Guild Wars 2

So I have a level 80 ele, put quiet the amount of hours into this toon. When the forums came up I was excited to see what builds everyone came up with.. but no I’m greeted by thousands and thousands of threads complaining that our class is underpowered and that our class has the most bugged skills (which almost all of them are NOT game breaking). As I do not want to get into all the bugs that I found because they have been listed a bunch of times I would like to remind everyone of this post.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Balancing-GW2/first#post92064

So just keep playing your ele work on your PvP and PvE and when this all gets fixed you’ll be happy to have stuck to the class and able to beast. Don’t re roll an obvious OP class just to get glory in sPvP. When Anet has collected enough data I’m sure 99% of the problems with this class will melt away. Chillax brohams and enjoy GW2

People don’t want to wait years before they’re able to play their elementalist. That’s why there are numerous threads.

I’m perfectly happy rolling the way my elementalist is right now, I dominate. What I don’t like is being forced to play a specific way because the elementalist isn’t capable of running any other build without losing all my HP in under three seconds.

I see what you’re saying but if you look from my Pov, I think our time is better spent figuring out builds/rotation/gear we could do to not die in three seconds.. or is that too much to ask? Personally for PvE

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.0.0.0.0.2.8.11.18.24.0.0.0.5.4.12.19.0.0.31.0.0.48.54.0.0.0.0.30.10.10.20.0

I like this build easy to get to 15 stacks of might (easy with warrior in party to get to 25 if they are running a good hammer build), not to too terrible squishy and great dps. But you know instead of people adding on or improving the build I got going.. Eveyone is worried about us not 1 rotation nuking things.

it’s not that.
how hard it is to grasp the concept?
it’s not like you’re not capable of doing some nice things, it’s that you need to sacrifice everything when it comes to hp/defense and you’re just getting on par with others for doing it.
Plus, you need to rotate attunements.
Warriors to do the same damage press 2 keys..well maybe 3 if they are not lazy.
I mean, if I want to play a game that takes me 400-500 apm to be good, hell I could be a semi-pro Starcraft II player and make some money out of online tournaments/streaming.

Ursu.4163:

Warriors to do the same damage press 2 keys..well maybe 3 if they are not lazy.
I mean, if I want to play a game that takes me 400-500 apm to be good, hell I could be a semi-pro Starcraft II player and make some money out of online tournaments/streaming.

So what you are saying is you want to be lazy and be able to faceroll the keyboard and be awesome? I think some people have trouble understanding the idea of the combat in this game that Anet has brought to the table. There is so much more then just the damage you do and the HP you have, last time I checked this is not a turn based game.. You do not stand still and expect to win. There are so many skills/tools that can work to our advantage and yet people like you still waste our time with your “Lets compare too different classes, and talk about damage and how everyone else needs a nerf and we need a buff” and hell you added on top of that with talking about a game that in no aspect is similar to gw2. Please tell me more about how much you are contributing to this new community?

Sweet gear.

Agree 100% with the OP.

Chill

Justbob.5897:

I see what you’re saying but if you look from my Pov, I think our time is better spent figuring out builds/rotation/gear we could do to not die in three seconds.. or is that too much to ask? Personally for PvE

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.0.0.0.0.2.8.11.18.24.0.0.0.5.4.12.19.0.0.31.0.0.48.54.0.0.0.0.30.10.10.20.0

I like this build easy to get to 15 stacks of might (easy with warrior in party to get to 25 if they are running a good hammer build), not to too terrible squishy and great dps. But you know instead of people adding on or improving the build I got going.. Eveyone is worried about us not 1 rotation nuking things.

I dare you to try this build in PvP omg I lol’d when you said this is your build. 1.9k toughness, are you kidding me? 2.2k attack?

/deaths please. I bet it’s near 100.

FYI, he left the slots for amulet/jewels/rune blank. That’s why the stats are so low.

Voltric.6920:

FYI, he left the slots for amulet/jewels/rune blank. That’s why the stats are so low.

