Guild Wars 2

Just curious. I know there are many bugs and about half our traits and trees being a bit undesirable, but to the people utterly convinced ele is non-viable, and so underpowered, what would it take to convince you otherwise?

Nothing you can say. It all comes from personal experience. You can easily convince a player that his class sucks(ofc, cause that’d explain exactly why said player keeps failing at various tasks). But you can never convince a player that the class is ok, just the person behind it sucks.

Just don’t try any other class
i did it and my ele was thrown in the dust i log with it for the cooking only

Batlav.6318:

Just don’t try any other class
i did it and my ele was thrown in the dust i log with it for the cooking only

Why? Just because you like smth else more then you like ele doesn;t mean it’s a universal truth….

1) Bugs fixed, specially the ones that make skills almost useless like rtl, mg, ap etc… Its complicated to really evaluate a profession that has half of his spells bugged
2) Skills – traits that are useless or not well designed reworked (even little changes can do the difference) (downed skills, tornado, conjuring weapons etc…)

TWMagimay.9057:

Nothing you can say. It all comes from personal experience. You can easily convince a player that his class sucks(ofc, cause that’d explain exactly why said player keeps failing at various tasks). But you can never convince a player that the class is ok, just the person behind it sucks.

I think the class as is sucks, plenty of traits are useless or broken. I personally think damage could be up’d a bit since we cant weapon swap your stuck in the classes weapon limitations to adept to different ranges. Animations can be sluggish.

Am not talking about strictly spvp or tpvp or wv3 or pve. but as a whole.

But i still log on and enjoy playing my elementalist. does that mean i must just suck at the game?

I know for a fact that on my ele in various dungeons (especially CM and AC) I was getting focused fired down. Especially in CM with the room after the door man (on story mode) or the snipers on the tree.

then i tried it out on my warrior, and she was getting focused on too!… turns out they just dont like ME!

seriously though, there are times when i was just DPS that my ele would just spend more time on her back, than standing up… but thats what im used to as a clothie anyway.

i personally found it the opposite, i cant seem to play any other class.

Elementalist has way more tools than any other profession, (i play as d/d) It does suck being stuck in one range, however i wouldnt give up having 5 active boons with 100% uptime, 3 interrupts, 3 gap closers, 3 escape tools, 3 auras, root, cripple, hinder.

and that doesnt even include the slot skills. which can give you even more on top of that.

But i do agree that Staff is really sucky, since it forces you into one attunement for damage and hardly any boons, and alot of the skills are pretty useless.

I think ele is fine minus some bugs. If you know your skills well and jump between attunements you can drop 10+ mobs in 5 sec. In PvP I play a roamer/support and yes I don’t pull backstab crits or 100 blade damage but I can buff my team to 7 stacks of might, stop enemy stomps on my team and revive them easily, and in all 1v1 situations I win more than 4/5 times (cept guardians =/).

I have played thief, memser, eng, war, and necro in PvP and I always have the most fun on my ele and my 4 kit eng (very similar playstyles).

The ONLY thing ele need an overhaul on is our underwater damage/attacks. I strictly try to avoid all underwater combat.

edit: one more thing is they need a to replace their #2 downed attack with a knockdown/knockback

Ele is good.
I can´t play another class because I like the effort you have to put into winning. I found a build that suits me and I seem to win most my encounters.
But. (you saw this coming, right )
After deciding to stick to ele no matter what I haven´t played another class. Today I just got steamrolled again and again with my ele in pvp and dug up my mesmer just for the kicks.
Boy. Did I feel like a winner! I had totally forgot how freaking easy it is with other classes!
It´s insane how you can spec to be a full glass cannon and just roflstomp your enemies left and right. Spec a bit vit and tough you´re nigh unbeatable. Maybe playing ele has honed my eye for the battlefield or smthing but I died one time in 15 games.

Nothing – it is underpowered compared to other classes. It’s an easy thing to test — just try playing a different class for a little while.

A decent part of this is because the skill floor is so high, but I think the larger part is due to overly difficult to land combos.

Dragon’s Tooth is the perfect example. It does decent but not amazing damage, but requires an incompetent (or AFK) opponent and/or a utility slot skill (SoE) or 45sec CDs (A5 dagger, E4 dagger) just to land it.

