Guild Wars 2

First, before you make any judgements I would like to share an anecdotal story to set the mindset this post is written in.

I used to think that I did not like tea, because all I ever had was standard Lipton or Red Rose tea. One day I was exposed to a high end tea place, and they told me how to properly brew tea (don’t use boiling water, and black tea take 2-3 minutes).\

I was amazed that I had been doing it wrong this entire time. So I continued brewing tea properly and now I like tea (even the cheaper stuff). It took me a while to wonder Why had I been brewing tea incorrectly this entire time? I finally looked at the back of the Lipton tea box for instructions on how to brew, and it instructed: Brew 3-5 minutes in boiling water.

Now that is a long anecdote, but what I am trying to get at is one of the first impressions you have of the Elementalist is the Profession page, and I do not think that page reflects the state of the Elementalist.

First the actual Text of the Elementalist taken from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

I think something like “They reward player skill and creativity with strong support and devastating area attacks” would be a better description for two reasons.

1) I have played as every class but the thief, and I can safely say that to play the Elementalist well demands some of the best player skill because we are not given any class specific advantage (i.e. Stealth, clones, pets, etc.).

• We have some of the best area damaging attacks. This really shines in WvW were you can get a lot of targets in a small area.
• We have no specific defenses but dodge, so you have to get really good at the dodge button. (all classes have to, but Ele’s are so squishy there is little room for error)
• One of our greatest strengths is comboing off fields, something all classes do, but this is one of the aspects we really shine.
• We have some of the longest cool downs and worst auto attacks for weapon skills encouraging us to constantly change attunement. That is a lot of buttons to be hitting at any given time.

2) The phrase “what they lack in physical defence they make up for in massive damage in a single attack” is misleading.

• This implies that the Elementalist somehow sacrificed durability for greater DPS, or Skills that hit harder than a class that did not sacrifice durability at the very least. which is not true. I compare the Elementalist to the warrior, because the warrior has sacrificed no durability.

*The hardest hitting skill I can think of is Fire Grab, which does 941 base damage to targets on fire (588 if the target is not on fire, and this skill has a 45 second cool down). Level 3 kill shot does 1256 damage and level 3 eviscerate does 1006 (10 second cool down, but requires adrenaline).

*Lava Font is another one that hits for 1200 if the target stands in it for 4 seconds. Hundred blades does over 2000 unconditional damage (it takes 3.5 seconds, but has an 8 second cool down).

• I do not think I am the only Ele that was expecting since our practical maximum health around 20 K is about where the warriors begin, that our DPS would be noticeably higher to compensate.

I would also like to mention the description for air does not match up for the scepter or staff.

By harnessing wind and lightning, elementalists can target specific foes with focused, high-damage attacks.

It would be more accurate if it was more like “By harnessing wind and lightning, Elementalists grant themselves the mobility and protection of air while disabling their foes with powerful gales and blinding lightning strikes”

The staff has chain lightning, which is not focused and it one of the worst damaging auto attacks in the game. It also has lightning surge which isn’t the most damaging skill at 400 damage with 10 second cool down. The other three are not attacks.

The Scepter is worse. The DPS on the Arc lightning is one of the worse in the game, and even adding in lightning strike it will still be lower than most auto attacks DPS. The foci does not attack and please do not get me started on ride the lightning.

I agree on every point,
i usually play the mage in mmos for the reason they got high dmg/burst (nuker).
Well i know that at gw2 there is no trinity but we sacrifice the defence/health (that happens at other mmos) and we still get awful base dmg on every attack.

What if we have 20 skills per weapon when half of them are at no use most of the time, or deal very low unnoticed dmg.

imo what needs to change is the AA on every weapon/rotation, elementalists have the most useless AA of every other class. (slow projectiles, low damage).
that will fix the class a little.

Fiery Rush combined with Lightning Flash is about as much damage as 8 100b’s in a row.
In my opinion that justifies some sacrifices in health and armor.

Ever heard of grasping at straws? This is an example.

Anicetus.1253:

Fiery Rush combined with Lightning Flash is about as much damage as 8 100b’s in a row.
In my opinion that justifies some sacrifices in health and armor.

Yes, but that is probably not the intended game mechanic and I expect that to be patched soon, especially if people start using it regularly.

ArenaNet has annouced that it’s working as intended. Plus, fiery rush work’s exactly the way described in it’s description. This can be tracked in some tequatl kill thread, iirc.

