Guild Wars 2

As an Elementalist, you need to play incredibly better to match toe-to-toe with many of the other classes. And a considerable amount of the time, the pure mechanics ensure you don’t succeed anyways. Here are my bones to pick:

Elementalist suffers from six major issues:
1: Arcana is a skill tax: without being able to quickly attunement swap, you don’t have access to much of your skill bar for the better part of a fight. The better skills in each attunement suffer huge cooldown times because it’s assumed the elementalist is using every skill in every attunement, not possible practically speaking without Arcana.

2:Long channel times: it takes a great deal of time to channel many Elementalist skills, and this has been pointed at as one thing responsible for our low DPS. Additionally, it means you MUST play preemptively, not responsively. Long channel times on things like blinds or resurrections can NOT succeed without luck or extremely careful planning.

3: Low base damage: many of the skills, no matter what, are not going to hit as hard as other classes can. My thief friend is critting for 8k damage with his shortbow clusterbomb. That AoE damage is not possible on an Elementalist even specced fully into power/precision (which is a bad idea anyways as you’ll lose your other skills because of Arcana, mentioned before).

4: Elementalists are also reliant somewhat upon condition damage, which max stacks in PvE and is cleansed in PvP. Eruption can hit for 11k in a considerable AoE but you will never see it’s full damage done (16 seconds long). It’s much better to do an instant 7k than 11k over 16 seconds. It’s worse than both to do “mixed” damage as the game punishes you for running condition damage/power hybrid.

5: Elementalist abilities are “balanced” around elemental traits. E.g. if you’re going to be using fire you’d better have Pyromancer’s Alacrity (20% reduced cooldowns in fire). Thing is, those exist for every element and the elements are mediocre without them. Yeah you HAVE four attunements, but you have to CHOOSE which one/ones are going to be good, where you can absolutely have the traits points you need for weapon swaps.

6: No weapon swap. Hear me out. Every other class can modify their effective range. Warriors can swap from greatsword to rifle. Thieves can go from daggers to pistols. But an Elementalist with a staff is kitten if he’s not at 1200 range, and the attunements do not provide range versatility. And some of the attunements are kitten. Look at air staff. That provides two useful things, a lightning combo field for stacking vulnerability on bosses, and an AoE swiftness useful for friggin’ travel. The other three abilities are garbage. The push is slow, the blind has a HUGE channel time, the autoattack is pitifully weak. I’m not saying that elementalists should be able to swap weapons, as that would be ridiculous, but I’m saying they should have a mechanic that allows them to fiddle with their range a little. Easiest solution is mixed range elementalist abilities or attunements. Say Air for staff is now melee-focused abilities. EVERY other class has this option.

I have 400+ hours of experience with my ex-main elementalist. The SINGLE advantage elementalist had over other classes was it’s ability to easily combo off it’s own combo fields. Then Evasive Arcana was removed last patch. The class is garbage. Listen to me. Read my lips. I’ve been trying since the game came out to make this class work and feel fair. I’ve played with every build out there. Elementalist can do a lot of things mediocre, but nothing well. You want burst? Roll a backstab thief. You want tankiness? Guardian or warrior. Melee damage? Warrior. Condition damage? Necromancer. Support? Guardian/Shout Warrior. All with better survivability and more versatile range.

I HATE that this class is bad because when it comes to these games, I have Wizzard written on my hat and on my heart. And it’s not like I’ve not practiced, or experimented, or that I’m just bad. I love PvP, I play competitive Starcraft. Losing in Starcraft though… it’s FAIR. When you play well, you win by a lot. When you play poorly you get rolled. I can look at what I’ve done wrong and the conclusion is never “my race is underpowered.” I can always DO something to improve. And in Guild Wars 2, the improvement that I made was rerolling. I am done with that class. You can play much better than your opponent and win by 200 hp. You can watch your opponent make mistake after mistake and win, or lose by just a fraction. WINNING is frustrating on this class.

Yes. But I think
it doesn’t make a bit of difference, guys.

this class has some pretty serious issues, but

Completely agree. The profession has some serious issues, and it needs a lot of work from Anet. Instead, it gets nerfs and more bugs.

Honestly, I think the entire profession design is completely flawed and needs to be re-written.

Trust i feel as you feel and i think we are not the only ones that do feel this way i agree with most of what you say {btw SC2 zerg high diamond here:)}cant wait for HoTs…i do think if Anet dont fix the buggs thats been around since Beta and really work on wvwvw theres not gonna be much in gw2 left to enjoy and elder scroll online will steal alot from them.Alot of people have been begging them to fix the class befor you nerf us to the ground…

I feel ya, man. I always play the wizard class—always. I’m a big fantasy geek. I play it. I read it. I write it. And I hate it when the wizard class is UP and utter suck-age like it is in gw2. I’ve tried so hard to make Staff Ele work (aside from bunker which is boring as phruck in sPVP), and nothing’s worked.

Heavy sigh.

what scares me the most is how long it takes to fix our buggs or pretty much anything… will this game last that long alrdy alot alot alot of ppl have asked for there money back or just stopped playing and frac’s if anything made this worse…plus i feel there’s a big problem with needing 30 arcane it feels like if ur DD ele u need it ,its almost a must i have tried manyy builds nothing so far feels as good as 0/10/0/30/30…..

I agree. A lot of people on the elementalist forums keep saying elementalist is fine and l2play. But they continue to ignore that the only real viable build these days is d/d which is fun but other builds should be viable for elementalists in pvp. I agree that the channeled skills take too long and in most situations your opponents are smart enough move out of them making staff and scepter to an extent very weak. I also agree with you that we are forced to place points in arcana so we are able to use all our abilities to be effective. I’m not sure what to replace the bonus for arcana should be but we should never be forced out of 20 or so skill points automatically. I think if anything they should make the base skills for scepter and staff scale better in terms of damage, that along with reducing channel time would really help the other builds elementalists can make. I’m not so sure the elemental traits are as much of a problem as they can determine what kind of a build you are going for (fire for more attacks more often or earth for cc more often). I also agree with having some sort of ability to change our attack range. The easiest I think would be an out of combat weapon swap (I do this anyway in wvwvw when situations change but its very clunky) something else to change our attack range on the fly would require a lot of redesign on the class though.

For the elementalist there are weapons which favour team gameplay (i.e. DE and WvW) and solo (PvE and PvP). Why on earth would anyone use an AoE mainly weapon whilst PvP? That is why this character can also go D/D – it’s a more personal face-to-face combat build.

I cosign the OP. I’ve played ele from the start, and the best hold by far is D/D. That’s fun, but situational and not very wizardly. We should have more viable options for WvW and PvP especially.

I’m at the point now that I think I’ll just make yet another warrior until they unkitten this class.

MrButtermancer.1624:

6: No weapon swap. Hear me out. Every other class can modify their effective range. Warriors can swap from greatsword to rifle. Thieves can go from daggers to pistols. But an Elementalist with a staff is kitten if he’s not at 1200 range, and the attunements do not provide range versatility. And some of the attunements are kitten. Look at air staff. That provides two useful things, a lightning combo field for stacking vulnerability on bosses, and an AoE swiftness useful for friggin’ travel. The other three abilities are garbage. The push is slow, the blind has a HUGE channel time, the autoattack is pitifully weak. I’m not saying that elementalists should be able to swap weapons, as that would be ridiculous, but I’m saying they should have a mechanic that allows them to fiddle with their range a little. Easiest solution is mixed range elementalist abilities or attunements. Say Air for staff is now melee-focused abilities. EVERY other class has this option.

Still this remains everyone’s favourite argument against Ele’s having weapon swap.

“But you can swap attunements, and you have access to more skills”

As soon as you bring up the fact that other classes can modify their range-of-attack their hearing shuts down automatically.

