Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a number of post talking about how weak Elementalist are, how their burst are and anything related to their builds and damage. The thing is, as an elementalist, I feel that the burst is there when I crit, but if I don’t, I literally just wait for my death. I’m talking about 1v1 monsters in Cursed shore, they are like horror. Pure terror. I’ve seen my friends using jobs like Warrior, Guardians, Necro and they can’t seem to have a problem with their damage.

TLDR; I feel that a slight buff is needed, I really feel that mages are supposed to burst people down, not waiting for crits to do it. Our crits should be like our current damage now. For example, if my normal damage is 200, and my crit is 400. Our normal damage should be buffed to around 250-300damage more. These sight changes can really help us in these areas.

*Envy warriors that can 1v3 mobs
*Envy and jobs that can 1v3 mobs
*Looking at elementalist (‘’o.o’’)

VOTE HERE:

1. SLIGHT BUFF NEEDED
2. NO BUFF NEEDED
3. SIGNIFICANT BUFF NEEDED

I’m gonna have to go with 3

For the complexity and the UP of the class in its current state, i think we need a reward for the much effort we put, so i vote 3

1. with fixing some of the bugs would be sufficient

Elementalists don’t need drastic changes, but they clearly need something.

1. Bug fixes.
This will help some key skills/ traits that are widely used.

2. Stronger traits.
This should put the elementalists more on par with other professions late-game.

3. More meaningful auto-attacks.
This should make elementalists less stressful to play against normal enemies. Why must we treat every single wolf as the most decisive battle of our lives, while other professions can get off by simply auto-attacking and using a few other skills every once and then?

I say 3..

Traits need a lot of work , they should either promote sticking to one attunement and make it significantly more beneficial to stay in it or, promote swapping more by adding bonuses to all attunements, wheter you are or not in the trait related attunement… (Or perhaps support both choices.. But that would be too hard to implement with a fixed number of trait options i think)

Damage needs to be balanced, especially air attunement damages are.. Well everybody knows what they are… Single target damage should be a lot higher than aoe dmg.. But other attunements are lacking in both burst and sustained dps, too.. Fire attunement/aoe probably needs less drastic changes, along with earth condition damage though..

Condition/direct dmg build seperation should be clearer i think.. Especially scepter skills are in the grey area.. Both condition dmg and power are useful but neither of them make any attunement (other than earth) shine.. (Might be because of terrible air damages, which would make it direct-damage-based priority attunement)

Elite skills are interesting, change the pace of play ..That’s ok.. But they are not very useful.. And that’s not ok… There should be a boring alternative which would buff you somehow significantly without changing your gameplay (which in turn would be useful always)

There is a desperate need for survival options.. (Surviving means surviving, not prolonging the fight without affecting the outcome.. If you look like you’re going to die, and after all the effort you’ve put in, if you’re still in the same position at which you have started, you haven’t really survived)… That could be achieved with two possible options i think.. One is making the CCs more effective (longer durations) to give the elementalist a chance to go on the offensive once more… Or changing CCs to have an offensive component together with their defensive components.. Both options serve the purpose of prolonging the fight to be more beneficial than they are now.. Because now, if you’re in bad shape (which you will be , if there’s nobody standing between you and the opponent) your most efficient usage of your “escapes” is to escape.. You cannot turn the battle to your advantage in any way, because you simply do not have enough time to react in between your CCs.. Nothing is bringing you back to the fight besides the regeneration of water attunement (which is not bad, but not enough to bring you back, unless you’re support of course, in which case there IS somebody between you and your opponent, and this situation does not apply to you)

