Guild Wars 2

Ok so let’s just skip the formalities, and let’s get right into it. I want to get the communities opinions. I’ll start off the post with a few points of discussion which are my personal opinions on the class:

• Attunement recharge is about 3-5 seconds longer than it should be. Engineers play similarly, but their weapon kits don’t have a cooldown at all.

• Our condition removal is stronger than any other class, but we are extremely vulnerable to any direct damage class able to connect on a consistent basis (which isn’t rare).

• Our burst is incredibly easy to avoid as well as our CC.

• As a class elementalists are too predictable.

• Staff builds aren’t viable outside of bunker builds (no offensive).

• We have no real viable condition builds.

• Out elite skills are awful. Most of us would rather have the option to pick up another utility skill instead of using an elite.

No one misunderstand that I am saying that we are weak I just feel as a class elementalists are just lacking in some areas that could be easily improved without putting us over the top, and while I’m not asking for a class with no weaknesses I just think where we are weak…we are extremely weak.

Mainly out of any point I made I feel the attunement cooldown one is the main thing that should stand out. 15 seconds is far too long, and it essentially pigeonholes us into minimum 20 points into arcane for every PvP build.

I read what you had to say and in all honesty you lost me at Condition Builds.

I build a hellva condition build, that in all honestly is really the on way I am able to play Elementalist at all. And it’s Fun. It rolls around 1500 condition damage and gets upwards of 1700+ once you get rolling.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fEAQJArdhImmbxR5wjDAkHn4CLjHhohHlCzA;TsAgyCuoay0koJbTumkNNW4wwcDA

Though I agree elite’s are awful.

The staff weapons are not necessarily weak, they just take way to long to cast and the projectiles are a little slow they should be about 25% quicker to cast and faster moving. If this means you have to down down the damage some that’s fine, but it’s annoying to have 1 dodge roll – null out 2 of your fireballs.

The diversity is really limited to the traits, so it’s more a trait issue.

Anyways man peace.

I’m not saying staff is weak. It’s very strong it’s just not viable for fragging. It’s more utility. Not sure why I listed it there’s it’s not really a complaint.

Also condition builds aren’t viable on an elementalist because of the downtime on earth attunement. It’s not the lack of damage we can do when we are allowed to it’s simply that we need to swap between attunements a lot, and there’s far too much ramp up time on condition builds on an ele simply because we don’t have any way of instantly putting large stacks of bleeds like other classes.

Someone said it already: Auras dont give protection but some effect.
There is no benefit for me from opponed stuned AFTER he hits me :>

Re: Staff. Major comment is that all of our auto attacks are extremely weak

- Fire 1 needs a serious buff to cast time/damage
- Fire 3 is useless since you’re not going to be doing a condi dmg build with Staff given the limited amount of bleeds/burns. Needs to be replaced with a DD that’s on a reasonable cooldown
- Fire 5 – many people might disagree with me here but I say each wave makes every single thing in the radius take damage and not RNG. This is supposed to be the bread and butter for damage in a staff build. It’s not bad for getting people off a door but realistically you’re not going to kill anybody who’s actually paying attention.
- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused
- Water 4: Lengthen the chill effect
- Air 1: terribad damage
- Air 2: useless. 1 attack blind for a very long cast time – you’ll probably take more hits while casting than it’s worth to blind that 1 attack

etc etc etc

I think one big problem with Elementalist is that there is not enough synergy between skills within one attunement. It should not be absolutely mandatory to cycle attunements all the time, because it is not absolutely mandatory to cycle weapons for other classes. For example, I can play a staff Mesmer and the staff skills alone will provide me with sufficient damage and survivability and have cooldowns that allow for a good rotation without too much downtime. Mesmer staff skills synergize nicely with eachother and it’s fun to play. If you want that extra efficiency and versatility you can then swap to your 2nd weapon set, you aren’t really kittened with using just one, however. The only comparable Ele build I found with single attunement synergy like that is D/D Fire, where spells interact nicely, but lack control.
I also see it as a big hinderance that the damage output across attunements is so varying. Water stands out as having totally lackluster damage, if you don’t skill into vulnerability, and even then the damage is not good, which bugs me, because I love Vorpal Blade. Earth doesn’t do much damage either and Air is moderately acceptable.

Volatility.6729:

- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused

Most of what you said is fairly true (I don’t agree 100%, but generally yah). However, I think people underestimate healing rain. That skill is AWESOME!!

