Guild Wars 2

I’d like to start off by saying that this isn’t going to be me whining for paragraphs about how I’m going to re-roll as a warrior because I can’t faceroll hundreds of mobs. There are lots of people complaining about eles, but not a lot of them go into enough depth, and some haven’t even played the class. I like to think that while my main is only lvl 52, I’ve played the class for long enough now to know how to play the game, at least in pve.

I wonder about the Elementalist as a class. It’s definitely unbalanced, but not necessarily underpowered. Sort of lop-sided if you like, great in some areas but lackluster in others. On the GW2 class page, the class is described by arenanet as such:

“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.”

If there are any devs or forum staff that can answer this, I’d really like to know where you want the class to be in 6 months to a year’s time, and if this is still an accurate description. You mention the ability to inflict massive damage with a single attack, suggesting the class was originally intended to work as a glass cannon specialising in one or two attunenemts like the weapons of other classes. In reality, the dps of each individual skill leaves a lot to be desired, and I think that the class is definitely meant to be a damage dealer through attunement dancing and multiple moves. This was at least the case during the BWE1, if you didn’t get a chance to play them then here’s a small taste of the damage a combo could do:

That beautiful 14K crit damage. Then damage got nerfed to oblivion on certain useful spells and utilities, and our dps dropped dramatically leaving us where we are now – throwing points into water/earth in order to stay alive long enough to pose a threat. However, don’t take this the wrong way, we’re far from useless. When a bunker build is played right the class is almost unkillable by less than 3 people. Daphoenix posted up a video on his guide showing him in two consecutive 4v1 skirmishes on wvw, using a bunker d/d build and not being downed once.

This might go some way to explain why arenanet are taking their time and nerfing the overpowered classes slower now. Given the mess the ele is in after the kneejerk nerfs in the BWE, I think they’ve realised that nerfing multiple aspects of a class all at once can have unforeseen side effects. It’s not a nice place to be, because trying to justify buffs in damage is difficult when we’re dominating points just by sitting on them in pvp and wvw.

The class feels like it could do with changing a lot of things. For starters, trait lines. If you want to do damage, you put points into fire, or for a crit build you put points into air. Then you pick traits, but now the problems start arising. Almost all the traits, both major and minor in fire, only help you when attuned to fire. So if you want to go glass cannon and you put 30 points into fire, when you switch out for a combo or because your skills are on cooldown, you may as well have empty trait slots. There is hardly any synergy between the attunement lines, and for a class that relies heavily on all of them this feels a little backwards, like it’s hindering you. It’s like this for most of our traits in all lines, the only one that has proper synergy is arcane.

As it goes, I feel slightly forced some of the way into arcane to even be viable in the first place, as we have to do with 4 weapon sets what other classes can do with one. I like the idea of swapping, I just wish the cool-down wasn’t so long on both weapon skills and the associated attunements. Fire grab for instance, an offhand dagger skill. I agree, during bwe1 we had too much damage on it to justify the low cooldown. But to bring both damage down and cooldown up made the skill underpowered.

If anet are looking to get people to stick to one or two attunements (versatility opportunity here, more options for people to look at, not asking for them to make this the only way to play), then maybe the more you trait into a certain line the less time that element should take to cool down, sort of like majoring in an attunement or two.

I’d also like to address those who have said in the past “learn to play”. I am open to the fact that I’m not a master of this profession, not even close. But rather than saying simply “learn”, how would you suggest to other players go about learning? Playing the class longer? are there videos and things we should watch out for? I feel like I know what I’m doing, but if everything you’ve read here is complete rubbish, please feel free to point me in the direction of the nearest guide – and I’m not talking, these are your skills, and this is what your traits do. I can read the tooltips for that. I’m talking strategy, engage, situational stuff that helps out when you’re not just fighting one trash mob. How all your skills interact, not just “here’s one combo now piss off.”

And finally, damage is something that I feel needs to be looked at. I know what you’re thinking – “oh boy, here we go, someone else crying that their class isn’t warrior tier”. Well I’m not asking for 100 blades damage, just a bit of a buff for our glass cannon builds. For a squishy class with the least base vit/tough in melee range with d/d, trash mobs should not take as long as they do to take down, I’m taking too many hits. I’m not a demigod player, I’ll be the first to admit that. These great players maybe make up 10% of the people playing this class, and just because they can play the class well doesn’t mean it’s balanced. They could play any class and make it look good. I’m talking about the majority of players who picked the class because they either played it in GW1 or liked the sound of the description, and now need to be thrown a bone because balance takes into account how the good players are playing.

Some say that this class is rewarding, and I’m right with you on the fun part. But balance shouldn’t be about each indiviual class and how fun it is, it’s about how classes interact. If this was a game where all the classes dealt damage as fast as an elementalist, sure, this class would be great with some bug fixes. But as it is, the other classes deal so much damage, and with auto attacks no less – meaning we have to step up the dps somehow, whether that be through damage, trait synergy or builds other classes can’t pull off.

I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on pve experiences, as well as wvw and pvp. Does anyone disagree with any/most/all of my points? Anything to add or change? I’m quite tired, so there might be things I typed out wrong or didn’t mean in a certain way, so I’ll correct this as I re-read it.

Thanks, and sorry for it being such a long read!