The Elementalist is very versatile, yes, and personally I find that in PVE and even in WvW that’s an okay trade-off, or at the least not a huge drawback as it is in sPVP. In sPVP, though, it becomes an off-balance nightmare because while the Elementalist is CAPABLE of doing everything, it is outshined in all of its fields by pretty much everything else, except the healing/support role. I’m not 100% familiar with Guardians; they may be more proficient at healing and support than an Ele, but it would be close. Support or Bunkering is arguably the only reason Ele’s are viable in tournaments, and as such I feel pigeonholed into playing a certain “role” in order to be effective with my team. I don’t necessarily consider this fair, as the class description of the Elementalist as written by aNet paints a very different picture than what we actually recieve.
Are they workable? Yes. Can they be good in the right hands? Absolutely. What saddens me is that only an elite minority is able to make the Ele perform well, and if that elite minority focused their skill on another class, they would become godly. As unfortunate as it is, the very nature of the elementalist; being multifaceted and able to adapt, is what causes us the most balance issues in sPVP specifically.
We are a jack of all trades, but a master of nothing.
“We are a jack of all trades, but a master of nothing”
that statement in itself it what is wrong with eles now. When u really look at it eles (magic classes) in general has to choice to master 1 element minor 1 element and the others ur basic and thats how the ele should be here. I want to master 1 element so when times start getting hard that my go to element, and minor one so i CAN switch on the run and still have decent damage im not gonna spam my f-keys all day long to do what is considered decent damage sry. so with that said i turn my attention to Anet in Gw1 the ele was a beast, ranking right up there in damage as the assassin ritualist and warrior.
“WHY CANT WE BE ON EVEN PLAYING FIELD AS WARRIOR OR THEIF ON HERE”
The problem is not what the elementalist is, but what was promised from the official side.
Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.
While the versatility-part is true, the “massive damage in a single attack” part is just untrue and wakes wrong glass-cannon expectations. I’m okay with playing an auramancer support, but most think that the elementalist is a glass canon and you can’t blame them for reading official class descriptions.
I think the elementalist needs only minor tweaks – a bit more damage here, a lower cooldown there. Since the elementalist relies heavily on self-combos, a few more combo fields/finishers would be nice:
a second blast finisher on staff (water-2?)
perhaps a water field that is not on a staff (but I cant think of an appropriate skill)
give us back whirl-finisher on dust devil
underwater fields (boil, lightning cage) and finishers (water 2 or 3 as blast, earth 1 or 2 as projectile finisher)
These fixes would be enough until some of our useless traits get reworked (which probably takes more time than fine-tuning skills)
I can’t wait until ANet releases the game promoted in the manifesto.
Until that, I’ll play GW2.
Uh, we have several attacks that do massive damage in a single strike. I’ve certainly hit for 9k with fire grab. That’s pretty massive. Dragons tooth can easily hit for 5-6k, and phoenix for 3-4k. Lightning strike, while the lowest damage of all these attacks, can still strike 3x instantly (Air Attunement switch, lightning strike skill, and lightning strike proc on sigil) and I’ve seen it crit for 3k easily, even 4k before.
Our burst comes from the Air tree, where you can spec into 10% more air damage and 20% more damage when to opponent is stunned or knocked down. Guess what, you have two knockdowns on the OH dagger. Earthquake → Air Attunement Strike → Lightning Strike → Arcane Blast → Arcane Wave, anyone who isn’t full tank spec generally wont even make it through that combo.
My thoughts are this: We were made to be a complex class and therefore they cant make it easy on us. The skill ceiling is higher for us than all the other classes. I used to die constantly until I really starting looking into how to play the class. Now I can straight own in PVP and PVE.
That said, I think we still need a rework passthrough on our traits and some minor tweaking, but nothing too serious. Downed state needs to be balanced so as to stop giving free team rallys. I think that should be 1st fix.
It’s quite simple, they built this class using basic math. We have twice as many skills as other professions, so they are all half as effective. Balancing 101.
(9k fire grab? sure, given a burning setup and an immobilized enemy. 100 blades and backstab might have a few things to say about high damage though…. Thieves can crit for 3-4k on auto-attacks, which happen a lot faster than any of ours. Elementalists can do damage, but anyone arguing that our damage is even comparable to classes with higher base survivability is talking out their kitten.)
Hats off to all the ones who stood before me, and taught a fool to ride.
Dance baby, dance If you do not like the idea of switching attunements constantly, do not play it. This is one of the changes from GW I like the most. I so wanted to be able to master all attunements
I’m seeing more and more people make the claim that the class doesn’t match some WoW-style archetype or that it doesn’t match the “back of the box” description. I get it. People want to play a glass cannon. But you can’t blame the class design itself for the class not fitting your mental image of it. That’s more a blame you apply to marketing
I’ve been playing mage-types since Ultima III. Every one is different to a degree. Sometimes the names are similar enough to cause confusion (EQ1 Magician vs WoW Mage). But most times you realize the differences right away.
“Elementalist” is not “Wizard” is not “Mage”.
There are definitely ways for this class to improve. I personally just want to see all abilities work as advertised first, and then be nerfed or powered-up as needed. But what I don’t want is for this class to become a WoW Mage. I’d rather they just make a new class for that, and change the marketing copy on this one
Ever play RuneKeeper in LOTRO. Now that is a glass cannon spec right there. They were also able to respec as and be a viable main healer. I used to have to heal end game raids on that all the time. Talk about hard.
