Guild Wars 2

Common mmo-knowlege would also be “a group should have a healer to be succesfull”. Much of this “common mmo-knowlege” doesn’t apply to GW2. And I say “Thief counters mage classes” doesn’t apply to GW2.

And of course I’m talking about more or less equally playing enemy’s, everything else wouldn’t be relevant. So of course I’m talking about winning versus good Warriors and good Thiefs.

Thief doesnt counter mages. For Thief to counter, the mage should have to have possibility of attacking thief before he dies.

For now it’s 2 like a boss :>

I dont have any problems on my Ele. Whether it be doing damage or staying alive or running away, can do all those pretty well and I win most 1v1 fights. Ele is certainly not weak just has a higher learning curve than other classes. Also people need to realize that staff Ele’s arent suppose to have super high damage, staff on ele is more for support while still having damage capabilites and even still meteor does quit a bit a damage. Plus if your using all your abilities like you should be staff can put out pretty good damage.

purplestone.8364:

I dont have any problems on my Ele. Whether it be doing damage or staying alive or running away, can do all those pretty well and I win most 1v1 fights. Ele is certainly not weak just has a higher learning curve than other classes.

^ This..

My Ele was my first character I’ve made/played for any of the GW series and compared to other classes, this class seems more of a “skill-oriented” class.

You have to be active and switch in between all the different attunements given the situation…

If you need some burst damage you’ll need to go Fire, if you or your allies are falling low on health.. switch to water, if you need some speed to catch up/disable enemies.. switch to Air, if your right in the middle of everything and need some defense to survive.. go Earth…

And I disagree with the people complaining about how attunement swapping should not have cd’s. That would be OP. And I have absolutely no problem with the cd’s for them and I hardly have any points into the Arcana trait line.

And (IMO) don’t think ele’s need weapon swapping unless it’s out of combat.
You already have a total of 20 weapon skills and more (if you have the right attunement swapping traits.

If an Ele with a Precision/Power build could weapon swap in combat… that would be over 50 skills he has access to right at his fingertips compared to the 10 skills other classes would have with their weapon swapping…. the burst he already has would pretty much be doubled, which in some cases could be an instant kill.

Don’t read me wrong, I’m not saying that Ele’s are perfectly balanced.. Just giving my two cents.

Gelrod.1295:

Common mmo-knowlege would also be “a group should have a healer to be succesfull”. Much of this “common mmo-knowlege” doesn’t apply to GW2. And I say “Thief counters mage classes” doesn’t apply to GW2.

And of course I’m talking about more or less equally playing enemy’s, everything else wouldn’t be relevant. So of course I’m talking about winning versus good Warriors and good Thiefs.

actually it absolutely does. you can’t do a dungeon without a supporting/healing and tanking class/classes (or it makes it insanely hard compared to with them).

i am trying to think of any general rules that doesnt apply to gw2, can’t really come up with any.
the setup of spvp makes 1v1 a MUCH higher factor then in most mmo’s so the big difference in group pvp is that its not really a “group fight” more like a individual fight and a “hold point” thing. which is the biggest diversity to the norm in most mmo’s (and i actually think this aspect of gw2 is pretty failed and gives a worse experience of group pvp then most other systems for this type of pvp).

at school right now so not commenting with too many other things.
think its pretty clear we would not really come to a commen understanding of where the ele is laying and what need to be done.
i think its mainly becouse of the difference in what we want it to be, i would like the ele to have its own role/feeling in every scenario and you would like it to be the same in all roles as every other class, just with flashy effects ^^ (or at least thats my understanding from your build and your explanation of playstyle, same with kyros)
and if thats the case, it just needs a bit more base tank and fixes to its skills and a better ult, so that it gets to be a “tanky dps mix” instead of a “glass class which excell in its area’s but is VERY squicy and easy to take out compared to other classes but its effect if you can keep it alive is higher at its respective area’s”

Of course you can do a dungeon without a dedicated heal or support and/or tank^^ Thats the most important change from regular MMO —> Gw2.

