Guild Wars 2

That’s a big task, finding a player who both knows the class inside and out will also mentor an apprentice. There’s another way. Try doing the best you can with what you learn. As you play the game you will run into lots of elementalists. Send them a tell or whisper if you have a specific question. Take the best of what everyone has to offer and come up with your own style and method of playing. Never stop learning.

o m g OP. You may have uncovered a coorelation between players who don’t know the advantages of attunement swapping and players who think Elementalists need significant buffs, between those who would rather moan in the foums about an underpowered class and those who pick up the techniques in here and apply them to better effect.

Having said that, calling out a player in a dungeon on their play skill is rarely going to end well. Unless there is a specific thing they could be doing at that moment in time that will yield an immediate positive effect, and change the outcome, keeping quiet is usually best. imo If she was enjoying herself and the group was successful, fine, leave it alone. Point is, unless there are some issues completing and something specific would help…being critical of others is, well… don’t be surprised if things don’t go well.

You dont have to aim Fire Grab, just hit it while the mob is in range, after you stop moving. Your character will face the mob it will hit. The mechanics of the game are far better at aiming that skill than we are. Also far faster. For a player or mob who has run thru us, your character will do an instantaneous 180 degree turn far faster than we can mouse turn.

If you stop moving long enough to cast Fire Grab, your character will automatically turn to face the mob you have tartgeted and cast it. If you have movement keys pressed, that will override that mechanic. It’s the same way melee classes are able to use their skills while mobs are moving around. This won’t swivel your camera btw.

/agree with Paulus here. The Focus is such a great weapon because it allows the Elementalist to avoid damage, but, since other offhand weapons don’t nearly as much, a player has to avoid damage by dodging and moving.

imo ya have to know where the skills for chill, immobilize, cripple, and such are on the weapons. That allows us to move and put distance between us and the slowed mobs. There are very nice skills that will port or move us at good speed away from mobs. All our skills are ranged anyway and we can’t take melee damage in light armor.

Summoning an elemental can draw one heck of a lot of agro. The earth elemental does a very decent job of tanking.

Kiting is much more difficult than it was before, now that more skills are “working as inteneded” lol, not that is was super easy to begin with.

Controling the number of mobs with good pulls makes a big difference. Knowing their agro range etc. Some skills will pull less mobs than others.

Eating food will help for buffs to vitality and such.

Oh, and then there’s Battery’s way. Very effective and especially satisfying.

Nayaru.4716:

Fievre: I have a high level guardian and a high level ranger, I had been leveling my ele equally but I’ve ditched it hoping it is changed one day to be as fun to play as my other two. My guardian heals more efficiently, it also can do around the same amount of damage – Without having to run around in circles, it can just stand in the middle of 5 mobs whacking away at them while they whack away at it. Same 5 mobs on my ele, I’m strafing and dodging and ducking and weaving

Did you have somethign better to do All you have to do is move your fingers.

Nayaru.4716:

and haven’t done as much damage as my guardian would have in that time and hasn’t been able to heal up as well either and is probably going to get downed relatively soon because I haven’t got enough dodges to cover the HP that’s being taken away

There are several ways to buff up your dodge, endurance, regeneration

Nayaru.4716:

and likewise I haven’t got enough HP to take hits until my dodges power up, while I’m playing ring a ring of roses a pocket full of posies with several mobs that require me to pan my camera round fast just so I can hit it with autowile i strafe in circles, let alone trying to hit said melee mob with those ground target aoe’s that take forever to cast…

Were you trying to eat while you were playing or what lol Why not push buttons? Nothing better to do atm

Nayaru.4716:

My Ele hits harder than my ranger, but what does that matter when my ranger will kill anything faster because it’s got a pet to help DPS which often takes aggro aaaanyway, where as my ele has to start kiting as soon as it even aggros something just to give it a little bit extra time before it’s got to start using up dodges. That’s my personal comparison, lol.

The ele class is certainly not the best class to solo. Better pulls help alot to control the number of mobs. The earth elemental skill will draw the agro of virtually every mob and has very high endurance. The Focus in the off-hand makes Pve so very very easy. Not for the player who is farming a gazillion mobs in the shortest period of time.

Nayaru.4716:

Hey and maybe I just suck at playing ele, which means there has to be a whole mechanic somewhere in there that I have absolutely no idea about because I’ve played all the classes, none of which give me this annoyance, and believe me I have TRIED so hard, coming from a gw1 Ele main.. I have tried to enjoy this new ele to the point of dismissing when people said the stuff I am saying here, but I had to give up trying to defend it, eles just not happening right now. lol.