I tend to run S/D in WvW, but this means longer travel times because no speed buff. If I do switch to my staff, and I happen to be jumped by a warrior or thief while running towards some objective (and solo most of the time), I’m kittened if a thief or warrior jumps me, because I’m now stuck on my staff. Same if I get singled out by one of the above while siegeing an outpost or similar.

I wouldn’t even go as far as demanding an in-combat weapon swap really, but if I can at least swap weapons before entering combat I’ll be a great deal happier. But browsing my inventory to get my s/d equipped while someone with death on their mind is barreling down towards me doesn’t work for me at all.

I cant realise how much weapon swap would be overpowered on an Elem, even if I can think of some really nasty combos. They should however offer at least one 900 range autoattack for dagger primary.

MrButtermancer.1624:

1: Arcana is a skill tax: without being able to quickly attunement swap, you don’t have access to much of your skill bar for the better part of a fight. The better skills in each attunement suffer huge cooldown times because it’s assumed the elementalist is using every skill in every attunement, not possible practically speaking without Arcana.

The cooldowns that matter though, are longer than your attunement cooldowns. Being able to swap more often does give you some flexibility, but it’s not like you cannot function without it.

2:Long channel times: it takes a great deal of time to channel many Elementalist skills, and this has been pointed at as one thing responsible for our low DPS. Additionally, it means you MUST play preemptively, not responsively.

That’s also what changes the playstyle. Long range weapons are per definition pre-emtive strike weapons. With daggers, the channeling time is a lot less than with staves. It balances things out, overall.

4: Elementalists are also reliant somewhat upon condition damage

If you’re talking about the staff, the actual condition damage skills can be mostly considered an afterthought. Eruption is mostly meant for combos, the bleeding is added bonus. Personally, I like to think of the few conditions skills as “…making Might not 50% useless…” and not much else besides that.

5: Elementalist abilities are “balanced” around elemental traits. you have to CHOOSE which one/ones are going to be good

Not true. There are plenty of traits that work for all attunements, and they’re by no means bad.

6: No weapon swap. Hear me out. Every other class can modify their effective range.

Staff and scepter users don’t have an effective range. They perform just as well at close range. Dagger users have a problem, true, but they also have gap closers.

Then Evasive Arcana was removed last patch. The class is garbage. Listen to me. Read my lips.

They shouldn’t have done that. Mostly because it doesn’t affect our power in any meaningful way, but it does affect our fun very much.

raziel.8375:

Trust i feel as you feel and i think we are not the only ones that do feel this way i agree with most of what you say {btw SC2 zerg high diamond here:)}cant wait for HoTs…i do think if Anet dont fix the buggs thats been around since Beta and really work on wvwvw theres not gonna be much in gw2 left to enjoy and elder scroll online will steal alot from them.Alot of people have been begging them to fix the class befor you nerf us to the ground…

Dont forget the FF14 rebuild, that game looks amazing and i got high hopes for that, However this game has some SERIOUS issues that really need to be sorted out and if they dont as if they hadnt had enough time to fix them, they add MORE bugs and issues when ever they release a patch they WILL start losing players i give it a couple of months at most before they start leaving

The problem – without a monthly fee they dont give a crap about the players as long as enough players waste money pon gems and gem store they dont care

I generally agree the only thing i will say is for a good mix of range and up close scepter/dagger is acceptable, for now. The option is there, but I still feel we ele’s re sacrificing quite a bit for a handful of attacks with miniscule versitality, and in order to be equally effective as other classes we need to play at a higher skill level

Elementalist has been the most exciting class I have ever played in GW2 as a mage than any other class.

It really has good skills for all weapons. It requires fast thinking, fast changing elemental skills and fast moving and dodging.

I havnt found 1 skill that is useless in Elementalist. Not on any weapons or Utilities.
Though, It’s one of my favorite classes, I happen to notice a lot of people just dont understand how to fully take advantage of the combat system and mechanic. Specially the Elementalist.

My friend and I both love elementalist and the fast pace combat skills it uses. Tons of strategies to be made.

If anything, this is excactly what a Mage class should be like!

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I havnt found 1 skill that is useless in Elementalist.

!

I can actually name a few that are -_-

Though I agree, my problem with these types of threads is this: ANet has already shown that when they make changes to the class, they are not the changes that are needed, and in some cases they reduce viable build options and enjoyment. Because of that, I feel like if they keep up with this kitten tinkering they’re doing now, it won’t be long until the class is unplayable or just not fun to play anymore. I’m scared of that patch, because the rest of the classes are so mind-numbingly dull to play that I’ll be walking away from the game if they take eles to that point.

The way things stand now, the Ele is not my “vision” of a wizard/mage
prototype. Why? In following fantasy for 20 years, my concept of a casting
mage is not “dual wielding daggers and being tanky.” In fact, I refused to do
the d/d build and tried everything else. In the end, Im just another d/d ele
in WvW because it is the most effective in disrupting the enemy forces.

As far as the reference above to people saying “learn to play,” my bet is they
are all d/d ele’s. Ill admit, going full zerk staff build was fun for a long time.
Root with skill > lava font > flame burst is an awesome nuke. The problem
is getting caught in the open against a thief and you are dead.

Lastly, Im also concerned about the time it takes to change things in this game. Longer
than any other MMO Ive been in.

OK here are SOLO scenarios I was put in that basically describe why an Elementalist is a powerfull profession when used correctly.

Place: Righteous Hoofmoot (centaur camp, lower right of Queensdale)
Mobs: Approximately 10 centaurs + 3 Veterans
Aid Used: Hounds of Balthazar, Glyph of Lesser Elementals.
Weapon: Staff

Basically, I pulled all of them together (the 3 vets as well). Started off with ‘Meteor Shower’ in the area I will pull them to and when they were there I used ‘Flame Burst ’, followed by ’Lava Font’ and ‘Glyph of Storms’. Attuned to Earth, used ‘Unsteady Ground’, ‘Magnetic Aura’ and doged to pull them along that path, and then used ‘Shockwave’. At this point I doged back and attuned to Air. Used ‘Static field’ to stun them and ‘Windborne Speed’ to get swiftness. Doged out of the way again and attuned to Fire. At this point I had 3 veteran left with less than 50% health. Used ‘Flame Burst’ again and ‘Lava Font’. Switched to Earth and used ‘Unsteady Ground’. Then finished it off with ‘Eruption’.

You may think, lv80 in a lv15 zone is easy. So here is another scenario.

Place: Otyugh’s Kraal (lower right of Field of Ruin)
Mobs: Champion Chief Otyugh
Aid Used: Hounds of Balthazar, Glyph of Lesser Elementals.
Weapon: Staff

Similar method as before. Using dodging where required and combo summed up bellow:

Fire(5,3,2) → Earth(Glyph of lesser Elementals,4,5,2) → Air (5,2,4) → Water (4,2) → Rinse and repeat.

The aid here is to use the Earth Glyph of lesser Elementals ONLY to keep him occupied since that glyph can take more damage. When he summons his minions then use Hounds of Balthazar. You will need to be able to dodge well and there were moments when my health went below 25%, but use healing ASAP when it goes down by 25%.

I have been playing around with all of the elements and it when used correctly it really makes Elementalist a powerfull character – problem is people just prefer to spam one element and be in a static position. That is why, I think, Warrior-based characters are used so often – just spam attack from one spot. Notice how many characters in a zerg-fest event attack the boss head-on…

MrButtermancer.1624:

5: Elementalist abilities are “balanced” around elemental traits. E.g. if you’re going to be using fire you’d better have Pyromancer’s Alacrity (20% reduced cooldowns in fire). Thing is, those exist for every element and the elements are mediocre without them. Yeah you HAVE four attunements, but you have to CHOOSE which one/ones are going to be good, where you can absolutely have the traits points you need for weapon swaps.

