Guild Wars 2

Sorrynotsorry for the title. But it’s an accurate transliteration of my real life reaction to switching to one of my alts for a while for the first time in months. I really, really love the idea of the Elementalist, I guess? I don’t know. It has a (currently) unexplainable (and irrational) draw to it that brought me to this game in the first place and has swaddled me in the warmth of its (abusive) love ever since.

So anyway, first, I logged on my Engi. I don’t know how to play an Engi. I hate it, actually. But those kitten ed kits are so fluid that you can’t help but love them. AND he has great base stats. In fact, his stats are so effective, that without having any idea what to do or how to spec, I can jump in a hot join and kill people effectively. 1v1’s last a while and feel fair. 2v1’s can go my way if I’m fancy.

I says to myself, “Self, let’s try a class that also complains of being nerfed… like ze Thief.” So I log on my thief. I have no idea how to spec my Thief anymore, so I make up a crazy-looking P/D condi build. You’re probably thinking, “Well yeah, condi P/D builds are OP right now.” Let’s be clear: Not Mine. I have no idea what a real P/D build should look like, I forgot to switch out my stupid runes, and my weapons didn’t have sigils. But you know what? I could drop anyone I ran into in <10 sec if I didn’t screw up my rotation. And if things didn’t go my way? I’d switch to SB, drop SR, and get out.

So anyway, maybe I’d lost my perspective. Other classes are immensely more effective in sPvP with much less skill, and Elementalists’ traits / stats are nowhere near on par. Sure, we can overplay and get kills periodically, but it is laughably more complex and less effective.

I know that’s not news to a lot of you, but I’ve been defending Ele in my mind for months since I found I could make my fire staff build “work.” I shan’t defend him now. Ele’s got real problems, and a couple changes to percentages, tweaking boon uptimes, or moving traits up and down the totem poll are not going to fix them. That’s just silly.

Sounds like my experience with a ranger alt yesterday.

I didn’t know that the GS/LB ranger was “not viable” so imagine my surprise when after a while I wanted to share the awesome build I had made, (I was top of the leader boards in every match, I figured I’d somehow made a good build) I found out that apparently only newbs who don’t know how to deal ‘real’ damage use similar builds. I once dropped a 6.5k Maul with the GS and was like “kitten, that’s firegrab terriory on a 3 sec cooldown”.

This is all very true. Every ele apologist does not step outside the class often enough, or just plays WvW, where staff is excellent and many enemies in small skirmishes are just bad.

The funny thing is, the last patch actually nerfed our potential builds a LOT more than they buffed them. The made survivability HARDER to get. This result should have been seen months ago when the “max survival” spec we had (3x cantrip ele) got nerfed by taking away every aspect of survivability we had, and they haven’t stopped crapping on it yet.

Sure, you can be a net positive for your team (i.e. more useful than having a 4v5), and even carry if the other team is REALLY bad. But at the level where players are even decent, almost any spec will destroy an ele and make your playtime miserable.

For the most part, if you are doing well on an ele, you are playing at the lower levels of competition.

P/D thief condi builds suffer from the same issue that P/U condi mesmers suffer from people can ignore you. For Roaming it can work in WvW it actually got buffed with the initiative changes I will say that since it can stand being outside of stealth better than burst can.

P/D has been around a long time it was really popular like last year November thanks to Youtuber Wildbill but it isn’t used in serious team ques. Dueling its good, WvW roaming good.

oZii.2864:

P/D thief condi builds suffer from the same issue that P/U condi mesmers suffer from people can ignore you. For Roaming it can work in WvW it actually got buffed with the initiative changes I will say that since it can stand being outside of stealth better than burst can.

P/D has been around a long time it was really popular like last year November thanks to Youtuber Wildbill but it isn’t used in serious team ques. Dueling its good, WvW roaming good.

That’s not the point. My second main is a glkittenter mesmer (I need to revamp it horribly though), and I’m levelling both a guardian and an engineer (these two aren’t too far in because I hate grinding levels and repeating story quests with a burning passion, but I still have acceptable play time in each), and I deleted my thief because I can’t stand playing against one. Everything is flat out easier than playing an elementalist. My mesmer stacks might easier and does it without having to drop half of his cooldowns just by shattering, does more damage, and can actually use the more interesting traits and utilities because he isn’t shunted permanently into survival.

I did the same thing a few days ago after the 10th december patch left me upset. I tried a ranger and an engineer. Completely new to both professions, and using default runes, I can’t believe how much tougher they felt in PvP.
Now, I had no idea what I was doing and I did obviously screw up a lot, but I could see how much easier it would be given a bit of effort.
It really is a strange state of affairs. I hope ANet can see this and have some kind of plan to help eles out.
I love the general mechanics of attunements and such like so I would not want that to change, but we are just a bit feeble compared to other classes. They seem to have much easier access to things that the ele has to have big cooldowns for, or go deep into trait lines for.
ArenaNet.. please help us.

I’ve sorta mained a Guardian since release, but started my Ele for WvW.

I did play some sPvP with both.
I have about 700~800h on each character, so I can say I kinda played both… extensively.

This is how my PvP days go:
“Hmm I love my Ele I’m going to join some PvP”
Works !@# off to 1v1 someone, totally impossible to beat 2v1 with half-decent players
“Dam that was too hard, I think I joined the pro-league and wasn’t told about it”
“Let me play my Guardian a bit so it doesn’t get too jelly”
Join a match, see 3 players, rush in with Hammer/GS, proceed to facesmashroll a squishy. Down a player, leaves the other two with about 10% health.
“Dam almost had those 3… they got lucky I messed up!”

