Guild Wars 2

Just an idea I had while sitting here debating whether or not to login to GW2 given the broken state of my Ele…

What if the Conjure skills spawned “Elemental” weapons instead of being locked to a specific attunement? Say, you could spawn a Bow, but instead of it being the Frost Bow with its limited 5 attacks, have it change elements when you change attunements, becoming a flame bow, or a lightning bow, etc? I think that would be an awesome upgrade to our currently mostly harmless Conjured weapons. Just a thought, discuss. And please, no flaming about how many more skills that would give us. Yes, it would give us more skills. Considering the 20 we already have with any particular weapon set have only… 5-10 actually useful skills, if that… (I’m looking at you, direct damage staff >.>) It would add some interesting flavor and possible new options.

It would definitely need to keep its charge system and duration, though. Just putting that out there.

Don’t quote me on this, but I don’t think the Elementalist attunement bonuses count as what the game defines as boons. I could be mistaken, however.

The Elementalist is very versatile, yes, and personally I find that in PVE and even in WvW that’s an okay trade-off, or at the least not a huge drawback as it is in sPVP. In sPVP, though, it becomes an off-balance nightmare because while the Elementalist is CAPABLE of doing everything, it is outshined in all of its fields by pretty much everything else, except the healing/support role. I’m not 100% familiar with Guardians; they may be more proficient at healing and support than an Ele, but it would be close. Support or Bunkering is arguably the only reason Ele’s are viable in tournaments, and as such I feel pigeonholed into playing a certain “role” in order to be effective with my team. I don’t necessarily consider this fair, as the class description of the Elementalist as written by aNet paints a very different picture than what we actually recieve.

Are they workable? Yes. Can they be good in the right hands? Absolutely. What saddens me is that only an elite minority is able to make the Ele perform well, and if that elite minority focused their skill on another class, they would become godly. As unfortunate as it is, the very nature of the elementalist; being multifaceted and able to adapt, is what causes us the most balance issues in sPVP specifically.

We are a jack of all trades, but a master of nothing.

Lol @ lifelike for comparing Tera to GW2. You could have bound your various cooldown to 1-5, and then used shift grouping to cycle between however many pages of skills you used… or you could just press Space to chain them as the game’s dev’s provided.

Of course, no one complained about the sorceror in Tera, which was the Ele’s equiv… because it actually worked right and did lots of damge.

Magic Night.1308:

What’s that thing you have there Westley?

That’s the Wunderwaffe DG-2 from Call of Duty: Nazi Zombies. It was a steampunk-themed weapon that fired a bolt of chain lightning, instantly vaporzing up to 10 zombies within 5 meters of each chain. Obviously, it would need some damage tweaks to be applied here… although, in hindsight, scrap that. I need a good thief zapper. ;D

Anyhow I think it’d make a great kit. It’d fit well with the engineer playstyle, inventions and mechanical back lore. Also has a very steampunk feel, obviously, which some of the engineer’s unique quirks fit quite well with.

Dinks.2478:

So then Eles and only Eles, who already have more skills than everybody else, will get even more skills.

One word: engineers.

Look past the CoD part, and focus on the weapon instead. It fits the theme so well!

Thamyris.3570:

Everyone and their dog has a pistol or rifle in this game, there are sniper rifles, mortars, char tracked vehicles, and flying machines. Engineers are a long was off being the first gunmen now, and rockets are a tougher tech than automatic weapons. Anyway that’s my opinion.

Fun fact: The first explosive rockets were in use by the Chinese in the 13th century. The first automatic rifle was made in 1887. The first multi-barreled automatic gun (the famous Gatling Gun) was invented in 1862, 25 years before the first automatic rifle.

I support a deployable, controllable gatling Elite skill.

I do have to agree though that in the case of condi damage builds, underwater does suffer a bit. Power/Precision oriented builds, however… I find all the elements except earth to be very effective. Water is actually one of my favorites.

Korgath.6581:

Westley.4716:

Look, my point is I don’t think that the combo system is an adequate trade off for doing little damage. Yes, we make excellent support platforms due to our healing and CC, but I honestly think that (in PVP) a player’s amulet, armor runes, and character speccing should determine a weapon’s role, with at least one of the options being decent damage from every weapon set, with obvious differences such as delivery style and range.

