Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been reading this sub-forum for some months, waiting for something productive to come up.
However it seems complaints are the only threads that ever appears.

(This rant is going to only cover the PvE aspect of the game. I do not mean to boast up and tell that everyone are playing the class wrong; I’m simply disagreeing with what the crowd in the forum seems to think)

Now I don’t say I agree with every change ANet has done to the ele, and I would like to see changes from what state it’s currently in.
But I have yet to see any place in PvE that my ele can’t handle. I’ve even soloed multiple dungeons, beaten liadri and done the 5-gamkittenallange with an ele . If now the elementalist were that bad on damage and died so easily, the class would get kicked out of a dungeon-group more than the former ranger. Which is simply not the case, excluding CoF p1 speedfarm (when that existed) I’ve never gotten kicked out of a group for being an elementalist.

I fear to say it, but I think the reason many people say they lack either damage or survivability is because they are doing something wrong. If a group is aiming for the fastest run possible, a zerk ele is one of the classes with highest potential damage.
If it’s a casual group, I have not found a problem with either surviving or keeping my dps amongst the rest of the group.

Now I do to some extent agree that the reward per risk coefficient is too little on the elementalist comparing it to a warrior.
But not that small to validate what people say; “there is no reason to play this class anymore”.

Elementalist is a hard class to play. A lot of people cannot handle the playstyle. I’ve put out there, to the best of my knowledge, the way to play an Ele effectively in PvE, but I’m still pretty blunt that the Ele is a class with a steep learning curve and not as much room for error. It’s honestly not a class for everyone. I would put it somewhere with the Engineer in terms of difficulty, but the fact is, flavor-wise, the Elementalist is very popular, and thus attracts a wide range of players, when in fact it exists as a very hard class to master or play well.

The bigger problem in my Opinion is WvW. Pretty much any class can go solo, take camps, 1 Vs1….well almost, ele from what i have seen in WvW just cant. It has to much emphasis on the healing and support and not enough on damage (and conditions!)

A lot of what you see is anger over the lack of room for creativity within the class traits due to the myopia/stoicism of the developers in designing/balancing the class mechanics. PvE is doable with several builds, the mobs don’t act intelligently and each fight follows a script.

It is PvP-based builds that have seen a weakening in bunkers in condition removal right before the meta shifted to condition-centric and a weakening in survival (stunbreakers removed and Mistform nerfed) that have been particularly irksome.

Snowball.3497:

But I have yet to see any place in PvE that my ele can’t handle. I’ve even soloed multiple dungeons, beaten liadri and done the 5-gamkittenallange with an ele . If now the elementalist were that bad on damage and died so easily, the class would get kicked out of a dungeon-group more than the former ranger. Which is simply not the case, excluding CoF p1 speedfarm (when that existed) I’ve never gotten kicked out of a group for being an elementalist.

Me too but it doesn’t mean the class is okay. Compare lupi solos for instance, my best one is ~14 minutes while on warrior its been done in <6 minutes.

Bringing up conjures isn’t valid for argumentations sake. Most of us didn’t pick supposedly flexible and high-skill cap profession to spam autoattacks from lh. I want normal weapon sets like d/d or s/d to be more valid. Conjures were supposed to bring more flexibility, not just damage.

And last thing, some speedrunners are actually using rangers, engineers and thieves now.

I would not play anything but ele, and in high-level PvE I find it quite fine, difficult, but fine
People are mostly whinning about WvW (read mobility) here.

Agree with the OP. You have to work to make the ele work. The profession is a direct extension of your skills as a player.

It’s funny you say that because some guy said the exact same thing on the Swtor before release. I remember a few supporter agreeing with him and let’s look at how history.

I would not play anything but ele, and in high-level PvE I find it quite fine, difficult, but fine
People are mostly whinning about WvW (read mobility) here.

Actually, very few of us that are “whinning” are talking about WvW. WvW isn’t a place you go to fight players or challenge yourself. WvW is a place jammed packed with noobs used to following commanders and zerging to the left and zerging to the right.

In an environment with everything equal the elementalist is worthless.

PvE and WvW are modes that not worth discussing. PvE (except QC) is so mindless and predictable that you rarely worry about balance. WvW you generally have A LOT of time to recover (cool downs etc)until your next opponent, actually most of the time you have the option to choose your victim.

It seemed to me 80% of the talks here are about WvW, 15% on PvP and 5% on PvE. The PvE discussion usually ending in “anything works” since people don’t play fractals past level 26. In high level PvE things can get quite complex, not as much as in PvP of course but it is worth talking about.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The bigger problem in my Opinion is WvW. Pretty much any class can go solo, take camps, 1 Vs1….well almost, ele from what i have seen in WvW just cant. It has to much emphasis on the healing and support and not enough on damage (and conditions!)

The major heals of the ele come from players blast finishing the water fields they cast. That requires no healing power stats on the part of the ele. The support is CC which are that skills themselves which require no stats of any kind. Condition removal is for example, Healing Rain, a long cooldown skill, again no stats. Evasive arcana can remove conditions and going high into water traits can, but only to those in close proximity which is useless in a zerg. Going high in water traits in fact has nothing to do with support.

In other words, everything you mention and are looking for can be done by a glass cannon ele specd for damage. The determining factor of how much damage an ele puts out is simply the amount of vitality and toughness and “self” healing that player needs to stay alive. The better the player, the less they need.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The bigger problem in my Opinion is WvW. Pretty much any class can go solo, take camps, 1 Vs1….well almost, ele from what i have seen in WvW just cant. It has to much emphasis on the healing and support and not enough on damage (and conditions!)

