Guild Wars 2

Are you guys for real? Anet is focusing on exactly what they said they would: fixing bugs and exploits. There are a lot more of them to fix, so really I wouldn’t expect any systematic attempts at class balancing any time soon.

Give the Chicken Little routine a rest. The sky is not falling.

This times 1000. Calm the kitten down people, seriously.

Did you honestly expect to get major class changes, new downed state skills, massive buffs, and a weapon swap 1 freaking month into the game?!? Seriously? For real?

The Elementalist as currently constructed is a pretty decent class with bugs affecting our effectiveness more than anything. Quit your whining, the class is not nearly as broken as many of these posts would suggest! I’ll admit, I wish they had fixed a few more Ele bugs (e.g., make windborne dagger actually work, cantrips mastery on mistform, etc.) but the game is just over one month old, they have more pressing issues (as evidenced by the number of fixes to Necro).

Considering wind borne dagger is currently bugged (as far as i know) and doesn’t provide any speed boost whatsoever, the answer is no.

Also, with speed buffs, generally only the largest one applies. So if wd worked, you would still only run 15% faster for 40 seconds until one with air builds to 20%.

Also if you are in D/D and u need distance disengage, we have a lot of cap closers which can be used to escape combat. There is nothing wrong with picking your fights, that is part of being a good player.

^this.
Playing D/D and need distance? Unselect target, turn 180, ride the lightning. Viola, you’re at 1200 range…

imagine if Anet eventually fixed Arcana XII so that churning earth works instead of tickling your opponent.

In all honesty, I think that the “churning earth” unleashed by evasive arcana is working as arenanet intended. I see it listed in every “bug” thread for Ele’s, but I don’t think it’s bugged at all.
If one could get a non-channeled, instant cast, full-power CE every 10 seconds simply by dodge rolling it would ALSO be absurdly overpowered (although not as much as weapon swapping). They HAD to nerf the direct damage, and especially the bleed damage component else the skill would be WAY overpowered (the other option would be to give it a huge internal cooldown, say 40 seconds since the real CE skill has a 30 second cooldown AND a channel time. The internal cd would have to be greater than the real skill cd to avoid making it overpowered. I much prefer it the way it is.)

No one would ever even bother to cast the real thing, why sit through the 4 second channel time when you could just roll every 10 seconds to melt faces?

Ukaei.8694:

I agree with OP.

The only thing stopping me from playing the Elementalist is that they lack a weapon swap like the rest of the classes.

Again, it would be absurdly overpowered. Weapon swapping is not needed on an Ele unless they rework and nerf all the skills of the entire class, which frankly, is not going to happen.

D/D is the way I wish to play.. I am however locked as a MELE class when I am a spell caster!

Big flaws.

D/D has so many gap closers that one should have no trouble getting into, and staying in melee range if one so desires. If RTL is ever fixed, and magnetic grasp possibly buffed to have a faster travel time (I don’t think this would be unreasonable) you could stay in your targets back pocket all day if you wished…

You can get even more might stacks then that if you have 10 pts in arcane for elemental attunement (which, let’s be honest, every Ele should have). Start in air, use RTL—> updraft, then switch to fire (getting the might stacks from attunement swapping) and unleash your combo for 15 more stacks.
In addition, updraft will knock your opponent down, so Dragon’s tooth will hit even against human opponents (if you’re quick enough).

Mayhem.5324:

Simple fix imo. Change the overal mechanic. Instead of “riding” along the ground, “teleport to the target” or “leap to the target”

Quite honestly, I don’t even know how this is still an issue after WoW took how many years to fix Blink?

But it still has to check pathing, else it could be used to “teleport” to the other side of walls and/or across ravines, etc. This is the same reason blink failed for so many years. During the pathing check it hangs up on a rat, and you get stuck (or in blinks case, you go backwards). Blink was worse, you couldn’t even blink across different textures, it was ridiculous at times

Another tip I have found when using the RTL and Updraft combo, do not hit the updraft until after RTL is completed. There are too many times where RTL will lag out for 2 seconds after you get to your target and then Updraft is wasted on nothing. Always make sure your RTL is completed and you can move your character again before using Updraft.

along those lines, why even mindlessly bash updraft after RTL completes in the first place? Sometimes you take the opponent by surprise and they stand their like an idiot allowing you to get a lightning whip in before updraft (extra damage in the “combo”). Other times they auto-attack and stun themselves on your shield. Lightning touch them and/or hit ’em with the whip! When they return and finally wind up their big ticket item, THEN you updraft and move into the fire combo

On top of that, it’s a rediculous combo finisher.. What combo are you gonna finish with a 4 second cast-time anyway?
(or am I using the spell wrong?)

I believe the blast finisher occurs when you start the channeling, not at the end (not 100% sure about this). This could be tested easily in the mists (e.g., start in fire, ring of fire (#4), switch to earth, start channeling and observe when the might stacks get applied).