It would be nice if it done more damage, for sure. I would agree that it doesn’t do enough with combo fields to warrant the drawbacks. It can use some tweaking for sure but as far as weapon sets go I think the staff is the weakest for Elementalists in general. I even prefer might stacking with Scepter/Dagger and getting other Classes to lay down fields under me as I do it.

What I don’t agree with is people using broad terms like ‘Underpowered’ and ‘Sucks’ or saying that everyone does everything better than we can when it’s just not true. It’s getting to the point were people are thinking twice about playing this class just because people are saying this sort of stuff when in truth the only reason to not play the class is if you prefer a more sedate play style.

I agree, but at the same time, the class does require a LOT of skill to play for results that are simply subpar when compared to classes of lower skill caps. This may be changing soon, after what the devs said, but time will tell of course. I’m content to wait until the game gets some much needed balancing (to several areas, not just eles) and see what happens.

I am in no way asking for Staff to be the go-to weapon for Ele’s, just that it be equally viable as a damage dealer as the other weapon options available to us.

EDIT: As an aside: take a look at the skill videos on the GW2 Class Description, and see how they differ from the current version. I almost wish they’d go back…
Elementalist Class Description

Okay, this discussion is getting very immature and far from objective. If you want objectivity, let’s try another look. Almost every other class can be viable in a 1v1 fight regardless of what weapon they use, assuming they are skilled and know how to use their advantages and mitigate their weaknesses. A staff ele is an exception, because if you’re attempting to do damage, all of your damaging abilities are area DoTs, as you already stated, which does not work with the GW2 combat mechanic. This games combat mechanic is very acrobatic, dodging and zipping about. The very act of immobilizing someone is considered a “condition” and can be cleansed by nearly any class or otherwise defeated via teleports.

While I understand staff ele’s have great access to combo fields, we lack the blast finishers to properly use them; requiring either a wasted utility slot or 30 points in arcana, and only one of them is on a cooldown low enough to be used with any frequency, and even then its ridiculously long cast animation makes it less than ideal simply for the fact of having to place the blast finisher THEN place the combo field, instantly burning 2 of your attunements just for the sake of 1 Area Healing, 3 stacks of Area Might, or 1 stack of Area Frost Armor, or a Swiftness stack we could already HAVE by using Air 4. While this isn’t something you hear me directly complaining about, its part of the problem that Staff Ele’s simply take too long to do anything impressive, and even then, its not that impressive anyhow. You speak of Staff Ele’s as being the king of combo fields, but a thief can lay down 3 combo fields, an engineer can lay down 3, a ranger can lay down 2 that I know of since I don’t play ranger…

Look, my point is I don’t think that the combo system is an adequate trade off for doing little damage. Yes, we make excellent support platforms due to our healing and CC, but I honestly think that (in PVP) a player’s amulet, armor runes, and character speccing should determine a weapon’s role, with at least one of the options being decent damage from every weapon set, with obvious differences such as delivery style and range.

I’m not going to bother explaining why I want this in the game. I won’t revisit its awesomeness. I won’t touch base on how it fits the steampunk theme. I won’t mention the hordes of zombies slaughtered at its mere trigger press. I won’t even mention how it could be implemented incredibly easily with some simple modifications to the chain lightning animation and effect.

You either get it, or you don’t. Without further adieu…
The Wunderwaffe DG-2

+1 if you think we need this as an Elite Kit.

I will cry in astonishment and weep with joy if Arenanet ever implements an engineer weapon/kit like the Wunderwaffe DG-2.

It would seriously be the best day ever. Ever. EVAR.

Or some ninja swapped out rifle sigil of slowfiring for a Sigil of Rage and you’re getting a 10% chance to proc quickness on crits. ;D

DreadShinobi.4751:

Korgath.6581:

Westley.4716:

Korgath.6581:

[Not sure why you would want me to 1v1 someone with a staff. It’s obviously not built around 1v1 engagements, square peg in a round hole much?]

This is a problem. Having a really tough time right now thinking of any weapon combination on any other class that isn’t viable 1v1 if used skillfully enough. Even a guardian and necro can use staff to better results 1v1 than an Ele can. Sure, an Ele can keep itself alive 1v1 for as long as he needs to, usually, but that hardly wins fights if your opponents can just tank your abysmally pathetic damage…

Why is terrible 1v1 damage a problem when you a pick a weapon that’s all duration based aoe damage? The only thing terrible about it is people trying to use it for something it’s not intended for.

