Guild Wars 2

Anet has stated that each profession is to be able to survive combat via their own unique style. Thieves, for instance, have high mobility and stealth to run away. Guardians have defensive boons to mitigate damage. Necros have a 2nd health bar and plenty of condition control to stand toe-to-toe in a war of attrition. These are things built into nearly every aspect of these professions. All guardians have their virtues, necros their DS, mesmers their clones, rangers their pets, etc. So…

What is the Elementalist’s niche for survivability? I’m new to this profession, but reading the forums and experimenting with traits, I’m having a hard time figuring it out. It doesn’t feel like there’s ready access to any particular method of survivability. I’m guessing a mis-moshed combo of auras, water-weapon heals, air swiftness, at least 1 Cantrip…?

I’d love a dev to explain their concept of Elementalists in combat. It would really help me understand how to build for survivability without having to sacrifice all my offense.

The niche for Ele (and the biggest reason ANet is having such a hard time balancing it) is versatility.

With access to 20 different abilities per weapon Eles are, in theory, able to seamlessly switch from good offensive capabilities to good defensive capabilities to good healing capabilities to good control abilities. Notice I say “good” here and not “excellent”. Eles were never meant to do as much damage as Thieves or Warriors, they were never supposed to be as defensive as Guardians, etc.

Instead Eles are supposed to be able to adapt to different situations and be a Jack of all Trades. Now whether or not ANet has succeeded in giving Eles the proper tools to be able to competently do this job depends on who you ask. Most players love to jump on the bandwagon that Eles are underpowered and not viable in many areas of the game. Many other players argue that Eles are quite strong and simply require a high level of skill to play (high skill level was also intentional by ANet).

I personally am a member of the latter belief in that when played properly an Ele can be a perfectly competitive (perhaps not the best but definitely not the worst) class. That’s just my opinion though.

I main an Engineer, and it seems (at least from your viewpoint) that they are similar to Eles…driven by versatility. Engis can do it all. But their kit choice determines the damage identity, and the traits and utilities determine how much survivability and support they’ll offer.

One thing that confuses me about Ele is that many of their traits apply only when in a particular attunement. Which seems odd, considering the strength of Ele is to swap attunements often to fulfill various roles. That makes it seem almost elementary-simple: deal damage with air (single target, high crit) or fire (aoe, lotsa hybrid), heal/cleanse with water, mitigate or condition damage with earth. This makes me think that Ele is an attrition profession, being able to dish out high, variable damage, mitigate, and heal without having to escape or reset fights. Yet Ele is a cloth class with low HP and the damage output isn’t top tier. What am I missing?

Healing and condition cleanses. But unlike other class survival mechanicsms, it is all bottled up in a couple traits so you need to spend 45 points in arcana and water to get any of it.

So the answer would seem to be to either move those traits to other lines or make their functionality baseline for certain abilities, rather than just swapping around a few adept <- → master traits.

Prism.5649:

The niche for Ele (and the biggest reason ANet is having such a hard time balancing it) is versatility.

With access to 20 different abilities per weapon Eles are, in theory, able to seamlessly switch from good offensive capabilities to good defensive capabilities to good healing capabilities to good control abilities. Notice I say “good” here and not “excellent”. Eles were never meant to do as much damage as Thieves or Warriors, they were never supposed to be as defensive as Guardians, etc.

Instead Eles are supposed to be able to adapt to different situations and be a Jack of all Trades. Now whether or not ANet has succeeded in giving Eles the proper tools to be able to competently do this job depends on who you ask. Most players love to jump on the bandwagon that Eles are underpowered and not viable in many areas of the game. Many other players argue that Eles are quite strong and simply require a high level of skill to play (high skill level was also intentional by ANet).

I personally am a member of the latter belief in that when played properly an Ele can be a perfectly competitive (perhaps not the best but definitely not the worst) class. That’s just my opinion though.

This is well said. This is the most unbiased answer you will get in the ele forums. It takes many months to be good.

Taking time to learn and master a profession I can do. Done it before. Doing it with a complex profession, even more fun. I just needed to understand what mechanics are used by Eles to achieve various results. Damage is always pretty obvious. It’s survivability and utility that are often nuanced. Seems the answers are: 20 water/20 arcane and take the time to L2P. Thanks for the info guys.

Watch videos of good players. Seranegw2 and xunleashed for example

FrownyClown.8402:

Prism.5649:

The niche for Ele … 20 different abilities … good offensive capabilities to good defensive capabilities to good healing capabilities to good control abilities … not “excellent” … Many other players argue that Eles are quite strong … I personally am a member … Ele can be a perfectly competitive (perhaps not the best but definitely not the worst) class

This is well said. This is the most unbiased answer you will get in the ele forums. It takes many months to be good.