Also, when interrupted it goes on full cooldown (30s) because the skill applies a cripple effect (up to 4s) DURING the channel. If it didn’t go on full cooldown, this could be abused (e.g., start channel, apply cripple, cancel channel, wait 4s cooldown for an interupted skill, wash/rinse/repeat). It kinda sucks I know. Try using armor of earth, arcane shield, and/or lightning flash during the channel (Armor of earth is great as it provides stability and prevents interrupting) and you’ll get it off more consistently.

I would suggest instead of Churning Earth having a faster wind-up time that you could determine an activation time (a la “press and hold” or alternatively “press to activate, press to release”) and deal more cumulative damage the longer you wind it up, the way skills in some other professions or bundles work.

From what I’ve heard, I believe this is how the skill worked in early Beta. I didn’t play the BWE’s however, so I don’t know for sure. Maybe someone will come along here and clarify

edited to add:

Churning earth can be started in a ring of fire and even if the ring ends .1 seconds later, you will still get the might when churning earth goes off.

Ah, it might work like this.

Yes, RTL can be frustrating at times. I can imagine, however, that this is a very difficult bug to fix from a coding perspective (i.e., fixing pathing to a randomly moving human target in PvP is easier said than done).

In the meantime, I’ve found two things that help RTL be more effective.

First, if I can, I jump in the air prior to using the skill. This helps prevent it from hanging up on small rocks, rats, and other invisible wall objects

Second, don’t expect to use it effectively from maximum range all the time. Using it from moderate to close range makes it’s fail rate go down tremendously

The elementalist should be given the option of weapon swapping like the other classes to increase it’s effectiveness at diff ranges and diff situations.

to do this would make the class horribly, absurdly overpowered.

Staff has no minimum range, so being in melee range with a staff (although dangerous) does not prevent you from doing damage and controlling the fight. Dagger/Dagger has the shortest range of all the weapon sets and pretty much limits you to melee range. This might seem limiting at first, until you realize that this weapon set comes with a plethora of gap closers, crowd control, and aoe type skills (especially when paired with smart utility skills). D/D has more ways to bring the fight to the enemy than any other weapon/class combo in the game for the most part.

No, to in-combat weapon swapping, it would break the class and make us gods. You could probably kill any other class without being hit more than once or twice, tops…

Weapon swapping would increase the fun and effectiveness of the elementalist, with negligible (if any) consequences to balancing.

If you know, for example, the staff and D/D skills sets intimately, there is literally no reason why anyone could believe this and state it with a straight face. People need to stop asking for weapon swap and simply ask Anet to concentrate on fixing the many bugs that currently plague the class. That alone would go ridiculously far in “balancing” and “fixing” the class.

Gaianus.5324:

Ah, okay then. Thank you for the heads up. In most games like this, I’ve leaned toward the melee, so, a mage-like class is admittedly virgin territory for me. I’ll keep what you said in mind, then.

In many other games, the “mage class” will choose a single element and stick with it (for example, in Wow you’re either a fire mage or frost mage, rarely both). This has been the traditional archetype for the mage class.

In this game however, that is far far far, from the case. As was already stated, you will need to learn all 4 attunements and switch between them frequently in order to be fully effective. Generally, fire is your aoe/damage element, air is a control (e.g., blinds, knockdowns, kiting) and damage, earth is toughness/defense and bleeding, and water is chill control and healing. While this isn’t strictly true in every case (i.e., you’ll find a bit of utility and damage in every attunement), if you think of the class like this and switch attunements as necessary to accomplish what is needed in the fight, you’ll be very effective and become a skilled GW2 gamer. In addition, learn to dodge early and often, it’ll literally save your life

Best of luck with the elementalist class, I personally love it and I hope you do too. It may be foreign at first, but stick with it, and you’ll find it’s a fulfilling class. Enjoy!!

known bug, see here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/NEW-Elementalist-bugs-and-glitches-thread

Just another day in the life of an elementalist…

seconded. It would be nice to get this fixed.

It is shockwave with the animation of churning earth.

Its bugged, or the tooltip info is wrong.

It still hits AOE however, correct?

I’ll admit I haven’t tested it fully in a controlled environment, i’ll have to play around later with it, but my impression is that it did.

If it does hit AOE, then I don’t see a problem, it’s just a mini-CE and I wouldn’t consider it a bug. They should just change the tooltip to say a “smaller version of CE”. Being able to chain two full power Churning earths back-to-back would be tremendously overpowered (and/or getting one without the channel time every 10 seconds provided you have enough endurance). That thing hits like a truck and puts up 8 bleed stacks, there’s a reason it carries such a long cooldown on it’s own.

Best $60 I’ve Spent in Over Ten Years

Jeez friend, you don’t get out much!

to be fair, in the thread he states “best $60 on a game” and I happen to agree with him.
But yah, based on the title alone it would seem our friend needs some sunshine

Also, I was disappointed like you Arc when I found out that Evasive Arcana didn’t use the full power CE when you roll. I figure Anet thought it would be overpowered to be able to chain two full power CE’s back-to-back via dodge-rolling, and I somewhat agree with them.