And I believe, if Ele would get more defense he could quickly become op. If you take the staff-build for example: even now you won’t be able to kill him when solo (or need tons of time) and he can even survive versus multiple enemy’s for some time. So, the defensive build already exists and more or less works as intended. If the more offensive builds would now be buffed with a bit more defense the staff-ele would also get the same defense, making his build even stronger and probably stronger of equal builds of other professions.
Only giving additional survivability to offensive builds could be achieved by adding t3 traits to fire and air, fire being “gain 5% of your power as toughness” and air “gain 5% of your precision as vitality” or sth like this. But I don’t think increasing the base-stats would be a good solution.
Do agree on the better ult + downed state as already said.

Gelrod.1295:

Of course you can do a dungeon without a dedicated heal or support and/or tank^^ Thats the most important change from regular MMO —> Gw2.

And I believe, if Ele would get more defense he could quickly become op. If you take the staff-build for example: even now you won’t be able to kill him when solo (or need tons of time) and he can even survive versus multiple enemy’s for some time. So, the defensive build already exists and more or less works as intended. If the more offensive builds would now be buffed with a bit more defense the staff-ele would also get the same defense, making his build even stronger and probably stronger of equal builds of other professions.
Only giving additional survivability to offensive builds could be achieved by adding t3 traits to fire and air, fire being “gain 5% of your power as toughness” and air “gain 5% of your precision as vitality” or sth like this. But I don’t think increasing the base-stats would be a good solution.
Do agree on the better ult + downed state as already said.

as i said its MUCH harder. and you can do so in other mmo’s as well, we could do everything in aion 2.7 and under with only a chanter as healing in our groups and most stuff we could simply 2-3 man.

i am not saying you couldn’t do it but its MUCH harder to do it.
which is the same in EVERY mmo. and i would go so far to say that at some bosses you will need tanky builds to be able to do it ^^ second general boss at dwayna run in arah you will properly not be able to kill it without at least 1-2 tanky build people (simply becouse of how its forcing you to stand etc.) and doubt you will be able to take down lupi without this either (simply just getting 1-2 shot in stage 2 will wipe you very easily, even with perfect dodges each person only got around 5 evades on charge before he simply cannot have enough stemina even with vigor)

(even at AC first dungeon the first general mob will be VERY hard without any type of tank char since one miss step and your group is gone and you can restart it if you got no one which can tank and thats properly the most forgiven of all the dungeons)

for the ele: i don’t believe he should get more survivability, since in that case he will just end up overlapping the guardian/warriors role and in very defensive build he could quickly become too strong for his purpose.
i strongly believe he needs more burst/hard dps in full out dps builds, this is where he is REALLY lacking, and need help. the same in full out heal build (i really think that the healing does too little and is way to hard to apply due to the way the game mechanic is made; a more targeting healing would be strongly preferred so you don’t see your friendly targets dodge out of the importent heals becouse they simply have to dodge or die before the heal hits.)

very squicy build is what is the main issue, and very tanky builds is not as good as other classes which doesn’t need the full out dps to perform consistently “high” dps.

don’t you think it would be more beneficial to let it scale better(full dps build would simply have a much better scaling on dps/burst)?
or maybe make his dps actually more reliable?
one of the main issue’s i personally got with the ele dmg build is that it is SOO extremely hard to apply the full dps(even with double root, slow,stun/knockdown etc.), while with most weapons IF your fighting some one where you can apply your maximum dps (person doenst dodge, remove condition, use defensive skills etc and stay within your aoe full time spand it last) your dps is actually pretty high and equels out how squicy you are, but becouse of the way the spells are made you will NEVER get such a situation and it simply takes too long time to apply that dmg with reasonable effect a change to this could also fix it, how they would do that i have a hard time seeing, you could ofc let the aoe’s stick to a target with center on that target (on healing aoe that would be very nice and dps i am afraid some builds would get too strong due to how tanking is made in gw2)

ps: i dont believe forcing a tier 3 slot to be used for defense when your doing full offense build would be good in any sharp or form, you would either overdo it and its op as a tank dps or you might as well go tank as people are doing now since results are +- the same.
i do believe that you need to upper the actual dps which is applied compared to how fast they are killed

Other classes have traits like this, that grant them bonusstats based on another stat (even Ele has one if I remember correctly, 5% of precision goes into healing power)… thats where I got the idea.

More reliable damage would be better than more damage, otherwise it would be just like hb… op when it comes to killing new players but not that good when it comes to killing good players. Thats the main reason I swiched from scepter to dagger… dagger is just way more reliable.
But sure, reducing the animation time of dragons tooth would be a good thing, at least reducing it low enough so that you can hit it versus an enemy kd’d by updraft/earthquake if he doesn’t stunbreak.