Other examples would be Meteor Shower, Ice Storm and a few other skills, causing much greater effect than any other profession’s skills.

The description should just say “elementalists are the profession of choice for masochists. They harness elemental powers to make pretty effects that do little more than just act as eye candy. Their bark is much worse than their bite, and regardless of how bad a player you are, you’ll be able to take down eles of higher skill level than you. They have twice as many skills, but more than half of them are useless and have double or triple the cooldown of useful skills on other classes that do the same thing.”

I am going to seriously question that it is working as intended. They may not ban people for using it, but I cannot believe that is how they intended it to work.

Second, in the description I added that they have great area of affect damage. Meteor shower and Ice Storm both are very good AOEs, but I would not say they have a greater effect than any other professions skills.

• The base damage on meteor shower is 481 per meteor, with a total of 20. Now most targets dumb enough to stand in the middle of the field still will no get hit with every meteor (the total area is 360, while the blast radius is 120, so I think 10 of the 20 hitting the target is reasonable).
• That is 4810 damage (3.5 seconds channeled and 30 second cool down). That works out to about 141 (171 with 20% cool down reduction) Damage per second. Add in the Fireballs DPS with Lava Font and Flame burst DPS (around 400 for Lava Font and Fireball and 164 from Flame burst) and you get about 800 DPS. This is only if the targets do not move.
• This is approximately the DPS of the warriors Flurry auto attack.

Now these are some rough numbers, but even the Elementalist emptying their entire Fire skill bar is good DPS, but other classes can and do match it (or exceed).

The point is the “Massive Damage” is nothing that other classes do not already have. And no other class has to endure the lack of durability with no defensive gimmick like clones or stealth (maybe the Ranger, and we know the state of their class.)

You’re assuming PvP circumstances where Elementalists are currently in a terrible state.
In PvE on the other side, high skilled elementalists are probably preferable over any other profession.

@Shadowfall: Staff or LH elementalists deal roughly 1.5x as much dps as warriors, in a perfect buffed setting. In a solo it’s about the same, when you’re able to hold up trait requirements.

Nikkinella.8254:

The description should just say “elementalists are the profession of choice for masochists. They harness elemental powers to make pretty effects that do little more than just act as eye candy. Their bark is much worse than their bite, and regardless of how bad a player you are, you’ll be able to take down eles of higher skill level than you. They have twice as many skills, but more than half of them are useless and have double or triple the cooldown of useful skills on other classes that do the same thing.”

While I agree with you, I am serious about changing the Elementalist description. It will take a long time for the Elementalist to be balanced out in Guild Wars 2 (look at Guild Wars 1 and the Ele).

I suspect that in a year or two that they may find a good balancing point (or I can at least start campaigning for Guild Wars 3). I know it is a lot of work to balance out the Ele, so at least as a short-term fix I ask that they fix the description.

P.S. They can also fix the class too, but I think if there was an easy way to do that they would have.

Shadowfall.6543:

*The hardest hitting skill I can think of is Fire Grab, which does 941 base damage to targets on fire (588 if the target is not on fire, and this skill has a 45 second cool down). Level 3 kill shot does 1256 damage and level 3 eviscerate does 1006 (10 second cool down, but requires adrenaline).

Actually, hardest hitting ability is Churning Earth (1092 dmg), but the channelling time makes it really lackluster, if combined with our natural squishiness, then even more.

But I totally agree with you, the description is really misleading, however I would like to correct the class, not that description That’s a preferred solution for me.

Anicetus.1253:

ArenaNet has annouced that it’s working as intended. Plus, fiery rush work’s exactly the way described in it’s description.

Show a link, I would really like to see that And there’s one problem with this “glitch combo”, it doesn’t help Eles in PvP at all….
I called that a glitch by purpose, because it is glitch for me, by a mere logic and my experience in a MMO genre.
Exploiting a glitch like this was often rewarded by a account ban in the past, so that’s the reason.

Back when tequatl was revamped there has been a reddit post, linking to a forum post, about a tequatl kill with using fgs and icebow , where some ArenaNet developer said the tequatl kill was legit and fgs working as intended. Just because the skill is ridiculously strong in certain situations doesn’t mean its a glitch or exploit. They already overworked the fgs some patches ago, fiery rush stayed same.