Or you can make a universal attunement build instead. Stuff like…glyph/cantrip/signet related traits, shields, conjured weapons etc. I have exactly 1 major trait that’s attunement related: cleanse when switching to water(unless you count one with air which i only use for gathering, glyph cd for everything else).

But an Elementalist with a staff is kitten if he’s not at 1200 range

This just just bs.

I have 400+ hours of experience with my ex-main elementalist. The SINGLE advantage elementalist had over other classes was it’s ability to easily combo off it’s own combo fields. Then Evasive Arcana was removed last patch. The class is garbage. Listen to me. Read my lips. I’ve been trying since the game came out to make this class work and feel fair. I’ve played with every build out there. Elementalist can do a lot of things mediocre, but nothing well. You want burst? Roll a backstab thief. You want tankiness? Guardian or warrior. Melee damage? Warrior. Condition damage? Necromancer. Support? Guardian/Shout Warrior. All with better survivability and more versatile range.

I HATE that this class is bad because when it comes to these games, I have Wizzard written on my hat and on my heart. And it’s not like I’ve not practiced, or experimented, or that I’m just bad. I love PvP, I play competitive Starcraft. Losing in Starcraft though… it’s FAIR. When you play well, you win by a lot. When you play poorly you get rolled. I can look at what I’ve done wrong and the conclusion is never “my race is underpowered.” I can always DO something to improve. And in Guild Wars 2, the improvement that I made was rerolling. I am done with that class. You can play much better than your opponent and win by 200 hp. You can watch your opponent make mistake after mistake and win, or lose by just a fraction. WINNING is frustrating on this class.

That’s your opinion and your problem. Ele is 90% the same playstyle as I’ve had in every other game as a healer. I’m only lacking the tag and some better focused healing. Which doesn’t stop me for being a support-dd hybrid.

MrButtermancer.1624:

Elementalist suffers from six major issues:
1: Arcana is a skill tax: without being able to quickly attunement swap, you don’t have access to much of your skill bar for the better part of a fight. The better skills in each attunement suffer huge cooldown times because it’s assumed the elementalist is using every skill in every attunement, not possible practically speaking without Arcana.

It really just feels like we’ve been made to pay a few too many times for the advantage of Attunements.

In order to have 4 weapon sets available at all times, the Elementalist had to give up the following:

1) Profession mechanic. Every other profession gets something special for their F1-4 keys. We just get different weapon skills. This is a perfectly fair trade-off, except it’s just the start of the bill.

2) Weapon swaps. This kinda makes sense. If we could swap weapons, we would have 40 weapon skills available at any given time in combat and it would be way too complicated and wonky. Nevertheless, we lose the ability to switch from melee to ranged. If you’re using a staff because it’s a DE and suddenly you need to solo some monster, you /can/ do it, but it’s going to be much rougher than if you could switch to D/D or S/D. This is extremely unfortunate and it mars our claim at versatility, but 40 skills would clearly be too much and I’m ok with this cost if there’s no elegant way to solve it.

3) Damage. Yeah, I know we can still deal damage. I know it’s enough damage to scrape by in PvE (if you kite like crazy and abuse the Glyphs of Elementals). But we flatly deal less damage than the other professions. I have an Engineer and a Thief alt (and just started a Necro alt) and it’s hilarious how much easier it is for them to kill mobs. It’s not even close.

4) Tankiness. It makes sense for a high-damage class to be squishy. If someone can kill you very quickly, it’s only fair for you to be able to kill them quickly as well, if you play your cards right. But Elementalists have poor damage, so their exceptional squishiness is out of place.

5) Profession trait line bonus. Normally, weapon swaps have a 10 second recharge to switch back. Elementalists have to pour points into Arcana to get that. Consequently, points spent in Arcana merely get us on par with other professions. Whereas Warriors get more damage from their trail line and Necromancers get to stay in Backup Safety Mode longer from theirs, an Ele who’s blown points on Arcana just gets to do with his “weapon swaps” what Warriors and Necro’s got to do just for hitting level 7.

6) Combo finishers. Especially now that EA has been gutted, Eles are sorely lacking in ways to complete our own combos. It’s great that we can throw down a lot of combo fields, but you know what? Everyone has combo fields and just about everyone has easy ways of completing their own combos. Many professions get combo finishers on their Weapon autoattacks. How awesome would it be if Fireball counted as a Blast Finisher (20% chance)? But nope, we get nothing as shiny as that because then we’d be too versatile or something.

7) Reasonable cooldowns. The majority of Elementalist weapon skills have longer cooldowns that is warranted by their effects. Other professions get much lower cooldowns on their weapon skills. This forces Eles to play the attunement dance game but ends up locking them out their damage attunements or their support attunements on occasion, which leads to a very irregular play pattern and puts yet another milling stone around the neck of our versatility. It’s great than we can drop a healing rain and a meteor storm, but doing the former means we can’t deal any damage for 12 seconds and doing the latter means we can’t provide support for 12 seconds.

Basically, playing an Elementalist feels like we borrowed some money from a shady loan shark who’s charging 400% interest. It feels like our deadbeat friend drove us to work one time and takes it as an excuse to crash on our couch for a week every few months and eat everything in our fridge every time he comes over. Obviously this is being hyperbolic, but it’s how I feel.

(As for traits deficiencies and bugs, we definitely have these problems as well, but so do most professions so I’m not inclined to point to this as an Ele-specific problem.)

In order to have 4 weapon sets available at all times, the Elementalist had to give up the following:

1) Profession mechanic. Every other profession gets something special for their F1-4 keys. We just get different weapon skills. This is a perfectly fair trade-off, except it’s just the start of the bill.

Special?! Who does? Mesmer gets shatters, necro gets shroud, warrior gets an extra skill based on the weapon, engi gets kits…. None of those is any more special that what ele gets….

2) Weapon swaps. This kinda makes sense. If we could swap weapons, we would have 40 weapon skills available at any given time in combat and it would be way too complicated and wonky. Nevertheless, we lose the ability to switch from melee to ranged. If you’re using a staff because it’s a DE and suddenly you need to solo some monster, you /can/ do it, but it’s going to be much rougher than if you could switch to D/D or S/D.

I have absolutely no problem soloing mobs with a staff… Actually, for me it’s easier than dagger or scepter or w/e else you might wanna use.

3) Damage. Yeah, I know we can still deal damage. I know it’s enough damage to scrape by in PvE (if you kite like crazy and abuse the Glyphs of Elementals). But we flatly deal less damage than the other professions. I have an Engineer and a Thief alt (and just started a Necro alt) and it’s hilarious how much easier it is for them to kill mobs. It’s not even close.

Then, obviously, ele is not the class for you. I have ele and mesmer. Absolutely prefer my ele, everything just feels easier. In every way.

4) Tankiness. It makes sense for a high-damage class to be squishy. If someone can kill you very quickly, it’s only fair for you to be able to kill them quickly as well, if you play your cards right. But Elementalists have poor damage, so their exceptional squishiness is out of place.

That I partially agree with. I’m still looking for the reason why my ele has 10k hp and my mesmer has 20k when the mesmer has more purely defensive skills(clones, which my girl can spawn faster than you can blink).

5) Profession trait line bonus. Normally, weapon swaps have a 10 second recharge to switch back.

What? Arcana isn;t just cd reduction on attunement swap…

6) Combo finishers. Especially now that EA has been gutted, Eles are sorely lacking in ways to complete our own combos. It’s great that we can throw down a lot of combo fields, but you know what? Everyone has combo fields and just about everyone has easy ways of completing their own combos. Many professions get combo finishers on their Weapon autoattacks. How awesome would it be if Fireball counted as a Blast Finisher (20% chance)? But nope, we get nothing as shiny as that because then we’d be too versatile or something.