Being locked into one range brings many problems with it.. Dagger/scepter/staff choices are not close calls.. Dagger advantages does not justify the risks, Scepter suffers from being good at nothing (Except stacking might.. If you can), Staff is useful when you’re in a group with more than 2-3 other people, below that number you exhaust your offensive and defensive options very very fast.. So for situationally you need them all, but you loose a lot by your choice than what you gain… Other than staff elementalists no other choice excels in one thing (There are other professions, that can fill your shoes better).. Staff elementalists excel at aoe-anything if you don’t know… But aoe dmg-support as an elementalist is good, IF you’re not targeted, and IF there’s more than one target to dmg-support.. That’s why any type of elementalist is great only at WvWvW keep/tower defense.. But i have no idea how this can be solved.. Making dagger elementalist hit like truck, would cripple sPvP.. Making them thougher would be great but how this can be achieved with limited amount of traits (and opening up the possibility of durable aoe-dmgers) i have no idea… Making scepter more dependant on direct dmg or condition dmg would destroy one range option of either dmg type using elementalists…. So this part seems hard to figure out..

Well.. So a lot of things are out of whack if you ask me.. Except from air damage, none of them are ground-breaking modifications… But the total number of game aspects to sort out is a lot…

zafery.6784:

I say 3..

Traits need a lot of work , they should either promote sticking to one attunement and make it significantly more beneficial to stay in it or, promote swapping more by adding bonuses to all attunements, wheter you are or not in the trait related attunement… (Or perhaps support both choices.. But that would be too hard to implement with a fixed number of trait options i think)

Damage needs to be balanced, especially air attunement damages are.. Well everybody knows what they are… Single target damage should be a lot higher than aoe dmg.. But other attunements are lacking in both burst and sustained dps, too.. Fire attunement/aoe probably needs less drastic changes, along with earth condition damage though..

Condition/direct dmg build seperation should be clearer i think.. Especially scepter skills are in the grey area.. Both condition dmg and power are useful but neither of them make any attunement (other than earth) shine.. (Might be because of terrible air damages, which would make it direct-damage-based priority attunement)

Elite skills are interesting, change the pace of play ..That’s ok.. But they are not very useful.. And that’s not ok… There should be a boring alternative which would buff you somehow significantly without changing your gameplay (which in turn would be useful always)

There is a desperate need for survival options.. (Surviving means surviving, not prolonging the fight without affecting the outcome.. If you look like you’re going to die, and after all the effort you’ve put in, if you’re still in the same position at which you have started, you haven’t really survived)… That could be achieved with two possible options i think.. One is making the CCs more effective (longer durations) to give the elementalist a chance to go on the offensive once more… Or changing CCs to have an offensive component together with their defensive components.. Both options serve the purpose of prolonging the fight to be more beneficial than they are now.. Because now, if you’re in bad shape (which you will be , if there’s nobody standing between you and the opponent) your most efficient usage of your “escapes” is to escape.. You cannot turn the battle to your advantage in any way, because you simply do not have enough time to react in between your CCs.. Nothing is bringing you back to the fight besides the regeneration of water attunement (which is not bad, but not enough to bring you back, unless you’re support of course, in which case there IS somebody between you and your opponent, and this situation does not apply to you)

Being locked into one range brings many problems with it.. Dagger/scepter/staff choices are not close calls.. Dagger advantages does not justify the risks, Scepter suffers from being good at nothing (Except stacking might.. If you can), Staff is useful when you’re in a group with more than 2-3 other people, below that number you exhaust your offensive and defensive options very very fast.. So for situationally you need them all, but you loose a lot by your choice than what you gain… Other than staff elementalists no other choice excels in one thing (There are other professions, that can fill your shoes better).. Staff elementalists excel at aoe-anything if you don’t know… But aoe dmg-support as an elementalist is good, IF you’re not targeted, and IF there’s more than one target to dmg-support.. That’s why any type of elementalist is great only at WvWvW keep/tower defense.. But i have no idea how this can be solved.. Making dagger elementalist hit like truck, would cripple sPvP.. Making them thougher would be great but how this can be achieved with limited amount of traits (and opening up the possibility of durable aoe-dmgers) i have no idea… Making scepter more dependant on direct dmg or condition dmg would destroy one range option of either dmg type using elementalists…. So this part seems hard to figure out..

