Guild Wars 2

I think what Xhaiden meant, and I agree with him here, is that the elementalist has plenty of “filler” skills. We are a combo class, and that’s fun, but when our combos translate to skill a: deal 100 damage -> skill b: deal 100 damage -> skill c: deal 100 damage, and then we see another profession click a single skill and deal 400 damage, then I question, what’s the point?

So far, our “combo style” is a novelty. It’s a really interesting playstyle, but the elementalists are full of boring or same-y skills. Elementalists are (are they?) supposed to chain skills in unpredictable ways, but in reality, you have one or two optimal means to burst, and several defensive skills you use whe you need to use them. That’s it.

A mesmer is more of chaining unpredictable skills at this moment, because you never know how they’ll shatter their clones. An elementalist with low HP will go to water, and you know they’re going to heal themselves while chilling you out for a while. And you know they’ll go to water, when their HP starts to get down enough. An elementalist will disable you out for a couple of seconds, and you know they’re going to take advantage of the moment to chain a very predictable burst.

Elementalist is an interesting profession in theory, but in practise it’s all about playing keyboard piano to time out defensive skills to survive, while trying to milk out a little bit of damage inbetween.

When we look at other professions, all their weapon skills feel so tight. They all feel important, and there’s a degree of strategy behind each of them. Although it’s easy to understand why elementalists’ skills are simpler, they also have several uninspired, more-of-the-same or even poor skills at their disposal. It’s kinda messy.

Wulfrim.4793:

I think Churning Earth is a pretty big noob killing ability.

Unfortunately, unless you have the right utility skills, Churning Earth is a pretty dead skill against good players. At least Meteor Shower can be cast from afar during group play, and is less noticeable until it’s too late. Churning Earth will simply beg for your opponents you burst do down and/ or rupt you as fast as possible. I do love CE, though, but I wouldn’t mind half a second less (how much time does it take to cast? 3s? 2.5s would be cool), or if it has extra trait/ weapons skill support.

Actually, the air 4- 5 fire 4-2-3-5 scepter/ dagger combo, or the similar version for D/D, is pretty much one of the fastest ways elementalists have to kill enemies fast. Glass cannons in pve have much better survival when they can kill fast enough.

ATMAvatar.5749:

I hate our downed state as much as anyone else, but to be clear – everyone realizes that dodges work in mist state, correct? You can actually get quite a bit farther away with two dodges in mist form than you may realize.

Wait, dodge works? Hmmm. I think you can also jump with mist form. I wonder if those are bugs or not.

Amnon.4769:

draxynnic.3719:

the concept of there being 6 easy professions and 2 hard ones is one that’s been coming up a lot. What the second one is, however, seems to vary according to the speaker – some would say thief, some mesmer, some necromancer.

Spot on, my friend… spot on.

As for the rest of the post… Picture a pro elementalist from one of the videos shared here. Now picture them with 30% more survivability.

Considering that the only pro elementalist I’ve seen has been having trouble surviving agaisnt anything, while roflstomping when using a warrior, I’d say that 30% more survivability should be enough for pros to run away less and dominate more, like they already do with other professions. Seems fair to me.

Wulfrim.4793:

I really want to find the person that says thief is a hard profession to play so I can take my imaginary stick and wack it over his imaginary brain. ~_~

Design-wise, I think Thief and Elementalist are easy to play and hard to master, in my opinion. Newbs can take advantage of initiative to spam a few strong attacks and win, or take advantage of the attunements to spam 20 skills. Good players will have to think which skill to sacrifice for which skill for both professions, because a thief using one skill locks you from using other skill, and an elementalist using one attunement locks you from using other attunement. It used to be this way in beta, before they buffed thieves and nerfed elementalists.

The thief is a bit too strong in numbers, and an elementalist is a bit too weak in numbers, so for now you don’t need to master a thief to win, while you’ll need to master an elementalist to stand a chance. Slightly nerf the former, slightly buff the later, and you’ll see that the general opinions about the difficulty to play will change drastically.

I also want the elementalist to remain as complex as it is at the hands of someone who has mastered it. But I also want the elementalist to be more rewarding. When we work hard for something, part of the pleasure that comes from the effort is the reward. This is not a MMO mentality, it’s a winning mentality in real-life, and for a reason.

If I’m dodging, swapping attunements, timing my defenses, bursting, applying conditions, all while playing piano with the keyboard and sweating myself, and then see a warrior or a guardian breezing through the same level of pve content by spamming 2345, or a thief hitting me 8k damage with heartseeker, and more 8k with pistolwhip, it’s really disheartening. I should be dominating the field against those kind of players, but instead, with all my effort, I can barely defeat them, or worse, should I create a single mistake or poorly time a single skill, and all my effort is rendered useless, while those players can create mistakes all the time. I should go through pve blazing faster because I’m working hard for it, not watch a random warrior spamming 234 for half an hour and get twice the loot I get.

Effort for the sake of effort is pointless. Effort should be a tool to get better results, not a necessity to get the same of slightly worse results.

Overall, I think the people in this board want the elementalist to be balanced compared to other professions. There are two ways to do this. You can nerf other professions strongest spammable skills, or you can give the elementalist a few of newb-killing skills, or even a healthy combination of both solutions. Keep in mind that this won’t dumb down the elementalists. It’ll simplify battles against newbs, yes, but that’s because they are newbs. At the hands of a good player, against another good player, you’ll have to play the elementalist at its max regardless of a few buffed skills.

