Guild Wars 2

Dude there are no ele nerfs on the leaked notes and also no considerable buffs to anything in the meta.And they also said they will tone down condies so the notes probably arent the whole picture or they are keeping the toning down for next patces.
All in all the worst things for ele are some small decrease in some of the elem att buffs and skills of ea.This wont affect your personall survivability AT ALL

I think the most viable condition build would be something with carrion(for spvp).
A hybrid that can stack might to god.Maybe the upcoming conjures buffs like the one of lava axe will help?!

ensoriki.5789:

Hope there is something for Earth shield in there too.

Staff bunker with clerics and lighting hammer at far point incoming!!!!
Unleash the cc monster
On the other hand i wonder if lava axe will work with pyromancers puissance for double the might?!Lol.. Or if deep freeze will retain its unbreakable status.Honestly its hardest cc there is in the game atm..imagine if it is made to land from and people start using it for stealth attacks.Its like a mini moa if you dont have instant immunity spells last time i checked

JonathanSharp.7094:

Also, we want to be more transparent with balance, so we’re going to be posting a list of the things that we’re working on now, so that you guys can see balance changes earlier than usual.

I’ll post that in a bit, hopefully today.

I bet rest of Anet doesnt like transparency!And i bet that rest had a word with mr.Sharp?!
Lol man..come on we are waiting to throw as a bone for so long

MTC.9536:

Furthermore the dmg of the air weapon skills of scepter should be reduced because otherwise otherwise double ele with oneshots without any animations would be the daily problem after all nerfs.

while i dont like doing any instant damage thats can crit for like 4k(strike +air minor on squishes) as much as i dont like unavoidable burn and kitten like that id hope they dont just reduce the air spells damage. The reason is that the sustain damage scepter produce is very low and if you remove the air skills would be extremely low. Currently if you sit on air and spam auto +l strike you ll do less damage than spamming lightning whip on daggers on a way more defensive build and fire spells require a lot of set up and are on long cooldowns while 2 of autos are cond based and 1 is pure crap to justify being your bulk of sustain damage.
earth 2,4 +arcanes +air spells =very good burst on a long cd=mediocre sustain
Fresh air increases sustain drastically but it still doesnt feel too much (sustain)damage considering what you give up.Someone could do some math so we are sure

^ that lava font trait is so important in the build!!
I wonder what troll in anet decided to put a “good” downed trait in the tree that if you choose to invest to you end up downed ..They sure got some good sense of humor those devs

woeye.2753:

What is the role of the elementalist? I don’t know …

Well..it was supposed to be the jack of all trades.But engis took that role with more options ,less restriction and the super power that is “having a viable condi build” so..
:D

Btw Karl was on the pvptv channel this morning and he said that the fgs trail and its damage is unintented and they are working to fix it. I dont know if he was talking about the damage when used properly or specifically about the bug when you use it with flash and the trail happens in the same spot same as using it against a wall.In any case this seems like a nice topic to post this info
Btw if you want to hear from devs go watch that pvp stream.The stream is worth it by itself and you get as a bonus to interact with gw2 devs like karl or jon quite often as they drop by.

The issue is simple and people have been crying about it even when ele was THE meta.
You get the lowest stats in the game,you ar forced into spending 30 points in line that gives zero stats,you have no active defence by default other than 2 healing spells top which are nullified by a few autos and your biggest chunk of your damage requires proper setup unless you pic 2 arcanse and try to be a suicide bomber
We have been screaming for ages that Ele has no survivability at all and people were “noob you are immortal” back in the days..Well im in the difficult position to announce you that all that were coming from a investing 50-60 points into specific admittetly too strong traits that are now nerfed and running a defensive amulet that now is useless cause of the condi meta.
Ele had always trouble at surviving ,just now its exposed.And its good that is exposed cause finally anet might notice and do something and stop hide behind the excuse of the overperformance of a single build that used to rule but now is crap
tl dr :GIVE ELE STEALTH !!! :p

Karl McLain.5604:

The damage from conjures and other weaponry of the like had an unintended increase from the patch on September 3 as a side effect from another change, so this fix was just to correct that bug. It’s not to say we’re against increasing ele conjured weapon potential in the future.