Well.. So a lot of things are out of whack if you ask me.. Except from air damage, none of them are ground-breaking modifications… But the total number of game aspects to sort out is a lot…

Very good post.

definitely 1.

maybe pushing 3 idk i do kinda well already so definitely 1

3. While I do know my way around the elementalist very well (I’m by no means a master), I think there is a lot of room for improvement of the class.

Traits (in particular, grandmaster traits) are rather weak while some spells take either too much time to cast/charge up or the damage is too inconsistent (I’m looking at you Meteor Shower).

Some skills need improvement (Focus skills could do with some changes or buffs) and of course, bug fixing would help out a lot too.

If you ask this on any class forum arn’t you going to get a bunch of 3s regardless of how well the class is performing?

“Why must we treat every single wolf as the most decisive battle of our lives, while other professions can get off by simply auto-attacking and using a few other skills every once and then?”

Story of every Elem. life

Maybe one thing you didnt realize yet. This is not democracy. You dont vote for something to be in the game or change. Arenanet chooses what to change, you can simply write your opinion and wishes.

1 or 2. I personally feel that elementalist is a very good survivor, and puts out decent burst to boot. I wish we had a bit more diversity in our tree, but when I compare our tree and utilities to ranger (my other pvp class), I thank god for ours. I enjoy my ele much more than ranger, and it’s definitely a stronger class.

I only wish Air had a little more single target damage, because as is, I am forced to use fire to put out the deeps.

I have a level 80 warrior and a level 80 elementalist (I literally have 0 life) and I can honestly say that my warrior has an easier time in PvE…but only because he can stand there and hundred blades and kill multiple mobs before they can kill him.

On my elementalist I can easily take on just as many or more mobs than my warrior but I have to MOVE AROUND, I have to use my abilities to KITE and to keep damage off of me.

This is not a bad thing, this does not make one class better than the other. Some classes are more complicated than others, warriors are the LEAST complicated class to play. Arenanet designed it that way ON PURPOSE.

My answer is 2, no buff needed.

Elaithe.6874:

I have a level 80 warrior and a level 80 elementalist (I literally have 0 life) and I can honestly say that my warrior has an easier time in PvE…but only because he can stand there and hundred blades and kill multiple mobs before they can kill him.

On my elementalist I can easily take on just as many or more mobs than my warrior but I have to MOVE AROUND, I have to use my abilities to KITE and to keep damage off of me.

This is not a bad thing, this does not make one class better than the other. Some classes are more complicated than others, warriors are the LEAST complicated class to play. Arenanet designed it that way ON PURPOSE.

My answer is 2, no buff needed.

Oh try kiting mobs that use ranged abilities.

zafery.6784:

I say 3..

Traits need a lot of work , they should either promote sticking to one attunement and make it significantly more beneficial to stay in it or, promote swapping more by adding bonuses to all attunements, wheter you are or not in the trait related attunement…

+10,000,000,000,000,000 (multiple personalities so I get more counts)

Fire trait line just sucks. If you aren’t planning on staying in it almost 100% of the time then none of the traits that you have do anything for you. That is one of my biggest problems. Other classes have these traits that help the character at all times but we only get crap (which is weaker than those anyways) that is only effective when we are in one attunement which goes against the mechanic of the class.

Also, I definitely agree about air. I can’t believe Anet ever had the gall to call the air line “single target high damage” (not exact quote of course….) because it is by no means any where near that. I would rather call it “that line that does some cc and that has the most bugs”.

Elementalist needs so many buffs.
1. Summoned weapons are clunky and don’t do enough dps or provide significant utility to make them worth the slot and the long cooldown.

2. Glass cannon builds just don’t work compared to other classes. The burst capabilities aren’t there and there’s no way to dps while avoiding dps (evasion while dps’ing abilities). One or the other is needed to make glass cannon work.

3. Lack of glass cannon builds would be fine if tanky builds had more utility. Basically if you’re not using a dagger offhand, you have no useful pvp utility. The combo field and heal capabilities of the staff aren’t significant unless you have a full tank/heal power build and then you have basically no damage output.