It doesn’t matter if the elementalistist is in a good position or not. We have a larger issue where many players don’t even INVITE elementalists to parties because they have the impression we’re weak. It’s gone to the point where many people in the general population assume we’re weak (due to many bad experiences with others or themselves) and are willing to ignore our class.

The class can be considered BAD if many players who fall in the ‘average’ skill-level of the spectrum is not able to play it adequately. By adequate, I mean capable of changing the minds of other party members that an elementalist’s role can’t be replaced by another class. Keep in mind i said average, not some of you better players.

ANet did not design this class for skilled players only and there are many who chose elementalist for aesthetics and the theme alone. Every player (even BAD ones) deserve to play elementalist to a publically accepted minimal. Ele is not designed “proz-only-pls”; Please drop this attitude even remotely close to this when considering the state of the class.

The elementalist is certainly not a glass cannon indeed. It is glass, and has no cannon. Sure it does AoE damage alright, but the damage is low, way too low to counter the squishiness. If I am lucky and get a 6k crit with Churning Earth, specced for “glass cannon” I am very lucky. Happened once only. The cast time is ridiculous anyway. One on one it is very hard to kill people, since the damage output is very low compared to other classes. I tried speccing for defense and 20k hp, and was several times killed within 1 – 1½ second by a rogue for example. Other classes have invisibility AND great burst damage.

Kiting is even horribly hard, even if you utilize most of your slow etc. effects. When a warrior and guardian can outdamage you at range, it can be very disheartening. I keep trying to find a better build, but no matter what I have to run in one on one fights.

If the damage is boosted to fit the squishiness of the class it would help a lot and bring it up to par with other classes. Otherwise I don’t see it being much good except a healing and minor damage AoE class, which is sad. There should be options to make it a glass cannon (I’ve tried, but damage is way too low). Hopefully they get a good damage boost.

… and by the way, I see very few elementalists around in game, sadly. But the reason should be quite clear.

actually one of my main concern on the delay of dmg skills is dragon tooth, MS, churning, etc. every spell that takes more then 2 seconds to land becouse evading them just gets rediculessly easy and especially with ms and churning you got a rediculess long casting time and in that time your getting beating to pieces

Malcastus.6240:

The elementalist is certainly not a glass cannon indeed. It is glass, and has no cannon. Sure it does AoE damage alright, but the damage is low, way too low to counter the squishiness. If I am lucky and get a 6k crit with Churning Earth, specced for “glass cannon” I am very lucky. Happened once only. The cast time is ridiculous anyway. One on one it is very hard to kill people, since the damage output is very low compared to other classes. I tried speccing for defense and 20k hp, and was several times killed within 1 – 1½ second by a rogue for example. Other classes have invisibility AND great burst damage.

Kiting is even horribly hard, even if you utilize most of your slow etc. effects. When a warrior and guardian can outdamage you at range, it can be very disheartening. I keep trying to find a better build, but no matter what I have to run in one on one fights.

If the damage is boosted to fit the squishiness of the class it would help a lot and bring it up to par with other classes. Otherwise I don’t see it being much good except a healing and minor damage AoE class, which is sad. There should be options to make it a glass cannon (I’ve tried, but damage is way too low). Hopefully they get a good damage boost.

this is what i have set my main focus on; i am no average gamer i learn insainly fast and have played most my life, i do manage it on a full out glass cannon build but i have an insanely hard time doing so. when i tried out several other classes i can lay half down on my chair almost sleeping and get the same results as i can with my ele (got a win rate in spvp on necro of 90-95% while my ele is only 50+-% just to compare and i actually played a ton more with my ele and know the skills to the core while on the necro i got a basic idea of what is what but thats it.)

the skill lvl needed to just compete on the ele is way too high and this is mainly based in how hard it is as a base char becouse of how weak the individual skills are.

the problem with groups not bringing ele’s and in general i avoid it as well is that the lvl it takes to simply just continually switch attunement to support and dmg and cc while having PERFECT dodging to survive is so high that its rare you will ever see one that can do it, and having to kick people and find some one else at the first boss or first hard boss becouse the guy simply cant do his part is a plague and you rather be more insured that you dont have to do that. i think we all have tried the dungeon with the ele which stays in one attunement the entire dungeon -_- its like having a sceptor only guardian or rifle only worriar, its awefull for the party and every one else need to work extra hard for it to work, now add to that the ele almost instant die to every boss if he doesnt dodge correctly and on average players +- he diffinately will not and he is just dragging every one down, so rather just get some one else for anything really hard if i got the choice

GW2 elementalist is just like GW1 elementalist, it will need to be reworked several times just like in GW1 just to get it right.