Again, what…? I just checked warrior(ya know, the “OP” class)…one combo field. Total. From all weapon and utility skills. Thief, mesmer and ranger each have one blast finisher to show. If you look at the wiki page, you might notice that all classes have pretty much the same field-finisher abilities as ele. That’s why GW2 is an MMO and not SP game…I put down the fields and my party finishes in them. And when I feel like it, i’ll finish myself for a blast…

7) Reasonable cooldowns.

More skills to use -> longer cooldowns. I’m pretty sure they gave us 4 skill sets instead of 2 with the expectation that we’ll be using them. You are not “forced” to swap, it’s the basic class design. Also, you can deal dmg in other elements and provide support in other elements. Every healer will tell you that healing is the smallest part of support one provides to a party. Well, to a good party. But the way GW2 was made, a bad party is beyond support anyway….

Basically, playing an Elementalist feels like we borrowed some money from a shady loan shark who’s charging 400% interest. It feels like our deadbeat friend drove us to work one time and takes it as an excuse to crash on our couch for a week every few months and eat everything in our fridge every time he comes over. Obviously this is being hyperbolic, but it’s how I feel.

Thus, the wrong class for you

PS: had to snip a bit due to post length limit

TWMagimay.9057:

Special?! Who does? Mesmer gets shatters, necro gets shroud, warrior gets an extra skill based on the weapon, engi gets kits…. None of those is any more special that what ele gets….

It’s not a matter of more or less similar. Ele’s don’t get actual content from their profession mechanic unless you Trait for it. And that’s fine! I’m not saying Ele’s are UP merely because their profession mechanic is to be able to change their weapon skills more times in combat than other professions. I’m just tabulating this as a cost.

TWMagimay.9057:

I have absolutely no problem soloing mobs with a staff… Actually, for me it’s easier than dagger or scepter or w/e else you might wanna use.

I’m sorry, but I’m simply going to have to disagree with you.

You /can/ solo mobs with staff, but the weapon has a stronger AoE competent to its design than D/D or S/D as well as additional range. Unless the Staff is horribly overpowered, that means it will be less optimal, by and large, while soloing a small number of opponents than a weapon that lacks its AoE and range strengths. While obviously the staff may just click with one person such that they do better with it regardless, that has more to do with their talents letting them use a nonoptimal tool very well than the versatility of the tool itself. Like, if I knew a guy who could whittle awesome statues with just a claw hammer, that doesn’t mean a pocket knife isn’t a better tool for whittling.

TWMagimay.9057:

Then, obviously, ele is not the class for you. I have ele and mesmer. Absolutely prefer my ele, everything just feels easier. In every way.

You’re misunderstanding me.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing for Ele’s to deal subpar damagic. That’s not what I expected when I first picked the profession, but I still enjoy the class for its complexity and versatility (and ability to call down fire from the sky).

My point is, lower damage is an additional cost we’re paying for our versatility. I’m making an argument about an aggregate cost. Lower damage would be ok as a trade-off, but we’ve already made so many trade-offs that it’s starting to feel unnecessary.

TWMagimay.9057:

That I partially agree with. I’m still looking for the reason why my ele has 10k hp and my mesmer has 20k when the mesmer has more purely defensive skills(clones, which my girl can spawn faster than you can blink).

Ele’s can be incredibly slippery with their cantrips and multiple heals, but they’re just too easy to spike down to dead.

TWMagimay.9057:

What? Arcana isn;t just cd reduction on attunement swap…

Yes, but every profession gets a special effect from leveling up their Profession line. In the Ele’s case, that’s reducing the cooldown on Attunement, which starts out as much too high. It’s like how stores will often raise prices before a sale: they’re claiming to give you a coupon for 50% off, but really they just jacked up the prices by 100% so you need the coupon merely to get back to retail price.

TWMagimay.9057:

Again, what…? I just checked warrior(ya know, the “OP” class)…one combo field. Total. From all weapon and utility skills. Thief, mesmer and ranger each have one blast finisher to show. If you look at the wiki page, you might notice that all classes have pretty much the same field-finisher abilities as ele. That’s why GW2 is an MMO and not SP game…I put down the fields and my party finishes in them. And when I feel like it, i’ll finish myself for a blast…

Ok first, there are more kinds of finishers than blast.

Second, MMO or not, GW2 was explicitly intended to allow all sorts of play, including solo play. You should benefit from playing with a group, but playing with a group shouldn’t be required.

TWMagimay.9057:

More skills to use -> longer cooldowns. I’m pretty sure they gave us 4 skill sets instead of 2 with the expectation that we’ll be using them. You are not “forced” to swap, it’s the basic class design.

Which, again, would be fine if there aren’t already so many drawbacks to having Attunements.

And you’re forced to swap if you want to play at even remotely an optimal level. Our #1 skills are all pretty terrible, so you can’t just sit there and autoattack. You’re also paying all the aforementioned costs for attunements whether you use them or not, so not using them basically leaves you as playing with one hand and two feet tied behind your back.

TWMagimay.9057:

Thus, the wrong class for you

This is an incredibly rude thing to say and an even more rude way to say it. It’s also dishonest argumentation. I’m making an argument about the Elementalist Profession, but you’re trying to make things personal in order to invalidate my points.

i dont understand a point of balance of elementalists sometimes…

he is very versatile, but it is compensated by longer cooldowns on attunements then on weapon swaps (15sec without arcane traits), in addition we have only 1 range type… along with this, we have very low dmg output compared to almost everyone, ok, some skills are AOE, thats why they have lower dmg, i understand, but why single attacks got that low dmg too? and why other profs aoe are not as low as eles? srsly, why? everyone say that ele is best support, but where? aura share 30 trait, arcane attunement 10 trait for quite short buff… and then? few heals maybe, but with 10k base hp its a must, nothing special compared to other profs… at every plus we can find a minus… but still there is disproportionately lower dmg compared to other profs…

I can relate to what OP’s saying but it would appear that the devs think ele’s are fine.

McClearyUnderMistRaildexGun.2086:

I can relate to what OP’s saying but it would appear that the devs think ele’s are fine.

The dev’s have incredibly poor communication with the community. You can’t assume they are fine with something just because they haven’t voiced their displeasure or released a patch. By that logic they are fine with all the bugs in the game simply because they don’t acknowledge or fix them. In reality it would appear to us, the customers, that they are simply incapable of meaningful progress.

A warrior has a simple task – spam the hell out of the enemy with his sword
A Ranger has a simple task – spam the hell out of the enemy with his bow

The other classes I won’t commnet since players tend to compare an elementalist to the above – always talking about DPS/damge/etc.

An elementalist is more versatile and requires more thinking, rather, than spamming one attack style only – thats what a warrior or ranger is for.

I’m going to stop reading the forums, there are just too many posts from people who just don’t get Elementalists or who want the profession to be completely changed so that it fit’s there image of what THEY think an Elementalist should be.

There needs to be LESS whining and more learning about the profession and game mechanics. Learning how to counter other professions and realising you cannot 1 button mash your way to victory to achieve this.

I play a D/D Ele I have different setups for sPvP and WvW.

And here’s the thing. I can beat anyone, ANYONE 1v1. The one profession that runs me closest to a defeat is a Mesmer who’s stacking heavy conditions and who uses Moa well (I’ve since changed my build a bit to try and counter these better). I used to struggle against well played thieves, I learned how to counter them and now I never, never die to a thief.