Yep. This.

Staff is an aoe/support weapon. Trying to 1v1 with a staff as well as a S/D or D/D is like saying a bow or rifle warrior should be able to melee as well as a GS warrior. All weapons have purposes, staff is not a ST dmg weapon.

Its an AoE/Support weapon because it was poorly designed and pigeonholed into that role. -.- Necros run staves and do plenty of damage. They also win 1v1s. They can also weapon swap.

Bow and Rifle warrior can weapon swap to close range weapons. Your analogy is invalid.

Elementalists do not have the luxury of weapon swap therefore our 4 attunements need to properly encompass the same potential advantages of swapping weapons to fill a variety of roles as the situation changes. The staff currently does not allow that. This needs addressed.

Lightning hammer is fun. I feel like Thor, sort of.

Earth Shield is great for support/bunker eles, as the 3 seconds of invuln gives you similar blocking ability to having a shield off hand. Couple it with things like Mist Form and Arcane Shield and you can actually avoid taking quite bit of damage.

Its also hilarious to play S/D Burst Ele, drop a shield for a teammate and have them use the pull skill, then drop it and use an AoE Knockdown… all while you’re dropping standard fire burst combo of DT, Phoenix, RoF, and Flame Grab. That being said, its a much more defensive utility than the others; don’t expect massive damage from it.

I think the devs should have put as much effort into designing the staff skills as they did designing the trident skills. I actually feel much more comfortable underwater with trident than I do on land with staff, as far as damage goes. If you’re having trouble stacking bleeds, I dunno what to tell you. Run a Sigil of Earth, and is there a trait to cause bleed on crits? I know there is for burning but not sure. Also, use your Rock Anchor to drag an opponent down, then get close and spam your earth 1 and 2 and you’ll stack bleeds fairly quickly. I can’t remember off the top of my head how many fire skills apply burning, so you’re on your own there.

If you’re not in combat you get auto-healed to full anyways, so that’s a bit of a moot point. Just set a trigger so that the moment your spells/attunement bonuses have an affect on an enemy (or a teammate who is currently in combat) it puts you back in combat. Same situation. Or set a global cooldown on the things like Elemental Attunement to prevent buff stacking. OP makes a very good point; no one likes going into a fight with half your attunements on cooldown.

Although the point could still be made that Engineers have no cooldown on their kits, which are arguably the same thing as our attunements…

Korgath.6581:

[Not sure why you would want me to 1v1 someone with a staff. It’s obviously not built around 1v1 engagements, square peg in a round hole much?]

This is a problem. Having a really tough time right now thinking of any weapon combination on any other class that isn’t viable 1v1 if used skillfully enough. Even a guardian and necro can use staff to better results 1v1 than an Ele can. Sure, an Ele can keep itself alive 1v1 for as long as he needs to, usually, but that hardly wins fights if your opponents can just tank your abysmally pathetic damage…

I lol’d. Alot.

On a side note, rifle/grenadier engineer may be the most fun I’ve ever had in GW2. Mostly coz the Overcharged Shot makes me crack up everytime I use it, sending someone flying while knocking me on my kitten Looove it. Also BoB, and then for even moar lulz use the Personal Battering Ram. Thief is like “I’m gonna steal from you!” /stealz and I’m like, “Got your gunk? Good, now GTFO.” /batteringram “And take your grenades with you!” /grenadebarrage

Sporadicus.1028:

This looks like it was translated with Google. I’ll try to make it look better.

Splarv said:

“The second weapon slot of the engineer was removed to force players to use weapon kits. This is why a weapon kits are selectable skills. To make weapon kits better, engineers should have a second swappable virtual weapon slot devoted only to engineer kits. This will add more fun and convenience. Engineers can mix various forms of kits and class weapons (for example pistols and rifle at low levels, elixir gun and Flamethrower at high levels), improve them with sigils and benefit from the “on swap” sigils as well, and even mix weapons like pistol and grenades (which grenade is obviously a one-handed weapon). Even medkits could be one handed “virtual” weapon with bandage for right and elixir for left.

This may be because I want to be able to switch between the Elixir Gun and the Flamethrower by using the ` key without using the conventional weapon at all. "

I’m not trying to make him seem like an idiot. Just trying to be friendly and help others out.

