Guild Wars 2

A lot of people say that elementalists have to work extremely hard to be on par the other classes, and frankly, that doesn’t surprise me that much as I have played an Elementalist for a bit.
I don’t have a problem with more difficult gameplay that is less forgiving if you make an error, but even if you execute your combos and abilities flawlessly, are you even on par with the other classes?
I want to like the elementalist, but I want to know if they are even cabable of being as good as say, a warrior. Perhaps my sights are too high as the warrior is considered to be OP at the moment, but I still would like to know their capabilities.

In pubs Elementalists aren’t having much troubles, since killing noobs isn’t hard.
My thoughts about Elementalist (And I played up to rank 35 with just an Elementalist)…

a) Going offensive:
It’s quite impossible to go offensive and do good. Staff isn’t good for offensive builds so you will have to run S/D or D/D. The burst Elementalists have is dodgeable or interruptable (Dragon Tooth, Phoenix, Churning Earth). And the Dagger 5 skill is on very short range and hard to aim. Therefor any skilled played can easily dodge the damage output from an Elementalist.

b) Supportive:
Elementalists can be great supports in groups when speaking about condition cleansing. But that’s about it. They can stay alive long if ppl let them dodgeroll into (water) combofields. But any decent player knows that if you immobilize/stun them, they’re dead in no time. Even when in supportive water spec.

c) Defensive.
D/D condition toughness build is populair and can do good in pubs. But for tournament play it’s really kitten. There’s always a cleanser in a good team. And if you know that the only thing a Defensive elementalist can kill you with is bleeding/burning damage, you will deffo try to cleanse those. And once again the high damage skills are pretty easy to dodge. I mean Churning Earth 3sec cast time, and it goes on a full cooldown when casted…

In my opinion Elementalist is forced to go for Water Staff supportive mode in tournaments for now. A damage elementalist can still do decent versus bad players, but since paid tournaments are comming I would rather pvp on one of my other characters then my Elementalist since versus a smart player an elementalist can’t do kitten even if he’s smarter.:-)

Basically, what that guy said.

I’ve enjoyed all the shiny graphics, but after trying to participate more actively in WvW I’m realizing that the class is pretty mediocre. Rolling a Mesmer to see if they will give me my spellcaster fix and actually work well.

The thing I would say about the elementalist at the moment is that they are crazy fun, but at higher levels (Orr and in PvP) the skill floor is very high, let alone the ceiling.

This isn’t solely the profession sucking. Quite probably we do need a bit of a buff somewhere, but it’s hard to see where at the moment as we’re still waiting on a list of bug-fixes as long as your arm. Traits don’t function properly, skills don’t last as long/do as much damage as they should, CC skills fire off incorrectly, etc.

I would say that for now, it is exceedinly challenging to play an Elementalist in a competetive format, and other, less skilled players on Warriors and Thieves in sPvP will most likely do better than you, yes. But, when the devs get round to the “look” at Elementalist they have promised, if we all sit and put on our puppy dog eyes hopefully Elementalist will be a bit more of a rewarding profession to play.

At the moment, a handful of players are excelling at PvP. In PvE I see a lot of Elementalists in low-level areas, but signnificantly fewer in areas like Orr. This would support my theory that the difficulty curve kicks in with a vengeance in the mid to upper levels when the Risen appear and can out-kite players. For now, playing past that will be fun, but expect other professions to out-perform you with noticeably less effort.

Take a look at the bug list though. Those are all things which should not be happening, so those are all things that hopefully will stop happening at some point, and will dramatically improve the playability at higher levels.

The class is just poorly designed ATM. Damaging abilities are overly telegraphed, and/or are delayed to a ridiculous degree. Numerous talents apply to a single element yet the skill system mandates frequent switching – specialising in a single element is not viable.

I feel Eles are in a better place than Thieves are for tPvP, and we do fine in pubs. Know your role, and your class, and you’ll be an asset to your team. Yes, it requires a lot of work, no you won’t be critting for 10k, or doing 14k damage Churning Earths (might as well be our equivalent to 100B). But you still bring a lot to any team fight, but finding a role in the current meta that suits a more offensive playstyle is difficult.

A healing D/D Auramancer build packs plenty of potential punch (5k average Fire Grab crits), tons of AoE damage, AoE regen, condition removal, protection, and has some staying power with high uptime on protection, the passive condition removal on Water attune, and your healing skills. You also have 100% fury and swiftness uptime if you so choose, and plenty of map mobility with RTL + Swiftness.