Cheers!
-Karl

I knew it!!! This post confirms that in the future conjures wont dissapear upon dropping them ! Come on make me happy Karl :P

haha my jaws dropped while reading it and i started drooling!!That would be like creating a god among the rest of the classes..But really the ideas(numbers aside) are interesting. So many people take time to come up with new ideas all the time but its always ends up pointless

I disagree with freezing gust and comet not having sunergy together.
The plain obvious that comes to my mind is using comet to itnerrupt a key ability like heal and then freezing gust to slow down the cooldown of the enemy skills.
I use those skills in that order every time after i heavily burst someone when i play s/f burst

garethh.3518:

Nothing should have much to do with evades….
Dodge rolling and ‘evading’ shouldnt make you immune to dmg.. you can just move out of attacks through the movement.
Like you’d be dodging an attack… by actually dodging it… not becoming kittening immune to dmg.

It seems like that’s what the devs originally intended, just had to cut it short because of time/funding constraints, which was a major blow to GW2.
Turning what would have made next to everything into a skillshot… into just point-click-immune sort of gameplay…
kittening disaster.

The devs don’t even seem like their trying to recover any lost potential.

Anyways, ‘fixing’ p/p thieves by making them just like d/p… is kittened.
d/p stealth spam should be fixed… not other things ‘fixed’ to be like it.
Plain and simple.
The devs are just showing again and again why they shouldn’t be devs.

In very early versions of the game ive seen in videos im sure endurance gain was higher but dodging didnt have immunity frames.You just moved out of the way of things
Im not entirely sure though ..i might need to find the video again

Focus completely lacks damage..Like theres no damage in it at all.This needs to change a bit.It can still be a defencive weapon.
But that earth 5..Look at it from an outside view for a bit.
Mist form requires a utility slot,locks you from your skills,lasts 3 sec and has 75 sec cd
Obsidian flesh might not stunbreak but lasts 4 sec,doesnt klock your skills,has a 50 sec cd and is a freaking weapon skill out of your 20 skills
The exact same comparison can be done between cleansing fire and magnetic wave.
Something is really really off here.Perhaps their idea of balance is super strong skills make up for incerdibly weak almost nonexistant skills like fireshield and flamewall.
In any case the weapon is fun but currently imo you should only run it with high offencive builds and fresh air so that you get your damage output in a decent level
The difference between pre fresh air focus and now is massive in terms of viability of this weapon just cause of the damage increase

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm. i thought people were complaining about conditions being too powerful?

and the direct counter to conditions would be more health, right?

So are you plannig on not buffing the health of condition classes or is it a global health increase?What about the non condition builds of those classes?
Cause i cant see how a global buff would do more than delay the inevitable? Condies would still be stronger than burst just take a bit more to kill.But at same time burst will take more to kill so it doesnt really matter.
Although global buffs of same value can indeed change the balance since more health for example in some classes is more valuable than others..but i dont see why this is a good idea

But but but..if eles get away with using 1 attunement in pve then why pve rangers wont get away with not fully utilising all their F skills if they implement it?? :P
Seriously though..skill floor increase is a sad excuse.This game isnt hard at all and not even the hardest classes are hard when you compare it to other games and genres that are popular.They just dont have the resources,motivation and power to pull something as big as that.Cause it will be indeed a very hard thing to do cause it would require rebalancing the whole ranger proffession..
Besides we all have seen what is the game skill of an average gw2 developer,right?
Every time they stream those pve events we see their gaming skill in their whole glory!! clicking,no binds,slow reactions ..no wonder why this game has things like autoturning and autotracking for leaps and passives..its full of casual pvers,from its playerbase up to its core of development team

I m pretty sure i ll regret it if i stay awake for this..and for that i wont! Have fun all hearing the same things again

Eurantien.4632:

Azunai.5974:

Eurantien.4632:

I’ve seen cleric staff eles push far node and decap anything and then not die to anything 1 v 1.

Haha, made me laugh. +1 for the joke!

Lol figured that would be the response. It’s happened. I’ve tried it and it sure isn’t easy but it can be done.