And even without the dev response, i don’t see why fiery rush should be an exploit. It’s bringing the elementalist into a good state in at least one of the tgree game modi and is bound to an elite skill on a 180 seconds colldown.

Anicetus.1253:

Back when tequatl was revamped there has been a reddit post, linking to a forum post, about a tequatl kill with using fgs and icebow , where some ArenaNet developer said the tequatl kill was legit and fgs working as intended. Just because the skill is ridiculously strong in certain situations doesn’t mean its a glitch or exploit. They already overworked the fgs some patches ago, fiery rush stayed same.

And even without the dev response, i don’t see why fiery rush should be an exploit. It’s bringing the elementalist into a good state in at least one of the tgree game modi and is bound to an elite skill on a 180 seconds colldown.

You don’t see it means nothing
Show a link to the Dev post which says it’s intended mechanics and I take that statement as final. Until that time, it’s an exploit for me, period.

It’s basically the same as the piercing skills damage was, hence that was corrected/patched. Well, where’s the difference between FGS issue and the piercing damage bug? And don’t say elite skill as a difference because there’s no other elite in-game capable of such damage output.

silvermember.8941:

Ever heard of grasping at straws? This is an example.

Maybe we should rename Dagger 5 from Fire Grab to Straw Grab.

We have devastating area attacks? On what weapon? The staff while sitting safely inside a zerg in WvW?

Shadowfall.6543:

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

I think something like “They reward player skill and creativity with strong support and devastating area attacks” would be a better description for two reasons.

• This implies that the Elementalist somehow sacrificed durability for greater DPS, or Skills that hit harder than a class that did not sacrifice durability at the very least. which is not true. I compare the Elementalist to the warrior, because the warrior has sacrificed no durability.

• I do not think I am the only Ele that was expecting since our practical maximum health around 20 K is about where the warriors begin, that our DPS would be noticeably higher to compensate.

How about description “you can do everything other classes can do,but worse” ?

Conncept.7638:

We have devastating area attacks? On what weapon? The staff while sitting safely inside a zerg in WvW?

As much as I think the Elementalist needs some help, I think it is in the base damage of our skills. The actual Skills work well enough.

We have a ton of AOE skills, and I think there are more than a couple that can be considered Devastating.

AOE on Staff

1) Fireball, Lava Font, Flame burst, Meteor Shower (Devastating)
2) Water blast (anti-devastating), Ice Spike, Frozen Ground
3) Chain Lightning, Lightning Surge, Static Field
4) Eruption (Devastating), Unsteady Ground, Shockwave (when paired with Eruption, Devastating)

AOE on Wand

1) Dragon Tooth (Devastating), Phoenix (Devastating)
2) Shatterstrone (anti-devastating, but a fun way to get 25 stacks of vulnerability)

AOE on Dagger
1) Dragon’s Breath (Devastating), Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Fire Grab (Devastating on Critical)
2) Vapor Blade, Cone of Cold, Frozen Burst (all Anti-Devastating)
3) Ride the Lightning (don’t get me started)
4) Ring of Earth, Earthquake, Churning Earth (Devastating, but should be after that cast time)

Utilities

1. Arcane wave
2. Cleansing Fire
3. Lightning Flash (Devastating with all of the possibilities)
4. Glyph of storms (Earth is truly Devastating)
5. Explosive Lava Axe, Ring of Fire,
6. Frost Fan, Ice Storm (Devastating)
7. Lightning Swing (PVE Cheese, Devastating), Lightning Storm, Static Field
8. Fiery Eruption, Fiery Whirl (Devastating), Firestorm Devastating)

Actually even calling the class “Elementalist” is misleading to anyone who is coming from most other MMO’s. People usually assume Elementalist = Mage/Sorcerer class, but in GW2 it’s nothing like that. Class descriptions are mostly only relevant to new players and the GW2 Ele just flat-out wasn’t what I expected to be.

In a typical MMO e.g. WoW you have the Mage class, which is very squishy…but to counter that, they are equipped with tools to immobilize/chill targets (root/snare) while hammering them with spells from a distance. Oh and they also have access to some quick get-away spells or emergency “oh poop!” abilities. So basically gameplay revolves around kiting.