I actually didn’t notice this, thanks. I did notice 0 Arcana though :P

You could achieve some decent damage with this, and decent toughness, but this term doesn’t venture outside of the elementalist class.

You’d (not you, but elementalists in general) still get trashed by a good <insert class here>

Justbob.5897

Personally for PvE

Don’t see how a PvE build could be judged by analizing its effectiveness in PvP.

While I can say that I’m pretty decent at playing an ele, and i’ve won most of the 1v1 i’ve fought in WVW and sPVP, i’ll die 10 out of 10 times when i come across a skilled player playing another class. [glares at mesmers]

I didn’t know I was UP until I read it here. Sure I had some challenging fights but the game seemed to be built for that.

I run a D/D with points in mainly fire, earth, and arcane (for the cd reduction) and I am having a blast. However I think posts I have read here have discouraged me from trying out pvp.

Chop.2976:

I didn’t know I was UP until I read it here. Sure I had some challenging fights but the game seemed to be built for that.

I run a D/D with points in mainly fire, earth, and arcane (for the cd reduction) and I am having a blast. However I think posts I have read here have discouraged me from trying out pvp.

You realize you are UP when you try out another class. You end up getting better result with less efforts very quickly

I agree with the majority (which is obvious if you have read any other post by me here lol). It isn’t that we can’t do well now in PvE and such, it is that I have to put in much more effort to get similar results as other classes. On that note though, I don’t want it to be easier but I do want to be rewarded more for mastering (or getting better in my case) my class. You know it isn’t balanced when you lose to a similarly skilled player every time you encounter them. And it is a slap in the face when they do it with 3 buttons and no weapon switching and I’m having to use all 25 skills.

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

DaedalusDragon.3754:

. You know it isn’t balanced when you lose to a similarly skilled player every time you encounter them. And it is a slap in the face when they do it with 3 buttons and no weapon switching and I’m having to use all 25 skills.

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

This I belive is the dumbest arguement that elementalists need buff.
What do you think will happen if they buff so you only need to use 5 skills? You will DESTROY if you use the remaining 15. Elemtalist is hard to play and takes effort. If you dont like effort then roll a guardian.

Razarei.2809:

I dare you to try this build in PvP omg I lol’d when you said this is your build. 1.9k toughness, are you kidding me? 2.2k attack?

/deaths please. I bet it’s near 100.

</elitism>… please.

As someone mentioned already, the poster specifically stated the build was for pve, do you really think anybody cares that it does not match your pro pvp standards?

Seriously dude, after reading many of your comments on these boards, you strike me as a zealot. Must you push your opinion on everybody who disagrees with you?

The OP said he is tired of hearing about “ele is UP” threads and so you start proving to him that ele is UP. What are you doing?

I like the challenge with playing an ele. I would rather have ANet balance other professions to make them this challenging as well.

Jadda.1753:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

. You know it isn’t balanced when you lose to a similarly skilled player every time you encounter them. And it is a slap in the face when they do it with 3 buttons and no weapon switching and I’m having to use all 25 skills.

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

This I belive is the dumbest arguement that elementalists need buff.
What do you think will happen if they buff so you only need to use 5 skills? You will DESTROY if you use the remaining 15. Elemtalist is hard to play and takes effort. If you dont like effort then roll a guardian.

I didn’t say that I wanted to win with 5 skills. I want to be able to do as well as everyone else when I use all of my APPLICABLE skills. As it is right now if we use all of our skills and are skilled players then we are almost always beat by ANY other class with less or equal skill as our own. I don’t understand how people don’t understand that. I don’t want an easy class, because I like the difficulty of this class (which I have posted uncountable times now). But if I am going to work as hard as I do then why am I still weaker than other characters?

And you are trying to say that my argument is poor when you put words in my mouth and decided that yours was better. I like having 25 skills. But I should NOT have to use every single one of them to still be weaker than any other class with their smaller button rotations.