I know it is “quite powerful” when played right. With (very specific) builds, I’m also getting excellent results with an elementalist for pvp. But there’s at least two things that make elementalists weaker than other professions: 1) they don’t have easy, spammable skills like all others (the solution can be either to give elementalists a few of those skills, or nerf all others from other professions – btw, the first solution won’t dumb down elementalists, unlike what some people think, as they’ll still be as hard to master as ever) and 2) the downed state, the traits and the elites need some clear buff, and it’s kinda hard to argue against that.

A1. I’ve keybinded my fx skills to shift+1234, my heal to Q, my dodge to E, and my utility and elite to ZXCV. Simple and efficient.

Elementalists have a weaker downed state, weaker traits, weaker underwater and weaker elites than other professions, depend too much on very few specific utility skills, and have a few underpowered weapon skills or unfocused weapon skillsets.

Overall, I’d say they weapon skills and utility are “almost there”, and everything else should get serious attention.

People usually get the best results by focusing on their better-than-nothing glyph elite, filling their utility with the few best skills, using S/D, staff and sometimes D/D, and investing points on the stats they need the most or have the best traits (earth for the former, water and arcana for both). This makes for a half-decent elementalist, but that’s possibly the best the profession can do.

Skill #2 skill should be an aoe KD instead of a single-target immobilize, and vapor form should be faster, like mist form. I think that could be fine.

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.

The thief and the mesmer are far harder to master than they seem. But they’re accessible to newbs. Your average joe won’t easily grasp the concept of destroying all their own illusions to apply a 1s daze to a single target. But a good mesmer will use that ability to great effect to turn-around battles.

An elementalist is not that to learn, unlike what a few are trying to convince us. An elementalist is ahrd to master, but it’s possibly one of the easiest professions to learn. The problem is, they are so weak at the moment, at least in comparison to several others, that you must master every detail to stand a chance against decent players at best.

People defending the current state of the elementalists is as if people started defending the current state of GW1’s paragons for Random Arena. “But they can rupt like other classes! But they can deal good ranged dps unlike any other class with good armor to boot! But, but, but” but paragons are still sucky.

Nick Danger: See it this way: when six professions are at a better state, and two (elem, necro) are at a worse state, what should you do, nerf everything because of two professions, or buff two because of everything else? Have dervs overnerfed two professions, or have dervs overbuffed six of them?

What is the “norm”? Aren’t two profesions out of eight the exception, and not the rule?

I think elementalists should be easier to play with, but not easier to master. Likewise, I think several professions should be harder to play than they currently are. And I believe a lot of this comes from balance. Buff up the eles, and it’ll be easier to play, but you’ll still need to master it against good players. Tone down thieves, mesmers, etc, and players will require more effort to play with them.

Arheundel: Elementalists have twice the skills. That means they should require twice the skills to get the same effects, if we go by mathematics alone. If a thief can win against a newb with 3 skills, an elementalist should win against a newb with 6. But a thief can spam those 3 skills, while an elementalist will have their 6 skills put under a high recharge.

Although it is true that elementalists are (mildly) compensated for their diversity, it is not always so. Let’s look at D/D. How much defense do you have with it? Let’s be honest: little to none. You have some auras that are situationally useful with some high recharges, and about 2-3 defensive skills more.

We’ll have to keep in mind that an elementalist is filled with drawbacks to balance them out. High recharges, high casting times, easily avoidable bursts, short-term defenses, terrible passive defense, and must sacrifice power for defense or vice-versa. In contrast, thieves have harder-to-avoid bursts, 8k+ backstabs to start the battles with before you even realize, short activations, stealth half the time, etc. And means to regain initiative faster.

To keep in mind that I’ve won against thieves 1vs1, when they’re casual players. But there’s clearly a lack of balance between both professions. Elementalists have a huge list of drawbacks for them in addition to the fact that they already must use twice the skills to do the same thing. Elementalists require more time (high casts, more skills), have less margin for error (due to high recharges, which is a deal-breaker against good players who WILL dodge your skills and cc you), and must interrupt their own bursts to survive.

Shatter is complex, but mostly only against good players, because mesmers are so strong at the moment that they usually don’t need to care about shatter against newbs, other than using Mind Wrack as a simple finisher.

If elementalists were as strong as the mesmers currently are, a newb could kill another by only using, what, two attunements? Likewise, if mesmers were as lacking as the elementalists currently are, then I assure you, hitting that f4 for self-defense or hitting that f3 for a rupt, at the cost of sacrificing all your illusions, in order to survive, is something that casual pvpers can’t do at all, and everyone would be claiming about how mesmers require too much effort for too little reward (using three skills to generate three illusions so I can defend myself by using a 4th skill, and only if the illusions don’t die beforehand? Wow!).

In fact, that’s exactly how it used to be during beta. Thieves and Mesmers required too much effort for lacking results, and elementalists still required you to attunement swap and chain skills, but could get excellent results against newbs when you did that. But since then, Mesmers and Thieves were buffed, Elementalists were nerfed, and the general consensus is that they were overbuffs and overnerfs respectively.

Tone down thief and mesmer a bit, buff a little the elementalist, and things will get more fair.

Also, elementalists are not that hard to play. They’re hard to master, yes, but they’re not that hard to play. Elementalists skills are very simple and have little subtlety behind them, because they’re meant to be combined together.

