Guild Wars 2

ok i try all builds you gently post, believe me, i try all but..in conclusion ele atm suck. i explain why.

the best build atm (for pve and pvp too) seems to be condition/toughness, and it’s a nice build, really..

But if i wanna play a condition build i switch to necro, cause the necro is much better in condition/toughness build..

If i wanna play as a glass cannon (even ranged) i switch to any other class, cause any other class are much better as a glass cannon than the ele.

Only way to play ele is as a support..and even here any guardian, engi can do we can do, but, even here, much better than us, and ofc i don’t wanna be a support, or better, i wanna can choose between be a valid support, or be a valid glass cannon..but atm we can’t do nothing good..

i don’t wanna play any other class, cause compared to ele, they are really boring..
and i don’t care to be the op class in the game, of course not, i wanna be just like any other class..any other class reflect really good their profession, guardian do what we expected from a guardian, even ranger, necro, war and so on..only ele seems to be like..umh..nothing..

we don’t play a char, we try to do our best with a broken class..it’s like ,not live, just survive..

i believe in you Anet, do something, please..

Tomas

I agree that the ele is underwhelming, but there are 7 other classes to play, and as you say several of them have viable builds and play styles. I once had my heart set on playing an ele in GW2, but I found I didn’t like it. I moved on to another class (warrior) and I’ve been having a blast. I don’t understand why you think the other classes are really boring – they aren’t. In fact, right now I think ele is the least fun class compared to the others.

i try all other class until lvl 15 and they are good, but (and this is just me) i wanna play a magic glass cannon class, in any mmo, (and even rpg offline), i always play the magic class with more burst, and less survavibility, cause i like kitting mob(and players), cc them and try to kill them before they come on me..(or if they are ranged, try to interrupt them, and so on)..and when i read many description about ele, i thought it was like this..

but ofc, it isn’t..ofc i can play a 1 button war, or ranger, but i don’t wanna do that..(i repeat it’s just me)

i love the gw2 combat style, with dodge, no mana, attunement and so, but i feel so disappointed of the work do about ele..maybe i wrong, ofc, but i wanna play a precise kind of class..(among other things , this class is present in any mmo)..

Sorry, but I don’t have these problems with my Elementalist, which is my main. I do think there are balance issues within the game, but that is to be expected with any game at this stage. I do wish that i wasn’t as squishy, but I evade as much as possible and can hold my own most of the time. I am not a “support” player and in fact I play a lot of the game solo and have no issues. Of course I die, everyone dies in this game or is downed it is just how it is.

I also don’t follow builds posted and such as I find it is more fun to just play and have fun and figure stuff out. I am always evaluating my gear and points and what not and try to adjust every 5-10 levels. I did redo my traits a few times until I was happy and right now my focus is on fire, earth, and water. I’m having a blast and I do feel gear has something to do with it. Having the wrong gear and upgrades can really change your gameplay into something frustrating! I mean “wrong” as in doesn’t support your play style, not wrong as in someone says so.

I think you have to find what class is fun for you, warrior can be a lot of fun (not boring at all), and figure out your own play style that works for you and your class. Everyone is different.

Kalendraf.9521:

In fact, right now I think ele is the least fun class compared to the others.

I don’t agree, elementalist is very fun.

What it lacks is a poor ratio in the two important factors:

Risk : Reward
Effort : Reward.

Some classes have high risk but high reward (thief), others give fat reward for the involved effort (engineer), others give high reward for low-ish risk and effort.

Elementalist is unique in that it imposes an high risk (expecially sPvP / close range builds) for low-ish reward and also gives low-ish reward for the profuse effort.

I.e. on my elementalist I will feel “pro” for having survived 5 mobs taking 5 minutes to kill them, several times going close to death, using all the cooldowns, summons, attunements.
On my warrior or ranger? I just mowed thru them without second thought then went to help that other elementalist over there still struggling since 5 minutes and about to die.
The difference in risk : reward is brutal. It CAN be overcome with quasi-masochistic dedication but why that?
Ele should be very hard to learn but then it should shine, not “busily, barely outlive” every encounter / PvP opponent like it was the last epochal deed.

wait, i can do well with my ele, i have no this kind of problem..but this don’t mean that our class is not broken..a good player can do very well, with all kind of class..expecially here in gw2, and if this should be a single player rpg, no one complain about ele, but this is a mmo, we have to compete, with other class, and compare with other class.. i can kill 2 veteran together if i want, just kitting them..maybe i need 5 minutes to do that, but i can do.the problem it’s not there. the problem is we have no burst, we have no cc, we have no damage and we have no valid support..all this COMPARED TO OTHER CLASS..

