Guild Wars 2

Eles were op at some point for their heals. Rightfully so they were nerfed. I completely dont understand the nerf to ride the lightning: a 20 sec cd jump could ever match say thief teleports or wars greatsword? was it so terrible?

But honestly if we compare eles of the past, even the op period, to todays necros or rangers they were at most an annoyance cause the damage was ok, but killing actually somebody needed a good minute of fight at least, not 20 secs at most. Stunwars do have counters but in 1v1 necros and rangers feels like having lasers in a game of knives.

@Leuca: seems to me that your opinion there shows more of an issue with the game rather than the ele itself. Or I misunderstand what u r saying? Or u mean it’s particularly bad with ele? In the second case can u make a comparison with another profession to make it clearer? Cause it seems to me, but we may simply disagree, that traits for specific weapon sets are quite rare in ele trees while quite common in other profession. Again maybe i completely misunderstand what u r saying.

@TGSlasher: u mean u would like fire tree to empower fire spells, water empowering water spells and so on? Cause there are specific traits for that (more damage for a single element, cd reduction for elements). The problem is the class is designed around its mechanic and this traits dont work particularly well (with the possible exception of air training+fresh air).

I would like to make a serious topic about the state of the ele and put together all the concerns we have about the profession maybe also to have an answer from anet. I tried reading this forum but i probably missed something from fellow eles so please post here to tell me about your concerns in a constructive way and i’ll try to keep original post updated for ease of reading for developers. Also possible solutions to the concerns are welcome.

As for me, i’m mainly a s/tpvp player so if i say something wrong feel free to correct me. Please do so in a nice way since i admit i’m no expert about pve.

1) While eles seem to have a place in WvW (even if maybe a little pigeon holed to staff) they feel sub par in pve environment (cause the only viable spec is lightning hammer which makes me say: why not take directly a war?) and totally unviable in s/tpvp. While we are ok with the low armor, low health we are not so ok with the low damage. Quite honestly as for pure dps output many professions can do better. But that’s not the main problem in fact.

2) Most of the eles in fact feel like we miss something to make us decent glass cannons. Basically other glass are not so glass. Wars are beefy and have excellent control, necros are king of control (oh, u have stability? nice, i corrupt boon u!), thieves have stealth and evade, mesmer have clones, invisibility and access to better utility (portal/time warp/moa). This is for glass cannon, if u go for a mixed approach then u have spirit rangers that are better at support while doing good (rightfully so not fantastic) damage and evading and are becoming a must have for every team.

3) I didnt mention guardians cause they have a different role in the current tpvp meta which is THE bunker. No other profession seem to rival that. And what makes me really really sad i did not mention engis not for the reason they are not good but for the reason they stole our place as jack of all trades but having a more reliable damage output and survivability. Basically why take an ele when u can have an engi in your team?

4) Eles are too depending on their mechanic and this makes the arcana tree quite compulsory therefore making 30 pts there a must have. Also Evasive Arcana is almost unskippable. Which other grandmaster trait is so good? Now before u nerf evasive arcana it would be nice to give us some serious fire traits for example cause right now, at least in a s/tpvp nobody in his right state of mind would pick even 1 of them.

5) Many people feel like the problems of the ele right now is not it’s underpowered but that other professions are overpowered. Many feel (me included) recent buffs to some professions were way exaggerated (necro in particular) therefore pushing out ele

6) Some nerfs were uncalled for. A 20 sec ride the lightning could not ever rival the mobility of a war or a thief.

7) All in all we suffer from identity crisis as mentioned in point 3: what’s our place?

8) Some weapons sets lack synergy among skills and arcana tree just alleviates the problem.

I speak just for spvp/tpvp since it’s the only thing i know.

30 arcane is a must have for any build for 2 reasons: attunement cd reduction and evasive arcana being too good to pass.

So i think it would be a good thing to reduce base cd on attunements and cd reduction in the arcana line. That said, please please please give us decent fire traits and find something to make the ele more viable as a glass. Blind on scepter 3 is way too little to make us decent glass cannons. And dont get me started on fire traits…

Lavadiel.6231:

silvermember.8941:

We are not bad, we just are worst compared to everyone else.

exactly.
Still the most fun thing to do in GW2 is to 1v1 eve vs ele….

