Guild Wars 2

Found this on the Elementalist forums…:

“While an elementalist does have some of the greatest potential in healing, utility, DPS, and tanking capabilities, there are its drawbacks. A user who plays as an elementalist has to work much harder to deliver the same results that other classes can perform.”

Thought it was funny.

I wouldn’t know, haven’t played on! I gues with 20x Skill’s you have to do some work to keep up with the different CD’s ect. I would say we have an easier time with our kit’s, seeing as they don’t have any CD when we swap around with it. Tho, a 3x Kit Engineer would have the same work to do, if it actually worked to do that, then an elementalist

I have a fully geared ele and engi (mesmer also) and out of the 2 I can safely say that the engineer has a way higher skill cap. My d/d ele does the same face roll rotation because its so effective, even if the target dodges and blocks some of it. It is just so much pressure with a mix of condition and high physical damage. The fall back to it all is popping into earth for free 33% damage mitigation and then immediately to water to cleanse all conditions and heal up without even needing to press 6.

Anyone who says ele is hard or has a high skill cap has clearly never played one. It is the only class I have played where I can confidently jump into a group of 10 people and wreck most of them, while retaining the ability to escape laughing when ever I want (without stealth or culling saving me).

Well bro, having a main that is the Elementalist with over 500h and having my engi that i also like with 300h (and they are the only jobs i can find interesting for my playstyle) i can say that he is right. With Elementalist you have to play with the CD’s very well and ofc DD Elem is not an example because it is simply broken and will prolly get nerfed. I play my engi with Shield + Pistol + Elixirs and i can say that those who press skills number 1+2+3 and repeat the process with pistol are just bad Engis. Engi is also quite hard to play because u have to be smart of how and when to use the correct Elixirs.

lol…I thought it was funny because we here in the Engineer forums say the same thing

As with anything, if you work hard at it, you’ll get good at it. But, as always, there is one lesson to be learned:

“No matter how good you get, there will always be someone better than you.”

I was perusing the Elementalist forum because I had to make one based on Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China(little Asuran!), and was checking the D/D Ele to see what was up. He’s only lvl 3, but thus far it’s a blast(no pun intended).

Trust me I’m not hating on the Ele. I can handle them with my P/S Tool Kit/Net Turret.

I would say, by far, that these two classes have the most potential for the most fun because I love versatility, and enjoy these types of classes alot

LOL at button mashing…I find myself ‘swapping’ between kits more than anything.

Besides…D/D Eles are fun to fight! Of all the WvW fights I’ve been in, the Eles are the most memorable to me.

First off DD ele is not broken its a melee class with the easiest to dodge dps combo in the game if you know it. So most players sadly to say suck. The truth is if you know how to beat DD ele then you wont see it the same way. Watch 2 dd eles duel no one gets hit with churning earth.

Now to the main topic. Engi can be more complex to play than ele. Most builds are not. The other thing is most ele play the class rotation or nothing. This gets simple with time. The same with engi though. You could make a kits build that with time gets to be just as simple to execute.

Here’s the real issue. to play ele effectively you have to rotate attunements. To play engi effectively you don’t have to carry kits. At base level engi is a simpler class to simply execute and be alright. Fact is ele has a higher skill requirement for its most basic build than engi does for its’. When it comes to upper level complexity Engi wins. A full kits build will usually be harder to execute properly than most any ele build.

On a side note playing ranger I realized it required me to press one extra key to play effectively compared to ele. I press the same number of keys on my kit build for Engi that I do for ele. Ranger is the most complex class in the game by that logic lol. In all seriousness though of all the classes I have played pet management is the most challenging thing I have had to deal with.

Final note it really doesn’t matter does it? End of the day my ele can do much more than any other class I play. Doesn’t matter how complex it is I can literally be better for the team on ele because its easier to accomplish combos and healing than it is on engi. Honestly you could stay in grenades and be a massive help to your team.

TL;DR: Complexity doesn’t amount to a hill of beans effectiveness does.

Ejiofor.4801:

Found this on the Elementalist forums…:

“While an elementalist does have some of the greatest potential in healing, utility, DPS, and tanking capabilities, there are its drawbacks. A user who plays as an elementalist has to work much harder to deliver the same results that other classes can perform.”

Thought it was funny.