Water auto is getting a considerable healing power increase(the considerable is my addition seeing how Jon Peters mentioned it first and put some emphasis on it )
Also water 3 is probably getting some radius increase and earth 4 a rework since in Jons words its terrible! So after next balance patch there would be more reasons to try something like that but i cant see why you would waste all the aoe healing,support and a bit damage in 1vs1!
Btw I ll just silently hide and wait till they remake conjures..That would be certainly fun

Azunai.5974:

I don’t really understand your train of thought here.

How does having more options make it any less skillful? In reality, it makes it harder given that more options = more ways to respond to even more situations.

Ele’s are restricted in a way given their much higher cooldowns. So most of the time, we’re just spamming our shorter ones while an engineer can pretty much rely on having the right skill at the right time, if they think of it.

Are you implying 3kit engies are bad? Are you? Because that’s just plain wrong. If anything, they are/should be the norm.

Actually i think 3 kit engis arent the most optimal engis but they arent bad imo.
Anyway you talked about being “hard” to play ..not about versatility options etc..
By your logic d/p thief must be stupidly easy to play since it doesnt have even half the skills of a 3 kit engi..right??(actually it has more than half..my bad :P ) I hope you get where m getting to
Also attunements have strong effects (electric discharge) which makes the swap even more meaningful,though i agree the cd is way to high and it promotes spamming to keep up the damage and pressure .
But thats cause of the 16 base cd and the low damage on autoattacks.I wouldnt in any case want to lose the on swap effect and DEGRADE attunements into kits.In fact id hope they make the attunement effects even stronger so the choice is even more important

Just roll an other class till meta shifts or they buff staff.Maybe go full damage and fresh air with focus.Just try to think what you cna do to help the team the most you can with what you have..So no 1vs1s unless its something like engi which you can manage if you go burst and you know how to play etc.Play it safe,stay at range try maxing dps without dieing ,maybe bringing mist form so you can stomp at least and good luck

Engineers are harder.

And no, not the stupid grenade spam engies. Three-kit engies.

Eles are harder ..and no ,not the stupid serious builds.4 conjure eles :P
Seriously though, rolling between 20 skills with no pentaly and cooldown to prevent you from mindlessy switching kits was never any skillfull.Playing 3 kit engi and thinking it requires skill cause of the immediate access to many skills is the same as saying wow or any other many skills hotkey mmos requires massive skill
At least nades need to be aimed and at least the other classes need to think and chose wise when they swap a skillset

S/f seems to be fairing decently well against fotm build matches and the damage potential is defiantely there..But there is 1 thing that i want to change for the ele and it hasnt to do with getting or losing power..Its the kitten frustration of playing it atm.It doesnt matter what build you ll run ,you will seeing your life going down by anything and even the way you do damage is frustrating.
On a warrior i autoattack ,build adrenaline,skullcrack and 100 blades and pop an bers stance f needed or block while the signet heals me passively..
On an ele i need to switch in and out of air for the lightning strikes while trying not waste an attunement and its buff if im gonna need it in the near future,whil trying to aim the fire spells while im keeping an eye of my position cause i cant disengage with focus while trying to be near los options for ether renewal. etcetc
Warrior vs Ele is just an example that gives me the impression that effort required for classes to perform is very unevenly dstributed..That hasnt annything to do with their power though

Allie Murdock.8152:

How can you even say that? If you honestly think you put more into this game than we do, you have absolutely no concept of what we do on a regular basis.

Yeah i get you..if i remember correctly is called having a real job that pays the bills and being dedicated to it..nothing fancy or out of the ordinary .Many of us can relate to it at some level
I think those randoms helping or donating to streams and trying to build the pvp community and improve this game dont get a check at the end of the month though so ..

^
wow so many letters in the greek alphabet

^ i know im just implying that fresh air is definately not the problem but rather traits and skills that were designed long long before fresh air was even conceived
Also the air burst is what for now makes me have a chance against necros ,warriors (no not rangers ) and is THE only way to deal with s/d thieves for the ele so im a bit biased

Mammoth.1975:

Duncanmix.5238:

But from limited resources it seems right now mesmer and ele need some love. Other 6 classes we see much more usage.

