Guild Wars 2

The problem of the elementalist:

I will try to state the things which I see as the problem which is directly resulting in the weaken state of the ele:

CASTING TIME/ANIMATION TIME:
the time it takes to cast any aoe spell is way too big, you actually got enough time to just walk from the middle of the aoe ring and out of it before the spell lands. While on every other class you got only the time of the animation setoff which in general is only enough to dodge it if you dodge instantly when you see the person cast the spell not when the ring actually comes.

DMG/survival:
The dmg is in general very low compared to the survivability, meaning that the ele dies ridiculously fast and doesn’t have nearly the dmg on its skills to make up for this.

CC:
The cc of the ele is very hard to place, even when placed perfectly the CC doesn’t have much effect and last so short that you cannot get any combo of spells on them making the cc have very little effect other then a little bit of kite ability.

elite skills:
they are REALLY bad and adds nothing really usefull or in charecter to the elementalist.

Traits:
This is actually where I see the biggest issue. The traits seems to be very badly made, there is nothing you can choose which is REALLY interesting, there is no synergi between the different attunements you can choose and all of the traits seems to be element specific which on a class where your supposed to constantly switch attunement to just keep +- up with the utility that every other class gets without even switching weapon (5 skils got as much utility as the ele’s 20 skills -_-) it makes it REALLY bad to have traits which is only effective in 1 attunement.

In general I feel like the elementalist is REALLY badly made. Its like they had this great idea and it just never finished and they ended up with some half-finished stuff which they then rushed out with some standard stuff prenerfing it at release and throwing it out there to just be failure from the start.

be free to add which features or lack of same you find the most problematic for the ele

edit:

balance is not about weather or not you can make a class work if you are insanely skilled and fighting less skilled people NO its about if you are equelly skilled to the people your fighting and you will have a fight which is a coinflip away from who wins.
and the ele deffinately do not fill that description, and is therefore wildly UP compared to the other classes. and this goes through every aspect of the game from spvp to wvw to dungeon runs to solo pve. the ele needs to be MUCH more skilled then any other class to neat the same positive results and they can NEVER reach the same results as the VERY best of the best players on other classes simply becouse their class cannot archieve it with the tools they got (dps vs survivability vs utility/Effective cc
this also counts in pve ofc.

I agree with some of your points made here,

casting time – the delayed damage on some of the AoE’s is a bit frustrating i usually only get 1 tick of damage maybe 2 if i am very lucky or the target isn’t smart

damage – our abilities actually can do a bit of damage the trouble is most are very easily avoidable makeing us seem like we do no damage – dragons tooth for example floats above for a length time before dropping causing its damage and most players avoid it very easily. Instead of buffing our damage simply decreasing the animation so the dragons tooth lands very quickly is more viable fix imo ( i used dragons tooth as an example but this should apply to most of our spells )

survival – I just agree here we do seem to have the lowest health and armor and don’t do the burst damage to counter this.

cc – i disagree here i feel our CC isn’t horrible ( static field can be very very buggy tho ), sure its not as good as other classes but we don’t have to be the best at everything

elite skills – Yeah a bit bland

I disagree that we are badly made, i feel it is the funniest class for me by far, its just very upsetting that our high skill cap is not rewarded with good damage or decent survivability

Attunements:

I really like the way they have done this, makes me feel like a baws while playing. The next Avatar, but still, it’s badly designed. Everyone is like omg ele so gud 20 skillz moar versatiliteee but no, it’s not versatile, it’s a hindrance. Who came up with this clever idea? Sure, it works in theory, but it practice because of the attunement delay it doesn’t work as well as intended. You want to make this versatile? Cool, make it 0.1 sec attunement switch rate like the engineers have with their packs.

Traits:

But Raz, you said nerf the cooldown on the attunements, you mek ele OP omg qqqqq.

But you can now put some real thought into traits. Why is it every other class in the game gets traits based on their weapon set for some real bonuses, but we get some halfkitten traits that barely make any difference whatsoever? C’mon now, seriously?

How about revamping the traits? I don’t mean removing them, I mean improving on the ones we already have. As per my suggestion above, this would start by adding a delay for attunement bonuses while changing attunements, to stop people from auto-buffing. Yeah? Solved.

Next. Some more specialist weapon traits ploz. Staff excels at support, why why aren’t there more traits with combined support abilities that give staff bonuses in the earth or water trait-line? I’d like to see things such as

Water 10 – Increases water spell recharge time by 20%, and increases the duration of healing spring and healing rain by 20%

and

Water 10 – Increases base healing power by 33%

and

Air 30 – All Air spells cause insert new effect here that ARMOUR PENETRATION while wielding a dagger. HELLLOOOO WHERE ARE YOU?! Yes, vulnerability, there you are. Why are you not applied to air spells? Really?

Base stats:

This section isn’t going to be long, but I’m sorry. We need better base stats. We need more base damage scaling, and more armour scaling. I said scaling for a reason. A straight buff would be stupid, because it’s linear. Adjust the scaling so that people with certain builds will actually gain a significant bonus, instead of being steamrolled all the time.

People that want to spec for power / pre will actually be the true glass cannons like they were supposed to be, the highest damage dealers in the game, with bad defence.

Alternatively, this goes for the people who want to spec defensively.

Mindset:

This is also a problem. You guys need to get it into your head, that elementalists are NOT versatile, and that they’re a challenging class to play, with no benefits. Sure, most of us understand this, and most of us continue to play the elementalist because we have hope. It’s going to be a long ride, but for those of us who have pretty much learned the inside and out of our class, we’re still left feeling slightly demoralized. Wanna join TPvP? No problem, what class are you? Oh, ele? Sorry we have an ele already.

