Guild Wars 2

You can apply your Arcane Wave or Eruption blast finishers on staff, more than enough in my opinion. What is important is what TwoBit said – you get more fields on staff, ergo more varied self-combos. You can also use Earth #1 for projectile self combos and apply single target weakness, chill, add extra damage to them, you can use blast finishers with Water #5 for area heal and regeneration, or Fire #2 for area might etc.

You can also use the Glyph of Elemental Power and add extra effects to all your spells, like burning to water spells or cripple to fire and so on. Also, in PvE when fighting tougher stuff like champions, it really helps to keep some distance, and staff again is great for kiting, although you could do the same with scepter… but then you get less self-comboing opportunities.

Anyway, staff can be used to great effect, especially in PvE, you just have to use it right.

Also, staff is just fine for leveling. The amount of self-combos you can pull is highest on staff, and if you use that in addition to normal attunement rotation, you can drop things with ease. It doesn’t have quite the spike damage a D/D set can have, but in PvE you don’t really need that as much as you need constant damage, and staff delivers in that regard. Keep the lightning hammer ready for when you get in over your head, it works really well with staff.

Also, as far as survivability goes, I find myself frequently outlasting the “tanky” classes… maybe because you learn to dodge and keep moving early on as an elementalist… you learn to dodge really well.

Yeah, it happens if you have sigils that proc on weapon swap.

So best make a stockpile while you can, eh?

It’s not excrement, it’s chocolate colored. Now, why would anyone want to be seen in a battle with a frosty chocolate weapon is beyond me, but as they say, de gustibus non est disputandum.

Well, at least we elementalists have a ton of ways to remove conditions from ourselves.

So wait, let’s say I read up on a MF recipe here on the forums, if I put those items inside there is a chance that Zomorros is just going to gobble them up and give me a big wet burp back for my trouble?

If so, is there a way to torture mystical genies in this game?

Kill them with fire!

As an elementalist, you can either pop a projectile reflect and just grab the present and leave them for someone else to deal with. Or you drop the greatsword on their heads, pop the reflect and proceed to burn the little monsters down.

But remember… always… always use fire.

Natas Enasni.3260:

“Name one RPG that hasn’t had some form of random loot?”

Baldurs Gate – Fallout – Planescape Torment just a few a of the best RPGs ever made.

Agree on that, but all single player games. MMO’s will always have RNG because that is pretty much the only way to ensure the rarity of certain items in the playerbase, and hence their “uniqueness”. If everyone was running around with legendary weapons, they wouldn’t be legendary, would they?

The only other way is to make the requirements far, far beyond what any single player could achieve. EvE Online uses this system, where pretty much all equipment in the game can be created by players (so loot is not nearly as important), with the best, most epic stuff only being available to large corporations (guilds), because it requires a coordinated effort from dozens of players to obtain and maintain them.

So basically you can either have a solo friendly RNG system or a group-only skill/effort system. I personally prefer a solo friendly system for this type of game… especially because given enough time, the group-only system results in everyone having a personal Titan or two parked in their garage. I don’t want to see Eternity on every corner.

Dunno, my experience is completely different. I always solo skill points, even when there’s other people around I try to wait so that I can have a go at those myself, alone. So far the only PvE content I’ve ever had trouble with were ranged champions (though a focus/scepter combo for those helps a lot, but then I’ll be at it for a looong time) or champions which use CC a lot (still ele is a dead ele).

Since the OP pays attention to his gear, I’d say the only issue is probably lack of attunement rotation. Not even moving for that part… I frequently just take out my staff and walk around while blasting mobs, I only need to run and dodge if there’s more than two mobs on me.

So basically, swap attunements like mad, use your big skills, if you use staff you have awesome combos, use Glyph of Elemental Power to empower all your spells with cripple/weakness/extra burning etc., use conjured weapons for tight spots (lightning hammer ftw – I’ve soloed a group of about 20+ mobs once with that, granted not lvl 80 at the time, but still, AoE blind can be a real life saver).

Use self-combos! Always stack up might if you have trouble taking something down, you can have AoE regeneration, chill, weakness, plant down a fire field, switch to Earth and add plenty of damage to your Earth projectile attacks… and so on and so on.