I still think this is due to the playerbase being months behind in terms of adjusting comps. Mesmers and eles are strong against melee, melee is strong against condis, condis are strong against mesmers…. and eles who never use cooldowns defensively if they can be used offensively.

Now that people have seen that warriors and double melee are undeniably viable, they’ll start running it, and that means mesmers and eles will see more success in turn.

Some tuning so that condis don’t destroy mesmers so hard, warriors don’t destroy condi classes so hard, and mesmers/eles don’t destroy melee so hard is all that is needed.

However, you have to take that with a caveat. I actually have no idea how the new warrior fares against mesmers and eles, I’m basing that matchup on the old meta, where mesmers and eles straight dominated them, and thus warriors never saw much play.

Also, I’m not talking 1v1 here, I’m talking about impact on a match.

1vs1 is very important since many warriors nowadays are used as far point assault more than teamfighting at least from my experience
I dont know what fares well against something that regen that much,is tanky, can stun 4 sec every 10 sec and also crit everything for the duration and deal huge number of damage.Mesm might have a chance with their great kiting abilities if they run with defencive utilities but eles im sure cant win with the old valks setups.
Reason is low damage and thus pressure while warrior eats 1 by 1 your defences on a very fast rate.You need DAMAGE !!

^ fresh air is not instant burst..the 15 minor is that triggers when swapping to air and hits for 1-2k is an istant burst
The trait is godsent in so many ways for the ele that if they touch it ill go kill myself (lol not really ). It basically makes tha att rotation unpredictable and gives you the room to effectively use your air spells at the right time.That has nothing to do with instant damage which btw for the ele is only in a single weapon that is scepter!
In fact i ll make a petition for fresh fire,earth ,water(maybe too op ??! lol )

BrunoBRS.5178:

it’s amazing the change in tone of the forums when the devs show and talk a lot. you’d think god himself has made an appearance, judging by the change from “OH MY GOD THIS IS SO DOOMED” to “OH THANK YOU I CAN’T WAIT FOR IT”.

People need attention,thats all

So if you get frustrated at the pace we’re making, or if you just need to take a break so you can try another game, or if you wait on something to be fixed the way you want it, that’s fine. We’ll keep working with our heads down, our minds churning, and our ears open, trying to make GW2 the best game it can be.

And we’ll be here when you get back.

Wait are you saying we should quit ??
Lol jk! But that was definately made under the influence of some heavy kitten ..dont fool me it was just tea

Well..ok i ll bite it and it and wont qq for petting zoos and pvpers being second class citizens (apparently i missed the big drama yesterday .. )
At least you got good taste in tv and music

No bug imo .You queue you get to play with a few people ,you win or lose and then you all start queueing again at the same time.And because you can clearly sync (big secret ,right?) you get to play with them for 100000000 games in a row.
What you can do to break this is waiting and not queueing immediately after match.
You can even add them to your contact list and wait till they are in a game.
It works 100% to break that and for all i know is the only way to stop getting 20 matches with the same people.
Its extremely effective against trolls that play sitting duck on node(guard) and go afk if their team goes behind by 50 pnts !! hehe :P

You play ele ..
When you didnt realise that for the 3 last matches you were running with the wrong elite
When you realised after sigent nerf patch that you had no keybind for healing skill

And the base att recharge is 16 sec for gods sake..Its like everybody makes that mistake!
Forget wiki,remove the arcana switch and there it is..15 appears which means you have above 15 sec more time before the skill is available..lol

Allie Murdock.8152:

Lighter.5631:

as of big patch, personally i just want to get ride of this current stat of pvp asap, so i can play this game again..

For sure, I can’t say we’re entirely happy with the meta right now either. Changes are coming.