I’m merely browsing these forums to see if other classes suffer from the same perils as my main, an Elementalist. I was taken aback by the time you took to straighten out the OPs message as English obviously wasn’t his first language. Huge props and respect to you for this. Just wanted to say thanks.

No one complains about bad mesmers. Its the good ones they complain about. They are simply overpowered. Their mechanic is overpowered, having copies of themselves, their indirect damage with their insta-spawn pets is overpowered, making escaping them ludicrously hard, and to top it off they get stealth, blink, and AoE quickness. Even worse they can be tanky and still put out far more punishment than most classes can muster.

Did you equip a PVP Steady Weapon by mistake? Or forget to equip an amulet?

Your arguement is invalid because Svanir stands still. Warrior’s damage is instantaneous where as a good majority of Ele skills have windups (i.e., Dragon’s Tooth) and all the cast times. In actual PVP, this is a huge noticeable problem, as a warrior can downstate you before Dragon’s Tooth even lands, and if he downs you, Dragon’s Tooth suddenly doesn’t do any damage even if it was fully casted while still up.

Also comparing Ele DPS to others via the use of NPCs is hardly a good comparison. Any class can kill the NPCs.

Wulfrim.4793:

How do you think a guardian does it? Their dps is lower than ours even if we go tanky but they are persistant.

You must know some very poor guardians, then.

So what you’re saying then is that a class that includes in its class description , and I quote: “What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack” cannot be a glass cannon? Sounds fairly contradictory to me. Just my opinion, of course, but it seems to be shared quite a bit…

Maybe we don’t want to play bunkers? Has anyone thought of that? =\

Also, someone who is paying attention to your status bar will see what attunement you’re in, so that’s a moot point on the color thing.

‘Hai, I’m a staff elementalist. I can call down a meteor shower! (don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.) I can also make lava erupt from the ground! You should take a couple steps to the left so it doesn’t keep tickling you. I can lobs fireballs at you, and make you burst into flame! But you can cleanse that, and just avoid the fireballs. I can also shoot lightning at you, but it doesn’t hurt much either… I can blind you! Well, for one attack anyhow. I could push you back, but I suck at aiming that skill. I can make my allies run a little faster! That works, right? Ooo, I know. I’ll throw ROCKS at you! Big rocks, the size of bowling balls! But they don’t hurt either, but move away from that pile of bulging rocks on the ground, coz its gonna blow up! Its okay if you don’t move though, coz it doesn’t hardly hurt either. I can make the ground TREMBLE beneath your feet, crippling or immobilizing you! Well, when it hits… Oh, but I CAN heal everyone. I can slow you down with a chill field, or give my buddies frost armor, or cleanse their conditions…………… so, wait… why do I have these other 3 attunements? Hm…"

/Click Esc
/Click Character Select
/click “Create New Character”
/Click Thief
/Profit

TL;DR: Why do we have 4 attunements if three of them are useless? Why is staff pigeonholed into “support” when we’re supposed to do great damage with Fire and Air attunements? I’m glad you found happiness with tanky staff build, but I want a damaging staff build. Please fix our atrocious damage!

Glass Cannon, except some Thief stole our Cannon and replaced it with a peashooter.

Yeah, I just tested this build in a few sPVP matches. While the damage is good, it doesn’t one-shot anything; and I’m not seeing numbers anywhere near the 30.6k you claimed it would produce. Maybe against a dummy, which is stationary and doesn’t have annoying things like stability, but in actual combat the damage is too low and you sacrifice too much to make it work reasonably… I personally won’t run an Ele in any form of PVP (or PVE for that matter) without Mist Form equipped, and having most of your damage come from your 3 very valuable utility slots is too great a sacrifice for mediocre results… A thief can do this same concept, but still have all his utilities how he wants.

This build looks cool! I’m gonna give it a go. Question, though; you’re already the squishiest class in the game (lowest base hp, lowest base toughness) and you don’t have the benefit of stealth like certain other classes that we won’t speak of… How would you rate being able to survive since RTL will undoubtedly miss 90% of the time, preventing you from even dropping the insane burst?

On a side note, since you’re relying on Arcane Power to guarantee crits, and arcane wave/blast always crit anyhow, would it be more prudent to use a Valkyrie’s amulet? Same crit bonus, same power bonus, but 500~ toughness instead of 500~ precision? Granted your base HP will be even lower, but the increase in toughness might make it worth it…

Also, Runes of the Air are definitely worth investigating. With that much power/crit, the lightning proc (at 20% chance every 10 seconds) will MELT stuff. I’ve seen it crit for 3-4k. It also boosts swiftness duration and gives the same bonus to Crit Damage as the Rock Dog runes.