Use Ether Renewal – it is probably the strongest heal skill in the game. You remove a condition each tick, use it with Obsidian Focus if you want some extra protection while channeling it.

Plenty of ways to play an elementalist, and the class in not weak or broken, it just plays very differently from the rest and you really do have to learn to play it before you can do well with it.

If you miss stationary object with lightning whip, try looking a little above the object. It’s weird, but I noticed that in 90% of cases where I get misses against stationary objects, if I tilt my camera a bit upwards, it starts to connect.

Personally, i think just removing the root on attacks would make the forms much more desirable. As it is, they’re highly situational, difficult to use right and useless in moving fights (PvP).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

You should be able to stay in them indefinitely, like how engineer kits work. They really don’t seem powerful enough for this to be imbalanced, and if it is they could tone them down a little.

Wolf form alone would make you a killing machine, at least in PvE. Very hard to bring down what with the knockback, regen, lifesteal and fear. Plus that life steal works per each mob hit so you could just wade into impossible furballs and walk away from it. Then there is the leopard stealth and sprint… pretty powerful abilities and would definitely be too powerful if you could just switch in and out of them like an engineer can do with their kits.

Yeah, confirmed, it’s the minor sigil of geomancy messing with conjured weapons. Removing it from my staff fixed the issue.

I also keep the “target closest” on my middle mouse button, makes things easier sometimes, especially because I regularly switch between weapon sets and clicking can be a chore in PvE if you’re circle strafing . Just have to remember to click anywhere to clear my target before I RTL outta there.

Huh, I also have a minor sigil of geomancy on my staff. Also procs all the time. Could be it, I’ll try and swap it for something else, see if I can confirm.

Upon further testing, this happens only when in combat. Out of combat the conjure skill works normal. Also, the conjure weapon boon does appear, so basically I have to either cast the conjure before entering combat or treat it as a buff spell for my other skills (which makes conjure skills arguably more powerful, but I’d rather not hunt for my lightning hammer in a middle of a fight where I could really use that AoE blind…)

Post-patch, I have had numerous instances where I would conjure a weapon, but only one copy appeared, that on the ground, while I retained my normal weapon in hand. Sometimes I would even get the associated conjure bonus, but still no weapon.

Anyone else experienced this?

Well, Akbaroth, I think it is quite beautiful. In fact, gave me goosebumps in places, which doesn’t happen often, so well done!

Doesn’t mean there aren’t any human/norn couples, just that they can’t have children.

I’ll let you know when I get mine.

Norn can beat everyone up, so the smartest race is the one which is least annoying to them.

I use them all the time on PvE.

Frost bow:

-a single rotation will drop most mobs before they can hit me
-#4 when I need to demolish something. This really is very good, no other ability we have will destroy static structures as quickly and effectively. So far haven’t come up to a structure which could take more than half a voley.

-Lightning Hammer:

-drop down a combo field and use leap. Use against tough, slow-hitting mobs for perma-blindness. Use in conjunction with staff Chill effect on faster hitting mobs for the same effect. Also good when you need to go in against a bunch of hard hitting but weak mobs, as it has nice AoE damage + AoE blind.

Basically I use it as a melee backup when going about with my staff out.

-Fiery Greatsword: use it as my go-to skill for champion mobs. #3 has a cripple on it, which works really well for kiting with #1 and #5, also great damage

-Flame Axe: don’t use it that much since Hammer is better in my opinion, but it also has decent damage and is ranged for the most part, so I guess it could be used with a D/D setup, only you can get higher damage from daggers anyway so a bit redundant except for range.

Basically I use conjured weapons all the time, but mostly as situational single skills, as in I conjure them up, use up everything useful, then immediately drop them and continue with my normal skillset.

