Guild Wars 2

Just because we have access to 20 skills doesn’t make them all good. Many are worthless.

Would you people please learn how to read. We were saying in DUNGEONS it can be more efficient aka more dps to stay in fire for STAFF. If we had parsers I would show you. We switch AS NEEDED not “just because”.

Regular mobs are completely different than dungeon mobs (way less HPs) so your proposed test is pointless. I don’t use staff for regular pve either unless it’s aoe.

Some of the original discussion was related to staffs in dungeons so your comments about S/D are pointless since my posts were only related to staff. I think many eles pointlessly switch attunements and mash buttons thinking they are good. Don’t confuse attunement switching with skill. Since ele attunements have almost no synergy you actually lose TONS of dps in staff by switching. This isn’t needed on trash mobs aka 80-90% of dungeons unless you are in a crappy group. Is it boring? YES!

Do I switch on bosses? Yes, a lot. Do I switch attunements when I run S/D? Yes, more frequently than staff due to the long fire cooldowns. Do I switch attunements in spvp with my D/D build? Tons. Do I switch for no reason so I can feel needed and warm and fuzzy because I gave the group an unneeded 1k heal? No.

Sojou.2067:

Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun. If you are in a good dungeon group your biggest asset would be dps and with your “support” builds many of you probably aren’t providing much. If you aren’t good enough to stay alive in just fire then you probably need to swap attunements often to make up for your mistakes. Sure it is boring sitting in one attunement, but it is the most effective dps (for staff).
Side note: I think the lack of parsers are why so many of these people like eles. They are probably the people that were never competitive for top dps in raids, etc in other mmos. Without parsing, they are happy to be oblivious to the fact that eles are inferior to the other classes and are simply mesmerized by our pretty spell effects.

And another bad elementalist claiming that if you tunnel vision fire attunement you’re better. DPS isn’t everything and sitting in fire doesn’t top your charts. Blast combos > fireball spam every second of a fight.

And another misguided elementalist that thinks pointless attunement swapping to use mediocre abilities makes him good. That’s why I want a parser so I can say, “Hey moron, while you were switching attunements for no reason I doubled your dps! L2P!”.

I swap attunements when it is NEEDED, not just because they are up. Word of the day for you: efficiency.

Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun. If you are in a good dungeon group your biggest asset would be dps and with your “support” builds many of you probably aren’t providing much. If you aren’t good enough to stay alive in just fire then you probably need to swap attunements often to make up for your mistakes. Sure it is boring sitting in one attunement, but it is the most effective dps (for staff).

Side note: I think the lack of parsers are why so many of these people like eles. They are probably the people that were never competitive for top dps in raids, etc in other mmos. Without parsing, they are happy to be oblivious to the fact that eles are inferior to the other classes and are simply mesmerized by our pretty spell effects.

boozer.7815:

elchulo.3148:

Just wait for the next updates. The ONLY changes in the works for eles that I’ve seen a comment on from Anet are upcoming nerfs to tanky ele builds. So the only viable build we currently have is next to go.

Where are you getting this, “the only viable build” stuff from? Ele’s have at least 4 completely viable builds just off the top, and there are more.

Sorry, the only viable build for spvp.

Just wait for the next updates. The ONLY changes in the works for eles that I’ve seen a comment on from Anet are upcoming nerfs to tanky ele builds. So the only viable build we currently have is next to go.

Roll a DD thief. Problems fixed (it’s the class that’s broken…not you).

Pinkerton – no profession is supposed to have designated roles so you’re wrong if you say it isn’t/can’t be a mage. The Anet description makes it sound like a mage. If I spec full glass cannon it SHOULD play like a mage, but it doesn’t. That’s the whole problem!!! Other classes can do glass cannon like thief but eles can’t. So we have the lowest base HPs for no good reason.

Eicherjw.3926:

Rhyse.8176:

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

Wrecks people or npc mobs? If you’re talking spvp I don’t believe you can 1 v 2 anyone unless they are afk or horrendous. It takes my thief about 3-5 seconds to kill a glass cannon ele and I’m not great with him. Eles are weak especially in glass cannon mode.

As I’ve said before, the silence from Anet is deafening. For some reason they believe melee classes should be much more powerful than casters minus the OP godmode mesmer. Why is our damage so poor in spvp? Why is our base health so much lower than necros and mesmers? Why aren’t we given anything substantial (like huge damage) to compensate for this?

If eles are fine then spec full glass cannon and duel my glass cannon thief and mesmer.

I completely agree with the OP. Your analysis is spot on. I’m quickly reaching that point too unfortunately.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

I’ve been considering melding my RTL combo with churning earth-teleport. The RTL combo already does a heinous amount of damage in AOE, but churning earth, earthquake, ring of earth into RTL, updraft, burning speed, ring of fire/arcane blast/wave would well outstrip any thief, but it would require staking the whole elementalist build on that one moment where you burst down the point.

You are just plain wrong. I would finish my 15-25k burst just as you finish ride the lightning minus all your other spells. If you throw in all those spells in I could put out over 30k dps on a thief and I’m not even that good at it. Thief has double the burst of eles, and way more evasion and survivability.

You want burst? Ele meet thief. I can do 15-25k damage in 2-3 seconds with the right setup on my thief. Try to match that on an ele.

Try an ele son and you will realize that mesmers are godmode.

Agree with OP. I just wish someone cared.

Very true and sad.

RIP spvp ele. I’m tired of being a masochist.

Yeah don’t mention “damage” in our threads or it will be taken away.

