Guild Wars 2

Lets see if everybody has the same opinion…
Wich class is the easiest to kill as an Elementalist ?

All dependent on skill level of opponent but generally speaking in WvW:

Elementalists – not seen many good staff users lately
Rangers – the good ones are scary
Thieves – if they have the balls to actually fight since we can’t chase anymore
Necro – attrition be ready for a long fight
Engineer – not that many around, some are touch and go, others disengage
Guardian – another attrition fight, as mentioned block, block, block, heal
Warrior – balls to the wall, and then they run.

Elementalist
15 char

By easiest to hardest
Staff ele
Rangers
SnF ele
SnD ele
Thief
Necro
Guardian
Mesmer
DnD ele
Warrior

Fuzzion.2504:

By easiest to hardest
Staff ele
Rangers

Don’t care about the rest, swap those. Staff ele has one of the best abilities to run away. Look behind → earth 4 → Static Field → Chill Field → Burning Retreat

Rangers are just omnom candy

Easiest to Hardest

Thief – i love it when thieves come at me
Mesmer – they’re squishy
Ranger – just let him faceroll all his evades then start nuking
Ele – if GC, not really. if valk/clerics, a bit tricky
Engie – the grenade spam build are easy but there are some builds that are tough
Guardian – block block block
Necro – that 2 life bars is ugh
Warrior – healing signet and crazy escapes

Wvw roaming: Elementalists
Wvw zerg: Elementalists

With the obvious out of the way…

2nd easiest to kill
Wvw roaming: Guardian – without their zerg, they have no surprises to spring. Just grind them down. You will be surprised how squishy they can be.
Wvw zerg: Mesmer – most zerg mesmers are not well equipped to duel and are very squishy.

Builds are really important here. I run D/D standard setup 0/10/0/30/30.

Generally speaking

Easiest to hardest

Thieves (not p/d condi)
Rangers
Mesmer – (not prismatic understanding all invis skills not using a staff)
Engineer
Necro
Guardian – attrition like has been mentioned
Elementalist – Tied with guardian because it isn’t a fast fight unless they are in like full zerk and bad
Warrior – This probably depends on the build the most there are easy fights and hard fights

The #1 most frustrating is 20/20/30 or 10/30/30 prismatic understanding mesmer with a staff and all the invis goodies. That is the most annoying build in the game currently imo. You can ignore them but part of me doesn’t want to but I usually do anyway.

gards

I run 30/20/0/0/20 Staff Ele in WvW. Generally speaking, I die against any other opponent in 1v1. Staff Ele is not meant to duel. But if it’s in a group setting, I can pretty much kill anything, but what stands out if I think about it is:

Ele – easiest to kill. Squishy as hell. Even bunkers are generaly easier to kill, I’ve killed many Bunkers, even my Level 20 Uplevel warrior can kill Eles. I should note my Warrior cannot kill anything but Eles. That tells you a lot.

Mesmers – generally they are easy to kill in mass combat situations. Sometimes they can be wiped out with one Meteor Shower.

Rangers – surprisingly also easy to kill

Necros – They seem resilient for some reason. Not so easy to kill. They also restrict my movement with all their AOEs.

Engineers – I hate fighting engineers, they leave so much junk around and that junk can kill me

Thieves – well this is split. Stealth Burst thieves kill me all the time. But if they are not stealth bursting me, they die fast and tend to be squishy too. But a lot of them stealth burst me

Guardians – they are so tough to kill. They can’t really hurt me, but man they are tough to kill.

Warriors – hardest to kill, no questions asked. Actually, they tend to kill me before I kill them. All the time.

MarzAttakz.9608:

Elementalists – not seen many good staff users lately

You have peaked my interest, I would to know about this solo good staff users and their builds. If you don’t mind my asking.

I solo roam on my staff ele all the time, and actually do pretty decent against some 1v1’s during fight clubs. I’m not saying that staff can kill everything, but it definitely has the cc and sustainability to either win or run away. I’ve also died a LOT, so take it with a grain of salt. I run 0/20/0/20/30 for now, but will probably try out 0/30/0/20/20 once the December patch comes out for the beefed up tempest defense.