Edit: Also, I see this not working against any class that grants stealth on CC effects, like Rangers and Engineers. Just a heads up.

Very easy solution: Undo the nerf given to us between BWE2 and BWE3. Elementalist damage with all weapons is lackluster, and although an elite minority is able to make it work well, its potential should not be accessible by an elite few while the rest are left to make easy prey for warriors spamming quickness and hundred blades, or thieves with pistol whip.

While I can make a S/D build work… somewhat, as well as D/D, staff builds are just atrocious unless building for support. This is ridiculous as the very design of the elementalist indicates it should be capable of damage, support, healing, or whatever else just via speccing and current attunement. The weapon should denote engagement range and style of damage, not functionally limit the class to support.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/
Read what aNet’s class description says about Fire and Air attunements. Fire is accurate, but Air is way off with every single weapon. Air has been relegated to CC, Mobility, and Buffs/Debuffs, honestly which would be better suited to Earth attunement for CC and Debuffs, and Water for Mobility and Buffs. Restore Air’s rightful place as targetted damage. A lightning bolt in real life would kill a man outright, where as fire is a slow, painful death. Granted real life has no bear in gaming, but… still.

Staff has a lot of skills that COULD do damage if they scaled correctly with power – precision and crit damage, but they don’t. Locking staff to “support – control” is a lame arguement as we get 1 immobilize on a 30 second CD that misses constantly and an AoE chilled, which is pretty useful I’ll agree, and a lightning ring-stun, which is meh as good players will just stay inside it and switch to ranged weapons and skills… Not exactly very controlling. Oh, we also have a knockdown on a 30 second CD that also misses constantly.

Having played both extensively in sPVP, I’d say Engineer > Elementalist. No grass is greener there, as I’ve played both. Alot. Ele seriously needs fixed.

Elric of Grans.7684:

Nick Danger.9821:

Elric of Grans.7684:

…I am not sure that many players are calling for the Elementalist to be dumbed down…

I see a distressing number of posters saying the ele is either broken (no amount of effort/skill lets an ele match an ‘easy’ class) or that it takes significantly more effort to achieve the same effect as some other classes.

I see these folks then call for ‘fixes’ for the ele (ie make eles easier). I can’t remember seeing any of these folks calling for ‘fixes’ for the ‘easier’ classes (ie make the ‘easier’ classes ‘harder’) as their preferred method for achieving balance. Have I missed these, and if so, do they outnumber the ‘make eles easier’ posters?

When challenged, folks can respond in several ways, including expending the effort to buckle down and improve their game, or expending the same effort to complain to have the game made easier. Bringing the ‘easier’ classes up to eles level is the former, advocating bringing the ele down is the latter.

Sorry, I honestly do not understand your post. No, I have not seen anyone calling for the other classes to be nerfed, but that has absolutely nothing to do with my statement that I do not believe the majority of Elementalist players want the class dumbed down. Changed? Yes, but change is not dumbed down. Fixing bugs does not dumb the class down. Improving synergy does not dumb the class down. Boosting underpowered skills does not dumb the class down. The majority of complaints about the class are asking for it to be improved, but retain all the complexity of it. I think I have see two or three posts asking for it to be dumbed down, in amongst hundreds of posts suggesting changes.

This. I’m honestly fine with the complexity of the class, but I do want to see several of the skills brought up in damage potential. Specifically staff; I’ve seen lots of Ele’s do fine with Sceptre/Dagger, or Dagger/Dagger, but staff skills just SUCK, being permalocked to a “support” role because our damage potential is atrocious. Let the spec determine the role, not the weapon.

Why does everyone always say “Oh, just roll another class!” No, I don’t want to. I got this game FOR the elementalist. I loved the concept of switching through attunements instead of being spec-locked into only using one as other MMOs do. I have other chars, I have a thief, a warrior, and an engineer. If anything, the Engineer’s learning curve is just as complicated (if not more so, with its myriad of kits and abilities available to it) except it does MUCH more damage than my Ele EVER could. I ran a full crit build on my engineer and could press 3-4 keys and kill (most) targets; and if I didn’t, the cooldowns were low enough that I could survive long enough to improvise and still come out on top. The Elementalist does not have that luxury; even with a full glass cannon build, the class ends up being more of a glass pea shooter, or maybe a glass potato gun. Certainly not a cannon.