An average joe who chains his air CC skills and then his fire skills for a burst should get as much success at killing as the average joe that spams pistolwhip and heartseeker. But he doesn’t.

Don’t think that I want elementalists to be dumbed down. But if elementalists skills were mathematically stronger, your dumb average joe would have as much or almost as much success by chaining bursts as any other average joe would have with any other profession. Afterall, Mesmers are hard to master, and there you go, lots of newbs winning with them against other newbs. Even the thief is hard to master, but once again, lots of thief newbs winning against other newbs. We should take this into account when we’re discussing the powerlevel of an elementalist.

It’s easy to burst with an Elementalist, once you know it. Dodging exists in all professions. Timing your skills right and sacrificing one thing for another thing is also an inherent mechanic of initiative, shatter, etc, isn’t it? Even mesmer’s utilities are far more subtle and indirect than elementalist’s, generally.

Elementalists are harder to play with than other professions, because they’re weaker. They’re not inherently that hard to play (they’re hard to master, yes, but not to play). If average joes can’t handle an elementalist no matter what, but can dominate pvp against other professions with the more indirect, more subtle mesmer, then it’s because the elementalist is not strong enough (or other professions are too strong, take your pick).

Gelrod.1295:

DiogoSilva

Mesmers. Kit Engineers. They are about as hard to play as the Elementalist, and they’re noticeably stronger. Noticeably stronger.

Mesmer? The class thats way easier to play than any heartseeker Thief? Very bad example. On Engineer I agree. Harder to play than Elementalist but also more rewarding… still theres only a small gap between them that won’t be that hard to balance out.

DiogoSilva

And I can safely say that the effort to play an elementalist is not rewarding enough.

For me it is (sometimes more, sometimes less)

Yes, the Mesmer is definitely one of the hardest professions to master in this game, and possibly the hardest to learn too.

The shattering system leads to complex decision-making for several reasons (should I sacrifice all my illusions?, when is the best time to use this effect?), the clone management demands more area awareness than most other professions, and the skills and the traits are less focused on direct effects, and more on anti-play, abstract mechanics, interrupts, etc. They’re also almost as squishy as the elementalists.

In comparison, elementalists utility is straightforward, elementalist’s traits are straightforward, elementalists skills are straightforward and some of the simplest and easiest to use for all the professions, and their complexity comes almost exclusively from attunements which, much like shattering, demands you to sacrifice your defense for damage, or your damage for defense; demands you to time your skills properly, and demands you to chain skills in different combinations for unpredctable effects.

An elementalist is easier to play than a mesmer, and possibly, about as hard to master.

However, Mesmers are currently one of the strongest professions in this game, and Elementalists are one of the weakest. Mesmers are strong enough that you can facestomp newb players by spamming illusions and your damaging skills. Elementalists are weak enough that you must milk the best out of the profession to gelt mild results.

Let’s use our imagination, and think about a future update that would overnerf mesmers and overbuff elementalists. Suddenly, Mesmers forums would be filled with players complaining about how it requires too much effort to even take down your HS spammer, and elementalists would fill out pvp arenas and be regarded as an easy-to-play profession.

This should give you an idea how being too strong/ too weak sometimes gives us the wrong idea that it is directly related to how hard to play a profession is.

The elementalist is harder to play not only because of the attunement swap. It’s harder to play because it’s weak. In comparison, Mesmers have much stronger auto-attacks, much stronger elites, much stronger downed states, much stronger traits, less bugs to deal with, and their damage is simply, plainly, a bit higher than it should, imo.

MosesZD.7428:

Sadly, this is a “Learn To Play” issue. HS and 100 Blades have huge tells. When you see them, you dodge. The thief runs out of initiative and the Warrior does no damage and is on cool-down.

The elementalists also have drawbacks. They also require about twice or thrice the time to down a Warrior, relying on burst skills that can have cooldowns as high as 45s. HB has, what, 8s recharge? Thief has plenty of means to gain a lot of initiative very fast, and 9 other weapon skills to keep you controlled.

Sarelm.8317:

I’m sorry. How the HELL do you get heartseeked FIVE times? You have mist form, a shield, a blink, a blind and a stun and that’s only looking at the utility skills you can possibly put on your bar, not the multitude of escape mechanics you have with every weapon and attunement. If you got hit more than twice with that obvious as heck jumping animation then your reaction time is the problem.

Because, and I know this is going to shock the world, but good thief players also exist. Even more shocking, but outside of 3-4 utility skills, we have little utility to protect us against heartseeker, unless you’re trying to imply that elementalists desperatly need 3-4 optional skills to stand a chance against HS spammers.

Gelrod.1295:

Maybe some players like to play twice as hard as other professions to achieve something?

Mesmers. Kit Engineers. They are about as hard to play as the Elementalist, and they’re noticeably stronger. Noticeably stronger.

The argument that we are dumb wow players is weak, has always been weak, and will remain as a weak argument. If you want to work harder because you like the challenge, pick a strong profession that requires effort. Don’t pick a weak profession that requires effort. There’s more to this game than Elementalists and Warriors. Elementalists are not the only profession that are hard to play/ master in Guild Wars 2. There’s alternatives, and there’s dedicated players getting good results with the alternatives.

To point out, before anyone calling me a noob, that I’ve been having midly success with my elementalist for pvp, I have been killing several players on 1vs1, and I sure know how and when to dodge, attunement swap and time my defensive skills. And I can safely say that the effort to play an elementalist is not rewarding enough.