I just want to know generally more about how the balancing process is done.
Like when you released necro with dhuumfire at 4 sec did you test in 1vs1 up to 5vs5 scenarios with the current meta builds?Then with new builds that came up after the patch?
And how come it didnt occur for example how rough time eles and mesm would have against these types of builds?I mean taking half the base hp with an autoattack on an unavoidable proc seems rather weird just by hearing it,doesnt it?
Or did you have in mind specific counter builds on specific classes while releasing these changes as a form of balance?
Also since now creating builds in this game wasnt any difficult procedure in terms of choices.We basically play what you put there..Theres always a better choise with very little diverisity so i cant agree that you need time (moths? :O ) for the meta to develop.You should already know how things will flow before hand,your testers should have stumble upon the current meta way before us did!

Conan.8046:

Its mostly a PVE condition. 25% increase from all sources is huge in PVE.

In pvp too .if 2 people burst or simply attack .A flat 10% damage increase is being given by very rare and useful traits so having this spread over your whole team for the target is not something to be ignored.It just isnt that game changing like other conditions
But thats fine!!isnt,it? plssss ??!
Lol

No pls No..Its not weak!It just isnt gamebraking like weakness is now..
Like that was the stupid thread about weakness and now look what we have.
A necro applies weakness and more than 25% of my damage dissappears !
Dont kittening propose stuff like that.They will introduce something stupid like each stack is 2% more damage without affecting the uptime of any class and you ll see engis,mesm,warriors stacking this to god..Jesus

dreztina.4820:

I don’t know why, but engis seem easier to kill than other condi classes. My fights with them generally end up with them either being too bunkery for anything to happen so it stalemates, or I win. I haven’t fought any with perplexity runes yet though, and I hope I don’t.

Those runes are beyond broken…Bam thy interrupt acouple and you got 15 stacks of conf and shield and ft ccs are undodgeable.. but at least they arent available in pvp.
But its true compared to sp rangers and necros i find dealing with engis easier cause they lack protection while rangers got it perma and necros have armor and the wall to get it. If they run with no stunbreak and you are a burst ele you just got to blink updraft into fire burst and arcanes and its over.
Unfortunately many run with slick shoes now and some with the prot when cced trait !
If you engage in an attrition fight with them you ll just lose
I played one myself so i get to learn how to counter them better and its not hard at all to deal with eles.You just got to avoid the obvious burst in fire and watch out for the eearthquake-air one and the burning ,confusion and bleeding will do the job for you.
They got all the tools to do that with many blinds,blocks,great healing with water fields and even a self rezz if they run with it (ele got no poison).If they dont its in their end imo

LightningBlaze.4913:

Minoru.1237:

From what I’ve seen of lightningblaze’s play, he is definitely a good ele roamer. But, having said that, he still goes down to the same condi spam that everyone else does. I have a condi engi guild mate who beats him pretty consistently when they encounter each other roaming.

I have only encountered one engi who have the right to state that. Is he a jq norn that uses p/s and rifle wep set with flamethrower utility? We had duels in wvw for over a hour a few days ago. It was the most fun duels I ever had. Very challenging engi. It went both sides of wins and loses. We even had a few occasions where we went down simultaneously. He did win more times than what I defeated him within that time frame. If i is not him then no other cond engi can state that and I would like to meet him in order for him to backup his statement.

Thanks for proving my point!
Go ask anyone serious spvp player about what is the outcome of engi vs ele usually!
You ll see
And how can you fight him so many times and not knowing exactly his utilities ?He cant use both rifle and p/s ..Maybe it was elixir gun that seemed lik a rifle to you? Jesus you got a lot of learning to do if you want to be in a position to claim things such as "i wins all 1vs1 " :P
Lol jk i hope i dont get across as mean

So you still stand firm on saying that you have no problem 1vs1 with these builds and that infact necros and thieves are easy?
If you were following the pvp scene ,watching the tourneys and the currently considered top teams you would see there are no eles left at all.They all rerolled or quit!
I cant believe that they all suck!? And 1vs1 isnt even the point of this game.Its worse when you are in a teamfight and ar focused by both enemy necro and a thief invading your backline.
I checked your build and its not something new.Its the most logical way to make a burst le currently.But it lacks options in the fight cause att switch is on more than 13.3sec and is very vulnerable to both condies and d damage.
Its just has a burst that can be negated by anything from a dodge to the burning of a defencive cooldown or the use of a rezz!! (yeah pvp players know how to use those).Then you ll get cc/feared ,you ll get chilled and then those 13 sec will become 16-17 and your damage will mean nothing.
Its not a good build man.Im sure about that and it takes very little effort to counter what it does..Wvw players arent a good way to measure the pvp potential and judge balance of this game.They hardly reach the max potential of their class!