But as newbie Ele I found that if mobs attacked me before I was “ready”, the only option was to either run away or die. Almost ALL my hard-hitting abilities seemed to require the target to stand perfectly still, but once they started chasing me it was borderline impossible to land a Dragon’s Tooth or Lava Font. Some (pathetic) kiting abilities are available in Water/Earth, but at low levels switching attunements = shooting yourself in the foot because now you’re locked-out of your Fire for 16 bloody seconds and hitting like a wet noodle. The experience feels quite broken.

Were I a WoW Mage I would quickly hit Frost Nova (immobilize, frost/water), hit Blink (15 yard teleport, arcana) and then proceed to blow up the mob with Fireball/etc. All the spells I need were available to me….but in GW2 playing Ele you need to make super-careful decisions all the time or risk dying, all of that with no real pay-off in damage output compared to other classes.

When I switched to Engineer suddenly I was loaded with a slew of abilities to keep targets at bay (rifle) while being able to hammer them from long range. Ranger can also kite+kill enemies from range better than Ele can, so it greatly confused me as to what exactly was Ele’s PURPOSE in the game when even a Warrior/Thief could equip ranged weapons and have an easier time putting out sustained ranged damage than Ele.

I have come to understand Ele largely as an extremely gimmicky support class with no real focus. All this is putting aside just how RIDICULOUSLY difficult to play Ele is, requiring a whole another level of awareness/timing/etc on abilities compared to the other 7 classes (or dying a lot).

They need to add in the Ele description “greatly reliant on player skill and good ping/latency”. That will stop newbies from accidentally rolling an extremely punishing class that requires decent knowledge of the game’s workings.

The only pay-off to playing Ele is the knowledge that you are playing at genius-level to accomplish the same tasks as other classes, and I guess some people like that sort of thing :P

Shadowfall.6543:

As much as I think the Elementalist needs some help, I think it is in the base damage of our skills. The actual Skills work well enough.

We have a ton of AOE skills, and I think there are more than a couple that can be considered Devastating.

Having a lot of something and having a lot of something useful are completely different.

1) Fireball, Lava Font, Flame burst, Meteor Shower (Devastating)

Admittedly a good auto-attack, you would have to be blind and deaf to take more than 1/4 seconds worth of damage, also good but barely AoE, in anything less than a 50 man zerg I have seen this hit nothing but the ground more often than not

2) Water blast (anti-devastating), Ice Spike, Frozen Ground

Does not affect you and doesn’t help in most support situations as any situation in which it would be worthwhile would be better served by switching to a ranged weapon in the first place, in which case they won’t be near the heal; impossible to hit anything but a completely prone target, admittedly a very good support ability

3) Chain Lightning, Lightning Surge, Static Field

Probably the strongest listing in your argument, not even close to the most powerful blind ability in the game but still good, good but deals virtually no damage

4) Eruption (Devastating), Unsteady Ground, Shockwave (when paired with Eruption, Devastating)

Nothing but a poor excuse for an incomplete and unfulfilling set of combos, decent utility with a completely disproportionate up time, not even technically AoE and there are auto-attacks that do the same thing

1) Dragon Tooth (Devastating), Phoenix (Devastating)

Can’t hit anything that isn’t bolted to the ground, pretty good but kind of smallish to count as AoE

2) Shatterstrone (anti-devastating, but a fun way to get 25 stacks of vulnerability)

Literally the most worthless ability in the entire game, I would take an entire skillbar full of the Engineers ‘Throw Wrench’ skill before I would voluntarily use this skill on anything but a stationary target.

1) Dragon’s Breath (Devastating), Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Fire Grab (Devastating on Critical)
2) Vapor Blade, Cone of Cold, Frozen Burst (all Anti-Devastating)
3) Ride the Lightning (don’t get me started)
4) Ring of Earth, Earthquake, Churning Earth (Devastating, but should be after that cast time)

I have to admit the devs did a dang good job on our D/D, only to mercilessly kill it for no good reason.

1. Arcane wave, # Lightning Flash (Devastating with all of the possibilities),

Good on a single build

1. Cleansing Fire

You have got to be kidding

1. Glyph of storms (Earth is truly Devastating)

True enough

1. Explosive Lava Axe, Ring of Fire,
2. Frost Fan, Ice Storm (Devastating)
3. Lightning Swing (PVE Cheese, Devastating), Lightning Storm, Static Field
4. Fiery Eruption, Fiery Whirl (Devastating), Firestorm Devastating)

Would be wonderful, if we didn’t have to trade in 15 skills for 5 which aren’t any better.