EDIT: The fact that some of you “must master the ele and die 1000 times” before standing a chance against HBers, heartseeker spammers, pistolwhip spammers or even spatial surge spammers, shows that the elementalist is not properly balanced, no matter how much you attempt to twist reality under an elitist point-of-view.

Grakor.3450:

Mr. Stein,

I didn’t realize that there was a separate team for writing the story. Thanks for clearing that up, so the props can go to them!

And I want to make sure that I want to keep this positive. I know it may sound like I’m criticizing the Norn story, but that’s not what I was trying to go for. Less “Man, the Norn story sucks, what were they thinking?” and more “Man, the Charr story rocks, they need to do more of this!”

Also makes me quite happy to see you posting here. Thank you!

True, amidst the criticism, sometimes we forgot to mention things we enjoyed. Even for the human’s story, I enjoyed the overall character archs and the mystery/ looking-for-the-truth plots. I would like to see more of Captain Tervelan, Riot Alice, Petra and Lord Farren, personally. Tervelan intrigues me especially, I sometimes question how this character would interact with the hero in a new context, especially considering the man wanted the best for Kryta afterall (if I did not miss any detail).

As someone who has only played through with humans, I’m interested on trying with a charr due to the TC’s points. I felt human’s story was a bit bland and unpredictable, it was basically white-and-black politics, which made it quite dry. If you’re going to give political tones to your narrative, you need shades of grey, some kind of humanistic drama or thought-provoking issues, to be any interesting, imo.

I also felt human’s story archs were disjointed from each other, and the characters weren’t given proper time to stick with you and develop. If this is any different for charr’s story, I’ll want to try it out.

TAllstun.3081:

DiogoSilva.7089:

The elementalist requires effort to play, like the Mesmer, but grants you lesser results. It’s a bit weak because of that. It also has several other problems, like an almost meaningless downed state, weak traits, poor trait synergy, weak underwater combat, and mediocre elite skills.

Taking all this into account, it seems to be a deal-breaker, but do not get disheartened by that: elementalists are very fun to play, and are strong and “complete” enough for you to go through pve.

You’ll soon realize that the elementalist feels like an “almost-complete” profession that just needs to be tweaked at several points to be fine. It’s not game-breaking to some people, but it might be to others.

I don’t mind putting in the effort so long as I feel like I’m getting some results out of it. haha. Do you have any suggestions for a particular trait to increase to help balance out some of these deficiencies?

Earth, water and arcana traitlines are usually the best, as they have several traits that are good for you regardless of your attunement. Earth’s Embrace, Soothing Disruption, Final Shielding, Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement are interesting adept major traits, especially the last one. Earth traitline also increases condition damage, so if you’re with scepter or dagger MH, you’ll still do plenty of damage this way, while still having decent defense. Fire’s and air’s traits are kinda lacking. :/

The elementalist requires effort to play, like the Mesmer, but grants you lesser results. It’s a bit weak because of that. It also has several other problems, like an almost meaningless downed state, weak traits, poor trait synergy, weak underwater combat, and mediocre elite skills.

Taking all this into account, it seems to be a deal-breaker, but do not get disheartened by that: elementalists are very fun to play, and are strong and “complete” enough for you to go through pve.

You’ll soon realize that the elementalist feels like an “almost-complete” profession that just needs to be tweaked at several points to be fine. It’s not game-breaking to some people, but it might be to others.

All professions are meant to use 100% of their skills. That does not change the fact, though, that almost all professions are so strong, than they can do most pve and most casual pvp with 2-3 skills. One of the biggest complaints about the elementalist in this forum, is that we must use double of our skills for lesser results. Telling those people that “lol, but you must use more skills with an ele!!1” is not a valid argument, because they already know it.

Likewise, stating that we have all the tools we need is not a strong point neither, because that has nothing to do with the known problems around the elementalists. We all know we have a lot of tools for a lot of situations (although I’d argue that D/D has not enough defense). The main problem is, all other professions can get better results in a lesser time. It’s not about the elementalist not being able to achieve its goals. The elementalist can achieve its goals. It just can’t do it as efficiently as other professions. This applies to all elementalists weapons, but it’s more obvious for underwater combat.

Effort for the sake of effort is pointless. Extra effort should come with extra reward.

Finally, there are really strong arguments against our traits. There’s a large difference between a trait that decreases your recharge rate of half of your weapon skills and even does something else, like providing a stat boost, which is what happens with other professions, and a trait that decreases the recharge rate of 1/4th of the skills of a professions that most depends on rotating those skills out, without even a bonus effect on top of that.

I also want to add that I know how to play an Elementalist, and I surely knew what to expect out of them before even the game’s release. Considering how early this game still is, I doubt any of us is significantly better than the other. No one needs to teach me that a dodge button exists, that changing attunements is key or that the elementalist is a combo class, because that is basic knowledge to most of us.

Mesmers are equally hard to master, and look at how they’re one of the strongest professions for pvp.

Hello, Hsulf. Gonna watch the video now. Do you think the elementalists are fine, or do you agree they should get some balancing in the future?

Generally, people want to pick the Elementalist, because it is the Elementalist. They don’t want to pick the Elementalist, because it’s the Unnofficial Underpowered Class That Makes Elitists Feel Good About Themselves.

If the game is too easy, then the solution is not to make one or two professions to suck, so they can appeal to those who want challenge. The solution is to design hard content (like dungeons) or play in organized pvp against good players.

