Elementalists are awesome. The way they have been ‘invented’ is very cool and how they can play around in various elements is very very cool.
It’s just that in my opinion the class is a bit broken in pvp against non-brainless players.
Pubstomping is still possible because for 70% you will only face noobs.
This post is about playing the game with and against good players.
I’ve got around 100 hours of played time on my Elementalist in either level 80 PvE or sPvP. Did around 300 pubs and 200 tournament matches in total. I’ve got lots of pvp experience back from WoW and have always played with top-pvpers worldwide in there getting various glad(+) titles. Not trying to say wow is the same as gw2, but I’m trying to illustrate that I’m a player that really cares about pvp and does it a lot and always tries to get to the top.
This post will be about PvP.
I’ve played around in 0/0/10/30/30 supportive staff build (gear: Tough/Power/Heal). Various S/D builds where my favorite was 0/20/0/20/30 (Power/Tough/Vit or Power/Crit/Prec/Vit). And some D/D builds like the condition dmg build with 0/0/30/20/20 (Cond/Heal/Tough).
- Something that in my opinion psychologically gives Elementalists a disadvantage is because of their downed skills. If I play PvP and meet up against an other Elementalist I always instantly think; ‘Oh nice! That’s my target. Once I get him down he won’t be able to interrupt my finish.’ Many people think like this, so you’re often ‘the easy target’ as an elementalist. It’s just a bit unfair compared to other classes in my opinion. The mist form (while downed) is really good ofc, but it takes long before you can actually use it. I rather have an interrupter 2 skill then the 3 mist form skill while downed.
The S/D build was one of my favorites because I always liked being to kill someone in an 1v1 situation (which was possible, but took ages in supportive staff builds). The thing that REALLY frustrates me is that the keyspells of this build are BUGGED!!!!
Ride the Lightning bugs so much! And if it does, you basically ‘stun’ yourself for ~2 seconds, giving the opponent so many possibilities. I even died at places like the trebuchet in Khylo where it bugged and charged me in a 180degrees WRONG direction; causing me to die from falling damage.
The Dragon Tooth spell is one of the key burst spells, but if you go in mist form and the Dragon Tooth still has to land, it will deal NO damage. Pretty kitten against a burst warrior where you have to mist to survive his first burst and try to get him hit by the tooth at the same time.
Sometimes in a teamfight I used the resurrection Glyph and it just bugged and didn’t resurrect at all. Or spells that have 1200 range that actually appear to only have 900 range cause you to waste them. Or combo finishers that happen at the start of a cast (like dragon tooth) and on your own position instead of on the target.
Most of the buffs given by spells like Phoenix also last much shorter then the actual tooltip say. (5s instead of 10s).
The thing that irritates me is that Elementalists only have burst that can easily be avoided.
I’m not good at making a structured post. But I’ve got so many complaints about either bugs or just mechanics (like downed spells) that cause this class to have so much problems in pvp. I could talk about this for hours.
I played 50 games on my Ranger, Thief and Necromancer and already noticed that it’s so much easier to do your job right as those classes.
Go ahead and troll that I’m just too bad to play Elementalist. But keep in mind, I’m not talking about the pub games or tournament games where you meet bad teams. I’m talking about structured good guild teams that battle against eachother. In my opinion Elementalists are forced into a corner and can only do decent in a group. If the group doesn’t want to zerg you down because you can’t interrupt when downed anyway.;-)
So PLEASE…. ArenaNet. Fix those bugged spells because Elementalist is so kitten frustrating if you’re playing with broken spells! And after that let’s see how Elementalists do, but please keep a close watch on them cus in my opinion we’re one of the weakest (but still the coolest) classes in sPvP.