I still use it in the PvP build I’m playing around with, however, cause I also run 3 cantrips (mist, lightning flash, and cleansing fire) with 30 pts in water (with cantrips give regen/vigor, regen give condition clear, and cantrips 20% cooldown reduction, which is VERY disappointing cause the CD reduction doesn’t work with mist form). I also use the sigil of superior energy (50% endurance regen on attunement swap) on one of my daggers.

That means that between the endurance regen on attunement swap, and vigor on cantrips, I have a ridiculous amount of endurance at nearly all times and therefore have a seemingly endless supply of dodge-rolls. Because my damage isn’t that great, I rely on the extra damage and blast finishers from Evasive Arcana to pump out a couple extra bleeds/burns and even condition clear while in water. I don’t pump out a ton of damage, but I’m also very hard to catch/kill (I put 10 pts in Earth for toughness and Earth Shield at 50% health, and my master arcane trait is arcane shield at 25% health).

With near constant regen, 3 cantrips, lots of dodge rolls, and shields at 50 and 25% health, you’re tough to down, but you can’t really burst people either

No.

It casts Shockwave (you can even see it in the combat log – go test it on a dummy) which hits for about the damage that Shockwave hits for, and applies one stack of bleed (like Shockwave), but no immobilize. It doesn’t cast churning earth. The rockburst graphic is that of Churning Earth, but the spell that fires is not anything close.

Fine, the combat log says “Shockwave.” But it’s AOE (like CE, not shockwave), does both direct damage and bleeding (both skills do this), and does not immobilize (like CE, not shockwave). I think the evasive arcana bleed duration IS 20s however, which is shockwaves duration (while CE is 8 seconds).

Effectively, it behaves like a small churning earth. Additionally, it looks exactly like a small churning earth.

Stating that it casts Earthquake was wrong, but no less wrong than claiming it casts Churning Earth, when it very clearly doesn’t, and takes 2 minutes to verify.

Again, my bad for not studying the combat log, but it behaves and looks exactly like Churning earth with fewer bleed stacks (and no cripple, due to no channeling effect as I explained). The tooltip for Evasive Arcana says “casts churning earth on dodgeroll” which it effectively does. In this sense, the tooltip is not wrong. If anything, the combat log is bugged, it responds far more like churning earth than shockwave (and it definitely responds more like CE than earthquake, which was the post I originally was correcting).

Outside of that, is there anything else I stated incorrectly in my post other than referring to the skill by something other than what the combat log references it as?

Thanks for the clarification CC Eva. I’ll gladly take the free 1c, and I’ll even more gladly continue to report these scumbags.

Although I feel a little bad when I have to report someone with a regular sounding name and not “wdgsafs” cause I figure it’s someone’s hacked account.

Oh well, reporting it in any event helps you guys identify the hacked account, so it’s a win-win, I just feel bad for the guy/gal who got their account hacked…

Evasive Arcana bugged with earth attunement dodge roll.

Tooltip says it should cast churning earth but instead it casts an earthwuake with no knockdown for 300~ damage.

no, it casts a weaker version of churning earth. It does some damage, and puts up a single bleed stack (whereas the real CE skill puts up 8 stacks). The animation looks identical to CE except the spikes from the ground are slightly smaller, so I’m not quite sure how you could confuse it with earthquake (the two skill animations look nothing alike).

Personally I think they could buff the roll in earth to at least put up 2 or 3 stacks, but such is life…

It does apply one stack of bleeding (and some cripple? Can’t remember).

regular CE puts up multiple stacks of 1s cripple while it’s channeling. The rocks that pull inwards towards you while you channel do this. The closer the target is to you while you channel, the more cripple stacks they get (cripple stacks in duration). I think the max is 4seconds if the target is right on top of you when you start the channel, but don’t quote me on that

Also, the 4s of cripple isn’t that great all-in-all cause you easily waste 2-3 seconds of it while channeling the kitten skill. It’s only good if they’re trying to escape away from you (as it slows their escape), but often they’ll dodge roll out and then the cripple doesn’t matter. Lastly, I do not know off hand if the cripple effect occurs with the evasive arcana churning earth, although I imagine it does not as it does not have the channeling step.

Racial skills are never affected by traits. For all the classes.

did not know this. Assuming it’s true, thanks for the heads up. I have never really used my Sylvari racials, cause the regular class skills are better.

Then why would anyone want to use them?

uniqueness, role-playing, fun, etc. Not everyone is a min-maxer so they might be tempted to give them a try. Also, the racials are disabled in sPvP, so you CAN’T use them there.

There’s a lot of really bad ele’s out there making the rest of us look bad.

I agree with this, but…

I’ve seen so many that run into dungeons using a staff (never use a staff in dungeons) that don’t even have another weapon to switch to.

lolwut?
0.0

This is a temporary suggestions until the Elementalist is fixed.

outside of a couple of bugs (such as RTL, etc.) that MANY classes have, what really, is “broken” about the elementalist? They may not be the most powerful of the classes, but they’re far from broken.