Is there a debate book on Eles people keep quoting from? It sounds the same from “many other players.” Who writes the original copy? Who is the orchestrator of these shenanigans?

Be what you say. Show your talk in PvP. I want to see every one of youz guyz that make these comments show up in the final battles in the e-sports competitions.

They need a validation process on these forums. Seriously, how about we get some in-game achievements show on a tooltip when hovering over a name – something that gives credentials for claims that people make.

For next patch it’s simple. It’s about making mandatory skills harder to get and somehow depend on getting lots of heals, so everyone will eventually get back into 30 water again. Because that’s what Diamond Skin will accomplish: need more heals.

FrownyClown.8402:

Prism.5649:

The niche for Ele (and the biggest reason ANet is having such a hard time balancing it) is versatility.

With access to 20 different abilities per weapon Eles are, in theory, able to seamlessly switch from good offensive capabilities to good defensive capabilities to good healing capabilities to good control abilities. Notice I say “good” here and not “excellent”. Eles were never meant to do as much damage as Thieves or Warriors, they were never supposed to be as defensive as Guardians, etc.

Instead Eles are supposed to be able to adapt to different situations and be a Jack of all Trades. Now whether or not ANet has succeeded in giving Eles the proper tools to be able to competently do this job depends on who you ask. Most players love to jump on the bandwagon that Eles are underpowered and not viable in many areas of the game. Many other players argue that Eles are quite strong and simply require a high level of skill to play (high skill level was also intentional by ANet).

I personally am a member of the latter belief in that when played properly an Ele can be a perfectly competitive (perhaps not the best but definitely not the worst) class. That’s just my opinion though.

This is well said. This is the most unbiased answer you will get in the ele forums. It takes many months to be good.

So playing a character with high skill nets you an average win ratio? Where is the logic in that, lol. Sounds like a balancing issue……….

Ele survival is based around using a mix of just about everything other classes can do.

In damage reduction, we’ve got protection, but not heavy armor or aegis.
We’ve got blinds, but they’re spammable as compared to thief or guardian.
We’ve got mobility, but it’s not on the same level as thief, ranger or warrior.
We’ve got some avoidance in Vigor and Mist Form, but not as much avoidance as a mesmer can reach.
We’ve got condition removal, but it’s not perfect.
We’ve got healing, but it requires more effort than guardian.

Elementalists have access to just about every survival mechanism except stealth (though we’ve got a smoke field + combo finishers for underwater stealth, I guess). That’s what defines us the most – not that there’s one survival type that we’re best in, but that we have access to almost all of them.

Some unwarrented hostility towards me. I’m out

Elementalist design philosophy – Work twice as hard as any other class for (at best) second place.

Working hard = more rewarding. As I’ve said, I don’t mind a challenging and involved profession. I main an engi, and it’s a button-dancing good time. But its survivability is obvious to me. It seems like Ele has a lot of tools to use, they’re just not very strong. And to make any one type decent you have to trait the crap out of them.

Dingle.2743:

Ele survival is based around using a mix of just about everything other classes can do.

In damage reduction, we’ve got protection, but not heavy armor or aegis.
We’ve got blinds, but they’re spammable as compared to thief or guardian.
We’ve got mobility, but it’s not on the same level as thief, ranger or warrior.
We’ve got some avoidance in Vigor and Mist Form, but not as much avoidance as a mesmer can reach.
We’ve got condition removal, but it’s not perfect.
We’ve got healing, but it requires more effort than guardian.

Elementalists have access to just about every survival mechanism except stealth (though we’ve got a smoke field + combo finishers for underwater stealth, I guess). That’s what defines us the most – not that there’s one survival type that we’re best in, but that we have access to almost all of them.

Yes, exactly, but the outcome of this is not balanced, but it’s kinda defined by the sentence someone already used on the forums, that “We suck in everything equally”.
And that has really nothing to do with the basic description of this class.

Prism.5649:

The niche for Ele (and the biggest reason ANet is having such a hard time balancing it) is versatility.

With access to 20 different abilities per weapon Eles are, in theory, able to seamlessly switch from good offensive capabilities to good defensive capabilities to good healing capabilities to good control abilities. Notice I say “good” here and not “excellent”. Eles were never meant to do as much damage as Thieves or Warriors, they were never supposed to be as defensive as Guardians, etc.

Instead Eles are supposed to be able to adapt to different situations and be a Jack of all Trades. Now whether or not ANet has succeeded in giving Eles the proper tools to be able to competently do this job depends on who you ask. Most players love to jump on the bandwagon that Eles are underpowered and not viable in many areas of the game. Many other players argue that Eles are quite strong and simply require a high level of skill to play (high skill level was also intentional by ANet).