No, you don’t have an ele, I get it you’re just trying to politely tell me to gtfo.

This goes for PvE dungeons on explorer mode too with most people.

In no way I’m saying elementalists are complete and utter paper, because they’re not. They can still be viable, but we’re easily outclassed.

They need to make guided skills. Dragon Tooth, for example, kinda usless in SPvP and even in PvE, but if make it follow the target he can be a more usefull.

Also, i think that some weapon skills need to remove and replace on something more usefull. I mean i really don’t need support skills when i used dagger in off-hand, i whant to make some damage.
For example Cleansing Wave. I don’t whant to heal someone, anyway i haven’t heal power to this and +1k hp is nothing in fight when other classes make damage about 2-5k.
Or Churning Earth. It’s casting like eternity, and only brainless stay in area and wathing what are you doing. Also, while you cast this, another elem can drop DT on you, lol.

inb4: elem is universal and he can be support and dd. Yes, he can, but when he trying be good in all, he instead of this became bad in all.

And i’m sorry for mah engrish.

i love the good points of every one here all together lets keep it comming with good hope some one with half a brain from anet will at some point poke some one and fix the ele

I can’t help but feel attunement swapping is kinda the problem here.

It feels to me a bit shoe-horned in, and the class suffers somewhat as a result. If they left the trait lines more or less as they are, removed combat attunement swapping and added weapon swapping I might be more interested.

I like the feel of being an ‘earth’ mage, or indeed fire, water or air. Flicking in and out between them is gimmicky and has little-to-no synergy with the traits as they currently exist.

Either the trait line, which desperately wants you to specialise in one or two elements, needs a complete rework – or – remove attunement swapping and bring in weapon swapping, allowing people to create more dedicated elemental builds.

It’s a little like someone early on thought attunement swapping was just the bees knees, and then refused to let go of it, even as the class grew in a different direction.

The most glaring issue i see is the lack of baseline damage, we can’t “sacrifice” damage to to invest in defensive stats effectively, we basically have to spec full glass cannon to not have laughable damage.
And attunement swapping is crippling the class, we are ridiculously penalized for the mechanic, considering anet doesn’t want/scared/lazy/incompetent to balance it properly.

really feels like the damage vs survivability is generally off for this class. If you build lots of toughness/vit you hit like a wet noodle, and are still able to be bursted by cannon builds if you run out of stamina, which as a result of increased fight lengths is common. I you build glass cannon you can nuke people down, but other glass cannon builds will very often burst you faster since you have literally the lowest toughness/hp polls in the game. The middle ground simply means you excel at neither position and generally still suffer the same problems of both GC and Survival builds.

The Risk vs Reward is not there. Even if you hit someone with a full fire combo which is easily dodged and/or outright misses due to casting time/ground targeting allowing them to simply walk away (not even dodge). So actually landing full combos is a very challenging experience, especially with S/D and staff (which staff is almost laughable in sPVP). That being said, when you are successful at hitting everything, you merely perform as well as other classes that require much less skill.

So Elementalist get the lowest toughness/health pool of every class, they should get the highest damage potential to offset should they not? Or perhaps more CC, more escapes, something… This is simply not the case, and that is a problem.

go and watch izkimar play (google if the following link won’t post)

http://www.twitch.tv/izkimargw2

and then stop talking about bad survivability.

Real problem is that 30 arcane is mandatory, much due to high cd of the elements themselves.

I agree with some of your points. The casting time and survivability are by far the biggest issues with this class. Even when spec’ed as a support ele you are way too squishy. I expect a cloth to be squishier than more intense armor, but not any squishier than other cloth.

In order to improve the ele I think a few things need to change. The cooldown on switching attunements needs to be shortened a lot. Especially the 15 second cooldown from your previous attunement this makes no sense. Survivability needs to be increased significantly for support eles to really separate out the glass cannons from the support. Healer power needs to be increased along with the effect time so they heal better for longer.

The entire trait tree for Elementalists is a buggered mess. You want to go Fire for power, but there is not a single really interesting trait in that whole line. And as above said, you are pigeonholed into 30 Arcane because of the ridiculous CD’s on switching elements. Quite frustrating.

I’ve just completely given up with the Elementalist. I love the playstyle but the only way I can compete is playing full healer/support in tournaments which gets really boring really quickly. Taking a break from guild wars 2 until they patch us

Kalo.4735:

I’ve just completely given up with the Elementalist. I love the playstyle but the only way I can compete is playing full healer/support in tournaments which gets really boring really quickly. Taking a break from guild wars 2 until they patch us

I am in the same situation…

The thing that really gets me is when I look at the trait trees of other classes and more specifically the trait tree of warriors. I love the warrior trait tree. It has so much synergy within itself that allows for interesting builds. The elementalist trait tree has a major in fire that is the exact same as the grandmaster minor. If that isn’t just flippin the bird to the elementalist class, I don’t know what is.

I can’t help but feel attunement swapping is kinda the problem here.

It feels to me a bit shoe-horned in, and the class suffers somewhat as a result. If they left the trait lines more or less as they are, removed combat attunement swapping and added weapon swapping I might be more interested.

I like the feel of being an ‘earth’ mage, or indeed fire, water or air. Flicking in and out between them is gimmicky and has little-to-no synergy with the traits as they currently exist.

This is exactly on point. Fixing this would be a major step in the right direction, but I wouldn’t complain about having higher damage and increased survivability! :-P

Ember.4326:

go and watch izkimar play (google if the following link won’t post)

http://www.twitch.tv/izkimargw2

and then stop talking about bad survivability.

