Guild Wars 2

A: I play with a regular keyboard and mouse.

B: I play with a gaming mouse and/or keyboard or other hardware.

1. Ele is UP
2. Ele is balanced
3. Ele is OP

I’m a B2, I play with a Naga and Nostromo. I would consider the class too hard to play without gaming hardware mainly due to the need to change attunments frequently via the F keys and maintain proper movement.

A1. I’ve keybinded my fx skills to shift+1234, my heal to Q, my dodge to E, and my utility and elite to ZXCV. Simple and efficient.

Elementalists have a weaker downed state, weaker traits, weaker underwater and weaker elites than other professions, depend too much on very few specific utility skills, and have a few underpowered weapon skills or unfocused weapon skillsets.

Overall, I’d say they weapon skills and utility are “almost there”, and everything else should get serious attention.

People usually get the best results by focusing on their better-than-nothing glyph elite, filling their utility with the few best skills, using S/D, staff and sometimes D/D, and investing points on the stats they need the most or have the best traits (earth for the former, water and arcana for both). This makes for a half-decent elementalist, but that’s possibly the best the profession can do.

BTW I do enjoy the class a whole lot but I realize my enjoyment of the class is dependent on not playing Twister on my keyboard.

B2. Logitech G700 mouse, and I think the class is fairly balanced (or plays the way this game should). That being said, I think some of the other classes have moderately overpowered semi-spammable abilities that give the impression that the Ele is underpowered.

A well played Ele can wreck shop in PvP. A poorly played (or single-ability spamming) Ele is laughably easy-to-kill cannon fodder.

A well played Thief can wreck shop in PvP. One played by a chimpanzee with his hand glued to the #2 key can come out with a couple of kills and a reasonable score…

I consider Ele in need of some fixing up.

I play with a gaming mouse and frankly I can’t fathom playing it without one. It’s a one way ticket to carpal tunnel syndrome playing Ele as is with one. ;p

I remapped most of my fuction skills to z,x,c,v respectively. Seems to have to worked out well so far.

B2

Using a razer naga (gotta love that mouse!) + Sidewinder X4 Keyboard… the keyboard doesn’t help, but the naga helps a lot.

And as said multiple times: We need bugfixes + some small tweaks (buffing ultis, better downed state), but all in all Ele is balanced.

I have a 5 button mouse, so I map 1-5 with it than bind the right hot bar to Ctrl + 1-5. So I can keep my whole hotbar on my mouse and only need the keyboard for class specific function keys. Works pretty well.

Leopold with MX Browns
Rat 7 Mouse

Attune swtiching from f1-f4 to shift+1-4.
Heal to E
Util 1 – Mouse 5
Util 2 – Shift+ Mouse 5
Util 3 – Shift + Middle Click

Loving the results

B2.
G700 for all attune switching and utility skills, the f1-f4 thing just wasn’t cutting it for me.

I’m currently d/d spec (I don’t enjoy Staff or Scepter) and I wouldn’t dream of playing another class. I do feel other classes should have their numbers toned down a bit but that will come in time.

B1 and I play with a Razer Naga. It has little to do with the reaction time if some PVE event dumps a major amount of DPS on you and others into a downed state that has pretty weak abilities (and I also play a mesmer so I have at least one caster downed state to compare).

I play with naga and nostromo but I don’t think they are necessary. You should be fine with a few modifiers.

A2

WASD, E,F,R utilies, G elite, V healing. Shift+E,F,R,G attunements. Same setup I use for all classes.

I have not problem changing attunements quickly to make combos out of multiple elements. Since the combos are where the classes power is at, I use staff since it has the most combo options. Earth 2/Fire 2 is a favorite, while Earth 2/Water3/Arcane Wave drops a huge amount of aoe burst healing.

Downed is weak, and I really wish there was a staff finisher other then Earth, but otherwise the class own pretty hard.

IMO, it’s just like playing starcraft, except slower paced. my APM with elementalist (while extremely high for an RPG) that i need for optimum performance is somewhere around the 40 range :P

i think… elementalists are a tough class to work with. sure we’ve got a bunch of abilities, but many of them are not unique enough. many would be redundant if, say, elementalist used initiative instead of CDs like thieves… so even though we have a lot of abilities, and even though many are useful… they can’t cover all our bases still.

A1 in sPvP.
A2 in everything else.

A gaming keyboard/mouse just isn’t needed for gw2. ~25 skills+movement does NOT require anything more than basic hardware.

Compared to aion where you have 40-45 skills that all need to be hotkey’d and another 20 or so for consumables/marking/other various keybindings and then movement on top.

B1. I have an 80 guard and thief for comparison. Bring out the ele in groups which is the most fun for me.

I also have a nostromo and a naga. Curious about others mappings. I use the mouse for all skills with fast targetting. The nostromo keys for movement and its joystick for attunement swapping. The latter is convenient but the most concerning to me. It feels like there is always a lag between swapping and casting my first spell.

A1.

I’m sorry for all the people who cannot rebind their keyboard, or use their fingers for more than WSAD.

A2. I have no problems with regular hardware. I’ve learned to adapt to it and to have quick fingers.

I might say the ele is slightly UP only due to having so many bugs with skills and traits just not working. Though, I’m sure other classes suffer from bugs as well.

B2

Filco majestouch 2 keyboard with mx red switches
Logitech g400 gaming mouse

My attunments are abound to 1234
My heal is 5
My 1 skill is bound to one of my side mouse buttons
My 2-5 skills are bound to q,e,r,f
My utility skills are bound to alt + q,e,r

I don’t think I could even tolerate playing any class without a mechanical keyboard.Rubber dome boards are just awful to use.Even the expensive gaming ones are awful to type on after using a mechanical keyboard.

A2
I use Alt + 1,2,3,4 for attunement changing. I’ve always used Alt 1,2,3,4 for something in any MMO so it was awkward not using them.

In pve I find elementalist to be just fine. We wont hit the top dps numbers but then again we aren’t a straight out dps class like thief. When it comes to leveling I find it super easy. If you build balanced or even tanky you can easily AoE wipe an entire area of monsters. When it comes to dungeons we have incredible support capability and versatility. We give a group exactly what it needs. No one wants to play a support in dungeons. Everyone specs glass cannon. Someone has to setup combos, boons and healing without sacrificing too much damage output. Lucky for them Elementalist can do just that. We should also be the last class to fall if played right.

When it comes to pvp I think we are also fine. We have three builds that work well in different pvp situations. WvWvW is obviously staff aoe build. It does wonders at a safe distance. sPvp you can either go D/D for fast paced clicking of death or S/D for massive condition damage while still being tanky. We have answers to every situation, the only question is can you act fast enough to answer a question when it pops up?