Guild Wars 2

It was nerfed to only apply Might and Fury, sadly. They went ahead and nerfed it, just like we feared.

My biggest problem with having an “Easy Mode” and “Hard Mode” for raids is that it removes something big for players to strive for.

Right now, players just do the very easiest dungeons, and never do any of the hard dungeons. People sell Fractals and Arah because that few people want to do these. Plus, they can use the money they got from doing all those easy dungeons.

If raids had an “Easy” and “Hard” mode, no one would take raiding seriously, even if someone said it was a “Hard mode” kill. Everyone would just say “Yeah, I killed the Vale Guardian” with a party full of Nomad’s characters versus an untimed Vale Guardian. People would strive for the lowest common denominator (as they already do with dungeons), and ignore the hard content.

By making all raids hard, it forces people to respect raids as difficult content that they must either organize and get better for, or just not do at all.

And unlike many other MMOs, GW2 gives plenty to do for less skilled players. Fractals are being revamped, the Verdent Brink has been great, and stuff like grinding masteries or working on a guild hall all are great distractions for casuals.

And by keeping raids exclusive, when someone does manage to beat a wing, or even a single boss, people will look to that person and know that they were part of a truly skilled group. For the first time, GW2 can grant a real sense of accomplishment to PvE players – something that it’s lacked for a long time (see: credit card legendary weapons and RNG fractal skins).

Raids should be brutal and exclusive. The timer should be kept low to prevent players from using too many support characters or too tanky of builds. And no “Easy Mode”, which would ultimately cause people to just devalue raids and never take them seriously.

J Eberle.9312:

Neko.9021:

Dreadfox.8031:

Neko.9021:

You know, since you seem so gung-ho on this, might I direct you to a forum where people PvE theorycraft extensively: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

Thanks I am familiar with this site and Brazil’s ranger builds. But I’ve never seen numbers for condi Rangers earnestly run by him or other players.

I’m almost certain if you posted your findings there you will get someone who’s willing to talk math with you.

It would end in tears.

Heh heh. Really though, it’s the only place this can be properly settled.

ThiBash.5634:

Neko.9021:

This is true, but the low damage of Staff leads me to tell people to stay away from it in most dungeon instances. The support of staff is decently interesting, but it does so at the cost of any good damage. People are certainly free to choose to run Staff, but I can’t in good conscience let them do so without stating the simple fact that Staff for Elementalist has very subpar damage.

What about Meteor Shower? Especially if you followup with an Ice Spike (for vulnerability and fury from attunement swap), it can make quick work of enemies. If anything, staff Fire’s damage is on par with that of Scepter.

Staff actually has better sustained damage than Scepter, though I often choose Scepter because it lets me use Focus and because Scepter has better Might stacking.

I’m going to update my guide to include a reference to the glassy staff Ele here – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Neko-s-Guide-to-the-Glassy-Staff-Ele. That should help people that have been wanting to play a DPS Staff Ele in dungeons.

Put simply, it’s a terrible build. It’ll have low damage, and for all that tankiness you’re offering 0 support to your team whatsoever.

Here’s a great Dagger MH PvE build: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F_Elementalist

Avead.5760:

0 0 10 30 30 celestial d/d standard build with cleansingwater ,the sigil that transfer condi and battle. Standard d/d arcane and water traits but with 5 instead of 3 for earth and full cantrips and signet heal.
I hate what is gonna happen with all the celestial sustain annoyance eles who will have no clue how to do their job which is mostly support with this build ..oh the glory days of far push ele are gonna be back

Yeah. We’re so kittened.

From now on, when people complain about “corner stacking and skipping”, they must do Dredge Fractal at Level 50 and kill all the dredge they encounter. I’m tited of AC always being used as the example in these threads.

Just press “Play Now” and join a game. If that doesn’t work, press “Play Now” again.

Razor.6392:

Stopped reading at casting drake breath to benefit from bonus 10% damage from Air.

Lingering attunements doesn’t work that way.

He’s referring to the fact that you can start the spell, then switch to Air and gain the bonus damage from Air Training, since the spell is dealing damage while you’re attuned to Air, even if it’s a Fire spell.

In order to beat the raid bosses, you need a healer and a tank. Admittedly, in GW2, the healer can also be the tank.

But you need DPS, dedicated healing, and a tank to control aggro. Seems pretty trinity to me. The fact that GW2 has its own take on how these things work is besides the point. Each game decides how they want to interpret the concept of trinity roles in a game. Regardless, most groups that succeed in the raid encounters have been doing something like this:

• 1 Healer (99% of the time a Druid, admittedly, but the occasional Tempest has been known to show up from time to time)
• 1 Tank (Many classes can actually do this just fine. This role can also be consolidated into the Healer role as well. Classes that do well include, but are not limited to, Engineer, Mesmer, and Guardian.)
• 8 DPS (All classes can do this)

If what people wanted from raids was a trinity in GW2, they got their wish in raids. The “meta” of raids is most certainly a trinity. A hard trinity even. Most groups have a dedicated tank, a dedicated healer, and everyone else dedicated DPS. There’s nothing soft or “pseudo” about it.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

… except that it doesn’t pose any sort of challenge to that said speedclear group, but drown the pug in tears now.

I never said such a decision would make any sense or be effective, simply that it was probably the motivating factor for doing such a quick haphazard change (keeping the AC tokens from the mob that they copy-pasted) out of the blue.

For leveling, you want:

Power
Precision
Ferocity

In that order.

I don’t really regard the ability of players to duel in 1v1 situations to be indicative of their skill, given that everything in the game (PvE, WvW, SPvP) is about your ability to team-fight well. If we accepted that 1v1 capability shows how good of a player you are, then PU Mesmers must be the best players in this game :P

The Elementalist is a very difficult class to play and to level. I have a guide that explains how to play it in my sig.

Go with 30 in Arcana, 20 in water, and take Arcana V VI XI and Water V VI.

Look at the guide in my sig. For Dagger Dagger, look at Zoose’s Guide. He has a really really great video guide that you should check out that explains the mentality of playing a D/D Ele.

Basically, the Ele has incredibly weak inherent stats because it has a lot of potential to do some really crazy strong stuff. It’s definitely not for everyone. If you hate playing the Ele and can’t keep up with its playstyle, then certainly, don’t play it. But if you really want to see how the class is supposed to work in PvE, look at my guide for some advice.

lordhidetora.3189:

TKiller.6829:

I’m under an impression that you consider warrior a class with the highest dps value.