Real problem is that 30 arcane is mandatory, much due to high cd of the elements themselves.

used around 1h to watch his movies, will just comment on what you wrote:
he dies almost instantly when some one actually focus him.
his playing as a pure support so it seems like people generally ignore him completely == which in every pvp game i have been in means that he is adding the least to the team and thereby can be ignored untill his the last one standing.

now try to check out any good necro/worriar/guardian/mesm/rogue, they are unkillable by normal scrups.

the attunement is indeed a very big issue.
as the “bonus special ability” its a really sucky one which handicaps the ele greatly. if you look at the others example worriar or necro there its a invulnerability with skills etc or a adrenalin which build up for some very powerfull effects etc…
the attunement really needs work, and wasting a full 30 points just to halfway fix a base issue with attunement is alot to ask of a class

Ember.4326:

go and watch izkimar play (google if the following link won’t post)

http://www.twitch.tv/izkimargw2

and then stop talking about bad survivability.

Real problem is that 30 arcane is mandatory, much due to high cd of the elements themselves.

I just spent about an hour and a half watching recaps. He runs alot of staff support, with a very coordinated team and he’s a great player. That aside, when he actually gets attacked, he dies very often. HE had a nice 1v1 with a sword and board warrior who obviously was clueless, but besides that… nope.

Twice he goes for different mesmers and dies or blows all cds and runs for help. Anytime a HS thief goes on him he dies or blows all cds and runs, when he 1v1s another S/D ele it’s a stalemate, they both tickle each other and heal it off.

He has very little impact on the overall success or fail of his team except for some very nicely placed CC and modest damage contribution.

Keeping that in mind, watch his warrior videos. He absolutely wrecks. 1v1, even 1v2, he’s walking away winning.

One particular match he was full tanky itemized with high vit/tough, almost 19k health, tried to hold a point against a ranger/necro just long enough for help to arrive. They easily took him down in under 9 seconds with all defensives, before help could even begin to arrive.

He’s a great players and using his skills he’s able to show how a ele can be somewhat viable. The problem still remains, he’s a top tier player, “making it work” and yet still running from less skilled players than himself simply because of the class.

So I guess we all agree with that…

I really like my Ele for PvE been playing it 0/10/20/10/30 D/D.

It’s a fun class to play. I think that D/D gives the the best for pvp because skills are more direct and give others less chance to dodge, but cast time is just ridiculous for Churning Earth.

Also, MS for staff. What I generally do is walk to cancel the animation after the skill has really started landed, bus still, the meteors are so sparse and it ends so fast that I’m happy when I hit something twice with it.

Like someone said, when we go full glass cannon we are still not doing that big damage compared to other classes, and the traits in the fire line are just sad. I refused to spend points on that.

I mostly agree with everything pointed here, although I like that the class attunement style, and wouldn’t want to see that changed for weapon swaping (although I think we should be able to carry another weapon set to be changed out of combat, rather than having it sitting in your inventory)

So, resuming, yeah:

*We are the squishier, compared to any other class.
*Even when spec full GC (or should I say paper cannon?), we do average damage, and still less than other classes spec’ed the same way
*Attunement cd and casting time is just ridiculous
*Heals have little use when compared to the DPS of other classes on you.
*Elite skills for PvP are terrible (I say PvP because I really like my elementals on PvE)

Did I forget anything?

Also, worth mentioning that trait lines not only have little to no synergy, but a some are also broken. For example the Master minor trait Lingering Elements. The effects don’t linger.

Hope they fix things, It’s really a fun class to play.

Traits and Elites are a serious issue.
Every element line is full of “+5% dmg vs condition” and "+20% recharge rate " traits that adds nothing to attunement-change playstyle of the profession. Auras traits are not worth the Major space they take because you can have a maximum of 2 auras with D/F build, otherwise only 1. Signet build (which I like) is half-baked without an Elite skill that justifies choosing signets over a cantrip+glyph/conjure/arcane and taking “Written in Stone” over a AOE 2s stability when attuning (which synergies pretty well with the protection bonus of the Arcane trait “Elemental Attunement”) when going earth-deep .
Elites are … not very elite-like. Elementals are not so bad but unless you’re against a single enemy earth elemental is the only viable aggro bait you can throw at enemies because of the long cd on skills, the low health pool and (PVE only obviously) the high threat they make when summoned; I’ve never seen anyone other than fire conjure-heavy eles using the greatsword elite and the Tornado skill doesn’t change to its UW form. If Elites are going to be only 3 until the new Exp Pack then IMHO signets-builds must be made viable changing the glyph elite with a signet elite (glyphs are already in good shape) and making the conjure one an arcane weapon conjure skill, with effects on conjure based on attunement (and possibly adding Major traits linked to the arcane conjure like fire has atm)

Saereth.8306:

really feels like the damage vs survivability is generally off for this class. If you build lots of toughness/vit you hit like a wet noodle, and are still able to be bursted by cannon builds if you run out of stamina, which as a result of increased fight lengths is common. I you build glass cannon you can nuke people down, but other glass cannon builds will very often burst you faster since you have literally the lowest toughness/hp polls in the game. The middle ground simply means you excel at neither position and generally still suffer the same problems of both GC and Survival builds.

