Guild Wars 2

I am still an infant player at this game, I have barely a few gold to my name and have yet to complete the story. I’ve gotten my Elementalist to 55 and I have just come to a realization. It’s a melee class. The staff which is the only true ranged weapon has poor damage against any moving targets, so it’s impractical. The scepter practically feels like melee because playing optimally requires the use of blast finishers. Then of course there’s the dagger.

I understand that they’ve moved towards offering melee/ranged/support to all classes in this game so group setups can be more dynamic, but I just feel Ele is slanted too heavily towards melee and it’s confronting considering the traditional role of a caster.

Recently I rolled a mesmer which seems more like a proper caster to me. They have a melee weapon (sword) but I feel like I have an actual choice on weather or not I should use it. The rest of their arsenal has good ranged damage. Every weapon (even the sword) has a clone or phantasm, which is a ranged attack. Then there’s the shatter’s which are a huge bomb of damage/utility that can be used at distance in any weapon set if needed.

This is class polarity is the reverse of what I would have expected. I Initially expected the Mesmer to be a damage over time class like they were in GW1 with all the health degeneration abilities but very little direct damage.

The Elementalist in GW1 did have quite a few melee skills, but I still found skill setups that I could play that didn’t involve using them. In GW2 the Elementalist seems to even have more damage over time than the Mesmer with all our burns and bleeds.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this post was, I guess it’s more or less a complaint. I just feel a little disappointed.

Untrue, with the scepter you can start and finish a fight while dealing massive dmg at range. As a matter of fact if you run against a warrior that has the mace,shield/gs stun build, you will have to burst him down while at range. Even if you have 3 stunbreakers, a skillful warrior with this build will eventually get you stun locked on 1v1 if you don’t keep yourself at range with RTL, LF and/or FGS.

Mesmer GS looks like it does a lot of damage, but remember that a channeled attack shows the cumulative damage, not the damage per tick. While it’s true that Elementalist Staff does miserable damage, it actually does very good Ranged Damage compared to every class except the Engineer, who is a specialized at Ranged combat.

Elementalists do lack damage to an extent, but it’s not nearly as bad as it seems once you have persepctive with the other classes. Scepter Elementalist also has some of the highest ranged burst in the game.

The Scepter is a skirmishing weapon. Pair with a dagger and it’s great at range while giving some good reasons to get up close when the opportunity warrants it. Pair it with the Focus and it’s a straight-up mid-range weapon set. It isn’t intended for use when fighting someone from a really long distance away and the skills are designed appropriately for their range.

The Staff is still a really great weapon for the Ele in big fights against multiple targets. I agree that the Ele lacks a good long-range single-target sniper-rifle-type weapon, but I do think you’re giving our Scepter and Staff short shrift.

With the new buffs to air line , SnD is now a semi-caster type playstyle.

DnD is till the ultimate choice for the pros because its the best. And yes it has limited range

SnF is no where near what is was like in GW1

So is Staff

What ever you remember about the ele in GW1, delete that memory.

The staff, however is something you must always, always!!! carry with you. The situation may arise where you are asked for combos or keep taking.

I was a little surprised at this as well, since I figured the Elementalist would be a “Wizard”, all staves and robes and fireballs and stuff. And you can do that with this class… but the dagger/dagger build suggests a different interpretation.

Consider the Elemental Chaos, the great swirling maelstrom of primal elemental energies. Now place a man at the center of it, the great embodiment of the Elemental Chaos. Now place him in the middle of a fight, whirling about like the wind, daggers flashing like lightning, searing his foes with flame, but with the stability of the earth itself keeping him upright. Ice and fire mix indiscriminately, air and earth churn and bleed his foes to death.

Oh, sure, he’s a “mage”… but don’t ever make the mistake of assuming he prefers to fight a distance. He revels in the chaos of battle. It feels like home.

I am just here to troll)…Only Anet know why =)).But sure it brings a very different experience to Mage definition. Plus and minus I guess.

Staff works. Try casting frozen ground, shockwave, unsteady ground or static field before you lay down your aoes in pve.

Or you can just use glyph of elemental power in earth attunement to cripple things left and right? It’s very easy to keep monsters in your aoes.

I find elementalists awesome. Usually unless you’re some sort of paladin type character RPGs stick magic users at the rear to fire some spells. The problem is that i much prefer to play a battlemage. Why should magic users be stuck at the back? Surely we should be able to conjure some magical defenses to stop us getting chopped in half. We are magical afterall.

We need a new 1200 range weapon. devs have already stated that they’re not interested in making staff viable in pvp.

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

@Jonathan Sharp

Also, focus doesn’t exist.

I run glass staff and the damage is actually not bad. It really shines against multiple targets, obviously. 2k fireball seems slow and weak vs 1 target but it can hit up to 5 at a time from 1200 range, so the potential to deal nearly 10k total from 1200 range is pretty nice, and that’s just the auto attack from 1 attunement.

Esquilax.3491:

I am still an infant player at this game, I have barely a few gold to my name and have yet to complete the story. I’ve gotten my Elementalist to 55 and I have just come to a realization. It’s a melee class. The staff which is the only true ranged weapon has poor damage against any moving targets, so it’s impractical. The scepter practically feels like melee because playing optimally requires the use of blast finishers. Then of course there’s the dagger.