I thought this was the meta everyone compared DPS to.

No. If we’re referring to “speedruns” and what is “the most optimal” or what is “meta”, Warriors are basically there to provide banner buffs (which are very strong). Their DPS is nothing special.

lordhidetora.3189:

maxinion.8396:

lordhidetora.3189:

TKiller.6829:

I’m under an impression that you consider warrior a class with the highest dps value.

I thought this was the meta everyone compared DPS to.

Warriors have moderate dps. Thieves and Elementalists,and even Guardians in some situations, out dps them.

So if a ranger has even less dps than warrior… It’s really not very good.

After reading a bit on this topic, I will say fair enough.

But I still stand by my point that I would personally rather have a player that plays properly putting up sub-par DPS than one that doesn’t play properly.

This is dangerously close to the Flase Dilemma Falacy – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma . I’m pretty sure no one wants to play with someone who plays improperly. I’m pretty sure no one in the thread argued “I prefer to play with people who play improperly.” What was being argued was:

In the context of running a dungeon efficiently, and based on the development of the dungeon meta from 2013 to 2014 (more Eles instead of more Warriors), is the Ranger (a class that brings lower DPS than most other classes, and whose unique buffs consist of Spotter – which was indirectly nerfed thanks to the Ferocity change – and Frost Spirit) worth bringing over another Profession?

To answer to that question “I’d rather take a good player over a bad one” totally misses the question, entirely.

I remember I used to play Mages in other MMOs and then was disappointed with the Ele.

Now I find Mages in other MMOs to be super disappointing compared to the Ele. :P

Sometimes I just have to remind myself and others that there are plenty of playstyles out there, and that there’s 8 professions in GW2. Just because one may not like one or two of those particular profession’s playstyles (or even 7 of them!), as long as one of the 8 is enjoyable, a player should just play that instead. The Elementalist is a very unique take on the Mage/Sorcerer/Evocation Wizard, but it’s become my personal favorite take on the idea.

Also, if you’re dueling people, I’m pretty sure Staff is a bad choice. Dagger or Scepter (especially the overpowered Double Dagger Celestial Water/Arcana build) is stronger for “dueling” players.

Aggrostemma.1703:

I apologise…

I did know that the word “meta” has a lot of meanings but I wasn’t aware it has THAT much. A knew the “part of the game” and the “higher level of theorycrafting” meanings. I was pretty sure that it’s also an artificial acronym of MostEfficientTacticAvailable… In LoL I heard this a lot and I thought it’s a gamer slang…

Well…

The metagame or metabattle words can be translated to any of these without making a huge mistake.

I think…

#EDIT: can somebody explain me what meta means in the metabattle or metagame words please? What do you believe?

#EDIT2: I still think my explanation is far from the most accurate one but describes the builds fairly good…

My posts attempt to give a broad overview of the history of “meta”. I’d like to believe it’s fairly accurate. The term meta can indeed refer to “high level theorycrafting” as a shorthand, sure. It’s not quite accurate to its historical context, but the gist and feel is about right.

If you’re looking for a more precise answer, the term “meta” can mean something which refers to itself, about or of itself. This is a wholly confusing definition, so let me use some examples:
*Metadata is “Data About Data”
*Metadiscssion is “A discussion about discussions”
*Metadreaming is “Dreaming of dreaming”
*Metajoke is “A joke about jokes”

And finally:
*Metagaming is “Playing the game of a games”

Okay, I’ll admit that last one is still a little confusing, but it’s basically trying to take your outside knowledge of the game, and incorporate it into your gameplay. Let’s take the example of a tournament. You decide to play in a casual Magic: The Gathering tournament with your friends. You’ve played with all of your friends a lot before, and you know what their decks are like. So when you go to prepare for this tournament, you decide to build your deck to counter the decks of your friends. You’re playing a metagame. The tournament itself is a game which you are trying to win, and the tournament consists of several instances of playing Magic. The tournament is a metagame. You will use your knowledge of the tournament and of your friends’ decks in your decision-making process while playing each individual game of Magic. This is essentially what metagaming is.

[Continued Below]

So let’s try and apply the concept to GW2. First, let’s look at its PvP. In the last World Tournament Series for GW2, the top two teams were The Abjured from North America and oRNG from Europe. The Abjured are an incredible team with incredibly skilled players, and their team comp essentially helped define the meta (that is, what other players copied and used) of PvP at that point. The Abjured was considered the best team in the world. So when oRNG was to go up against them, and knowing that The Abjured are highly skilled players with the best builds in the game, they had to think, how can we win this tournament? You see, they were not simply trying to win one game against The Abjured. They wanted to win the tournament. They want to win the metagame of the tournament, which consisted of playing a bunch of PvP matches. So what did oRNG do? Knowing that The Abjured ran with 2 Celestial D/D Eles and a Celestial Engineer, and a Condi Necro, they countered the Abjured’s team! They ran a DPS Guardian and a Shoutbow Warrior. The DPS Guardian does a great job of wrecking the enemy team with Hammer, and the Shoutbow Warrior provided the necessary team support and sustain to keep them in the fight. The act of counter-comping is one of the fundamental aspects of metagaming. And it’s part of the reason why oRNG won that tournament against the “best” team in the game (also oRNG just had far tighter play from practicing way more, but the comp was important as well).

Now let’s try applying this to GW2 PvE. It’s a bit of a stretch, but try and go with me here. You load up GW2 and decide it’s time to run the same godkitten old boring dungeons that haven’t been added to in over a year, like what the heck, come on ANet some dungeons for some quick gold, and for whatever reason, you want to minimize the pain of doing the same thing over and over again maximize your efficiency and speed and doing a dungeon tour. So you go look at your build, and try to fit as much damage as you can possibly play well without dying. From this perspective, it’s not so much that you’re trying to complete a single dungeon as much as it is you’re trying to run dungeons efficiently, in general. This is your metagame. Now other players are trying to do the same thing, since lots of players run dungeons every day for the gold and challenge of it. So you take into account the build ideas and theorycrafitng of all of the players, and try to determine, what kind of build will I run? What kind of builds should my team run? Can we fit more damage? Maybe someone should take a few more defensive utilities like Glyph of Storms. Maybe the Warrior should take Phalanx Strength instead of a selfish DPS build to help buff the team’s damage if we can’t sustain enough Might. It’s still a metagame, even if running dungeons isn’t competitive per se.