Hmm…when it comes to 1v1 duelling, on my staff ele, my experiences are as follows:

Easiest
Guardian
Ranger
Engineer
Warrior
Thief
Mesmer
Necro
Hardest

silvermember.8941:

MarzAttakz.9608:

Elementalists – not seen many good staff users lately

You have peaked my interest, I would to know about this solo good staff users and their builds. If you don’t mind my asking.

You’d have to ask Thibash about that one

For me a good staff user target in WvW is one that actually gets away while being pressured. Sadly most just drop dead and Mist Form a few steps away. I always feel guilty killing a fellow Ele though.

MarzAttakz.9608:

You’d have to ask Thibash about that one

You flatter me sir. Still, I’m willing to share my build and ideas if you’re interested.

Currently, my PvE/WvW build is as follows:
Skills: Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Armor of Earth, Glyph of Elemental Power, Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Glyph of Elementals.
Air: 25 with Zephyr’s Boon and Quick Glyphs
Water: 15 with Cleansing Wave
Arcana: 30 with Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff and Evasive Arcana
Gear: Soldiers armor, berserker&cleric trinkets (50/50).

The build brings the minimal amount of defensive/healing I can justify and relies on crits to actually deal damage. The fury gained by auras (mostly magnetic aura with a pinch of ice field blast finisher) combined with Arcane Fury is enough to get permafury. The swiftness frees up Windborne Speed to be used for condition removal instead of transportation. The same concept is used with the glyphs: they’re all sources of controlling conditions (most notably chill or cripple), thus constantly slowing the opponent, which makes them easier to hit, which makes them easier to snare, which makes them easier to hit, etc. As you may notice, none of this hinders the build’s performance as a ranged ‘artillery’ for WvW. In fact, glyph of elemental power makes it easier to hit stuff with meteor shower and makes static field also have a chance of slowing stuff.

As for PvP, I’m currently esperimenting with a signet build. I’ve found that combined with the staff’s own control effects, you can harass an opponent a LOT. With the upcoming changes to Arcana and the new fractal rune, I think signet builds may actually become a very good choice for eles.

Bear in mind though, that I’ve accepted that the staff isn’t a 1v1 weapon, and that I am satisfied when I get around the theoretical 50/50 win-loss ratio. So far, I’ve been above that but there may be special circumstances (WvW and uplevelers for example). However, I feel that with my current build I can put up a good fight most of the time.

On a sidenote, did anyone notice that the fire elemental summon also applies cripple?

ThiBash.5634:

MarzAttakz.9608:

You’d have to ask Thibash about that one

You flatter me sir. Still, I’m willing to share my build and ideas if you’re interested.

Currently, my PvE/WvW build is as follows:
Skills: Glyph of Elemental Harmony, Armor of Earth, Glyph of Elemental Power, Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Glyph of Elementals.
Air: 25 with Zephyr’s Boon and Quick Glyphs
Water: 15 with Cleansing Wave
Arcana: 30 with Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff and Evasive Arcana
Gear: Soldiers armor, berserker&cleric trinkets (50/50).

snip

What runes do you use?

4 Altruism and 2 Traveler.

For me, it would other elementalists and thieves that doesn’t use perplexity runes.

Mesmer or ranger atm. I’d include thieves but it’s unfair to generalize because of how many noobs play that class.

Toughest class to kill could be stun spamming warrior and necros.

Edit: Oh of course, the actual easiest one would be other Eles.

I almost always go for the most threatening class first.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t.

Unless the most threatening class is a bunker-type class, then I go for the lower armored people behind it.

If there’s a group of people, I’ll usually go straight for the engineer, then thief when they get bold enough to attack. Necro is also up there, but so is Warrior.

Mbelch.9028:

I almost always go for the most threatening class first.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t.