They do. Engineers do less cooldown management than Elementalists and routinely bring fewer kits than the Elementalist is demanded to work with. Elementalists also have less base health and toughness to rely on, whereas many successful Engineer builds stack at least toughness and sometimes toughness and vitality.

Of course, Engineers would bring more kits if they could… but they take up utility slots with toolbelt skills that are frequently lackluster. The actual kits are pretty hit-or-miss, too.

Well, I’d say it definitely depends on the build. Running a 3 kit build I still have just as many skills as an elementalist and I only run 3 kit builds. Then again, you could make a super simple elixir engi, although I feel they are not nearly as effective. Sure, elementalist’s have the added CD’s to worry about but the freedom to change kits at all times also takes a certain skill required of engineers.. For example, by the time an elementalist’s water attunement is off cooldown the know that the first three of those skills are also off cooldown.

With engi, on the other hand you have the potential to waste two whole seconds switching to bomb kit to find that smoke bomb is still on CD. Additionally we don’t get crazy kitten buffs every time we switch to a kit.

Additionally, building an engineer spec that works for you is a huge part of the challenge of playing engineer. It’s much less cookie cutter than elementalist which I think is a huge barrier for many.

Finally, I think that engineer offers a lot more challenge compared to reward in most cases than an elementalist and I think this shows in the number of engineers that actually play this game. All in all, I can say that I see a lot more decent ele’s that engi’s.

The difference is that with ele you can actually achieve results for working hard.

With engi all that hard work gives almost no returns.

My Ele’s not too far along yet, but comparing leveling Ele to leveling Engi, I’d say we have a wider skill range, and probably with a lower low end and higher top end since we’ve got so few blast finishers, one of which is on an n second delay.

Up to level 20, Ele has been much easier than leveling as a kit engineer was. This is probably partially due to D/D being pretty powerful with everything coming to melee range anyway, but I think a large part of the ease is because when I need a job done, I don’t need to attunement swap more than once or twice to do it and have relatively easy combos to set up. Otherwise it’s “Hey I need to hurt things – go to Fire (maybe combo a few finishers from Earth),” “Oh I need to heal – switch to Water.” With Kit Engi I was constantly swapping kits to counter things getting out of control, though easy one or two mob fights were just as easy to finish by camping in Bomb/Fire.

The Static Discharge build I’ve been messing around with lately is much less complex than either of those. Both professions have been easier to level than pre-40 Mesmer, since Mesmer’s a lot more trait dependent. Post-40 Mesmer will probably be much, much easier than either now that I have clone on dodge.

YourOwnFear.2743:

I have a fully geared ele and engi (mesmer also) and out of the 2 I can safely say that the engineer has a way higher skill cap. My d/d ele does the same face roll rotation because its so effective, even if the target dodges and blocks some of it. It is just so much pressure with a mix of condition and high physical damage. The fall back to it all is popping into earth for free 33% damage mitigation and then immediately to water to cleanse all conditions and heal up without even needing to press 6.

Anyone who says ele is hard or has a high skill cap has clearly never played one. It is the only class I have played where I can confidently jump into a group of 10 people and wreck most of them, while retaining the ability to escape laughing when ever I want (without stealth or culling saving me).

This is what I think everytime I see a D/D ele in WvW, it cant be that hard with the same rotation everytime even if you have to mix it up slightly given the situation. Even if you kitten up severely you can practice bc you always get away. I have a feeling that the get-a ways and heals for the ele are on there way to a nerfing.

Both professions are certainly hard to use, but for different reasons.

An Elementalist has the steepest learning curve, as by level 5, you have all your elements to start learning. This makes for a very self-conscious sort of difficulty, where you have to have a good sense of timing for cooldowns, and coordination for quick-swapping attunements and activating the needed skill. It’s not very button-friendly with the default key layout, either. This front-loading of difficulty can cause players, but when it “clicks,” the player is rewarded with high potential and strong numerical advantage.

An Engineer has an easier initial learning curve, as you don’t get a single kit until level 5, if you even choose one then. However, Engineer skills are generally lacking in damage, instead relying on controlling the opposition to succeed in the long term. This means your focus is external, and your attention goes to positioning, environmental awareness, and enemy knowledge. A lot of problems for Engineer are caused on missed vital attacks, stability, and a lack of strength in the face of the unexpected. Their difficulty is not based on how they play, but rather how their design is made. Difficulty comes late game, when a player’s skills are consistent enough that the game design is less forgiving of mistakes, and numerical (gear) advantage matters more.