Anyway, that’s basically what it is. Metagaming is playing the overall game, and trying to do well at it. And many players already naturally do this. After all, one of the most natural ways to start metagaming is to go to the forums/community, and ask people “what is the meta”. That’s what the OP did, and it’s perfectly natural if you think about it.

An Elementalist Mindset – Combos, Rotations, Attunement Swapping

The Elementalist gains its power via the use of combo fields. Combos are often treated as gimmicky and ineffectual… for good reason. Most combo fields and combos are pretty tame or weak. In fact, the best combo fields are probably simple ones like Fire and Water because their effects provide direct damage and direct healing.

And how lucky for you that you have access to both! Now no, this guide will not really touch on Water fields, because their main power comes in PvP formats (mainly in WvW, more than sPvP), and only the Staff gets them (a weapon we won’t really use). But Fire Fields combined with Blast Finishers provide 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds (!), and when traited, also give fury for 10 seconds (!!!).

The main trick to the Dungeon Elementalist is laying down Fire Fields and comboing in them to maintain might for your party. In this section, I will go over several ways to stack might on the various weapon sets:

Double Dagger: Burning Speed (Fire 3) -> Ring of Fire (Fire 4) -> Dodge Roll and swap to Earth Attunement as you do so do perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Arcane Wave to perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Earthquake (Earth 4) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Churning Earth (Earth 5) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field.

That’s 12 stacks of Might right there. For 20 seconds. This is the bread and butter combination for stacking theoretical maximum might, and I definitely feel that you should practice this combo to really understand the sort of dynamic flow that the Elementalist can have.

Scepter/Dagger: Dragon’s Tooth (Fire 2) -> Ring of Fire (Fire 4) under your Dragon’s Tooth -> Phoenix (Fire 3) -> Dodge Roll and swap to Earth Attunement as you do so to perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Arcane Wave to perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Earthquake (Earth 4) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Churning Earth (Earth 5) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field.

That’s 18 stacks of Might! Combine with Fire XI (Persisting Flames) and that’s also 1 minute of Fury!

Dagger/Focus: Burning Speed (Fire 3) -> Dodge Roll and swap to Earth Attunement as you do – so do perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Arcane Wave to perform a blast finisher in your Fire Field -> Magnetic Wave (Earth 4) to do a blast finisher in your Fire Field.

That’s 9 stacks of Might for 20 seconds. Still very solid.

So now we get to rotations and swapping.

The first thing I can say is, look at Zoose’s guides to the Elementalist:
Dagger/Dagger
Scepter/Dagger – Pre-June 2013 Patch
Scepter/Dagger – Post-June 2013 Patch

The Elementalist’s greatest asset is his power to set his own rotations on the fly, and decide for himself what to do as the situation calls for it.

Our greatest flaw, however, is that our autoattacks do absolutely miserable damage, on basically all our weapon sets (Lightning Whip on mainhand Dagger is our strongest one).

Thus, the trick to an Elementalist is to “press all the buttons so you can press more buttons”. Zoose talks about this in his Dagger/Dagger guide, and the key thing to remember about an Elementalist is that while other professions cannot swap weapons while channeling a skill, Elementalists can swap attunements while channeling a spell.

When one traits 15 points into Water, the Elementalist’s attunement swap to Water heals for a massive 1600 health. The various skills in Water also heal for a ton (Scepter Water 3, Dagger Water 2, Dagger Water 5). Evasive Arcana gives the Elementalist a massive 1600 HP AoE heal and cleanse when they dodge in Water (among other things).

Thus, the trick to an Elementalist is playing the entire class for its abilities. The very act of swapping, thanks to Elemental Attunement, provides incredible bonuses (Protection in Earth, Swiftness in Air, Regeneration in Water) and Eles with at least 5 in Arcana gain Fury for 2 seconds. Dodging with Evasive Arcana casts powerful spells as well (Blast Finishers in Earth and Heals in Water). In the end, the Elementalist is about utilizing everything in combat to its fullest potential, not just a few small set of skills, like many other classes.

Of course, sometimes you need to autoattack after all your cooldowns are wasted. If you are a Dagger Elementalist, Lightning Whip is your highest autoattack damage. If you are a Scepter Elementalist, depending on your traits, you will usually either spam the Air 1 2 and 3 skills (if you have Fresh Air [XII] or 20+ in Arcana) or Fire 1 until Fire 2 is back up.

Lightning Hammer

Now let’s talk about a certain Utility Skill known as Conjure Lightning Hammer. This skill creates a Lightning Hammer on the field that anyone can pick up, as well as a Lightning Hammer in your hands for your own use. It will have 15 charges (or 25 if you have Conjurer, Fire VIII), and when you use its autoattack, you will do an insane amount of damage compared to your actual weapon sets. The downsides to Lightning Hammer, however, are that it’s clunky to cast and set up in the middle of battle, the extra hammer can be picked up by other party members, and that it overall can sometimes feel like it takes away from the ‘spirit’ of what it means to play an Elementalist by limiting your weapon skills to five.

However, it does an insane amount of damage nonetheless

An Elementalist, if he so chooses, can always use Conjure Lightning Hammer and its trait Conjurer to do lots of damage, if they so choose. You can even use Conjure Lightning Hammer without the trait, and it works decently well. However, Elementalists should always take note of it and keep it in mind when deciding what traits and utilities to pick.

Key Bindings

So here’s something I think that gets a lot of newer players when they try and pick up the Elementalist. It’s a class which simply demands greater use of its Class Abilities (the F1, F2, F3, and F4 skills) than any other profession. Enough so that if you actually leave your default bindings to F1-F4, you’ll find the class clunky and difficult to play unless you’re either very agile or have large hands.

For this reason, while I won’t demand that you totally rearrange your keybindings just to play an Elementalist, I do think that you should try to find a better place to put your profession skills. One that I personally use is Ctrl-A for F1, Ctrl-E for F2, Ctrl-D for F3, and Ctrl-F for F4. This doesn’t have to be the way you bind your keys, but leaving them at default at F1-F4 can often be one of the greatest physical barriers to using the Elementalist to its fullest potential, in general.

Also, turn off auto-targeting when using Dagger Elementalist, because you want great control over the direction of your PBAoE attacks. In fact I suggest turning it off altogether at all times since it will help you retain better control over your character’s attacks on all weapon sets.