The class needs fixed. It just does. Yeah, in a support role its phenomenal; can provide support better than a Guardian in some cases, and it can even be a bunker despite being the LOWEST base survivability class in the game (lowest base HP, light armor) but it really needs the nerf that was given to it after BWE2 to be removed. I’d like to be able to actually do damage with staff. And don’t say “staff is only for support” because the spec should determine a weapon’s role, not the weapon itself, aside from engagement range. A thief can equip pretty much whatever weapon he wants and do decent damage with a myriad of well designed abilities. A warrior as well, and don’t get me started on mesmers. Even Guardians do more damage than an Ele in some cases, and their name would imply damage isn’t exactly their forte.

Please, PLEASE stop white knighting for aNet and petition them to fix the class already.

Also: when comparing Ele to other classes, use the engineer as a basis. They have just as much diversity, with 6 seperate kits vs our 4 attunements PLUS their equipped weapon. Granted they can only access 4 kits at a time, plus their weapon, but that still puts them at an advantage. In addition all of their kits have normal cooldowns on abilities, and NO cooldown on swapping kits, AND they get toolbet utility skills.

They probably buffed Mesmers. >_>

Things that would be obvious improvements to Staff:
Increased damage from Fire, Air, and Earth autoattacks
Increased delivery time of Lava Font and/or replace with Trigger Skill or instant damage skill (Lava Mine)
Increase Flame Bursts normal damage, reduce burning duration if needed to balance
Increase Air autoattack damage, cast speed, and travel time (Like to see this replaced with a bolt of lightning rather than chain lightning, honestly)
Increase Lightning Surge damage, reduce cast time slightly
Make Gust a directional AoE, similar to Mesmer equivalent
Make Windborn Speed do lightning damage to enemies inside its area of effect
Make Static Field a DoT inside its AoE, with the stun remaining on the ring
Improve Cast Time for Eruption, maybe small knockback a la Big Ol’ Bomb but not as strong
Increase duration of Magnetic Aura? (Maybe, this one is pretty good as is)
Increase length of cripple effect for Unsteady Ground, or better yet make it unpassable like the Guardian skill, except minus the swiftness for allies
Improve projectile speed for Shockwave; its far too easy to dodge (It’s just a slide to left… XD)

Seraskus.6810:

Munchkin, you are wrong in 1 point- Staff condition damage is the only thing that saves this weapon :P Both Flame Burst and Eruption are the skills without which I would be dead twice as often in PvE.

About the “Badly located” things I would point other skills:
-Staff: Gust = Pushes away only 1 enemy, which often makes it no worth taking (it pushes 1 enemy away from others while staff is also all about AoE.)
-Staff: Stoning. What it changes to me that I weakened my opponent if I am supposed to stay on long distance? Weakness would be better in daggers.

And I kinda agree about Fire Shield. In fact about all shields- all besides the Magnetic one are useless :<

Afer all I myself consider Ele lacking in condition applying. For example blinding and chilling. It would very much increase their survivability

Frost Shield is the greatest armor aside from Magnetic and Chaos. Try dropping your Earth 2 skill (Eruption) and then your Water 4 skill and standing near the Eruption when in combat.

Also, casting any earth projectiles (#1 and #5) through your Water 4 skill will cause Chilled to the target. The only way we can cast Blindness though is via Sigil of Air and Air 2 (Lightning Surge) also note Lightning Surge has much longer range than it advertises.

A good tactic for PVE is to cast the Ice field at your feet, so you’re standing on the opposite side of it from the mobs you’re engaging. Toss a few Earth autoattacks through it to apply Chilled and Weakness to make their ranged attacks miss more, then switch attunements to whatever you like. Any mobs moving into the Ice field who weren’t already chilled from the projectiles will become chilled, thus buying you more time before you need to move. Also, Unstable Ground is alot more useful in PVE than PVP.

