Guild Wars 2

witcher.3197:

Lawful.5314:

Nothing changed, that is how Elementalist is, the damage is rather low compared to other classes, but you have a more skills to spam, to compensate with quantity over quality.

Afaik ele has the 2nd highest DPS in PvE.

In PvE, he is one of the better classes, in PvP, he is still mediocre.

The damage potential is there, but it still doesn’t take away from what i said, overall damage elementalist does, is with quantity over quality, we have to spam all our abilities in 4 different attuenements to be effective, while dealing suboptimal damage with singulary spells.

Wynne.3908:

Your question was, “Are elemetalists better now?”.

This has been answered many times here already. The answer is “Yes”.

You have spent the rest of this thread trying to argue that this answer is wrong, and that elementalists are a weak profession. Why did you ask question if you were so sure of the answer? Trolling?

To be blunt: You are a year away from the game. What do you know? You are outta touch with whats going on right now.

I’ve been back for a couple of weeks now.

Are elementalists better now? Slightly yes, but mostly the same as they were, with other classes being tweaked.

Elementalist is average at best, and people saying that its a “TOP” class, should really stop with that rubbish.
What makes the class seem like TOP, are the handful of players that can play it really well, but same can be said about any other class that is being played by that good player.

With Elementalist, you either go full 6 water and 6 arcana, trying to compensate for your horrible damage with overhealing the damage you are receiving, and blowing cantrips to survivive longer, or you run Fresh air zerker and you die in 2 shots, while dealing somewhat decent damage, comparable to a warrior.

Necros is a nightmare for me as Elementalist, too much CC with damage and pets that will shred you in seconds if you aren’t constantly healing yourself.

Nothing changed, that is how Elementalist is, the damage is rather low compared to other classes, but you have a more skills to spam, to compensate with quantity over quality.

You can try mostly Zerker with a bit of soldier or other vitality/toughness gear , you’ll be doing some hefty burst, but survivability wise it’ll be a nightmare against good players.

scerevisiae.1972:

Iris Ng.9845:

To someone who said elementalists can not live without triple cantrips, I say it’s also equally rare to see mesmers without blink and decoy, warriors without shouts or stance, thieves without shadowstep and signets, or engi without grenades and toolkit, ranger without lightning reflex and all that jazz.

This. Skill/utility balance in this game is fricken awful. I’m still yet to find anything that comes close to water/arcane/cantrips. In 2.5 years, the crap skills/traits are just just as crap, the situation has not improved.

The reason why water/arcane/cantrips is always the best choice is that the basic design of the class is flawed — the base defense is too low, which guarantees that survivability traits/utilities remain king.

Yep, the core of the class itself is very weak.
70% of our traits are garbage.
Our cantrips are decent.
Our survivability and damgage is weak-mediocre.

Like i said in the previous posts, we exceel at nothing, we are jack of all trades, master of none, even more so, we are less than average at them actually.
If you combine all the weaker aspects of the elementalist into one and add its versatility in the mix, the class is barely average.

And the only reason why elementalist is viable at the moment, is because compared to 1 year ago, almost every single class was nerfed in some way, as i look through the patch notes and the gear was slightly improved for PvP.

If you want to say that Elementalist is one of the best classes in the hands of a good player, then the same could be said about ANY other class aswell, infact, ANY other class, in the hands of an excellent player, will be stronger than the elementalist, with less effort required.

Don’t go running around watching Youtube videos of the 1% of the elementalist elite mopping the floor with pugs, then thinking the class is very strong, the truth is, that 1% of the warrior elite, 1% of the thief elite, 1% of the necro elite, and others will mop the floor with that elementalist with little to no effort.

Meh, overall ele is pretty average in PvP with or without the nerfs, the player behind the ele matters.

Meanwhile a novice warrior will still do 3-5k crits or eviscerate you in one shot, regardless if he has experience or not.

So i’ve been wondering, why haven’t they fixed the trait yet? Its been like over a year now and my blasting staff trait is still bugged in PvE, as in, the AoE indicator is not modified when the trait is equipped.

While this bug does not persist in PvE, aoe indicators work perfectly fine for that trait.

