Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone !

You know… Sometimes I read someone in this forum saying “OMG ELE IS BROKEN” and stuff like that, but there is something that feels wrong, FOR ME… i was born believing that Elementalists (Or Mages, or Wizards) are CONTROLLERS, not STRIKERS.

For those used to those D&D terms (and NO, I’m not comparing both games, I’ll just use the names), Elementalist feels like a STRIKER+LEADER, instead of a CONTROLLER. Explaining what that means:

• Striker is the Damage guy, meaning you can dish out lots of damage.
• Leader is the support guy, meaning you can buff, protect and heal your team.
• Controller mean you can control the battlefield (stopping movement, preventing them their actions, denying an area and status like immobilize, stun or daze, for example.

I would be OK with this, if someone said: “ANet decided that Ele should be a triggerhappy damage-dealing class that rains death”, but people constantly say that “Ele’s control is good”. That is why the tag is: [I am a Noob], by the way =)

From my noob’s point of view, Necromancers (which everyone says that sucks, is broken, everyone can do their job better) is way more a Control guy than the Ele, and that is why I’ve started playing Necromancer. It felt WAY MORE powerful in the subject of Crowd Control.
OK, Necro have it’s problems in other areas, but the Terrormancer can CC badly:

• Reaper’s Mark (Staff 5)
• Doom (Death Shroud 3)
• Spectral Wall (Utility)
• Reaper’s Protection (Trait)
• Flesh Golem’s Charge (Elite)
• Not to mention if you are using Rune of Nightmare, which gives you a 50% chance of triggering a 1 sec Fear when you are struck (once in 60 secs, but …)

And those are only FEARS, that take away the control of the character. They also have access to other stats, like Chill or Weakness, like Chillblains.

Considering you have traits to boost the time duration, you can not only damage (all Fears cause damage from Terror and all the Condi’s ticks normally while Feared) but “lock” your enemies for more than 10 seconds if you would line up everything. Is it useful? Nope. It’s better to stop combos 4 times in a combat than line up one CC-chain, except in specific scenarios.

While playing Elementalist (which is the “usual mage type character”) I have:

• Frozen Ground (Staff 4)
• Gust (Air 3)
• Static Field (Air 5)
• Unsteady Ground (Earth 4)
• Shockwave (Earth 5)

Aside from Air 5 (that stuns… for TWO seconds…), all the other options do not take away the enemies actions. Shockwave immobilize, but that means nothing when you are a Power Ranger and can attack from range. Static Field stuns for 2 seconds, but you need to use Gust, because that same ranger won’t move inside the Field.

Let’s consider I’ll leave Staff (mainly a support weapon) to use Scepter + Focus and we lose all Staff spells described up there for:

• Freezing Gust (Water 4)
• Comet (Water 5) – can you actually hit someone without using Gale (which should be user to Dragon’s Tooth, from what I’ve played)
• Blinding Flash (Air 3)
• Dust Devil (Earth 3)
• Gale (Air 4)

Not to mention that Blindness may last longer than the other conditions, but the affect only 1 hit/miss.

The way I see it, Necro’s CC just beats Ele’s CC in EVERY situation. Why people say that Elementalist’s control is good?

Of course, Ele have access to A LOT of other things, like area healing, combo fields, huge area damage, Utility, but that is not my point.

Am I missing something?
Thank you everyone for reading this far and for those who are willing to help!

PS: An Extra question: I’ve tried to do that “Fresh Air” build and I’ve killed a lot but… 90% of my time I’m using Air 1 and Air 2. Is this how it is supposed to be played? Because it seems boring as hell. It feels like having access to a whole armory, but only one or two weapons are actually good. The others feels like decorations on a pretty wall =)

PS again: Don’t flame me, please =/ I’m a noob. I said that in the topic’s name =/

ele’s might not be king of control but they do offer quite some quite some abilities that are very usefull. Magnetic aura+burning retreat might not be considered in your point of view as control, but magnetic aura simply puts the ranged attacks of the enemy on a 5 sec cooldown and burning retreat opens up for alot of kite potential giving you alot of extra "control"over your enemy. (Could give some examples on the other weapons aswell but i think i’ve proven my point :P)

The thing that makes ele’s great is that they offer all aspects of guildwars 2 holy trinity (support, control and damage) and therefore they are a viable class for PvP and WvW. Also the water+arcana traitline offer a great amount of healing and condition removal so they can outlast some other classes.