Then there’s the (stupid) partitioning of weapons into attack modes, so staff is only AOE, D/D is only close range. Would it really have been so hard to offer 1-2 skills/20 on staff to do reasonable single target dmg? would it really have been so bad to have 1-2/20 skills on D/D hit at reasonable range?

Auto-attack damage is so low and attunement CDs so long that frequent attunement switching is the only viable way to play Ele. If you wanted to specialise in e.g. fire, you can’t. In fact, a typical 1v1 will require the use of 20+ skills, and if you’re playing from Australia for e.g. with a 220msec ping, imagine how much fun it is to lag your way through the whole fight.

It’s not 1 single issue with Ele, it’s the sum of a lot of small irritations/bad design decisions/oversights/outright bugs than make it UP.

@OP:
yesterday four members of my party have been deafeated by a Champion mob, while one member was cast away from the combat area and would take several minutes to reach again the battlefield.
At this point, a random Mesmer of another guild appeared: he kept busy the Champion for three straight minutes without ever falling below 50% HP and being able to damage it for at least a good 15% of its health pool.
Alone.

Now that’s what I call a good class.

Funny thing is, 1 month ago everyone hated the ele, no one liked it, it was the useless class that couldn’t get a group in tpvp.

Now all of a sudden, the staff ele, s/d, s/f, dd, cantrips, signets, support builds start coming through and now all of a sudden people are starting to realise how good the class actually is.

The problem is two things:

1) This ele is nothing like a sorc in any other game. He doens’t have the OHAMAGAD THIS BURST of the average game sorc, however he has more utility, much much more.

2) The ele has the highest skill cap, I don’t really care what Jon said about Necro’s, ele’s are the hightest skill ceiling. But when you can saftely say you know every spell in every attunement, know roughly when the cd will come up (feel play), don’t need to look at your spell bar to check CD’s and have the correct build, you are one of the strongest classes in the game.

It’s very likely Ele’s won’t get a buff, apart from their downed state. If they buffed ele’s there would be serious imbalance. I know this sounds like a different planet to some of you ele’s who think we’re weak, but there’s others of us who will read this and thoroughly agree.

Ele’s are not weak, they are just harder than most other sorcs in other games and one thing you have to get used to, you are a utility class WITH DAMAGE and depending which weapon set you chose means how selfish you are with that utility or if you’re a group player.

Grevender.9235:

@OP:
yesterday four members of my party have been deafeated by a Champion mob, while one member was cast away from the combat area and would take several minutes to reach again the battlefield.
At this point, a random Mesmer of another guild appeared: he kept busy the Champion for three straight minutes without ever falling below 50% HP and being able to damage it for at least a good 15% of its health pool.
Alone.

Now that’s what I call a good class.

or… a good player?

LOL, convincing a person that they suck is definately an uphill battle. You know if you to the mesmer forums you will see endless crying about how WEAK they are in pve. They get 1-2 shot and have virtually no defense. Then the good ones will point out they do just fine, and can do things like you say. So is it really the class in this case??

Ive been doing mmorpgs for 19 years bro, wanna know how you know a class is balanced or unbalanced? look around
if everyone is playing a certain class, its too powerful. if everyone is not playing a praticular class as much, its UNDERpowered.

everyone claimed “oh i play archers because im an archer person”
then they came to warhammer and saw the shadow warrior and all of the sudden lost interest.
“I played a thief in dungeons and dragons and played a rogue in wow.. i always play stealthers” but then when they played the witchhunter they suddenly lost intrest in playing a stealther.
everyone claims to hate playing a healer, yet when the best damage class in warhammer turned out to be the healer, EVERYONE rolled one.

Street fighter, everyone claimed to be a HUGE Ibuki fan. so they brought her back. but the only reason people were ibuki fans is because she was a top tier class in the previous version. so when they brought her back, she was not as powerful and thus nobody played her.

I see very few elementalist. I see more of late, and they are all dagger dagger changing stances as fast as they can and spamming buttons in mindless directions…….. obviously copycat syndrome. other than that? still all warriors with hundred baldes and shield, dagger thief, shortbow rangers and a zilloion greatsword mezmers.