In WvW I can take on people 1v1, 2v1, 3v1 and even..4v1 (I have it on fraps). This profession is nowhere near as “broken” as people make it out it to be. Yes it requires work, you need to know your attunements, time your abilities, know rotations, know counters for other professions, know when to cleans, how to kite…the list goes on. And if you play correctly, you can absolutely devastating and if things go wrong with the right build, you can get out of pretty much any situation.

I kill other Ele’s all the time and I’m amazed at how bad some players are. Ele’s who use staff and just stand there pew pewing, no attempt to kite, no intelligent use of CC. Other Ele’s that don’t use rotations properly, even the basic one’s like RoF into a blast finisher to get some might. Or Ele’s that go GC in WvW and get melted in 2 hits or those that try churning earth on me and I just dodge it before it casts.

If you think winning is frustrating on this class or you complain that it’s not easy enough, then play something else. Stop filling the forums with junk about how aNet should change Ele’s so that they are more “mage” or “Wizard” like. Elementalists are what arena net WANTS THEM TO BE, not what you TELL them it should be. If you don’t like it play something else. There are plenty of people who do like the profession the way it is, players who like playing something that requires a bit more thought and those are the guys who are wrecking people in sPvP and WvW.

Loco.4561:

There are plenty of people who do like the profession the way it is, players who like playing something that requires a bit more thought and those are the guys who are wrecking people in sPvP and WvW.

No one’s saying we want the Ele to be fundamentally changed. At a basic level, I think the Attunement system is pretty cool. I just think some of the numbers are off… and EA could use its finishers back.

I’m going to throw this out there and see how people respond:

I am almost certain that all ranged weapons except rifles and maybe shortbows have a design flaw that causes their #1 skills to auto-attack more slowly than was intended across professions. There are numerous complaints about Pistols on the Thief board, Longbows on the Ranger board, Scepters and Staffs on the mage boards, and if you pay attention you’ll notice that your #1 skills are very slow relative to their activation speeds and their damage potential.

Bluntly, it ruins those sets, and in the case of the Elementalist and Ranger in particular it cripples the entire profession.

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s not a matter of more or less similar. Ele’s don’t get actual content from their profession mechanic unless you Trait for it.

And warriors get content? 1 extra skill per weapon is content but 20 extra skills per weapon isn’t?! How does that work exactly…? Shroud is basically extra hp and some skills, not much different either. Shatters are 4 extra skills, which is, again, more content than 20?!

I’m sorry, but I’m simply going to have to disagree with you.

Like, if I knew a guy who could whittle awesome statues with just a claw hammer, that doesn’t mean a pocket knife isn’t a better tool for whittling.

It might be for the general public, aka the less skilled with a hammer. But it also doesn’t mean hammer is not a great tool. I like the range, cc and aoes of staff. It allows me to be mobile without missing skills. With a dagger moving 2 steps to the left = miss.

You’re misunderstanding me.

My point is, lower damage is an additional cost we’re paying for our versatility. I’m making an argument about an aggregate cost. Lower damage would be ok as a trade-off, but we’ve already made so many trade-offs that it’s starting to feel unnecessary.

No, I think you are misudnerstanding. For me the low dmg is not a “trade-off”. Ele plays a lot like a healer. Low dmg, medium survival, high support(at least staff ele does). And, as you know, not everybody can play a healer, most people can’t. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is, people expect ele to be a nuker(maybe at some point that were true), but it’s more of a support-dmg hybrid which, ofc, means subpar dps.

Yes, but every profession gets a special effect from leveling up their Profession line. In the Ele’s case, that’s reducing the cooldown on Attunement, which starts out as much too high. It’s like how stores will often raise prices before a sale: they’re claiming to give you a coupon for 50% off, but really they just jacked up the prices by 100% so you need the coupon merely to get back to retail price.

Ermmm, yeah, mesmer gets reduced cd on shatter skills instead…doesn’t sound particularly “more special” to me somehow…

Ok first, there are more kinds of finishers than blast.

Second, MMO or not, GW2 was explicitly intended to allow all sorts of play, including solo play. You should benefit from playing with a group, but playing with a group shouldn’t be required.

And warrior still has only one field. If combos were a “requirement” for solo play, warriors would then be the single most UP class in the game…which i don’t think they are. Also, since blast finishers are not the only finishers…a staff ele has 6 fields and gasp 5 finishers(3 projectile, 2 blast). Doesn’t sound bad to me, when you consider that a mesmer with 6 fields can only have 2 finishers(leap) at best. Or 5 fields, 3 finishers(2 leap, 1 blast).

Which, again, would be fine if there aren’t already so many drawbacks to having Attunements.

And you’re forced to swap if you want to play at even remotely an optimal level. Our #1 skills are all pretty terrible, so you can’t just sit there and autoattack. You’re also paying all the aforementioned costs for attunements whether you use them or not, so not using them basically leaves you as playing with one hand and two feet tied behind your back.

Which would be the…class design…. And I wouldn’t say ele autoattacks are that bad… I mean, they are autoattacks after all, all of them are pretty meh, for all classes.

This is an incredibly rude thing to say and an even more rude way to say it. It’s also dishonest argumentation. I’m making an argument about the Elementalist Profession, but you’re trying to make things personal in order to invalidate my points.

Why is it rude? You expect to be perfect at every class and click with every class? Just because you have such high opinion of yourself doesn’t mean that if smb doesn;t share it, they are automatically insulting you. Or maybe it does…ego is a powerful thing. And, yes, it is personal. Because it is your personal view of the class and not some universal facts. I can’t invalidate an opinion, because, well, by definition an opinion is neither valid nor invalid.

PS: stupid post length limit………

TWMagimay.9057:

No, I think you are misudnerstanding. For me the low dmg is not a “trade-off”. Ele plays a lot like a healer. Low dmg, medium survival, high support(at least staff ele does). And, as you know, not everybody can play a healer, most people can’t. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is, people expect ele to be a nuker(maybe at some point that were true), but it’s more of a support-dmg hybrid which, ofc, means subpar dps.

This game doesnt have healers…
The Ele plays nothing like a traditional healer.
The ele can be a nuker if you build for it
It can be support if you build for it.
It can be a sustained dps if you build for it.

Its all about how you build and trait the class to function

Which would be the…class design…. And I wouldn’t say ele autoattacks are that bad… I mean, they are autoattacks after all, all of them are pretty meh, for all classes.

some of out auto attacks are crap, some of them are great. I agree every class has a good auto attack and a bad one.

Solori.6025:

This game doesnt have healers…
The Ele plays nothing like a traditional healer.
The ele can be a nuker if you build for it
It can be support if you build for it.
It can be a sustained dps if you build for it.

Its all about how you build and trait the class to function

Actually, staff ele plays exactly like a healer. Not like a traditional healer, but like a good healer. As in, more support, less healing.

TWMagimay.9057:

Solori.6025:

This game doesnt have healers…
The Ele plays nothing like a traditional healer.
The ele can be a nuker if you build for it
It can be support if you build for it.
It can be a sustained dps if you build for it.

Its all about how you build and trait the class to function

Actually, staff ele plays exactly like a healer. Not like a traditional healer, but like a good healer. As in, more support, less healing.

This is probably because of your build, and/or playstyle
The staff to me plays like a multi target nuke, because thats the only time I actually need to use the staff.

But this still ties into what I said.

Its all about how you build and trait your class to function.

Loco.4561:

And here’s the thing. I can beat anyone, ANYONE 1v1. The one profession that runs me closest to a defeat is a Mesmer who’s stacking heavy conditions and who uses Moa well (I’ve since changed my build a bit to try and counter these better). I used to struggle against well played thieves, I learned how to counter them and now I never, never die to a thief.