I definitely agree that the Elementalist needs some rebalancing. But I do not think Anet is going to fix the Elementalist any time soon (just look at Guild Wars 1). I understand that rebalancing will take some time.

I am hoping that I they change the description, it will be an acknowledgement by Anet that the Elementalist does need some improvement.

Because until Anet thinks there is a problem with the Elementalist they will not try to fix us (I have my suspicions on what classes Anet plays…). Right now I suspect Anets primary contact with Ele’s is only with the very good ones, that make this class look easy, powerful, and hard to kill. So Anet does not see any wrong with the current set-up.

^That’s because the only people who still play ele are the best of the best. Everyone else gave up on it because of the multitude of weaknesses it suffers from.

Nikkinella.8254:

The description should just say “elementalists are the profession of choice for masochists. They harness elemental powers to make pretty effects that do little more than just act as eye candy. Their bark is much worse than their bite, and regardless of how bad a player you are, you’ll be able to take down eles of higher skill level than you. They have twice as many skills, but more than half of them are useless and have double or triple the cooldown of useful skills on other classes that do the same thing.”

Seems about right

STRanger.5120:

Anicetus.1253:

Back when tequatl was revamped there has been a reddit post, linking to a forum post, about a tequatl kill with using fgs and icebow , where some ArenaNet developer said the tequatl kill was legit and fgs working as intended. Just because the skill is ridiculously strong in certain situations doesn’t mean its a glitch or exploit. They already overworked the fgs some patches ago, fiery rush stayed same.

And even without the dev response, i don’t see why fiery rush should be an exploit. It’s bringing the elementalist into a good state in at least one of the tgree game modi and is bound to an elite skill on a 180 seconds colldown.

You don’t see it means nothing
Show a link to the Dev post which says it’s intended mechanics and I take that statement as final. Until that time, it’s an exploit for me, period.

It’s basically the same as the piercing skills damage was, hence that was corrected/patched. Well, where’s the difference between FGS issue and the piercing damage bug? And don’t say elite skill as a difference because there’s no other elite in-game capable of such damage output.

The difference is that the piercing bug allowed you to hit for up to 800.000.000 damage on a 12 second cooldown and a combo that takes two utilitys away and can be used twice per 180 seconds to hit for up to ~200.000 damage.

And one more about the pve aspect of the game: Eles are pretty much the strongest profession right now. Best self dps (aside from mesmer who can’t ever come close to pulling it of) and highest group buffing. 18
stacks might and fury permanently on your party, combined with some vuln stacks, extremely well dps and a projectile absorbtion skill on a 30 seconds cooldown seem pretty strong to me.

Anicetus.1253:

STRanger.5120:

Anicetus.1253:

Back when tequatl was revamped there has been a reddit post, linking to a forum post, about a tequatl kill with using fgs and icebow , where some ArenaNet developer said the tequatl kill was legit and fgs working as intended. Just because the skill is ridiculously strong in certain situations doesn’t mean its a glitch or exploit. They already overworked the fgs some patches ago, fiery rush stayed same.

And even without the dev response, i don’t see why fiery rush should be an exploit. It’s bringing the elementalist into a good state in at least one of the tgree game modi and is bound to an elite skill on a 180 seconds colldown.

You don’t see it means nothing
Show a link to the Dev post which says it’s intended mechanics and I take that statement as final. Until that time, it’s an exploit for me, period.

It’s basically the same as the piercing skills damage was, hence that was corrected/patched. Well, where’s the difference between FGS issue and the piercing damage bug? And don’t say elite skill as a difference because there’s no other elite in-game capable of such damage output.

The difference is that the piercing bug allowed you to hit for up to 800.000.000 damage on a 12 second cooldown and a combo that takes two utilitys away and can be used twice per 180 seconds to hit for up to ~200.000 damage.

And one more about the pve aspect of the game: Eles are pretty much the strongest profession right now. Best self dps (aside from mesmer who can’t ever come close to pulling it of) and highest group buffing. 18
stacks might and fury permanently on your party, combined with some vuln stacks, extremely well dps and a projectile absorbtion skill on a 30 seconds cooldown seem pretty strong to me.

You do not play an Elementalist do you?

• In certain builds our DPS can be very good, but it is a long way from best. Every other class can reach our DPS, and have more survivability.

