Guild Wars 2

Why HS needs a nerf or elementists need more hp

I’m bored of the elementist’s crappy damage which you can’t even get off because you’re just jumped by a thief or a warrior and your hp vanishes before your eyes…. Another thing I wanted to ask was is the pvp gear you get in spvp the very best in the game? Or when you turn in your trophies do you unlock better stuff?

I hate the look of the pvp gear it’s shocking

elementalist = bad damage? oh boy… what rank are you? how many games have you played as ele? clearly you need to figure out how your profession works and you get better stuff from chest and tournament chests

I’ve only played like 6 games with my lvl 32 elementalist in structured pvp. So i’ve not much expirience but what i konw from pve also comes in play in pvp, swiching the attunments constantly is so very important. If you are not having atleast one attunement on cooldown your doing something wrong, this is true for pve and propably also for pvp.

I think elementalist because of the way the mechanics work is one of the hardest to master classes. I’d say do more theocrafting here on the forums and try different build before posting something like this.

Maybe that is it, I’ve never been good at mmo’s just because of the amount of fumbling around changing skills, weapons during combat, I panic and spam my skills haha

But I played aion as a sorc and you could literally stick your target to the floor and nuke the hell out of him. Very very focused damage but most ele skills are aoe

Aion is my most played game of all time but really the skillcap there was very low indeed. Its a korean mmo based on gear. So ye you need to get used to move in pvp and eventually you’ll stop fumbling with them buttons and start owning ^^

I used to be a clicker (A) dont flame me i mean in Aion that was pretty viable. This is my first mmo where i use hotkey’s. I’m still tempting to click but i wont i’ll resist temptation and punch myself in the face when i do click. I binded 6 – 0 skills to shift 1 – 5 and it works great for me so far.

gl in future!

They do need a bit of a buff in my opinion, i played ele in beta and a bit in release and it feels like everything hits for much less than it did, also did they nerf the eles glyph heal?

If you decide to use scepter dagger, start in air knock them down with skill 5, switch to fire do dragon tooth phoenix fire grab, then switch to water kite a few seconds, then to earth use the knockdown repeat. If that doesn’t work use ride the lightning to get away and do it again.

if you un-target the enemy, i usually use the escape button , ride the lightning will send you in the direction you are facing. also turn off auto targeting or it will just re-target them when they hit you.

I really don’t see a single Elementalist build that struggles with HS thieves. Elementalists do not need a hotfix, they don’t need an emergency buff. Those casually playing them should realize that the tools of the Elementalist aren’t as straightforward as the tools of the Warrior (for example); if you aren’t doing damage or able to survive, maybe try a different class for a bit until you learn the base mechanics of the game shared across the game type.

Different traits, different armor runes, etc. Don’t give up because you’re getting stomped in the clusterduck of 8v8 PvP.

In a fight of glass canons, it’s hardly, if ever, the profession or build that matters, but your skill in avoiding your opponent burst.

Arguably, HS and Pistol Whip spams are annoying when you get caught unaware, but you’d get killed the same way by any other glass canon build as well.

You are an elementalist, you wear cloth. Anyone with a glass canon power burst build will try to take you down as soon as possible, so be aware.

Anyway, if you are bored of dieing, look up builds with more survivability instead of running around with 14k HPs.

I do agree Elementalist could use a tweak or two in the damage department though, they have to do way too many combos and execute them perfectly to do the same damage as some other professions.

The only buff elementalist needs is to the downed state. Change the 2 skill from a root that you won’t get off in time 90% of the time to a knockback or interrupt. While alive elementalist is a really powerful profession. I have absolutely no issues beating the crap out of the majority of thieves, even if they get the drop on me.