Long story short, if Engineers got a decent cluster of core bug fixes, and a few smaller buffs here and there, they will not be as hard as Elementalist. As it is now, they’re both difficult, but Elementalists get the difficulty in the beginning as they learn to play, where the Engineer gets difficult as the numbers game becomes less forgiving.

Having played an Elementalist for a short while (to level 16): the hardest part about using an Elementalist is trying to take advantage of combo fields to gain the greatest boons, in my opinion.

For example, I would always try to get Might stacked up as high as I could on my Elementalist, as quickly as I could. Since I was using Scepter and Focus, I would lay down a Wall of Fire on a nearby enemy, step into the wall with them while blasting Dragon’s Fang and the Phoenix thing, switch to Earth or Water to hit them with either Comet or Magnetic Blast, Arcane Blast, and if I could get a little faster, I’d have hit the other skill between Comet and Magnetic. Then I’d switch to Air attunement and Sith Lightning ahoy. I could easily get up to 12 stacks of Might, at the cost of having to be near the enemy to benefit from the field. This led to me being downed. Often. When it didn’t, I tended to obliterate things. Especially when I got my second utility skill slot and stuck Lava Axe in it for yet more damage.

Had I chosen to use a different weapon set or simply not tried to use that particular line of attacks unless there was no other option, I would likely have been able to go a lot longer without being downed.

As an Engineer, I have no such problem – it just takes forever to kill many things, as I specced for tanking in reaction to somehow gaining massive amounts of aggro (and the impression that it’d be difficult to compensate for the artificially lowered damage inflicted as a result of the devs thinking Kits were going to be powerful, so I might as well focus on just not dying). Our combo fields are also far fewer – none of our weapon skills lay a single combo down. Turrets can self-combo (detonation) or play off each other (thumper turret, especially, off of either Healing or Flame turret), toolbelt skills are generally not the type of thing to create a field or finish a combo (except, of course, for Healing and Thumper turrets), and most kits only have one combo field skill (with the exception of Toolkit, which has none, and Bomb Kit, which has two) – and no finishers except for Physical Projectile (Elixir Gun) on any of them.

Engineer difficulty comes from: Kits not gaining weapon stats, turrets not gaining gear stats, bugs aplenty, and toolbelt skills being, in general, kind of a crapshoot, with the good ones being on bad skills and the bad ones being on good skills – and the ever-present damage reduction. With bugfixes, kits and turrets gaining stats they currently lack, and a rework of the toolbelt (if all toolbelt skills could qualify as skills in their own right, and be chosen independently of utility skills, that might actually justify the lowered damage), the Engineer would definitely be easier to play. Well, except for people who have an easier time figuring out the right combination to lay down than coming up with contingency plans.

Dunno whether Elementalists actually have to work harder, though – I often found mine slashing through, without combos, encounters that would’ve stymied my Engineer for quite some time.

Not going to argue which class is harder.

But having a class have more potential for power because all other classes are easymode is stupidly bad design.

The “work harder” part refers to anything not D/D Bunker faceroll. Staff for example is excruciating to play outside of group scenarios.
What makes the D/D bunker build so good are the millions of boons you get with speccing into cantrips, who also happen to be great defensive tools on their own. Perma Regen and lots of Might and Fury make up for the subpar damage output etc. If D/D Eles didn’t have this abundance of boons then they would just be pressing a lot of extra buttons to achieve what other classes can achieve with much less APM. With the boon masses however it’s kind of ridiculous…

IMO both Ele and Engi could use some workflow improvements. Both professions seem to have at least a few competitive ways of being played, but spread out over more button presses than other professions, thanks to kits, attunements, Conjures, tool belt skills etc..

If they used to play a class like warrior or thief who can own someone by only pressing 2~4 buttons, then they’d probably get owned when they first roll a D/D ele.

ThiBash.5634:

They’re both versatile, but where the engineer picks something before the fight starts, the elementalist basically makes their choice during the fight.