• You are correct that certain builds can stack a lot of might (aura build or Persisting flames). It is one of the few things we do well. We are not the only class capable of stacking a lot of might though, and more classes could do it, but do not take advantage of it.

Then tell me which class can reach elementalists dps.
Saying “only in certain builds” isn’t an argument, no profession deals good damage on all builds. The elementalist is the profession with the most possibilities here, there are a couple of builds that reach results very close to each other (whereas the optimum is depending on the situation).
Aura Share definitely isn’t a build to stack might, actually it’s a trash build for PvE. Persisting Flames isn’t required to stack might, you can just get one more blast in your firefields then before they expire. The difference here is 15 or 18 permanent might for the whole party.
And last but not least, which class can stack similar amounts of might, fury (and partly vulnerability)?

Guess the playerbase is split between ‘absolute junk’ and ‘the best ever’.

Personally, I’m in the latter category. Rather than complain about the issues, I’ve decided to specialize in the elementalist and make sure that, even if I’m subpar on paper, I’ll at least be optimal in what I do. So far, everytime I thought I hit a ceiling, it turned out the answer was I was doing something wrong (or not well enough). Playing the underdog did wonders for my abilities as a player and I am now confident that I can compete with the other professions. I’m certainly not dragging down my team, not even in sPvP. And if anything, beating a thief 1v1 with a staff ele (a supposedly impossible thing) is extra sweet.

Elementalist is the strongest profession on paper.

Anicetus.1253:

Elementalist is the strongest profession on paper.

Strong on paper
Made of paper
All hail the paper dragon!

But also cut’s enemies as if they were of paper

Anicetus.1253:

STRanger.5120:

Anicetus.1253:

Back when tequatl was revamped there has been a reddit post, linking to a forum post, about a tequatl kill with using fgs and icebow , where some ArenaNet developer said the tequatl kill was legit and fgs working as intended. Just because the skill is ridiculously strong in certain situations doesn’t mean its a glitch or exploit. They already overworked the fgs some patches ago, fiery rush stayed same.

And even without the dev response, i don’t see why fiery rush should be an exploit. It’s bringing the elementalist into a good state in at least one of the tgree game modi and is bound to an elite skill on a 180 seconds colldown.

You don’t see it means nothing
Show a link to the Dev post which says it’s intended mechanics and I take that statement as final. Until that time, it’s an exploit for me, period.

It’s basically the same as the piercing skills damage was, hence that was corrected/patched. Well, where’s the difference between FGS issue and the piercing damage bug? And don’t say elite skill as a difference because there’s no other elite in-game capable of such damage output.

The difference is that the piercing bug allowed you to hit for up to 800.000.000 damage on a 12 second cooldown and a combo that takes two utilitys away and can be used twice per 180 seconds to hit for up to ~200.000 damage.

And one more about the pve aspect of the game: Eles are pretty much the strongest profession right now. Best self dps (aside from mesmer who can’t ever come close to pulling it of) and highest group buffing. 18
stacks might and fury permanently on your party, combined with some vuln stacks, extremely well dps and a projectile absorbtion skill on a 30 seconds cooldown seem pretty strong to me.

Ok, how to say this.

Thing #1: Eles are unfortunately one of the weakest classes in-game now (especially in Players vs Players encounters of all types. Only case where Ele can do something useful is by hiding in zerg and trying to pull a meteor/tornado combo – which ends by enemies dodging/moving out of or focusing you —> your death)

Thing #2: If you can’t use common sense, don’t try to defend an obvious glitch in the skill design, you won’t succeed by any chance. Get more gaming experience and learn, too bad that you can’t do that in time when glitches/exploits were highly observed and severely punished for. That would show you what is considered “intended” and what is not.

Anicetus.1253:

Elementalist is the strongest profession on paper.

Agreed on this one. But have you tried it?

I’ll tell you a little secret, if you trait/equip for doing great dmg with Ele, and take a weapon set which enables you to stack might/fury like you said, you wouldn’t get past half of the stacking combo and you’re dead, because you burst so much damage that you’re immediately focused by even the stupid AI and downed (you can’t dodge if you want to perform the whole combo and you have to be in melee range to do it.). Only exception is when you are OOC stacking, but that seems like a big waste to the dmg and I don’t like to be considered a “stacking machine”, because my niece can do that, so no need for me to play at all….
And still, with that build, you are 90% downed in one hit, especially in harder instances.
I’m not even talking about any kind of PvP/WvW content…..