This, I agree its the biggest problem even if the traits are kind of blah.

bump and nice to see so many well argumented explanations keep them comming in hope the ele will get the rightous buff/change soon

Elementalist are pretty weak and broken. My main is Elementalist JUST BECAUSE ..and I can’t stress that enough, JUST BECAUSE in GW1 I loved Elementalist

Points of Failure :

• 20 skills vs 10 means that ours are far more WEAKER …limiting with useless
• casting time is HORRIBLE
• No trait synergy <- REALLY IMPORTANT
• ELITES …useless, bland (even Earth Elemental dies of 1 strike from boss )
• Conjures … really, oh come on
• Cantrips : Mist Yaaay………….. Fire/Earth….have you EVER actually seen them ?
• Earth : " I can move mountains !" …………no hunny, You CAN’T ….you can trow small rocks -.-
• I have dmg hihihi, ….ups, wait …I’m dead ???
• I am tanky hihihihi … ups …wait ….I’m dead ???
• I balance survability/dmg HEHEHEHEH …..I’m gonna KILL YOU Warri/Thie…….. ups ….dead -.-"
• Weaker DMG then other classes
• Weaker survability then other classes
• Weaker CC then other Classes
• lesser weapons (and by that diversity of choice)
• - Give us 2 elements per weapon (different combinations) …AND either give us weapon swap or at least 10 USEFULL skills

I hoped that in GW2 Elementalist would be …an ELEMENTALIST …..not some demented person that throws small rocks, blows at you and splashes you with water ?

I can MOVE Mountains !!!

Elementalist in GW2 is really different from Elementalist in GW1, thats correct. Maybe you should try another class, that is more your playstyle?

And @Topic:

As I like to say, elementalist is the most balanced/polished class there is in GW2. True, you’ve got to get used to the playstyle and it takes some time… but for me it was completely worth it.
If you feel too squishy don’t run a zerker amulett. If you want to deal as much damage as a thief… play a thief. Elementalist shouldn’t be able to deal that amount of damage. And if you want to be a full-tank… play Guardian or Warrior or sth. Elemetalist is a true hybrid. He doesn’t deal as much damage as other classes, he isn’t as survivable as other classes. But he can be pretty surviavable while still dealing good damage.

Gelrod.1295:

Elementalist in GW2 is really different from Elementalist in GW1, thats correct. Maybe you should try another class, that is more your playstyle?

And @Topic:

As I like to say, elementalist is the most balanced/polished class there is in GW2. True, you’ve got to get used to the playstyle and it takes some time… but for me it was completely worth it.
If you feel too squishy don’t run a zerker amulett. If you want to deal as much damage as a thief… play a thief. Elementalist shouldn’t be able to deal that amount of damage. And if you want to be a full-tank… play Guardian or Warrior or sth. Elemetalist is a true hybrid. He doesn’t deal as much damage as other classes, he isn’t as survivable as other classes. But he can be pretty surviavable while still dealing good damage.

hmm must say i dont really get your view:
elementalist is weaker on EVERY area then any other class yet your argument for him to be fine is what? his a hybrid?. well if he gets owned easy mode by every other class does it matter what he is suppose to be for the fact that he sucks at it and needs help?.

the elementalist got the lowest survive of all classes, it got a VERY high amount of offfensive abilities and a few support abilities, from that we most assume its suppose to be a class cannon
but no matter what it is suppose to be compared to other classes it is really lacking everything in every area which is burst, dps, survive, support,tank.

your statement that it shouldnt have the dmg of a rogue and not the tank of a guardian.
ok fair enough then what should it have in your eyes? since at this point it’s worse at everything then any other class, and not by a little but by so much that other classses will far outdo it in every area which is in the game.
that is why i would wish for a buff/change to the elementalist

The elementalist is a jack of all trades. With certain builds he can literally do everything at the same time. That makes him the perfekt roamer. You need assistance for a teamfight? Ele can do that, by dealing damage and supporting the team at the same time. 1 minute later you need someone to cap a undefended point? Ride the lighning and cap it. The point gets attacked? Good thing the Ele is also good at 1v1’s and node defending!

Sure, another class could be better for the teamfight. And a thief could be at an undefendet point a little bit faster. And sure, other classes defend a node longer or kill the attacker faster. But they can’t to all this with one build.

the elementalist got the lowest survive of all classes, it got a VERY high amount of offfensive abilities and a few support abilities, from that we most assume its suppose to be a class cannon

I see it the other way round. You’ve already got strong offensive ability’s, so why not build a little tankier?

My main in GW1 was an Ele and so when it came to GW2 of course I was excited to play the new version. Which during the BWE’s I did, and I enjoyed it, that was before I tried out any of the other classes and realised I was being downed on my ele where I wasn’t even getting close on my others. I really really really want Ele to work but even compared to other light armor professions it is just tokittensquishy for me, I usually have to be constantly kiting and dodging, which I wouldn’t mind except I can’t weapon swap, I have to choose if I want to use long or medium or close range attacks before I go into battle, which means if the situation changes I have to have made the right choice before that. I understand the logic behind not giving ele weapon swap but I really feel like it’s one of the many contributing factors that is letting it down, I feel if weapon swapping was applied for Ele a universal cooldown for attunement on weapon swap might make the presence of weapon swap fair. Too many times have I been stuck kiting/dodging a very speedy mob while I’ve got a staff equipped, having to target aoe’s that should really be for long range in front of where I am going..with the long cast time that probably gets evaded anyway is.. just.. ugh.

I also feel like some of the ground targetting skills do not need to use ground targetting. Like Phoenix for example, I’m already targetting a mob, why can’t it shoot out and hit it +mobs nearby? Unless I’m missing a feature of that skill which makes it only useful with ground targetting. Where as a skill like dragons tooth might benefit from ground targetting, half the time when I cast that, the target moves away before it lands anyway so I wouldn’t mind being able to cast it slightly closer to my side of a mob than directly above it.