If it weren’t for sPvP, I’d main my Elementalist all day no regrets.

interesting, might I ask what build you were running on engi, was it 10/0/30/30/0 because I feel that build is a bit op in the current meta for spvp that might just be because I hate automated response though (the same way I figured I would hate diamond skin[but haven’t seen anyone use it yet])

This is what I’ve been trying to tell people, I’m also someone who made the jump to Engineer a while ago – not just to test an alt, the class seemed to be genuinely interesting to play (hence I leveled it to 80 and spend lots of time on it).

The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that rifle’s AUTOATTACK seemed to do equal sustained damage than anything Ele, because Ele abilties require the target to stay 100% still for max dps. Sure on a still target Ele dps goes through the roof, but when targets start moving (especially in PvP lol) abilities like Dragon’s Tooth, Lava Font, etc become literally useless.

Funny to read this, because I have the exact opposite feeling when playing my engineer. Whatever I’ve tried, I always seem to end up dealing less damage AND being less survivable.

I like the ideas that ANet has when they post around here. I feel like they’re honestly trying. I just don’t have any idea what they’re experiencing. I’d love to see a full, blunt dialogue on the process that goes behind balancing and patching.

But despite my optimism for their efforts, like… they can’t really fix Elementalists as they are right now without some really, really sweeping changes. And that doesn’t sound as if it’s on their calendars given the patches. Not to mention, the “buffs” are just as BlackBeard said — they make viability harder to achieve. Why? Because they’re grossly overestimating the value of the traits they push upward, and they grossly overestimate the value of the % tweaks they make to the not-complete-crap traits.

For example, on my Thief (that I don’t know much about, mind you)… Every. Single. Trait. that I took is of significance. My playstyle was decided and defined by my traiting, and I had to make hard choices because there was real power in my options. I could even make the exact same P/D condition type thief but with 10 different major trait variations. But on my Elementalist? Half the crap I could care less about. And the big choices aren’t even THAT big of a difference in practice. There’s not a single style for D/D, Staff, S/F, or S/D that has so many effective trait combinations and so many amazingly synergistic choices.

For example — Thief has Slowed Pulse: Regen(10s) 1300 health when you get two stacks of bleed (mix that with regen and condi clear when stealthed). Elementalist has Soothing Wave: Regen (3s) 390 health (10s recharge) when critically hit. Nice.

Let’s talk about useful skills… take my beloved staff for example. MOST of my weapon skills are completely useless. Earth 1 and 2? Uhhh. Earth 3, okay. Earth 4, only reason I really switch… and it’s when I’m running. Earth 5 never really seems to hit. Air is alright, but the time it takes to use its control keeps me from doing anything else (i.e. killing someone) so it should be more like kits anyway, but that’s another topic. Fire is okay. Water 1 is stupid. Water 2 is a complete and utter disgrace. I have zero idea why I ever try to use Water 3, but I do. Water 4 is only used in shame when Earth 4 didn’t work so I’m trying to jump off the edge of something and take my own life before I get ROFLstomped. Water 5 is like Water 3.

I’m just ranting now, so I’ll back off. But basically, I played a thief and engi crappily and it blew my mind right out of my head and onto the floor. Pyrite and P Fun have it exactly right… other classes seem to do more faster and with less effort. It’s not about whether my P/D build was so leetballs. It’s that the random, awkward setup I picked was 10x stronger, more synergistic than my favorite, most practiced Ele build.

Pyrite.9641:

Sounds like my experience with a ranger alt yesterday.

I didn’t know that the GS/LB ranger was “not viable” so imagine my surprise when after a while I wanted to share the awesome build I had made, (I was top of the leader boards in every match, I figured I’d somehow made a good build) I found out that apparently only newbs who don’t know how to deal ‘real’ damage use similar builds. I once dropped a 6.5k Maul with the GS and was like “kitten, that’s firegrab terriory on a 3 sec cooldown”.

Longbow/GS is severely underestimated. The Greatsword as defensive sidearm allows you to go all out glass canon on the bow(for example 30/20/20 or 30/25/15).
However, it’s a pretty tactical playstyle, so the typical player you encounter in spvp would probably not be capable of pulling it off.
It’s all about mastering the GS to move around and using the 1500 range vuln/damage spike on opponents, who are already in battle.

Back to ele: Ele is not in that bad a spot right now. Engineers are probably still worse off.
What annoys the hell out of me when playing ele is the amount of choices, you are forced to make.
Playing the aforementioned ranger is fluent. You got skill A, which does X, skill B, which does Y and skill C, which does Z. Elementalist, on the other hand got skill G, which causes H, I, J and can also be used for K or L, when combined with skill F. When you then consider that there are also 5+ traits, which directly add additional side effects to G, you will at some point realize, that the whole thing is just plain overloaded with effects. And that while those 20 weapon skills ar your disposalare still pretty much sub-par to other skills and only become good, when you factor in skill rotations with quick attunement swaps.

After getting dowed by a small breeze with my ele for only god know how many times,I’m took the dust off my undergeared mesmer alt and tried that PU cond build that is all the rage these days and oh boy …

Roaming is so much “casual” now i can alt+tab to check my mail in the mid of a duel and still win, warriors are jokes now…well they still run away but at least they run with 15% hp and not with my lootbag.

naphack.9346:

Back to ele: Ele is not in that bad a spot right now. Engineers are probably still worse off.

LOL wow.

I stopped reading there. Do people really think that engis are in a worse spot than eles?

Ele is at the bottom, maybe tied with ranger. Every other class is better and has a defined role, if not multiple ones.

Ele is outclassed at everything.

Engineers are near the top. They just fly under the radar because they are the least played profession.