Guild Wars 2

Very nice video and gameplay from both of you! I was seriously surprised to see you perform that well with that low armor number against multiple targets focusing fire on you even if they were very noobish players. That’s how skillful players do it! Like Ozii I also loved the split between you and your partner on the video.

Ele in spvp is not as bad as many players from the forum state. Even though I got bored of this setting months ago when I reached rank 50… I went back for a week to tpvp just to test if these opinion were right ( this took place a few months ago) My conclusion was the Ele no longer is the easy to play, beat all class, god mode type it used to be but with good player base skills you can most certainly perform great. Do I mean the Ele current state is fine as it is?…. The answer is no. There is too much effort the player playing as Ele needs to execute to accomplish this…

If you don’t have the burst and reaction to counter condition spammers like necro then try the focus offhand. It completely counter all condition based players… Well probably with the exception of a constantly steathing Mesmer that let his clones do most of the job for him.

The way I see it ozi it is not about the armar type, it is about mixing different set of gears to reach your desirable stats. I remember a couple of months ago when I posted my stats on this forum there were so many wondering how I got those stats and my answer was “I run a mix of different gears". I currently use cavilier, soldier, knight, zerker, and Valkyrie in my burst non glass Ele to meet the stats i like for hp, armor, power, crit dmg and crit chance. For my playstyle I don’t care about the other stats.

oZii.2864:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Xaos.3257:

Actually maybe the stealth mechanic in wild star is not so OP.
The developers had the common sense to make the grass move in a way that you can understand that a stealthed player is step in it!

That’s sounds helpful! As long as the stalker is taken out of steath if he is hit then the steath mechanic will never be broken like it is here in gw2.

I just looked at some video’s and stalker has a trait they can take to not be revealed when they take damage. You can see vids on Zybaks channel.

The theme of the game isn’t really my style it has the effects clutter that gw2 has but then all the UI and combat indicators thrown on top of it. The Enemy fire cone indicator is cool but I see that only being good in 1v1 more people more clutter less useful it would be.

I’ll keep looking at the game though but sci-fi themed MMO’s kind of turned me off after SWTOR.

mmm that’s horrible. Every stalker will want that trait. Hopefully there is a cd of at least 15+ secs before they can resteath. If not… I will not even bother to try another mmorpg. Honestly, it is very annoying to face players where the only method to beat them is to burst them down before they can resteath in the next second.

Xaos.3257:

Actually maybe the stealth mechanic in wild star is not so OP.
The developers had the common sense to make the grass move in a way that you can understand that a stealthed player is step in it!

That’s sounds helpful! As long as the stalker is taken out of steath if he is hit then the steath mechanic will never be broken like it is here in gw2.

Myst.5783:

I’ve been trying to get into the Wildstar beta for awhile now with no luck. The classes look really interesting, but I hear its going to be a grindfest.

Nikkinella.8254:

i can only assume its better since mages from every single other mmo that has ever existed is better than ele. I do know that the Force in PSO2 is what ele SHOULD have been in GW2, it’s freaking amazing. You can download the Japanese version for free and there’s an English patch for it since people got tired of waiting for SEGA to localize it, which will probably never happen.

The Force in PSO2 was lots of fun. :P

Retsuko.2035:

So who’s better?

Superman or goku from dragonball Z?

I’m betting it’s goku, since his powerlevel is over 9000!

This person does have a point, all these things are from very different games, so its kinda hard to compare them.

Indeed the classes look very unique and interesting. Unlike gw2 where I knew from the start I would love the ele above any of the other “mage” type class. In Wildstar I’m seeing myself having a long debate between the spellslinger and esper to choose as main.

@Nikkinella – I agree the gameplay from both of these type of mage classes is perfect for the type of playstyle I’m used to from previous mmo.

@Retsuko – Neither! The ele would beat them both!….

and a happy what?

spoj.9672:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Any build is viable for pve to be honest.

Same could be said about wvw and pvp. Whether they are good builds is another story.

Being a good build is part of being viable…. I don’t want to offend anyone by saying Pve is too easy in this game that even a 0/0/0/0/0 build is good. For a more competite environment like spvp and WvW that’s where the different story takes place.

Any build is viable for pve to be honest.

Fishbones.6914:

we will be stuck on SoR until at least sunday night, we had lots of fun last night though!

