Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the responses. I haven’t played ele since the April patch and found a celestial build that I’m currently doing better with.

@Neko – Thanks for your advise. I understand about the keep moving and healing. Your probably right about just sticking to Mesmer. I guess my point is if you take the moving and dodging skills you have to learn just to survive as Ele and apply that to any other class you can easily shine. For example I play a pitiful Warrior but because I’ve learned to constant move and heal, I can play War and still survive 60% of battles not knowing a thing about what I’m doing. And in Mesmer, I’ve yet to fight an Ele that could beat me 1vs1. Partly because I know all the ele moves and second because I can range them down with GS.

I agree that staff ele in WvW is a wonderful asset if you want to play utility but don’t get caught alone as a staff Ele. You can’t beat anyone. Well I take that back. I’ve won a few with staff against some really bad players after fighting for 10 minutes and praying that no one else comes along (thank you for standing in meteor shower and lava font trying to dps me down). I did get in a fight with another staff ele once .. We fought for something like 15 minutes and finally decided to give up.

@LightningBlaze A beginner at 800 hours? I don’t know whether to say thank you for proving my point or just laugh. If at 800 hours your still a newb to the class, if you need special keyboard setups, macros, or game controllers just to play the class at a descent level, if….. any way.

As far as landing skills easy. I don’t’ expect that at all. I know good players will dodge, block, go invis and make themselves invulnerable. But could you imagine the outcry if good second before you got backstabbed a huge symbol appeared above your head allowing you to easily dodge. And I understand other classes have easily telegraphed big hitting abilities as well. The difference is usually they get some damage in while the opponent is making their defensive counter. Many of the eles moves can be totally avoided by dodging or merely running out of the area before the move executes.

In response to RTL being used to engage and disengage. Are you telling me Warrior’s Rush, Theif’s Heartseeker and Ranger’s Hornet Sting are never used to disengage? I’ve seen Wars, Thieves, Rangers, Guardians all use combat abilities to disengage. Just go on YouTube and watch WvW roaming videos of those classes.

I think I’ve road this dead horse into the ground. I guess I just wanted to play ele because I’ve always played wizard classes, all the way back to old EQ. I’ll painfully finish my PvP wins achievement and go play my Mesmer.

Best of luck out there!

Before you start saying L2P. Let me preface this. I’ve played the game since launch. I started with Ele as my main character. I leveled Ele to 80 first. I’ve tried every build out there from bunker to glass cannon, DD, SD, Staff, you name it. Even tried a couple of build that I’ve made up. I’m current level 36 in SPvP and 124 WvW. /age Says I’ve played the character 814 hours. I have leveled all other class now at 80 except necro. Total hours played 1822.

I have to say Ele is the weakest of all the characters. Their damage is mediocre, survivability is low, most high damaging abilities take way to long to cast and are easily telegraphed. Even when played at their best your lucky to bring down a medium skilled character of any other class.

The first problem is survivability. Because of low health, Eles are almost forced to go bunker to have any survivability while other classes can easily go with more aggressive offensive builds. I’ve literally been 2-shoted by thieves while being in a more offensive build with an ele. This isn’t the case at all with my mesmer, thief or any other class for that matter.

The second issue low damage. Even in an offensive build, ele damage is at best just ok. Having to spec bunker further complicates the problem. The easily telegraphed skills even further adds to the frustration. Fire Grab hits for 5K, that’s if it hits, but it’s nothing to see a thief backstab for 6k with autocrit from stealth, and they can do that over and over again while Fire Grab has a 45 sec cool down. Every class out there I can name abilities that do more damage, some way more damage, than similar ele abilities. Churning Earth is laughable. I’m serious. When I play other classes and see a ele start to cast CE. I laugh. I’m thinking thanks for the 2.5 seconds of free damage I get to do to you. While I easily move out of range and dps from afar. Even if it does hit me, I’m like .. whatever with its measly 2k to 4K damage and a bleed that can easily be removed. Heh. My mesmer autoattack can do 2K in 1/3 the time. Heck I’ve had theifs that could dps me down before it even cast. Really though Churning Earth should hit for something like 7K to 10K damage with a 4k bleed

This brings into light another frustration of eles. Eles are forced to melee combat or ranged combat but can’t do both. Every other class can do both. This means every class has an instant advantage over an ele by simply moving to the damage type that eles are not using.

Of course with the long cast times and telegraphed moves eles are forced to do tricks just to get some spells to land. Locking people in place and hoping they don’t have a teleport, use a stability or just cleanse the condition. Using cantrips like Lightning Flash just to land a spell like churning earth is really a joke when other classes don’t have to go through that trouble.

And can anyone for the love of all that is holy, please explain to me why eles are punished when Ride the Lightning misses but when Heatsearker, Leap of Faith, Swoop, Rush, Whirlwind Attack and every other gap closing damage ability in the game by any other class is not penalized when they miss? Heck of seen warriors out run whole mobs of people just using their weapon skills. I’m sure that’s not what those abilities were designed for or…. where they? Be fair here, if your going to do it to RoL, do it to all of them or remove it from RoL.

I love ele but playing mine makes me want to bang my head on my keyboard. Please fix them. And don’t say there is nothing wrong with them. When I switched to mesmer I went from not being able to kill hardly anyone and dieing over and over again to being able to take on 2 sometimes 3 people at once and having people whisper me and say that I’m too good.

My suggestion is give them a little more health, lower the cast time or up the damage of some of the more telegraphed abilities or you could make all their abilities cause conditions. That would be interesting. And for the love of all that is holy in MMOs, remove the penalty from RoL.

I also want to throw out a challenge. I dare all the devs to play Ele solely for one month.