Guild Wars 2

Donut.6914:

Wow I guess some people can never be pleased. Ele has the best downed state in the game. They’re not unkillable like a Thief or Mesmer, but now we have a way to avoid a stomp, get to our friends, and the 3 skill does a kitten ton of damage if specced into conditions.

This, here, is the issue. They just keep trying to force specific roles on us instead of letting us fulfill any role we want to, although they advertised all of this game’s professions as being able to do so.

Agreed. The title screen looked great on the beta, forcing the new launcher feels backwards.

no f in luck.9513:

3) The story? OMG, there’s so many different story lines, i’ve done 2!! How can you be bored??? For sure if i eventually fill my character slots, i’ll buy another one and do another story path with a different profession and race. Sure there are some voice bugs, etc, but my personal opinion is that the story line is great. I do find it hard, sometimes i have to repeat a quest 5 or 6 times, but i eventually do it.

I think the biggest “issue” (non bug/balance-related) coming from the whole story thing is how inconsequential your choices are later on. It doesn’t matter at all.
It just feels very rushed, like you were minding your own business developing a real personal story, then suddenly you’re being pushed to do the same as every other character cough Claw Island, etc…cough.

I understand this is the way they have made the story unfold, but I wish they’d have exploited those options more/better.

Xynthe.7061:

The ele downed state is actually one of the most offensive imo.
I know its difficult to swallow that when we go down, unless your team can interupt the incoming stomps, we’re finished.
However, if they do. That 3 second immobilize is a very effective way to finish off the kill target and possibly land a counter stomp.

Oh boy. It finally happened. A “pro” defending the current downed state.

I thought that was where they drew the line, as then their trolling would become too obvious. I should’ve known better.

Back on topic: while we’re at it, I hope they take a look at all weapons, not just D/D.
Though I still wonder why’d they prioritize “balance” over fixing bugs… Kinda pointless to balance if fixing the bugged traits and skills is going to break that balance later.

The person shows up as a Follower because they have added you to their contacts list and you have not added them to yours.

Blocking the person prevents them from seeing you online (as well as messaging you), it doesn’t remove yourself from THEIR contacts list.

So, they still show up as a follower because they haven’t removed you, but they will never see you as Online…

BishopX.6453:

now when its PVP, ya know… guild WARS.. not “slaying polygonal computer controled dragon” WARS, you are in direct competition with the other classes.

Shows how much you actually know about the game, that you didn’t even know it’s named after PvE lore.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Guild_Wars

You’re welcome.

It’s crappy, but a workaround that works for me (at least until they fix these issues) is to reply to the thread, which causes the buttons to become visible – then edit and add the quote…

Agree with OP. Trying to balance or compare “competition” against “cooperation” is ridiculous.

cesmode.4257:

@ infiniteretro: I disagree. The gameplay might be different, the types of systems and features might be different, but it is guild wars. The characters, the lore, the references to event that have passed. I didnt play guild wars 1, but what I have gathered from lore in game, and NPCs talking, along with personal story, I understand a little bit what it was about.

Uhhhh…………..

Random trolls apart, I wonder when (if ever) will ANet actually come out with an official statement regarding the overall status of the game. I find it quite shocking that they prioritize nerfing over fixing bugs.

MrNobody.4357:

Warrior is op, period.*

According to ANet, it’s at the “sweet spot” and all other classes are balanced around it.

On topic: The differences (compared to other classes) will only get worse the higher level you become. Roaming around Cursed Shore as an Ele is a nightmare.

Which profession and build can hit a ~2.7 armor target from 1200 range for 6k damage on a regular basis and cannot be avoided by strafing?

The fact that you’re locking yourself into a tank build right away as there’s no other viable at all speaks for itself, but anyway, to “answer” your question, I didn’t mention anything about ranged attacks. But hey, if sitting stationary in a tower for hours so no one ever has the slightest chance to get to you in melee range, that’s fine.

Unsurprisingly enough, none of the “pros” actually posted any videos at all.

And yeah, ~1000 DPS is funny when your foe has over 20k HP and smacks you for 6k easily.

^ Now THAT does restore faith in Eles.

sachiel.8051:

We should have a sit-in on the thief board and talk about all our elementalist problems there. It’s where the dev’s are probably hanging, chatting about their preferred class, so our posts will finally get read.

I’m quite certain Warrior is their preferred class.

I think the greatest issue here, which keeps real balance from being achievable (not just as far as Elementalist is concerned), is having fused the PvE and PvP skill sets.

One would think ArenaNet would have learned from GW1…

Just separate them, then each issue can be worked on separately without having a negative impact in the opposite game mode.

Gelrod.1295:

I like the traits, I love my utility skills.

Okay, he’s trolling. Better off pretending the guy doesn’t exist.

Wazabi.1439:

I think the argument stems from people not wanting to be labeled as less skill.

Similarly, I think the “counter-argument” stems from people with a need to feel like they are “special”, “better” or “elite” and it is imperative to them that everyone else acknowledges their self-labeled superior skill.