BishopX.6453:

I see very few elementalist. I see more of late, and they are all dagger dagger changing stances as fast as they can and spamming buttons in mindless directions…….. obviously copycat syndrome. other than that? still all warriors with hundred baldes and shield, dagger thief, shortbow rangers and a zilloion greatsword mezmers.

Only official stats I’ve seen are here:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/?utm_source=client

Mesmers are lowest in popularity.

BishopX.6453:

Ive been doing mmorpgs for 19 years bro, wanna know how you know a class is balanced or unbalanced? look around
if everyone is playing a certain class, its too powerful. if everyone is not playing a praticular class as much, its UNDERpowered.

I agree with you on some points but most, especially the very first one isn’t true.

The ele is in a weird place in that if you are very good with the class then you will in any decent spvp team, it’s not like ele’s aren’t in these teams. Staff ele’s are a reqresuite on Khlyo, and so is a mesmer, and if you don’t bring those two classes at the moment you’re slightly kittened.

But that’s the current meta. One destroys treb the other fixes treb. Etc.

You very rarely see games where one class is specifically a lot harder to play than others. Yeah sure you can argue any class is hard to master, but as seen from the forums peoiple just cannot play the ele to a decent level and whine about it, where at decent levels they are doing just fine.

If you bear with the class, if you learn the builds (and ideally use a naga lol) you will reap rewards with the ele.

I feel it’s one of the strongest classes in the game. It’s also by far the hardest to play, and that’s why I dont agree with the majority of your post as most people want the “easy to play OP class”. People want INSTANT gratification. You won’t ever get that with an ele.

The ele is a force to be reckoned with if you take the time to learn him and learn him well.

I’ve got over 200 hours, 98% of that on D/D, and I’m still discovering new combos. Yes, you can trigger Churning Earth and use Lightning Flash to get within range for big damage, but you can also trigger Churning Earth, hit Armor of Earth for stability regen and 3xMight, attune to water for regen, hit Frost Aura to slow anyone that hits you while giving you fury, then hit Lightning Flash to get you in range with another 3xMight to really hammer your opponent into a bad place. That’s 6 key presses in the span of channeling Churning Earth, but it hits like a monster truck and puts you in a great position.

Now, get proficient enough with that combo so you can not only do it while under the pressure of PvP, but also know when you can and should do it. Also, keeping track of your cooldowns and the vast array of other options at your disposal. Learning what combos to do when is almost more a matter of muscle memory and instict. This class needs to be learned, and it’s a long and deep learning process.

This is a lot to ask of your average player. Even a good player might not be suited to the massive amount of multitasking required to make the Ele effective. But for those of us that do, I think we can all honestly say, we love doing it.

Kilger.5490:

Grevender.9235:

@OP:
yesterday four members of my party have been deafeated by a Champion mob, while one member was cast away from the combat area and would take several minutes to reach again the battlefield.
At this point, a random Mesmer of another guild appeared: he kept busy the Champion for three straight minutes without ever falling below 50% HP and being able to damage it for at least a good 15% of its health pool.
Alone.

Now that’s what I call a good class.

or… a good player?
[CUT} So is it really the class in this case??

he was undoubtely an highly skilled player, but Ele -as it is now- would never be able to accomplish such task: not enough mobility, not enough HP (that Champ could oneshot me, that’s not about skills…), not the same self healing ability if it boosts damage, not enough damage if you want some chance to survive ecc ecc.

Before some misunderstanding: I am not saying the Ele is UP, it definitely needs some tweaking (especially for what concerns damage output which need to be drastically improved) but is mostly ok. Instead I am stating a mere fact: Mesmer can accomplish a task which can’t be accomplished with Ele.
“Balance” means everyone can accomplish the same exact goals, just in a different way: for now, I don’t see this balance.
Basically, if your reply could be synthesized with “l2p”, it’s okay with me, I am willing to learn, and eagerly waiting for a master Elementalist that shows me true wonders such that described in the above post…

I think the class as is sucks, plenty of traits are useless or broken. I personally think damage could be up’d a bit since we cant weapon swap your stuck in the classes weapon limitations to adept to different ranges. Animations can be sluggish.

Am not talking about strictly spvp or tpvp or wv3 or pve. but as a whole.

But i still log on and enjoy playing my elementalist. does that mean i must just suck at the game?

If it sucks so much, what exactly do you enjoy about it? Or are you implying that you are a masochist?