The way I understand it, the class’s underwhelming performance really shines (or fails to shine, rather) in sPVP. I did come across a build I enjoy quite a bit, as its very effective and can 1v1 most classes fairly easily. It uses D/D, and is an odd amalgamation of traits that I initally thought to be a fool’s errand, but actually manages to deliver fairly consistently.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.0.0.0.0.3.9.11.10.24.2.2.2.0.0.0.21.24.0.0.0.0.48.50.0.65.69.0.0.25.0.25.20

This is the build I use now, and the daggers I use twin Sigils of Superior Air for the extra lightning damage. Coupled with the Runes of the Air, you end up with a LOT of incidental damage procced by critting or getting hit, and the heavy water spec gives you some extra padding in your Vitality as well as some decent regen and heals by switching to water attunement. The cantrips all grant you regen and vigor, and using Lightning Flash to chase someone when they move outside of Churning Earth works very well. You also have a lot of mobility with RTL to get out of fights if the kittehs (HAH! Beat you to it, filter) get ugly. Try using Magnetic Grasp to jump into a fight instead of using RTL; although they both work interchangeably, RTL does move you farther and doesn’t require a target, making it equally useful for a quick getaway. Just some helpful advice.

That being said, I still find Elementalist underwhelming at best. This build works, but still requires far more precision and timing to execute than the average H. E. Artseeker musters when they spam their favorite key. It is, however, very gratifying to get kills with, especially knowing how underpowered it is.

One last time: Do not make the mistake I did and underestimate Burning Speed (Fire skill, either 2 or 3) when it crits, it crits very hard and sets you up for a painful Flame Grab follow up.

I wish Staff could be played that well in offensive playstyle instead of support only. =(

I don’t agree with the “Staff is for Support” mindset at all. Staff is for AoE, but that does not define it as support. Yes it has good support potential, but the character spec should determine if its support/damage/tank, not the weapon. That “weapon-determines-function” mindset is what Guild Wars 2 had hoped to avoid, and tried to amend by adding the condition damage you mentioned throughout your post; it’s meant so that with proper speccing and accessories/runes/sigils, one may capitalize on one damage type (direct or condition) and leave the other as purely supplementary.

In regards to a change to Staff Air, get rid of the 4 skill, the one that grants swiftness. Swiftness can be easily obtained via a Lightning field (5) and a blast finisher (Earth 2, Arcane Wave, Evasive Arcana-any attunement) Yes the Immobilize cure is useful, but that could be worked into a water spell, where it belongs, or a utility, like Mist Form (which already cures immobilize anyhow) or Armor of Earth. Replace it with some form of damaging lightning spell, a powerful bolt from the heavens, instant damage, small radius AoE. Sounds deliciously perfect, if you ask me.

Edit: Better yet, work that into a trait – Attuning to Air cures crippled, chilled, and immobilize.

Edit 2: Also, another limiting factor of Staff is that the Blasting Staff trait requires at least 20 points in Arcane; another tree I would not normally spec into for a staff build were it not for that ONE trait. Could be moved; I’d be happy if it were moved to the 10-point slot. Wasting 20 points in Arcane is costly for that one trait, and the 3-4 seconds off my Attunement recharge doesn’t help me much anyhow.

Otiz, I should not have to reroll to enjoy the class. The elementalist very clearly has some serious issues. I got this game to play elementalist, and I agree with everything Munchkin posted above, with one exception: Your comments about Staff Air; These absolutely need fixed.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/

Read what it says about Air attunement. It does not say “Support” or “CC.” It says Focused, High Damage abilities. Which none of the weapon sets for Elementalist offer. Firstly, the damage of chain lightning needs to be stronger or the spell needs to cast faster and instantly travel to its target. Like a bolt of lightning does. When it storms outside, do you see a slow moving burst of lightning fall out of the sky and splat harmlessly on the ground? No, you see a bolt. Instant transmission, at around 224,000 miles per hour. Big flash, lots of noise. Also, Gust needs to be a Blowout, not just a knockback. Knockbacks are pretty useless, at least in this case; a Blowout would be more effective as you could knock someone down then plant Lava Font underneath them.

Also, a custom combo where Eruption placed in Lava Font would cause an actual, high-damage volcanic eruption would be sweet as hell. I thought that was the point of the combo field system, when they advertised it, not silly boons and conditions. =\

A Ele can win vs. a thief? Maybe a tank specced Ele, and assuming the thief is stupid enough to hang around when low on HP instead of retreating like a smart thief would do… and forcing a retreat is not a victory, a kill is. And how does an Ele beat a ranger? Constant knockdown from pets and auto attack for the loss. And Ele beats warrior…. HAH… maybe a hundred blades warrior, sure, but there are TONS of great Warrior specs and only 1-2 "decent’ Ele specs. Its just that simple; Ele needs fixed. Sorry guys. Argue about it till you’re blue in the face but having played 5 classes, and trying SOkittenHARD to make the Ele work (as its my favorite class… come on, who doesn’t love slinging lightning bolts??) the numbers just don’t add up.