I feel like my Fire/earth trait ele does well considering. I don’t have any issues with the attunement cooldowns, they work for me and I don’t see a need to put 30 points into arcane to lower them, I’m only ever on an attunement long enough to use all the cooldowns (In proper fights anyway) once and then I cycle to the next one, which I enjoy doing but I find if I want to just stick to one Attunement during a big fight I will probably get squished faster, I’m not altogether sure why that is, just that it is.

As of now though my ele is on the bench. I really want to like it but when I’m also playing guardian/ranger/mesmer without being squished so easily and all of which seem to be able to adapt to the situation better… My ele may end up staying on the bench forever if nothing gets changed with it because I just find it stressful to play at the moment and it shouldn’t be like that.

Although I’m kind of impressed. My lv80 ele friend who’s sorely regretting making her first toon an ele, specced fire/air traits with power/prec, her water skills often hit harder than my rangers power/prec longbow skill. And then she gets two shot or something and I’m less impressed. lol. Ele has potential but right now it’s just potential.

This is one of the many things I feel may have been addressed if there had been an open beta. I won’t go into the rest here, but I will say, I’m 95% Happy and impressed with the game thus far. It just needs tweaking here and there.

Ele good at 1vs1?

Ele’s have the lowest survivability. So first you start by getting survivability and all this does is put you ON PAR with other classes. So you sacrifice attack power to be as good at surviving as other classes that haven’t done ANYTHING about survival.

Ele doesn’t have a lot of dmg (when you got close to 2k power and your Churning Earth hits a war for 1k then I’d say that’s not a lot of dmg, screw the bleed you’re long dead before the Warrior has to worry about that). The damage abilities we have take far to long to trigger and/or got insane cast times (Dragon Tooth, Erruption, Churning Earth, Meteor Shower, Shatterstone, Lava Font, Ice Spike, Healing Rain, Static Field, ). Flame Grab is an exception but tends to miss 90% off the time when you and your opponent are moving. So your left with removing your survivability again so you actually do damage or sacrifice survivability utilities so that you can actually hit your opponents.

Then there’s the whole switching attunements which again costs extra time. You CC with Earth, switch to Fire, start casting fire skill and then half your CC is gone already. Then a year later your Dragon Tooth finally decides to land while your opponent is already halfway across the map. The ability of mashing more buttons doesn’t make us better. It makes us on par IF we manage to mash all our buttons correctly, but it’s still highly inefficient since the other classes can do just as much without all the switching and it pretty much forces us to take the Arcane trait so that we can actually use all our attunements.

Yes, Ele with certain builds is pretty strong 1v1 vs most classes/builds.

And Ele doesn’t has the lowest survivability, cause he’s got really good defensive skills. I’d say Thief is way easier to kill than an Ele for example.
If you run a full-glass-cannon spec without stunbreaks… sure you will die. But thats your own fault.

If you don’t like long casttimes… try d/d or another class.

And I don’t know why everyone says you’ve gotta get 30 points arcane… you don’t.

I agree with pretty much everything which has been said here: the elites are awful, the traits are a mess, the damage/survival ratio is the worst of any class and the conjure skills feel like the developers didn’t know how to fill our utility skills so they just created random, useless things. I mean does anyone here actually use the frost bow? the earth shield? how about the flame axe???
I think our CC skills are not so bad though.
Now I’d like to add a few things which I consider should be looked into.

First our underwater skills are simply useless, I’m completely stuck on the story mission which takes u to some underwater cathedral in the straits of devastation. I can’t kill anything, I haven’t played today though so I might be able to complete the mission now that we have whirlpool.

Second (and it has already been mentioned on many posts so I won’t go into detail here) our downed state is worthless.

Third: the OP mentioned animation times for AOE attacks but i think this goes to many other skills as well. I usually play scepter/focus and sometimes scepter/dagger.
Now lets see fire attunement is supposed to be the high damage attunement, right?
Well what have we got with a staff/focus combination? Flame strike has an animation of approximately two seconds before it actually hits (causing very little damage) a thief using skill #1 with dual daggers can hit three times in two seconds and cause at least twice as more damage.
Dragon’s tooth takes even longer to land, it takes so long that unless i use immobilize via signet of earth (which has a long cooldown and makes me lose the passive effect) on the target monster it never hits unless it’s a ranged monster. Phoenix animation is fine but here comes the worst part:

Fourth: some weapon sets of skills have an awful trade-off. As a player I’m always facing the decision whether to use focus or dagger in my offhand. The dagger has some nice offensive skills (fire grab, Ride the lightning+updraft combo). Earthquake, however, takes so long to cast that by the time it’s done u are nearly dead if there are more than a monster around. However the dagger completely lacks any defensive skill. Two or three ranged enemies attacking you? you better run or you are dead meat. Why not make one of the earth skills a defensive one? Earthquake takes so long to be cast that it’s basically useless, I’d take a projectile reflection/destruction skill or protection over it without thinking twice.
Now what if I use the focus? the focus has some really cool defensive skills, you can knockdown enemies or destroy projectiles on air attunement, you can daze and chill them on water (I’d like a heal here though) and you have two awesome earth skills to reflect projectiles and become invulnerable for a couple of seconds. Ok that’s a lot of defensive skills so one would expect some offensive skills on fire, right? Not quite.
Flame wall’s damage is close to zero and the burning effect you can get it by simply using Flame strike but it remains a tiny bit useful thanks to its combo effect. But what about Fire Shield? why did they have to ruin the focus leaving it without a single offensive skill? Why dear god the dagger has no defensive skills and the focus no offensive ones? Fire shield lasts for three seconds during which it will cause burning for one second to enemies which are probably already burning anyway from flame strike or dragon’s tooth. This is perhaps the most useless skill in the entire game and ruins your offensive capabilities if you choose to use a scepter/focus combination.