SecondtoNone.7549:

Turbo Whale.1738:

Expansive.3716:

Arheundel.6451:

Anet really need to understand that slow moving/delayed skills are are not suitable for this kind of game…unfortunately the ele is the only profession which is loaded with unrealistic slow activation skills, many staff skills require manual aiming+strong CC and the result is awful

This cannot be stressed enough. Good post sir

It boggles my mind how Arenanet gives the ele such a slow casting time on their skills. The prof begs for attunement switching which would promote fluidity through the skills and yet the animations to cast the skills are so slow. It hinders quick combos

There isn’t any other profession that has this kind of issue

I’m sorry but D/D is one of the most fluid, responsive, and fastest weapon sets in the game. S/D is still really fast with skills like air 2,3,4,5; fire 4; and more. Staff is meant to have high delay burst and meant to be somewhat sluggish compared to other weapon sets. Every profession has a weapon that is slow and sluggish.

I think he’s referring to Staff. Super long cast times. Super long delay. Super long animations.

Well, yeah. Since it is a support weapon. As in, you stand back and support. Not go in and crack heads ninja-style. We got daggers for that.

In my opinion, the only skill that really needs rethinking is the Tooth… it really is too slow and obvious. It should be ground targeted, like the Phoenix, then at least we would be able to predict where the enemy will be and drop it there.

Oh I think I wasted enough time discussing first world problems. The only thing I find hilarious about all this wailing is that virtually every class forum has identical complaints… you would think every class sucks except that they always claim some other class is better and so much more awesome.

Third: I’m glad you can circle strafe and kill a single target after five minutes. I’m not complaining that it doesn’t work at all, just that it sucks. Other professions don’t take NEAR as long to kill a single mob underwater. To meet the damage of my AUTO ATTACK above water, I have to hit every button I have underwater. Forget the damage I can do above water when I actually use the other 16 skills on my first bar. We’re back to the “elementalists have to work twice as hard as anyone else for half the results” thing here.

Four: Fighting one mob is okay. Fighting three is really starting to push it simply because of how long it takes to kill and our limited ability to protect ourselves against multiple opponents or opponents that aren’t tightly grouped or opponents that actually move around. Yet, other professions can handle multiple mobs underwater without problem. I just want some equality.

No, fighting a champion takes five (ok I lie, fifteen) minutes. I simply do not encounter such problems in PvE underwater…. if anything, it’s even easier to kill multiple mobs, and do it just as quickly as on land. Sure, you have to pay attention which skills you use when, so that you CC mobs before you use static AoE on them to maximize damage and so on, but really, I haven’t noticed such a drastic drop in effectiveness underwater. If anything, since we have so many AoE underwater skills, we can actually handle multiple mobs better than other professions. But you HAVE to circle strafe or you die real quick.

We have a ton of CC underwater, we got blinds, AoE blinds, shotgun bleeds and damage, stuns, evades, big blasts… yeah, so each can’t do comparable damage to other profession skills, but can you imagine how OP we would be if each of our 20 skills would be on par with other professions’ five?

Nevermind that some professions can abuse the hell out of certain underwater skills, that’s a design/balance issue for THEM, not us. Can’t balance the game around unbalanced or poorly designed skills, it goes the other way around.

Ayame Yoshimoto.1860:

Gaudrath.6725:

I don’t get all this “we suck at underwater combat” complaining. We have so much choice… just move, don’t stand there like a log. Move and use those kitten spells and you will melt stuff. I mean, if I have a complaint about underwater combat is that NPC pathing is so sluggish, you can literally circle-strafe them to death without even getting hit once.

First: you haven’t set foot in PvP before, have you?

How about next time you clearly indicate you are complaining about underwater PvP, instead of creating a thread with a blanket title that the devs “hate” Elementalists. This game is not all about PvP and most definitely not about underwater PvP, so stop assuming people know what your particular pet peeve is all about.

And yes. You have to use all 20 skills. Just like on land. Deal with it or roll a warrior.

Berial.4860:

Another thing that can help. Keep your gear up to date. Just buy some blues/greens every 4-5 levels from the trading post, selling your old gear to a vendor. The cost is minimal and it can really make a difference.

This. ALWAYS keep your gear up to date. I made that mistake during my first go at the elementalist, also kept dying a lot and doing no damage. During early levels it makes a huge difference.