So as i repeat, probably it’s just me, but there’s nothing we can do better than other class..we can came close to them, but with all own effort, we can’t do nothing better than them..and i don’t wanna play a class like this..easy..try another class, and maybe you understand what i said..

@titaniumm Can you retype that in English?

dchsknight.3042:

@titaniumm Can you retype that in English?

i’m not english, i try to type in english, but i know, i’m not good..what don’t you understand? i can try to explain better..forgive me..

Let’s not be elitists with grammar here, we don’t even know if the topic creator’s first language is english or not. EDIT: And it seems I was right.

Regarding the elementalist, I feel we have good/ enough defensive skills (except maybe for D/D), and that we work well with a purely defensive staff build or with a healthy mix between condition damage and toughness/ vitality/ healing power.

The problem comes almost completely from our damage, as we are possibly one of the worst damaging professions in the entire game. We need double the skills, double the time to pull those skills off, all at the extreme sacrifice of all other attunements/ defensive options, and we won’t still pull off the same numbers as a Hundred Blades Warrior. It does not help, of course, that our skills are almost as easily avoidable as HB, and we require about as much utility support as HB Warriors to make sure things go the way we want.

What are the main causes for all this?

• Our Scepter/ Dagger fire burst damage was nerfed multiple times during beta, possibly overnerfed.
• Staff is a support weapon with a bland fire attunement. It can’t burst with fire, and it can’t support with fire neither. Staff’s fire is basically a semi-average option to deal any damage to your opponent, because its other attunements can’t. Meteor Shower has no other purpose but to appeal to casual players who love flashy stuff, or to be broken in WvW. There was a time during development where devs replaced it for a skill called Meteor, that dealt burst damage and crippled, being both a reliable damaging tool and a support skill. But the fans whined that a shower of meteors was what they found so appealing about the Elementalist, and we’re stuck with this unsatisfying, either-useless/ either-overpowered skill.
• Focus fire is underwhelming, with possibly one of the worst skills in the entire game. Fire Shield reads: ignore me, unless you want to suicide yourself for 1s burning. With 40s recharge, it almost feels like the successor of GW1’s post-nerf Smiter Boon.
• MH Daggers fire damage is good, but not good enough for the risk involved.

When we add in other elements, OH Daggers sets up bursts nicely with air and deals even more worthwhile damage with earth, but that’s it. Non-fire staff skills lack damage, Scepter’s non-fire bursting skills are very underwhelming, Focus is a defensive off-hand, and MH Dagger has an mix between average damage and average defense.

I agree, English is not the OPs first language and they are trying their best to express themselves and doing a good job of it. I understood! I completely disagree with most of what they said, but I did understand and didn’t need things rewritten.

I also DO play other classes. To assume that people don’t is a bit, well ridiculous in my opinion. I’m sure there is some lone person out there playing just one class, but I am not one of them. I feel that there can be improvements, of course, but my gameplay experience has not been that of a supporting player or struggling to survive. I do feel, as stated, that there are obvious balance issues in the game, but I don’t feel that Elementalists suck, as originally stated!

DiogoSilva.7089:

Let’s not be elitists with grammar here, we don’t even know if the topic creator’s first language is english or not. EDIT: And it seems I was right.

Regarding the elementalist, I feel we have good/ enough defensive skills (except maybe for D/D), and that we work well with a purely defensive staff build or with a healthy mix between condition damage and toughness/ vitality/ healing power.

The problem comes almost completely from our damage, as we are possibly one of the worst damaging professions in the entire game. We need double the skills, double the time to pull those skills off, all at the extreme sacrifice of all other attunements/ defensive options, and we won’t still pull off the same numbers as a Hundred Blades Warrior. It does not help, of course, that our skills are almost as easily avoidable as HB, and we require about as much utility support as HB Warriors to make sure things go the way we want.

What are the main causes for all this? Our Scepter/ Dagger fire burst damage was nerfed multiple times during beta, Staff’s fire attunement was always bland and its big 5th skill has no purpose other than ppealing to casual players and being OP for WvW, Focus fire is underwhelming, and MH Daggers fire damage is decent, but not good enough for the risk involved. When we add in other elements, OH Daggers sets up bursts nicely with air and deals even more worthwhile damage with earth, but that’s it. Non-fire staff skills lack damage, Scepter’s non-fire bursting skills are very underwhelming, Focus is a defensive off-hand, and MH Dagger has an mix between average damage and average defense.

Thank you Diogo, you explain in a comprehensive english more or less what i mean..

O.T: i wanna ask sorry to all for my bad english, i try to explain as better as i can, but unfortunately, i’m not english, and i do many grammatic errors..sorry again..