Darnis.4056:

I feel bad for staff elementalists but then again I don’t want to see more AOE splatter everywhere..

At least unlike necro splatter it gets effected by retal…

Actually staff aoe is “good” aoe.Lava font ticks after a sec and isnt that big of a threat,ice spike and eruption have a huuuuge delay and meteorshower ..wll its meteor shower!I dont know what to sayabout that.
And thats pretty much all aoe damage staff has except the minor aoe from the blast of fire ball and bounching air auto but thats like the thiefs sb auto.
All the rest aoe is control or heal with a bit of dots and very very little damage here and there ..You can improve the weapon by fixing the autoattacks and giving it more defence without touching the aoe damage it has at all

I have no clue about wvw because a few kind of important nerfs didnt carry over to that game mode and you have more freedom to adjust your stats.
But tbh i cant imagine how i could defeat a good engi if he was running kitten like runes of perplexity
Maybe if you can reach high power,crit damage levels without droping your hp and toughness too low you can force very fast fights and avoid all that cond jazz.
I can see why LightningBlaze is fine 1vs1 with a burst build in wvw if the burst is enough to drop the other guy low enough to turn defensive and you avoid a dragged fight.Other rules over there i guess

LightningBlaze.4913:

Thieves and necromancers were still the 2 most easiest profession to defeat just like in wvw.

I also played the popular bunker/healer build 0/10/0/30/30 D/D for tpvp and I have to conclude it is still very strong even with all its nerfs. The amount of survivability this build provides within tpvp is still admirable.

See heres the thing..You might be an amazing ele player but you did that while playing wvw so its safe toassume that you are nowhere close in spvp ,rating wise, to face people that know what they are doing with their class.
You simply cant say that thieves and necros are an easy match up for eles.All the top eles have rerolled just because of these 2 classes ! Thats not an opinion,its a fact ..it happened
Was the thief acrobatics s/d? Were the necros 30 20 0 0 20 with spectral armor,spite signet
Its not that i dont believe you can win 1vs1 against necros,thieves but the simple fact you ALSO said that they are your easiest match up makes me very suspicious about the quality of players you faced.Now taking account that you PROBABLY havent invested time in that mode to increase your rank/rating ..i would make the wild guess that you were fighting newbies nowhere near the potential of their class
And the d/d 0 10 0 30 30 is dead.Without the scepters instant burst and range you cant damage back the perma evade theif and cleansing water nerfs (i assume you know in pvp this trait has a 5 sec icd) and sustain nerf(i assume you know about the healing nerf in that mode :P ) means you cant survive the condi aoe spam !
Heres what ele has big trouble 1vs1 (assuming similar skill)
spirit ranger
bombs engi
stun warrior
condi necro
evade thief(easiest 1vs1 in this list imo)
Did you face those builds? Or just random necros,thieves,warriors etc

cheshirefox.7026:

i’ve logged 2500+ hours on the elem, mostly staff -_-
your analogy is completely moot.. if the elem performs significantly lesser than the other professions, and it does, then “appreciating it more or finding it interesting” isn’t going to correct the current state of it..

you missed the point of the opening post entirely

is elementalist interesting as in viable
was the elementalist so interesting as to be singled out from the other professions that it had to be nerfed into oblivion

Yay !interesting was more aimed as having a reason to bother with it.
But i do feel that the gameplay at core has issues that makes the class play a lot less strategically that it could thus making it less “interesting”
Maybe im burned out

Basically they need to increase the benefit of staying in earth and water by a lot.Atm you need to go out of those attunements asap if you want to mantain good uptime of prot and regen.You also cant stay in fire for long cause autoattacks in both scepter and dagger suck so only air is an att you want to stay in.
If autoattacks werent that crappy maybe people would intelligently switch attunements to adapt and not to keep a decent amount of dps and boons.
Its contradicting ..you have to swap but you cant know if you will need the skills you leave a moment later.In the end you swap anyway and most of the times spamming those skills in an attempt to not waste anything before you regain access to taht attunement.