So basically when I’m using scepter/dagger my offensive skills are decent so long as there are no more than 2 enemies at which point I’d need some defensive skills which I don’t have access to. And if I’m running scepter/focus I have more survivability but thanks to long animations and lack of offensive skills other than those of the scepter I kill everything very slowly…..

What do you people think? Do you agree? Or do you have workarounds to this?

I agree, that fire attunement is the reason focus is mostly worse than dagger. But I don’t think Anet wants to completly change skills, so that actually is a problem. Increasing the damage of flame wall and increasing the burning duration of the flame shield could help.

I also agree, that Elementalist Elites are… not as good as other elites and pretty lackluster. Glyph of Elementals should have an active ability once you summoned the elemental like all other summons (I want to control when my water elemental uses its chill-field or when my air elemental stuns). Tornado… dunno. It’s not that bad but it’s really situational. And the greatsword summon… if it only did a bit more damage :/

I imagine Earth Shield and Frost Bow actually to be usable in the correct build… though its very niche.

Well, cast time have allways be long for ELE in GW1 ( remember meteor shower ), at least the big damage AOE. But Meteor shower well placed on a warrior teams immobilized was usefull ( and with the stuns was working great ).. in GW2, its seems just good for PVE. ( well im not enough experienced for say i will not change my mind laters ) ….

The big problem i see is defense skill ( damage reduction etc ) they are way too short and with too big CD. Ok for invulneraribility skill ( like Obsidian ) who was an elite on GW1, and was short duration but usefull…

Some old GW1 skills is missing ( specially the contact fire skills who was cast in 0.5 sec damaging Foes around you and at range ) ( coupled ofc with Assassin teleportation to target ) ..

About air skill, i cant find the same fun we had in GW1: interrupt ? Knock down ? stuns ? ..

Ofc, i can imagine like in GW1, at a moment the teamplay and the type of team you run is way more important of the single class attribute. ( spike the damage on target with 3 ele in the same second for get down anyone )..

Well most teams in GW1 was full teams ( Full ELE, Full Ranger spike team/ interrupt, full warrior ).. i have no doubt anyway Anet will work to balance that. Vut in GW1 with the sub profession it was a bit more easy balance directly ourself the build..

OneBloke.7264:

What do you people think? Do you agree? Or do you have workarounds to this?

what do I think? I’m rolling a warrior now, that’s what I think, killing everything I was running from as an elementalist with a greatsword pressing 2, 3. Then move to next.

I’ve been playing wizards/mages in mmo’s for 10 years now, always being happy to trade no defenses and lowest hp of all classes for by far the highest damage output of all classes. I had to know how to kite, when to engage and when to flea, how to use sparingly my cc’s ‘cause they were few and on ungodly cooldowns. But man, when I mastered my class I was feared. There were teams dedicated to take me out in GvG and even with that I was dying 3-4 times at most in 3h GvG fights. My kill to death ratio was about 10-1 after months of GvG.
I mean, if you give me a low defense class give me something else to work with. You can’t give me CC ‘cause that would make me OP , i get that. But if I spec full glass cannon I’m on par with other classes dps while they inherently have more HP and more defense. That in itself is an abomination, I’m getting nothing by totally sacrificing my defense. If I want to build up defense and spec for it I’m totally dumping my damage to a point where my opponent becomes impossible to kill.
Spec on defense and you mitigate the damage taken from 33% of your HP to 25% of your HP. That still makes you almost dead when you’re cc-d and a warrior/thief presses 2, 3.
What if I cc them first? well…first I need to think how I want to fight!!! I have to attunement dance to get to my CCs, kite, defense skills, damage skills. I have 1-2 usefull skills in each atunement, so ya, thanks Anet.Other classes swap weapons adapting from a long range to medium/melee combat. I can’t do that , cause I’m overpowered for some reason , right? Well, how about fighting long range mob/class , take him down and then a speedy melee attacks me? Well…I’m pretty much fked because I can’t adapt. I need to kite and use my subpar melee survival skills on my staff to take that melee down. PvE might be something I could deal with, but sPvP or WvW? No way, no player is as bad as an open world mob.
So what do I gain playing an elementalist? The privilege of playing a bad thought out class (well, it was nerfed when people didn’t understand the game) that’s in 90% of the cases sub par compared to any other class?
No thanks. I won’t.

Actually, Elementalists are better than warriors in WvW, where melee is merely cannon fodder. It’s very hard to die as an elementalist in WvW if you know what you are doing. The class does everything at range (you’re going to be using a staff, put those daggers away, you have no business in melee in WvW, hell, melee is bad enough for those professions actually intended for it in) and can trait for speed in Air attunement and zip around the battlefield. Eles are squishy as hell in any other aspect of the game, but in open world combat they simply cannot be pinned down if you have any situational awareness. This isn’t Orr where there’s some stupid mob every 10 yards to aggro. You almost always have the option of pulling a Sir Robin and cleanly running away.

But for just about any other purpose, the warrior is superior. Especially solo pve. The profession practically plays itself. Sill, I love WvW which is arguably one of the main things left to do at level 80, so my ele gets played a lot for that, while my warrior does all the scrub work in Orr.