Were you that human female d/f Ele roaming with a full glass thief last night?

Fishbones.6914:

me and four buddies transfered to SoR for a holiday vacation! if anyone wants to do some small GvG’s or duels lets me know.

Meeeeee for duels but darn it would have to wait till the weekend. Will you still be around?

@dreztina: Yea he is in sos but his guild transfer on other servers looking for more gvg. You can whisper him to try to find his updated current server. He is friendly.

oZii.2864:

LightningBlaze.4913:

O that was you! The focus just counter so well the ranged condition types with the exception of the annoying constant steaths mesmers haha. FGS is awesome at kitting d/d eles so don’t feel bad because even serane was defeated easily with it at times xD. There was like 1 or 2 instances where I would cast fgs during the wrong time in our duel and I would pay with a defeat lol. I defeated you without the elite too but didn’t keep track of our win/lose ratios. I believe it was very even. Your build and play style was very similar to Serane and that’s why I asked you if you knew him and if you were using his build. Serane was the first very challenging d/d ele I have faced since god mode for the ele was eliminated. You are the second. Against Serane I did keep track and the ratio was usually 1 win for me for every 3 duels…. On rare occasions I would beat him 2 or 3 times in a row and then he would come back with the same winning streak lol. He is so good.

I am like 0-10 against Serane I cannot lie. He is really good.

Indeed he is. So far I consider him to be the best overall Ele I have encountered.

Mbelch.9028:

LightningBlaze.4913:

When I roam with s/d my favorite order is: Easiest to hardest profession (assuming the player is skillful…) to defeat from top to bottom
Thief
Ranger
Ele
Engi
Guardian
Warrior
Necro
Mesmer

Now when I roam with s/f the order changes:
Ranger
Engi
Necro
Ele
Warrior
Guardian
Mesmer
Thief
Btw did we encounter each others during season 1 in wvw Mbelch? I met dreztina and frowny during those 2 weeks and we did couple of duels but I don’t recall if we met Mbelch while roaming.

Oh heck yes we did!!!!! Just saw your signature. Oh those were some great duels.

Thanks for posting with your preferred match ups. I noted that all the ranged people jumped to the top as soon as you switched to focus ;D.

If you recall, I’m the elementalist that we basically tied if you used your fiery great sword but I won if you didn’t use it. Tormentum Nex. You Serane and I know each other.

O that was you! The focus just counter so well the ranged condition types with the exception of the annoying constant steaths mesmers haha. FGS is awesome at kitting d/d eles so don’t feel bad because even serane was defeated easily with it at times xD. There was like 1 or 2 instances where I would cast fgs during the wrong time in our duel and I would pay with a defeat lol. I defeated you without the elite too but didn’t keep track of our win/lose ratios. I believe it was very even. Your build and play style was very similar to Serane and that’s why I asked you if you knew him and if you were using his build. Serane was the first very challenging d/d ele I have faced since god mode for the ele was eliminated. You are the second. Against Serane I did keep track and the ratio was usually 1 win for me for every 3 duels…. On rare occasions I would beat him 2 or 3 times in a row and then he would come back with the same winning streak lol. He is so good.

Mbelch.9028:

A little elaboration on the topic:

I run a main ele, but have 80s in each class but two. I love the class, and 95% of my hours are on it. One of my absolute favorite thing to do is dueling.

A close second would be roaming.

So what I’m looking to see is a fun thread where people discuss their favorite duels, and maybe elaborate on why some of their duels aren’t a favorite.

PLEASE READ: This is a WvW thread.

So if you want to follow a format, you can make a list of your favorite classes to fight.

I’ll kick it off.

My favorite classes to fight are in ranked order

Elementalist
Engineer
Thief
Guardian
Necro
Warrior
Ranger
Mesmer

A little explanation on my list: I love fighting elementalists. I think ele fights are the most engaging thing we can do, and one of the best ways to learn about our class. Heck I learned something in a string of duels last night with some fellow eles.

You’ll find on my list that it almost goes in decreasing order of how passive the class is. Mesmer, being one of the most passive classes I think in the game, is my least favorite fight.

I have less fun fighting thieves since their repeated nerfs, as they stealth a lot more.

Lastly, I’ll add which I most frequently tie, as I rarely will lose a duel. I most frequently tie bunker condi engineers, warriors and mesmers which all fit that bunker, condi stereotype.