Besides, you didn’t really name anything that sucks just for the ele as a class. Other classes have useless/broken traits, I have seen a lot of staff/gs mesmers so being stuck in a range can’t be underpowering and d/d build has enough catch-up skills anyway, other classes have funky animations also. I have mesmer and ele. The mesmer 2nd downed skill bug annoys me more than anything I ever experienced on my ele.

All I need for my Ele is bugfixes, when everything works fine, I´ll fell like I´m buffed The class is hard to play, and that´s why I play it. I don´t want to be “limited” by a two-button class, just need this one to have it´s skills working. Yes, there are kinda many traits that seems bad/unusable in comparison to others, so I fully agree with those who wants them reworked and the glass-cannon builds should be viable with any class (if you want to die faster, your choice) which is not now for the Ele, but I don´t think Ele is somewhat greatly underpowered, we are weaker than some other classes a bit(in the terms of pure dmg), but the class has it´s tools to make up for this, it only depends on the player….

Hsulf.9370:

1) This ele is nothing like a sorc in any other game. He doens’t have the OHAMAGAD THIS BURST of the average game sorc, however he has more utility, much much more.

Ele <> sorceror

Ele = Warhammer Online Magus crossed with Engineer crossed with vanilla WoW druid.

A little issue of mine is that I was perfectly happy to play a sorceress. I was happy with the clear role and even with the relative simplicity of the class.

There’s none GW2 magic ranged class like that though. I wish there was.
No, respeccing ele to fire does not bring it justice, does not make it a mage nor it’d be fair for the other classes. But no mage is really a shortcoming for this game, after all we DO have warriors and rogues.

Outside of bug fixes d/d and s/d ele’s are fine. I’m not sure of the other weapons as I’ve only played builds around those combos.

Still, the most fun profession in the game.

Edit: Besides the obvious of downed state being looked at for ele, of course.

Grevender.9235:

@OP:
yesterday four members of my party have been deafeated by a Champion mob, while one member was cast away from the combat area and would take several minutes to reach again the battlefield.
At this point, a random Mesmer of another guild appeared: he kept busy the Champion for three straight minutes without ever falling below 50% HP and being able to damage it for at least a good 15% of its health pool.
Alone.

Now that’s what I call a good class.

http://youtu.be/67ToSaS9xjQ

http://youtu.be/QIrqAv8yO7Q

(Thank you daphoenix for the videos)

Whats your point? The Mesmer was skilled and 4 of you had trouble? That has nothing to do with Ele being UP, considering in PvE they’re in a good place.

TWMagimay.9057:

I think the class as is sucks, plenty of traits are useless or broken. I personally think damage could be up’d a bit since we cant weapon swap your stuck in the classes weapon limitations to adept to different ranges. Animations can be sluggish.

Am not talking about strictly spvp or tpvp or wv3 or pve. but as a whole.

But i still log on and enjoy playing my elementalist. does that mean i must just suck at the game?

We technically have more than other classes, 4 attunements, 20 skills, attunement swapping still counts as weapon swapping so in a way we get more out of sigils. Please carry on playing your ele, if you enjoy it why not?

TWMagimay.9057:

If it sucks so much, what exactly do you enjoy about it? Or are you implying that you are a masochist?

Besides, you didn’t really name anything that sucks just for the ele as a class. Other classes have useless/broken traits, I have seen a lot of staff/gs mesmers so being stuck in a range can’t be underpowering and d/d build has enough catch-up skills anyway, other classes have funky animations also. I have mesmer and ele. The mesmer 2nd downed skill bug annoys me more than anything I ever experienced on my ele.

So having a bugged 2nd skill (Even though you have the second best down’d skills) is more annoying than having no down’d skills that stop you from being finished? I’d rather something that works some of the time than having nothing.

All I’d like to see are bugs fixes, viable glass cannon builds and a bit of a re-work on the staffs damage/skill animations. I also suggest people who complain about Ele to go create a Necro, they’re arguably worst off.

It would take fixing our downed, and putting our damage and survivability on par with most other classes (other than necro lol). We do not do the same damage per the same amount of complexity as any other class. Reward complex play or get rid of it. For PVP, people would rather hit 2-3 buttons to kill you than 10, because it just makes sense.