As I stated in my other thread the attunment switching slows you down. That extra second or half second that it takes you to move from one to the other.. So you can do something like remove a condition or immobilize an opponent is killer. The class you are fighting typically has that stuff directly at their dispposal. I played an Elementalist to 80 and it was great for aoe damage in wvw. However, all these dagger/dagger builds people talk about for straight up burst damage on a single target… still don’t have the brust potential of say a thief. If you are playing solo and pugging a lot of Spvp, my advice is to stay away from the elementalist.

http://www.twitch.tv/salokingaming/b/331536557

i think he starts to play ele around 45minutes.
best necro/ele player ive seen so far.

ive started to play with that spec in normal games, its so glass spec it doesnt seem to fit that well in 8v8 but its fun as hell, took me a while until i was able to get more than 50 points a game, just rolled ele so it wasnt only about the spec but learning the class.

now im getting really nice results with it, though its far from perfect, with arcane spec its really hard to rotate the spells/stances perfectly since its so fast tempo class and build.

On very high skill levels eles are very competitive. Thing is the learning curve is terribly steep.

Atm while i play the piano dancing around attunements all the thieves do is press hs and what all mesmers do is spamming clones and phantasms. If i lose a millisecond of attention i get 19k hundred blades for the warrior that was waiting there for me to engage somebody else (same warrior i disintegrated 5 second laters). 1v1 is fine even if more demanding to an ele, but in a situation of say 3v3, which is more common, since you have to properly execute your combos (which is not simply 7-2) and accurately evaluate your positioning (no teleport, no stealth, no clones to disguise myself) ele is terrible to play. Unless you are a super pro from team paradigm or similar or you decide to do support with staff and stay back (which again is fine imho). Since i’m no pro i end up doing the second. What i dont like about ele is there should be an easier way to play: a spec or some kind of utility to ease up your gameplay.

While i disagree damage in general is not fine, i agree that glass cannon builds damage is not fine: i can at most crit for 7k on blazing speed and maybe an extra 3k with arcane blast. Nothing like the 19k on hb which is a warrior skill. And warriors have high health and high armor (the latter not a biggie honestly). I would buff the fire traits which are lame (specially grand master) and give something to the traits that reduce cd (other profession buff skills apart from reducing cd if i’m not mistaken). As a matter of fact i would make possible to play a glass cannon which atm just isnt, specially at low tiers of pvp.

Honestly i dont like to see glass cannons in general but it’s the easy way to play for many people so why not make it possible? 1hb warriors get less and less popular as we go up in the ladders i would just like such a spec for eles.

I would like to post a personal experience here to illustrate the current state of the elementalist.
My main is an elementalist but I play a thief and a warrior occasionally, in PvP, however, I never take my ele because I know I’m in for a beating.
So I was talking to a lvl 80 elementalist who, although he agreed with me that eles need a serious buff, he claimed to be a pretty good ele and do decently in PvP.
We decided to look for an empty PvP server and have a duel so he could teach me a few things and help me improve my ele gameplay in PvP.

His ele is lvl 80 and he played ele during the BWEs as well, so basically he’s an experienced player who knows what he’s doing.
My thief was around lvl 17 and I had played around 20 PvP games with him…..so you can imagine I was (And I’m still) far from being a Pro thief.

And even though he did win the duel, it took him close to three full minutes to bring my thief down, yes it takes a decent ele player close to three minutes to kill a noob thief, that’s just how bad elementalists are at the moment. The class simply doesn’t reward your skills as a player with good results, it simply awards excellent gameplay with the results anyone can get easily playing other classes.

And before anyone asks why I still play my ele, I do it because I have fun with it in PvE I like having the possibility to switch attunements and have a completely new set of skills, I like the idea of having to concentrate and actually use strategy to stay alive when more than a monster are attacking me.

You just need to see how many elementalist are in spvp and how many thiefs/mesmer/warrior are in spvp… In my lasts 5 games, i was the only elementalist in the game ( including my team and enemy team )

i’ve gotten up to rank 11 so far and i’ve only played against 3 ele’s that actaully knew how to keep track of cool downs , swap threw elements and be all around good at there class, ele in my opinion is one of the harder classes to master but for those that can do it, its a power house class

OneBloke.7264:

The class simply doesn’t reward your skills as a player with good results, it simply awards excellent gameplay with the results anyone can get easily playing other classes.

I’m elementalist lvl 41 / rank 11 and I got the same feeling.
But I like it, I just regret that I rolled Shyvary instead of Norn or Human.

I’ve been playing Ele isnce BWE#1, and im a total ele diehard.