The thing you guys are all forgetting is that Guild Wars 2 was supposed to break the paradigm of “this-class-does-this” and “that-class-does-that” and in some cases this is true, but clearly not in the case of the elementalist. You all say “just reroll” but why should we? I came to this game FOR the elementalist. I was an Ele in GW1 and had a blast, and now I came to GW2 and recieve this poorly executed excuse for an elementalist that does everything, but less effectively than everything else. Yeah we have some flashy skills and a few things we do hurt really bad, but the chances of lining them up in sPVP with so many stun breaks and dodges at everyone’s disposal and the very limited choice of effective weapons (i.e., use scepter or go home) makes me wonder what aNet was thinking with all the nerfs. I mean, I’ve seen videos from BWE3 where a staff elementalist crit’d for 2500-3000 with lava font while using a build that still gave him a decent amount of survivability and 20k health. Now, I can’t even do that kind of damage with a full glass cannon build with 14k health. Its insulting, really. My thief can do twice that much damage with one backstab, and his auto attacks deal between 750 to 1500 depending on which chain. Undo the nerf, already! Give us our damage back! Warriors get hundred blades for burst, but yet we needed nerfed? =(

Kyros, I have to agree that this does shed an interesting light on Elementalist team play but does nothing to solve its other issues. For one, your roamer build uses the common Scepter/Dagger, and your Bunker uses Scepter/Focus. This tells me the same thing that everyone else tells me; Elementalist is useless without a Scepter in hand. I’ve seen other classes use a variety of weapons to very effective means, but when I’m on my thief and engineer, I routinely squash Elementalists who are not using Scepter. While S/D is good and fun, I prefer the staff-style of attacks, which as we all know, is better suited to Support. Support is fun and all, mind you, but in a 1v1 you’re basically just tanking until someone else shows up to help or your opponent gets a lucky burst in to wear you down. The problem with Staff lies in its skills; they’re ALL DoTs with the exception of 2: Ice Spike and Eruption; neither of which are very strong, and they all have a painfully long delivery time. Your basic attack speed in all attunements is the slowest of any class I’ve yet seen except maybe short bow thief, and while fireball and chain lightning are useful, they simply fire too slow to make up for the slow casting time of other skills. Having to stand still to cast Meteor Shower and Healing Rain is painful but bearable; Healing Rain shouldn’t have a stationary cast as its not THAT powerful except in a support role where you’re cleansing conditions or blast finishering for AoE healing. This could be fixed or helped by maybe adding a couple trigger skills… maybe have Lava Font be the same ground AoE, but give it a trigger ability to Erupt causing instant damage and a small burn (similar to Dragon’s Tooth) but prematurely end the Ground DoT. The other issue is long delays between switching attunements; for all intents and purposes, the attunements function much like the Engineer’s Kits; with the addition of a localized AoE on attunement change if specced for it. Engineer kits however have no cooldown, and may be switched into and out of at will. This provides a ton of options for self defense; knockdowns from Rifle, immobilize, then knockdown again from flamethrower. This could be fixed by making that Lava Font Eruption also have a small knockback or knockdown?

What really needs to be done is remove the long cooldown from switching attunements, and give staff skills some smaller cooldowns. Gust is one of our only skills that can be used to push a foe away to flee effectively, and it misses with more frequency than a blind man at a shooting range, and has a 30 second cooldown unspecced. The engineer rifle knockback, however, has a… 8-10 second cooldown, I can’t remember. If the attunement-activation traits are an issue, put a cooldown on THOSE rather than the attunement itself; putting the cooldown on the attunement just locks us out of skills that may save our lives. I can’t count the number of times I’ve swapped from lightning to fire to gain Might and drop Meteor Shower on a point and a thief jumps out and backstabs me. My only defense is to use Gust to push him away to get a second’s reprieve, and lo and behold my lightning attunement is on cooldown. Utilities help, but most of the ele utilities just buy you a a few seconds longer before you die.

Or, they could just give us weapon swapping. <3