In WvW I can take on people 1v1, 2v1, 3v1 and even..4v1 (I have it on fraps). This profession is nowhere near as “broken” as people make it out it to be.

So you dont play an Ele, you you play a Rogue…
D/D is a Rogue nothing else.

And first of all I have to get rid of your delusion you are GOD.
In WvWvW you will in 99% of all cases never fight anyone in 1on1 who is
a) geared
b) lvl 80
c) specced
for a 1 on 1 match.

To get gear for a PvE player is hard, if you don’t have the time to grind. And even then A net limits drops, so you can’t really grind effectivly.
I have not unlimited time, I play 2-4 hours a day in the evening running dungeons and only have one complete gear, with just one weapon the staff, no exotic dagger, no scepter. I play since 3 days early release and the beta…

So if I go into WvWvW, wich I do to find POI’s I get rolled 1on1 because I have no chance of winning. not I glimpse of a chance cause I lack the “proper” gear and specc.

Just for you to laugh at. Once i stumbled across two Rangers…
I died instantly, I am full specced Water and have my gear complete vitality and go near 18k HP at level 80. They “INSTANT KILLED ME” as soon as I, unconsiously, entered their Range.

I really like the mechanic for the Ele, but he is as mentioned mediocre.

First af all, the Ele can make the same dmg as a Warrior (to some degree), or a Rogue. But he will be 5 times as squishy as the Warrior at the same time. So you get instant killed by every attack of some random dungeon mob. When you go all dmg with Berseker and 30/30/0/10/0 with D/D. So why take an Ele when you can get another dmg dealer?

So you can go Support, but in my humble opinion the Ingi is the support god. He has much more surviveabilty and can do some good dmg when supporting and healing. So why bother bringing a mage?

So Range and Melee have one difference, Melee is supposed to do more dmg. Okay… I honestly dont get it but thats what A Net tells us via Blogposts…
So why is the Ranger maybe the best single DPS class in the game? I don’t know, I just know Ranger is ownage on bosses.

Oh yeah lets take a look at the Guardian… They Tank/Heal/DPS/Support all at the same time, with around the surviveability of a tank while an Ele is an unarmed civilian sent to front to die a fast and horrible death.
To go in a dungeon without a Guardian is twice as hard as to go with one, expecially fractals in higher levels. The Guardian outshines every aspect of the Ele in PvE in a tenfold way.

The Mesmer is an unkillable machine, in PvE or PvP. With his clones he can easily solo most content without a glimpse.
And the Necro has is vast arrange of conditions, wich are way more usable as for an Ele. Never use Conditin damage on an Ele… I tried it sucks!!! And plz if you dont wanna cry dont compare Necro AoE with Ele AoE…

A net also posted, that DMG>Support>Heal
Okay… A net, thanks we got the lowbob end of the rope..
The best Ele’s can do actually is HEAL, support is subpar, especially because the Range of most of our support abilities is right next to my “LITTLE TOE”

In PvP I get why you have to be clustered to give boons or heals to allies, but WHY does this rule apply to PvE?
Auromancer just works when I stand next to my teammates with a range of 100-200 or so. And with the staff I only have “1”, written “ONE”, AURA, for gods sake! Play D/D to have two auras, yeahs A net give me more crap. D/D seems to be the new support build WTF.

In my opinion Eles can’t hold up with other classes, especially cause DMG is the top priority. The support is just subpar und healing doesn’t really scale very well.

I am leveling my Ranger atm and after that I will level a Guardian. So I have some viable options in PvE and don’t have the feeling I drag my group down the slope.
After that I will probably level an Ingi… still better support and I love Asuras.

Solori.6025:

This is probably because of your build, and/or playstyle
The staff to me plays like a multi target nuke, because thats the only time I actually need to use the staff.

But this still ties into what I said.

Its all about how you build and trait your class to function.

I do agree with you, ele can be specced into anything, never said otherwise. I’m just a bit jumpy about the idea people have about healers…. Cause a good healer is just like an ele: she can become everything you want and more. You just need to know what it is you want and how to make it work. And, ofc, have somewhat realistic expectations….

Solori.6025:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I havnt found 1 skill that is useless in Elementalist.

!

I can actually name a few that are -_-

Really? Cause I was able to find all Utility and Weapon skills useful in different situations in mid-combat.

I said this before, but I’ll say it again for this thread:
“The usefulness of the Skills and Utilities are determined on how you use them’
So yeah, Make sure you learn what the skills do, and challenge urself into making strategies that works with them.

The more strategies you learn using different combos, the better you are when it comes to different situations that calls for it. =) I dont stick with 1 weapon and utility set. I change it up a lot. It’s really fun.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

A warrior has a simple task – spam the hell out of the enemy with his sword
A Ranger has a simple task – spam the hell out of the enemy with his bow

The other classes I won’t commnet since players tend to compare an elementalist to the above – always talking about DPS/damge/etc.

An elementalist is more versatile and requires more thinking, rather, than spamming one attack style only – thats what a warrior or ranger is for.

I disagree with what you said with Ranger and Warrior examples.
You dont just “Spamm attks” with Warrior or Ranger for DPS!
That’s what horrible players do.

I play Warrior and Ranger as well as Elementalist, and those classes require lots of thinking and are all versatile. I play 5 classes as my main and I know when and how to use my skills in combat, When and how to weapon swap with my other classes to adapt to the situation. I dont just spam DPS. I use Cripple, Stun, Chill, endurance regain, Swiftness, Knowckdown, Knowckback, etc etc with all my classes.

As a Warrior, I hardly take hits since Im on constant Move+Dodge as I use Meele and Ranged weapons. DPS is good but should never be only focus with any class.

TWMagimay.9057:

And warriors get content? 1 extra skill per weapon is content but 20 extra skills per weapon isn’t?! How does that work exactly…?

Well, first, it would be 15 extra skills, first off. And it loses your weapon switch, which gives most (all?) range flexibility. And you have a cooldown when switching between attunements, which almost requires investing heavily in one talent tree if you want to combo.

It might be for the general public, aka the less skilled with a hammer. But it also doesn’t mean hammer is not a great tool. I like the range, cc and aoes of staff. It allows me to be mobile without missing skills. With a dagger moving 2 steps to the left = miss.

If only one person can carve with a hammer, that’s a solid indicator they are a savant an it is not a great tool.
For people who don’t have trouble with moving two steps to the left = missing, daggers are more effective at soloing mobs. Its not a criticism of the staff, there would be something very wrong if aoe attacks did more damage than single target attacks.

No, I think you are misudnerstanding. For me the low dmg is not a “trade-off”. Ele plays a lot like a healer…The problem is, people expect ele to be a nuker(maybe at some point that were true), but it’s more of a support-dmg hybrid which, ofc, means subpar dps.

do you attack mobs? If so, its a trade off. Regardless, youre agreeing with what he said, lower damage in return for versatility. Support-dmg hybrid -> subpar dps.
WIthout evasive arcana, I dont see how a staff ele is effective at support. You have several fields, but 1 blast finisher and 2 projectile finishers on your weapon. 1 blast and 1 projectile in your utility slots. Geyser is blah (yay! heal! Oh, you mean I have to stand still for 3 seconds?), and healing rain is mostly cosmetic. In a game designed to basically not have healers.

Ermmm, yeah, mesmer gets reduced cd on shatter skills instead…doesn’t sound particularly “more special” to me somehow…

The cooldown on attunements is so high to start that the profession line only brings it to managable levels. It doesn’t give a boost, it corrects a pitiful design flaw.

And warrior still has only one field. If combos were a “requirement” for solo play, warriors would then be the single most UP class in the game…which i don’t think they are. Also, since blast finishers are not the only finishers…a staff ele has 6 fields and gasp 5 finishers(3 projectile, 2 blast). Doesn’t sound bad to me, when you consider that a mesmer with 6 fields can only have 2 finishers(leap) at best. Or 5 fields, 3 finishers(2 leap, 1 blast).