Yeah I’m saying just for spvp. I still use my 80 ele for wvw and pve. I don’t think I’ve ever gone a full spvp match without dying as ele (I don’t use tanky builds), and to go my first two matches without dying while destroying people had me laughing out loud.

I rolled a mesmer. Holy crap they are fun to play and 100 times easier and more powerful than eles. I didn’t die once in my FIRST 2 FULL matches and I had never even played the class before. I didn’t even die when I was 1 v 3 a few times and even got away from a 1 v 4. I had several kills as well and it is basically impossible to lose 1 v 1. For all of you sick of the ele for spvp roll a mesmer. Your frustration will disappear.

They must hate elementalists. They kick us when we are already down and they haven’t even fixed our downed skills so we can’t interrupt them.

They are the two most played classes in spvp for a reason.

LOL at the last two trolls. Tanking bosses in dungeons with DD?? Thanks for the laugh.

It has been said already but- you have half the dps of my thief and I can kill you in 3-5 seconds.

People are straying from the OP. Our weaknesses have nothing to do with keybinds or the number of our abilities. It has to do with how weak our abilities are, how low our dps is compared to the other classes, how squishy we are and/or how few HPs we have vs the other clothies.

Edit: we have nowhere near the highest burst and ours is hard to set up and slow to hit.

I also agree with the OP. There is more denial here than you see at AA meetings. Most who agree with me have already stopped posting, stopped playing, and/or rolled other professions that faceroll. It’s apparent that eles were designed to be weak and squishy compared to other classes and nothing will be done to change that anytime soon. My frustrations are all for spvp. So, I’ve resorted to using my 80 ele for wvwvw and pve but it’s too horrible/frustrating to use in spvp. There I roll my faceroll thief and I’m going to roll a godmode mesmer.

I guess I’ll park my kitten ele and spend more time on my faceroll thief.

There is no excuse for not buffing us. They nerfed us to hell after short beta events but can’t buff us after 5 weeks?!? Makes no sense.

Those of us who actually care about the class have been beating these drums since launch but so far we’ve been completely ignored. I suggest either avoiding spvp or re-rolling to keep your sanity.

Yeah the patch broke my game too. Awesome. I went about 2-3 weeks without error 7 and now after this patch I’m crashing every 5 mins.

Simple: increase our overall damage by 30-50%

Needs to be 3 times faster along with phoenix and needs to hit twice as hard.

Quote is broken like this class so I’ll cut and paste from another poster:

“There are 4 main points the ele needs some love
The downed state, 2 needs a CC that interrupts stomps
We need more damage/burst on many skills (nearly every class’s auto and burst skills do waaaaay more damage, while not having to be coordinated as perfectly); mainly talking about scepter as a whole and dagger lightning skills – also more fields outside of staff
Also D/D needs more forms of survivability/mobility/CC to be comparable to other classes weaponsets – as of now its go in and never come out
Many traits need work, many Grandmaster traits are utter trash, also we need more encouragement to attunementswap, since traiting a certain way makes some attunements WAY more attractive to stay in than swapping to others (even more so without lingering elements). "

Not that the developer cares as they haven’t given any feedback after dozens of these threads. All I want for Christmas is a working ele.

+1. Better post a good video to back up ridiculous claims and you didn’t.

There are two solutions to the balance issue: raise ele dps or nerf other dps to our level. If you think neither is needed then you aren’t being objective. OP already lost all credibility as demonstrated throughout this thread.

I agree with Razarei: the thread should be closed. At least change the title to, “Ele is mediocre to average in certain tanky/support builds, I’m here to help you”.

I’m happy that everyone here (except for one fanboy/possible Anet ele programmer) seems to understand how out of balance our profession is. Please fix some of the problems documented here and in several other threads.

That would just put us on par with thief dps.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Because each profession has its own strong points and drawbacks.

Except us eles have no strong points in spvp. Although we do die better than the other classes with our pathetic downed state abilities.

OP is 100% correct. Our biggest issue is that we have a horrible glass cannon spec. We output 1/3 to 1/2 of the burst damage of other classes with much less survivability. How is that fair?

No, we need a boost to HPs and double or triple damage.

Where is our spell that hits for over 6k, 8k, 10k? Thief has three abilities in D/D that can crit for 6-17k. Oh, and you can spam one of them. If I get a 4k crit I’m happy. That sucks.

Thieves do 3 times our dps with no delayed or directional spells….yeah that sounds fair.

What I still don’t understand is why anyone would say, “please don’t give us a boost.” Many players think we need a boost. If you are one of the “elite L2P” eles why not just keep your mouth shut and “dominate” even more if a boost comes? Guides are helpful and appreciated but saying we all suck and fighting against damage boosts makes no sense if you actually play and like the elementalist profession.

Or we could say the worst glass cannon by far. Let’s face it: many people who roll an ele want a super high burst glass cannon. Problem is we don’t have the burst of other classes that come with much more utility and survivability in their burst builds. Plus, our burst is harder to set up with slow cast times and delayed damage spells like dragon’s tooth. So you are correct to say we aren’t horrible in our tanky/util builds but our glass cannon build sucks. There, I just resolved all the arguments and proved everyone’s points.

Well done Razarei. I hope he posts the video. What build were you running?

Are these all ele vs ele challenges? I’m interested to hear who the best extremely weak elementalist is.

Parked my worthless level 55 ele and playing a thief now for pve and spvp. Game is actually fun now.

But they nerfed us badly after the short beta events and haven’t boosted us in 4 weeks. Nerfs didn’t take any time so that can’t be an excuse.