Elementalists are one of the most played professions, because people want to play it for what it is advertised to be: a spellcaster that can use all four elements to cast flashy spells. Many of those people won’t want to pick another profession, because they love the flavor behind the elementalist the best, among other reasons, like those who like spellcasters the best but don’t enjoy the dark/ creepy style of the Necromancer or the more abstract/ illusion-driven playstyle of the mesmers.

Ideally, people should be free to pick the professions with their favourite flavor, and all those professions should be strong enough for casual players to enjoy normal content, and with a skill floor high enough for hardcore players to master for hardcore content.

The elementalist is clearly underpowered. When you use an equally hard-to-master profession, like the mesmer, the difference is massive. It’s just so much easier to go through normal pve/ casual pvp with a mesmer, it’s not even funny – and the mesmer is harder to grasp for newbies than the elementalist.

At the current state, Mesmers are stronger than Elementalists, yes. Both require effort, but the Mesmer actually rewards you for that effort. Also, Mesmer’s traits, elites, underwater and downed state are overall much better than the elementalist’s.

Arcane.4950:

The point was other ranged classes having more damage, health, toughness and survivability while being faceroll easy to play.

Mesmers and necromancers aren’t faceroll easy to play. And we all (well, most of us) know elementalists are a bit underpowered. But regardless of that, elementalists are clearly supposed to rely on active defenses and knowing when to sacrifice their defenses for bursts. The devs need to analyze the problems with the elementalist and improve the points where they were supposed to be good at, not change their playstyle by giving them necromancer/ warrior hp.

Arcane.4950:

Oliin.9581:

Arcane.4950:

None are viable in sPvP, worthless skills.

Just to reiterate here, not good in sPvP =/= worthless skill. There’s a whole lot more game to GW2 that just sPvP.

sPvP is the only place where balance matters, you think the mobs you kill care if you oneshot them or not?

The mobs no, but the other players will. Unbalanced pve leads to an unsatisfied playerbase and to profession/ build discrimination. It’s a very relevant issue for pve.

Condition damage is strong enough to be meta in PvP, elementalists’ burst damage is rather underpowered while their condition damage is fine, and condition damage allows you to keep killing foes while you’re spending your time on defensive attunements. It’s certainly better than people give credit for.

Greatsword in a condition damage build deals 10k worth of burning damage in a single usage of #2 skill, and you can spam it each 5s, while evading or keeping your distance inbetween. Call that worthless. :P

Fiery Greatsword is better than people give credit for, in the right build.

Carrion insignia is interesting if you want an offensive build that does not rely on criticals. Power/ Condition damage/ Vitality. Speccing into earth for more condition damage and toughness, and you have decent defense, good damage, and excellent condition damage. Great for Scepter/ MH Dagger + OH Dagger, but I’m not sure if I would recommend that for Staff.

Because each profession has its own strong points and drawbacks.

And because I can’t edit my posts at the moment, I’ll have to double post: Yes, I also play D/D pvp with defensive (+ condition damage) specs, and with cantrips, and yes, I also can fend off myself. Elementalists have good condition damage. They’re nice at killing opponents while they’re spending their own time surviving.

But their power builds simply don’t work well enough. However, I’ve heard of a critical build with that arcana trait that gives vigor per critical, and it seems stronger than people are aware of. I might try it someday.

Amnon.4769:

I understand your points in theory, but when it comes down to actually playing the Elementalist, I don’t find it squishy in PvP, or underpowered in the least.

Elementalist is all about how fast you can press buttons while still knowing what you’re doing, and which skill should come in next. It’s about knowing your skill order, your attunement order, and being fast enough to use them. If you have that nailed down, you will rip people apart as an Elementalist.

Many people who find the elementalist underpowered in this forum also know all that, myself included. The problem is that doing all that is not enough against any decent player. You’ll be able to “rip apart” mediocre players, but then whenever you are killed by 2-3 spammable skills, you’ll get disheartened, dot. Maybe you can prevent that with the right weapon set, with the right defensive utility and the right defensive traits, but think, for example, of a fellow elementalist that has built for offensive d/d. Their weapon skills offer almost no means to defend themselves from, say, heartseeker spamming or the like, and dodging is not the solution because every profession can dodge, and only twice in a row. An offensive D/D elementalist will simply not kill fast enough, or at least not as fast as any other offenssive profession, while still having no meaningful defense, with the exception of one or two high-recharge utility spells.

One thing I’ve noticed, from my own experience, is that defensively-specced elementalists are mediocre/ average in pvp, but power elementalists are plain bad.

Because flashy mages are popular in all MMOs. Just like everyone is playing with Warriors, Guardians and Rangers, and few with Engineers and Mesmers. Even if warriors, guardians and rangers sucked, and engineers and mesmers were completely overpowered, you would still see most of players picking the first ones, completely unaware of their power balance.

Also, the elementalist is not “oh so terrible”. It’s underpowered when compared to other professions, but it’s good enough to beat most of pve nonetheless.

And to the second poster, playing a weaker profession just because it adds challenge to the game does not means that the profession is not weaker. Go play a Mesmer or an Engineer, they’re about as challenging to play as with an Elementalist, and yeild better results.

The elementalist is not one of the most polished classes in this game. Well, maybe mechanically, it is fine where it is, but when it comes to balance, the devs still haven’t hit the right key.