For your 2nd question about the fresh air build, this build is very squishy and you will need alot of skill combo’s to quickly finish off the oponent, because in longer fights you will die because of lack of healing/surviveability.
Fresh air builds relies on having decent burst (lightningstrike+lightningstrike trait+sigil of air+sigil of fire) in combination with quickly pulling off an extra spike combi such as dragons tooth+phoenix+lightningflash combo to quickly deal loads of dmge. incase you want to try out S/F i’d definitely suggest to look for some video’s first and just practice your rotations on random mobs rather then going straight for enemy players

Also both scepter and staff are harder to play and less viable in the current roam/pvp meta, you might want to consider taking D/D instead

you are looking at the class to statically. Ele according to anet is the jack of all trades master of none class. Its roles are defined by its weapons. Staff provides great group damage, soft and hard cc and healing. This would be more like your “leader” you described in a way. D/D is a brawler class that can stay in the middle of the fray for awhile while offering a bit of support with boons and decent aoe damage. Scepter builds are strikers that do great single target damage.

As someone who’s played quite a bit of D&D (3rd, 4th, 5th), let me try to help you out:

The Elementalist actually is very much closer to a Striker+Leader. This is very intentional. Please look to the description of the class:

“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.”

The Elementalist’s main abilities are its abilities to deal damage and buff itself and allies, which are aspects of a Striker and Leader respectively. The buffs come from Water’s healing and the boons that come from attuning to the 4 attunements, while the damage comes from the ability to combine those attunements for lots of damage.

To be quite honest, it was your fault for assuming the Elementalist is ‘the typical mage’. It is not. Neither flavorfully, nor mechanically. This is a mistake that many players seem to repeat when coming to GW2 without bothering to research the classes. Of the three spellcasters – Elementalists, Mesmers, and Necromancers – the Mesmer and Necro are far more Control-oriented than the Elementalist is. Not to say that the Elementalist does’t have some great control abilities (Shocking Aura, Updraft, Gale, and Static Field are all amazing). But it’s very much less a part of the class’ design than the other two scholar classes.

The Necromancer focuses on draining their opponents away with debuffs, while the Mesmer controls their opponents through trickery and deception. I actually think that the Mesmer probably comes the closest to a D&D styled Wizard that focused on control-type spells. The Necromancer is a great PvP controller with its various conditions (Fear, Immobilize, Cripple, Chill), and is honestly better than the Mesmer at it in practice at the ‘control’ role because its ability to stay in the fight better.

Overall, remember that the ‘mage’ means different things in different games, and for GW2, the archetype of mage is very much split between the three scholars, each representing their own distinct take on the concept. The Elementalist, in its design and flavor, is usually a Striker, Leader, Leader+Striker, or Striker+Leader. The fact that it has Control spells is simply due to the fact that all classes have a little bit of Damage, Support, and Control in their design, to ensure that classes can fill any role as needed. If you’re looking to push the Control line of the Elementalist, I think when Tempest Defense is moved to Master Tier in the update, a build which uses that and auras might be an Ele-styled control build.

I think that staff + tempest defense + lightning rod + soothing ice could work quite well as a control build when new trait changes arrives, it doesn’t really need to be focused on auras, just those two defensive/control aura traits

Neko.9021:

To be quite honest, it was your fault for assuming the Elementalist is ‘the typical mage’. It is not. Neither flavorfully, nor mechanically. This is a mistake that many players seem to repeat when coming to GW2 without bothering to research the classes.

Overall, remember that the ‘mage’ means different things in different games, and for GW2, the archetype of mage is very much split between the three scholars, each representing their own distinct take on the concept.

Perfect answer! Honestly.

Just wanted to comment a little about it:
When I’ve said “typical magic”, It was about the concept of controlling the Elements of Nature. Every game can approach this concept the way they want. I agree with it and I’ve said it myself in the post:

I would be OK with this, if someone said: “ANet decided that Ele should be a triggerhappy damage-dealing class that rains death”

It’s their class, they can implement it the way they want.

What really misguided me was not the class description, It was the concept of “control” that people use in the forum, as “the krytan assassin” showed =)
Mobility, in general, should be defined as Utility, not Control, from my previous experiences, but If people say that Burning Retreat is “control”, I can understand why people say Ele’s control is great and that makes a lot of sense.

Thanks everyone!

PS: I’ll give a try on the tips about Fresh Air, thanks again!