Guild Wars 2

Even with the new traits, I still find Ele to have little real build choice (in PVP/WVW) – virtually every spec revolves around 20+ water and 20+ arcane.

This is not to say you can’t run something else in PVE/zerg WVW/hotjoin, you’ll just be an easy kill/bag to any decent player.

So, this is intended to be a list of skills/utilities/traits that still stand out for me as being underwhelming on Ele. For reference, I spend roughly 33% of my playtime roaming solo on staff (aka hard-mode) or D/D, and 66% zerging with 10+.

Sceptre:

• water #2 is particularly bad.
• water #1 does really poor damage for an auto-attack that doesn’t have a secondary effect.
• fire #2 has never made sense to me as a (another) delayed auto-targeted spell, would make a lot more sense to be ground-targeted and phoenix a skill-shot. The “spam and hope for hit” aspect of this skill is a major turnoff for the whole weapon IMO.

Staff:

• air #2 is one of the slowest-casting skills in the whole game, yet does weak damage and the AOE radius of the blind is less than melee range. Accordingly it isn’t worth casting. Given the low damage and blind range, I would expect this skill to be instant.

Focus:

• is currently a weird mix of really weak and really strong skills.
• fire #4 is very underwhelming – an 8 sec field that causes 1s of burning. Needs a secondary effect or more like 2.5sec of burning per application.
• fire #5 is another relatively weak effect for a 40sec CD. A CD of ~25sec seems more reasonable.
• air #4 is crying out for swiftness.
• water #4 does virtually no damage & chills for 3sec, which compares very poorly with spinal shivers which also chills, but for 5sec, and also strips 3 boons and does considerable damage on a shorter CD.

Glyphs:

• lack trait support, the only trait of consequence is Inscription and even then, it’s quite weak. Suggest a secondary effect needs to be added in addition to existing effects, eg: a small heal, or an aura… just something.
• GoEP is best used before an encounter yet is a stun-break, which makes little sense.
• GoLE is a terrible utility because the elementals created are terrible. IMO one of the deserving candidates for a complete rework.

Conjures:

• mechanics are far too clunky for PVP. I’m firmly of the opinion that conjures should only replace the 5 skills of their respective element and not lockout all 20 skills and preventing attunement swapping – this is the core class mechanic!
• lack trait support – only 1 adept trait.

The only problem I have with ele so far (just started playing it a few weeks ago) are the weapon skills themselves. Sure, there are a LOT of weapon skills, but a lot of them just aren’t that great, as scerevisiae pointed out. Plus, although there is a variety of them, it’s hard to combine different skills together, IMO. Once you’ve picked your weapon(s), you’re stuck with 20 skills that you either like or hate. It’s not as good as other professions because there are plenty of different weapon combinations (not including engi…), instead of just, for example a “staff” that takes up all of your weapon skills, with no sort of weapon swap or room to change out skills.

So… After 1300 hours on my elementalist and 500 on other professions why do I still play and enjoy playing my elementalist way more than any other profession (except perhaps the necromancer and engineer)
D/F is an amazingly fun weapon combination. Its the fast-paced combat of the D/D and the strategical skill-use of the Staff combined in one weapon set. Fire Aura is extremely strong and the 8 second fire field allows you to easily plant all of you blast finishers there for extreme amounts of extra power and condition damage. Want to see you try that with a guardian, necromancer or mesmer.

Sure if you look at all our skills seperately we’re very underwhelming but it is because we have the ability to actively combine any of the 20+ abilities we have that we are seen as being OP.

I prefer planning and actively being engaged in combat than standing still on a point with my warrior and just auto-attacking while alt-tabbing to check my facebook (I actually do that and survive)

man i hate it when they your topic title…