There’s a lot more problems in our class than mediocre elites, mediocre underwater skills, bugs and a poor downed state. Most of our traits are both directly weaker than others and highly conditional, and this is a mathematical fact, not an opinion that can be argued against. We have a lot of drawbacks to make sure our high skill pool is balanced, but then we have several filler skills, bad auto-attacks, even entire unfocused attunement sets, and our skills are generally weaker and simpler, so the appeal of having more diversity is an illusion, and the reality is that we’ll always need to put more effort to get the same results as other players. But even then, we’re not getting the same results as other players, because changing attunements comes at extreme sacrifices that pidgeonholes us into one, and one thing only, and we’re not even that good at that thing. For example, changing to fire completely removes all our defenses and crowd control for the sake of damage, and then our damage is both lacking and easily avoidable, to the point that a warrior with HB, frenzy and a CC skill can, in one or two seconds, deal more damage than we ever could by chaining 4-5 weapons skills and CC with one utility.

The way the devs have balanced us, is that we are one-trick ponies like warriors, with the exception that, at the cost of passive defense, we can change from one one-trick pony playstyle to another one-trick pony playstyle. Now, this is fine by design, but is at a very problematic balance state. Every single playstyle behind each of our attunements is mediocre at their specific role, and although that could be a mean to balance our diversity, we’re still punished even harder with longer casting times, longer recharges and plain bad auto-attack skills, for no gain in power.

In my opinion, either several of our drawbacks have to go, or they must be justified with a gain in overall power. Also, several of our skills much be fixed, and our auto-attacks should be prominient in our playstyle, and not weak filler skills that downgrades us from 20 skills to 16.

This, of course, is excluding the problematic traits, elites, bugs and downed state. I’d say Elementalists need the most focused attention right now alongside Necromancers.

Based on my experience, D/ D has good condition damage coupled with decent-but-not-good-enough burst damage (even when specced for), and lacks defense.

Invest all your equipment and trait points into toughness, healing power and condition damage to capitalize on that. With toughness + healing power, you’ll heal a lot, and the earth traitline offers both toughness and condition damage.

But this does not ends here. In your 30 points in water, you’re going to pick traits III, IX and XI. This will make your cantrips apply regeneration (and vigor), recharge 20% faster, and whenever you apply regeneration to yourself, you’ll lose a condition (D/D is weak at removing conditions). Naturally, you’re also going to pick the healing glyph for more rengeration and earth’s trait III for auto armor of earth cantrip. Your utilities will be all cantrips, with Lightning Flash to make sure Churning Earth hits, Mist Form because it’s going to turn the tide in your favor countless times, and any of the other two.

I actually only put 20 points in earth so I could have 20 in arcane, for Elemental Attunement (more regeneration) and arcane shield, but you could ignore this later one and put 30 in earth anyways.

This build will make you extremely hard to kill, as you’ll consistently come back to full health by changing water + using glyph (+ Mist Form, water skills, other cantrips, etc, dependind on the situation), and you’ll still deal a LOT of damage with condition damage, especially with Drake’s Breath, Burning Speed, Churning Earth and the skill I’ll talk bellow.

Your elite will be Fiery Greatsword. Yes, the conjure elite. Your #2 skill will deal 10k worth of burning damage alone, and everything else will allow you to kite your enemies well enough. Spam skill #2 whenever you can. You’ll win battles with skill #2, as long as you last long enough.

Some of you people want buffs to some of our best spells. I disagree. We need buffs for our weakest spells. That being said, there’s maybe one or two exceptions I would make.

Staff
Meteor Shower – Increase the range of the splash damage and add cripple per hit.
Reasons: Staff has three control/ support-focused attunements with poor damage, and a fire attunement that does not add cc/ support nor has enough damage to compensate for it. This would make fire’s big 5th skill more reliable at killing, and simmultaneously add an extra CC effect.
Eruption – halved casting time.
Reasons: This skills takes some 3 seconds to blast, and is supposed to work this way so we can make some cross-attunement combos. For that reason, it’s already hard to pull it off perfectly, and so having a high casting time feels redudant and clunky.

MH Dagger
Lightning Whip – Have the player evade to the left/ right, like the Ranger’s sword.
Reasons: Air’s dagger was supposed to give us some sort of defense while still dealing damage, but it’s underwhelming at that. This change will improve its playstyle, while go in line with the mobility the weapon is supposed to be good at.
Lightning Touch – Add a conditional effect: If it hits from behind or from the side, like Ranger’s shortbow, add 10 stacks of vulnerability/ or the damage is increased considerably.
Reasons: To synergy with the above changes to Lightning Whip, and also because the mechanics behind this skill’s animation seem to be the same for Fire Grab, which also has a conditional effect. Would add consistency.
Shocking Aura – Increase stun duration to 2 seconds.
Reasons: Auras don’t prevent damage, don’t last long, and pve mobs don’t attack often enough. Worse, auras are some of the main defensive skills for D/D builds, and they’re clearly not offering enough. 2 second stun should give more room to breath, and some free and very needed spike opportunity.

OH Dagger:
Frost Aura – Increase chill duration to 3 seconds.
Reasons: Worse than Shocking Aura, and worse than Focus chilling skill, this adds no immediate defense at all, and I’m unsure how to improve it. Here’s an alternative solution: Adds 1s daze to foes who hit you in addition to 2s/ 3s chill.