I understand that they’ve moved towards offering melee/ranged/support to all classes in this game so group setups can be more dynamic, but I just feel Ele is slanted too heavily towards melee and it’s confronting considering the traditional role of a caster.

Recently I rolled a mesmer which seems more like a proper caster to me. They have a melee weapon (sword) but I feel like I have an actual choice on weather or not I should use it. The rest of their arsenal has good ranged damage. Every weapon (even the sword) has a clone or phantasm, which is a ranged attack. Then there’s the shatter’s which are a huge bomb of damage/utility that can be used at distance in any weapon set if needed.

This is class polarity is the reverse of what I would have expected. I Initially expected the Mesmer to be a damage over time class like they were in GW1 with all the health degeneration abilities but very little direct damage.

The Elementalist in GW1 did have quite a few melee skills, but I still found skill setups that I could play that didn’t involve using them. In GW2 the Elementalist seems to even have more damage over time than the Mesmer with all our burns and bleeds.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this post was, I guess it’s more or less a complaint. I just feel a little disappointed.

You don’t understand the basic of the game, that’s all. Getting range damage means lesser threat for you, resulting in doing lesser damage than melee. But for melee, you need much more defensive traits/armor/movement/skill to get the damage you want. But even in range damage, staff is just brutally strong, but not in a way you would think of it.

Consider the following: Most of the skills on staff just TICK. We have Lava Font doing damage nearly every second. We have burning. We have meteor shower. We have a lot of AOE CC, Heal, Support and whatever, and all of this on range and on just one weapon. Meaning that we just have to cast once and the effect will apply itself automatically. There is no high risk, no combo, just running around and casting fields with a staff. So how should you even consider there any good damage.
But still, there is a lot:

For example, I run around often with about 10-15 stacks of might. I am no Zerker ele, being more armored with a mix of cleric/knight/zerker gear. On 80, I do about 1-1,5k with a normal crit, but nearly the same with lava font. In fact, I didn’t look up properly, but it should be about that range.
But just calculate: If Lava font is doing damage 4 seconds, along with about 1k damage each second on a supporter, how is that with zerker gear? If you can still cast every other type of spell, how much damage do you actually deal?
Damage means damage over time and not just having high numbers displayed. That is the reason why conditioners are way too underestimated in GW2. And staff is doing firstly good damage over time and secondly a hell lot of AOE. I heal up a whole team with just switching to water magic and casting 2 spells, I can switch back to damage however I want. That is the true strength of an elementalist: That you have such a high mobility of switching from defensive to offensive spells.

Consider this: melee has its advantages: The high burst damage, high mobility, high melee support. But the staff is a ranged weapon, having such disadvantages such as: Going against one mob is not effective, but you can directly whipe out whole groups of mobs if you play your elementalist correctly.

Scepter and staff are great ranged weapons, some of our best damage is in scepter. No other class comes close to the utility and party support elementalist staff offers.

Dagger offhand adds great utility to your scepter. Focus is grossly underrated, very powerful full-on caster type weapon in the right hands.

Very standard ‘wizard’ fare, that.

Main-hand melee dagger combat is a welcome surprise for our class, a mage going melee and doing it well no less is unheard of.

We do it with style, a “melee” all our own that utilizes our elemental prowess. Never seen it work like it does in GW2.

Everything about it is brilliantly planned out.

Seeing that swords and great swords are too cumbersome for a mage class (mesmer not withstanding; most of their attacks involve heavy magic use and little actual weapon prowess), dagger was a perfect choice.

The elementalists’ ability to take the fight to the enemy in a magical/melee mix of dagger play is a genuinely unique style of game play exclusive to GW2’s elementalist.

It’s also a lot of fun, high risk high reward game play. For that reason, you’ll see a lot of people playing that role.

It’s different and fun. You can choose to make your elementalist melee focused, but it’s certainly in no way forced on you.

The elementalist does more then well on scepter and staff. We’re among the best with them. Certainly in our element.

Why is the Elementalist so melee focused?
Simple! Because Anet like Warriors and Thieves… but don’t want us to do the same output damage (actually our damage is less then 50% ? 30% ? )

Our damage isn’t low in melee, if you sacrifice everything for the hammer spec.

If I wanted to just do 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 pick-up hammer
with the hammer… wouldn’t I make a warrior wearing an heavy armor?

Deneb.2697:

If I wanted to just do 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 pick-up hammer
with the hammer… wouldn’t I make a warrior wearing an heavy armor?

I don’t know, would you?

Tarvok.4206:

I was a little surprised at this as well, since I figured the Elementalist would be a “Wizard”,

I think many fell for this tricky interpretation
It’s not a Wizard, it’s an Elementalist: I’d say a mage highly specialized in boosting his own abilities to accomplish certain tasks. In the D&D universe the closest thing that comes to my mind would be a Warlock, but unfortunately the Elementalist is just a poor imitation.

You’re right. All staves on all classes are support weapons. It’s total BS.

Elementalists do less single target damage with their staves than warriors do with rifles or longbows, or than rangers do with longbows.

While its true that scepter is a 900 range weapon, its not really practical to think of it that way. The heavy hitters, DT and Phoenix will likely never hit someone beyond 600 without some great CC. Air2 hits fairly hard and reliably, but the air autoattack damage is even less than spamming fireballs with a staff.

Why? Because GW2 was probably more about challenging the norms than making actual sense.