Also, I’d be surprised if you didn’t already have this, but make sure to Show Skill Recharge for all of your skills.

Turn off Melee Attack Assist. It’s a terrible setting.

Chesire.9043:

Neko.9021:

This is what I’d run with Dagger/Focus:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k3c;2B2-Y0A5-N-Z0;9;69TT;44;049A17ASs0;3H7W3H7W30JQ

Thanks Neko! One question, what made you choose LS over say Arcane Shield, Mist Form, or AoE?

Right now I’m running 0/6/0/4/4 with it and I have to say it’s a pretty fun build, albeit somewhat fragile as I’m using zerker amulet. It can hit like a truck, brings some team support, and has a good range of CC. The only drawback is I can’t survive any kind of 1v2.

Lightning Flash is simply one of the best spells Eles have in general. Blinks are just one of those really high value utility types, and besides the usual combos (Burning Speed + Lightning Flash), the ability to re-position yourself and/or do instant damage is just too good.

Also, the signets aren’t just there for the passives. Signet of Earth with Focus is just really strong, and proactively using the Signet of Air’s instant blind is a great defense mechanism (and of course, you can always use it reactively as a stunbreak).

Yeah, it seems like Wildfire might have just been a mistake. I hadn’t even heard of the boonrip until now.

To be honest, Tempest is going to receive a rather large nerf to its Support spec anyway when they bugfix Sand Squall to only give 4 seconds of Protection, not 8. This is fine, since as it was, the skill was a bit too strong.

But changing Heat Sync basically destroys the Support Spec. The Shouts and traits just aren’t enough to justify a Support Tempest as they are, especially when compared to the existing trees already.

What really gets me is that Tempest was advertised as a Support Elite Specialization, or at least partially. Yet once you change Heat Sync, the Tempest really doesn’t offer much in the way of support at all. So now I’m just sort of at a loss as to where the Support is. Even speccing for full Shouts and Support Traits, it really doesn’t seem to add much to a team in PvE, PvP, or WvW. The Boon Share was the thing that made the spec passable, and now that’s gone.

At the very least, there’s little reason to take Warhorn over, say, almost any other weapon set now. Staff gives two Water Fields and lots of other great team utility. OH Dagger has such a strong kit, and Focus has the best defensive kit. If we do see Tempests out there, they’re certainly not going to use Warhorn.

The Weapons

You should carry all of the Elementalist’s weapons. Switch as needed.

Dagger Mainhand
This is your only melee mainhand weapon, and it’s a pretty darn good one at that. The dagger’s auto attacks are pretty sub par compared to other classes, but the #2 and #3 abilities have a ton of utility.

• Your strongest auto attack is Lightning Whip, your Air Auto. Your Earth Auto stacks bleeds (meh), your Water Auto has 600 range (though sitting in Water is a bad idea as an Elementalist so avoid using it unless you need to) and your Fire Auto is mainly single target.
• Drake’s Breath (Fire 2) does decent damage and you should use it when you can.
• Cone of Cold (Water 2) does amazing damage and heals yourself and allies for a substantial amount.
• Ring of Earth (Earth 2) is insanely strong and you should remember to spam this whenever it’s off cooldown, and you’re done with your other Earth rotations.
• Lightning Touch (Air 2) actually has more utility now that Weakness was buffed.
• Burning Speed (Fire 3) is a high damage skill-shot attack that you will also probably miss a lot when you first use it. However, once you learn to land it, you’ll find your personal DPS goes up substantially. Burning Speed is probably the most important source of your burst and engagement damage as a Dagger Elementalist.
• Frozen Burst (Water 3) is a great spell, chilling in an AoE, and you should spam it when it’s off cooldown.
• Shocking Aura (Air 3) is borderline broken in PvP and it’s pretty darn good in PvE, so use it when you need to do more damage, since thanks to Zephyr’s Boon, it also grants you fury.
• Magnetic Grasp (Earth 3) is a 900 range immobilize and pretty good, and its chain attack, Magnetic Leap, is a Leap Finisher. If you have a Fire Field down, leap through your own fire field to gain a Fire Aura, giving yourself fury once more.

Dagger Offhand
Dagger Offhand has some great immediate burst damage good for killing trash.

• Ring of Fire (Fire 4) does a significant amount of damage, inflicts burning, and lays down a 6-second fire field.
• Fire Grab (Fire 5) does a lot of damage to burning foes but, like a lot of Elementalist abilities, you’ll miss it a lot due to the odd hit detection. Once you learn to hit with it, you’ll do a great deal of damage.
• Frost Aura (Water 4) is great and you should use it when you need fury (assuming you’ve traited for for it with Zephyr’s Boon), probably spamming it off cooldown like most Ele abilities.
• Cleansing Wave (Water 5) does a great deal of healing (1302 + Healing Power), and you should use it when you need a quick burst heal.
• Ride the Lightning (Air 4) is the reason Elementalists are such a pain in WvW and PvP, giving an amazing amount of distance. It’s a great way to get back to a foe, and does a good deal of damage. It’s not something you should spam off cooldown, however, but you should use it as needed, or when you need to run through trash. Make sure to turn off auto-targeting when running off-hand Dagger elementalist so that you can use this ability to run past enemies without targeting them automatically.
• Updraft (Air 5) is basically another dodge, as well as an AoE knockdown, as well as gives you a great deal of Swiftness. Use as needed.
• Earthquake (Earth 4) does a great deal of damage, knocks down in an AoE, and more importantly, is a Blast Finisher.
• Churning Earth (Earth 5) is your strongest damaging spell, inflicting 8 stacks of bleed, 4 stacks of cripple, a gigantic amount of damage, and is also a Blast Finisher.

Scepter
This is the first weapon Elementalists start out with, and strangely, almost all Elementalists I meet quickly abandon it as soon as they can. I never understood why, since it’s a very strong ranged damage weapon if you need one.

• Dragon’s Tooth (Fire 2) is actually pretty easy to land on most mobs since they often just stand around. It is also a blast finisher.
• Phoenix (Fire 3) can be awkward to land, but has some great abilities (removes all conditions and grants vigor when it returns). It is also a blast finisher.
• Shatterstone (Water 2) is really bad and you’re better off just using Water autoattack.
• Water Trident (Water 3) heals for a ton, and you should use it if you or an ally needs a burst heal.
• Lightning Strike (Air 2) and Blinding Flash (Air 3) are low-cooldown high damage and high utility abilities respectively and should spam them off cooldown whenever you get the chance.
• Rock Barrier (Earth 2) is a good spell to start combat with, granting you a good bit deal of toughness.
• Dust Devil (Earth 3) does a good bit of damage and blinds in an AoE. Solid and spammable off cooldown.