I love my elem but the fact that when stat’d berserker in pvp against other classes in berserker we just don’t compare. Glass Cannon without the Cannon.

I completely agree with most of the statements here. I realize Guild wars 2 is different from the traditional mmo in many ways, but also that it needs to stay in tune with some features in order for the class to even have playability and relevance.

For one, in most mmo’s when the damage of a class goes up, relatively the armor/protection/health goes down, not arguing that. When the armor/protection/health goes up, the damage of the class typically goes down. In this case, the elementalist is sub par damage, sub par health and nothing to compensate. Yes, we do have 4 different elements to work with and no weapon swap. I’m statted in full 80 exotic berserker and half +dmg and half +vitality/toughness on my accessories. I swap between both dual daggers and staff. The problem is, I’ve seen crits around 5-6k, but they happen rarely even though I’ve got 51% crit rate. I’m typically hitting for 2-3k non-crit. It’s a slow process.

I feel your pain with being jumped by a few mobs in orrian and dying easily. Yes, we do have some cc, we do have control, but the cooldown/recharge is slow on the elements, and swapping from element to element gives a split second of “load” so we can’t activate immediately. The problem is our class doesn’t perform highly well in either direction without a perfect build or perfect setup. I’m not arguing that a well played player can do it right, but what about the casual player. All the other classes are able to be played as a tank (high dmg absorbing) and glass cannon (high dmg, lower health) whereas we can’t do either very well. We are a mixture somewhere in between with mediocre damage and mediocre protection. If I spec for protection, I lose my damage, and vice versa. Other classes don’t have this issue.

I did play gw1 from beta on and saw the many changes the elementalist went through. I don’t necessarily want the typical “mage”, I just want the class to be on par with the others as far as being able to survive, and to do damage. What good is the class if we’re kittened either way and “can’t play the way we want” which is part of the big overall picture that each class is supposed to be playable as.

I’m up for thoughts and keeping this thread going, hopefully with enough valuable suggestions Arenanet will make the appropriate changes to balance the class out.

DarkSider.1079:

For one, in most mmo’s when the damage of a class goes up, relatively the armor/protection/health goes down, not arguing that. When the armor/protection/health goes up, the damage of the class typically goes down.

In “most mmo’s” that may be the case, but not in Guild Wars.

Some quotes from Ensign about the Elementalist.

Ensign:
Similar reason to why Guardian damage is ‘god awful’ – you’re a very durable, high utility class that pays for all that utility with lower ratios.

Plus you’re a long range utility caster, which knocks damage down another tick.

Whether or not you’re taking advantage of that utility is up to you, but it’s the reason you’re not doing the damage of one dimensional damage characters.

Ensign:
Base armor makes very little difference in this game. Guardians are squishy as hell without active defenses either. You have your array of blinks and cleanses and bubbles to keep yourself alive; and you’re long range to begin with, which counts for a lot defensively (Guardian has ranged sets, which are terrible). Your downed state is comically bad though, worst in the game.

but solo it feels like they need to run strict rotations to get the best use out of self-comboes they can just to match what other professions can do trivially.

Ensign:
Offensively, yes, you do; and that’s because you’re a durable caster with a ton of utility, and you can’t just take that off your bar. It’s baked into the class. They pay for it with lower raw damage output; so you have to work harder. So you’re going to end up behind classes without all that utility and durability when it comes to raw damage output. That’s only natural.

I’m not saying that the Ele doesn’t need adjustment, I’m just saying that pretty much everyone is playing the class wrong – they’re playing the class they think it is, not the class it is – and it’s skewing perceptions of its power level.

D/D glass cannon is a very durable long range utility caster? Oh, I didn’t noticed that. Could explain why the damage is so awful compared to some other melee glass cannon builds from other professions which of course have not the utility and durability of an elementalist… oh, wait…

Ensign:
Where to start? How about that while D/D is short range, it’s not melee – with a variable range – and the damage reflects that? Your basic attacks deal damage somewhere between what you’d expect from melee attacks and long range attacks, after adjusting for AoE.