Focus:
Magnetic Wave – Take condition removal out of this skill.
Reasons: Focus earth is overpowered, while focus fire sucks. We’ll need to nerf one to buff the other. Let’s add condition removal to one of the fire skills.
Flamewall – Crossing it gives 6-8 seconds of (non-stackable) burning.
Flamewall – Foes crossing it get 6-8 seconds of (non-stackable) burning, and allies crossing it lose conditions. Put it into the 5th slot.
Reasons: This will make flamewall work similarly to other wall skills, like the Mesmer’s focus skill, where you only need to cross it once to get the full effect.
Fire Shield – Make it also remove one condition per second.
Fire Shield – Reduce the recharge to half, have it give 2 seconds of burning at melee range.
Fire Shield – Remove the melee range, reduce the recharge to 30s. Whenever someone hits you, they’ll get burning for 6-8 seconds.
Reasons: This aura is bad and needs to be buffed somehow.

Scepter:
Phoenix – Remove condition removal and reduce the recharge to 16s.
Reasons: This skill is too busy. Put condition removal elsewhere, and give us more opportunities to burst and dodge instead.
Rethink the water attunement.
Reasons: Seriously, what’s the strategy behind this attunement? It feels like a bunch of random skills with completely different functions put together.
Water Trident – Add condition removal.
Reasons: Because of Phoenix’s suggestion above.
Lightning Strike – Add a conditional effect to make it less mindless.
Reasons: The current strategy behind LS is: spam it whenever you can. This should make it more tactical, like Blinding Flash.
Rock Barrier – Add passive condition removal every 10 seconds.
Reasons: Because of Phoenix’s suggestion above.
Hurl – Add bleeding per hit.
Reasons: Bleed stacking with Scepter is awfully boring. This will give some decision-making to it.

The elementalist is very fun, I agree. Unfortunately, until we get better balanced, our fun gets a bit tarnished by the lack of reward and satisfaction we get for all the effort we must put into it.

They’re probably quite busy with a lot of stuff, but I would love an official comment about what they think of the elementalist’s current state.

I feel that we have a lot of drawbacks to compensate for our strong points, but our strong points aren’t as strong as they should.

We do not have as much diversity and skillset synergy as we should have, and the appeal of our high skill pool is tarnished by several filler/ useless skills.

So you see, the other professions have 5 skills per weapon, and each one of them is really important. We have 20 skills per weapon, but it feels like only half of them really matter.

I am sure changes will take their time to come, and we should have some patience. That being said, I’ve rerolled already, and Mesmer with swords is my greatest new thing. <3 My elementalist is still waiting, though, at level 80 with 40% of the map explored.

Yeah, I’m sure the devs have already discussed this issue, and as the meta establishes with few to no elementalists, they’ll take action. However, official word of how they see the current ele’s state would be nice, there has been some dev comments for the necromancer, but not for us yet.

I also love the challenge, but I’m also re-rolling Mesmer because it’s disheartening to work so much for so little. It doesn’t helps that we have some attunement skillsets that feel a bit bland/ unfinished, with no cohesive strategy, like Scepter’s water, among other questionable skill placements, especially when it comes to most of our auto-attacks, which feel like filler.

I much prefer the elegance behind 5 strong weapon skills than 20 weapons skills with some messy placements and several filler slots.

When playing with an elementalist gives the idea that general pve is hard, and playing with all other professions gives the idea that general pve is easy, then the problem is with the class, not the player.

Also, I’m going to shock a few people here, but: Elementalist is not that hard to play. “Wow, did I just read what I did? This guy said that the Elementalist is not that hard to play.”

Oh, it is hard to master, but not more than a few other professions, where people have been getting excellent results for some time. Elementalists require kiting, timing and correct attunement switching. And memorizing its skills, which gets second nature after putting a few hours into it. The Mesmer also requires timing, kiting, and a great deal of illusion management and shatter decision-making, and even more so, the Mesmer is harder for a beginner to grasp than the Elementalist. And yet, its already gaining a lot of popularity over pvp’s meta, unlike our poor Ellie.

I have played a Mesmer for about a few hours, and I have leveled my Elementalist to 80. I get better results in pvp with Mesmer, and that’s not even comparable. I started playing pve with a Mesmer, and it is also difficult, and it also requires some degree of mastery, yet once you “get it”, it’s so much easier than with an Elementalist.

This idea that the means to master the Ellie are extremely obscure to us all, and that we are all noobs who haven’t found the dodge button yet, is a naive accusation.

The Elementalist is underpowered. Once it gets its deserved buff, most of us will be properly rewarded for our effort, just like good players from other hard-to-master professions are already getting the wins they deserve.

^Elementalists do fill the role of a glass cannon with some of their weapon sets. By design, they have the worst passive defense, and rely on active defenses, kiting, and chaining burst skills. It’s just that the numbers aren’t high enough for that role to be rewarding.

And yes, the elementalists will always be “overly complicated” due to attunements. Giving to one profession two times the amount of skills of other professions, and keeping it as balanced as everything else, leads to some pretty unelegant quantity > quality skillset. Engineers are at a much better state, because you’re free to choose how many kits you bring with them, and so their normal weapon skills are individually strong, while it’s your decision to go for a more busy style, or for a simpler style.

That being said, chaining cross-elemental skills can be very fun, and I think elementalists can be fixed without drastic changes. Maybe if there were more cross-elemental combos and if those were quicker to cast/ set up? If the devs are going to give us so many drawbacks to balance this profession, shouldn’t at least their skills be individually strong?