Baladir.2736:

You miss the point. Whether or not something is interesting, your post title, has nothing to do with anything else. If I see a girl, I may or may not find her interesting. I don’t care what other girls look like or what they do or do not do or what anyone else thinks. The relationship is between me and the girl. Between me and my elementalist in this case.

So, Mr. 1500 hours, if you find the class uninteresting , tell us why you have played and continue to play after so long. Let’s hear some truth here instead of what you brought into the forums in its place.

Well to me something interesting is something that promotes intelligent gameplay that gives you a lot of ways to engage an objective.
I keep playing the class because im used to it by now. But how much complexity of the ele is actually true and not a gimmick that artificially makes basic things difficult for you?
I dont know..
I find the class mechanic and the 16 base att cooldown actually limiting eles options in fight promoting predictable rotations and little reaction.You are forced to rotate out of your attunement cause your dps drops dramatically ,you are locked of your skills the moment you need them which leads to spammy gameplay and your method of attacking or sustaining yourself is pretty basic with straightforward attacks or straight healing.Theres a reason everybody runs with 30 in arcana ..
And how many of eles utilities are actually worthwile?They are all boring to me compared to what other classes have in terms of affecting something more than yourself..in pvp of course!In pve even the crappy glyph of storms in earth could be usefull etc
edit:its not that hard to solo campl.. Go climb the soloq ladder beyond 200 or even 100 instead for a challenge:P

^Thats the thing ..you dont know or care about what the other classes can do.You cant really have an opinion if you cant properly compare .
Not only that but you tell me to go solo camps in wvw and pve ?!? to learn to play the class?I have 1.5 k hours on the class and most of them have ben in pvp against people that know their classes in and out.There you HAVE to know what each class is capable of cause there arent noobs in low gear to farm ..
Dude..come on im pretty sure i know how to play ele and this post was not intended for the pve or wvw community at all.I dont give a kitten about those

As a matter of fact the only weapon i find interesting on ele is staff and that unfortunately only works in large encounters so only wvw..Thats why i excluded it from my post.Its actually a really good utlitity support weapon and not 1 dimensional at all..Too bad it doesnt work for where im interested in

Maybe cause healing rain is huge!!
Why not just give healing rain a small heal and make geyser last a bit longer?
Or at least make geysers combo field last longer.
While you are at it make earth 4 not suck and increase damage on anything and everything. :P
Btw if i remember correctly gust is the only skill that the game throws at your enemys CURRENT location which results in an miss 90% of the time.All other ranged attacks count your enemy’s speed into the euqation and aim the attacks at what will be his position if he keeps moving at same speed in the same direction!
Why??Are eles the cool kids to have a different mechanic?I think dust devil does this too!!

DiogoSilva.7089:

I would spend more time defending this class too, but I’ve come to realize that the people in this board won’t listen. Not that this is excluse to the elementalist’s boards. All professsion-specific boards are driven by community members who enjoy playing the victim card. Just look at most other boards, it’s the same as this one.

“Why does our profession suck while all other 7 are so awesome?” You won’t see anything else being posted here, or on the mesmer’s forums, or on the engineer’s forums, or on the ranger’s forums, or on the thieves’ forum, etc.

If you want to understand why the elementalist is a decent or a good profession, it’s better to discuss it in non-biased forums, like structured pvp forum, for example.

Ok then! If its just the community that likes to play the victim card explain me why ele is a good class and why is it worth it to ahve in your line up?
You assume that everything will get nerfed and ele will magically rise up again but i doubt anet will completely reverse necro buffs ,warrior buffs and destroy spirit rangers.
Then tell me what skill is bringing ele to the team??With countless useless utilities and elites?
Or give me a reason why ele bunker is good support or good at anything now that it cant push far point and ranger is better at close?
Or how berserkers burst ele perpform when the enemy has a warrior and a thief aswell on the lineup. People here are seriously acting over the top about ele but i honestly think theres not muchif anything going on for ele atm.Nothing to stick him out and say "That is why i want him on my team "While i can do that with the toher classes.Its just mediocre and if you go fresh air -zerkers -selfish utilities its a bit better against necro for the tradeoff of nonexistant support..Its not a good build,its just being desparate to fit into this meta

BlackBeard.2873:

Don’t you see, we do too much instant-damage with our arcanes to be given any buffs. I would expect to see arcanes nerfed (probably with a delay). Ride the Lightning will probably also be given a cooldown that is 4x longer. Maybe when all of the options are terrible, people will use focus or staff more.