Sorry to hear that cause many others feel as you do too. Am not trying to be sarcastic. If you are still reading I hope there is sometihng constructive here you can use.

The only time I have found off-combat weapon swap to be a problem is when I am attacked in the middle of it lol. Otherwise it is a small inconvenience. Looking at how huge a difference would make however, being able to change weapons in a mere split second between engagements, is a huge buff to our combat. It takes a few seconds now because I have to find the kitten weapons in my inventory, they move lol. The screen is covered with the window. I can’t see where I am going or who is coming for me. Those things prevent us in many cases of even attempting to quickly break agro and re-enter the battle with a new weapon set. They are in effect forcing us to make do with the weapons we have when we don’t have the few seconds to change. I think they did that on purpose and it’s working as intended. In those situations where seconds matter, we have to make do with what we have equipped.

I am really begining to think some of these “bugs” as we call them are not going to be fixed lol. Several of those “bugs” would be big improvements in our characters.

DiogoSilva.7089:

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Harder/ more complex work should give better payment. Liking the work doesn’t means much here, because if you can enjoy an “easy” job as much as a “hard” job, then you’re much better off with the easy job. Most of the people who are willing to work harder, do so because it gives them a more confortable position in life.

It will never happen. If we got the payoff you describe the class would become OP for a significant number of players. And, no, one isn’t better off with the “easy job” if they like the “hard” one better. Some people like tasks that have less of a challenge but for others, those tasks will just drive them crazy.

lol. Wrong forum, but for the sake of conversation, Conditions can be removed and attacks can be avoided. Neither one is a replacement for the other.

I did a lot of Pve leveling with Scepter/Focus. The focus gives a ton of protection against melee and ranged attacks, has great conditions and crowd control, and a real nice combo field-finisher. With dagger in the off-hand, that is more of a glass cannon approach. You get some real nice dps there but will have to do more dancing to avoid the mobs dps. Dancing can get kind of old after while and the Focus gives you alot of defense and durability.

Vaerah.4907:

Baladir.2736:

Regardless there are alot of people who buy into your argument that because we have a higher learning curve, that this translates into final level of potential of the class. Those are two different races. Time off the line in the quarter mile does not translate into the final mph at the finish line. Both can arrive at the same time and the race is then over.

Yes but then one may legitimately ask: “what’s the point”?
I mean, some people might love to just make their life nasty for the pure sake of it, but most (think about it: any CEO) want to pour in a lot of effort in order to see nice results.
If the result is identical, why work overnight and during week end and be CEO if you earned the identical wage of a burger flipper?

Cause you like the work.

@DiogoSilva No, I wouldn’t say Pve is hard. Some have a harder time of it until they do learn to attunement swap and put together synergies but that’s not hard to pick up. sPvP is a better barometer of class equality and that is where attunement swapping, I believe, becomes critical for success.

I don’t particularly care that I have to push more buttons for equality, I just care that equality exists. Balance and equality are not the same as 1v1 parity with every class.
The game has no formal 1v1 because there is no class that is on equal parity with every other class, imo. But, having said that, no one wants to be steamrolled lol when they are in a 1v1. And, we don’t have to be.

Elementalists Weak? No, I wouldn’t say that at all. Harder or easier to learn has nothing to do with strength. The ability of an individual to play one class better than another has nothing to do with weakness. The assumption a player can "rofl-stomp…without weapon swapping’ with a particular class is no indication of the potential of that class in the hands of a master.

Regardless there are alot of people who buy into your argument that because we have a higher learning curve, that this translates into final level of potential of the class. Those are two different races. Time off the line in the quarter mile does not translate into the final mph at the finish line. Both can arrive at the same time and the race is then over.

so e2=6 bleeds. f2 + arcane wave is field and finisher for might x3. Pyromancers Posture is might (x1?) with each fire spell. So if he changed his order like you say and went f2,e2,e4,arcane wave, if one field and two finishers counts twice that would be 6 might (7 might with PP) and 6 bleed. He’s saying 6 might and 8 bleed. With f2 first , there could be an e1 auto attack in there which it is another finisher for another x3 might if it works that way. Only have 6 seconds though and that’s 9 might.

From the Wiki. Might is 0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack.
So, 1 stack at level 80 = 35, 35×6 stacks = 210. 210 bonus on a condition with 6 seconds, plus condition duration with traits in fire, is not bad. But, yeah, if he is using e2,e4,f2,aracane wave, we are missing something. Sounds like testing is in order. Some mob is going to have a headache tonight hehe.