4. Lack of synergy between traits. Basically wasted traits and abilities going into any tree while sitting in off-stance and no significant benefit to stance dancing beyond maxing cooldown usage (read utility skills) and the arcane tree aoe buffs. If you spec into a tree you should feel encouraged to stay in that stance or receive benefits related to that stance while in other stance (faster ability to switch back to the ‘main’ stance or gain your benefits in any other stance, ie all skills can cause burning if spec’d fire, all skills have a secondary heal if spec’d water, etc).

These are the main issues I see. I’m sure others exist but these are what stood out most compared to other classes I play and have seen played.

It’s frankly shocking how underpowered we are. You see other classes landing single hits for 5k and the highest I get with all exalted gear is 3k.

Whatever. Arenanet clearly didn’t build this game to last.

Another reason to beware of “no subscription needed.” It just means they don’t give a kitten about polishing the product after release.

Before I hit 80, I probably would have gone with 1. Now that I’m in the Ruins of Orr with full 80 gear, defensive abilities, cantrips, and it’s a struggle for survival if I get two enemies that look at me funny, it’s definitely a 3.

I really hope Anet at least acknowledges we need something. =/ I have so much fun on my ele, but it’s such a gold sink trying to do anything (especially story quests) when I die so incredibly often.

I’m pretty sure you can 1v3 or even more mobs really easily as an Elementalist with a proper burst routine.

3. Although I don’t think ArenaNet really cares.

I would buff it slightly over time until it hits a sweet spot. I see no need to buff or nerf any profession by a large amount at one time.

3 for sure…

I hardly can face 1 vs 1 not even talking about 2 or 3 enemies at the same time…

definitely 3.

It’s rather sad when I see a warrior go in 1v3 mobs or chain kill one after another through the whole cave, when I’m struggling to stay alive in 1v1. Also I really like the idea of attunements but it really hurts elementalists (specifically staff build) because if you want to kite, you lose damage, if you go full damange, you’re pretty much tanking and relying on blind/dodge.

TL;DR
I feel that elementalists (mages) need to be able to kite well and still significant deal damage.

In my opinion, mages and warriors are supposed to be the easiest and brain dead class to play. But..

If you want balance then it’s 3.

2. No buffs, just bug fixes.

At 80 PvE we’re great, in sPvP we’re great and in WvW were bordering OP.

I’m torn between 1 and 3. Surely we need a buff, but it will come primarily from a TOTAL traits and elites redesign than from other form of buff (skill effects, stats)

I vote for 1, elementalists needs some minor work.

Number 1, because the bugs on Elementalist is somewhat game breaking in competitive gameplay and fights (PVP/PVE dungeons-boss). A lot of skills aren’t working, broken trait and etc. So it became useless and we are stuck what we have functional.

I’ll go for 3, I ain’t high leveled, but I think eles needs a buff since other classes outshine them.

i’ll have to go with 3. dies too fast, does too little damage, not enough mobility. Also, i would like for mobs to stop running away and regaining health when i’m kiting them…

It’s frankly shocking how underpowered we are. You see other classes landing single hits for 5k and the highest I get with all exalted gear is 3k.
Whatever. Arenanet clearly didn’t build this game to last.
Another reason to beware of “no subscription needed.” It just means they don’t give a kitten about polishing the product after release.

The game has only been out for a month and you’re already saying that they don’t care about polishing the product after release? Do you realize how ****ing dumb that makes you sound?

They’ve been fixing the stability issues with all their effort and have already released multiple patches with bug fixes and some balance changes. Don’t expect them to instantly change everything you want about your class. I have played 200+ PvP matches with my Ele and they’re in a good spot now. Sure, they need changes, every class does, that doesn’t mean the developers don’t care about the fact that they need changes.

God, these forums are just overflowing with whiners and children who haven’t played an MMO besides WoW.

