Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I want to give my opinion about the current elementalist with the game experiences I have had in sPvP/tPvP. So here goes:

skip the background if you like
A little background. In GW2 I have played Engineer (power and condition damage/surviveability), Warrior kitten and support), Ranger (Longbow and spirit build), so it’s pretty diverse. Lately I have played Thief a little in the 8v8 aswell with a backstab build.

It starts here!
Out of all the professions I found the elementalist the most fun to play. I play with scepter and dagger/sometime staff by the way. What I really like about the Ele is that it’s challenging to play, switching attunements wisely is a big and tricky aspect of the Ele, aswell as timing all those ground targetted AoE’s. Also the animations are kitten awesome!

You aren’t here just to give positive feedback, right?!
Nope, I am not. I said before that switching attunements is challenging and tricky… I do not like what I get in return for it. I’ll be more in depth for each attunement for the weapons I play with the most, scepter+dagger.

Fire
kitten I can do alot of damage, even when traited only 10-20 into this line. But how do I actually hit a good player? 9/10 times someone dodges out of dragon’s tooth or the phoenix and the number 5 skill is very slow.

People will say you have to invest into an immobilize of some sort. But if I do not invest all my utilities into surviveability I can die in seconds, even with high toughness. And even then, my opponent probably has a stun breaker and all these skills miss, it requires a single dodge roll.

Lightning
Should be a really quick single target spike damage, but it really isn’t. The only good thing is the speed at which you can unload these skills, you have to be happy with the little damage you have done and move on.

Earth
Great to boost surviveability with the n2, a nice stun (a bit slow, but hey) and a blind. But then you get to the nr5 skill, a loooong channel for very medium damage, even with decent toughness/vitality (1600/1900) you can die in the channel by 1 class.

Water
This attunement is actually fine. I can ward off people with n4, put a long freeze on them, heal with 3 and 5, remove condition and even group heal a little (all little bits count).

Random thoughts and conclusion
All the n1 skills do lackluster damage. With any ~2k power build on any character you can put out 2-2,5k damage per second on a glass cannon. An elementalist simply cant.

I have seen succesfull ‘bunker’ elementalists and this seems to be the onyl viable build right now. They are however not as succesfull as any other profession who goes bunker/support. In my opinion one of the only succesfull builds for Ele’s is the worst of it’s kind(well, maybe after support Thief).

Another thing; my oh my the bugs on this profession. There is a list of 6 forum posts long bug reporting.

Conclusion
Challenging and alot of fun, but the degree in difficulty does not pay off and needs alot of work to fix bugs and make them on par with other professions in PvP.

Regardless of this guardian discussion – splitting pve and pvp skills is a good idea. That way you can nerf for pvp and buff for pve.

You can still use your skills while being immobilized.

Leap skills will leave you standing on the spot doing it.

The only thing that I think should change is the ability to turn while immobilized. If someone roots you for say 4s and is behind you…

Ranger elite root skill requires you to kill the root, but sometimes the targettable root is behind you. Ranger just pewpews from behind and GG

I agree with Scaryman, I play elementalist and I rarely land my attacks on good players. In 8v8 I can dish out lots of damage, but in tournaments I just dont land anything.

To clarify I do anticipate where people will go and I have a signet to root for 3s every 20s, but its not enough. The damage being dealt (scepter, dagger) is just not enough even though I run a high damage build.

The balance in sPvP is bad. There are builds out there that are nearly impossible to beat with any profession or set up. Skills that can make any fight completely unfair and alot of bugs. I have played defensive/offensive warrior, balanced elementalist and condition/AoE bombkit engineer.

Too strong:
1. Moa… There are some things up for debate that might be countered. This one is not! With all the mesmer effects up there is no way you are going to see it being cast. There is a very high chance you will lose the fight while being a moa

2. Any kind of quickness. Quickness + pistol whip, hundred blades, crossfire (shortbow ranger) etc.

Argueably you dodge these abilities. I say that’s not doable. Sure you can see the herpkittenwarrior coming. But how am I to dodge the stealthed thief? How am I to cure my conditions every 5s because you have rank 10+ bleeds on in that time?

3. Target drops. Mesmers and thieves have alot of these. I do not care I need to reselect him, but if I already pressed my skill it will fire and miss. You can lose so much damage missing because of that.

4. Condition builds. High direct damage means high power and high precision. High condition damage means just some condition damage stat. There is alot of room for being very very sturdy while dealing alot of damage. Removing conditions does not help so much because of the cooldown being too long.

5. The trebuchet in Battle of Khylo. It’s not too strong, it’s just way too easy to repair. It’s not fun getting the treb down 10 times.

It seems to be a trend to shoot down any thread about something being unbalanced. So please, some constructive comments about other things you think are too strong or too weak.

What is it, a 240 seconds cooldown? It should be powerfull. Currently we haven’t got any good elite. The Signet of Rage is all I see people going with. Rampager is screwed when they remove your stability. Banner gives mediocre buffs.

Vehementi.1094:

biggyphool.4831:

Psy.6153:

5 signet warrs have basically 100% crit chance
kill shotting for 14k, gg

broken class

They have 100% crit at lower levels. At 80, its a drop in the bucket.

No, you can still achieve about 91% at level 80 in WvW/PvE (sPvP gear/options are really kittened in comparison)

Who cares if you crit, it matters howmuch your crits land for. I dont care if you have 100% crit chance and crit 1,5k for each greatsword swing, I will crit 2,5k with 75% chance to crit. (Numbers are made up just to make the point)

Oh please, you are dead meat when locked on? A thief can always get away.

Check out thieves’ elite skills vs some other classes, they are absolutely overpowered. Thieves guild and disappear yourself will get most classes halfway (or use up all their dodges and it’s easy to kill them).

And even when you take down the thief, if you do use the disappear and teleport in downed state and DO NOT attack you can hop around forever.

For those of you saying HS spam isnt that effective etc. you are right. In 1v1 from the start it isn’t. But most of the time a thief pops up when you are doing a 1v1 and he just uses 1 bloody skill 4 times and you are dead. It feels terrible, doesnt require any skill whatsoever, it pisses me off.

Thieves used to be strong and took skill to play, HS was effective when under 30% health, not from 70% to 0. I do not see how they make the Thief this strong after so many beta tests. Especially the downed state is ridiculous, everyone complained about it and nothing was done. If you kill someone you should have a good chance of finishing him. The ONLY exception to this would be if you down someone and you have under 2k health left. Not spend 30 seconds running after a thief trying to finish him.

Sometimes it’s caused by lag. Most of the times it’s because the skills are poorly designed. Both skills cannot be cancelled, this leads to especially Rush rushing into a wall and you are stuck waiting untill it’s over. The skill rushes behind the mob/player so you need to turn to hit. In PvE this means you are set back a second, but in PvP someone who wants to get away will be away by just walking.

There is another issue with Rush, which is the extremely SLOW attack animation. It’s supposed to be a gap closer, but in the 2 seconds it takes to hit someone can get away.

Cooking is not worth it. A couple of professions can make a consumeable (almost every) which are just as good as chef food.

untill I figured out lots of stuff was sold by karma vendors I was unable to lvl my cooking because of the randomness of stuff to gather. Now it’s ridiculously hard to make food, which really isnt that great

The skill point to the most south west in the straits of devastation has been stuck for a few days now. There seems to be no way of starting it, are you aware of this arenanet?