Yes, the amount of healing it provides alone isn’t great, although 2000 healing in the form of regen is pretty good. Also, and I could be mistaken here, but since it’s a 4 s regen buff on a 9s field, you can get the regen to happen twice in a single cast (raising the default healing amount to over 4k.) if you stand in it for the full duration. This isn’t that hard to do even when kiting cause the field is HUGE.

{Note, as an aside, if you’re using a staff in PvP, it better be WvWvW anyway, staff in sPvP is just suicide.}

Also, HR provides 3 conditions removals and most importantly, a massive 9s water field. In dungeons, for example, if the entire group knows to set off blast finishers (even DPS oriented ones) when they see the rain cloud, it’ll set off AOE healing waves. 2 or 3 blast finishers and the entire group can be healed to full in seconds. It’s very powerful. Hell, sometimes i’ll run inside the rain cloud and use arcane wave near some teammates even if I’m not striking a SINGLE mob, the healing waves unleashed are just too powerful to pass up.

What do you mean our elites are bad? Throwing 18seconds of burning on someone is bad? It does 35k damage over the entire duration… And idk about you but in any PvP scenario I can at least get away in 18 seconds… Oh wait… No one use conjure great sword silly me….

And we’re only “predictable” if you use the same skill combos over and over and over, there’s so much mixing and matching that it’s ridiculous!!

PS: eng have no CDs on their switching because it costs them a utility skil…

Bsquared.3421:

Volatility.6729:

- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused

Most of what you said is fairly true (I don’t agree 100%, but generally yah). However, I think people underestimate healing rain. That skill is AWESOME!!

Yes, the amount of healing it provides alone isn’t great, although 2000 healing in the form of regen is pretty good. Also, and I could be mistaken here, but since it’s a 4 s regen buff on a 9s field, you can get the regen to happen twice in a single cast (raising the default healing amount to over 4k.) if you stand in it for the full duration. This isn’t that hard to do even when kiting cause the field is HUGE.

{Note, as an aside, if you’re using a staff in PvP, it better be WvWvW anyway, staff in sPvP is just suicide.}

Also, HR provides 3 conditions removals and most importantly, a massive 9s water field. In dungeons, for example, if the entire group knows to set off blast finishers (even DPS oriented ones) when they see the rain cloud, it’ll set off AOE healing waves. 2 or 3 blast finishers and the entire group can be healed to full in seconds. It’s very powerful. Hell, sometimes i’ll run inside the rain cloud and use arcane wave near some teammates even if I’m not striking a SINGLE mob, the healing waves unleashed are just too powerful to pass up.

I 100% agree with you on how awesome the skill is once its casted, especially paired with evasive arcana, but the cast time/channeling with lead you to take a lot of damage to the point it becomes a wash (for yourself, not so much your team). You should be allowed to cast it while on the move.

I 100% agree with you on how awesome the skill is once its casted, especially paired with evasive arcana, but the cast time/channeling with lead you to take a lot of damage to the point it becomes a wash (for yourself, not so much your team). You should be allowed to cast it while on the move.

It would be nice to cast it on the move, however I haven’t really limited by it’s 2s-ish or so cast time. When using a staff in WvW, i rarely find myself in the front of the fray anyway (again, that’s just suicide), and HR is a ground-target 1,200 range skill. So I’ll position myself in the back, take 2 seconds to drop it near the front of my team, then run into it using every blast finisher i can come up with to unleash waves of healing on the group. It’s not a perfect self-heal skill when used in this manner, I know, but it gets the job done.

For self-healing, I find simply being in water and using my glyph of elemental harmony is usually fine. If you’re really desperate and on the move, drop a geyser ahead of you while running and blast arcane wave when you pass through it. You’ll get a tick or two from geyser and the healing wave your blast sets off.

Volatility.6729:

Re: Staff. Major comment is that all of our auto attacks are extremely weak

- Fire 1 needs a serious buff to cast time/damage
- Fire 3 is useless since you’re not going to be doing a condi dmg build with Staff given the limited amount of bleeds/burns. Needs to be replaced with a DD that’s on a reasonable cooldown
- Fire 5 – many people might disagree with me here but I say each wave makes every single thing in the radius take damage and not RNG. This is supposed to be the bread and butter for damage in a staff build. It’s not bad for getting people off a door but realistically you’re not going to kill anybody who’s actually paying attention.
- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused
- Water 4: Lengthen the chill effect
- Air 1: terribad damage
- Air 2: useless. 1 attack blind for a very long cast time – you’ll probably take more hits while casting than it’s worth to blind that 1 attack

etc etc etc

I agree on healing rain but it’s debatable, excellent points otherwise. Staff auto attacks are terrible, the utility very questionable might as well remove them and make do some real damage.