Then, on top of your damage, you have an assortment of snares, immobilizes, stuns, and/or knockdowns to harass with.

A substantial chunk of your damage comes from conditions, not as burst; you also have built in healing and condition removal.

Why is Elementalist damage weaker than other classes? For the above reasons. Why do you feel weak as a full glass cannon burst character? Because you’re playing a class that isn’t well suited to that. Sure, if the standard for ‘good class’ is putting full Berserker on everything and breaking out the stopwatch, you’re right, Elementalist is not a ‘good class’. But that’s the idiot bracket. Elementalists benefit immensely from a mix of stats, they want to be built with more durability to give their bag of tricks more time to work – and in that paradigm, sure, it’s possible the Elementalist still needs some damage buffs.

But that’s a far cry from ‘my character is not as good at being a Thief as a Thief is’ when the Elementalist is not a Thief – nor should it be.

Today I witnessed the “ele is not a thief”. I ran against my own guildies (who are very good). One of them stood in the center of a room and just self healed. I was never able to bring his health (S/D) below 50%.
You could say: “well, sure use CC, interrupts etc.”.
So we went the “full thing”.

Guess how much better I could kill him, with 4 guys constantly, always focusing on me?

Why did they focus on me? 20 or so matches played, only elementalist I have met is… me.

What I met were only guardians, mesmers, thieves and warriors. 1 necro. One.

Yes, I can see people may be playing classes differently, but isn’t that the entire premise of gw2, play the class how you want? I don’t see why all the other classes have the damage output, or tanking ability inherently in them whereas it’s kitten for elementalist. Call it “playing it wrong” or such, but when most people are having the same issue regardless of spec, gear, or being casual or hardcore gamer, the class has a problem within it.

Yes, there are too many dry comparisons between a “wow mage” and the elementalist and how they differ or are similar. I don’t expect any of my characters or classes to be like wow. What bothers me is that there shouldn’t be a “you’re playing this class wrong” when there’s multiple specs and such. Call it a support class, but why do all the others (played mez, warrior) feel OP and ele feels so weak.

Regardless if armor isn’t that big a deal, regardless if toughness is only minor or vitality, we’re under powered as a class. Play as as support/utility healer and you lose the damage aspect. Play as full dps glass cannon, and the damage just isn’t there. I’m not comparing a wow mage or other casters, but the sheer fact that other classes in the game if in full glass cannon dps, they do some serious damage (on top of a much higher vitality/armor/toughness built into class) whereas we’re usually stiffed on damage. Likewise, go as healer or support and yes the damage goes down quite a bit, but it feels half-working.

Again, no comparison to all other mages or casters, with that in mind, our class is kitten for doing the damage that others are capable of doing (not even including the others can take more hits as full dps). I expect to die often as full dps, but I also should be able to kill mobs (pve dungeon) in a similar way to other classes with high damage. The class itself is inherently more difficult, anyone doing an elementalist realizes that, but even when mashing between different trait setups and full dps, we just can’t compare to others.

Again, I don’t expect to “play like all the other mmo’s” out there, it is guild wars 2, but I do expect my class to play on a fair playing field to other classes. If we can’t play as a glass cannon or play as a true support tank-ish as other classes, we have no purpose and the class has no forseeable future.

I think the main problems with the Elementalist is alot of their skills take way too long to cast, and their damage isn’t high enough for their low survivability.

Problems with elementalist:

We have kitten burst for glass cannons. I realize we have some abilities to increase our survivability, but that doesn’t matter because after 3 seconds of invulnerability we’ll still be glass cannons with kitten burst against warriors with mediocre burst/high armor and rogues with mediocre armor and insanely high burst.

Problems with elementalist:

We have kitten burst for glass cannons. I realize we have some abilities to increase our survivability, but that doesn’t matter because after 3 seconds of invulnerability we’ll still be glass cannons with kitten burst against warriors with mediocre burst/high armor and rogues with mediocre armor and insanely high burst.

well do not repeat the same post everywhere….

ele problem is easy:

Not only it isn t the strongest in a single thing, but it has so many drawbacks (people like to ignore to scream OP nerf) that makes it frustrating and not versatile..

