Guild Wars 2

FYI, both Sc/W and D/W also rely on Wildfire hitting enemies with large hitbox twice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-m7OB5c20U&feature=youtu.be

Weapons aren’t really relevant. Celestial is used for a more relaxed gameplay, just goofing around and killing stuff without paying too much attention. Ditch it when you feel you can avoid getting hit most of the time and you want to kill stuff faster. D/W, S/W, even Staff despite the nerf are all pretty solid choices for PvE.

All signets? You can do better.
For instance, Glyph of Elemental Power is really sweet for condi builds. Glyph of Elementals doesn’t bring much, I’d suggest trying the Fiery Greatsword.

Also, the Tempest line is pretty lucrative because of Fire and Earth overloads (and problaly “Feel the Burn!” too). Generally you shouldn’t worry about surviving in PvE, the content is easy enough to tolerate you going full glass against it.

Lonami.2987:

I think the strongest point of the elementalist, skill variety thanks to attunements, is his weakest point as well, from a development perspective. Weapon skills take four times the amount of work, and the profession suffers because of it.

I would hate to get more off-hands with future elite specializations, so, what if we removed that variety, replacing it with something else that can be easy to upgrade?

We would normalize weapon skills through attunements. This would mean that a weapon skill has the same mechanic across every attunement, with similar base stats as well.

It would kill all the fun of playing Ele.

The change to MS is strictly PvE-only. It’s doesn’t concern any other mode in the slightest. Read the patch notes.

What are you even talking about? Staff was the number 1 damage dealer in the game just a week ago. Either the pure fire build which would only go in air to overload it and cast Lightning Storm, or with the Fresh Air build which would use both attunements and complement the lacking Air dps with conjured weapons.

Furthermore, lacking condi is irrelevant. If not for the MS change, the staff would still be number 1 dps. They didn’t make the change because they don’t want the staff to be used for damage, they made it so there are other dps classes out there beside ele. However, they completely overlooked how hard is to produce this dps on ele and how easy it is on other classes. That’s all. It’s just a bad decision made with good intention. Sadly, it ruined the state of ele.

You can use it outside of raids, sure. But don’t throw zerk gear away. It’s preferred for a reason.

I wouldn’t say “desirable”.

I’ve been on VG greens duty with both ele and condi ranger and my feeling is the ranger loses less by going there. Both have big parts of their damage coming in melee range, but condis keep ticking for you even if you’re away. And perhaps you can still get a greater percentage of your damage output from afar than an ele can.

On Gorse you can bring pretty much anything. And if you have enough dps you don’t even have to bother with much clearing. So again there’s no particular advantage to running an Ele over another damage dealer.

On Sloth there’s some value in the cleave potential of the staff and the stunbreak. But the nature of the fight will hinder the staff quite a lot. Yesterday I saw my ranger outdps a fellow ele there by a fair amount.

Wing 4 is a dps fest all the way. The most reason to bring anything specific would be on Samarog where you need pushes, CC and immobilizes, which Eles do not really excel in.

So I just don’t see any particular desirability in the class. Yeah, it CAN clear the content. Just like anything else. But there’s nothing to justify the greater risk incurred in playing one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a long-time ele main and it disheartens me greatly to say this. But it’s just how the current situation is.

Ookamikun.6472:

Should I swap my Traveler’s Runes tho?

Most likely. You can get a 25% movement speed boost in Air attunement, and that’s the major feature of the Traveller runes. Seeing that you’re not really a “meta player”, I’d recommend using Strength runes. If you find these too expensive, Flame Legion runes are a decent pick (especially since Celestial gives you some condi damage). Another option are Rage runes.

lucadiro.4519:

Yes we are not anymore top DPS and small hitbox, thats true, but we are still very competitive on them.
Also on small hitbox the rotation on both Dagger and scepter is way easier to do since you don’t have to use icebow, so is also easier to be competitive if you are a good Ele.

The micromangement in skills like phoenix, burning speed, wildfire etc etc is what make the difference between a good Ele and a FTW reroller and is what give you the reward and the satisfaction to play Ele. And I like it.

If you prefere to do an easier rotation and archieve a good dps you can always play another class.
Condi Warrior, thief and ranger are now very good for it.

To be competitive, even on a large hitbox, you need to be really good. Sticking to simplified rotations just won’t cut it (dropping the Ice Bow, for instance, will lose you substantial dps).

The point isn’t that Ele is hard to play. That’s not a bad thing. I like how Ele plays, I always have. My first character was an Ele and I have 90% of my playtime on her. The bad thing is your ele is more fragile and at the same time it’s harder to play it. And you get similar or worse results for it, compared to professions which are both sturdier and easier to play. In high-end content this translates to unnecessary risk.

Sure, Ele is just fine for open world, dungeons or fractals. But for raids, not really. Perhaps on KC, because of the specifics of the fight. Maybe on Xera for shard clearing. Maybe on Sabetha as a throwaway DPS class to go on cannon duty. Outside of these, there really isn’t much point in taking one, if you’re trying to maximize your odds against the boss.

lucadiro.4519:

But you can still out DPS every class if you become good at it.

Only on large hitbox. On small, realistically, you can’t. Unless they are pretty bad.

The FA Staff was similar in difficulty, but on the theoretical numbers it had a bigger advantage. Meaning you had more room for making mistakes, while still retaining a competitive dps. Right now, you pretty much have to be perfect, otherwise you get out-dps’d.

Rain.9213:

Oooh that’s interesting. I just started playing Ele again since my Revenant is still shelved for Raiding but looks like my ele might be my new Raider

Ele really isn’t in a good place for raids right now. In theory, you can still produce competitive damage output. However, it still requires a lot of skill to do so. Meaning if you’re new, average, or even decent ele, you’d be easily outclassed by other professions which are easier to play. Last night I saw my condi ranger have 30-60% more dps over the ele in the party.

katniss.6735:

It’s going to be torch for theme reasons.
No element can be channeled through melee means.
You must heal, and light up the darkness for actual dps players.

Torch has strong thematic connection, but only with Fire attunement. So I don’t know.

That being said, I find both Sword and GS rather cheesy for a spellcaster. Come on… It’s bad enough mesmers and necromancers swing oversized pieces of metal for no good reason.

Jski.6180:

Its not realty about how much it realty effects its about the meaning that anet is sending ele staff is not a dmg wepon its a support wepon. The support on it has been buff over and over and the dmg on it has been nerf over and over. Even when they changed burning to stack in dmg they at best added +1 stacking to one skill… that nothing and very telling what staff is for its not dmg.

That gets to a greater point ele is no longer a real dmg class. The lack of going after condis at any level the adding of stronger counters to power and not adding any effects such as condi to ele (mostly staff) is not able to do dmg on any level compared to other weapons and classes.

That’s pure nonsense.

First, calling staff a support weapon. Staff has a single strength, and that’s Fire attunement skills. The rest is highly situational. Handy, but not really strong. If you’re trying to support, you’d probably want Warhorn which at least has something remotely resembling support.

Second, damage dealer is the only role an ele can fit. Both our support and healing options are easily outclassed by other professions. At the very least, because other support/heal professions bring party-wide buffs like Spotter or banners, which we don’t have. It’s either dps or nothing for us.

Happened after the 8/3 update. Tried reloging and restarting the game with no luck. Skills 2 and 3 are shown and work normally and I have seen other players use skill 1 in front of me (no idea if they have updated or not).