Discuss!

A note, I never turn down a duel, but I will sometimes turn down a rematch if I found the fight to be stressful. I’ve turned down several mesmers for rematches, especially if I find their play to be annoying. In the same regard, one of the people I duel most frequently is a mesmer, as the person is extremely nice and plays intelligently.

When I roam with s/d my favorite order is: Easiest to hardest profession (assuming the player is skillful…) to defeat from top to bottom
Thief
Ranger
Ele
Engi
Guardian
Warrior
Necro
Mesmer

Now when I roam with s/f the order changes:
Ranger
Engi
Necro
Ele
Warrior
Guardian
Mesmer
Thief
Btw did we encounter each others during season 1 in wvw Mbelch? I met dreztina and frowny during those 2 weeks and we did couple of duels but I don’t recall if we met Mbelch while roaming.

If you really want to burst someone I’ll give you some general guidelines
- Spend no more than 5 points in arcana tree.
- Change your heal, and signet of earth… (it will only work on beginner level players to help you land your dragon tooth) to lightning flash
- Increase your power, critical damage and hp
- Decrease your armor a bit

Unless you really like to burst or are willing to spend a great amount of time playing as a burst ele in wvw I wouldn’t recommend you go with this playstyle. As a burst ele is not a matter of downing players in 1-2 seconds (again only bad players will get downed within this time frame on 1v1). It will mostly require you to analyse your opponent build and predicting some of his most beneficial skills/rotations to avoid them. In short it is all about countering and outplaying your opponent and knowing when to use certain skills. It will lead to frustration if you don’t pay attention to anything else aside of your own skills rotation.

It works just fine for me

Adastra.9821:

He’s basically saying someone’s going to come in and tell you you’re doing it wrong and that ele is basically one of the best professions.

That’s right and that will be me! Nah kidding. Honestly, I do great with the profession in WvW roaming but I know how much more effort I have to execute compared to when playing with other professions. I was looking at some beta preview of Wildstar last night and I gotta admit I wish the Ele was just like the spellsplinter(not sure if that was the exact name of the pistol Baster, teleporter, ccer, speedy yet fragile light armor weilder Mage type).

I’ll join in the cause because I have seen a huge decrease of Ele roaming in WvW and that is not fun seeing only me roaming as Ele for hours.

MarzAttakz.9608:

How’s he not experiencing it when he states “I’m not the only one who experiences these bugs, if you search the forums a bit, you’ll see m8.”

I too experience these issues, have since beta, yes, in most cases it is due to connectivity, but often it is not.

I misread his comment while I was on the move. My reply came out in a rude tone so I deleted my comment. Most importantly, if this was an actual bug then everyone that spends an adequate amount of time with dagger offhand and LF would experience it with no exception but that is not the case. Finally, let’s assume it is a bug…. That still doesn’t add up to the half of bugged skills/traits he stated in exaggeration.

Adastra.9821:

LightningBlaze.4913:

None of this has ever happened to me and I have been using these 2 skills since early stage of open beta. It is probably a lag issue you are experiencing.

You should remember how RTL did not home in on your target. It used to predict where your target would move to, similar to projectiles and shoot you in that direction. If they moved, then you would get rooted unable to do anything as a ball of light.

But even now, the skill is choppy and I often rubberband, probably because of latency and whatever server-side processing they do to make homing skills work.

That’s true lol I remember those days. I also loved rtl when it used to go on a straight line instead of downwards when launching from a high place.

dreztina.4820:

LightningBlaze.4913:

I really wish builds like this with the focus become popular so I can finally encounter at least one decent Ele with the focus off hand in WvW. I have hear there are a few out in lower tier servers but so far 0 from tier 1.

Deeez is the only good focus ele I’ve fought, and that’s from playing every server from kitten t8.

That’s interesting Dreztina. I hope I encounter him someday.

STRanger.5120:

spoj.9672:

STRanger.5120:

spoj.9672:

Arcane shield is like 3 stacks of aegis. Its a very good skill for pve. Especially for when you are rooted while casting fgs or some other long channel skill. Also im not aware of any bugs with LF. And RTL seems fine to me.

Well, this can be caused by several conditions:

A) You don’t play Ele at all and don’t even read forums
B) You don’t use these abilities too much
C) You’re blind

Which one fits you?