A build with 4 fire AND 6 Air AND 4 earth. That’s your problem.

You’ll need a lot more in defensive trees (Arcana+Water) to be viable in PvP.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Dagger/Dagger

Focus
Highly underrated but very powerful in the right situations. I prefer Focus over Offhand Dagger in Dungeons. Focus has a defensive skillset that you’ll use when the team needs protection from bad guys that sit back and shoot dangerous projectiles at you (read: quite often).

• Flamewall (Fire 4) is pretty bad, and now it’s also bugged thanks to the patch (you can cancel it if you attack while it’s still casting) but it at least provides a Fire field.
• Fire Shield (Fire 5) is pretty weak as well and more or less only there to proc with Zephyr’s Boon for more fury.
• Freezing Gust (Water 4) is a ranged Chill and is thus quite powerful in certain situations.
• Comet (Water 5) is a ranged daze and actually dazes opponents for quite a bit. It’s also a Blast Finisher.
• Gale (Air 5) is a ranged knockdown.

Mainly though, you use Focus for these three skills, because they are all so strong:

• Magnetic Wave (Earth 4) is a Blast Finisher, Cripples opponents around you and does damage, cures 3 conditions, and reflects projectiles shot at you for 3 seconds. (It does everything on a 25s cooldown)
• Obsidian Flesh (Earth 5) grants invulnerability for 4 seconds, while allowing you to do other things during that time.
• Swirling Winds (Air 4) offers 6 seconds of projectile destruction. It’s very strong, especially in cases where you need projectile deflection, such as the Harpy Fractal, the Shaman Fractal final boss, and Mossman in the Swamp Fractal. Basically, you should use this ability as much as you can, and you’ll find that once you start using it in battles, it definitely helps mitigate damage for your whole team. This is the main reason to take Focus over Offhand Dagger when paired with Mainhand Dagger.

Staff
High skill cap to use, and pretty awkward at that. The main thing is that it can be really hard to land most of this weapon’s attacks, and the auto-attacks themselves do incredibly low damage. In most dungeons, you’re probably better off using Daggers or Scepter. There are some cases where the Staff is really nice to have (such as clearing lots of trash or lots of enemies, such as the Ascalon Fractal), but overall, especially for newer players, I’d point you in the direction of the other weapon sets first.

So which weapon set should you use? It depends on the build.

• Mainhand Dagger provides your most consistent DPS and is thus my goto weapon for most situations. While it lacks Scepter’s burst, it can still use Lightning Whip (your Air Autoattack) when the fight gets a little long, and you need to deal consistent damage.
• Scepter has really great burst damage and better might stacking abilities since with Offhand Dagger, it has 4 blast finishers (Fire 2 and 3 combined with Earth 4 and 5). Its main issue is it lacks good damage after exhausting its high CD abilities.
• Offhand Dagger provides good burst PBAoE damage on a fairly high CD like the Scepter. Your best attack on this thing is actually probably Ring of Fire due to its lower, 15-second CD. This is the usual goto for most Elementalist’s Offhand. I suggest always pairing Offhand Dagger with Scepter because Ring of Fire is a great Fire Combo field.
• Focus provides great utility abilities. Swirling Winds (Air 4) is just so strong and laying it down in a fight can really help protect your team. The Earth Abilities are as strong as other class’ Utility slot skills. I suggest pairing Focus with Mainhand Dagger because of its utility, even though the tradition in the Elementalist community has been to use Double Daggers. I do not suggest pairing Focus with Scepter if you plan to be a Might-and-Fury stacking Elementalist because Wall of Fire (Fire 4) has a horrid casting time, and is also bugged thanks to the latest patch.

Utility Slots and Elites

Your utilities depend a bit on what you’re trying to do. You want a good stunbreak like Arcane Shield or Mist Form, and Arcane Wave is an incredible spell since it’s a blast finisher. Conjure Lightning Hammer is great, should you choose to use it (you really should).

For your Heal skill (#6), I would suggest Signet of Restoration or Ether Renewal. Try both and see which one you like more. I find Signet to be better with Dagger and Ether to be better with Scepter.

For your Elite, I like Conjure Fiery Greatsword. It’s a great “ranged” swap and does a great deal of damage just for pressing 1. The Whirl and Gap Closer also do an insane amount of damage when done against a wall (if you don’t target anything when using these abilities, then they do a lot of extra damage). Conjure Fiery Greatsword, if used against a wall, actually does more damage than Conjure Lightning Hammer, so I definitely suggest using it for that purpose when you can.

Gear

Now this is where things get interesting. You are almost definitely going to go into Melee somehow, and you have low HP and low armor. What should you equip for dungeons?

Probably full Berserker gear with Ruby Trinkets. For your runes in your armor, I’d suggest Ruby Orbs or Scholar Runes. The latter provides better DPS if you can stay above 90% health for 25% of the time, and are still very strong even when you’re not above 90% health.

Why full Berserker on trinkets and armor though, you might ask? Because in dungeons, the most important thing, generally, is dealing damage and killing enemies as quickly as possible.

The thing is, most dungeon mechanics are about one-shot mechanics that will down most characters in one hit or so anyway. Stacking survivability through stats is a waste, especially on a character like the Elementalist which has so little in the way of HP and Armor that you might as well not try to increase those in PvE, at all.

If you are somewhat paranoid about your own survivability, just note that unlike other classes, you have a surprising amount of self-sustain available to you if you spec for it. Your primary means of healing will be:

• Auto-attacking (which triggers Signet of Restoration)
• Attuning to Water attunement with Water 15 trait (which heals about 1600 HP for you)
• Dodge rolling in Water Attunement with Evasive Arcana (which heals another 1600 HP and cleanses)
• Using Cone of Cold (which heals about 800 for you) or Water Trident (which heals about 1600 HP)
• Using Cleansing Wave (which heals another 1600 HP and cleanses).
  If you’re out of all of these, then you can pop the signet. Don’t forget that, also, due to rapidly swapping attunements, you gain Protection from Earth attunement for a sizable time, which reduces the damage you take by 33%. Ether Renewal is also an amazing heal if you go with that instead.