TemperHoof.6438:

I’m done with this game now. I really love the elementalist, I really do. But I can’t stand how every other class just does what they can do, but do it better.

Sounds somewhat overkill, why not just play alts in the meantime?

Durgish.8952:

It just takes a little more time and skill than warrior.

Small correction here, it takes a LOT more time (unless you’re not playing solo, I guess).

Durgish.8952:

Don’t fret too much though, the game hasn’t even been out for month and they clearly have many things too be fixed and can’t do it all at once.

This is something I have mixed feelings about. While you can try to be “understanding” about the situation of the game, they didn’t need to ‘gather data’ or take such a long time to nerf the elementalist to the ground before release.

GankSinatra.2653:

I dont even wanna know what kind of damage and horribly OP kitten we did if we got nerfed before Haste/PW and Mesmers and guardians.

It was just alright, -almost- right there with warrior, ranger and the others. I could actually kill the level 20’s centaurs comboing without taking more than 10-15 seconds each, and it didn’t really hurt that much when they hit me. Playing the same area/level range (Kessex Hills) after release, the same centaurs cost a lot more to kill (15-25 seconds), and seemed to hit me much harder than prior to the nerf.

Still, it’s hard to say, since the differences become more and more noticeable as your character levels higher, and we never had access to high level maps.

Cezton.2415:

I really wanted to go for a caster this time around

Try Mesmer or Necromancer. Mesmer is quite fun to play as, Necromancer I’ve barely played, so I can’t say.

Ahem.

“l2p noob”
“you need to switch attunements”
“you’re just bad”
“elementalists aren’t meant to be played as conventional mages, drop your dps build and spec for earth/water”
“never had any problem, ele is balanced/op and I can one hit KO the entire map with MS”
…etc.

Steve Olson.5613:

Sure, I take aggro off other people, but why is it always me?

Because end game mobs know eles are free kills with a fairly low risk.

To answer your other question, experiment with Dagger-based builds, whether as MH or OH.

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

Roll a Thief ?
That’s the best advice anybody can give you around here ….

PS: Warrior is also acceptable

QFT.

inb4 “l2p noob”

EDIT: To answer your question, no, ArenaNet hasn’t made any statement on whether it’s being looked into or not.

I think the OP was just being sarcastic…

Heraseth.9703:

I will stop leveling this class if it truly is broken, I may need to see this for myself but a heads up comparisn is what i’m after. Lillian gave me some good answers to work on so far

The elites are useless – I will test other class elites and compare to see how strong the differences really are.
No trait synergy – Again will need to compare but these are good points non the less, knowing other classes have excellent trait synergy is worth looking into.

The rest of the answers however don’t give me anything to work with. I’m after just a few facts and am instead getting a lot of personal reasons, such as i don’t like it or i think its broken, and no that doesn’t mean i need a full compendium of all class ability examples, just a couple.

Underwater combat is completely broken: you can hardly cause any damage, some attacks are hard to aim/land, and you get crushed pretty easily/fast. However, I don’t know how this fares compared to other professions, other than seeing a random Engineer shoot all the enemies dead in a moment once.

Downed state: terrible. Just terrible. There’s no interrupt, the skills are too weak, you get a mist form for about 5 seconds that does nothing other than delay your death – that is, if you survive enough for the skill to actually cool down.

Damage/defense: It’s been mentioned before. You get the minimum base health with the minimum defense (only two more have your base health, guardian [heavy armour] and thief [medium armour]), so you are likely to die very, very fast… and there’s no compensation for it. Even if you trait all the way to DPS, your damage is still lower than any other classes’ average damage. This leads to situations where you spend a minute to kill an enemy or two, and as you’re about to move forward, either the previous enemy respawns, or you see another player rush in, kill 5 enemies in a few seconds and leave. Fine that the class is more complex and has more depth, but having to work a lot more and still not even get an equal result to the other classes…
Unfortunately, this becomes a larger problem the more you advance into the game, to the point where some parts are nearly unplayable.

Healing: unless you spec for it, your healing will suck, again, compared to the other classes. You’ll heal few and far between. If you do spec for it, say bye bye to your little DPS.

Dungeons: Yes, dungeons. There are a growing number of PUG parties that will refuse to accept an Elementalist due to “being useless”, especially for Explorable Mode. This isn’t a problem with the class per se, but rather with the way it’s broken/flawed.

There are a few more issues here and there, but those are probably the “loudest”. There’s no “fix the broken skills and traits will work fine”. Traits are very poorly designed, and fixing a few skills won’t change that. It’s akin to putting a bandaid on a train wreck victim.

Keep in mind a good chunk of these issues surfaced when ArenaNet decided to nerf the Elementalist to the ground at BWE#3 – it wasn’t half as bad in BWE #1 and #2.

Seems like some people are misunderstanding here (or they’re just too pro and obviously everyone else sucks).
The issue is not regarding whether the elementalist is a viable class or not, or whether stuff can be done with it or not.
It’s about how after the second beta weekend event, this class got nerfed so badly that it simply can’t compare anymore to any other class under equal conditions.