You seem to have no idea who i am.
But i’ll just answer both your posts right away.
First, i’m well aware of what is an exploit/glitch, especially to arenanet. Explpits are unintended mechanics that make you an unfair advantage over other players.
That’s not the case, anyone can use it. Also it doesn’t affect the games economy in any major way. FGS allows you to ~double your dps, not to multiply ot by 1000.
And when you know ANet, you should know what their stance on “exploits” like this is. They don’t care, not even a bit. Examples can be found in gw1: rezz scroll glitch, HoS, dhuum lstuck, skips and unintended shortcuts, etc.

To your second post: the only thing i can say here is that you’re assuming a playerskill lower than an average dog’s. Elementalists don’t take a lot of hit but they are able to aboid them in many ways. And yes, i do play an elementalist. Together with my warrior, mesmer and guardian the character i play the most.

Edit: Wrote this with my mobile phone, being about to freeze. Sorry for all grammar and spelling mistakes i made. The post looks horrible, i know.

See Dub? You need to get more gaming experience. Thus I invite you for our two last fotm 79 runs today before anet deletes it for some strange reason.

You can count me in. I’ll be home around 5pm.

You could come as ele and then we could even play 4eles/1mes. Just because ele is bad and fotm 79 is easier than new fotm 31.

To be honest, I don’t care about who you are m8 And I don’t care about what Anet consider an exploit. I’m playing MMOs for 16 years and I have pretty good common sense about what is “intended” and what’s not but is “too difficult to fix so we announce it as intended”. That’s all.

And what does that change about the state of the ele in gw2? Nothing. Even if ANets states it as working as intended because of being lazy, you’re still allowed to use it and won’t be banned. The elementalist is in a very good state in PvE, mediocre in WvW but absolutely lacking in PvP. Which is what i said, right?

Anicetus.1253:

And what does that change about the state of the ele in gw2? Nothing. Even if ANets states it as working as intended because of being lazy, you’re still allowed to use it and won’t be banned. The elementalist is in a very good state in PvE, mediocre in WvW but absolutely lacking in PvP. Which is what i said, right?

You’re of course right about Elementalists state, I can’t say anything against that.
I’m just one of those ppl whose creation of Elementalist was conditioned by the original description of the class and of course the love for spellcaster classes, and after a year and few months, Ele is unfortunately in even worse state than it was at the time of release

Thats sadly true for WvW and PvP. In PvE especially staff elementalists got strong buffs and some are still coming. A bit confusing how they buff pve eles and nerf pvp eles when they should do the opposite (or well, at least buff pvp eles). :/

Anicetus.1253:

Thats sadly true for WvW and PvP. In PvE especially staff elementalists got strong buffs and some are still coming. A bit confusing how they buff pve eles and nerf pvp eles when they should do the opposite (or well, at least buff pvp eles). :/

Staff and LH are strong in PvE in speedruns with optimal groups, but only in those situations, and only because they get carried by other classes.

Anicetus.1253:

Thats sadly true for WvW and PvP. In PvE especially staff elementalists got strong buffs and some are still coming. A bit confusing how they buff pve eles and nerf pvp eles when they should do the opposite (or well, at least buff pvp eles). :/

Yeah, exactly. I’m afraid that those changes Anet is planning for us doesn’t change anything, because the main problem is not in minor trait tweaks, but in the basic mechanic/main trait direction of the class. Simply put, we have to invest in twice as many traits to get the result of the other classes (for example. Traits working in Fire att. vs Traits working with certain weapon set for other classes)

Zelyhn.8069:

Anicetus.1253:

Thats sadly true for WvW and PvP. In PvE especially staff elementalists got strong buffs and some are still coming. A bit confusing how they buff pve eles and nerf pvp eles when they should do the opposite (or well, at least buff pvp eles). :/

Staff and LH are strong in PvE in speedruns with optimal groups, but only in those situations, and only because they get carried by other classes.

I can’t agree on that. We’re often using only one warrior and no other professions for dungeons where we don’t need projectile reflection. Elementalists syngergize extremely well with each other but are also perfectly fine to standalone. The only thing where elementalists sort of are carried on is sustain, but that not only comes down to playerskill but also fits to lots of professions.