For ele’s right now, PvE-wise, #3. in order to score a point, we need to do a bunch of combos and button mash to score that point. For generally any other class, their autos and a skill here and there is enough. Dealing with the Risen at Orr is just turning out to be one hell of a chore, all the more so with trying to get the vistas, PoI’s and skill points. Let alone that, dealing with a wolf (as previously mentioned) is like the fight of our lives. For other classes, it’s a joke.

PvP-wise, #1. A small base vit/toughness buff would be nice, but it seems with people making D/D ele’s work in tourney play, I doubt my glory rank of 5 will warrant my input much.

WvW-wise, #2. We have an extremely strong kit for siege attack/defense and generally being with a massive mob, you can pass off going a power/precison build, which will be quite painful for the opposing side, eating 2k crits from meteor balls. For skirmishes, you have a snare, stun, slow and cripple, easily turning aggressive play from the enemy against themselves. If we’re caught out 1v1, we can use those spells + haste to open the distance, generally with ease, and if we do choose to fight, it becomes more of a skill match, with the opposing class generally having the advantage (as we have to juggle 20 skills, where as other classes generally only juggle with 10 to 15).

All in all, for a general buff, somewhere between #1 and #3, but to get that buff to work without impacting our already strong kit for WvW will be hard and troublesome.

P.S. This is based off my time maining the staff, with d/d play in PvP and occasionally swapping to d/d in both PvE and WvW.

I actually like where Elementalists are in both PvE and WvW. WvW is obvious, of course, but we’re workable in PvE while requiring a considerable amount of skill to execute correctly, and water/fire are both very desirable combo fields (alongside the necro’s dark) and makes us really good in a group that knows to combo blast finishers in a healing rain/whirl finishers in ice field. It makes soloing fun, too, rather than “walk up, press 2, HUUUUNDRED BLAAAAADES.”

For PvP, I think that elementalists are balanced way too much towards the maximum end of the skill spectrum in group play. Granted, I’m not close to being there yet, but from the videos and streams of Phara, AC Powers, and Sad Face I’ve deduced that elementalists actually perform quite well in very high-skill, organized, pre-made team play. In fact, many of the nerfs that we saw from BWE1 to now are the indirect result of similar extraordinary players taking the high-damage AoE elem archetypes of beta test GW2 and breaking each and every one of them three ways to next Friday.

The problem that this causes is pretty obvious; the extremely skilled players are a small minority in the game, while most of the game are filled with players of a vastly varying spectrum of skill. While it’s okay to make a class more difficult to play than the others, in no game should any class require that level of gameplay especially given how many of your players will never be in one of those top pvp guilds. The elementalist imo needs a new weapon set with lower versatility (like making some skills relative clones of each other, having fewer aoes and aoe controls, while making this weapon somewhat easier to use in PvP) in exchange for more damage and generally easier control. This makes elementalist skill more of a progression – newer players would still be able to use the class and learn by playing and learning slowly from playing PvP instead of being instarolled and giving up on the class, while the top-end players won’t use this weapon to steamroll because they recognize that it’s a less versatile and worse weapon overall at their skill level.

There will, of course, be elems that stick to this learning weapon, but that’s just like warriors deciding to stick with a 100b build in PvP – its less effective when played well and that player should not be a threat to more advanced players, higher damage on weapon or not.

This (and appropriately balancing this new weapon to lower skill levels), I think, will address most of the elem PvP issues of “the class needs a buff, but we can’t buff them because it will make people like Phantaram a raid boss in PvP.”

I realized that I didn’t give numbers to my previous assessment, so guess my opinion would be 2 for PvE/WvW and 3 for s/tPvP. The three of course is not in favor of numerical buffs as much as a lower versatility, higher damage, and simpler to control alternative for most players who are still learning the class. This would indirectly make PvE a bit easier with this weapon as well, but that’s not a problem.

For kicks, this weapon should also be the greatsword, and should have BWE2-era damage.

3!! Ele is the weakest mage class ever seen in a mmo

Honestly if they just fix the bugs and broken traits/skills then we can judge whether or not eles really need a buff right now. I don’t want to see this mechanic get changed because I love the challenge of the elementalist but as it is we put forth too much effort to get back still smaller results than other classes.