Yayabingyi.2815:

I agree, English is not the OPs first language and they are trying their best to express themselves and doing a good job of it. I understood! I completely disagree with most of what they said, but I did understand and didn’t need things rewritten.

I also DO play other classes. To assume that people don’t is a bit, well ridiculous in my opinion. I’m sure there is some lone person out there playing just one class, but I am not one of them. I feel that there can be improvements, of course, but my gameplay experience has not been that of a supporting player or struggling to survive. I do feel, as stated, that there are obvious balance issues in the game, but I don’t feel that Elementalists suck, as originally stated!

first of all,thank you for your comprehension i appreciate it

2) probably i explain myself bad..(infact for be clear i repeat many time PROBABLY IT’S JUST ME ) i can explain many things, but probably because of my english, I would be misunderstood..so i try to be ‘fast’..ele (for me) need more burst damage..because this is what I expected from elementalist..

i’m honest, i wanna play the most burst magic damaging class (ofc, with low survavibility) and ele don’t reflect this..

i don’t wanna be rude, i only speak quickly to make as few mistakes as possible

Diogo, the problem is only partially one of damage. Even if they brought up single target damage up to speed and jacked up the autoattacks, the class would still be a headache to play due to the attunement system. It’s finicky and demands exceedingly high APM and I don’t believe it will ever be more than a minority taste as a result. Too much busy work. They would have to go back to the drawing board for me at any rate and drop the entire attunement system. I don’t want 20 weak and situational skills that lock me into a single weapon set. I much prefer 10 strong skills and two weapon sets. More in this case is not better. They overdesigned the class. It needs to be streamlined and simplified. The elementalist is GW2 by Rube Goldberg. It’s way too contrived in comparison with any other option.

Don’t worry about your english. Most of us can figure out what you are saying and if we have problems, and you don’t mind, we can just ask you to clarify. There’s no reason to worry about where you were born or what language you speak best here, those kind of people just disagree and can’t argue with logic so they lash out.

I’m still enjoying the game (even on my ele) but people are right. High risk : low reward is really boring after a while and adds a type of challenge that isn’t any fun. The challenge is only fun if in the end you are rewarded for it. Completing a challenging dungeon is fun because you know you accomplished something, but when you solo a small group of 2 enemies and barely make it out after some amazing feat of dodging and skill use, it isn’t any fun.

That being said, play a guardian. I have found that the guardian is a very fun and complicated class to play well so it matches the play style that I found interesting with the ele without the paper-defense and the paper cut attacks. I used to think people were exaggerating when they said that they had tried a different class after leveling an ele to 80 and gasped at the extreme difference. I definitely agree with them now. HUGE difference.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Don’t worry about your english. Most of us can figure out what you are saying and if we have problems, and you don’t mind, we can just ask you to clarify. There’s no reason to worry about where you were born or what language you speak best here, those kind of people just disagree and can’t argue with logic so they lash out.

I’m still enjoying the game (even on my ele) but people are right. High risk : low reward is really boring after a while and adds a type of challenge that isn’t any fun. The challenge is only fun if in the end you are rewarded for it. Completing a challenging dungeon is fun because you know you accomplished something, but when you solo a small group of 2 enemies and barely make it out after some amazing feat of dodging and skill use, it isn’t any fun.

That being said, play a guardian. I have found that the guardian is a very fun and complicated class to play well so it matches the play style that I found interesting with the ele without the paper-defense and the paper cut attacks. I used to think people were exaggerating when they said that they had tried a different class after leveling an ele to 80 and gasped at the extreme difference. I definitely agree with them now. HUGE difference.

thank you for your answer, and yes, i’m totally agree with you.
i have a lvl 28 guardian, and i see huge difference between these class too..

the guardian it’s ok, it’a good dps, and have a high survavibility..with mace/focus you can probably kill any veteran without getting one hit, and if you get hit, you regenerate your hp very fast..and if that was not enough you can switch to scepter/torch(or shield), immobilize your target, and keep doing dps aswell..i mean THIS for versatility..(and this is just an example)..ele don’t have this kind of ‘trick’..but don’t have neither guardian’s damage..and you know..guardian it’s not a glass cannon..it’s a balanced class..we should do atleast 150 % of damage guardian to make sense of existence (in my honestly opinion of course)

i love the gw2 combat style, with dodge, no mana, attunement and so, but i feel so disappointed of the work do about ele..maybe i wrong, ofc, but i wanna play a precise kind of class..(among other things , this class is present in any mmo).