Regardless, I have been undervaluing might. I never thought of standing in my Lava Font either lol, or other ways to use that skill which now come to mind. And, I’d say it’s time to be alot more liberal in the use of fields, which means changes in what I’ve been doing. Point is, I have no doubt that I have missed many nuances. This one was, as he said, one freebe.

*Edit- ah, Elemental Attunement gives might. That’s one more.

Ty Rhyse. I got what I came for. You confirmed I have missed alot of potential in many areas. Nice. Very nice combo btw.

I think some people miss the point of why the Ele is so attractive to many players. Many of us simply don’t want to auto attack and mash the same skills.

For me I started by taking an 8 1/2 × 11 piece of paper for each weapon set and putting on there every skill and every skills effects, durations, etc. All our traits change those numbers in signficant ways. I started drawing lines connecting different skills. How much damage and what effects does a sequence put out in a certain amount of time vs. how do I survive for that amount of time vs. who am I facing vs what skills do I have left now? I’m only scratching the surface here. It may seem like too much trouble, but I don’t see how I can be effective in light armor without being very effective at reducing incoming damage via skills and strats, being aware of cooldowns, knowing what alternate skills are available, and having an idea of what I might need to be doing next.

In Pve it can be pretty much all about changing attunements and “fire everything” lol. It’s real easy in Pve to get lazy, kick back in the chair, and be a button masher, besides it’s too expensive to change traits and try out new things for size. Few are the times I am jerked upright in that chair with the realization I might die unless I get may act together and bear down right now lol.

I am by no means a sPvP addict, but one thing is for sure, it will take learning new capabilites of the class that wasn’t needed for Pve. There are no magic buttons that are going to fix our class for Pvp. Against that ranger that I lost to who had a sliver of health left, or the warrior who was downed but not dead and rez’d before I did, I didn’t lose because his class was better than mine or because I needed more stats, I lost because I missed something. It’s likely not a small miss either. I used to think staffs were just stupid for anthing but sieges and some afk boss fights lol. I can’t believe I said that out loud. For me, I have much to re-learn about what I thought I knew already in many areas.

For starters, how did Rhyse get 6 stacks of might and 8 stacks of bleed? I’m missing something…

Re #1. Inside and out. ie. Phoenix gives 100% endurance regeneration which roughly equals twice as many dodges. I don’t think there is a better go-to defensive move than dodge. The devil is in the details of all these skills. Little things matter, alot.

yes, minor skill tweaks only, Rhyse. Seems to be some agreement happening

I’ve always been keen on finding the hidden potential of a class. In Wow, BC, the sexy fire mage build was king. I used a water elemental and was always in the top 2 or 3 in damage output in a 24 man raid, behind the warlock if I remember correctly, while always at the bottom in terms of agro, but that was a long time ago. All the while, the fire mages died early on or had to lay off dps because of the extreme agro they generated.

I’m looking for that potential in this class ankittenhinking it is there somewhere

Extremely good point re balance vs. skill changes Atrixer. I think many are getting caught up in altering skills as a way to balance the class and instead the fixes might be more easily made by the devs to our stats. The changes to Lightning Whip and the like are less for “balance”, rather they are for making the skills “work as intended.”

I don’t think it would be hard at all. Essentially they would only have to match the pathing of Teleport. Basically if we can see it we can go there, with some variations. That would give us two very similar skills, except that Teleport takes up a very valuable skill slot.

Have they agreed this is a bug?

I get the distinct impression that this is so. Otherwise, we would have seen some significant changes already.

I personally think there is no reason we can not cast a spell while looking over our shoulders lol. I take the removal of that ability as a small nerf to neutralize kiting, as if we were not powerful enough. The AI of the mobs too appears to have improved and they can get right on our tails whereas before I could swear I could circle them. They don’t yet attempt to cut across lol, so I should count my blessings.

Anyway, Anet seems to have us right where they want us which leads me to believe that somewhere up there is a tester who is doing just fine with this class. Somewhere in this game must be players who are doing just fine too. There certainly seem to be alot we can do as players to improve via builds and tactics and I see alot of those approaches here in the forums. Yet, there seem to be an awful lot of players who are still seriously having problems with the class and have requested many improvements.

So, my question is really this. Would implementing even some of the changes that have been requested move the Elementalist class into the OP catagory? In other words, are there a bunch of you, lol, out there who have been able to take what we have and do just fine? Hey, for me, I’ll settle for one of you out there who has mastered this class to stick your head in this thread and give me the thumbs up. I’ll take that and run with it until I too reach that plateau. Or repeatedly rez trying heh.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to have fun because I do enjoy ranged casting and this class has alot going for it. Would be nice though to know just how far I can take the class I play. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Lol. It’s pretty frustrating running D/D and watching an ele drop aoe from up on top and not being able to do a thing about it atm.

