I got caught without one of my 3 stun breakers. Thieves do relatively the same thing only with auto-attacks to 50-60% followed by 4 Heartseekers (if Heartseeker specced) or Blink from stealth to me → hasted Pistol Whip chain while immobilized if I don’t have Water attunement up.

Mind you all of those above combos can be done roughly every 20 seconds (average), require very little effort on the end of the user, and are still moderately effective against even the tankiest of folk (it results in them playing defensive due to the heavy pressure). An excellent Elementalist on top of his game might be able to set up a 12k burst chain (specced and geared full glass cannon of course) once every 30 seconds, but he’ll die in less than 1/3 of that time if he misses one of those attacks and fails to kill his target.

I could mention stuff about the lackluster CC options and how half of them don’t work because they don’t follow their target and have travel time associated with them (and of course they have durations 10-15 times shorter than their cooldowns)

TL:DR - Interesting/well thought out design, bad implementation and balance. Could use some help/work, particularly with the base health and control ability’s durations vs cooldown.