If I understood you correctly you want to play a character with low survivability but big damage, preferably from 1200 range. Such a profession does not exist in the game and most likely never will because Guild Wars works different than “any mmo”. If you want big damage you have to go in melee.
Take a look at the Thief, it should fit your desire for a low survivability/high damage profession the best.

^Elementalists do fill the role of a glass cannon with some of their weapon sets. By design, they have the worst passive defense, and rely on active defenses, kiting, and chaining burst skills. It’s just that the numbers aren’t high enough for that role to be rewarding.

And yes, the elementalists will always be “overly complicated” due to attunements. Giving to one profession two times the amount of skills of other professions, and keeping it as balanced as everything else, leads to some pretty unelegant quantity > quality skillset. Engineers are at a much better state, because you’re free to choose how many kits you bring with them, and so their normal weapon skills are individually strong, while it’s your decision to go for a more busy style, or for a simpler style.

That being said, chaining cross-elemental skills can be very fun, and I think elementalists can be fixed without drastic changes. Maybe if there were more cross-elemental combos and if those were quicker to cast/ set up? If the devs are going to give us so many drawbacks to balance this profession, shouldn’t at least their skills be individually strong?

I dont have much of a problem with our current damage numbers for scepter dagger, air could use a little love. But the main problem i find is dragons too NEEDS a knockdown on the enemy to ever hit, unless they are in a comma.

I think one of the answers is that we need to have an easier time surviving. The different shields available I think should all have some damage absorbant ability, on top of an effect. The times be made longer on them (like 10+ seconds) at the cost of the effect being lessened. Shield for 2-3 seconds just either make the enemy not want to hit you for a few then front load a bunch of damage on you, or the effect doesn’t matter to them and they keep attacking.

Just reroll. It’s honestly early enough. I’m in a same spot as you, and probably holding out while semi-rerolling warrior for WvW and playing mesmer in sPvP.

The good part about sPvP is that it’s not linked to PvE, so your PvE “main” doesn’t matter. You can always just roll whatever works best at any given moment. Elementalist is broken right now, but so is mesmer, only in opposite direction. It’s hilariously overpowered across several builds, fairly easy to pick up and will get your into decent tourney teams after getting a hang of it.

Good luck.

The thing you guys are all forgetting is that Guild Wars 2 was supposed to break the paradigm of “this-class-does-this” and “that-class-does-that” and in some cases this is true, but clearly not in the case of the elementalist. You all say “just reroll” but why should we? I came to this game FOR the elementalist. I was an Ele in GW1 and had a blast, and now I came to GW2 and recieve this poorly executed excuse for an elementalist that does everything, but less effectively than everything else. Yeah we have some flashy skills and a few things we do hurt really bad, but the chances of lining them up in sPVP with so many stun breaks and dodges at everyone’s disposal and the very limited choice of effective weapons (i.e., use scepter or go home) makes me wonder what aNet was thinking with all the nerfs. I mean, I’ve seen videos from BWE3 where a staff elementalist crit’d for 2500-3000 with lava font while using a build that still gave him a decent amount of survivability and 20k health. Now, I can’t even do that kind of damage with a full glass cannon build with 14k health. Its insulting, really. My thief can do twice that much damage with one backstab, and his auto attacks deal between 750 to 1500 depending on which chain. Undo the nerf, already! Give us our damage back! Warriors get hundred blades for burst, but yet we needed nerfed? =(

ele takes skill to play , i agree its a bit underpowered but its not even close to being as bad as you claim

unless you use anything besides staff, then yeah, ele is bad. L2p ele staff and you’ll see how strong the class can be in the right situations, go bandwaggon d/d and get stomped

the best build is not condition/toughness, i dunno whatcha smokin

best build for ele (only if you can make it work) is hard damage and no survivability, you have invulnerability and 1200 range to make up for that fact. 1200 range is way more than you think it is, and don’t think of this as a 1v1 game

Clearly you haven’t read the elementalist exploit listed on the gw2 subreddit to turn you into an unstoppable killing machine.

I’ve never had a problem with my Ele, I’m lvl 60 atm and currently specced full fire with 10 points in Air and Arcana. I did start off using a staff but I began to feel it was too situational, especially the meteor shower. I changed to Scepter/Dagger which I now think I’ll stick with. Anyway, if you just do a little hopping between Fire and Air when you run out of things to cast, make sure you have Arcane Power, Wave and Blast and I guarantee you’ll be able to take on 8-10 mobs at a time.

titaniumm.2983:

Thank you Diogo, you explain in a comprehensive english more or less what i mean..

O.T: i wanna ask sorry to all for my bad english, i try to explain as better as i can, but unfortunately, i’m not english, and i do many grammatic errors..sorry again..