Have you ever heard of “high risk, high reward”? That is what the ele is supposed to be. We risk a lot (work very hard) and so we shouldn’t still be weaker than the other classes who all have (for the most part) more hp, defense, and attack and support abilities.

These kinds of posts are what I hate to see. Nobody who is in favor of keeping ele as it is (or who just like to argue my points with invalid arguments) wants to give logical reasons. They think (not necessarily anyone in this topic, as I don’t know yet) that just because pros can play the elementalist well against other characters with less skill that everyone should either be a pro or just quit ele. This class isn’t accessible and the return on the effort isn’t there either. But whatever. If you don’t like how the majority of us feel who are giving good reasons, then go play another class because I have a FEELING that Anet will agree with us on most of these points to some extent and help out their very broken class (both the bugs that plague quite a few of our skills, and our overall lack of playability).

So can you make an argument that defends what you want or will you just put words in my mouth again and call me stupid?

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

Couldn’t this be taken as an argument that the other classes need to have greater complexity, rather than the Elementalist needing less?

While I agree the design of the Elementalist is going to need some work in the coming months, does anyone really want ‘mashing 3 buttons’ to be the gold standard in gameplay? I most certainly don’t.

Hydrophidian.4319:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

Couldn’t this be taken as an argument that the other classes need to have greater complexity, rather than the Elementalist needing less?

While I agree the design of the Elementalist is going to need some work in the coming months, does anyone really want ‘mashing 3 buttons’ to be the gold standard in gameplay? I most certainly don’t.

Definitely, but I see the amount of work on Anet’s side and think that just making the effort = reward a much easier task. Some of those classes would require an, almost, complete rework which would be like starting the class development process over again. And for the most part those classes are ok because other classes can counter with a similar tactic. The ele can’t though.

And P.S. I really like the skill required to play the ele. I think it makes it stand out and be more challenging. But from any “challenge” aspect (dungeons, which are already starting to exclude eles and pvp) the elementalist can be replaced by any other class and work better with a team and still require a less skilled player.

Jadda.1753:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

. You know it isn’t balanced when you lose to a similarly skilled player every time you encounter them. And it is a slap in the face when they do it with 3 buttons and no weapon switching and I’m having to use all 25 skills.

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

This I belive is the dumbest arguement that elementalists need buff.
What do you think will happen if they buff so you only need to use 5 skills? You will DESTROY if you use the remaining 15. Elemtalist is hard to play and takes effort. If you dont like effort then roll a guardian.

That’s great and all, but the Warrior mashing 3 buttons will destroy the Elementalist using all 25. It’s not 25 to compete. It’s 25 to be laughed at slightly less.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

And P.S. I really like the skill required to play the ele. I think it makes it stand out and be more challenging. But from any “challenge” aspect (dungeons, which are already starting to exclude eles and pvp) the elementalist can be replaced by any other class and work better with a team and still require a less skilled player.

This is in line with my own impressions so far.

I think the underlying problem with the class is that it’s, generally speaking, not as rewarding to play as the others. That it requires more effort and focus isn’t necessarily a detraction; it could even be viewed as a draw, but that there’s no real significant pay-off for that extra effort… I think that’s an issue.

BUT I do also think the OP needs to be echoed here. I have a lot of respect for the ANet dev team and their methodology, and this game has only just started to get rolling. Even if my Elementalist isn’t wowing me as much as my other characters are (Thief, Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer), she’s still fun enough to play and she still has areas of play in which she shines (group scenarios, support). She’s still viable and can still contribute. For now, that’s enough to keep me mollified until the tweaking starts. I have every confidence that the situation will improve.

If, a few months from now, nothing’s really changed, my knickers might start getting twisty. But I do think that at this stage ‘relax, give it some time’ is sound advice for everyone.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

SNIP

Calm your horses buddy. I clearly misunderstood and I am sorry. Now go calm the kitten down. I agree we need a small buff. But I dont think it is nowhere near as bad as people are saying. And for the record I didnt call you stupid I said the argument was stupid.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Jadda.1753:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

. You know it isn’t balanced when you lose to a similarly skilled player every time you encounter them. And it is a slap in the face when they do it with 3 buttons and no weapon switching and I’m having to use all 25 skills.