There is a list in here with important utilities that affect the team in a substantial way and eles are nowhere to be found there.
Quite frankly arcanes can go to hell,can sink down to the deepest ocean and never be found again! They are nothing more than pure instantaneous boring unimaginative damage with some minor utility on a long comparatively cooldown..All that while mesmers bring portals,thieves bring shadow refugee,engis bring elixir r,guards syg,rangers spirits,necros epidemic and corrupt boon,warriors berserker stance,and so on..
Just remove them..Bring conjures in the surface or anything that my team can actually use and not more damage or selfish cantrips

I sat down and thought about each gw2 class so far and out of them all ele seems to be the most boring non standout class at the moment.
Let me explain. Yeah the concept of switching elements is cool and looks sexy at first.But after playing more classes you just realise that in the end is just another form of delivering what every class delivers at base line! at least currently.
Attunement swapping is something YOU do and its the way YOU percieve the game when playing on your ele. Your teammates dont care whether you switched from air to fire and did a combo to burst.All they care is that you did a cc and bursted which every class can do.Now count the amount of ccs,mobility and burst skills we have,add their cooldown on the equation and you see that 20 skills arent that impressive at all!
Now if you accept that the main mechanic is actually a gimmick that does little to alter the result of your actual actions,what are you left with?
(lets pretend that staff doesnt exist!it really doesnt exist in pvp at least )
The class cannot stealth or port like a thief. It cannot offer anywhere near the utility of shadowtrap or shadowrefugee and play the mind games a thief does.
It cannot offer party wide effects such as quickness,stability (earth trait is a joke with its range),burn or prot on hits etc
It doesnt have any important field apart from fire,while the most effective engi builds can have WATER ,SMOKE, light and poison at the same time!
It doesnt excell in mobility or cc and is very far away from having a condition build.
The only utilities that were ever non pure crap were selfish effects or pure damage boring skills.
Where are things like portal,spirits,elixir R , illusion of life, corrupt boon,stand your ground etc etc The list is huge. In comparison ele gets crappy signets,crappy glyphs with selfish effects aswell,semi decent selfish cantrips and pure damage arcanes with some minor utility added as blast finishers (wtf??)
Where are the game changing elites?
In the end its just a very straightforward class with mediocre versatily at best hindered by the inability to weaponswap and adjust its range.
Its also one of the most predictable classes in the game due to the nature of att swap cooldowns and base rotations to pull off your damage.An ele simple doesnt have options in the fight.He just goes to attunement does a few skills and leaves the attunement in the same pattern over and over again (exclude perhaps fresh air builds)
The skills although flashy are boring and basic and any kind of pure support it has always been based on the traits elem attunement,evasive arcana and the whole water line! and its now nerfed to not having any worthwile effect in pvp due to abudance of condi spam
There i got it out of me and feel lighter !! And wow it was longer than i though

LightningBlaze.4913:

The same phrase over and over again “having the lowest armor and heath in the game”.. It gets old to see players using this same excuse to justify why they are performing poorly with the profession. While some are complaining that the ele is awful at every aspect of the game, there are other players that are very good with this profession at every aspect of the game. What could be the difference?

Have you tried to do soloq after it was introduced? Go try it,climb up the ladder to higher than 200,meet good and known players ,feel useless and get yelled for even thinking of bringing this crappy excuse of a class there /end
The class needs serious help in tpvp and its not my opinion mate..Nobody plays that class anymore in pvp.You might do 20 games in a row and you ll probably wont meet any ele at all ..and im not exaggerating unfortunately