-we are stuck in one range
-If we build balanced we are basically like glass cannons in other professions.
-if we build GC we lacks any sort of suriving mechanic
-damage is bad for both GC than other build
-attunements doesn t give versatility considering cooldowns is doubled OR effect is halved compared to other classes…..they are a drawback.
-its extremely difficult to use but we don t get anything in Exchange seeing how they nerf any potential strong point.

They really have to question themselves whwat do they want this class to do..

Seems we cannot have mobility, or healing otherwise other players screams OP NERF!!!1!!!

We cannot clearly have damage nor crowd control….

We can t do everything as they try to say.

We are good only as a nuisance…nothing more.

I run a balanced build rather squishy and Yesterday i met another D/D ele in www….
I got hit from a churning earth because i was distracted (a Group of moas <.< joined the fight) and it really was risible damage to one of the squishiest build possible…

Being balanced i can kill only glass cannon…where is our damage? really…..

Its so frustrating when comparing my eles stats with my warrior. I have to invest heavily into toughness and vitality to get enough defense stats on my ele to not explode in milliseconds on spike damage. On my warrior I can reach perma 4k power + 50+% crit chance and still got the same damage reduction and even more hitpoints than my ele.

Sure ele has access to regen and protection, but damage-wise ele is just pathetic compared to warriors or thieves. GW2 is the first MMORPG ever with no high-damage caster available.

Dont get me wrong, I really like ele mechanics. But the lack of damage is kinda annoying. And I really hate the AOE mechanics. Although I play WvW 99% of the time I never got for staff. I like skills which are directly connected to your opponent. IMO its ok to have 1 or 2 AOE skills which are ground target, but the rest should be direct damage skills.

I really loved how AOE spells were implemented in DAOC. First there were PBAOE spells with fast casttime and really high damage but it was very risky because you have to be close to your target. The range was far lower than e.g. Churning Earth but getting hit by it really hurts.
Then you had direct range AOE spells with medium casttime and medium damage. Direct means you had to target one enemy. When the spell hits the enemy the AOE effect procs off this enemy being the center of the AOE effect.
And you had ground AOE spells with medium casttime and low damage which worked like AOE spells in GW2 now.

So at the end casters had 3 different kind of AOE spells to choose from. PBAOE was great for defending against melee classes or defending choke points like gates. Direct range AOE was great in open field battles. Ground AOE was great for defending or attacking keeps.

Playing staff ele in WvW is more like spaming those ground AOE spells + crossing your fingers hoping your enemy is dumb enough not to leave the red circle before the spell actually does damage.

Ele skills need to do more damage then they currently do.

I

Over 6 months into the game and we’re still having this same complaint?

Elementalist damage is fine. You do decent sustained and decent spike. The primary problem with the class is it’s difficult to play well, especially in PvP. The damage is all based on stacking effects and trait bonuses together, and utilizing CC so that your delayed cast skills actually connect when you want them to. In PvP that is very challenging, especially if your opponent knows what you’re up to. To be honest, that is really my only complaint with the class. It isn’t that our damage isn’t there, but that Thieves and Warriors can apply their damage far more easily.

I don’t, however, think that should be changed very much. It’s part of what keeps the class interesting for me, and why I find other classes (besides Engineer, which has similar challenges) boring.

Reported Asura.4709 for thread necromancy and reposting the same rant over and over again all over the forum.

A-Net please fix the ele. please.

Elementalist in PvP = Best Class
Elementalist in PvE = not bad, but there are better classes

You see it’s hard to balance the class for A-Net.

Honestly, I love my elementalist. I always have a blast playing it. I find success to be very rewarding, because when I beat someone I know I earned it. My biggest problem is that anet’s written intention for the class doesn’t even come close to actual game play. They say in the description of the class, right here on this very website, that elementalists are supposed to make up for their low defense by dealing massive damage.

At least change the description, guys! It should probably read something like “very skilled players can eek out small edges over baddies over long drawn out fights.”

Natedogg.9254:

Honestly, I love my elementalist. I always have a blast playing it. I find success to be very rewarding, because when I beat someone I know I earned it. My biggest problem is that anet’s written intention for the class doesn’t even come close to actual game play. They say in the description of the class, right here on this very website, that elementalists are supposed to make up for their low defense by dealing massive damage.

At least change the description, guys! It should probably read something like “very skilled players can eek out small edges over baddies over long drawn out fights.”