@Taku-ty for the tip, I’ll def take a look at that.

@Xhaiden-effort is a better word.

I’ve been running survivability type setups in Pve just because I get myself into the middle of lots of adds and fast respawns pretty regularly. I haven’t been trying those in sPvP for no particular reason other than I’ve been orienting for more DPS. And yeah, it appears I’ve moved too far in that direction. That’s been effective against some players but it’s not effective alot of the time.

If only I could go scepter/dagger/focus. Now, that wouldn’t be OP would it? /laugh

1)Curious why you did not hit Arcane Wave before he had crossed the Ring of Fire for the Combo Finisher.

It’s a totally different way of playing than PvE. Many rotations, skills, or trait setups that can work well enough in PvE don’t work at all in sPvP. Nor does anything in PvE prepare a player for the fast pace and changing circumstances in sPvP.

I am glad I gave you a chuckle. The post was intended to do that although not quite in the way you got a kick out of it lol. But, yes, sPvP raises the bar. Good enough in PvE does not translate to the same in sPvP.

High skill cap? idk about that. You are putting words in my mouth. But, it definately will take some time to try out different builds, tactics, and skills to find what fits. And learning the other classes. Part of the fun for me, after I get past the dying part, repeatedly as it turns out, is in the discovery. Eventual success is guaranteed of course, if, as you say, there is a low skill cap.

I am glad this is not PermaDeath! I have never seen so many hit points disappear so quickly on my character before. This definately raises the bar on the skill level required to play this class. Once ya get over the dying part the rest can be kind of fun to work on. The last part seems particularly important.

Title pretty much says it. The wiki is not clear whether it is the player or the character who makes the weapon who has to have 400 in the two required crafting professions.

I for one appreciate all the good tips on how to fight messmers. I haven’t been in sPvP since beta and am going to give it a whirl. The one time I was 1v1 in beta against a messmer, I found the clones to be very annoying lol. Not knowing, I tried tab targeting each of the images in succession and I have to laugh now looking back on that. I think he finally ran away but I don’t remember. Anyway, the clones sure were annoying at the time. Now that I understand the mechanic a bit more it seems a decent temporary defense for a light armor wearer and not OP at all.

This is a disheartening conversation to walk into lol, anticipating my first travels into sPvP after beta. If I read this right, it sounds like playing to win deprives the other side of both glory and the victory. If enough play to win, maybe we will get lucky and the materialistic wanna bes will all rage quit.

I know there are people who value trophies and show and tell over all else. Gear in this case. I just don’t get it anyway.

imo this will not work for two simple reasons. One, the cooldowns would have to be lowered significantly on the skills so that there would be anything to cast when switching back and forth. That would make the players who use 4 attunements OP. Players would be able to spam the most powerfuld skills in each of the attunements non-stop lol. Or, the skills would need to be changed or the auto-attack skills would need to be more powerful and both are just crazy.

The OP says, "Swapping attunements according to situation and utilizing all skills are very difficult and can be achieved only by the best. " This is not true. It’s a very simple matter to swap attunements. It’s no more difficult than using a skill. As was said earlier, simply know what the skills are and where they are. Like magic all will fall into place.

I’m a noob and use hot keys on a gaming device rather than the F1-F4 keys. That makes a huge difference for me.

@Aerian When you go into water, you slot the skills you want for water and they can be different than the ones you slot on land. When you leave and reenter the water they will automatically switch.

While others saw you as running, I seemed to see you were giving time for your dots to do their work. I thought that was quite wise. You seemed to be using line of sight to prevent damage and allow your skills to recharge, all the while coming back when players came to you or you circled around, using knowledge of the map, to lay on more dots and direct damage. I think probably many times the other player was surprised to see you again lol.

@Rack There’s no reason to avoid WvW until level 80. There are always players out there running in groups together. You will be fine.

If you are dying too often in dungeons you either have too little vitality and toughness or you are misreading the mobs and under-reacting to their attacks. Agro too is the worst enemy of a light armor wearer.

High vitality and toughness take care of many ills but the really best crafted and karma gear and jewelry is really really expensive lol. In the meantime you could load up with some defensive traits, weapons skills, and optional skills to provide more defense.

Try to identify where the damage is coming from. It’s pretty easy to avoid melee damage, for example, or at least to see it coming. The ranged agro on the other hand can be a real bear. A Focus in the off hand can be a big help there.

Dodge is your best friend.

The descripton, in wiki anyway, is “Arcane and signet skills cause vulnerability when activated.” Our attunement or use of weapon skills has nothing to do with activating this effect.

