Guild Wars 2

I played GW2 in all the beta weekends, and a mainly played ele and necro. Ele was by far my favourite and I knew I would play one when it was released. So I made an ele as my first character, but I quit it and have hardly touched it since.

I’m not sure what changed between the beta weekends and now but elementalists feel completely different, and I’m having a hard time sticking with it

From what I’ve read they nerfed the heck out of elementalist in beta weekend 2 & 3.

Nerfs happened, but the not radical enough for it to feel completely different i think.

Strang.8170:

Nerfs happened, but the not radical enough for it to feel completely different i think.

The spell coefficients for nearly EVERY WEAPON got dropped pretty majorly between the BWEs. Dragon’s Tooth went from 6-7k to 4k on a crit, fire grab from 8k to 5k. Even auto attack damage got nerfed. That massive of a damage nerf changes how the class plays, whether we like it or not.

@Slithan
My playstyle has remained identical from bwe1 to current date. Only difference is that i couldn´t get away with wildly swapping attunements just because, since i couldn´t do enough damage anymore without properly learning what to combo with what.
I can see though why people feel they had to change theirs a bit, to compensate for loss of damage without longer combos, but that it would be completely different?…well aguess it´s a subjective experience.

Have to agree, during BWE1,2 and 3 i had loads of fun… then within 1 week after release i switched to engineer because ele was so boring and sad…
but tbh it is alot better, some weeks ago i changed back to ele and i really enjoy it again now.

It’s strange, I can see the damage nerf pretty clearly, but I also found myself not getting killed as easily in the BWE’s, where now my level 15 ele can’t pull more than 2 enemies and survive.

Granted, I’m not the best elementalist player yet as I’ve hardly played it, but I just know my necro could handle almost 10 enemies at once, and trying a guardian I was just able to jump into a group and kill everything in a couple seconds and hardly get touched

Levian.6742:

It’s strange, I can see the damage nerf pretty clearly, but I also found myself not getting killed as easily in the BWE’s, where now my level 15 ele can’t pull more than 2 enemies and survive.

Granted, I’m not the best elementalist player yet as I’ve hardly played it, but I just know my necro could handle almost 10 enemies at once, and trying a guardian I was just able to jump into a group and kill everything in a couple seconds and hardly get touched

Propably because with more damage you kill faster which gives mobs less time to kill you.

Also try to remember that eles play very differently to guardians or necros. You will have not learned all eles can offer in 15, 30 or even 80 levels.

Beta weekends I would stack condition damage and was able to literally burn people down, fast. I can tell they nerfed the crap out of eles since beta. Burn condition build no longer has the power it use to along with burst damage build. In Spvp, during beta, I was a face stomping squshy ball of doom. Now I’m just a marshmellow that hits for sad damage.

PS: I also played a thief in beta and they were badly underpowered. It seems like eles and thiefs got thier damage swapped after release.

I have tried out the staff and LOVE the attacks. I’m always an AoE person if I can – on my necro I use a staff as my main weapon, and have wells with ground targeting.

And it works great, in group settings. I found though that it takes what feels like forever to kill a single target with the staff. Its the same with my necro, but I have the ability to swap to my other weapon set for single targets – axe+dagger if you’re wondering.

I also tried D/D and like the attacks as well, loving the higher damage and mild AoE, but I don’t like playing a caster class melee range – it feels way too squishy to me and I drop like a rock. I felt the same on my necro using D/D.

My weapon of choice in the BWE’s was sceptre/dagger for the medium range attacks. However I felt a lot of the attacks were next to useless.

All of the fire abilities are great and were my main source of damage, and seems to be the attunement to use when fighting 2+ enemies.

Air is good as well, being more single target oriented. Water felt useless for me. I’d switch to it and use Frost Aura and Cleansing Wave and switch out, those being the only abilities that seemed worth the time.

I like earth when speccing into it, and the abilities are quite decent but if I was using fire or air I don’t know what situations call for using earth over air or fire.

Also, what is it generally better to stack with eles – condition or power/crit? All of earth and fire cause condition damage so I was never sure whether to go for a condition or power build

Levian.6742:

It’s strange, I can see the damage nerf pretty clearly, but I also found myself not getting killed as easily in the BWE’s, where now my level 15 ele can’t pull more than 2 enemies and survive.

That’s because enemy damage was a lot lower during one BWE.. I think it was BWE2.. It was a bug, and got fixed.. Since elementalist succumb to pressure easily, combined with their damage nerf and enemy damage fix… And to add some major bugs with some key skills (most important ones got fixed), stress tests were hell for elementalists… It was completelty unplayable during minor lag at that times.. It is now just above playable, but still terrible.. That’s what has changed..