Honestly not really i play hybrid (classic valkyrie+berserker jewel) and when i see an ele i avoid 1v1 cause i know except in the case of BIG mistakes on 1 side or the other we’ll just stay there for ages till one of my friends or his solves the stall.

What i see from the posts in general is ele seems to have a place in WvW cause of damage and support with staff. Unfortunately staff in spvp is way not viable cause the control is decent but not fantastic and u r gonna go down FAST if targeted. Again like somebody said it’s not that ele is bad, it’s that other classes are way better.

As for the damage of the ele being fantastic maybe on par with war: no, just no. As a war now u have the stuns to land a 1h blades, u have blocks u have other utilities. As an ele if u go glass cannon to have a damage to rival any other glass cannon u have a big fat nothing to defend yourself. If u wanna deal damage u have to leave every defense and die miserably while thieves have stealth, mesmers have clones, rangers (and thieves again) have evades… Just the ele have a big fat nothing if they want to deal damage. They do have controls on LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG cds which just dont cut it compared to the war 4 sec stun every 10 secs or so. Not to mention the low health and low armor again….

LightningBlaze.4913:

Fiery Lily.8046:

i know ele can still kill an attrition battle with somebody else but that requires A LOT of concentration and skill compared with other classes. One mistake and u are down FAST (and i dont play glass cannon) which in the end made me switch to warrior.

I do agree that ele is no longer the easy to play, button smashing profession it used to be with the previous god mode build. It does require a lot of reading towards your opponent next move and being able to avoid and counter. Even our own skills can’t be used as carelessly as we used to (example Ride the Lightning, Mist Form). This is the reason why many experienced players fail now. Players grew accustomed to the previous playstyle and now that it requires more combat skills to actually perform very well, many just quit or simply can’t adapt.

By the way, I doubt you will find the warrior any better than the elementalist unless you are playing a very bunker/healer stun lock build for solo encounters. Let me know if I’m wrong with that assumption. I play warrior and mesmer too and honestly aside of 1v1 encounters I just can’t find myself to be as good with them as I am with my ele for the other type of battles. Leveling a gurdian now and I have high expectations towards this profession as well for WvW.

Speaking strictly about tpvp/spvp here.

I find warrior really fun. I tried ranger spirits and it’s so op i refuse to play it (unless my team doesnt have a ranger and the other one does, in this case i equalize things). Not even funny, just button smashing. Thing is war is not button smashing, u have to time your things right but mistakes can be forgiven.

I never button smashed my ele (except in the beginning) but now i’m really really angry cause one mistake and u are down. And on the other side if u dont make mistakes it’s a 50/50 win loss ratio. Most likely since it will be an attrition battle the encounter will be decided by other members of the team. And in exchange for this do we get an edge somewhere? No. Damage: anybody can do better. Survivability: guardian, ranger can do better. Support: guardian, spi rangers are better again. Which is the advantage of ele? Cause i dont see any.

One of the problems imo is that our utilities are either defensive (cantrips with the exception of lightning flash which can be used offensively) or offensive (arcane). I wont even mention signets (which are a decent choice if u go condition but condi ele is not a decent choice) and conjures (please just remove these from pvp: the add more complexity to ele in exchange for nothing). Most of time for other professions utilities can be used both ways.

Speaking from a spvp/tpvp standpoint ele just have no place in the current meta. Low health, low armor, either no damage or no survivability (other glass cannons have some control or evades or stealth or something ele has at most 2 hard controls with very long cd), very little support (the most support-ish thing u can do is go aurashare which has very limited range and leaves u with very small damage).

Little time ago reading the forums eles were lamenting their uselessness in pve.

Which leaves us with WvW. Staff buff made them possibly viable but then again arent around better aoe damage dealers (cd on meteor shower is looooooooooong, isnt it better to have granades or cluster bomb or something else?).

Pretty sure about the spvp part, is the pve/WvW correct? Before anybody jumps at my throat: i know ele can still kill an attrition battle with somebody else but that requires A LOT of concentration and skill compared with other classes. One mistake and u are down FAST (and i dont play glass cannon) which in the end made me switch to warrior.