Don’t worry all of us understood what you were trying to say, maybe those that didn’t need to improve on their comprehension skills.

titaniumm.2983:

ok i try all builds you gently post, believe me, i try all but..in conclusion ele atm suck. i explain why.

the best build atm (for pve and pvp too) seems to be condition/toughness, and it’s a nice build, really..

But if i wanna play a condition build i switch to necro, cause the necro is much better in condition/toughness build..

If i wanna play as a glass cannon (even ranged) i switch to any other class, cause any other class are much better as a glass cannon than the ele.

Only way to play ele is as a support..and even here any guardian, engi can do we can do, but, even here, much better than us, and ofc i don’t wanna be a support, or better, i wanna can choose between be a valid support, or be a valid glass cannon..but atm we can’t do nothing good..

i don’t wanna play any other class, cause compared to ele, they are really boring..
and i don’t care to be the op class in the game, of course not, i wanna be just like any other class..any other class reflect really good their profession, guardian do what we expected from a guardian, even ranger, necro, war and so on..only ele seems to be like..umh..nothing..

we don’t play a char, we try to do our best with a broken class..it’s like ,not live, just survive..

i believe in you Anet, do something, please..

Tomas

Maybe your just not very good at playing an Elementalist?

incisorr.9502:

ele takes skill to play , i agree its a bit underpowered but its not even close to being as bad as you claim

unless you use anything besides staff, then yeah, ele is bad. L2p ele staff and you’ll see how strong the class can be in the right situations, go bandwaggon d/d and get stomped

So what you’re saying is there’s only one viable build on one weapon, and you don’t think the ele is in a bad place right now? I don’t think there’s another class with so few options. Sure some are stronger than others, but most sets are viable. I’m mostly a PvE player right now, but I could see when I played my ele that I pulled much less numbers than my warrior or thief friends with more work (more work is not a problem btw, having a high risk/high effort, low reward class is). Supporting is fine, however, but while I do like this role, other options would be nice.

Still, I wouldn’t mind playing an UP class if there was some confirmation on Anet’s part that it needs work. From what I know they only said that fixing bugged skills was a top-priority, which is nice, but that’s not the only problem with the class; it’s been three updates already and the ele has had 3 inconsequential changes, while all other classes get adjustments left and right. How long until it will be looked at? 5 years like in GW1? There’s only 5 slots if you don’t buy gems and I’d rather not keep an unwanted class for years.

Levelling to 80 and gearing up, the entire journey wasn’t difficult but longer compared to other professions. I had no problems getting into or doing dungeons or doing the non-group skill points solo after 100% the world. I enjoyed switching to other abilities. But when you compare the reward::effort to others for example, warriors, it’s depressing.

Ive tried everything, and cant get away from Staff. It suits my playstyle, and the spells that come with it our perfect for how i play. The problem is damage. I watched a friend twitch feed of his guardian, in a dps build, all I saw was numbers that were twice mine.. nonstop. I am not a huge fan of hybrid melee, I made a pally in WoW, but always preferred the playstyle and abilities of the warrior.

So.. I then rerolled warrior. The dmg out is quite honestly twice my ele. In spvp I find 2 hnd ownage, in WvW I have to go sword and board for survivability.

So.. I then rerolled warrior. The dmg out is quite honestly twice my ele. In spvp I find 2 hnd ownage, in WvW I have to go sword and board for survivability.Maybe I am not the God amongst the community of Ele’s, but whatever I do with my warrior seems to yield twice the dmg. Its a shame, the entire playstyle of the class is extremely engaging and exciting, its just unfortunate that some people I have to hope will die from boredom when I attack them.

My friend played a support staff elementalist and kept getting ripped apart by heart strike thieves. So I created a quick Ele for sPvP and made a pure glass cannon build, 14k hp and all. I got him to run the same build but he took a different accessory and had 20k hp and less crit damage. In a 1v1 battle we basically drew, I was the victor but had so little hp left that it was a downed fight to the death.

There was one match that we were in on the same team that all the enemies were Thieves bar a Warrior and Mesmer. They had 4 thieves on 1 point, both of us opened up on 2 different ones and the all vanished. We were like what the hell and then they reappeared downed lol, so squishy. Neither of us were less then half hp, was so fantastic. I put the build up against a tanky warrior and we drew 3 times, him being the victor in the downed war due to vengeance + finish and elementalist lack of downed interupt. And hundred blade warriors were never a threat. That ele build is my for fun pvp character.

My friend has refined his original build and can keep chill field up for a fair while allowing him to kitten heart strike thieves. He plays all his pvp builds in pve as he lvls so he can get used to the skills and combos that he will be using in tPvP.