Sinsce BWE 1 we’ve had a long series of nerfs and only a few buffs. I think thats fine, because we were too powerful way back when.

There are still things that need work, and im sure they’ll get attention when the devs feel they are the top of the priority list. Things like RtL, the ‘missing’ of skills that shouldnt miss, and various traits and skills that are just bad, such as Fire Shield and Burning Precision.

We are probably the class that is easiest to hard -counter, since we have low toughness and low health. You have to make up for this by using you skills really well and not putting an attunement or ability on CD when you nee it later.
You also need to directly counter skills just right, or its game. For example, if you dont double dodge a haste’ed unload-spam, thats pretty much you done for, even if you manage to drag the fight out a little longer.

I love the ele and for the most part, i have no trouble beating every class.

OneBloke.7264:

And even though he did win the duel, it took him close to three full minutes to bring my thief down, yes it takes a decent ele player close to three minutes to kill a noob thief, that’s just how bad elementalists are at the moment. The class simply doesn’t reward your skills as a player with good results, it simply awards excellent gameplay with the results anyone can get easily playing other classes.

This is -EXACTLY- the problem with elementalist. It’s a very high skill cap class, which I LOVE, but the reward for performing perfectly simply means you perform on par with other classes, any failing to correctly combo, dodge or use defensive at the exact time you need to results in a loss, nearly always… And when fights can drag out for 2~3 mins in some cases this becomes more and more of an issue as time goes on, human error and all that.

OneBloke.7264:

His ele is lvl 80 and he played ele during the BWEs as well, so basically he’s an experienced player who knows what he’s doing.
My thief was around lvl 17 and I had played around 20 PvP games with him…..so you can imagine I was (And I’m still) far from being a Pro thief.

And even though he did win the duel, it took him close to three full minutes to bring my thief down, yes it takes a decent ele player close to three minutes to kill a noob thief, that’s just how bad elementalists are at the moment. The class simply doesn’t reward your skills as a player with good results, it simply awards excellent gameplay with the results anyone can get easily playing other classes.

What weapon was he using? I’m finding it hard to believe a D/D ele would take 3 mins to kill a thief (and D/D is what you should be using for 1v1 and spvp in general imo), I kill most thieves in 5-10s if I get a crit on Burning Speed and/or Flame Grab, a bit longer if not. The only classes I’ve fought on that timescale was a fully defensive specced staff ele (probably 30water/30 earth or similar) and some seriously defensive guardians (ie point defense classes who are just trying to keep me occupied so I’m not a threat elsewhere).

I won’t claim to be a super pro ele, but I can deal with most people 1v1 if I see them coming. Melee thieves are some of the easier kills for me so long as I have a stun break off cd as if they want to kill me fast they have to be squishy, and I can dodge or otherwise avoid the majority of their burst damage while unloading my own. I’m honestly not sure how much health such a thief has, but I can deal upwards of 12-15k damage at the start of the fight, and add another 5k or so + a rather large amount of bleed stacks a bit later, cast just after a knockdown + cripple. A good thief can of course avoid a large part of this damage, but that requires dodging the CC that comes before it or using their CC breaks early, in which case it’s easy for me to save it and unload it a little bit later.

In the end, elementalists are probably the hardest class to play at a high level, which makes them seem less powerful to less experienced players who have not learned the ins and outs of the classes yet. And tbh I would be very sad if the elementalist was buffed for the inexperienced people and as a result be either grossly OP at a high level or dumbed down so that the difference between a good and bad elementalist is on the same scale as warriors.

Vayra.3290:

OneBloke.7264:

His ele is lvl 80 and he played ele during the BWEs as well, so basically he’s an experienced player who knows what he’s doing.
My thief was around lvl 17 and I had played around 20 PvP games with him…..so you can imagine I was (And I’m still) far from being a Pro thief.

And even though he did win the duel, it took him close to three full minutes to bring my thief down, yes it takes a decent ele player close to three minutes to kill a noob thief, that’s just how bad elementalists are at the moment. The class simply doesn’t reward your skills as a player with good results, it simply awards excellent gameplay with the results anyone can get easily playing other classes.