I have to agree the problem right now is the sheer amount of cc. GW2 has become stun wars. We can discuss weather this or that spec is better at it but still the problem is anet guaranteed before the release that stunlocks would never become possible in gw2 since it’s not fun being killed without being able to do anything. Which is exactly what’s happening now. Also soft control is a problem. Immobilize, permablind? big problem.

I used to play ele now i just dont see the point. I got 2 stunbreakers and lightning flash to get out of troubles but still not enough and with 3 cantrips i kitten ridiculously my damage. Not enough control right now means not enough damage and stunbreakers dont guarantee survivability since 1 utility simply cant cope with a cc that can be used every (depends on spec) 5/10 secs.

I also agree with op about all the “evade builds” (mainly ranger, thief) running around. Basically ridiculous. Does that require skill? Maybe if 2 of the same confront each other (say 2 s/d thieves) but other than that not so much.

I have an issue also about stealth (d/p thieves, mesmers with torch). Not incredible op but basically u have aoe or suck. And please explain me how spamming random aoe is fun.

My last issue is progression in pvp. We are supposed to go from hj to solo to team. But simply as it is hj promotes bad playing. Just encourages players to zerg and not care about points not to mention some builds which are not viable at high level may seem viable in hj (cause EVERYTHING works in hj, just everything). Solo queue promotes builds that can 1v1 and basically punishes support since soloing will never ever encourage players to collaborate while support might be useful at high level.

IF they remove the kill by fall on the map sure include it, otherwise it would be 5 necro with long fears running around. I played it once and it was quite enough. Also it’s quite silly that i’m so afraid of something that i throw myself into the void…

I’m no pro and my team disbanded due to ppl leaving gw2. That said i love gw2 pvp and i do it anyway despite the fact that i lost like 300 position or more in the last 15 days (used to be around 700, now i’m out of the first 1k).

Now i dont care much about leaderboards though seeing people that has less than 20 played matches in the first say 300 positions bugs me. Now cant we have a limitation in the leaderboards like “if u didnt play at least 15 games in the last month you are out” or something similar? Would be also a decent way to see who is actually playing atm and purge the leaderboards from dead accounts.

Just an idea. What do you think?

Confirmed for me too. Up and running.

It’s 23:16 atm and it looks like SFR is going to win: 2k advantage more or less but 2/3 of the map is in SFR hands. VERY VERY exciting week: gz to everyone who partecipated!

I dont seem to be able to partecipate in free tournment right now. Dont know about paid.

I was thinking about what’s the best composition for tourneys and I have a couple of questions for everybody:

1) often the discussion about professions is quite short-sighted because it revolves around 1v1 which is one of the possible scenarios in tournment but probably not the one you see more often. Is it really so appealing to have somebody that can 1v1 very well but it’s not so useful in a teamfight? For example 1v1 builds often need surviving traits to work cause pure damage would be too fragile: in a teamfight the problem could be solved.

2) this leads me to the second point. Control abilities are often used for bunker builds but could be used in combination to let the dps builds dish up more damage and let them unequip their control/defensive abilities. I dont deny a bunker or maybe even 2 (depending how u wanna play your team) are necessary but couldnt we have 1 proper bunker and 1 high survivability controller? Or it’s a waste in your opinion?

3) Support: 80-90% of cases discussions about support end up being discussions about healing. Support could be other things. While i dont deny the usefulness of defensive support and healing there are support builts that can grant many stacks of might or even permafury. Again: i’m silly to consider offensive support as useful as defensive one?

4) Condition vs power: this is not quite a question but more like an opinion. Isnt the game a bit biased towards condition builds? Except a few high burst builds direct damage seems to be falling behind in general. Or am i horribly wrong? This idea may actually be connected with point 3 since it forces at least one of the team to be condition cleanser (support necro or ele very often) therefore limiting possibilities.

5) After all this please give me your favourite composition for tourneys, being specific about who does what. I’m just curious about what people consider “best in slot” for a team.

So why all elementalists i see in teams play support staff? Do we really have any other options? I would really love to see stats about the ppl that does tourneys both free and paid. I would really like to see how many successful dps eles are out there (support eles are still viable imho). I know honestly i’m not one of them while i’m perfectly ok with mesmer. A matter of playstyle? I would even say i play ele better than mesmer but still the instrument feels much more powerful when i use the second one.