While you bring a lot to the table, it suffers in the current bunker-heavy meta. You can’t kill a good bunker. Even if you land Churning Earth and a burning, 14 Might stack Fire Grab. So, your job is more about roaming to assist your other teammates, grab bosses on Nifl, kill the treb on Khylo (more easily done with a staff), and you can sway teamfights with your AoE damage and support capabilities, not to mention backcapping, and helping your roamer deal with bunkers. It also has a very similar trait and u-skill setup to the staff and S/D tank/heal builds, and all it takes is a weapon swap and an amulet swap to be effective (assuming you’re not just stacking Ogre runes, which you shouldn’t). Find a team comp you fit well in is the trick, and learning to be flexible. If you need a bunker, go bunker – you can do it on the fly. Need to kill the treb? Go do that. Stealing a boss? The Churning Earth + Lightning Flash combo is good at this if you time it well. Otherwise, just jumping in with RTL and your Fire skills should do the trick.

Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth or Cleansing Fire, and Signet of Earth will give you what you need to land your bursts, and survive. Lightning Flash + Churning Earth into a teamfight, or Signeting that slippery Thief to ensure a Fire Grab, or let your team have an easy time manhandling someone, etc. It’s all in how you play, and how you fit with your team.

“In pubs Elementalists aren’t having much troubles, since killing noobs isn’t hard.”

ehhh….I don’t know where to begin dismantling that statement.

OP: I don’t think we are in as bad a state as this forum might make you think. The person behind the keyboard is far more important than the differences between classes. That being said, I do think most players would beat their Ele with any other class if they could play against themselves. (And put in the same amount of practice obviously).

So I read your post. Very good questions.

Are we on par with other classes?

This is actually a very broad and good question. In terms of DPS, no (sounds like you’re talking from a PvP stand point). Many things come into play when playing our class. We have our burst.

We cannot “out burst” a Warrior, but we have the ability to avoid or mitigate the damage they put out and end up “out DPS them”. After bulls charge, they have nothing. We have Mist Form, Cleansing Flame and Shocking Aura and Flash.

For right now, our strength comes from drawing the battle out where we have more survivability and eventually “out damaging” a class. We also have the ability to break up team fights as we see fit.

Now, are Warriors OP’d? That all depends on how you see them. We can pretty much mitigate or stop all their damage. Yes, even with your weapon swap, we can still avoid / mitigate it. It depends on what you run, which you haven’t stated.

Anyone can make a class and take it to sPvP and say it sucks because they don’t know how to play it. You never said you did but it seems like you just took an Ele to sPvP and didn’t like it.

“A healing D/D Auramancer build packs plenty of potential punch (5k average Fire Grab crits), tons of AoE damage, AoE regen, condition removal, protection, and has some staying power with high uptime on protection, the passive condition removal on Water attune, and your healing skills. You also have 100% fury and swiftness uptime if you so choose, and plenty of map mobility with RTL + Swiftness.”

As always Animosity knows what’s up. It is beyond me how people don’t realize the effectiveness of D/D support build. To explain the effectiveness I’ll give an example of how I would support someone as D/D if I show up to a 1v1 where my teammate is losing

-Dodge roll on top of my team mate while hitting water attunement mid dodge roll
5k heal +3.8k hot over 8 seconds + 1-3 conditions removed. The range on cleansing wave (evasive arcana blast finisher) is 240 units. The range on healing ripple is also incredible small. The most effective way to land both it is to dodge roll on top of your teammate while swapping to water attune.

-Share frost aura which gives (8 seconds of fury + 8 seconds of swiftness), use cleansing wave if off cd for anther 2.5k heal + cond removal.

-Swap to earth attune to give 8 seconds of protection.

-Swap to air (8 seconds of swiftness) share shocking aura (gives 16 seconds of fury + 16 seconds of swiftness), EDIT: would actually start in air attune first, rtl in updraft if necessary

-Swap to fire to set up some fire fields to stack might (which last 32 seconds).

At this point water attune would be off cooldown and I could start the process over if needed. Keep in mind this is just an example, realistically I’d be using offensive abilities as well.

Meanwhile the staff ele is wasting his time in water attune setting up water fields + blast finishers for weak heals around 1.1k. Spending more than 3-5 seconds in water attune is just needlessly increasing the cooldown of your most effective heal (water attune swapping+dodge roll). If cleansing wave + frost aura were on cd I would literally be in water attunement for no longer than the 1.5 second attunement gcd and this would still give me time to cast frozen burst.

On top of this you have the increased damage output that Animosity explained.