NdranC.5107:

I’m assuming that in fleets positioning matters a great deal so you all don’t get wiped by a couple bombers… why can’t I, as an elementalist punish a bunch of dumb f…..s who stand together in the same spot without moving? It dumbs down the game.

Because this game forces people to bunch up in certain scenarios. Like the aforementioned gates. Already you can rain pain on gate attackers, now I doubt that a gate assault would be even remotely possible if there was a dedicated elementalist group (or any caster with ranged AoE damage) focus-firing around. You could insta-murder whole zergs by having a roaming group of AoE attackers on vent (so they can sync up nicely) just plow into them.

Maybe if there was a way to shield whole areas from such attacks, so you could have counter teams, but unfortunately this game isn’t so complex.

Also, as awesome as the rest of the game may be, EvE fleet PVP isn’t really about the, you know, the fun PvP part. Mostly it is just about listening to your commander on vent and clicking through primary and secondary targets on a big spreadsheet style list. Not so sure that would work well in this game. And in EvE you don’t have theme-park style classes, so that doesn’t translate well, since that game literally has thousands and thousand of ship configurations, fleet configurations, maneuvers, tactics etc. etc.

GW2 is about big swords and magic, and just a handful of specific classes each offering only a few possible distinct variations. So with such a limited variety you have to have a similarly limited combat system in order to keep it playable for the majority of players.

And also, always chill tougher opponents. The reduction in attack frequency directly translates to your survivability. You can even chill them to slow down their attacks, then cast lightning hammer and do the AoE blind chains which now, thanks to the chill effect, makes them perma blind and unable to hit you for the duration of the chill effect.

And my advice when leveling is to get to know all weapon sets intimately. D/D is great for dueling and roaming, but staff definitely has its uses in PvP, especially WvW.

They have the AoE player target limit is to prevent groups of, for example, 5-6 elementalists completely erasing an area, like when defending gates or in a zerg fight. Since pretty much every class in this game has some form of AoE, fights would be really short and brutal, and pretty much reduced to who got their abilities off first.

So they have an artificial limit to prevent AoE focus firing. Ask any player of EvE Online what a skilled bomber group can do to a fleet, this would be pretty much the same, except the bombers wouldn’t be so easy to kill.

I don’t get all this “we suck at underwater combat” complaining. We have so much choice… just move, don’t stand there like a log. Move and use those kitten spells and you will melt stuff. I mean, if I have a complaint about underwater combat is that NPC pathing is so sluggish, you can literally circle-strafe them to death without even getting hit once.

It’s so easy you can drop all your armor even. It doesn’t matter, few things can actually hit you if you do it right. Combine that with our AoE spells and what’s there to complain about? That you can’t nuke a single target real quick? No, but you can destroy a whole bunch of them at once. Just like on land, in fact.

cero.1209:

In my eyes, ele’s are the most powerful class in the game. It just takes a high level of skill and knowledge to excel with it. I just got mine to 80 and i do ok in pvp and dominate in pve. I’ve seen my guild mates run train on kids and its insane. If you ever have played EVE online its a learning curve similar to that.

Or to illustrate the above:

My Norn is Uthgar Stormbringer, an elementalist.

For bosses we have an awesome shield skill, the Let The Guardian Guy Get Hit. It lets you solo those things all by yourself! :p

I am sure you can have a build which allows you solid damage on Air, but I am curious how do you tackle some of the more challenging content out there, for example champions? You HAVE to kite those, because they can drop an elementalist in a few hits. And without using all 4 elements, you essentially strip yourself of the ability to CC and heal, ergo no kiting and no healing for those times when you do get hit.

Basically, you can do OK with sticking to only one or two attunement. But if you want to mop the floor with everything, well, you gotta use everything you got.

Pro tip: don’t rummage through your bags when hunting for your staff or weapon set. All your weapons are available from the Hero panel, so there is much less clutter and only really problematic if you have several items that use the same icon.

Yeah, but you also have to make sure that the legendary weapons are actually, you know, legendary. As in, you don’t see one on every corner. So acquisition of materials should be a long but more importantly, difficult process. Not grueling, like collecting a bazillion Ancient Rat Tails, but difficult.

