Guild Wars 2

Tonight I had an epiphany regarding the elementalist. My wife has a low level elementalist alt and she got thrown into the story again when she tried to enter Kessex Hills with it. My initial thought was ‘ok, just hand over the mouse and keyboard and I’ll show you how the ele works’ but that quickly changed.

It was downright hard. I could barely damage them and they still hit me like a truck. Her alt was far from optimized, but she had progressed into the Evasive Arcana style and her gear was decently enough. It was doable, but it took a lot more effort than I was used to on my fine-tuned optimized main. I realize that for inexperienced players, it’s thus nigh impossible.

So I get it now. People are experiencing this all the time and it turns them off the elementalist, and I cannot blame them. It’s been nearly a year since I had experienced playing like that. The elementalist can be great, but it takes a lot of experience, finetuning and knowing all skills, combos and traits from memory. It explains why there’s such a huge rift between the two sides of the discussion. A rift I didn’t know was that large until I once again experienced the other side again. Honestly though, I’m not sure I’m ok with the learning curve being THAT steep. But I would like to apologize for coming across as an elitist: you guys have every right to complain, because levelling an ele is certainly no picknick. But if it’s any consolation, if you do stick with it, in the end it’ll be great. But I no longer blame you for going warrior and shaving 5 months off the learning curve.

I hadn’t played GW1, so GW2 was my first time experiencing the unique combat style (finally quitting WoW, yay). I picked the very fist class that resembled my WoW Mage, an Elementalist, assuming the two classes would be similar – squishy against melee but equipped with a solid set of kiting tools, strong solo capability, ways to absorb/avoid damage, etc. Oh boy was I wrong.

Lets just say that I think I spent my first ~5-10 hours in this game in downed state more than being alive. The class is incredibly difficult to play compared to all other classes. No fancy distractions like mesmer clones, no handy escape tools like thief stealth, no guardian/warrior style face-tanking, no kiting tools compared to what engineers/rangers have.
Just mashing the hell out of dodge as much as possible and backpeddling away from enemies in order to avoid getting crushed. If I pulled multiple enemies then hit Air > Ride The Lightning the hell out of there. Cry a lot if it’s on cooldown.

Things became far easier as I hit 80 and let gear-scaling put me far out of reach of most world mobs, but I don’t think I will be leveling another Ele. What an unforgiving and punishing class to play, with no reward in sight for all this button-mashing.

PvE ele is easy. Kite mobs, gather them into RoF, use all blast finishers. . . profit?!?!

sorrychief.2563:

PvE ele is easy. Kite mobs, gather them into RoF, use all blast finishers. . . profit?!?!

Have you done the Kessex Hills story up-leveled?

And with full ascended trinkets!

I’ll go do it right now on my second ele at lvl 20, you just watch!

ThiBish, it isn’t only new players … its also people that don’t want to go staff. ANet has painted the ele into a corner with having staff and/or being part of a zerg. S/D, S/F, D/F and non-Ascended D/D is not very good in comparison to most of the other classes in the game … even if those classes are not optimally setup. Eles have to put in twice the effort to do nearly the same damage output with less survivability and mobility.