@Calle:
- I did miss that post, gonna give it a look if u link
- Dodge. Universal excuse for unbalance. L2 dodge. Sure, gimme infinite dodging and i will, unfortunately i have 2. I even have often vigor on but still there are moments when i cannot dodge.
- U r kind of right about fire 1 IF all 3 lines hit, which is not always the case. About air 1 we both agree “miss” counts as 0. I’ll give you that IF it hits the damage is ok, but since it doesnt…
- Thanks, good suggestion. Unfortunately since i often move around my enemy and so does he those spells do miss a lot.
- Yes, i can escape, assuming i’m not controlled: rtl is a very good spell, so is mist form. I do think ether renewal became interesting: though u r right to say UP TO 8 conditions since interrupts may happen. Yet escaping is not my thing: i may win or lose but escaping is not my thing. I do that occasionally when that 5 points could be necessary for the win but even so i dont like to do it.
That said with people that actually mark a target who is the first to go down in general in a group fight? Personally i target mesmers first (but mainly to keep attention on which is the real one) but i notice generally many teams go for the ele 1st (unless it’s bunker). And before you say it: also my leader goes for ele often, not just the other team cause i’m a baddie.
- I’m quite curious about your build: 18k life would mean knight or soldier amulet. Am i wrong? Please link me your spec, i’d like to test survivability and damage.
- Thanks for the cute, i would have appreciated a less sarcastic tone but meh.

Sorry but i have to disagree about the “ele is fine” argument completely. Damage is awful compared to other professions. Just plain awful. 1hb wars can do 17k on glass cannon, backstab thieves around the same depending on cds. To do my burst (which cant even remotely compete with that) i have to (i use daggers, scepter 2 is avoidable even with updraft): air 4-5, fire 3-4-2 (this passage is optional)-5. Notice 5 has a 45 sec cd. 45 secs for a spell that doesn’t do 8k but if we are lucky 5k.

And at any point my camera can be wrong, it’s very easy to miss. At any point a stunbreaker can end my burst which is a pretty long chain if compared to say 5, f1, 1. (and not one of this abilities has a cd). Air 1 almost misses half of the time even after the “fix”, so does fire 2, air 2, water 2. All 1 spells of every attunement except for scepter 1 air and maybe staff fire 1 have a damage that… if u remove them from game i dont think anybody would notice. We are speaking about hundreds vs 2k of other professions. I dont even consider viable to go condition: 2 decent spells (scepter 1 earth and dagger 5 earth) and 1 is pretty hard to land. Even supposing we land churning earth we are slower than a necro, a thief, a ranger, an engi for bleed stacking.

Adding to that the survivability if u go glass cannon is a laugh. Ele is extremely weak against controls: no automatic traits for say cloak yourself or have protection while stunned. A controlled ele is a dead ele. Even a 1 sec stun is deadly. Cause you know for some reasons we have low health and low armor adding to low damage. In exchange for what exactly? aoe i guess and some more healing options if compared to other professions. Just doesnt cut it for me.

What to do to solve this? First of all: Fire traits and to some degree air traits. Would be cool to have stats about people who picks fire traits: they are USELESS. And i mean USELESS. “Best” one is 10% damage in fire attunement. It’s a first tier trait: grandmaster traits are an insult. And that’s all said. Nobody builds around fire traits. Only exception may be the condi based aura build. In that case u go for fire embrace to have auras when u use signets. That forces u to have 30 pts in earth for written in stone. Not my pair of shoes so i didnt test that extensively. But the thing is we need fire traits designed for direct damage. Another line that needs rework but in a minor way is air. Mostly i’m speaking of the grandmaster traits. 20% damage on stun/kd is useless since we have so little control but if we add control and make it work with knockback MAYBE it’d be worth taking. Tempest defense is kind of good but it feels to me like it should be on second tier not 3rd and give space to something else.

Second thing: we need more control and/or traits for defending from control, specially for daggers. Maybe and i say maybe halving the cd on earthquake and updraft could do.

These are the 2 things i can think about while playing unhappily my mesmer. Before u ask: rank 30 here, played ele from the beginning, switching to other professions from the last patch while still trying to find something that works for ele unsuccessfully.