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

This I belive is the dumbest arguement that elementalists need buff.
What do you think will happen if they buff so you only need to use 5 skills? You will DESTROY if you use the remaining 15. Elemtalist is hard to play and takes effort. If you dont like effort then roll a guardian.

I didn’t say that I wanted to win with 5 skills. I want to be able to do as well as everyone else when I use all of my APPLICABLE skills. As it is right now if we use all of our skills and are skilled players then we are almost always beat by ANY other class with less or equal skill as our own. I don’t understand how people don’t understand that. I don’t want an easy class, because I like the difficulty of this class (which I have posted uncountable times now). But if I am going to work as hard as I do then why am I still weaker than other characters?

And you are trying to say that my argument is poor when you put words in my mouth and decided that yours was better. I like having 25 skills. But I should NOT have to use every single one of them to still be weaker than any other class with their smaller button rotations.

Have you ever heard of “high risk, high reward”? That is what the ele is supposed to be. We risk a lot (work very hard) and so we shouldn’t still be weaker than the other classes who all have (for the most part) more hp, defense, and attack and support abilities.

These kinds of posts are what I hate to see. Nobody who is in favor of keeping ele as it is (or who just like to argue my points with invalid arguments) wants to give logical reasons. They think (not necessarily anyone in this topic, as I don’t know yet) that just because pros can play the elementalist well against other characters with less skill that everyone should either be a pro or just quit ele. This class isn’t accessible and the return on the effort isn’t there either. But whatever. If you don’t like how the majority of us feel who are giving good reasons, then go play another class because I have a FEELING that Anet will agree with us on most of these points to some extent and help out their very broken class (both the bugs that plague quite a few of our skills, and our overall lack of playability).

So can you make an argument that defends what you want or will you just put words in my mouth again and call me stupid?

We ARE weaker because we have light armor. Nothing we do can change that. Certainly not toughness or vitality. Yes we have to have more skill than other players to be equal because the class takes more skill to play. Yes we have to play all or most of our skills to be equal because that is what Anet put them there for. It wasn’t by accident. We have no useless skills. Yes we have to change attunements as quickly as we can because that is what we have to do to get to the skills that will keep us alive.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

And P.S. I really like the skill required to play the ele. I think it makes it stand out and be more challenging. But from any “challenge” aspect (dungeons, which are already starting to exclude eles and pvp) the elementalist can be replaced by any other class and work better with a team and still require a less skilled player.

I disagree here, I have not had any problems with dungeons. I find myself able to offer a lot to my team and our runs usually go fairly smoothly. In fact I think an Ele offers more in a dungeon run than some other classes. We can offer lots of healing, cleansing, combo fields, cc, dots, buffs, etc. And we can do it all in one spec. Other classes can also do many of those things, which is the beauty of this game, but usually not all of it and they can’t switch roles around as easily as we can mid fight.

I’m not saying that they don’t offer anything to dungeons. There are actually groups that won’t accept eles into their dungeon runs and it makes sense to be honest. It isn’t as risky to take another class because their skill requirement isn’t as high. But say, if our pay off was higher for the amount of skill we need, then this wouldn’t be a problem.

It’s no problem Jadda. I probably went overboard anyways. I’m listening to my recently gained “Guild Wars 2” soundtrack and I keep listening to “Fear Not This Night”…. I much calmer now than ever lol. Seriously…. LOOK UP THAT SONG.

Baladir, I’m not asking to be a tanky ele, just that we have more damage for the armor we do have. It totally makes sense that we have to put more skill into our playing but that skill shouldn’t equal an outcome that is weaker than most other classes with equally skilled players.

I’d like to see more about the ‘exclusion from dungeons’ problem. What’s the reasoning given for the exclusion?