Which ultimately means it must be wiki-proof. It must be unpredictable and unique for every player. That’s the only way to keep it out of the reach of teeming masses and still interesting enough not to make you wanna bash your head in when actually trying to get one.

I would tie the Hunt into a sort of a personal story with a totally randomized seed so no one could ever make a specific step-by-step guide how to get your precursor stuff. And the hunt should definitely have to be something that really tests a player’s mettle… beyond just fighting. Maybe a clever clue system which assembles a series of randomized locations and clues how to find them? Somehow I think if they make it just really tough to get because it’s in the belly of a dragon or something, it will get farmed sooner or later.

@ArmageddonAsh, I didn’t say it’s a requirement, I said that I can solo champions + adds when using all 4 elements, and good luck with that if you stick only with Air. With regular mobs, the difference is that you finish fights before they even started when using all 4 elements, while you will always have an uphill struggle when using only one or two.

For example with staff, you can literally drop single mobs before they ever have a chance to hit you, without even moving. IF you use all you available skills. If you use only 25% of your available skills I imagine the results are comparatively slower/weaker.

However, the main point is that people have the right to choose how they want to play – but if they choose to play with a quarter of their chosen class skillset, they should not be complaining that the class is weak and underpowered.

No, you don’t need to attunement dance, but if you do your effectiveness rises dramatically. Don’t believe me? Try to drop just a single PvE mob with only one attunement. Then do the same by using all four. See the difference?

Because there aren’t enough Norn Shamans running around (Norn elementalist here).

And yeah, all kinds of armor just looks awesome on them. Plus their culture and background seems most interesting to me.

I can’t even play anything else that the elementalist. I tried out other classes, but the limited variety and less than engaging gameplay really get boring soon.

And to people who find the attunement swapping difficult, try playing the elementalist for longer than a couple of levels. I don’t even notice it anymore and I too play just with normal keyboard bindings and mouse, no special gear here. I know exactly where each skill is and when I should use it.

Hell, even gameplay itself is really varied compared to other classes. Not only do you have an excellent range of choices when it comes to CC, damage and healing, but you also get to play a ‘zerker warrior (lightning hammer), ranger (frost bow) or just set things on fire with the flaming axe or greatsword. You know, for those times when burning/freezing/electrocuting or crushing stuff to death isn’t quite enough.

No other class offers that, which is a shame. ALL classes should be as varied and challenging to master as the elementalist, not the other way around!

My Norn enjoys the various entertaining ways his enemies drop dead while being roasted/frozen/lacerated/electrocuted. His only wish is to find a nice shaman-looking armor so that he can also look as cool and Norny as his warrior friends.

Heh, I didn’t know attunement switching is considered a weapon swap, nice one!

This is a game, not something you evaluate for practicality. Do you like chess? Some don’t. Some do.

The problem with elementalists is that you have a LOT of players who are not very good at playing them, and then you have a minority of players who will stop entire zergs singlehandedly, precisely because it’s such a versatile class. There is a huge disparity in effectiveness and skill in the player base and it’s really hard to balance a class around that when you need to put it in the context of a game where most classes don’t really follow the same template.

So if you buff it, you will then make the majority of poor players do OK with the class, and also transform that minority into walking gods. Much complaining will ensue from everyone else then.

What this game needs is a redesign of classes to make them all equally complex. Don’t know why they made the elementalist so engaging and warriors so simplistic… well actually I do, they want to cater to all types of players and that makes sense I guess… at the price of eternal complaints.

You can decimate PvE content with lightning hammer utility skill. It applies an AoE blind at the end of every autoattack chain, which means perma blindness for many mobs which hit slower than your chain takes to finish. Great when you just want to steamroll a bunch of mobs.

Frost Bow #4 is excellent for quickly demolishing many stationary objects. Use that when you’re in a hurry and just need to wreck something.

Flaming Greatsword can be used very effectively if you need to solo a melee champion. #3 (the spin attack) will also apply a cripple effect and you can use that to kite the champ with your #1 attack which is ranged and has excellent damage. By the time the cripple effect wears off, you can use #3 again.

Dagger water #2 heals you even if you don’t hit anything with it.