It is the only game I’ve ever played where a mage was poor, normally they are they are the bread winners for the rest of your characters.

new game, new rules. Just because “mages” in some other games ruled the roost (and I question the veracity of this statement), doesn’t mean they necessarily have to here. Also, part of the reason you may be having difficulty playing the Ele is because you’re thinking of them as a “mage,” an all-powerful glass cannon nuker, rather than adapting to what they really are.

Also, due to lack of money I’m unable to train tier 3 with my trait points, something that really sucks.

wow. I had the book banked 15 levels before I could use it (and with a couple gold in my pocket to boot). If you find yourself this broke, you’re doing something wrong.
Don’t buy useless crap on the TP, this includes updating your gear continuously (you should be finding good stuff along the way, also try the karma vendors in WvW, they sell some good stuff). Mine every node, chop every tree, pick every herb. Even if you won’t use them, they sell on the TP. Lastly, don’t salvage every blue/green item you find, often it’s better to simply vendor it for the cash. Rares will sell on the TP (sometimes), but salvaging blue/green items typically results in just getting wood/ore which you could have chopped/mined for free. You’re throwing away lots of extra cash.

I wanted to make a Longbow using Human Ranger named “David Bowie” and sport a spider pet named “From Mars,” but alas, someone already had the name “David Bowie.”

I have an Asura engineer named “Papa Hotel Delta” (PHD in Nato speak, as I have one), and a female human thief named “Sneaky Spice.”

Also, “Rage Quit Inc” made me lol irl.

1. Unsteady Ground is useless in PvP…. Much more versatile usages than small cripple everyone just roll through.

somewhat agree, although there is something to be said for making another class waste a dodge roll just to avoid your cripple.

2. Chain Lightning…it has not-nice tendence to chain onto neutral mobs (like nearby stags or fireflies)

OMG yes. This is ridiculously annoying. It should not, under any circumstances, jump to a neutral mob. It’s so bad, I almost consider this a “bug.”

3. Gust is often useless as it can push just 1 enemy.

Somewhat agree. If staff is “king of the aoe”, then gust should pushback similar to updraft (where the aoe isn’t that large, but slightly effective).
Gust travels along the ground in a line, this could be fixed by simply making it travel in a narrow cone (expanding outwards slightly as it covers ground).

As I mentioned in another thread, the ability to weapon swap while in combat would be horribly, horribly overpowered.

An out-of-combat swap I’m totally on board with (although it should have a sizeable cooldown, say 90s or so). Swapping while in combat would simply provide WAY to much CC, too much burst, too much healing/support, etc. Basically it’d be overkill. The class would practically be unkillable.

Going into a fight at melee range with a staff is idiotic. That’s why they want weapon swapping, so that they could stand a chance when at melee range.

I wholeheartedly agree, so do your best to ensure that they don’t get into melee range when you’re running a staff. Hopefully your teammates can help you with this, especially if a stealthed thief pops up next to you (throw them some heals and maybe they’ll help you peel the thief).

Bottomline is that the ability to swap weapons in combat w/ the Ele would make them horribly overpowered. Start the fight at range, throw some fireballs and burns out. Switch to air and gust/static field/windborne speed to keep them at range. If they ever do get close, quickly switch to D/D for RTL/updraft/burning speed/ring/arcane blast/fire grab combo. Switch to earth, earthquake, tack on some bleeds. Back to staff for shockwave, switch to water, drop some water fields (then blast combo to heal yourself to full). Attune to fire, burning retreat then resume kiting at range. That doesn’t sound ridiculously overpowered? A weapon swapping Ele between Staff and D/D would be practically unkillable.

The CC in Staff is quite weak and only last a second.

The CC is staff is quite strong in my opinion, with the best “CC skill” simply being 1200 range. After that you have a free dodge-roll in fire, an AOE chill in water, a knockdown and AOE stun in Air, and a cripple and immobilize in Earth. Add an utility skill or two (signet of earth, active, for example) and you have plenty. The only addition I would argue for would be a projectile shield/deflect, but at 1200 range, many projectiles can be easily dodged by strafing and/or using one of your 3 dodge rolls.

Edited to add: And I actually forgot magnetic shield w/ staff, so it DOES have a deflect ranged shield.

Weapon swap. I’d like to go from MELE D/D to Range STAFF like all other classes can do.

No, just no. Weapon swap would make the Ele horribly overpowered (unless we’re talking about an out-of-combat swap button, which I’m on board with).

A preferable “fix” would be to add a few longer range actions to the D/D skillset (such that it would still be preferrable to be in melee range, but not near worthless outside of 600 range), but that would mean giving up some of the currently useful skills in the D/D ability set, so I wouldn’t be excited about that “fix.” I currently use all 20 skills in the D/D set, so I wouldn’t want any to go away.

Staff not having “melee range” skills is not an issue as there is no minimum range on the skills, it’s a non-issue.

Personally, I don’t think this is as big of an issue as some people make it out to be. That’s my 2 copper…

Skip the Geomancy sigil and put in one of superior energy. 50% endurance regen on weapon swap (e.g., attunement swap)?!? That’s literally a free dodge, thank you very much!