Or am only i having this problem?

Good point, i like how the priory armor looks most aswell anyways, so i’ll go with that.

Besides, the thematic fits the Ele most of all, even if i have to stand a few NPC’s for a while longer , ugh i just hate the Priory guys, so arrogant lol

So i’ve been going through the main quest and i have to pick one of them, any difference of each, are they going to affect the character somehow?

I’ve seen they all have a specific set at lv80, with different stats and looks, which one is better for the Ele?

Personally i’m a male human ele, and only Priory set looks decent on him, maybe whispers is okay too, do they actually matter?

Pwent.2639:

Lawful.5314:

Umm, with a 4 second delay , it has limited use as a blast finisher.

What? ^ Is this guy being sarcastic or trying to troll?

Op i agree it would be a nice change. The extra heal/might/swiftness would be pretty legit. The cooldown is a little low so i almost see it as an overbuff.

A change that would be a bit more balanced imo is just halfing its cast time.

You must be blind or ignorant, as in you want to tell me that the 2s casting time then 1s delay before it drops, doesn’t count?
Total skill time, takes 3-4 seconds, most fields will end before you can cast it in time.

Sarcasm? Totally serious, no point in this skill being a blast finisher and obviously Anet felt the same way.

Titans opening is way too overused, 1/10.

Well, D/D elementalist, which is currently the most popular and powerful type of elementalist, has to be in pretty close range to execute his abilities (400 range).

Umm, with a 4 second delay , it has limited use as a blast finisher.

What do people mean when they call it auramancer btw?

Good guide in that youtube video, makes me wonder whenether i should use strenght, hellbore or rage runes in my PvP gear, all of them seem better inclined for a certain gameplay style, hellbore is more might stacking oriented while rage would be fury stacking oriented.

Even tho you can stack fury with 2 points in Air atunement almost infinitely, it does require quite a bit more work with your rotations and it makes might stacking more stressing because you have to squeeze in a bit too many abilities into your fire circle.

BarnabeJonez.6023:

Purple Miku.7032:

Lawful.5314:

Elementalist will feel overall weaker than other classes, despite having more skills available.

wut lol

I really hope by “weaker” you only mean “squishier.”

I think he is talking about during the leveling process.

Exactly what i meant, they will feel overall weaker than the rest of the classes as you level them and gear them.

PierPiero.9142:

Lawful.5314:

PierPiero.9142:

elementalists are better now for the fact that anet unnerfed signet of restoration and celestial amulet. I play ele and eng ( for making a parallel ) and also eng celestial build hase become really popular and effective …. before the unnerfed of celestial amulet the builds strong for eng were quite only based on rabid amulet … in my opinion it is not the elementalist who got buffed … but only the runes he uses. And we wil lsee after the little nerf on might and on sigil of battle if something will change

Is there another one coming? As far as i know might was already nerfed to 30 from 35 power per stack.

No , i don’t think . I wanted to say that the effect of nerf of might and of sigil of battle will be visible in a while . For example now many cele rifle eng don’t use sigil of battle more but that build is less based on might than elementalist one . I was only saying that something could happen .

I don’t know if the sigils are a major blow or not, they are felt in longer fights and might is generally weaker now, so you can’t stack as much and its not as powerful, but in general, shouldn’t be that much of a problem, unless you were one of those “pro” elementalists that ran 1v3 fights for over 90 seconds each fight, having enough time to stack up 20 stacks of might. (Even with the nerfed signet, you would still be able to get up about 16 might stacks in those 90 seconsd anyways)

Exeon.4358:

Lawful.5314:

Wait what? It went from worst class in the game to best class in the game?

It was never that bad, people didn’t know how to play them that much back then.
I recall Ele’s in PvP were all going glass-cannon and getting 1-shot by anything on a staff zerker build.

Nowadays in PvP Ele’s tend to go for a more tanky setup with team support and decent damage, or burst Scepter yolo builds XD at least those have more survivability then the previous zerker staff builds.