I personally am a member of the latter belief in that when played properly an Ele can be a perfectly competitive (perhaps not the best but definitely not the worst) class. That’s just my opinion though.

A personal opinion based on many years of pvp games (despite i hate gw2 pvp):

I believe elementalist is designed to be a burst class that needs to be effective to force player into passive gameplay.

As your opponent force you to answer his game, ele just becomes weak.

Other profession are not so dependent on rotations, and that means having the tool you need WHEN you need.

Thus you can react with the best option.

With ele, his abysmal cd and attunements you have a great way of opening a duel (in theory…if it wasn t nerfed to the ground) but as you have to react you have to deal with many cooldowns (attunements because you are forced in rotations and CD because they usually last twice other professions).

That is the difference between reactive gameplay, usually associated with skill and proactive play, usually associated with beginner class.

On the other hand execution on ele is slightly harder compared to other profession due to the higher number of skills.

But this would open the old debate on the meaning of skill: tactic VS execution….

Simply said, we have one advantage (more weapon skills) on the other classes, which is “balanced” by four disadvantages (no ranged/melee weapon swap, bigger CDs/weaker weapon skills, bigger CDs on attunement switch and bigger CDs even on utility skills).

STRanger.5120:

Simply said, we have one advantage (more weapon skills) on the other classes, which is “balanced” by four disadvantages (no ranged/melee weapon swap, bigger CDs/weaker weapon skills, bigger CDs on attunement switch and bigger CDs even on utility skills).

you forgot lowest armor and HP

But each of those drawbacks is extremely heavy…..
The issue is if your opponent is unable to force you into react but just plays passively, ele seems strong.
Otherwyse its clearly bad.

I.E: if you outplay with a wyde margin your opponent, ele is strong.
Its the fact ele is so bad that makes it so hard to play….but more than skill is the need to find gimmicks to outplay your opponent.

LordByron.8369:

STRanger.5120:

Simply said, we have one advantage (more weapon skills) on the other classes, which is “balanced” by four disadvantages (no ranged/melee weapon swap, bigger CDs/weaker weapon skills, bigger CDs on attunement switch and bigger CDs even on utility skills).

you forgot lowest armor and HP

Good point m8, totally forgot about that

Prism described the initial concept very well: Versatility

If the Elementalist is able to switch through all his attunements he should be able to do everything the other classes can do as well (with a few exceptions, like never been as strong as e.g. a Condi class like Necro). That’s why we are limited with our weapon swap, too.

Now come the problems (from the start & right now) with this concept:

>> Unlike GW1, professions differ in health points too and ArenaNet has put the Ele in the lowest HP class as well as in the lowest armour class. Our versatility should balance that downside, but the cool down of many of our skills (especially weapons skills #4 % #5) are so long, that we can’t switch back to a certain “role” in time we need to have at the moment of battle.

>> Many of our traits give us benefits for staying in a certain attunement, which contradicts the concept of swapping often. In addition Lingering Elements is buggy/broken and will not work as we players think it should work, even after the fix Jon Peters has promised (e.g. see the Dec 10th thread about stacking of the +% damage traits with Lingering Elements)

>> Since we are not fast enough to adept to a situation (as described above), Eles has to go very defensive to survive initial attacks. That’s why bunker builds and spec’ing in Water & Arcana is so popular. With this defensive build, our damage is not on par with balanced setups of other professions, so we have a hard time killing them e.g. in WvW. The longer a fight lasts, the less dangerous an Ele gets most of the time (see cool down of skills)

How can the Elementalists class be improved (for the majority of players) – IMHO part:

>> ArenaNet has the possibility the make the gap in health between classes smaller, which would result in huge balancing stuff across the board. This will not happen. The initial flaw will remain in the game forever.

>> Devs need to tweak attunement swapping more than they will do with the Dec 10th update. Now we have a cool down from 16-10 second, in December it will be 13-10 seconds. They need to shave off 2 more seconds (which is not that game breaking as we still have to deal with our skill cool downs too).

>> They need to re-think the idea of putting Cleansing Wave, Renewing Stamina & Elemental Attunement in the Master trait line. Just putting EA there should be enough. There are hints by Jon Peters that this might actually be considered at the moment.

>> They should gradually work on decreasing skill cool downs and watch the effects on competitive play. Also increasing condition duration by one or two seconds on a few skills should also be considered. This might make Condi builds more viable to play.

Consider they are nerfing ele due to a new GMtrait ._. basically nerfing anyone that will not take 30 earth.

On the other side the new fire trait is extremely cool…..

if only i wasn t forced to spend 30 points in arcana, 15 in water and 10 in air just to be viable.

We lack a class mechanic.