What the hell is the point in having 6 combo fields when playing solo? Even in a party. You would only need multiple combo fields of the same type if they both have long cooldowns.
The warrior can lay down his and blast off stacks of might. Pick up a banner and put it down for another 3. The elementalist can lay down a fire field, switch to earth, and cast eruption and arcane wave. And then wait for 15 seconds because of the attunement cooldown. Solo, the warrior’s one field, usable every 10 seconds, will get him significantly benefit than the elementalist’s.

Getting back to it, the elementalist cant finish his own blast fields that well. 2 blast finishers is awful when you are laying fields all over the place.

The mesmer doesn’t have as many fields, blast finishers, but also isn’t a, what did you call it, healer character?

(Also, some shouts are basically as combination of combo fields/blast finishers. WIth fury too.)

[

Which would be the…class design…. And I wouldn’t say ele autoattacks are that bad… I mean, they are autoattacks after all, all of them are pretty meh, for all classes.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/63335-elementalist-vs-ranger-comparison/#entry1914453
Elementalists are more aggressively meh
Also, you are forced to use attunement switching. Its the class design.
[

Why is it rude? You expect to be perfect at every class and click with every class? Just because you have such high opinion of yourself doesn’t mean that if smb doesn;t share it, they are automatically insulting you. Or maybe it does…ego is a powerful thing. And, yes, it is personal. Because it is your personal view of the class and not some universal facts. I can’t invalidate an opinion, because, well, by definition an opinion is neither valid nor invalid.

PS: stupid post length limit………

I found that statement to be quite rude itself.

An opinion can be invalid. An argument that has no support, that is inconsistent. Which is what you are basically trying to do by saying his problems come from him not know what he is doing.

Blaine Tog.8304:

6) Combo finishers. Especially now that EA has been gutted, Eles are sorely lacking in ways to complete our own combos. It’s great that we can throw down a lot of combo fields, but you know what? Everyone has combo fields and just about everyone has easy ways of completing their own combos. Many professions get combo finishers on their Weapon autoattacks. How awesome would it be if Fireball counted as a Blast Finisher (20% chance)? But nope, we get nothing as shiny as that because then we’d be too versatile or something.

This is one point I have to correct. Most of the earth staff spells are in fact combo finishers.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Solori.6025:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I havnt found 1 skill that is useless in Elementalist.

!

I can actually name a few that are -_-

Really? Cause I was able to find all Utility and Weapon skills useful in different situations in mid-combat.

I said this before, but I’ll say it again for this thread:
“The usefulness of the Skills and Utilities are determined on how you use them’
So yeah, Make sure you learn what the skills do, and challenge urself into making strategies that works with them.

The more strategies you learn using different combos, the better you are when it comes to different situations that calls for it. =) I dont stick with 1 weapon and utility set. I change it up a lot. It’s really fun.

Arcane blast. Completely awful. I cant think of a single realistic scenerio it would be worthwhile. (Maybe if you were 1500 away and didnt want to get closer because it had some awesome 1 hit kill attack that couldnt be dodged, and it only had 500 hp left)

The conjure _ skills just kinda suck, but you might be able to think of a time the axe/hammer could help. Though I cant, so consider that a challenge.

Viator.9801:

the Range of most of our support abilities is right next to my “LITTLE TOE”

You play with your feet? Because if so, then I think I know why you have trouble playing the Elementalist…

Lorat.1085:

Arcane blast. Completely awful. I cant think of a single realistic scenerio it would be worthwhile. (Maybe if you were 1500 away and didnt want to get closer because it had some awesome 1 hit kill attack that couldnt be dodged, and it only had 500 hp left)

How about a fleeing player? Or the CoE path when you get to man the southern forst cannon? You can hit the boss with it without leaving the cannon.

Lorat.1085:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Solori.6025:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I havnt found 1 skill that is useless in Elementalist.

!

I can actually name a few that are -_-

Really? Cause I was able to find all Utility and Weapon skills useful in different situations in mid-combat.

I said this before, but I’ll say it again for this thread:
“The usefulness of the Skills and Utilities are determined on how you use them’
So yeah, Make sure you learn what the skills do, and challenge urself into making strategies that works with them.

The more strategies you learn using different combos, the better you are when it comes to different situations that calls for it. =) I dont stick with 1 weapon and utility set. I change it up a lot. It’s really fun.

Arcane blast. Completely awful. I cant think of a single realistic scenerio it would be worthwhile. (Maybe if you were 1500 away and didnt want to get closer because it had some awesome 1 hit kill attack that couldnt be dodged, and it only had 500 hp left)

The conjure _ skills just kinda suck, but you might be able to think of a time the axe/hammer could help. Though I cant, so consider that a challenge.

Arcane Blast isnt that bad. Actually I can use Arcane Shield if enemy gets too close to me and I dont have enough endurance to dodge, Use Arcane Blast for extra damage then Dodge back quickly when endurance is rechanrged. Or If my Endurance is still low, switch to Fire attument, use Skill3 to Dodge with Burning effect if I’m using Staff.

actually its not bad when ur using daggers. since Some skills with daggers require you to be up close. Attking enemy’s blind sides is well done and I do close range spells as well.

It depends on what utilities and weapon skills/attunemnt you use.
If for example: You just use Arcane Blast just for the extra damage when ur using a Staff, “Which means u have to get closer for more damage”, then that would be pointless, I agree. But when u cant dodge,

Again; You can use “Arcane Shield” when enemy is close to you, and “Arcane Blast” to help Completment each other during that situation if it occurs.

I have to experiment with tons of different Utility and weapon attument combos and test them out in action to see better ways to use em.

Edit: I test out all the skills and enjoy building different strategies for different senarios for every skills I get for all my classes. =) I find it really fun.

I think you’re confusin Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave. For the record, he’s talking about the 1500 range projectile skill.

ThiBash.5634:

How about a fleeing player? Or the CoE path when you get to man the southern forst cannon? You can hit the boss with it without leaving the cannon.

A fleeing player would have to be at around health 15% (it actually did around 2300 damage in wvw, so more than I expected), fairly far away (it did just occur to me that I was assuming using a staff, if you are using daggers they would only have to be between 600 and 1500, so a bit more of window) not surrounded be teamates, or even really with anyone nearby to res them. And either out of endurance or not paying attention. And they cant have just come from a fight with you, because arcane wave would be a better choice, hands down, if they were in range of it. Or almost any of the signets, ranges of 1200. And there has got to be a cliff or something inbetween you, or else lightning flash would get you in range.

And you would have to see all of this coming, or else there is a better spell for the slot.

I dunno the coe path, path 3 i assume? But the boss would have to be standing between 1200 and 1500 hundred units away. Well, theres more conditions for it to be worth anything, but I have a hard time believing there isnt another skill that would del better damage than 2000 every 20 seconds.
[/quote]

ThiBash.5634:

Blaine Tog.8304:

6) Combo finishers. Especially now that EA has been gutted, Eles are sorely lacking in ways to complete our own combos. It’s great that we can throw down a lot of combo fields, but you know what? Everyone has combo fields and just about everyone has easy ways of completing their own combos. Many professions get combo finishers on their Weapon autoattacks. How awesome would it be if Fireball counted as a Blast Finisher (20% chance)? But nope, we get nothing as shiny as that because then we’d be too versatile or something.

This is one point I have to correct. Most of the earth staff spells are in fact combo finishers.