In PvE Ele right now is competing with thief for #1 on damage as those 2 are the top damage dealing classes in dungeons, add to that, that ele’s tend to bring fury to the group, as well as fire fields for might stacking a couple(or ton depending on your build) blasts and ice bows which are just insane for damage and 5s deep freezes.

When i was playing over a year ago, Elementalists were running almost exactly the same build as they run now, but they were the weakest class in PvP.

All cantrips with maxed water and arcane, plus some earth.
(back then you had 70 traits, now you only get 14 total traits)

Maybe elementalists were playing glass cannon at the very start of GW2, but that was a very long time ago when people thought the class was a “damage dealer mage” but it didn’t take people very long to realize that you can’t survive unless you run defensive builds and that your damage isn’t that great even full glass cannon.

So the class turned into something like a starvation class, you would win fights by outliving the opponent while you chip down his HP bit by bit and outplaying him.

Anyone who is saying that “The class was never weak” has probably just started playing recently, or didn’t actually play elementalist back then.

Elementalist will feel overall weaker than other classes, despite having more skills available.
But it gets better as you get better with the class and set him up with right gear.

And you will have to hop around all 4 atunements all the time, because cooldowns are too long in every one of them, so you’ll want to rotate and blow cooldowns on other elements while waiting for the ones you used previously.

Cryo knight.2493:

“When it comes to profession, we want you to build your own path.”

Sadly, that statement is the least true in the elementalists case, despite having most skills in the game.

Sure you can build however you want, but you’ll end up mostly with dissapointment.

MyPuppy.8970:

I don’t know if it’s better, i just know i play better, but anyway, it’s forever fun to play. I just wish we could have equal base stats. Less HP and less armor is ok as long as you have more of something else to compensate. For great justice. But I guess it’s balanced this way because we have more skills and are smarter with an inimitable aura of grandeur.

Yep, basically that was the mindset when they made the class, give them 20 weaker skills, and let them compensate with quantity over quality.

And in fact, half of those skills are very situational.

PierPiero.9142:

elementalists are better now for the fact that anet unnerfed signet of restoration and celestial amulet. I play ele and eng ( for making a parallel ) and also eng celestial build hase become really popular and effective …. before the unnerfed of celestial amulet the builds strong for eng were quite only based on rabid amulet … in my opinion it is not the elementalist who got buffed … but only the runes he uses. And we wil lsee after the little nerf on might and on sigil of battle if something will change

Is there another one coming? As far as i know might was already nerfed to 30 from 35 power per stack.

Kodiak.3281:

Lawful.5314:

I really don’t think that you should base the vialibity of a build , based on a select very few good players.

Sure it works, but its not anyhwere near as good.

The only thing you should really base the viability of anything on is does it accomplish the goals and objectives you want to accomplish? If it does, then it’s viable.

Arguing the difference between a Hammer, a Sledge Hammer, a Nail Gun and a Bolt Driver doesn’t matter much when all you’re trying to do is hammer some nails.

Difference is huge, and that is effectiveness.
Some of them can’t get the job done all the time.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I disagree: you can play dd or staff with a lot of efficiency. The D/F and S/F have also been used at the competitive level. I have a number of builds I use when I am just training on my own, and my observation is that it is quite viable to use less arcane.

I do not use rotations. I really like Phantaram’s guides though (and Zoose’s of course). I think he gives the best guidelines on how to perform decently, but then you need to make your own decisions to reach a higher level. I have also learnt a lot by watching Denshee’s stream.

I really don’t think that you should base the vialibity of a build , based on a select very few good players.

Sure it works, but its not anyhwere near as good.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Other classes having better healing the ele? I doubt that.

Yes, the base stats of the ele are not in our favour. In fact, a lot of our skills are underpowered. But many of our traits are completely OP compared to other classes, and we have strong synergies (at least in arcane and water).

I would say that the ele is balanced. However … it requires a ton of practice, which is its disadvantage compared to other classes.

A while back, I was training with a warrior friend for 1v1 in pvp. Then we deciced to swap roles. He had barely tried the ele before, and I had never played warrior in pvp. I completely destroyed him without having to dodge at any point. I was just spamming my keys for the first dozen of duels, then I learned a bit, so I rekt him even more.