Water just happens to be our attunement that can inflict vulnerability with our weapons. hence the name I guess. I’ve never used it. Have you tested it? Should be pretty easy to do!

I would like to be able to name the elementalist pets we summon. There does not seem to be a stampede in the forums on this, lol, but that doesn’t mean many of use wouldn’t have alot of fun with being able to do this. I for one would get a big kick out of seeing the names people come up with. Besides, these aren’t nameless beings who we are summoning from another plane of existence. They are loyal and trusted warriors who come to our aid and can turn the tide of battle. A little dramatic, yes.

It’s a Pve skill plain and simple. Fortunately mobs are not so bright.

Encrypt.8196:

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By the way I play D/D, S/D and Staff support all in tournies depending on what I feel like rolling and do equally well on all 3 specs, it just depends on what your team needs and how it fits your play style.
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I’ll cop to not much experience in pvp, but what I am exploring to compensate for my light amor is the Focus. Obsidian Flesh for invulnerability. Magnetic Wave cures 3 conditions and reflects projectiles. Swirling winds destroys projectiles. Comet with a daze. Freezing gust for a chill. With a dagger in our main hand we get Magnetic Grasp for Immobilization. Shocking Aura for a stun. Lightning Touch for weakness. Frozen Burst for a chill. There are of course several utility skills that give us some protection too as well as traits. In Pve Dagger Focus works pretty well but I lack skills with any real range. In Pvp it would seem this could be viable. I certainly want skills that I can cast on the run and do not want any inductions. This weapon combo fits the bill, if I can put it all together. Even Take Root gives me 4 seconds of invlunerability.

lol, I haven’t been in a dungeon yet where someone said, “gee we 4 manned that because we had an ele.”

PUGs are always going to be difficult with difficult content, ie. dungeons, and I wish I thought there was a way around that. Classeses which can be played badly or, more importantly, have the perception in the player base to be played badly seem to have that problem in any game, getting into pugs. We are our own worse enemy there and generate alot of our own bad press. About all we can do is play our class well so it stands out. The game is new. Players who are not successful will drop out and the quality of play by the class as a whole will increase.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Jadda.1753:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

. You know it isn’t balanced when you lose to a similarly skilled player every time you encounter them. And it is a slap in the face when they do it with 3 buttons and no weapon switching and I’m having to use all 25 skills.

Just look at that number…. I use 25 skills when I have to fight one player…. they use 3 (or 8 if they want to be flashy with their utility/elites/heals).

This I belive is the dumbest arguement that elementalists need buff.
What do you think will happen if they buff so you only need to use 5 skills? You will DESTROY if you use the remaining 15. Elemtalist is hard to play and takes effort. If you dont like effort then roll a guardian.

I didn’t say that I wanted to win with 5 skills. I want to be able to do as well as everyone else when I use all of my APPLICABLE skills. As it is right now if we use all of our skills and are skilled players then we are almost always beat by ANY other class with less or equal skill as our own. I don’t understand how people don’t understand that. I don’t want an easy class, because I like the difficulty of this class (which I have posted uncountable times now). But if I am going to work as hard as I do then why am I still weaker than other characters?

And you are trying to say that my argument is poor when you put words in my mouth and decided that yours was better. I like having 25 skills. But I should NOT have to use every single one of them to still be weaker than any other class with their smaller button rotations.

Have you ever heard of “high risk, high reward”? That is what the ele is supposed to be. We risk a lot (work very hard) and so we shouldn’t still be weaker than the other classes who all have (for the most part) more hp, defense, and attack and support abilities.

These kinds of posts are what I hate to see. Nobody who is in favor of keeping ele as it is (or who just like to argue my points with invalid arguments) wants to give logical reasons. They think (not necessarily anyone in this topic, as I don’t know yet) that just because pros can play the elementalist well against other characters with less skill that everyone should either be a pro or just quit ele. This class isn’t accessible and the return on the effort isn’t there either. But whatever. If you don’t like how the majority of us feel who are giving good reasons, then go play another class because I have a FEELING that Anet will agree with us on most of these points to some extent and help out their very broken class (both the bugs that plague quite a few of our skills, and our overall lack of playability).

So can you make an argument that defends what you want or will you just put words in my mouth again and call me stupid?

We ARE weaker because we have light armor. Nothing we do can change that. Certainly not toughness or vitality. Yes we have to have more skill than other players to be equal because the class takes more skill to play. Yes we have to play all or most of our skills to be equal because that is what Anet put them there for. It wasn’t by accident. We have no useless skills. Yes we have to change attunements as quickly as we can because that is what we have to do to get to the skills that will keep us alive.