I think that description was written before the community figured out how bad Power/Condi hybrids really were. In a magical land where hybrid builds output more total damage than crit builds their description fits.

It’s the only thing I can figure out, really. I truly believe they had no clue how huge a difference base-weapon damage + crit damage would really be.

I’ve been waiting for someone to do a decent comparison, so we’d know how long a battle would have to go on before Condi builds caught up to Crit, and how hybrids would fare on that scale. I don’t think there will be such a thing, because the answer is most likely “Never.” In my experience, Condi builds never catch up to crit builds even in cases where the bleed cap is never reached and cleansing never occurs.

PinCushion.7390

…..
I’ve been waiting for someone to do a decent comparison, so we’d know how long a battle would have to go on before Condi builds caught up to Crit, and how hybrids would fare on that scale. I don’t think there will be such a thing, because the answer is most likely “Never.” In my experience, Condi builds never catch up to crit builds even in cases where the bleed cap is never reached and cleansing never occurs.

In theory it should be pretty easy since we can set up a character any way we want in the Mists and go hit a battle golem. But, I can’t copy/paste my combat logs and have not attempted to find them on my computer, believing that would be impossible anyway. In addition, there are so many variables such as might, durations, attunement cooldowns, skill combos etc the possibilities are endless. They don’t give us any guidence on combos in the wiki. I carry about 400 condition out of a dumb blind trust in the devs that because conditions bypass armor and toughness, they must hit pretty well and the stat by its mere existence has some value. Am I a fool?

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Elementalist in PvP = Best Class
Elementalist in PvE = not bad, but there are better classes

You see it’s hard to balance the class for A-Net.

do you really have to jump in every thread to say “nerf ele”?

COnsidering you play a mesmer its quite funny you ask to nerf other classes…..

LordByron.8369:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Elementalist in PvP = Best Class
Elementalist in PvE = not bad, but there are better classes

You see it’s hard to balance the class for A-Net.

do you really have to jump in every thread to say “nerf ele”?

COnsidering you play a mesmer its quite funny you ask to nerf other classes…..

I’m playing guardian and never every played one single game with a mesmer. And I didn’t even said nerf ele. I said it’s hard to balance it for PvP and PvE together. Don’t interpret stuff and read carefully. Thanks

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

LordByron.8369:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Elementalist in PvP = Best Class
Elementalist in PvE = not bad, but there are better classes

You see it’s hard to balance the class for A-Net.

do you really have to jump in every thread to say “nerf ele”?

COnsidering you play a mesmer its quite funny you ask to nerf other classes…..

I’m playing guardian and never every played one single game with a mesmer. And I didn’t even said nerf ele. I said it’s hard to balance it for PvP and PvE together. Don’t interpret stuff and read carefully. Thanks

don t make me link your post…
Also if you play a guardian you cannot lose to an ele unless you are playing that “debatable” (insert any kitten word there) new spvp mode in wich running is OP or other weird modes.

LordByron.8369:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

LordByron.8369:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Elementalist in PvP = Best Class
Elementalist in PvE = not bad, but there are better classes

You see it’s hard to balance the class for A-Net.

do you really have to jump in every thread to say “nerf ele”?

COnsidering you play a mesmer its quite funny you ask to nerf other classes…..

I’m playing guardian and never every played one single game with a mesmer. And I didn’t even said nerf ele. I said it’s hard to balance it for PvP and PvE together. Don’t interpret stuff and read carefully. Thanks

don t make me link your post…
Also if you play a guardian you cannot lose to an ele unless you are playing that “debatable” (insert any kitten word there) new spvp mode in wich running is OP or other weird modes.

Your post does not make any sense to me. What are you trying to say?

I’m so frustrated with my elementalist and his lack of survivability. I tried even as much toughness as possible on my armour and it didn’t seem to make a scrap of difference. I feel like I might as well not have any armour on me – because it doesn’t help me much anyway. My damage output is pretty good, it’s just, after leveling my ele to 73 so far, I think I’m just going to give up on him and go work on my level 5 guardian, simply because guardians have more defence and survivability (I’m sick of constantly dying as an ele).

It’s sad but I don’t see anything changing with the ele anytime soon :-/ also, even when I’m in an area of the SAME level monster I still struggle. For example, in the level 70-80 frosty mountain sort of region when I was level 73, I got absolutely annihilated. I could only kill things like goats and yaks – now THAT is sad. I simply could not kill a monster without my 2 summoned elementals, and they only last a short time because they die pretty easily, then I have to wait for the skills to recharge before I go and kill the next monster. It’s just ridiculous.