The problem of the ele is that it takes a lot of effort to be as effective as other classes. But with renewed efforts we have the potential to perform better than others.

People complain that our healing and cleansing are too automatic, and they are right. But dealing our damage takes a lot of attention. I am guessing that this, in addition to the irrelevance of fire/air/earth traits compared to water/arcane, is why we have been stuck in the semi-dps role for ever.

The problem with the Ele class is that there are very few viable builds, you are forced to run D/D and learn how to rotate with it, while running tank specs, and learning how to stack might while other classes are free to roll you with whatever weapon they have.

If D/D gets nerfed, Ele will be the worst PvP class yet again, too dependant on ONE build to survive or be competent, while having to work a lot more than other classes aswell.

Kodiak.3281:

Really their whole system is pretty much mixed signals and makes no sense. Ranger has medium HP pool and is more healing based while the Thief is more low HP pool and has a lot of escapability. Conversely in Light armor pool the Elementalist has a low HP pool and is more healing based while the Mesmer is a medium HP pool and has a lot of escapability.
.

I know right?! Balance in this game makes NO SENSE.

I’ve been watching some Warrior PvP videos, they have 28~30k hp, while dealing 3~5k damage bursts per hit, being able to down you from ONE combo.

While Elementalist has 15~19k HP and does on average like 1~2k damage , logic much?

How the hell do you end up balancing classes that they have both no damage and no hp, compared to the heavy counterparts?

Shouldn’t it be like the other way around, that Light Armor classes have the 3~5k damage while having low HP and the high Heavy Armor classes have 1~2k damage with high HP?

And despite all that, warriors and other classes still seem to have BETTER healing than Elementalist does, by default, while having even more HP and Damage.

I don’t see you might-stacking, which is one of the more important things and Elementalist should do, your rotations are a bit off, for good might stacking you have to go through air>fire>earth>water and pop every possible might boon with blasts.

You got him pretty low at one point but you seem to miss most of your abilities, besides you always seem to waste your teleport on earth 5, even tho you never had to.

Compared to that, i can’t even combo properly yet, but keep up the good work xD

cursE.1794:

I kind of agree that basically the only thing that makes ele great in pvp is the d/d celestial meta build. S/f fresh air with berserker gear/amulet is “ok”, you can burst people down and can do a lot with it if you play it at its high skill cap but still, it can be very frustrating to die to thieves who 2 shot you. Staff is clunky and just doesn’t feel right unless you play fullzerker and bomb people in node fights into oblivion or run in a zerg in wvw with more balanced gear.

So it’s a bit of a weird situation: The current state of ele is indeed great since it is top tier in all gamemodes. But this could change quickly in spvp and wvw roaming if the d/d meta build gets nerfed.

Exactly where i’m coming from, if Anet decides that d/d is too strong and it gets nerfed, then elementalists is back where it was a year ago, aka being the worst class for PvP.

And judging by some people on the forums crying “Elementalist OP” , that might actually happen.

The class is great, but when i change to every weapon, it just isn’t there, i feel like there is so much potential in the class, but the weak damage is keeping it back, all the numbers need a bit of love for it to be newbfriendly.
Especially on staff.

Some people are going to say “Whoa wait, if they buff its damage, its going to be OP as hell!”
Well not exactly, if they buff the damage on elementalist, players won’t be forced into defensive cantrips and 6 water builds all the time to be able to scrap healing from anything they do, people would be able to actually invest into damage builds and try different variations, sure if a couple of them end up being too strong aka tanky and too high burst, you can tune the numbers down on the cantrips and stuff to make them less tanky, ect.

Don’t know, despite the D/D setup with Celestial, elementalist still feels like Jack of all trades, master at none.

EDIT: Like i’ve been playing my Thief recently and i hopped back on Elementalist, and what i felt is that, Yes elementalist has a lot of diversity, but it feels iffy for some reason.
And that reason being is that, with Thief i would just 3-1-2 and the target (In PvE) would die in a matter of a couple of seconds (I use D/P on thief PvE), all it takes is just a bit of AA’s and the situation few skills, while on elementalist it i just had to spam everything i have access to and swap out elements for different rotations to even survive.
Like the difference in ease to use and usefriendly-ness is like, way different. The class seems cool, but it feels weak.