I may be the only one in the world but i got to say this. I find both halloween and this event are extremely confusing. Consider that reading what an npc says is not my pair of shoes, so i repeat: it may be just me, but just in case somebody agrees… And btw Anet said that to play gw2 wouldnt have been necessary to read anything cause “u can see what happens”.

I pved all my way to 80 and got map completion: loved the nice mixture of hearts and events and had no problems at all. Lost shores and halloween got me completely lost. At the point i abandoned halloween pretty soon and even if i looked forward for lost shores i’ll abandon it too. Even if i go against my idea of fun and read what to do i still dont understand how to make a donation (cool, they need wood and metal i have that, then a donation packaging says Miyani ok… Ops they dont combine…), i still dont understand what to do with the wreckage on the beach and i’m never sure i’m in the right place for events because they may not be active atm (and anyway waiting isnt fun).

Sorry but why? Why not give some clue on the interface (top right corner: the infos i see atm are VERY generic)? I may be stupid but I really really dont like the idea to have to get information in game by reading npc or even worse having to search on the internet for videos and infos.

The dungeon looks fun but i can do that any moment laters, for now i just had a taste of it. So I guess i’ll just lose content, be pissed and abandon pve till something changes. If it’s forever cause i’m the only one thinking like this it’s ok: i have my spvp but honestly I feel very very disappointed to lose content i was really looking for.

Pretty much agree with OP. As an ele i will wait and see but the first impressions are horrible.

Just to say WTF doesnt work anymore for me…

This is definetely a problem with italian net (mostly fastweb but not only that) AND anet server. Issue here is having them work together…

Anyway guys: i received an email requesting to send them some data and i did. Did you do the same? The more data they have the faster the issue will be solved. And that’s the only thing we can do to help.

Guys Italy seems to have problems with connections there is already another post about this, go there https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Stuck-in-every-loeading-screen/page/3#post713502

I can confirm on my side the problem is not at every time and not in every zone. Personally i have problems in the mists and related pvp maps while i’m ok in the pve world. I also have problems entering personal story (which is another server i guess). I had no problem this morning, but again the lag is unbearable this evening.

What’s completely strange is some of my toons have no lag at all: it seems like pve in the world is fine but as soon as i enter an instance (personal story) or the mists i start having BIG problems. I’m no expert but how can this be a provider problem?

“Tracing route to 206.127.157.102.plaync.com [206.127.157.102] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 general failure. Trace complete”

Does it mean anything?

Btw, Italy fastweb for me too. Same identical problem: i was in the mists, but now it’s starting to spread everywhere as a problem.

I got title and everything but not the 2 gifts of exploration. Pleeeeeeeeeease send me

Edit: ok,, the chantry of secrets worked for me.

Simply i did the achievement “been there, done that” correctly (did all poi, hearts, waypoints, vistas on all maps) but didnt receive the 2 gifts of exploration. The login screen shows correctly that i completed map but i dont have the 2 gifts. I was in eternal battleground at the moment. I changed servers just to complete: did that cause the bug? Can you send me the 2 gifts?

After this morning maintenance i found grp for TA exp mode. After entering the dungeon half of the party couldnt read party chat and neither he saw the interface of the party. After a relog try he left party to see what happens and for everybody he was “offline” and i was offline for me. Then another guy left/disconnected, i went to caledon to ask for people and another guy whispered me for the place. He was “offline” for me and i couldnt whisper him back even if he whispered me back again few seconds after.

So it seems like there are problems again with party, chat and offline/online status not showing correctly.

Basically same as title. I’m ele and i want basically cleric gear (+power +tough +heal). I know i can craft myself cleric with tailoring and i want to ask so the question is: how can i farm gossamer? Is there a good place to farm that? Which kind of item should i salvage and which salvage kit should i use to get it?

And how do i fill the remaining slots (rings, amulets, staff etc)? Should i just go explorable dungeons and hope for that?

@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)?

Just finished arah dungeon, killed the last boss and crashed on the final cinematic. As a result no loot and no achievement (cant enter explore). But i get to see people celebrating on the deck…

Except for the people that were doing the instance with me: they had the same problem.

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.