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood!

/thread

its not a threat. as a customer i can buy their product(gems) or another product. as they created the need for the produnt itself, im feeling free to choose whatever is cheaper.

There is no need to buy gold in this game, please don’t ruin this game by supporting those scumbags.
Also, if you’re finding yourself that broke, you’re doing something wrong. By lvl 20, I had the necessary 1G (plus extra) to buy the 2nd skill book, which I bought. Then I saw it wasn’t useful until lvl 40 (so I banked it and moved on). By the time I reached lvl 40 and could use that book, I didn’t need to buy it again and had roughly 3.5G in my pockets. Gold is scarce, to be sure, but you shouldn’t ever find yourself running out of it.

Protips (or semi-protips):
1.) Mine every node, chop every tree, pick every herb. Every if you have no intention of ever using these items in a profession (cooking, for example) you can sell the goods on the TP for a small profit.
2.) Don’t buy useless crap. I see folks posting leveling guides with nonsense like “replace your gear every 5-10 levels.” This is stupid and wrong, don’t do this. You can easily get by just using what you find when killing enemies and questing. Occasionally you may want to upgrade your weapon to up your damage, do so by buying the cheap Karma “Invader” weapons in the WvW area. They’re only a couple hundred karma, and can be useful upgrades.
3.) If you’re trying to level professions, DO NOT buy ingredient crap on the TP unless it’s absolutely necessary. You get the most experience/progress from discovering recipes, and you will likely find enough raw mats just leveling in the world to level the profs to a pretty high skill without wasting money on unnecessary materials. If you find yourself short, don’t buy stuff, just go back to a lowbie zone for an hour or two, do some hearts, explore the map, and collect materials. You’ll be gaining gold, exp, and mats while working on 100% map completion all at the same time.
4.) Don’t buy your cultural tier armor at lvl 35. it’s a waste. Maybe you’ll want to buy it later for appearances, but statwise it’s not that significant an upgrade to justify the costs (IMO).

The wiki maps are kinda nice,
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zone

You have to go through zone by zone, but they show every heart/poi/vista, named area, etc. You can zoom in on the maps and they’re fairly detailed.

Not sure if this will help you, but it’s a start. Sorry, that’s all I got.

Draconerus.9867:

Elementalist Arcane Trait XI seems rather buggy to me. When in water spec my dodge does not do the cleansing wave effect except for about 10% of the time. Am I reading the ability wrong or not understanding how it works? I only see the ability work on rare occasions.

There is a 10 second internal cooldown, so you can only trigger the effect once every 10 seconds. As an aside, this cooldown is PER attunement, meaning one can dodge roll in earth (setting of a weaker/smaller Churning earth skill), immediately switch to water, dodge roll for cleansing wave, switch to fire and dodge roll for blast, all within 10 seconds (assuming you have enough endurance for dodge rolling, of course).

Along these lines, does anyone out there know of the Sigil of Superior Energy provides 50% endurance on attunement swap? I’ve been told that it does, but haven’t tested it out myself yet, I’m curious.

Umm anyway i’d like to know what’s so awesome about this trait other than a 10 second cd heal. I just didnt see it being worth 30 points so far. Cant edit my post.

well, as mentioned above you can use it with every attunement. One dodge rolls a lot in PvP, so it’s free burning when it fire, free heal/cond clear when in water, free blind in air, and free dmg/bleed in earth. I’ll admit the skill isn’t earth shattering (no pun intended), but a very nice bonus free-be every time you dodge roll.

Now I feel like i’m playing Diablo3 again. Nothings answered and Class forums are a baron wasteland unless a Mod decides to close a thread.

Oh come now, be honest. These forums aren’t NEARLY that bad

I’m guessing the reason they fixed heartseeker, lightning leap, etc first is probably because those skills all shared the same bug and that bug was fixed at the same time.

I would guess this. Basically, they’re an easier bug to fix whereas RTL is complicated. As an aside, I find that RTL seems to track better and most importantly, hang up less often, when I jump prior to using it (so you’re starting the skill in mid-air). Not always possible or easy to do, but if you’re opening a fight with it, try it out.

Cool, now I can use my elemental pet more often.

Yeah, that’s good, but I must admit I was dismayed when I saw this fix cause (and I may be wrong here) Cantrips mastery still does not work with Mist Form (and that’s a big part of my fav build). Just as heartseeker, Lightning, Monarch, and Flame Leap were fixed as a single bug, I figured cooldown reducing traits not working on a particular skill would get fixed similarly.

/tear

Anet, thank you for fixing quick glyphs so it now applies to Glyph of Elementals.

Along those lines, any ETA on when “cantrips mastery” is gonna be fixed to work with Mist Form? When I saw the quick glyphs fix I was somewhat puzzled that it didn’t include the cantrips mastery fix as well as these two bugs are basically the exact same issue (i.e., a cooldown reducing trait not working with a particular skill). It’s 15 seconds, that’s HUGE, it would be greatly appreciated!!

