Guild Wars 2

After playing a Necromancer and a Mesmer and it is the most fun I have had in this game yet. The combat just feels so interactive and everything is so engaging. Swapping elements like a boss is just so enjoyable. I feel as if I can play any style if I wanted due to my variety of skills and the conjurer weapons. I just spent money on both cultural armor for my Necro and Mesmer and now I don’t even want to touch them anymore!

Who else loves the Ele?!

lol I agree about the gameplay of an ele. They’re just fun. I love my engineer with all her flashy grenades, but my ele is just more fun. Uh-oh! Health getting low! Switch to water, throw down a heal. A few seconds later, switch to something else, or pop a cantrip for more regen and protection. I generally run 0/0/10/30/30.

They do have their quirks and a few things could be changed, but overall I love how they play.

This is a legitimate post, I’m not trolling (because I expect people will think that).

90% of people run a 0/0/10/30/30 build, or close enough to it. It’s really the only (most?) viable spec there is. I haven’t leveled mine that high yet, but I’m rarely in the situation where if I’m low health I can switch to water and heal back up. Because when I’m anywhere near half health, I get one or two shotted.

This is coming from my experience as a level 25ish Ele. I had 10 points in water and 5 Arcana, and tried D/D but changed for staff. I really wouldn’t want to be pigeonholed into the only viable spec anyways. People will criticize me about this post, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure all of them will be people who run the 30 water 20-30 arcana D/D FOTM build and claim that the Ele is OP in every way and its my fault for not using the holy grail of builds, as this is the feedback I’ve seen in every other thread.

Sorry for the negativity, it’s not typically what I do. I’ve stuck with a Necro this whole time and stayed positive about it, but what’s happening with the Ele just irks me.

I love the elementalist, though it is frustrating to play at times in comparison to, say, a Guardian or a Thief (my other two “mains”). While I’ll happily admit to running a highly non-optimal build (5-20-5-10-30), as fun as it is to dice continually with death there are times when you want to reach for a burst of power and it’s not there, because mostly utility skills need to be those “quick, flee!” type skills.

The chaotic nature of the Ele is brilliant. I even love the mad-crazy dicing with death, those fights where you walk away and think “Sweet fluffy kittens, how did I survive?”

Having said that, it’s also a very unforgiving profession which demands a lot of attention, and will reward you less for it than a lot of others, in terms of loot and xp for effort put in.

as someone who has played ele for a long time, and a member of a wvw focused guild who runs a lot of dungeons, I’d highly encourage you to also not get pigeonholed into a single weapon set. Although you have to open your bag to swap out out of combat, I may do an AC or CoF run, or FOTM and use d/d, s/d and staff all on the same run. Many starter ele’s will run the d/d cuz it’s simple cookie-cutter of everything an ele can do, but it’s no where near your best weapon set for a lot of situations. Only time I ever run d/d anymore is when I’m farming mats and just want the extra speed buffs for running around Orr. If you’re a d/d junkie, learn s/d, it’s everything d/d offers and far more. If you run a lot of wvw, have your staff, in large zerg fights it’s invaluable.

Jack of all trades profession is a legitimate statement. Although that generally means great at everything, best at nothing. There is one thing we’re best at, and that’s offensive and defensive support in group play, and that all revolves around your combo fields and finishers. 25 stacks of might on your whole team during a dungeon run, easy. Massive AoE heals, easy. Perma swift your team, easy, protection and fury, easy. If your a tank and smash-A player, it’s not the class for you, but if you care about how your whole team does, look no further. Glad to see more and more figuring it out, although I read the ele forums daily and it’s painful how little ele’s still know about themselves.

One suggestion, get to know your combo fields and finishers like the back of your hand and you’re party will always beg for you to join them on a dungeon run

I don’t like that whole d/d mentality either. I just prefer the staff. I actually decided to use the 0/0/10/30/30 before I started looking up ele info. lol It just seemed more logical for my play style.

I love to play support roles when I’m with other people, and the 30 in water helps a lot with that, not to mention my abuse of cantrips. Being able to switch back and forth between elements from the 30 in arcana makes a big difference too, especially with the boon applications. It does suck that we’re almost forced into that one just for the faster element changing. Unless you’re one of those that just sticks to one element, in which case, what would that matter?

I can’t stand the whole “you have to use this build or you suck” attitude. It drives me nuts. When I see someone talking/typing like that, I just speed read through the post and end up missing half of what they said anyway.

I don’t know about other people, but I had TONS of trouble staying alive on my ele until around lvl 45 or so. I’m not sure if it was just because she was my first character, was abandoned for several months at lvl 43, then returned to after my engineer was at 80 for a couple of months. The whole karka thing REALLY taught me how to dodge!

SlimGenre.6417:

One suggestion, get to know your combo fields and finishers like the back of your hand and you’re party will always beg for you to join them on a dungeon run

This. For Dungeons, I use Staff almost exclusively just because it allows me to chain combo fields/finishers together non-stop, while at the same time having the ability to lay down some serious pain. It’s a great feeling to have your team compliment you on keeping stacks of might rolling along with almost non-stop regen heals and frequent burst heals.

This game is extremely dumbed down to appeal to the masses. Honestly an ele, due to the attunement switches, is the only one that is engaging to play.

I’ve leveled multiple Elementalists now and I find it hard to play any other class other than Mesmer.

For now elementalist and necromancers are my favorite professions.