Guild Wars 2

TheBob.9863:

Azrayne.2983:

LordXy.4278:

the only problem with elementalist currently is that it isn’t something a noob can use, you have to study it deeply in order to use it effectively, if you give up because you cannot fully utilize your elementalist that only means your level of understanding is much shallower than those who can use it quit effectively.

I actually agree with you that you should go back to games wherein the mage play style is really really easy and requires little to no thinking at all when playing.

Going to disagree with you there, while the class definitely does have a rather high skill ceiling, that’s far from it’s sole issue. Even an excellently played elementalist will find themselves working much harder to achieve less result than, say, an equally well played warrior or thief, or even a mesmer or guardian. There’s nothing wrong with a challenging class, as long as the challenge pays off, but with the elementalist, it doesn’t.

I disagree with you completely, all you have to do is watch a stream of a competitive player playing an elementalist and realize how strong an ele is in the right hands

Yes, a skilled player, when backed up by a skilled group in the right situation, can make the class work, but the fact remains that outside of very specifics roles/situations/specs (AOEing from behind a zerg/wall, bunker staff in SPVP), we work much harder for less surviveability and less damage than many other classes. Not to mention the array of bugs and many weak/useless/broken abilities (how many other classes do you think sit there wishing they could use their elite slot to fit in a 4th skill because all of their elites are so terrible?).

This isn’t a black and white issue, nobody is saying that the class is absolutely and totally 100% useless 100% of the time, but the reality is that there are a whole pile of areas in which it needs to substantially improved before it’s on par with the other more balanced classes within the game.

flipside.3502:

Just wanted to say, SoR’s battle tactics are amazing. I’m in SoS, and this past week against SoR has been anything but easy. They are literally EVERYWHERE, when and where you least expect them to be. Even zerg fights found us on the losing side a couple of times. So hats off to you, SoR…really gave us a run for our money.

Yeah, SOR have put up an excellent fight. Serious props for the dedication too, it’s great to be up against a server willing to stick it out all the way to the end.

LordXy.4278:

the only problem with elementalist currently is that it isn’t something a noob can use, you have to study it deeply in order to use it effectively, if you give up because you cannot fully utilize your elementalist that only means your level of understanding is much shallower than those who can use it quit effectively.

I actually agree with you that you should go back to games wherein the mage play style is really really easy and requires little to no thinking at all when playing.

Going to disagree with you there, while the class definitely does have a rather high skill ceiling, that’s far from it’s sole issue. Even an excellently played elementalist will find themselves working much harder to achieve less result than, say, an equally well played warrior or thief, or even a mesmer or guardian. There’s nothing wrong with a challenging class, as long as the challenge pays off, but with the elementalist, it doesn’t.

I’m honestly baffled as to why ANet are refusing to fix this, any good they’re causing by allowing people to play with their friends in PvE is far, far outweighed by the harm they’re causing to WvW, the community is almost universally opposed to free transfers, it’s wreaking chaos on server balance and the ranking system and ruining matches, but ANet just sit there with their fingers in their ears. What the hell?

“LOL WVW. If you don’t play ele in tourneys where balance matters your opinion is invalid. In WVW gear and level matters way more than skill or class or build.”

Except anyone who’s made even the vaguest effort has at least one level 80 in good gear by now. This game isn’t WoW with it’s months of raiding, you can hit 80 in a week and be fully geared a few hours afterwards.

The class ‘is’ severely broken, there’s no denying it by anyone with even a fraction of common sense. We have among the lowest surviveability and require a huge effort to do even close to the damage other classes can do without even trying (and even then it’s basically impossible against anyone with anti-CC abilities. So, you know, everyone). The only thing we have going for us is standing in the back of a large group and spamming AOE.

Small changes, but good ones, especially vapor form

I agree that attunement swapping is rather problematic right now, but it’s only part of the greater picture of poor design.

I’d say the problem with the elementalist comes down to 3 core problems:

1) No weapon swapping. To me, as a heavy WvW player, this is the absolute biggest issue. It locks you into one role, meaning you’re choosing to either function in siege combat but be very ineffective in smaller group combat, or vice versa. I just don’t see the justification for this, sure some players might find it a bit overwhelming on top of attunements, but I think everyone would rather play a complex class than a weak one. Either we need weapon swapping, or the attunement system needs to be changed to be more equivalent to it, instead of just having the same effectiveness and role designation as any other classes weapon, only spread out over 20 spells instead of 5.

2) And this ties into the above, the attunements themselves, as this thread points out. You’re forced to dance through attunements constantly just to be nearly as effective at anything as another class, constantly locking you away from abilities you need and forcing you to make tactical choices where there’s no good option. At the very least, the attunement cooldown should be no longer than the weapon swap one, perhaps even shorter.

3) Finally, the spells themselves are just too ineffective and unyieldy. Damage is too low, cast times are too long, far too many spells which are supposed to be the core of our damage output are completely useless because they’re impossible to land against anything other than a training dummy, thanks to some combination of ground targetting with small areas of effect, long cast times/delays and easily visible target areas. Spells like phoenix/dragons tooth/trident and so forth need to either lock onto their target like other nukes, or be converted to instant casts with faster projectiles and larger areas of effect, currently they’re impossible to use reliably unless your entire build is build around CC locking and you’re lucky enough to fight someone without a counter to it.

Finally crowd control is either broken or short and easily countered, and heals and shields don’t come anywhere near close to cancelling out our absurdly low defense and health pool unless we spec so defensively that we even further neuter our damage output.

That said, the core concept of the class is a good one, but it falls apart in the details and needs some serious work to be made competitive.