For your sigils, you should take Sigil of Battle in your offhand weapon, and Sigil of Bloodlust in your mainhand weapon (gain 10 to Power per kill). If you really want to minmax, swap out your mainhand weapon for a weapon of the same type with Sigil of Force (5% damage) or Sigil of the Night (+10% damage at night) after you max out your Bloodlust stacks.

For consumables, Superior Sharpening Stones are great (or if you’re cheap, Hardened Sharpening Stones will do). Your food should be Omnomberry Pie (or Mixed Berry Pie if you’re cheap) for survivability with lifesteal on crit, as well as the extra damage from lifesteal. This part is really important. Dungeon Elementalists benefit hugely from Lifesteal food. Always eat some if you can afford to do so. It will make a significant difference in your survivability and DPS.

The Elementalist has been a highly problematic class for a good portion of the game’s history, when it comes to balance. At the game’s start, the class was misunderstood by the vast majority of the playerbase (like all classes), though players eventually began to understand the power of the "tanky-DPS’ Ele, and Bunker-Damage Arcana-Water builds soon proliferated through the mists. The class remained largely dominant over the PvP meta until patches of the summer of 2013, when a multitude of changes were made:
-5 second ICD to Cleansing Water
-18% nerf to Signet of Restoration
-Doubling of Ride the Lightning’s CD
-Mist Form changed to no longer allow Heals or Utility skills while active
-Removal of stunbreaks on Cleansing Fire and Lightning Flash

These, along with later buffs to Necromancers and Warriors made the Elementalist outright garbage and unplayable in PvP for an entire year.

Later on, in the recent April patch and beyond, Dhuumfire was nerfed, Warriors were nerfed, Double-Sigils were made a thing (Battle+Doom, for example), Strength Runes were buffed, and Celestial Amulet was buffed. On top of all of these things, the ICD on Cleansing Water was removed, as was the nerf to Signet of Restoration. The nerfs to RTL and the cantrips stayed. Elementalist went from worst class to best class, and still the class has yet to know a prolonged period of time where it wasn’t either god tier or garbage tier in PvP. This is upsetting, especially to players who want to stick to a class without fear of having it get continuously rocked back and forth on the viability scale due to the flow of patches. It’s also frustrating because it seems the balancers at ANet cannot figure out a way to make an Elementalist that is not:
A. So fragile and easily killed by anything because of its low base stats
B. Outsustains everything around it with constant healing

So here’s the thing, it’s clear that the class is far too strong in PvP. The problem is that despite ANet’s philosophy of gradual changes, they changed a bunch of things at once in both balance patches that made the Ele terrible, and then made it too strong. Celestial Amulet, Strength Runes, Double Sigils, no ICD on Cleansing Water, and a stronger Signet of Restoration are a deadly combination, but it’s difficult to pinpoint which of these things could be changed without risking destroying the whole class all over again because too much was changed at once. There’s also the fact that the changes to other classes such as the Dhuumfire nerf might have actually been the real tipping point that changed the state of the Elementalist. And we’ll probably never know, because changes are made in gigantic bulk, rather than the gradual process over time that ANet promised us.

So here’s the problem with the Ele – it’s a class that is highly influenced by changes in the game, due to its low base stats but high return on using those stats. Celestial Amulet makes a huge difference, as does a stronger Signet of Restoration. But would one be too strong without the other? It’s hard to say, because they were both changed at the same time, along with a million other changes to other classes.

This is my plea to the balancers. We all know that the Elementalist is next on the chopping block for nerfs over the course of the next balance patches. As it should be. But do us a favor, and change things slowly, emphasizing re-examining changes you’ve made to gear (Amulets, Sigils, etc.) before possibly re-destroying Signet of Restoration (which, in my opinion, is the real heart of the Elementalist’s viability, much the same way that Healing Signet keeps the Warrior viable). Change things slowly, rather than piling on a bunch of balance changes into one patch like you guys have done in the past.

It was pretty trash in PvP for about a year last year, and then they introduced double-proccing sigils, Celestial Amulet, and un-nerfed Signet of Restoration, making it godly in PvP once more.

In PvE, the introduction of the Grandmaster Trait Fresh Air and the buffing of the Grandmaster Trait Persisting Flames granting Fury gave it incredibly powerful PvE builds that allow for very consistent damage and incredible team damage buffing.

Niceeeeeeeeeee

THE BUILDS

Well, that took a while, but here we finally are. I went through a lot of information before finally getting to the builds.

The reason I did this is because the Elementalist actually has quite a few variations, depending on what exactly it is you want to do.

In this section, I will introduce the build, link the build, rank it on several criteria (with “Low” “Moderate” “Good” and “Great” as the grades), and then give a short summary on how to play it.

The criteria I use to judge builds are as follows:

• Damage – How much personal DPS this build outputs
• Survivability – How easy it is to keep this build alive in a dungeon
• Support – How much it helps your team with boons, buffs, heals, and cleanses
• Swirling Winds Access – It’s that important. Being able to block projectiles is just so useful in dungeons.
• Arcana Build – To me, having lots of points in Arcana and swapping between attunements is what defines an Elementalist. Almost every build here will be an Arcana build. Eles that aren’t Arcana builds lose access to all the various benefits each of the attunements offer.
• Lightning Hammer Synergy – The sad truth is, Elementalists more or less need Lightning Hammer to do great damage. Some versions of the Elementalist work better with Lightning Hammer than others.

The Classic Auramancer (0/10/0/30/30)

First, let’s go over the very classic 0/10/0/30/30 “bunker” spec that was popularized in WvW by Daphoenix and in PvP by Zoose .

Here is the build

• Damage: Low
• Survivability: Great
• Support: Great
• Swirling Winds Access: Yes
• Arcana Build: Yes
• Lightning Hammer Synergy: Low

Great for beginners. If you are a beginner, play this build.

I highly recommend this build for people who are new to the Elementalist. Using this build will teach you how to play the basics of an Elementalist. This build’s damage may be lacking, but its general versatility and survivability when played moderately well are what make it great for beginners.