Actually, the more I think about it, I will start playing on my guardian.

Zaoda.1653:

I’m so frustrated with my elementalist and his lack of survivability.

The elementalist uses active survivability. Which in practice means that, much like the Thief, you need to avoid getting hit, not absorb them. This means using things like Mist Form, earth elemental tanks, snaring, kiting, dodging wisely.

Mind you, with a proper setup, you can facetank. But the idea behind the class is that you do not. That’s what warriors and guardians are for. The ele on the other hand, needs to keep moving and pulling of 5 tricks a second to stay upright.

The one thing that is true across all of this is the standard situation:

Elementalist does equal lowest base health and lowest armor. Usually the idea of the spellcaster is to kill fast, but die fast as well. This was true in GW1 where offensive spells could be used defensively by creating choke points.

This is true in WvW as well, where using a Meteor Shower becomes more of a deterent to enemy movement. Problem is as soon as they see that it hits for 1000 damage from tanky builds, around 20+ players will run right through, stacked together due to the five target limit.

This is the very first game I’ve played where in order to survive a Glass Cannon, you simply stack players together to throw the RNG that selects targets off and spreads the damage around. Then the players can throw their area heal and your attack does 0.

The second problem all spellcasters have is the AoE rings.

These rings warn players an AoE is about to hit, so naturally every single player was born with ESP to know where these rings are coming from. IF you want to see these rings to know where they are….then have a trait do it as nothing is more frustrating than casting ANY AoE on ANY CHARACTER CLASS and seeing a red circle saying “oh dodge this”

Maybe it might help the casual PvE and help placing the spell in targetting a group, but it definitely DOES NOT HELP in WvW or PvP. As soon as that ring appears, all players instinctively know to get out of the area.

The third problem deals with the predictability.

My attunement is its own buff on my screen, so any enemy targeting me knows I am an ELE and say “Oh its the low armor, low health character…easy kill!!” and then they see the weapon I have and know all my strengths and weaknesses, unlike other classes that get two weapon sets. They also see what ELEMENT I am in, and the order of buffs I get on attunement swap using Arcane Traits.

There are more problems with Ele, but i do not want to post them all at once.

I agree with this -.- expecially with this:

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.

About the elite skill i feel the same, i feel that they are so useless, other classes have awesome elite skills like guardian and elementalist have what? things to figth at our side? c’mon, they are usefull sometimes but they die fast and they don’t even tank anything, the sword is kinda cool and the tornado but i feel that the tornado have to much cold down in the skills, like we have to wait forever to use the tornado and then when we are in tornado form the skills have cold down are the same time is really annoying that, at least give to the tornado form separate skills cold downs, just for when we use the skill 1 we can use next the skill 2 and 3, because like this we only use the 1, if they have same cold down why use the other skills? to be different? i don’t even notice when i’m using the skill in that form, the tornado skill is for us to use when he are really in trouble (and i’m in trouble a lot) i could be better if the skills don’t have that ’’little cold down" even if is fast is really irritating and useless.

Biggest issue facing elementalists:

Too many core features which should be baseline to the class are tied to either traits or the arcane traitline attunement cooldown reduction.

Fix that and suddenly you’ll see variety in builds.

Fixing the Elites: The hounds should last 1 minutes instead of 30 seconds and have double the health.
Other summons should have the same fix, elemental are ridiculously useless in PvP. Just go 1vs1 against a ranger and you’ll see. They need to have double health, dmg and duration.

Anyone even use the first attack of the water attunement? It’s a total joke, it does like 300 dmg.

Fiery great sword: DMG should be increased by 20% to be on near-equal terms with warriors, it should boost your vitality by 20% as well.

Other elite skills need to be rethinked.
Tornado: useless, does like 1k dmg every 3 seconds. It should do about 3k instead.

Traits, that’s another matter entirely, less urgent to change if they fix the skills.

We need a major buff that will make us more than just a support class.
The biggest problem is that we have useless skills like the magnetic shield, fiery axe and our main attack are too slow and do at max around 2k dmg.

I imagine it was the developers intention that the first attack of the water attunement was only used for killing rabbits?