I haven’t seen it happen myself, but it’s been mentioned enough in this forum for me to believe it’s happening.

I haven’t seen anyone in chat ever say they don’t want an Ele for a dungeon run and I don’t know what the reasoning for it would be, either. In fact the only place I’ve seen it mentioned is on Ele forums where Ele’s tend to complain about their class anyway, so I forgive me if I don’t believe it.

There reasoning is that if they get a player who is just as skilled as them then they lose because it takes more skill than other classes to get the same outcome. They don’t want to risk getting a lesser skilled ele when any other class can be taken in and not have to worry as much.

PUGs are always going to be difficult with difficult content, ie. dungeons, and I wish I thought there was a way around that. Classeses which can be played badly or, more importantly, have the perception in the player base to be played badly seem to have that problem in any game, getting into pugs. We are our own worse enemy there and generate alot of our own bad press. About all we can do is play our class well so it stands out. The game is new. Players who are not successful will drop out and the quality of play by the class as a whole will increase.

lol, I haven’t been in a dungeon yet where someone said, “gee we 4 manned that because we had an ele.”

We get owned in pvp. You get targeted because you are the weakest link. There are plenty of other classes that deal similar damage, yet they can get in and out better than we can, and have more durability or hp. There is the problem, with generalized roles for all of the classes, ours is one of the weakest out there. Easy to kill, and not easy to escape. Its pvp where we have problems, not pve.

Baladir.2736:

lol, I haven’t been in a dungeon yet where someone said, “gee we 4 manned that because we had an ele.”

Lol yea. In fact most of my dungeon runs people make comments at the end about how well the run went, how smooth it was, and how well we all worked together.

Avs.1058:

Its pvp where we have problems, not pve.

This I can agree with. I see a lot of complaints on the forum and many seem to make no sense to me because a lot of them are talking about PvE scenarios where I think Ele’s do well. PvP however is a different story.

When contrasted against other classes, I wouldn’t say Elementalists do well in PvE. Rather, I’d say they do well enough.

But, as we’re right out of the gate, I’m not going to kvetch too much about it. All the classes seem to be in the viable range of the playability spectrum. Some more so than others, but hey. It coulda been worse… coulda been a lot worse. Other MMOs have had absolute horror shows w/ class balancing and viability.

That’s not the case here, that’s for sure.

Razarei.2809:

Justbob.5897:

I see what you’re saying but if you look from my Pov, I think our time is better spent figuring out builds/rotation/gear we could do to not die in three seconds.. or is that too much to ask? Personally for PvE

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.0.0.0.0.2.8.11.18.24.0.0.0.5.4.12.19.0.0.31.0.0.48.54.0.0.0.0.30.10.10.20.0

I like this build easy to get to 15 stacks of might (easy with warrior in party to get to 25 if they are running a good hammer build), not to too terrible squishy and great dps. But you know instead of people adding on or improving the build I got going.. Eveyone is worried about us not 1 rotation nuking things.

I dare you to try this build in PvP omg I lol’d when you said this is your build. 1.9k toughness, are you kidding me? 2.2k attack?

/deaths please. I bet it’s near 100.

Lol yeah my deaths are quiet high.. mainly due to figuring out which works and which doesn’t for my play style. Big majority is thanks “Ruins of Orr” Imaright? Please take your childish elitest bull back to LoL or DoA please and thank you

I was in a party the other day with another elementalist, and part way through the dungeon he was kicked out by other members, the excuse being: “We obviously don’t want to waste our money carrying 2 elementalists through here”.
I left the dungeon myself after that.
I have also been rejected from joining beforehand because I was an elementalist.
This is really really sad – I don’t want this situation to last very long so that it becomes engrained into the games culture permanently. Seeing the patch notes complete ignoring or even nerfing the elementalist makes me very sad.

Yeah, just because it hasn’t happened to some people doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen and this really shouldn’t be happening just because it requires more skilled players just to equal any other class.