It’s clear the elementalist is weaker than other professions. All the people that are in denial on that, can only claim that we are the worst kind of wow mage noobs, and limit at giving us basic elementalist knowledge that, frankly, I knew very well even before the game was released.

See, I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think Arheundel and Amnon are on to something when they say the class, when played well, can be quite powerful (cause it is).

My disagreement here has been with the tone and means by which they attempt to get this point across.

B2. Logitech G700 mouse, and I think the class is fairly balanced (or plays the way this game should). That being said, I think some of the other classes have moderately overpowered semi-spammable abilities that give the impression that the Ele is underpowered.

A well played Ele can wreck shop in PvP. A poorly played (or single-ability spamming) Ele is laughably easy-to-kill cannon fodder.

A well played Thief can wreck shop in PvP. One played by a chimpanzee with his hand glued to the #2 key can come out with a couple of kills and a reasonable score…

many people called me that and said focused in the “learn to play” phrase in the post.

I try to avoid the dreaded “learn to play” phrase when giving advice to people on gaming forums cause it evokes the “L2P noob” thought from folks who hear it like akittenPavlovian dog whistle.

Try “practice with the class,” or “analyze your strategy,” etc., because it makes them think that perhaps they could be doing better rather than evoking the feeling like their being insulted, even if that is not your intention.

mainly if english is not your native language.

what?!? English is not your native language, what are you doing on our forums then?!?

/gasp

:)

@Bsquared. You simply forget that all those skills cause huge burning dmg which get increased by the might stack , with that you can reach a burning dmg of 650+ for second, and the crit dmg + arcane skills + ring of fire blast + burning speed +earthquake as I have said….

I’m not forgetting about the burns, they’re very nice (the burn from ring is the best part about it aside from the combo field cause the base damage isn’t that impressive). You don’t get the might stack until you unleash wave (3 stacks) which is after you’ve already put up 6 seconds of burning from speed/ring. It was my understanding that the might did not up the damage from burning applied BEFORE you apply the might stacks, but I could be wrong here, I haven’t tested it for that particular scenario**. Yes, if you follow with arcane blast after wave, you will have might on THOSE burning stacks however. This is VERY GOOD damage, i’m not arguing with you about that. It still won’t kill a person (even if they aren’t able to wipe the burns).

**{The way I understand the calculation, as explained on the wiki, is that you get burning from 3 sources, speed, ring, and blast, which stack in duration. Blast has the highest condition dmg (due to the might stacks) so it gets applied first for its full duration, and then it rolls off and the remaining seconds of burn are calculated using the lower +condition dmg from the speed/ring since they were applied without the might stacks. Again, if already applied burns/bleeds get their damage increased by stacking might AFTER applying those burns/bleeds, then this discussion is moot, and I’d be quite surprised. I didn’t think it worked that way, however.}

said more than enough really, it’s quite simple the concept

See, even when you’re posting a reasonable discussion oriented message you can’t shy away from the “it’s elementary, L2P noob” type mindset. It’s this disingenuous, snide comment making that fired me up in the first place.

Husseini.7413:

Never said “L2P WoW kiddies”. The “learn to play” wasn’t offensive AT ALL. I even said at some point “then instead of raging I learned how to play and get better”. Btw, learning how to play doesn’t mean be the best player in the world, just at least don’t die every single time I thief target you. And you guys are focusing way too much in the word “kid”, I just said that I’ll call people who only complain and don’t even try to get better kids, because they are taking the fun from others by complaining nonstop in the forums.

And where you see me talking about WoW in the post? :\

I apologize, cause my post didn’t make it clear, but my post wasn’t necessarily directed at you Husseini.

But make no mistake, there are a plethora of folks on this board who use “L2P WoW kiddies” everytime someone offers an opinion that the class could use some developer love…

What’s wrong with you people? I was just trying to show to the people having problem with the class that it’s normal and if you keep playing you are going to see how wrong you were. That’s all I trully meant.

I completely agree with this sentiment and basically share in your experience. First go ‘round I got wiped ridiculously fast. Went out and learned some more weapon combo’s, tried out D/D and S/D (rather than staff), moved around some hotkeys (and invested in a G700 mouse, on sale at Bestbuy for $59.99, free advertising!!) read the wikipage on others classes skills, etc., and found I did a lot better (huh, imagine that?!?).

The “I quit, this class blows” crowd will never make that kind of effort and consequently will never achieve the desired results. But I’m not so egocentric to sit on this message board and belittle those voicing legitimate concerns about the class (not that you were necessarily doing so either, this comment is directed at others).