Curring.9752:

All I’d like to see are bugs fixes, viable glass cannon builds and a bit of a re-work on the staffs damage/skill animations. I also suggest people who complain about Ele to go create a Necro, they’re arguably worst off.

I’d agree with the bugs and fixes, as that’s all I want too. But trust me one thing, if either the ele or the necro get buffed people will be moaning about them on these forums for a long time to come.

Good eles and necros are destroying games now, buffs would just be silliness.

^ What he said

There really seems to be a trend where the people praising ele’s are also not playing any other profession. In PvE, ele is the weakest class by quite a margin. My warrior is significantly stronger and more durable than my ele, and running a dungeon with an ele is almost always slower than without, even if they are non-80’s.

As someone pointed out, the main gripe people have is that an ele can be pretty mediocre if played really well, but bring that same level of micro to any other class and you get a superior result. Of course an sPvP group can do fine with an ele, but they’d do better if that player was a competent war/ranger/necro/mesmer/engi.

Hsulf.9370:

I’d agree with the bugs and fixes, as that’s all I want too. But trust me one thing, if either the ele or the necro get buffed people will be moaning about them on these forums for a long time to come.

Good eles and necros are destroying games now, buffs would just be silliness.

Defiantly agree, though the staff does need a bit of work, but it’s mainly bug fixes. They’re complicated classes to try to fine tune, the two classes are tricky to fine tune and they end up breaking something when they fix something. I’m just fed up of people making out they’re in such a bad spot when they’re not.

I love playing my Necro for the fact they’re bunker wreckers.

@Rainsfords I play every profession in Spvp. They’re all different, but you can achieve very similar results with any profession.

Besides the things we’ve beaten to death, ele’s are in good shape.

Me personally I don’t think the Elementalist sucks, or is underpowered, I don’t even think it “can’t” work in PvE or PvP. No my problem with this class is this. I have to use about 10 or more attacks in almost any fight to stay alive, 5 attacks just to defend/protect myself, and 5 more attack to even get my damage across, and if whatever I am throwing elements at is still standing, I better use the other 10 spells I got and hope I make it.

I don’t think the class needs to be dumbed down or made easy to finish off things in a good one or 2 hits, but I should have to be using every single spell in all 4 elements just to make heads way. I won’t lie, when I started off it was beautiful, like seeing someone do a dance of elements, but as time went on and mobs got stronger, harder and everyone seems to have a chain knock down, that dance turned into me rolling on the ground, be it dodging or getting kicked to the ground.

PvP is no better, I find myself half the time trying to get out of combat to change from D/D to Staff, or from D/D to S/D. I was playing with a friend the other day who was on a Thief and got mad cause they so much was going on in the main fight they had to sit back for a few and fire off shots from a bow. I couldn’t help but think “are you kidding me? I would kill to be able to change to my staff or S/D on the fly!”

I see the videos and the guides and they are all nice and helpful, but I think for a lot of us it’s not so much we can’t play or suck, as much as it is the fact that, if I have to be a super hot key, macro spamming, hardcore gaming set up mouse and keyboard player just to enjoy the Elementalist, what the heck do I have to give to be GOOD at it? I am all for skills and learning curves but MAN does this class have a mean one!

For the players that are good and taking names and never looking back, I am proud of ya! I love seeing you Elementalist in action, but for me for now I think it’s time to take a break a try another class. Maybe to curve was just too much for this player, but better to admit it then say something sucks when so many are doing good.

Curring.9752:

http://youtu.be/67ToSaS9xjQ

nice performance, my hat off.
Still, that champion cannot be compared mostly because it doesn’t oneshot: it doesn’t matter how good you are at playing if you get oneshotted.
The point is: probably to get near that level you must excel, when with Mesmer you can just be a “good player” and still manage to pull that off

Curring.9752:

http://youtu.be/QIrqAv8yO7Q

nice, but not real solo (there is a -prolly random- ranger doing his stuff)

The Mesmer was skilled and 4 of you had trouble?

well, considering the champ had 16 levels more than me, I consider already a good achievement having reached him

If the abilities and their timers simply matched their descriptions I would consider it a massive improvement.
If it says it will crit 5 times then make it crit 5 times. How hard is that?