General strategies include:

• Don’t sit in Water attunement or Earth attunement for too long, since switching to either provides a Heal and Protection respectively. Attune to Water for a massive Heal, and attune to Earth when spike damage is about to come.
• Learn how to stack Might with your two fire fields, Arcane Wave, Evasive Arcana dodge rolls in Earth Attunement, and the Blast Finisher in Earth 4.
• Learn how to “attunement dance”. Swap to Fire for burst damage, swap to Water for the heal skills and the general heal (as well as dodging in water for a heal), swap to Air when you need Fury and a good Autoattack, and Swap to Earth for the on-demand Protection, spike damage with Earth 2, the blast finisher in Earth 4, and the blast finisher in dodging in Earth (good for dodging in your own fire fields).
• Your auras provide Fury and Swiftness to the entire team. You’re a great team-support sort of character, so you pop your auras as needed to help boost up your team’s damage.
• Your best autoattack after exhausting all of your attunement’s high CD abilities is Lightning Whip (Air 1).

Seasoned Elementalists will note that I choose Focus over Offhand Dagger. You’re free to slot Offhand Dagger if you so choose, but I feel that the sheer utility of focus skills (Swirling Winds in particular) outweigh the damage of offhand dagger.

Finally, I find that Lightning Hammer unfortunately just doesn’t work as well with this build as it does with others. Still, I think that once you get used to this build, swapping either Arcane Wave or Arcane Shield for Lightning Hammer is a good choice.

I think the Ele is viable, but it’s still not meta. There are still stronger builds, but you can still succeed on Ele whereas before it was much, much harder.

Dude, it’s a HUGE buff. It changes a ton for the Elementalist. We can actually use on-elite runes now, with these new activated elite abilities for Elemental pets.

I’ve always wanted to run 4 Cantrips on my utility bar <3

T_T The squishy members survive because there is a tank and a healer to protect them. The healer incorporates Healing Power and the tank incorporates Toughness. Is that not enough?

I really like this change. Having a low-CD blast finisher in Water Staff is very nice.

It’s very good.

Yes pls.

Hybrid Scepter-Hammer (30/0/0/20/20 or 30/0/0/10/30)

Trying to actually take the absolute glassiest version of the build can be a little daunting to some players, however, and so I want to make available a version I feel that is a little more “noob friendly.” I have thus taken a page from the Fresh Air DPS build and allocated points to Water and Arcana for our own safety.

Here are the builds:

• This version has Healing Ripple from attuning to Water (30/0/0/20/20)
• This version has 30 points in Arcana and Evasive Arcana (30/0/0/10/30) (Cleansing Wave [Water V] can be Vital Striking [Water VI] if you so choose)

In both versions, you can replace either Mist Form or Arcane Shield for Arcane Wave for the extra Blast Finisher.

• Damage: Good
• Survivability: Moderate
• Support: Great
• Swirling Winds Access: No
• Arcana Build: Yes
• Lightning Hammer Synergy: Yes

For those who want good DPS and great team buffing, but also want a little self-sustain as well. Good for those who want to play a Scepter-Hammer Elementalist but want some survivability too.

This is basically a “compromise” version of the Scepter-Hammer build above. It makes several DPS concessions in exchange for a bit more versatility and survivability.

The general idea is to take a bit from other Water Arcana builds and incorporate that into the strategy of Scepter Might and Fury Stacking. You can either take the Healing Ripple version for a heal on attuning to Water, or the Evasive Arcana version which gives you a heal on a dodge roll in Water. The Evasive Arcana one is nice because it also gives you a blast finish in Earth Attunement, allowing you to lay down a Ring of Fire and roll into it in Earth, stacking more Fury and Might.

The point of this build is more to show that it is indeed possible to play a Scepter-Hammer Elementalist and still be somewhat survivable. The Elementalist gains most of its survivability from traits and utilities, and so if that playstyle interests you but you find you go down a lot, consider taking this compromise Hybrid version instead.

See everything in the previous Scepter-Hammer build for more advice.

For PvE Ele, it looks like Fire, Air, and Water will be the new traits to look at. You can still take Aeromancer’s Training (10% crit damage), Piercing Shards (more damage to vulnerable foes and your vuln lasts longer), Aquamancer’s Training (deal more damage above the health threshhold) and Bountiful Power. And now Fresh Air Ele can benefit and have Healing Ripple and Soothing Mist while still aiming for full DPS. Overall, seems like a quality of life buff

Have you tried the classic 0/10/0/30/30 build yet? It’s in my sig. While I think every Ele should eventually move away from it, I think you’d do best to try 15 in water for that heal on attunement swap. Try D/D aura-sharing. It’s not the best, but it’s very survivable.

This is actually a bit of an issue, it seems. Part of the barrier to PvP in this game is the awful “hotjoin” system that many players don’t realize is just for fun and not to be taken seriously at all. To them all of PvP is just hotjoin, and they don’t even realize the two queue systems that are in place exist at all.

We really do need an unrated queue with hidden MMR.

General Dungeon Strategy:

One of the things you’ll find in the balance of GW2 is that ranged damage, with some exceptions, does significantly less damage than melee damage. It’s for this reason that Hammer, the only Elementalist’s actually ‘melee’ weapon, deals so much damage compared to the Elementalist’s actual weapon sets. Luckily, it is possible to fit in a great deal of utility from the Elementalist as well, whether you play an Arcana build with the power to provide boons and support from the four elements – Might from Fire, Heals and Regen from Water, Swiftness and Fury from Air, and Protection and CC from Earth – or a purely Might and Fury stacking 0 Arcana build that still adds quite a bit of DPS to your group.

What this means is that you’ll often find yourself up in the front lines, sort of forced to really, due to the close range of Dagger and Hammer.

The first thing to note is that as daunting as it can be to be in a PUG wearing light armor with Berserker stats while you’re up in melee while everyone else insists on ranging, it’s actually not nearly as bad as it sounds. The reason for this has to deal with the way enemy aggro works in this game. You will have such a low armor class and with nothing in your earth tree, the only classes that will have as low toughness as you will be other Berserker Light Armor classes. So if you’re in a party with all Eles, Necros, and Mesmers wearing all Berserker gear, you might be in a bit of a tough spot, but that’s fairly rare.

In truth, whoever has higher armor than you will generally draw aggro thanks to the way aggro works in this game. The trick then, as an Elementalist, to retaining your survivability, is to stay with your party, and allow them to engage first. Once they do, you can freely move up into melee distance.

However, the squishiness of the Elementalist does mean that they are vulnerable to instagibs and dying to random accumulated attacks by trash mobs. It is for this reason that I personally try to have at least one good long protective utility like Arcane Shield or Mist Form. For harder content, I may even use both along with Lightning Hammer/Arcane Wave.