Flavius.9580:

Actually, Elementalists are better than warriors in WvW, where melee is merely cannon fodder.

You know that warriors can use rifles and longbows, right?

true, WvW is one place where elementalists do good and where I felt a bit at home. Problem is every time I moved out from the safety of zerg I was downed/finished in a split second. PvE leveling build doesn’t work nicely in WvW.
true, stuff changes at 80 when you spec for survival, but where the efff goes the damage then? I tried to change speccs for WvW to see what’s happening and I went from getting hit for 1/3 of my hp down to 1/4 of it. Not bad. Problem was when I tried to dish out damage…that was reduced by a good 33%… Hitting 1.2k crits down from 1.9k is way too much to get 1 extra shot of survival. And then I saw what longbow /rifle can do in WvW and I just got out of it with the tail between my legs.

OneBloke.7264:

Flavius.9580:

Actually, Elementalists are better than warriors in WvW, where melee is merely cannon fodder.

You know that warriors can use rifles and longbows, right?

Sure. But combat at range isn’t their forte and is very much a second best option. More importantly, a warrior cannot lay down aoe and cc at range in the way an elementalist can. Nor can they heal and support at range. (Actually, they can’t heal at all, except for themselves.) There’s really no comparison here. Rifles and longbows are very much auxiliary weapons for a warrior.

And warriors feel so slow compared to my ele at perma 25% run speed.

Don’t get me wrong, I think warriors are stupidly good and simple to play in any other aspect of the game. But in WvW…I’ll stick to my ele. If I had to switch professions in that venue, it would be to a ranger or engineer, not a warrior.

Flavius.9580:

Sure. But combat at range isn’t their forte and is very much a second best option. More importantly, a warrior cannot lay down aoe and cc at range in the way an elementalist can. Nor can they heal and support at range. (Actually, they can’t heal at all, except for themselves.) There’s really no comparison here. Rifles and longbows are very much auxiliary weapons for a warrior.

And warriors feel so slow compared to my ele at perma 25% run speed.

Warriors can team heal. There’s a trait that makes shouts heal in an area. It’s quite nice. In fact, sometimes I run with a cleric’s amulet on my warrior, because of it.

I don’t think runspeeds stack. I think they just take the highest one. Find a thief with signet of shadows and try to keep up with him.

… Unless you’re talking about sitting in air attunement all the time. Which isn’t really a good idea.

I switch to air attunement when moving from seige to seige…or when I have to run away. For all practical purposes overland travel is conducted at bonus run speed on demand.

I wasn’t aware of this team heal on the warrior (never unlocked it on mine) but I’m doubting this is anywhere near as useful as an ele attuned to water.

Look, the bottom line is this: you do not play a warrior for combat at range or for heals or for support. They may have limited options in this area, but it’s simply not their main focus and other professions can do these things better, including the ele. If you want to be jealous of anybody in WvW, I can understand, say, ranger envy. (I certainly envy their range.) Warriors are meh there. They are the poor bloody infantry.

megrim.3189:

I can’t help but feel attunement swapping is kinda the problem here.
It feels to me a bit shoe-horned in, and the class suffers somewhat as a result. If they left the trait lines more or less as they are, removed combat attunement swapping and added weapon swapping I might be more interested.

Agreed. I feel like I get punished when I don’t constantly swap attunements. Lowered cooldowns of skills (3-5, usually) would make me feel like I’m not wasting time in an attunement. Once I use the skills with a long cooldown, it’s time to move on to the next attunement.

Compare this to ranger shortbow. Most of my damage actually comes from 1 and 2. When I use 3-5, it’s because I want the utility those skills provide, not because they increase my damage. I don’t feel like I have to be constantly using those skills in order to be effective.

Flavius.9580:

I switch to air attunement when moving from seige to seige…or when I have to run away. For all practical purposes overland travel is conducted at bonus run speed on demand.

I wasn’t aware of this team heal on the warrior (never unlocked it on mine) but I’m doubting this is anywhere near as useful as an ele attuned to water.

Look, the bottom line is this: you do not play a warrior for combat at range or for heals or for support. They may have limited options in this area, but it’s simply not their main focus and other professions can do these things better, including the ele. If you want to be jealous of anybody in WvW, I can understand, say, ranger envy. (I certainly envy their range.) Warriors are meh there. They are the poor bloody infantry.

I actually really like the Warrior rifle skill set. It’s got a cripple, spike damage, pressure damage, and a knockback.

As for the Warrior heals, yeah, they probably don’t do very well in WvW, but they really shine in sPvP.

Flavius.9580:

I switch to air attunement when moving from seige to seige…or when I have to run away. For all practical purposes overland travel is conducted at bonus run speed on demand.

I wasn’t aware of this team heal on the warrior (never unlocked it on mine) but I’m doubting this is anywhere near as useful as an ele attuned to water.

Look, the bottom line is this: you do not play a warrior for combat at range or for heals or for support. They may have limited options in this area, but it’s simply not their main focus and other professions can do these things better, including the ele. If you want to be jealous of anybody in WvW, I can understand, say, ranger envy. (I certainly envy their range.) Warriors are meh there. They are the poor bloody infantry.

Warriors are Meh in WvW? I’m going to ignore all of your posts now.

The rifle skill set is good in solo pve where you’re dealing with limited or single targets. You can certainly kite a single mob forever with it, sure. Ditto in spvp.

In WvW the rifle is just a peashooter. The ele has autoattacks which do splash damage, area denial spells of all sorts, combo fields, etc. etc. We eles are the masters of the open battlefield, or at least among the royalty. The class has many problems and I did roll a warrior specifically to play the game in those other areas where I feel the ele is a second class profession. But in WvW we excel.