Which also means that if an engineer truly wants run cc, they will do it better than the elementalist. But that same engineer will heal less than that same elementalist. Etc.

This came from the elementalist forums which pretty much sums up the comparison between engineer and elementalist versatility. All credits goes to ThiBash.

Ele isnt that difficult to play. No more difficult then a kit engineer. The major difference is how players learn this.

If you are leveling a D/D ele, you dont need to atunement swap to blast through leveling content. I mostly sit in Fire and just pewpew stuff to death pretty fast. With a switch every now and again if i get a group of mobs or for fun. In my leveling progress i am not being challenged to use my full potential.

Unlike an Engineer, due its naturally weaker performance in every regard you need to use everything you have. You are motivated to use your full potential, or rather punished if you dont.

I’m already trying to force my self on my Ele to switch atunements and combo things together. But stuff is dead before i even get to the 3th swap. If thats my experience from leveling, when i take him into WvW at lv80 i fear i will hit a brick wall. As this is the point where i first start to really learn to play me Ele.

KirinDave.6451:

Ejiofor.4801:

Found this on the Elementalist forums…:

“While an elementalist does have some of the greatest potential in healing, utility, DPS, and tanking capabilities, there are its drawbacks. A user who plays as an elementalist has to work much harder to deliver the same results that other classes can perform.”

Thought it was funny.

They do. Engineers do less cooldown management than Elementalists and routinely bring fewer kits than the Elementalist is demanded to work with. Elementalists also have less base health and toughness to rely on, whereas many successful Engineer builds stack at least toughness and sometimes toughness and vitality.

Of course, Engineers would bring more kits if they could… but they take up utility slots with toolbelt skills that are frequently lackluster. The actual kits are pretty hit-or-miss, too.

Ever stop to think that the reason they bring fewer kits is cause none of them work properly right now?

Cause that’s what I’m seeing.

I’d like to mention that while the Elementalist might have as many or more potential skills to utilize as an Engineer, the thing that really makes Engineer more difficult to play in action is the fact that attunements have CDs and kits do not.

As an Ele, once you swap out of an attunement, you don’t have to worry about it or any of its skills for 8-12 seconds. Engineer’s must consider all of their skills at all times.

Just my 2 copper.

nofo.8469:

Not going to argue which class is harder.

But having a class have more potential for power because all other classes are easymode is stupidly bad design.

You’re god kitten right it is. Classes should be able to achieve roughly the same average results, using their profession’s skills properly, with the same amount of effort, in my opinion – it’s not balanced if one person has to hit twice as many keys and take twice as long to achieve the same result, unless it’s only taking that long because they’re miming someone else.

tigirius.9014:

Ever stop to think that the reason they bring fewer kits is cause none of them work properly right now?

I do not think so. The only kit with significant problems is the Flamethrower, and even if it worked perfectly I wouldn’t be slotting it.

People think kit management is hard. It’s not difficult to swap kits by any stretch of the imagination. What’s hard is managing cooldowns so that what you need is up; because that requires anticipation of your opponent. Remembering what button to push is the easy part. Guessing when you’ll need to push it and tracking that in your head is hard.

I don’t use kits because I just don’t like them much. There’s so many other skills that I prefer, why would I use a kit if it takes up a utility slot?

Anymras.5729:

I don’t use kits because I just don’t like them much. There’s so many other skills that I prefer, why would I use a kit if it takes up a utility slot?

I am quite the opposite. I don’t understand why every engineer doesn’t bring the tool kit. It has a 1200 unit interrupt/pull, an attack with a short cd that does a large amount of damage/confusion, and a 3 second long block with a 20 sec cd. I did not even mention the short cd cripple. All of which can be used to set up your burst or stop a targets burst on you.

I mostly don’t bring it because our other skills are more to my liking – currently, I’m running Healing, Thumper and Flame Turret, and Throw Mine. Thumper and Flame Turrets allow extra sources of damage/knockaround/blind, and Throw Mine strips boons, knocks enemies around, inflicts vulnerability and allows a decently damaging, albeit randomly placed, AoE effect through the Toolbelt.

I’ve tried using the Toolkit a few times, of course – I’d just rather use my pistols. I feel it should probably be noted I don’t do PvP, so I don’t usually have to worry too much about being burst on, so I may be missing a particular aspect of the viewpoint.