Hold down your horsed Bsquared. Your aggressive posts are quite amusing,

I’ll admit, I was quite fired up, I apologize for that.

a wall of text to simply say that you don’t grasp the concept of ele

Oh, I grasp the concept of the class just fine, no worries about me. And thanks for proving my point that telling people to “L2P” is your catchall for any argument they might have.

as I have stated before the ele is not a DPS class

I understand that, hell, I agree with you on that. IMO, the class is about control, escapability, and sustained damage to pressure the opponent into making a mistake opening up burst opportunities. Played correctly, the class should be quite hard to kill (we’re only squishy when we take damage. we have a variety of means to avoid it, USE THEM).

so go and re-read in your mind the skills I have mentioned and do some simple math

I did, and the math doesn’t add up. BS/Ring/Wave/Blast cannot burst someone from 100 to 0. Even adding RTL/whip/updraft before hand won’t do it, and especially not in “3 seconds.” (and yes, I run a G700 mouse and can pull off RTL/updraft/bs/ring/wave, etc. in probably less than a second as well.)

I use and the fact that I have clearly said :" I jump in a 3vs1" meaning that 3vs1 become now a 3vs2 but that’s the not the issue

Well yes, it IS the issue then. Someone said “I put out the same damage with 8 skills that a warrior does in 2” and your response is “ha, I can burst 3 opponents with 4 skills in 3 seconds, L2P newb.” (paraphrasing, of course).

So it turns out the opponents weren’t at 100% health and were otherwise engaged against a teammate. If getting the drop on wounded opponents and finishing them quickly (while they ALSO soak up dmg from your teammate) is your version of proof that the Ele is the burst king and we all should just “L2P”, then color me unimpressed.

if after some math you can’t realize yet the fallacity of your argument..well…

Again, the skills you (and by extension, Amnon) mentioned, that is RTL/updraft/BS/Ring/wave/blast, cannot kill someone from 100 to 0. Note, I’m not asking Anet to buff the skills such that they do either, I’m just telling you they do not (and yes, the math backs up my claim). Sure, it’s a huge chunk of health, and you get might stacks to boot, but you’re not effectively one-shotting people with that combo (nor should you), so don’t play it off like you are.

Finally the ele who can’t hit 3 players at the same time is the “stupid” one really,

I can hit 50 opponents no problem, in WvW for example, when they zerg up. But in sPvP or tPvP (where things are more wide open) only BAD opponents stand on top of each other when an ele is nearby (they should basically NEVER stand on top of each other, unless then want to eat a 100B or mesmer whirl as a group too!).

THAT was my point. The only time you can get a three-for-one shot with RTL/updraft (updraft in particular doesn’t have a wide aoe component, RTL will hit pretty easily) is if your opponents are bad, and superbad at that.

again you can’t play the ele like a wizard from Everquest or whatever, the newb will be ovbious

Lastly, I completely understand that. Because the tone and trollish nature of my post was so heavy, I don’t blame you for missing that point, and again, I apologize for being so fired up.

In addition, I am not asking for class buffs, I think the class is very good and extremely powerful when played up to its full potential. I’ve just grown awfully awfully tired of the usual suspects telling others to “L2P newb, the class is complex” whenever they have to audacity to offer some criticism of the class, especially when the most oft-quoted criticism is the class is extremely complex to play with respect to others and should get some benefit from that.

In a “I quit, this class blows” thread I understand those kinds of responses and expect them. Those quitting the class in frustration have clearly not put in the time to learn it properly before criticizing it. But YOU started this thread with the premise that “Only I am good enough to play this class” (hell the title screams ‘ego-ego-ego’) and merely offer embellished anecdotes and trivial stories as subjective “proof” that any valid criticism is invalid. It’s bullkitten.

Turpo.9458:

Amnon obviously doesnt approve anyone else than himself as "pro"elementalist. No offense, but thats just what picture I’ve gotten from you.

In some instances that is the case, however, in this thread, his post of:

I’m sorry, but all this shows are bits and pieces from fights where you happened to win; I can’t take this video seriously.

And to be honest, you seem to be stuck in Fire attunement the whole time, never switching even when you should.

is spot on!

This tPvP video is very nicely edited, has a good soundtrack, and is fairly entertaining. That being said, it doesn’t show any of the OP’s skill or any real Ele gameplay at all, to be frank.

I never said it was a commentary/tipcs&tricks or a full match, it’s a simple video to entertain people, i had fun making it, and i hope you’ll have a good time watching it. I just didn’t want to make a standard boring video where people wonder for 30 min.

and it IS entertaining. In the future however, you could show a whole match and just speed up play (and/or cut parts) where travel occurs. You spent a lot of time cut/pasting video clips, so cutting out travel would be easy, and you slo-mo’d a lot, so speeding travel up should be an easy option with your video-editor.

Amnon.4769:

Agreed. This is why I’m so militant about those players here who want to “buff” (aka simplify) the Elementalist class.

I very much agree with you here, although I vehemently disagree with your tone and how you handle those people asking for buffs in some other threads. You’d do far better explaining to them how you like the complexity of the class and that you’d prefer if OTHER classes were made to have to do the same complex stance dance, cooldown juggling, and higher thought that this class has to in order to be effective. Don’t just tell them to “L2P.”

In addition, I apologize for my tone in Arheundel’s thread (although my rant was moreso directed at him), I was fired up, i’m calmer now

I just left a long-winded and semi-trollish post in another thread lambasting the “L2P WoW kiddies” crowd that can be seen all over this forum, but that is not to say I disagree with Husseini here.