Don’t know, from what i’ve seen, staff is very lackluster in PvP.
I would have imagined it would be the bursty weapon but not really, the damage you get out of it, isn’t very impressive.

Personally staff is my favorite weapon type for Elementalist, but it just isn’t that good aside for group PvP and support.

Supreme.3164:

In PvP the profession possess the lower level of build diversity among all classes, 2 years after release and the only build that make eles feel welcome in a team….it’s the well known 30 water/arcana.

Many will disagree with me ofc, many will call me a noob…but OP, ask yourself this : can a profession that rely on an amulet and a build that stack everything in survivability to be viable in PvP, be really considered in a good state?

Exactly my thoughts, not much changed the the specs you have to run to be effecient in PvP is D/D with tanky buildup and maximum protection cantrops.

I really dislike how they can’t balance out all the other weapons for elementalist, you are just basically forced into dagger / dagger with no real play divergence like the other classes have.

Hell thief for example can kill anything with almost any build, same for warrior, and a lot of other classes, but elementalist just has to stay with D/D to be even remotely close at being able to kill anything – and just equipping the weapons isn’t enough to be able to kill anything ,you have to spec yourself properly, have the proper gear and know the rotations perfectly.

Well, when i made this topic, i was kind of hoping something changed when i saw that the traits system was reworked somewhat, but i guess elementalists are still where they were, just the new gear aka Celestial made them be able to deal more damage and become actually viable.

How is staff Ele by the way? All the time i see that D/D ele is the top spec for PvP and stuff, but i really enjoy the Staff gameplay.

I’ve watched a few youtube videos from two years ago and from few months ago, the damage elementalist deals in them is substantially better. People didn’t just get better all of a sudden, there is much better sustain damage now aswell.

Also i’ve noticed they changed the whole PvP gear system and how Traits work, they used to be from lv15 i think and you got a bunch of points to throw into there? Now you just get a couple and they do not influence your stats anymore? Not sure, havent checked the traits in detail yet.

Bottom line is, racials don’t really matter, you won’t see them used as often as you think.

MightyMicah.7451:

Lawful.5314:

Wow i hate how people are so serious about the " Well it took us 3 years to realize how to play elementalist"

No guys, thats a ton of bull, there were good elementalists right off the bat, it doesn’t take you longer than a few months to figure out how to play a class very effeciently.

The only reason why elementalists became better at something is:

1. They got buffed
2. Everyone else got gradually nerfed/balanced.

There is no, it took us 3-4 years to realize they are great, people always knew elementalists were universal but it just wasn’t there, there were jack of all trades but master at none so they couldn’t get the job done completely.

If they became viable and competent, the reason isn’t that people finally discovered it, please.

LOL agreed. People just like to think that they’re better than previous players. Gives them a sense of accomplishment.

Exactly, people like to think that they are better, but there were GREAT elementalist PvP videos out there in the past too, there will always be great players in every generation and the problem was the class itself, not the players.

Generally elementalist was always VERY HARD to play, but if the majority is doing better with it now, means that it got buffed.

Its like league of legends, 90% of the players are silver and there are only a handful of diamond players out there, who utilize the class effectively, but if the silver players started getting better results with it, means that something changed, by no means did they get better at it as they think they did.

Wow i hate how people are so serious about the " Well it took us 3 years to realize how to play elementalist"

No guys, thats a ton of bull, there were good elementalists right off the bat, it doesn’t take you longer than a few months to figure out how to play a class very effeciently.

The only reason why elementalists became better at something is:

1. They got buffed
2. Everyone else got gradually nerfed/balanced.

There is no, it took us 3-4 years to realize they are great, people always knew elementalists were universal but it just wasn’t there, there were jack of all trades but master at none so they couldn’t get the job done completely.

If they became viable and competent, the reason isn’t that people finally discovered it, please.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

It was never the worst class in the game.

About a year ago, or more, elementalist was the officially worst class in Guild Wars 2 for PvP and it was mediocre for PvE.