By the way, to append to what I said previously, if the idea of a “meta” for GW2 PvE seems like a stretch, it’s because it really is. GW2 PvE simply isn’t challenging enough for there to be a true “meta” in the way the term is used for other games. Add onto this the fact that many players don’t prioritize efficiency or gold per hour, and using the term “meta” to refer to the most efficient DPS builds does feel somewhat incorrect.

However, there are two points to keep in mind. First, for better or for worse, the term “meta” does now have that connotation in GW2, and the most important thing about language is the way real people use it. If people want to use the term meta to refer to speedrun builds, that’s their right. And if a large portion of the community agrees and understands that that’s what “meta” means, then… that’s what it comes to mean. Even if it is somewhat inaccurate.

The second thing to note is that the overall inferred concept of “meta” is still very useful, when referring to GW2 speedrun builds. By this I mean, if you go play some other competitive game like League of Legends or Magic: The Gathering, you will hear people use the term “meta” as a shorthand to refer to what is good or bad in that game’s current state. The term “meta”, while not entirely understood, is a large part of gamer language today, and the ability to go between games and use the same terminology is valuable. Thus, to someone new coming from some other game, if I call something the “meta”, then they will generally understand it to be “what the best builds/choices/strategies are”. In fact, that’s still a generally decent way to use the term, and so using it to refer to speedrunning builds is generally OK, even if I’ll always have my personal gripes about it.

What a lot of players may get upset about is the fact that since GW2 PvE can generally be overcome by basically anything, they point out that trying to bring competitive or “meta” concepts to something that is ultimately casual content can be a bit disheartening. Some people want to play their high-healing support builds or tank builds, even if they’re arguably not all that great if we look at how they help in completing the dungeon quickly and efficiently as the only metric. But you see, this is a game, and there’s more metrics to games than simple efficacy. Some people just wanna have fun, you know? And that’s why many players have a general distaste for every time they hear about the “meta” or how “the meta ruined the game”, etc. Since GW2 PvE isn’t competitive, you don’t need to use “meta” tactics, builds, or strategies to succeed. Compare this to a competitive game where, by their nature, you do need to understand and adapt to the meta of the game if you want to win. Some people just want to play their PvE to relax, not to be high-strung competitive.

Conclusion:

I hope this guide helped you, and I’m still in the process of editing it, but I wanted to get it out there to get some feedback right away. Please leave comments in the respective thread I posted this in, and I’ll make sure to read them. I will be editing this guide over time.

The Elementalist is in an interesting position in the Dungeon Metagame at the moment. They have a lot of potential to do all sorts of things, especially thanks to the recent June patch. When I last posted a guide, I basically saw only one or two really good builds, but now the Elementalist has so much more diversity in the things it can bring, thanks to several tweaks and buffs.

They can even work with the infamous “Organized Group” metagame due to their ability to stack Might and Fury while doing some of the highest damage in the game. They have basically unrivaled power to boost their ally’s damage, and have some incredible access to certain things all at once if they choose to spec for it (such as AoE group condition cleansing or Protection granting). They have some great escape utilities and incredible sustain with Water and Arcana, yet they also can instead choose to stack damage multiplier traits and smash things down faster than anyone else. An Elementalist with a Focus and Lightning Hammer doesn’t make a bad utility-DPS character in your average dungeon group.

In the end, I definitely feel the Elementalist is viable in this current PvE metagame, both for Organized Groups and PUGs. It has build diversity, and it can have incredible damage, incredible support, incredible self-sustain, or even a bit of both.

If you feel there is a build that I should add to this guide, feel free to post here or message me in-game. Please leave any feedback in the thread, or message me at my GW2 username, Neko.9021.

I hope you enjoyed this guide!

Try Condi Ele. Dagger MH with full Apothecary gear. Green Apothecary should do it. Hit her with as much Drake’s Breath as you can, then sit in Earth attunement spamming the auto while kiting around (since the Earth auto on Dagger MH can attack enemies behind you). The Healing Power from the gear should give you plenty of sustain for the fight. The typical Bunker Ele (6 water 6 arcana) will work.

This guide will see its next major update after the December patch, and in response to constant questioning about it as well as due to my new play habits (joining a WvW Raid guild) I will also include thoughts about WvW Raid builds as well.

This is really sad. Why did the devs only respond to this problem when it involved Living Story? Potions have been bugged for months, and only now do they fix them.

As someone who’s played quite a bit of D&D (3rd, 4th, 5th), let me try to help you out:

The Elementalist actually is very much closer to a Striker+Leader. This is very intentional. Please look to the description of the class:

“Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”

The Elementalist’s main abilities are its abilities to deal damage and buff itself and allies, which are aspects of a Striker and Leader respectively. The buffs come from Water’s healing and the boons that come from attuning to the 4 attunements, while the damage comes from the ability to combine those attunements for lots of damage.

To be quite honest, it was your fault for assuming the Elementalist is ‘the typical mage’. It is not. Neither flavorfully, nor mechanically. This is a mistake that many players seem to repeat when coming to GW2 without bothering to research the classes. Of the three spellcasters – Elementalists, Mesmers, and Necromancers – the Mesmer and Necro are far more Control-oriented than the Elementalist is. Not to say that the Elementalist does’t have some great control abilities (Shocking Aura, Updraft, Gale, and Static Field are all amazing). But it’s very much less a part of the class’ design than the other two scholar classes.

The Necromancer focuses on draining their opponents away with debuffs, while the Mesmer controls their opponents through trickery and deception. I actually think that the Mesmer probably comes the closest to a D&D styled Wizard that focused on control-type spells. The Necromancer is a great PvP controller with its various conditions (Fear, Immobilize, Cripple, Chill), and is honestly better than the Mesmer at it in practice at the ‘control’ role because its ability to stay in the fight better.

Overall, remember that the ‘mage’ means different things in different games, and for GW2, the archetype of mage is very much split between the three scholars, each representing their own distinct take on the concept. The Elementalist, in its design and flavor, is usually a Striker, Leader, Leader+Striker, or Striker+Leader. The fact that it has Control spells is simply due to the fact that all classes have a little bit of Damage, Support, and Control in their design, to ensure that classes can fill any role as needed. If you’re looking to push the Control line of the Elementalist, I think when Tempest Defense is moved to Master Tier in the update, a build which uses that and auras might be an Ele-styled control build.

Wait till after patch and Adrenaline drains on a miss. It’ll definitely help turn the matchup in your favor. ;3

Your guys’ hatred for Thieves is a bit overblown.