What weapon was he using? I’m finding it hard to believe a D/D ele would take 3 mins to kill a thief (and D/D is what you should be using for 1v1 and spvp in general imo), I kill most thieves in 5-10s if I get a crit on Burning Speed and/or Flame Grab, a bit longer if not. The only classes I’ve fought on that timescale was a fully defensive specced staff ele (probably 30water/30 earth or similar) and some seriously defensive guardians (ie point defense classes who are just trying to keep me occupied so I’m not a threat elsewhere).

I won’t claim to be a super pro ele, but I can deal with most people 1v1 if I see them coming. Melee thieves are some of the easier kills for me so long as I have a stun break off cd as if they want to kill me fast they have to be squishy, and I can dodge or otherwise avoid the majority of their burst damage while unloading my own. I’m honestly not sure how much health such a thief has, but I can deal upwards of 12-15k damage at the start of the fight, and add another 5k or so + a rather large amount of bleed stacks a bit later, cast just after a knockdown + cripple. A good thief can of course avoid a large part of this damage, but that requires dodging the CC that comes before it or using their CC breaks early, in which case it’s easy for me to save it and unload it a little bit later.

In the end, elementalists are probably the hardest class to play at a high level, which makes them seem less powerful to less experienced players who have not learned the ins and outs of the classes yet. And tbh I would be very sad if the elementalist was buffed for the inexperienced people and as a result be either grossly OP at a high level or dumbed down so that the difference between a good and bad elementalist is on the same scale as warriors.

It always come down to a “l2p” issue isn’t it?…it’s never because the profession may be UP..

1) You’ll never see coming a good thief…never, same with a HB warrior

2) Good thieves go stealth after every failed attack, they reset the fight at their leisure, mostly will just pop out their shortbow for a quick venom burst followed by HS spamm

3) Stealth break any CC , I bet you use signet of earth…shadow step and it’s GG for you

4) At high level of play, you get targeted by 2-3 people in one go exactly because you’re easy to take down in an instant

It isn’t even about timing your dodges correctly though, when you are standing back from the crowd laying down support you will just get either a ranger burst you down or a thief to shadow step > hs > FINISH HIMMMMMMM

The thing that annoys me is having to change attunement just to get a dam CC… What attunement do you guys run around with? I’m thinking maybe earth or air and then when you see the enemy you can put a slow on them then switch to fire?

Vayra.3290:

OneBloke.7264:

His ele is lvl 80 and he played ele during the BWEs as well, so basically he’s an experienced player who knows what he’s doing.
My thief was around lvl 17 and I had played around 20 PvP games with him…..so you can imagine I was (And I’m still) far from being a Pro thief.

And even though he did win the duel, it took him close to three full minutes to bring my thief down, yes it takes a decent ele player close to three minutes to kill a noob thief, that’s just how bad elementalists are at the moment. The class simply doesn’t reward your skills as a player with good results, it simply awards excellent gameplay with the results anyone can get easily playing other classes.

What weapon was he using? I’m finding it hard to believe a D/D ele would take 3 mins to kill a thief (and D/D is what you should be using for 1v1 and spvp in general imo), I kill most thieves in 5-10s if I get a crit on Burning Speed and/or Flame Grab, a bit longer if not. The only classes I’ve fought on that timescale was a fully defensive specced staff ele (probably 30water/30 earth or similar) and some seriously defensive guardians (ie point defense classes who are just trying to keep me occupied so I’m not a threat elsewhere).

I won’t claim to be a super pro ele, but I can deal with most people 1v1 if I see them coming. Melee thieves are some of the easier kills for me so long as I have a stun break off cd as if they want to kill me fast they have to be squishy, and I can dodge or otherwise avoid the majority of their burst damage while unloading my own. I’m honestly not sure how much health such a thief has, but I can deal upwards of 12-15k damage at the start of the fight, and add another 5k or so + a rather large amount of bleed stacks a bit later, cast just after a knockdown + cripple. A good thief can of course avoid a large part of this damage, but that requires dodging the CC that comes before it or using their CC breaks early, in which case it’s easy for me to save it and unload it a little bit later.