@Hydrophidian
+1 We are playable, but I feel that it just isn’t balanced. But, and I have said this before, we might actually be a balanced class if we could play with fully function skills/traits and the sort. I really think we will still be UP but I would like to try it first.

I just want to say that I actually don’t think the elementalist needs a huge buff at all. Just a slightly smoother skill curve. I would be the first to admit that I’m not exactly the most skilled elementalist around, but I really don’t feel I should have to prove myself to other people and I dont like by being judged in the first few encounters of a dungeon, where this doesn’t seem to happen with other classes.

@Ajwz, how would you go about that though? I’m just curious to hear another persons opinion who didn’t start their conversation with “get better nubs”.

Well I play exclusively PvP (tournaments w/ around about 85%+ win rate) I’m currently rank 26 so can’t speak for PvE but I see people crying everyday about how Elementalists are so UP etc. and this is not really true. The only thing the Elementalist class needs is a bit of fine tuning like damage upped on some of the air skills, cooldowns reduced on certain skills, things like dragon’s tooth not being ground-targetable and a base HP increase then we’ll be golden.

Also classes like mesmer, thief, guardian need to be toned down a bit (not saying huge nerf just a few minor adjustments to a couple of skills).

Sure we have to switch attunements and put out a lot more APM than everyone else bar engineer but that’s what makes playing Elementalist fun for me, If I played a class where I could just spam 2 buttons to win I would get very bored, very fast.

By the way I play D/D, S/D and Staff support all in tournies depending on what I feel like rolling and do equally well on all 3 specs, it just depends on what your team needs and how it fits your play style.

So for all those people crying, take a break from Ele, go play another class for a day or two then if you don’t want to go back to Ele then don’t, there’s plenty of us who will stay and remain patient, ANET has a lot of other issues such as server stability and account security that need paid attention to before listening to your constant nagging because you aren’t able to faceroll like your friends.

Well I’m not an expert. I play as a staff elementalist at lvl 80 and am half geared with exotics. I have only got about 10 ranks in pvp but my suggestions for staff anyway are:

1. Change some of the channelled skills so that you can cast them while moving, such as Healing Rain and Meteor storm (Not neccesarily change cast times, just make it so you don’t have to stand still)
2. Add some damage effect on top of spells which otherwise only deal with status, such as: Gust, Frozen ground, Flameburst, Cleansing flames
(I think they did this with all of the signets after one of the betas)
3. Make fire walls (and earth walls and walls in general) deal much more straight up damage)

Fara venator.3908:

You realize you are UP when you try out another class. You end up getting better result with less efforts very quickly

I will probably start up a guardian sometime later this month, but right now I am enjoying my elementalist at max level. From what you are telling me, once I start another class, I don’t want to come back

Encrypt.8196:

…….

By the way I play D/D, S/D and Staff support all in tournies depending on what I feel like rolling and do equally well on all 3 specs, it just depends on what your team needs and how it fits your play style.
……….

I’ll cop to not much experience in pvp, but what I am exploring to compensate for my light amor is the Focus. Obsidian Flesh for invulnerability. Magnetic Wave cures 3 conditions and reflects projectiles. Swirling winds destroys projectiles. Comet with a daze. Freezing gust for a chill. With a dagger in our main hand we get Magnetic Grasp for Immobilization. Shocking Aura for a stun. Lightning Touch for weakness. Frozen Burst for a chill. There are of course several utility skills that give us some protection too as well as traits. In Pve Dagger Focus works pretty well but I lack skills with any real range. In Pvp it would seem this could be viable. I certainly want skills that I can cast on the run and do not want any inductions. This weapon combo fits the bill, if I can put it all together. Even Take Root gives me 4 seconds of invlunerability.

Forgot to add one:
I’d like to see the earth spell magnetic aura as a utility spell rather than a weapon one. It is really helpful in defence but you can only use it effectively if you are already in earth attune which most people aren’t, since obviously you have to switch attunements then cast it to activate, at which point you have already been hit by the projectile,

Support the OP!

Well said!