Flavius.9580:

The rifle skill set is good in solo pve where you’re dealing with limited or single targets. You can certainly kite a single mob forever with it, sure. Ditto in spvp.

In WvW the rifle is just a peashooter. The ele has autoattacks which do splash damage, area denial spells of all sorts, combo fields, etc. etc. We eles are the masters of the open battlefield, or at least among the royalty. The class has many problems and I did roll a warrior specifically to play the game in those other areas where I feel the ele is a second class profession. But in WvW we excel.

Let me rewrite this post in “Flavius prose!”

Yeah I know ele’s suck so I rolled a warrior and lol at people as they die to my blade, but I’ve found that if I equip a staff and completely stay away from battle and spam my AOE’s, I won’t die because everyone else is too busy being distracted by the numbers of people on the battlefield. Unfortunately for me, when someone targets me I am dead, but it’s still playable.

OneBloke.7264:

Flavius.9580:

Actually, Elementalists are better than warriors in WvW, where melee is merely cannon fodder.

You know that warriors can use rifles and longbows, right?

I deal more ranged damage on my warrior using a shotgun (not specced for it) than on my elementalist.

Then I press backslash and the greatsword gets out. Then I press 3 (to close up and almost insta-gib) or press 2 and then 3 by aiming a bit ahead of the target and that target WILL die.

Is the warrior kittenly OP or the ele kittenly lol?

Vaerah, you can only deal more damage with that shotgun on a single target.

In any kind of target rich environment, the ele will handily beat this, and WvW is a target rich environment by and large. (Unless you’re doing guerilla duty deep behind enemy lines with a small squad.) Between splash damage autoattacks and outright aoe spells, the numbers add up fast. Area denial > single target dps in WvW.

It’s just a difference of scale here.

Gelrod.1295:

The elementalist is a jack of all trades. With certain builds he can literally do everything at the same time. That makes him the perfekt roamer. You need assistance for a teamfight? Ele can do that, by dealing damage and supporting the team at the same time. 1 minute later you need someone to cap a undefended point? Ride the lighning and cap it. The point gets attacked? Good thing the Ele is also good at 1v1’s and node defending!

Sure, another class could be better for the teamfight. And a thief could be at an undefendet point a little bit faster. And sure, other classes defend a node longer or kill the attacker faster. But they can’t to all this with one build.

the elementalist got the lowest survive of all classes, it got a VERY high amount of offfensive abilities and a few support abilities, from that we most assume its suppose to be a class cannon

I see it the other way round. You’ve already got strong offensive ability’s, so why not build a little tankier?

Hun …every single class is Jack of all trades in this game XD

Everybody can :

• Damage, Support and Control
• Everybody has Heal
• Everybody has melee/ranged
• Everybody has AoE/ Single

We CAN’T :

• Damage and Control as others
• We don’t have weapon swap and set of usefull skills ( ergo stance dancing requirements)
• We suck at melee ( we either die, or don’t do dmg)
• We don’t have single target DMG

PS
We have offensive skills, but without Power/Precision they don’t do dmg …. you either choose to be:

• Glass Canon that can’t hit as high as Warrior/Thief
  or a
• Tank that can’t tank and has no DMG, you just don’t die in 2 seconds ….

bumping for more comments

Agree with all points.
I was in the very first beta and have been in all since Jan.
They felt so powerful in the betas, and honestly still do up to about level 30…oddly where most people got to in the time the betas would let us.
It is almost like around the level 50 to 80 it losses all grunt, this might be to lack of any testing at such a high level against other high levels and matching combos with others in high dungeons. Lack of feedback may contribute to the lack luster of this class at high levels.
Dragons tooth is terrible at high levels as is the casting time on 90% of spells as mentioned.
The fact there is a cooldown on attunment swapping is below par when weapon swapping for other classes is smooth and instant!. Why are we being penailzed, we should be able to switch between them fluidly. At least let us weapon swap, there is no flow with swapping. And the Air one drives me mad when I switch to it to get a run boost and it hits a yellow urgh!
The protection spells, need to last longer for us to survive, if we are not going to get some sort of dps buff!
As now…we cannot tank, we are no glass cannon and other classes buff and add boons in dungeons…so why even use a elementalist.
Please listen to us as you have some great suggestions here, or at least respond to us as in the future of this class, if you feel it is ok or if you are going to address some of these issues we are experiencing.
For now I am leveling a OP ranger, I love they have a tank pet to protect them lol

While I know the damage debate will rage on and my experience with DPS has been that I average medium damage to high ( but that has a lot to do with points and gear and a concern would be if you don’t have the right gear or the points in the right places then you’re screwed on DPS ), but my main concern is why we are so squishy. I feel we need more defensive spells, if we are to remain a squishfest, where we can get enemies away from us. It seems like 80% (to me and my experience) of the mobs run up to you and I don’t feel we have much to CC as we should.

High DPS is great, but what happens when you’ve exhausted all of your quick burst spells and you still have enemies about, well you are going to want CC and if it is a group of mobs, you need something more than what we have to really buy you some time. Etc. For me, I like a mix of the high DPS and condition damage spells, but even then you need more CC options. Just my two cents, or make us less squishy lol.

Ele’s are great at team condition removal in sPvP.. .and since conditions is where it’s at in sPvP now, they are pretty often seen in top teams.

But when the focus goes from conditions and back to pure damage, seeing an Ele in top team sPvP will be a thing of the past.