In the end, elementalists are probably the hardest class to play at a high level, which makes them seem less powerful to less experienced players who have not learned the ins and outs of the classes yet. And tbh I would be very sad if the elementalist was buffed for the inexperienced people and as a result be either grossly OP at a high level or dumbed down so that the difference between a good and bad elementalist is on the same scale as warriors.

He was using a staff. I’m not exactly a pro but from what i can tell he countered my burst very well and his attunement dancing was on spot, i thought i was gonna win after i used my elite (the 2 thieves) but with armor of earth plus the staff heal he made it through and wore me down in the next 2 minutes

@ Arheundel.6451
Yes thats exactly what i did, when i noticed things were going downhill i just used shadow refuge and get healed (theres a trait for that). After that i was nearly fully healed and i could start with unload or steal+spider venom and this would make him go into defense+heal mode again that’s why the battle dragged on for so long

The glass cannon build for the Elementalist in sPvP (s/d or d/d) has a comparatively lower damage output than that of similar classes (thieves, warriors). All the adjustments made via traits/sigils/accessories to maximise damage kills our survivability to the point where even if we did do great damage we get popped so fast it makes our heads spin.

Its a fact, people need to stop denying it.

Is the class useless? Far from it.

A support build for an elementalist makes us so freaking invaluable I cannot stress it enough. Every team should have a support elementalist.

This is the build I use:

(Link to build doesn’t work, can someone point me in the right direction?)

Until I can find a good link, the basic breakdown is
20 Earth
30 Water
20 Arcane

Passive regeneration almost constantly, throwing out heals like its going out of style, aoe’s so large no one on a point can avoid it. I can hold off 4-5 guys by myself on the road, buying my team time to take points, or lead the charge in annexing a point from defenders.

Was this what I rolled an elementalist for? Absolutely not, I wanted to burn, shock, freeze, and grind to dust. Did I find what we are currently great at? Yes.

@Hammerheart: Is it really right to pigeon hole a profession to a specific role/spec? While i do agree staff support is fine is that the only thing we should be able to do?

I keep my opinion that anet should work about the horrible fire traits (possibly even something useful in air: what’s with the 20% more damage to stun/kd with so little stuns and kd?) and make at least ONE spec viable for glass cannon. Why can a thief dish up more damage then me if specced like me (say 30/30/0/0/10 or similar with berserker and stuff like that)?

Fiery Lily.8046:

@Hammerheart: Is it really right to pigeon hole a profession to a specific role/spec? While i do agree staff support is fine is that the only thing we should be able to do?

I keep my opinion that anet should work about the horrible fire traits (possibly even something useful in air: what’s with the 20% more damage to stun/kd with so little stuns and kd?) and make at least ONE spec viable for glass cannon. Why can a thief dish up more damage then me if specced like me (say 30/30/0/0/10 or similar with berserker and stuff like that)?

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

I was on the verge of just shelving my Elementalist until the damage problems were addressed, then I discovered the support role. I am enjoying it immensly, because i know they will fix us in the future, and because of the usefulness of our profession in that role.

The point of my post was an attempt to inspire people to keep playing their Elementalists, because our support role is such a boon to the team, and is really fun to boot.

DPS ele is probably one of the most challenging professions to play effectively. Top level eles however, are some of the most dangerous players in a match. Players such as Phantaram of Team Paradigm (uses scepter/dagger) or Prince of Imperial (d/d) can wreck teams thats aren’t careful.

The only problem with Ele’s I think is the fact they do not have a knock-down in downed state. Finishing off most other classes is a pain in the bum with their knock-back/knock-down, especially when combined with other CC but Ele’s can not only get bursted down in seconds (low hp) if they don’t evade/ combo right but then get stomped in seconds too.

Does anyone know a valid reason why this is done? because I don’t like ‘downed mechanics’ at the best of times but this just makes me rage. I would prefer to see one of 3 things:

1. Flash (Blink) to change position while downed.
2. All classes get a knock down
3. No classes get a knock down

we need our defenses or dmg buffed oh and egi need help to

Ele’s are hard to learn and harder to master. You just gotta stick to it and rage out when needed, and get back in the game afterwards. I honestly dont think they need any buffs, atleast not S/D.