Only true loyalists would play it, that liked the mage class in general.

Is it good in PvP atm?

About a year ago, we were using FGS everywhere so the ele was king in PvE.
In pvp, the ele got a few well deserved nerfs because it was obviously too good, and after this it fell in line with other classes.
But yep, the general opinion of the public did not reflect the actual state of the class

Wasnt very “king” since we had to always use FGS to even compete with other classes, as for PvP, we were way too sqhishy for the low damage we had, best damage we had in PvP was the lightning hammer, if you could remotely come close to being able to hit anything with it.

i wasnt the best pvp player but it felt very harsh in PvP as elementalist ,literally anthing would kill me and i wouldnt deal enough damage and even PvE would kick me in the nuts solo, lol

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

It was never the worst class in the game.

About a year ago, or more, elementalist was the officially worst class in Guild Wars 2 for PvP and it was mediocre for PvE.

Only true loyalists would play it, that liked the mage class in general.

Is it good in PvP atm?

Neko.9021:

It’s the best class in the game.

Dungeons – http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F_Elementalist OR http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Staff_Conjure

PvP – http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Dagger/Dagger

Wait what? It went from worst class in the game to best class in the game?

Don’t think so, for the major part its about Aesthetics, pick what you think looks best for you, also check out the armors (but honestly, all armors look the same, just different races and body-builds)

SO i haven’t played Guild Wars 2 in over a year, but i used to roll Elementalist, despite it being the weakest class in PvP and being Mediocre in PvE.

Has anything changed for Elementalist this past year?

Seems like Thieves got nerfed pretty hard as i googled up some QQ threads, otherwise i think most classes became better?

Not sure, how is elementalist now in PvP and PvE?

Its…pretty clear in the name of the thread that its a scam mail.. -.-

No, all those games are P2P, with a monthly subscription, and to be honest, Elder Scrolls Online is not that good, i played a few BETA’s, and its not worth the money they are asking for.

Wildstar was interesting, but i only played it in a stress test for a few hours, and my PC didn’t handle it that well, but its entertaining, somewhat.

And Everquest, have no idea, i have never played the everquest series of games.

Just got some mail on one of my emails, which isn’t even registered with GW2, about having 72 hours to confirm ownership, theres like several links that lead to the official site and this link, which is kinda fishy.

Fishy why? cause look at the ending, ends with .comegawkc
No site has that kind of ending unless its a scam, the .com should be separated with another /wasfa , ect.

So dont fall for it guys, cheers.

Post edited by moderation

I don’t understand the concept of might stacking, its technically impossible to have too many stacks, as each stack has its own timer, thus they do not all refresh if you build up a new stack, and they will decrease every few seconds by one stack, thus getting up to like 20 stacks is impossible?

People kittening, kitten off seriosuly, ele is weak as it is, we need to have something decent at least.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

It’s also:

-One of the highest damaging skills in the game (in the top 5 as I recall)
-Causes 8 stacks of fair duration bleeds
-Has a wide AoE
-Is a Blast finisher

Should it really be a surprise that this is the most difficult to land skill in the game?

There is a trick how you can use Chruning earth and hit with it most of the time, you just start casting it, then use Lightning Flash to close in on your target, as the earth finishes its cast time.

Are you sure you did not crit with Earth while he was downed? Because when a character is downed, they do no benefit from armor bonuses.

phaeris.7604:

Versatile…i’ve heard of that word.

Maybe when they game came out and they said ’ Any class can fit any role!’. No holy trinity!..

But then they gave everyone different hp and armour totals and expected a class with 8k less hp and 300 less armour to have the same levels of tankiness as a warrior?

Exactly, i strongly dissagree how Anet treats elementalists, we should have much more damage if they stripped us of everything else, i wouldn’t complaint if i could see 5,000-10,000 damage numbers in PvP as an elementalist, but thats not happening, most i ever saw my elementalist crit was like 5,000, with full CRT gear.
Which is really nothing, coming from the fact that it was with the Nr5 D/D spell, which has like 40 seconds CD.
When thiefs,warriors, rangers,ect crit on a daily basis like that with spammable skills and auto attacks.