Those saying “I quit, this class blows” are equally annoying as the “L2P” crowd, if not moreso. The Ele class is quite powerful, nuanced in how it plays, and I enjoy it very much. That is not to say it is perfect however, and doesn’t deserve any developer attention (mostly in the area of bug fixes, targetting w/ RTL, etc.).

I’ve been following this thread for awhile and finally feel the need to chime in based on some of the horribly embellished, hyperbolic nonsense I’ve read over the last few posts (by the same two posters who have been putting every other Ele down in this, and every thread like this, for days). To start with, I will say that my personal opinion is that the Ele is NOT underpowered, just that some other classes are too easy and have moderately overpowered near-spammable skills that give the appearance that Ele is underpowered. Played with the right hands (and a G700 or Naga mouse) the class is tremendously powerful.

Now, that being said, I want to address a few things. To Arheundel, who claims he can kill 3 opponents in 3 seconds with the right burst combo (one post before claiming, and I quote, “Ele is not a burst class, it’s like a magical version of the engineer but more effective at switching roles,” but I digress), that is complete and utter BS.

The rotation you suggest (which is one probably every Ele in this thread uses, or has used in the past) quite simply does not pump out enough damage to kill 3 players, period. Amnon says “start with RTL—> updraft first.” Fine, if you can find 3 stupid players standing together close enough when facing an Ele to hit ALL 3 with RTL (very possible) and then updraft (somewhat difficult), follow it up with burning speed, Ring of fire, arcane wave (aoe, will hit all 3), then Arcane Blast (NOT aoe, will NOT hit all 3, although it will cause burning as a projectile finisher), that STILL does not add up to enough damage to kill an opponent from 100 to 0 (you won’t even kill the opponent you used the blast on), let alone do so in “3 seconds” as you claim. This is not opinion, this is fact. None of those skills pump out enough damage to chew through 15k hp (or more). Flat out, the “combo” you think is “pro-leet” (which of course, again, every Ele uses) won’t get the job done as you claim. Not to mention you’re using two utility skill slots for arcane damage abilities, and blowing BOTH of these cooldowns in the process.

I’m not arguing this combo isn’t remarkably effective, it absolutely is, everyone of us here uses it (with minor variations, of course) but people won’t/don’t take you seriously when you embellish so extravagantly.

Humposaurus.5764:

Lol? Are you serious? This games combat system is already flawless. I don’t see why you want to change it lol… If YOU do not like it, then why are you playing this game?

Whoa Whoa now, I wouldn’t call this games combat “flawless.” It’s very very good, but by no means “flawless.” And I wish people would stop telling folks to “stop playing this game” whenever they have to audacity to post their opinion on something. It’s not like the OP said “I don’t think dodge-rolling should exist, Arenanet CHANGE IT NOW or I’m leaving….”

Yup. And casual = boring.

You forgot “casual = larger player base” and “casual = money.”

This game rewards the casual and punishes the dedicated players.

It does no such thing.

Actually, hopefully it won’t, so that game companies will be encouraged to finish a game before selling it

I see this complaint everywhere, over every video game forum these days, and I wonder, wtf does it even mean? What about this game is “unfinished?”

Do people these days honestly expect a game as large as this one, with 100’s of thousands of players, to be completely bug-free and perfect upon release? So the TP was down for the 1st week and you didn’t get a jump on cornering the market, boo freaking hoo.

Seriously, how high are people’s expectations today? This was the smoothest MMO launch in seemingly forever, it was orders of magnitude smoother than D3’s (and that’s not even and MMO!).

If you want a perfect game with no bugs go play Chess. It’s been perfect for over 1000 years…

Also, sorry for the trollish tone of my first post, but I’m just so sick of seeing 100’s of thesekitten“hardcore vs. casual” posts on video game forums all over (it’s like thekittenD3 forums all over again).

Nothing will ever be good enough for the “hardcore” gamer, Anet could release dozens of high-end raid content tomorrow that’s nigh-exclusive to the top 5% of gamers, and 2 weeks from now the usual suspects would be back on this board saying “I put in 12 hour days like a hardcore gamer should, finished all your content, we want MOAR. This game is too casual.”

Seriously….

I wish companys would just consider the hardcore players you know the type of players that go to game conventions , make youtube videos, spend hours playing these games and try to be the best they can be in any game they play.
There is more of us than you might think ^

Yeah, you comprise merely a couple % of the gaming population. Making a hardcore game for only the most hardcore of the hardcore is a sure-fire way to fade into hardcore video game obscurity.

I guess you could define hardcore as gamers that want to compete with eachother and casual as gamers that play just to amuze themselves.

This game offers a plethora of ways to compete with each other on equal, or semi-equal footing (equal being tPvP and sPvP, and semi-equal being WvWvW).
But that’s not what you hardcore whiners want, now is it? What you want is a means by which you can spend exponentially more time than everyone else playing the game and growing your kitten with “uber-l33t gears” so that you can go out and “pwn some noobs.”

Kids these days…