So I say 4, fix all the bugs and then we’ll see (maybe with a little buff in there anyways because, lets face it, even after all of the fixes we’ll still be kinda weak).

1 we need slight buff
we are squishiest class and yet it seems like we dont do more dps compared to others
some of the staff abilities needs a lil bit more dmg slow casting spells should be more powerfull
scepter heals are weak compared to staff but have the same Cooldown either few seconds faster reload or a lil bit more healing
i don’t use dagger so i cant rly comment on this one
I dont want to be overpowered so they need to touch eles just a lil bit

2. Because you all need to learn to play and I am a god at gaming.

Anlyon.8375:

2. No buffs, just bug fixes.

At 80 PvE we’re great, in sPvP we’re great and in WvW were bordering OP.

Idk about you but in PvE, I struggle a bit. As for PvP side of things, not much needs to be changed (minor stat buffs) and in WvW ofc we’re good. All you do is stand behind the mob and lay down fire AoEs which I think there’s a general consensus that staff fire is fine.

I think in elementalist forum we all will vote 3.

I’m gonna go 2… I -like- that my ele takes more effort then my ranger, my ranger got boring because of how brain dead it was to play, where as with ele, after i got the prof down that is, i feel like a god amongst mere mortals slinging spells out like a mad man and leaving death and despair everywhere all the while supporting my allies by killing my enemies!! It reminds me of Archon in Rift except im not debuffing myself… hugs the arcane trait line oh how i love you!!

EDIT: Oh, i would like to see the conjures buffed though, our fiery great sword is fantastic and don’t think -that- needs a buff, but the hammer and axes totally do… i think bow and shield are ok where they’re at though (especially shield, it gives SO much survivability it’s amazing)

No offense, but I kinda feel the premise to this thread isn’t really valid. It’s easy to say if something is broken and give our “opinions” on how much work is needed to fix the problem. But we’ll likely find that those opinions don’t lead to a real solution.

I’m a software engineer and I had a mentor of mine long ago used to say unless I come to him with a real analysis of the problem and a solution to how to fix it, all I was doing was complaining.

Complaining will get us nowhere. If anything, let’s take the time to build other characters and give genuine evidence of where the profession lacks, and what may be done to remedy the issue.

There seems to be plenty of analysis and possible solutions being posted in the thread. Good stuff actually.

I’d say 1, probably. There’s not many traits that really seem valid when it comes down to it. And, while I’m pretty sure these are problems that show up for other classes as well: lack of Weapon Swap, while understandable due to the attunement system, is kind of frustrating considering the number of buffs (read: Sigils) that require weapon swap to do ANYTHING. Not saying that elementalists should even have weapon swap, because that would be actually insane as far as versatility. But…perhaps just reconsider some of the features that require swapping, possibly count attunement as swapping, or something of the like.

Then perhaps more minor things like summoned Elementals not attacking things I’m attacking unless I get really lucky and the monster decides to wail on my elemental, and it MIGHT decide to turn around and defend itself. I remember trying out ranger and seeing some basic settings as far as pet aggressiveness that I mentally compared to GW1’s Hero settings, So I don’t know if that’s a good call to work into a universally accessible menu for other classes that can get pets or minions of one kind or another.

1. Small tweaks required.

• Fix bugs.
• Boost auto-attacks (eg Sceptre/Air is clearly supposed to channel while you spam the other buttons, but the damage is meaningless).
• Balance traits (honestly, I see this as a major issue for most classes, not just Elementalists). They should better reflect the attunement-dancing play-style of the class.
• Make the elements do what they say on the box (eg Air = burst damage? lol!)

i am going with somewhere between a 1 and 3 not the number two but buff wise. My ultimate concern is with damage obviously. It is the thing were lacking. I switch attunements when I’m in groups you cant do that in Pve you’ll be dead.

If “every single wolf is the most decisive battle of your life” then you’re doing it wrong. =\