Let’s not be elitists with grammar here, we don’t even know if the topic creator’s first language is english or not. EDIT: And it seems I was right.

Regarding the elementalist, I feel we have good/ enough defensive skills (except maybe for D/D), and that we work well with a purely defensive staff build or with a healthy mix between condition damage and toughness/ vitality/ healing power.

The problem comes almost completely from our damage, as we are possibly one of the worst damaging professions in the entire game. We need double the skills, double the time to pull those skills off, all at the extreme sacrifice of all other attunements/ defensive options, and we won’t still pull off the same numbers as a Hundred Blades Warrior. It does not help, of course, that our skills are almost as easily avoidable as HB, and we require about as much utility support as HB Warriors to make sure things go the way we want.

What are the main causes for all this?

• Our Scepter/ Dagger fire burst damage was nerfed multiple times during beta, possibly overnerfed.
• Staff is a support weapon with a bland fire attunement. It can’t burst with fire, and it can’t support with fire neither. Staff’s fire is basically a semi-average option to deal any damage to your opponent, because its other attunements can’t. Meteor Shower has no other purpose but to appeal to casual players who love flashy stuff, or to be broken in WvW. There was a time during development where devs replaced it for a skill called Meteor, that dealt burst damage and crippled, being both a reliable damaging tool and a support skill. But the fans whined that a shower of meteors was what they found so appealing about the Elementalist, and we’re stuck with this unsatisfying, either-useless/ either-overpowered skill.
• Focus fire is underwhelming, with possibly one of the worst skills in the entire game. Fire Shield reads: ignore me, unless you want to suicide yourself for 1s burning. With 40s recharge, it almost feels like the successor of GW1’s post-nerf Smiter Boon.
• MH Daggers fire damage is good, but not good enough for the risk involved.

When we add in other elements, OH Daggers sets up bursts nicely with air and deals even more worthwhile damage with earth, but that’s it. Non-fire staff skills lack damage, Scepter’s non-fire bursting skills are very underwhelming, Focus is a defensive off-hand, and MH Dagger has an mix between average damage and average defense.

There are a number of flaws in the personal story. Let’s list them for ANet. Feel free to add to this list.
-No dialogue choices
-Dialogue cutscenes look bland and unrealistic. Make it cinematic!
-Quality>Quantity. Too many boring subplots and uninteresting characters.
-Voice acting needs better directing, as a poster above me put.
Anything else? Add to the list. Let’s make this easy on ANet so that they know what they can do to make the game even better than it already is.

Yeah, I think people in this topic have made it quite clear of the biggest and the lesser problems with personal storyline. I’ll add a bit to your list, based on my observations:

Top Priorities (The issues that really need to be improved):

• Dialogue
• Voice Acting
• Character Development

Lesser Issues (Problematic, but not as much as the issues above):

• Cutscene cinematics.
• Players have a choice on the actions to take, but not any (meaningful) choice on the reactions their characters should have.
• Subplots should be unified by/ within the main plot, instead of being completely unrelated to each other and unrelated to the plot at hand. + (More on that bellow).

Things to consider

• One or two extra plot twists in the main story.

I wanted to add “more grey morality” and “less ego flattering” in there, I really wanted, but I believe those are necessary ingredients for better dialogue, for better character development, and can even function as fuel for more twists in the main plot and more interesting options the player’s avatar can make. Naturally, quality > quantity is also an important factor to achieve most of that.

+ Example for one of the points above: When you create an human, there’s this really awesome cinematic about the centaurs, and feels like something epic and important is going to build from that. But then the human storylines ignores it most of the time, and only the background story and the hearts/ events of the game are left to narrate the war with the centaurs. What if all the subplots were part of the bigger treat, and what if all of them helped to build up for a big climax against the centaurs? That would have been more exciting, and would have made each subplot more interesting.

Better, more creative traits that give us means to counter spikes in several traitlines, including in fire/ air.

Example: phoenix is automatically cast if over half of our HP was lost in three seconds for fire (defensive and offensive).

Before defending the elementalist, people should understand it first.

Yes, elementalists are meant to be glass cannons. MH Daggers, OH Daggers and Scepters are filled with skills that exist for the purpose of damage-over-time, bursting or setting up bursts. Even if you go into a more defensive route with the Focus, you’ll still have to burst with your MH Weapons. Only the Staff falls into a more support role, where your squishiness is compensated by the support you can bring and by the large distance you can keep from your foe.

I’m not sure either if the devs wanted all elementalist players to be forced to trait into earth/ water lines, or bring defensive equipment. Nor does toughness and vitality automatically mean it’s the only way you can fend off yourself: all professions should have means to be self-responsible even when they’re specced into damage builds. That’s why dodge is universal to all professions, that’s why a strong self-heal is universal to all professions, that’s why each profession can choice at their will their utilities and have means to defend from attacks. Even an Elementalist with dual daggers has its own share of support and control skills. If that, by itself, is not enough, then surely something is wrong.

Staff Ele has plenty of strong combo fields, and D/D Ele’s playstyle is crazy fun. Also, their spells are flashy.

Any worthwhile aura builds is not going to depend on a terrible aura from the focus when there’s a good alternative for the OH dagger.

DrakeWurrum.6049:

You are aware that certain traits play off auras, right?

Fire Shield is poor without traits, and there’s a better alternative in OH dagger when you want to build for auras.