S/D, you can stack might easily by casting Ring of Fire → Phoenix → switch to Earth → Earthquake. Top it off with Arcane Blast if you have it slotted and you got yourself a nice Might stack.

The problem with buffing the elementalist, so that for example players can power-up a chosen element so that they don’t have to dance… good players will do that AND dance and be totally unstoppable.

Elementalist is a complex, difficult to play class, in a game filled with simple, easy to play ones. Hence much frustration when people compare what they have to do “just to keep up”. The only solution involves major game redesign, something which will not happen; either the elementalist is simplified to the level of other professions, which frankly would suck all the fun out of the class, or every other class is made just as complicated to play as the elementalist, so that warriors have stances which they need to change all the time, thieves perhaps have overt/covert actions they need to combo to be effective and so on.

That would actually be real nice in my opinion, but I can imagine the absolute cacophony of wailing on the forums if something like that ever happened.

So basically, you roll an ele if you want some actual challenge in the game. Yeah, you will work twice as hard to achieve same results as other classes. You will have to play that kitten keyboard like a piano. That’s the point.

Because man, when everything slots into place and you’re in the “zone”… now that’s awesome. I wouldn’t trade that for EZ-Mode ever.

What I find funny is that no matter which class forum you visit, you will essentially see the same arguments repeated everywhere. “Our class is too weak, class X can perform better.”, “We are too squishy, die in seconds”,“Our skills/utilities are crap, other classes have better ones.”

Which leads to the logical conclusion that people who come to the forums to complain about their classes are actually people who got bored by them, or don’t know how to play them and would rather play another class – because grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

I was like that (sans complaining on forums), but once I actually rolled a few alts I saw that for some strange reason, they are not the uber juggernauts of mayhem and destruction I was expecting them to be. Just a different, less complicated (and for someone coming from playing an elementalist), ultimately destined to be boring class.

So basically:

PvE – learn to play. The class doesn’t suck, you do. I know, it’s tough, but hey it’s only a game.

PvP – it is a team play game. So play with a team. Ramboing won’t get you anywhere, regardless of class. Don’t believe me? Check out the other class forums and feast your eyes on the amount of complaining identical to what we get here.

Weapons – they have their uses. Accept that. Staff is long range support. Use it as long range support. That means groups. I know staff looks awesome and Gandalf used one, hell I even switch to it sometimes just to shake things up, but don’t go in solo with staff and then complain how you got mauled horribly.
Scepter/Dagger is great for PvE soloing. Scepter/Focus is good for PvE soloing ranged stuff. Dagger/Dagger is good for dueling, roaming and general melee shenanigans.

CONJURED weapons are awesome. IF you use them correctly. Check out how you can just jump in the middle of a NPC furball and totally drop everything around you without getting a scratch. Check out how you die if you try that with mobs that are immune to blinding or hit too fast (like for example, other players).
Running D/D and have a demolition job on hand? Frost bow. #4, demolition completed, that simple. Fire axe? I like them ’splosions. Greatsword? The ultimate melee champion soloing tool.

That’s it. Oh, and as others said – you’re not a “fire mage”, a “frost mage” or any kind of mage at all. You’re playing an elementalist. Use the frikkin’ elements then, there are four of them and they’re awesome.
And the only way to “fix” that is to make the elementalist as boring and repetitive as other classes. No thanks. It’s a complicated class that requires effort and skill to play well, and some of us like it that way.

OR… you get a scepter/dagger build, get some +power/healing stats and solo veterans and multiple adds with ease. You can also get a D/D setup and solo champions (melee ones that is, ranged ones are tough cookies for that setup, but then for ranged champs just switch to scepter/focus and totally pwn them without getting a scratch). I would only use staff if you’re in a group or are expecting a lot of regular enemies.

Lightning hammer is also very nice, as others have said, and later on you get flaming greatsword which just melts stuff… used with #3 which applies a cripple, you can both kite AND melt stuff, always a welcome combination!

Elementalist is VERY versatile and you can use that to your advantage. Warriors don’t even get close – they excel in certain situations, but for everything else, eh not so much.