I have to disagree witht this statement. We are fine in WvW. We just arn’t as strong as we used to be. I can easily take camps solo and 1v1 many classes(except you pesky engis). Staff eles have insane CC support and damage in WvW. Chaining meteor storm with tornado, I can hit 5-6k with ONE meteor. Their static fields and water fields are still big gamechangers though. If you can stay alive in the back, you can dish out tons of damage. The problem I see with a lot of eles is just the build. Try experimenting more!

I have tried various builds from Staff to D/D none are as strong as my Mesmer, now of course i dont think all classes should be the exact same. The fact i have yet to lose to a single ele in WvW.

They might be “strong” as in durable, they are not strong as in damage and if you go full zerker, well i doubt anyone does – i know i have yet to encounter so i guess that might be a sign as to why.

They might be in a decent place for support but what about for those of us that dont want to go support? Just curious how do you deal with Thieves?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Just curious how do you deal with Thieves?

Imo thiefs are a lot easier to deal with than engis.
I ususally go with D/D, knock them down and try not to miss your fire spike.
The only real problem is when the thief gets away with stealth and re-encounters before our knockdown skills have recharged

Why does someone who is bothered by forum QQ about the ele put “Bring back D/D” in his tag?

You are not genuine.

I’m relatively new to Elementalist. I have been playing it for about a month, and I am going to hit 80 tonight.

That said, I’ve leveled it exclusively betweeen WvW and Queen’s Jubilee zerging.

It doesn’t bother me that I can’t solo camps in WvW. I can disrupt trade routes with almost no effort with my staff, CC skills (Earth Magic is godlike) and a fire elemental to wreck a Veteran Guard’s day. To me, disrupting trade routes and preventing Yaks from leaving camps is just as important as capping those camps.

Frye.4608:

Why does someone who is bothered by forum QQ about the ele put “Bring back D/D” in his tag?

You are not genuine.

this made laugh.

“There is too much QQ on this forum, so i’m going to make a QQ post about the QQ to finally end all the QQ.”

Tristam Green.9178:

I’m relatively new to Elementalist. I have been playing it for about a month, and I am going to hit 80 tonight.

That said, I’ve leveled it exclusively betweeen WvW and Queen’s Jubilee zerging.

It doesn’t bother me that I can’t solo camps in WvW. I can disrupt trade routes with almost no effort with my staff, CC skills (Earth Magic is godlike) and a fire elemental to wreck a Veteran Guard’s day. To me, disrupting trade routes and preventing Yaks from leaving camps is just as important as capping those camps.

It is very important. Also, as you become more familiar with the class everything will fall more and more into place. With Staff for example, if you are going to lay down an Eruption for damage on the Yak, put a Lava Font, Frozen Ground, or Geyser on top of it at just the right time to stack Might, Frost Armor, or Mass Healing. The delay in the blast finisher of Eruption will allow you to lay a combo field down on top so they combo when the blast goes off. There’s a thread in here somewhere of elementalist tricks. Not everything is obvious at all.

Baladir.2736:

Tristam Green.9178:

I’m relatively new to Elementalist. I have been playing it for about a month, and I am going to hit 80 tonight.

That said, I’ve leveled it exclusively betweeen WvW and Queen’s Jubilee zerging.

It doesn’t bother me that I can’t solo camps in WvW. I can disrupt trade routes with almost no effort with my staff, CC skills (Earth Magic is godlike) and a fire elemental to wreck a Veteran Guard’s day. To me, disrupting trade routes and preventing Yaks from leaving camps is just as important as capping those camps.

It is very important. Also, as you become more familiar with the class everything will fall more and more into place. With Staff for example, if you are going to lay down an Eruption for damage on the Yak, put a Lava Font, Frozen Ground, or Geyser on top of it at just the right time to stack Might, Frost Armor, or Mass Healing. The delay in the blast finisher of Eruption will allow you to lay a combo field down on top so they combo when the blast goes off. There’s a thread in here somewhere of elementalist tricks. Not everything is obvious at all.

After I got the hang of flipping attunements, I cycle through every single one at least once per fight. No matter what.

Usually, it’s (Static field + stun)/(Frozen Ground)/(Unsteady Ground) —> Unload unholy hell while cycling.

It works wonders, it really does. I am so glad that I’m not a one-trick pony Ele like I was in GW1.

I came into this thread expecting

http://media.al.com/scenesource/photo/8977170-large.jpg

Anyway my problem with ele is that it does everything worse than the other classes. Yes as with all classes in the game, ele is not unplayably broken, you can do it; but if I want to keep up with DPS of other classes I need to run full berserkers (even if they’re not), the only conditions ele can reliably inflict are burning and bleeding making a condition build kind of useless, ele utility only supports themselves, and eles can not weapon swap which other classes use to switch from long range to close range and not just to change their damage skills at the same range.

The reason I assume we can’t weapon swap is because our attunements are technically our weapons.

Tristam Green.9178:

The reason I assume we can’t weapon swap is because our attunements are technically our weapons.

Personally, i would consider that a bit of a slap in the face. The attunements and the water tree and attument in particular is why the class is so bad at the moment. They cant make them stronger in either damage or condition due to the healing/support they offer and i highly doubt they would consider changing the attunement system and/or water skills to be able to buff damage and conditions

Tristam Green.9178:

The reason I assume we can’t weapon swap is because our attunements are technically our weapons.

Exactly my point.

A scepter on fire is the same as a scepter on earth or water.

While a main hand sword mesmer is not the same as a greatsword for a mesmer.

A staff ele needs that range, but if an ele goes into battle with a staff, they’re locked to stay at that range.

The mesmer with the greatsword can change to the sword when enemies get closer.