The issue with Ele in PVP is cantrips. 3 Cantrips is almost a must, which negates some offensive power choices. Ride the lightening is just plain broken, which makes it very difficult to hit the RTL/Updraft stun that we have….which is basically a requirement to use if you actually want to hit the ONE bursty combo we have (ring/tooth/phoenix).

I think if they made Dragons tooth an instant cast ability, and fixed the very well known Ele bugs, it’d go a long way to solving the cries of “we’re under powered”, without making the top tier Ele’s into gods.

Oh oh oh I know, duel me and I’ll show you how underpowered my Ele is

Klassic.8057:

Oh oh oh I know, duel me and I’ll show you how underpowered my Ele is

Another special olympics MMA champion heard from.

Buzzkill.9608:

Klassic.8057:

Oh oh oh I know, duel me and I’ll show you how underpowered my Ele is

Another special olympics MMA champion heard from.

Lol just because you suck that doesn’t make me a “special olympics MMA champion” trash cans will always stay a trash can

Klassic.8057:

Buzzkill.9608:

Klassic.8057:

Oh oh oh I know, duel me and I’ll show you how underpowered my Ele is

Another special olympics MMA champion heard from.

Lol just because you suck that doesn’t make me a “special olympics MMA champion” trash cans will always stay a trash can

No.
Trash cans always say that trash can and that would be you.

My ele rocks but that’s not the point.
The point is that the class is broken and needs to be fixed.
Statements that a broken class are fine are stupid and lessen pressure on Anet to fix the class not to mention defying logic.
Eles can be good if you work harder than you should have to and do more than you should have to.
You shouldn’t have to.

Bugfixes and time, that’s all. I’m already convinced ele can do amazing things, I’m just curious how everyone stacks up in an environment where everything is working as written.

Haette.2701:

Bugfixes and time, that’s all. I’m already convinced ele can do amazing things, I’m just curious how everyone stacks up in an environment where everything is working as written.

Agreed and we should have known that the day the game was released and I payed for it.

Buzzkill.9608:

Agreed and we should have known that the day the game was released and I payed for it.

Ideally yes, realistically that’s never going to happen. I do wish they’d get their priorities straight though, nobody cares about holiday events when there’s this many bugs in every class.

Guild Wars 2 Description”

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

When the Elementalist actually fits the description of it as posted on the Guild Wars 2 website. Right now, we are all the glass without any of the cannon. We lack physical toughness and we lack the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack unless it’s a wall or a door for a keep in WvWvW. Don’t get me started on versatility, especially when it’s becoming more and more obvious that the Elementalist versatility is a joke compared to other classes.

“Anything the Elementalist can do every other class can do better. Except die.”

I want the possibility to concentrate on one task – I am a man and I can’t do two things at once. I like the mechanic with all the attunement swapping and all but really all I want is my GW1 elementalist in GW2 – massive fire damage coupled with energy battery.

I don’t like water nor earth and to some degree air.

PS. I am a purely PvE player.

Here’s the thing about elementalist…if you try to play it wrong, you will suck. Probably more so than any other class. But if you play it RIGHT, you will be awesome.

With my mesmer, I can just sit back and spam my phantasms and do relatively well. I CAN play the mesmer better, but it is not required to be effective.

With my ele, if I try to stay in one attunement or just stick to mainly auto-attacks with just a few skills thrown in here or there, I will be terrible. That is just the way the class is, you have to accept it, or play another class.

One thing I hear a lot of new ele’s say is something like “I’m going to be a fire elementalist.” NO! Bad! Ele is not meant to just spec in one attunement and stay in it. The class’ mechanic is being able to swap to 4 attunements on the fly, and you are meant to use that. If you try to specialize in one and put all your eggs in that basket, you will suck.

I don’t need convincing that the Elementalist is good.

It’s great.

But there are things that need to get looked at. For example the Foci. Gale is a useless skill. The fire focus skills also need something changed with them.
We Elementalists also need more viable PvP and dungeon builds.
RTL is still bugged, which is by far the most annoying and noticeable bug the Elementalist has.
Lightning Surge and Dragon’s Tooth have cast times that needlessly increase skillcap, why Dragon’s Tooth isn’t ground-targetable is beyond me.
Many skill descriptions do not match the actual effects.
Elementals are weak. Conjures have weak autoattacks. Many traits are very weak (Conjurer, One with Fire, Flame Barrier, Obsidian Focus, Piercing Shards). Fire Shield is…

I have high expectations of Anet. That is all. Time for pew pew.