Well, I agree. Even beyond level 80 I’ve gone through plenty self-improvements to my gameplay. Just cause you’re level 80 doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve fully mastered the profession.
I’m still learning and adapting (been playing elementalist since the first beta weekend as my main). I’ve played most other classes off and on, but the complexity and continued learning is what I like best about elementalist.
There was a class called elementalist in an old pen-and-paper rpg I played a thousand years ago, in a lot of ways very similar. I really like the profession, overall.
Having lower survivability and damage than every other class is challenging, and in most PvE quite fun. If any of the devs have the fondness that I do for elementalists, we’ll get the balance changes we need eventually (until then I’ll play my alts for pvp and wvw, as half-decent an elementalist as I am, my lvl 30ish thief does as well in wvw as my 80 elementalist).
Hats off to all the ones who stood before me, and taught a fool to ride.
My mindset is that this is the class I find the most fun, even if it most certainly does have a ton of bugs and balance issues that I hope get looked at soon.
My thoughts are this: We were made to be a complex class and therefore they cant make it easy on us. The skill ceiling is higher for us than all the other classes.
Except that the class is not supposed to be harder than the others. The classes were all designed to be of even difficulty, just different styles.
My thoughts are this: We were made to be a complex class and therefore they cant make it easy on us. The skill ceiling is higher for us than all the other classes.
Except that the class is not supposed to be harder than the others. The classes were all designed to be of even difficulty, just different styles.
Then the problem is that other classes are too easy to play? Not that Elementalist is too hard…
It’s quite simple, they built this class using basic math. We have twice as many skills as other professions, so they are all half as effective. Balancing 101.
Not basic math, not basic math one bit. Complex algorithms dealing with damage over time graphs at maximum skill level and average skill level, reviewing all combinations of skills to see if elementalist can stunlock longer than intended with too much damage coming out during that decision. It’s not easy to balance a class like ele.
My thoughts are this: We were made to be a complex class and therefore they cant make it easy on us. The skill ceiling is higher for us than all the other classes.
Except that the class is not supposed to be harder than the others. The classes were all designed to be of even difficulty, just different styles.
No, no no no no no no. The classes were NOT designed to be even difficulty. That’s just not true. If they were designed to be even difficulty, they would make you choose two attunements and make everything much slower and easier.
Elementalist is not really that hard once you learn what all your skills do… Then it just boils down to cooldowns and being able to actually land hits. Right now I think the biggest issue with elementalist is the low survivability and landing successful hits.
Except that the class is not supposed to be harder than the others. The classes were all designed to be of even difficulty, just different styles.
Please, give me a link where ArenaNET themselves says this to be true. In my opinion the complexity and difficulty of playing different professions is naturally going to vary, and for a good reason. Diversity. Some people prefer easy to play professions, more straight forward ones like the warrior while others like bashing their keyboard with 100% focus for maximum efficiency. I have no problem with the elementalist being complex, infact the reason i play one is just that.
And now, responding to the OP.
I do believe that the elementalist is a class which can be played without problem through most of the games content, if you learn it and play it well. But the truth is that we are suffering from a long list of troublesome problems which come from how our skills work that naturally breaks the flow of combat and attunement dancing. Shatterstone for example. I cannot compare the class to other professions since i havent played them enough to see the real difference, all i can say is that i am enjoying my elementalist more then my original ranger even though having a fatass bear made it much easier to go through the game.
But in the end im not a big fan of just grinding, the elementalist provides more of a tactical approach to every situation where you need to know both your class and your enemies in order to come out on top. The potential sure is there, its all about unlocking it by using every aspect of the profession avalible. But ofcourse, in the end, when it all boils down to numbers, we might be underpowered as claimed by many, who knows. In any case i want the flow of combat one hundred times more then i want to see bigger numbers on my screen.
Fire grab is on how long a cooldown? Right….45 seconds. The problem is that almost all ele 1-5 abilities fall into these categories:
Easy to avoid (ie, the #2 problem): DT, lave font, ice spike, eruption, shatterstone, etc
Low damage: Most autoattacks
Marginal utility: Rock armor, water trident
Good, but with ridiculously long cooldown: Fire grab, earthquake, frozen ground, healing rain
Easy to avoid and a long cooldown: churning earth
And scattered in there are some good abilities, but there are not enough “good” abilities with moderate cooldowns.
Dagger has it’s problems and needs a bit of a re-work (Which they stated they are doing).
Scepter is alright, for me though it needs one water field, maybe the changing of Trident would suffice. And the staff overall needs a bit more damage and some decent blast finishers, why water 2 is not a blast finisher is beyond me, it’s basically Scepters fire 2 but ice. >-<
Other then that it boils down to skill bugs/buggy traits. The class isn’t as bad as most people make out.
Oh and will people stop comparing weapons? We all know Dagger is deals the most damage, thats not the point, staff should be able to dish comparable damage, weapon
sets are about play style more than anything.
In the greater blob of things, there is only the zerg.
Kittens, Kittens everywhere!
Not sure if the reveal order was by-complexity, but some dev said that warrior and elementalist are the most straight-forward classes. Back then, it was even true (mainly because of the powerful auto-attacks and arcane wave / blast with 30% more damage on a lower cooldown)
I can’t wait until ANet releases the game promoted in the manifesto.
Until that, I’ll play GW2.
If you do not like the idea of switching attunements constantly, do not play it. This is one of the changes from GW I like the most. I so wanted to be able to master all attunements