Unless the most threatening class is a bunker-type class, then I go for the lower armored people behind it.

If there’s a group of people, I’ll usually go straight for the engineer, then thief when they get bold enough to attack. Necro is also up there, but so is Warrior.

From my approach I usually go for the squishiest or less skilled one first. In your scenario I would first target the easy mode thief simply because he can shadow refuge any other member you down and res them and because I find thieves to be a lot easier to defeat than engineers. However, if necro is involved in this group fight then he becomes first target regardless of what other enemy profession is involved.

Since I’m s/d gc I would say anyother gc that doesn’t see me coming or that I see coming first.

easiest to hardest would be:

-Thieves because phoenix fire grab would be enough just set a good 3+5 and maybe 4 if I need fire grab to hit harder which is almost never.

-Elementalist if they are bad. If they are God mode then forget about it they will know which skills to dodge.

-Mesmers if I don’t blow my burst on a clone…

-Rangers If they don’t happen to be running that signet that makes them invulnerable.

-Engineers I don’t even bother chasing.

-Warriors Will just spam 2 until I eventually make a mistake. Or will resist my burst with that stance that makes 0 0 0 to pop up.

-Guardians They just so hard to kill that 1v1 them its impossible because eventually all the league of justice(his team) will pass by and kick your kitten .

-Necromancers Never in my life. If gc they will pop DS boom I have to waste my burst just to take them out of a 15k worth of hp block while they deal tons of damage.
If they happen to be conditomancers I will need to focus just in staying alive. Luckily for me they suck at chasing so I will just rtl into the sunset and say “So long sucker”.

With dagger/focus, assuming that the targets are good :

Ranger
Necro
Thief
Guardian (no chance to lose, but take a lot of time to kill)
Warrior
Elementalist
Engineer
Mesmer

To me elementalist and engineer are still almost impossible to lose against and they are at the same lvl of difficulty, all the other below are close of 100% chance of victory or endless duel (over 10min against good lame perma stealth thief).

I met a good engineer (Kimoe.2607 7th in spvp ranking, each duel 5-10min in www, i won a bit more than i lost, but it was equally matched) and when i didn t know him, engineer where at the same lvl of difficulty as warrior. Since then i think good engineer are far harder to fight against, if you compare to any class. But there isn’t many engineer roaming and even less good engineers.

Mesmer are a pain to kill because of my poor mobility, but if i can manage to land a few interupt skill (racial asura + 2 focus skills), they are easy. So most of time they aren’t a problem, but good mesmer are too hard to control.

Truebanana.5936:

With dagger/focus, assuming that the targets are good :

Ranger
Necro
Thief
Guardian (no chance to lose, but take a lot of time to kill)
Warrior
Elementalist
Engineer
Mesmer

To me elementalist and engineer are still almost impossible to lose against and they are at the same lvl of difficulty, all the other below are close of 100% chance of victory or endless duel (over 10min against good lame perma stealth thief).

I met a good engineer (Kimoe.2607 7th in spvp ranking, each duel 5-10min in www, i won a bit more than i lost, but it was equally matched) and when i didn t know him, engineer where at the same lvl of difficulty as warrior. Since then i think good engineer are far harder to fight against, if you compare to any class. But there isn’t many engineer roaming and even less good engineers.

Mesmer are a pain to kill because of my poor mobility, but if i can manage to land a few interupt skill (racial asura + 2 focus skills), they are easy. So most of time they aren’t a problem, but good mesmer are too hard to control.

That’s odd, I rarely have issues with mesmers now that I play as d/f.

Air 1 spam gets rid of any clone or phantasm instantly, from then it’s easy.

In descending order of ease

Another Ele, most are really bad
Ranger
Engineer
Warrior
Guardian
Necro
Mesmer
Thief

Anything that can repeatedly apply stealth is a problem. At ~400 ping, by the time the server sees my skill activation of even a nearly instant cast skill, the target has already disappeared back behind stealth, and my skill hits ‘nothing at all’.