And those are the only combo finishers eles get from their staff, they are still sorely lacking. And they don’t have a field under earth
Attunement timers means you cant use your finishers with your own field more than every 10.5 seconds (assuming maxed profession talent, 15 without)

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Lorat.1085:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Solori.6025:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I havnt found 1 skill that is useless in Elementalist.

!

I can actually name a few that are -_-

Really? Cause I was able to find all Utility and Weapon skills useful in different situations in mid-combat.

I said this before, but I’ll say it again for this thread:
“The usefulness of the Skills and Utilities are determined on how you use them’
So yeah, Make sure you learn what the skills do, and challenge urself into making strategies that works with them.

The more strategies you learn using different combos, the better you are when it comes to different situations that calls for it. =) I dont stick with 1 weapon and utility set. I change it up a lot. It’s really fun.

Arcane blast. Completely awful. I cant think of a single realistic scenerio it would be worthwhile. (Maybe if you were 1500 away and didnt want to get closer because it had some awesome 1 hit kill attack that couldnt be dodged, and it only had 500 hp left)

The conjure _ skills just kinda suck, but you might be able to think of a time the axe/hammer could help. Though I cant, so consider that a challenge.

Arcane Blast isnt that bad. Actually I can use Arcane Shield if enemy gets too close to me and I dont have enough endurance to dodge, Use Arcane Blast for extra damage then Dodge back quickly when endurance is rechanrged. Or If my Endurance is still low, switch to Fire attument, use Skill3 to Dodge with Burning effect if I’m using Staff.

actually its not bad when ur using daggers. since Some skills with daggers require you to be up close. Attking enemy’s blind sides is well done and I do close range spells as well.

It depends on what utilities and weapon skills/attunemnt you use.
If for example: You just use Arcane Blast just for the extra damage when ur using a Staff, “Which means u have to get closer for more damage”, then that would be pointless, I agree. But when u cant dodge,

Again; You can use “Arcane Shield” when enemy is close to you, and “Arcane Blast” to help Completment each other during that situation if it occurs.

I have to experiment with tons of different Utility and weapon attument combos and test them out in action to see better ways to use em.

Youre thinking of Arcane Wave, the blast finishers that does critical damage. Arcane blast is a projectile finisher that does just over half the damage but has a range of 1500

the problem of the elementalist is that all skills s.u.c.k. big time until you trait for them,

all signets suck, unless you invest heavily into earth for written in stone, 20% CD reduction and in all auramancer traits.

all cantrips suck, unless you invest heavily into cantrips, and soothing wave,
the same with glyphs…

which is silly, as Elementalist is the only class that have to trait themselves to use their only elite skill… (in order for the glyph of elementals not being a kittycat you must trait in air-10 to have glyph CD reduction)

all the base damage is so low compare to other classes… you have to trait on trait (5% to burning, 5% to bleeding, 10% when full endurance, 5% when you above 90%, 20% when enemy below 25% etc, etc) in order to have decent damage…

EDIT:

oh, yes conjure skills…
if the devs expect us to use these, they have to change them similar to engi kit mechanics, or nobody serious will use them…

Lorat.1085:

Well, first, it would be 15 extra skills, first off.

First off, other classes have 10 weapon skills, ele has 20. 20-10=10, not 15. And what F1 skill has no limitations? Or what class has no limitation on weapon change? Yeah, that. Then, dunno how you play, but I don;t generally blow all my attunement cds and then go like “oh, i wanna combo now”. Without arcana one would have to plan a bit more careful and generally play a bit smarter. But then again, arcana has some pretty good traits. I don’t have points in it because of attunement cd, I have them mostly because I want the bigger range on staff aoes.

For people who don’t have trouble with moving two steps to the left = missing, daggers are more effective at soloing mobs. Its not a criticism of the staff, there would be something very wrong if aoe attacks did more damage than single target attacks.

I was going more for…it’s a different playstyle. Neither is by default worse or better. What staff lacks in dmg, it more than makes up for with kiting ability.

WIthout evasive arcana, I dont see how a staff ele is effective at support. In a game designed to basically not have healers.

Precisely the bolded part. For one, support is not just healing(seriously, I wonder what kind of healers you all played with till now). I can support my party by slowing down/immobilizing/blinding/stunning a mob/boss/group of mobs. For two, it’s a party effort. I put the fields down, they finish them. When I need an extra heal/might/w.e, I finish the fields myself. Most people are aware of how combos work and happily utilize mine(dun think I ever put down healing rain and didn’t see a blast finisher go off in it).

The cooldown on attunements is so high to start that the profession line only brings it to managable levels. It doesn’t give a boost, it corrects a pitiful design flaw.

That’d be your opinion, not a fact. Who’s to say that shatter cd isn’t too long to begin with and the trait line is just fixing a design flaw? You? Or another person not from the dev team?

What the hell is the point in having 6 combo fields when playing solo? Even in a party. You would only need multiple combo fields of the same type if they both have long cooldowns.

Oh, so it’s ok to force the warrior into using longbow and banners as utility skills, but it’s not ok to force the ele into using anything, right? Ele must have access to everything, instantly without any limitations or it’s a broken class?

Getting back to it, the elementalist cant finish his own blast fields that well. 2 blast finishers is awful when you are laying fields all over the place.

The mesmer doesn’t have as many fields, blast finishers, but also isn’t a, what did you call it, healer character?

Why is it awful? And how is it any more awful than having 1 blast finisher only? Or is it bugging you because you have whole 6 fields and only 5 finishers(remember how it was agreed upon that blast is not the only finisher?)?

Ah, so the whole dmg argument is retracted. Good, we agree ele dmg is just fine.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/63335-elementalist-vs-ranger-comparison/#entry1914453
Elementalists are more aggressively meh
Also, you are forced to use attunement switching. Its the class design.

Oh, this is funny. Especially the part where warrior long bow(you know, the warrior mandatory weapon according to you) takes 1min40s. Ele attacks seem fairly ok compared to the rest and having in mind the attunement background and how we agreed that ele is closer to healer than to mage.

I found that statement to be quite rude itself.

An opinion can be invalid. An argument that has no support, that is inconsistent. Which is what you are basically trying to do by saying his problems come from him not know what he is doing.

An argument without support, sure. But how can an opinion be invalid? It’s based on smb’s personal belief, not on facts. You can view an opinion as invalid, because it contradicts your opinion, but that doesn’t make it invalid.

Yeah, and I think it’s rude to call me rude for not thinking he’s flawless, pure perfection and exceptionally skilled at everything or otherwise…that he’s a superhumen. I just don;t believe in superhumans.

PS: grrrrrr

I waited a while to even say anything. Whether I play support (which I do 100% of the time now on the cute lil ele) or I play DPS. I have always enjoyed my ele.

I do realize im about to perpetuate one of the problems people have stated here (my build consists of arcana) but for my purpose (healing in any formal party of farming DE’s) it works for me. I live a lot longer, and can actually solo content with i’d say a 98% survival rate (assuming i dont make too many mobs unhappy)

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VkZ;1J0R0-U085sN-Z0;9;59-TT;14;304A47A;6nBnBnBnB3NX

Now why do I play support? cuz I have a bunch of glass cannons in my guild and no solid healers, since I was the ONLY ele in the guild, and I knew I could do it, I did it.

I roam around Cursed Shore healing.dpsing DE’s. Do I get a lot of loot? not unless im in a party, do I have an easy time farming the DE’s for karma?… yeah..lol

I love my ele, and prefer it to my warrior (who was solely created for farming)

McClearyUnderMistRaildexGun.2086:

I can relate to what OP’s saying but it would appear that the devs think ele’s are fine.

It would appear that none of the devs have any real appreciation for the class.

I would like to add that the class is not without complications, but I have accepted those complications by taking on the role I have chosen (support/heals) I know im not going to deal a crap ton of damage… im ok with that