I agree with your post Taikanaru.

Elementalist can be amazing as is, but there are a lot of skills/traits that are either useless in their current state, or bugged. So I do feel kind of pigeonholed into the few builds that are viable at the moment.

But with those builds, elementalist FAR from sucks.

Xriah.5743:

I’ve got over 200 hours, 98% of that on D/D, and I’m still discovering new combos. Yes, you can trigger Churning Earth and use Lightning Flash to get within range for big damage, but you can also trigger Churning Earth, hit Armor of Earth for stability regen and 3xMight, attune to water for regen, hit Frost Aura to slow anyone that hits you while giving you fury, then hit Lightning Flash to get you in range with another 3xMight to really hammer your opponent into a bad place. That’s 6 key presses in the span of channeling Churning Earth, but it hits like a monster truck and puts you in a great position.

And then, i’ll press #5 on my sheild warr and block it….or drop a well on you to strip your boons with my necro, or #5 short bow out with my thief, or thow down a sanctuary or a aegis with my guard, or RTL the kitten outta there with my Ele. Sorry, i dont play any other classes…

and it took all of 1 key press and no thought to block all your 45 sec c/d’s you just blew to try and get 8 stacks of bleeds and some cripple……..and i could just remove the cond. if i wanted to eat all that and then smash your face in.

I still get what you’re saying, but because you work twice as hard doesnt me you get paid twice as much.

You’d have to elaborate on “good”.

Many people, despite the innate difficulties in currently playing one, enjoy the profession due to its dynamic play-style (particularly with d/d). The biggest obstacle I find people need to overcome to find out how effective they can be is how quickly and easily they can swap attunements. Those people who leave it bound to the function keys I’m sure have problems. No matter the weapon set you’re using, effective and timely attunement swapping is critical, and if that can’t be handled well then the entire profession will not be played very well.

The problems that need to be addressed have already been mentioned ad nauseam; a long list of bugs, traits (particularly in our damaging lines) that need addressing, and a lackluster Downed State. After that personal experience might dictate what other types of adjustments would be desireable.

I think my personal biggest uncertainty is what direction the dev’s want the game to go in terms of damage and survivability. Right now there seems to be quite some discrepency in terms of available burst damage between professions. They’ve already mentioned that they think d/d’s damage is too low, for which I agree, but at the same time I wish they’d tone down other professions damage rather than bring mine up too much. I like playing the Elementalist because I have to work for my damage, and feel far more like it’s dictated by my level of skill. Other professions however can pull off far more with far less effort (Thieves the classic example), and often with better survivability.

What I want most of all is for the vision that was touted coming to fruition through class balancing. No near-instant kills, no aspect of the game that is guaranteed by any one profession, and a host of dynamic, fun abilities that are both rewarding for the novice and offer additional benefit for those that master it. Unfortunately at the pace they’re moving this may happen, but not for several months as they’re really still working on bugs (both those that have existed and new ones that continue to crop up).

Curring.9752:

We technically have more than other classes, 4 attunements, 20 skills, attunement swapping still counts as weapon swapping so in a way we get more out of sigils. Please carry on playing your ele, if you enjoy it why not?

Its not about having more skills its about the lack of its ability to adept on the fly to a situation. this isn’t a big deal in spvp/tpvp since everything is a close range battle or easy enough to close gaps.

But can dagger switch to a long range fight? can staff hold its own on a close range fight? etc etc. running away and trying to get out of combat to switch is not my idea of adepting.

TWMagimay.9057:

If it sucks so much, what exactly do you enjoy about it? Or are you implying that you are a masochist?

Besides, you didn’t really name anything that sucks just for the ele as a class. Other classes have useless/broken traits, I have seen a lot of staff/gs mesmers so being stuck in a range can’t be underpowering and d/d build has enough catch-up skills anyway, other classes have funky animations also. I have mesmer and ele. The mesmer 2nd downed skill bug annoys me more than anything I ever experienced on my ele.

Does something have to be utterly devoid of flaws for someone to find enjoyment in something, does someone have to write something off as perfect before they can admit they enjoy it?
Its not about what other classes have just as bad, its about what other classes do better.