None of them. I play ele but i dont read the ele forums that often. Please explain whats so bugged about LF and RTL. Because i havent encountered any bugs yet.

I know you can take fall damage during RTL while going down a slope but that can happen just by running down some awkward slopes. So its not a bug specific to RTL. Thats the only bug I can think of. Please enlighten me.

So that’s probably #2 I guess. Because by frequent usage of these you would surely notice that sometime, LF fails to port you at all (weird slopes between you and the target location), RTL suddenly stops mid-way and results in getting you killed (same reason as with the LF, mainly when you have something in target, rarely when using it without a target).

Needed to add that these bugs are in-game since beta guys.

None of this has ever happened to me and I have been using these 2 skills since early stage of open beta. It is probably a lag issue you are experiencing.

STRanger.5120:

LightningBlaze.4913:

STRanger.5120:

LightningBlaze.4913:

List half of these suppose bugged skills/traits because I only know very few of them. Your dependency on only 2 of our traitlines is just your own choice. I spend only 5 in arcane, 0 in water while spending the other points on the 3 so called unreliable traitlines. I do perfectly fine whether I am running by myself, in group and even in Zerg.

Ok then, let’s start with skills ok?
RTL – everybody knows how reliable this is.
LF – Well, pretty much the same case.
Eruption/Shatterstone cancelling bug (still not fixed if I remember correctly.)
Fire grab reliability is really low – due to network issues/hitbox registration (and that’s the skill with kitten CD? /facepalm)
Gale – Kinda the same case as Fire grab, but with even bigger CD…..

Traits:
Lingering elements – still not working properly, it’s like that since beta, replacement was promised though, but nobody ever cared for that and the promise vanished….
Persisting flames (Haven’t confirmed myself directly) – Lava font has no benefit from it while Blasting staff is traited.
Burning fire – I’ve seen issues reported with this one too, but I don’t use it so can’t confirm myself.
Arcane abatement – Water attunement lacks cleansing wave – Also not from my experience.

And I’m not talking about the skills/traits that are totally useless and nobody would ever use them, although half of those are minor traits that you can’t decide to replace.
Also, the double-cooldowning solution of our skills/mechanic seems like a bug to me too, because nobody with a sane mind would create such penalty for a class he would like to see balanced….

Ok you listed mostly some skills you personally consider unreliable which is only opinion and I respect that while I have a complete different perspective towards them. The main point is they are not bugged. I believe shatterstone was fixed because I don’t encounter that issue anymore. Granted lingering element is still bugged. I have hear rumors about burning fire but will have to test it to be sure. The other 2 I never hear of till now. That makes up only 4 so far…. Is that half to you?

One thing, these has nothing to do with my personal opinion If you don’t know that RTL + LF for example are buggy as hell, why do you even bother to post on this subforum? I don’t get it m8….

Are you making this up? I played a bit last night in wvw and used Rtl and lf to escape from a zerg and there was np.

I really wish builds like this with the focus become popular so I can finally encounter at least one decent Ele with the focus off hand in WvW. I have hear there are a few out in lower tier servers but so far 0 from tier 1.

I agree the lava tomb trait in WvW can create some hilarious experiences

Kyon.9735:

We have perma vigor though we are forced to trait 10 points into it which is not really ideal if you want flexibility, that’s it for evade.

My main concern would be the cooldown on our stunbreaks. All our stunbreaks have very long cooldown that if I mess up with it, I usually have a hard time to recover. But well, that’s me. I’m not a pro who doesn’t have any problems playing the class.

Actually, an Off Topic question. Feel free to ignore me though:

How do you guys counter condi engis as a D/D or S/D? Especially ones with runes of perplexity. Even if I have lots of condi removals, they just put it back so quickly. Confusion is also a really hard counter against D/D eles. As for Diamond Skin, a few random auto attacks renders it useless. TBH I don’t even want to trait for Diamond skin just to counter 1 or 2 classes in WvW.

With d/d it might be harder but with s/d i find it best because you can keep yourself at range and be able to see and avoid the interrupts. If you use armor of earth utility works great against perpl engies too. Just avoid those confusion conditions and the engi should be a piece of cake.

STRanger.5120:

LightningBlaze.4913:

List half of these suppose bugged skills/traits because I only know very few of them. Your dependency on only 2 of our traitlines is just your own choice. I spend only 5 in arcane, 0 in water while spending the other points on the 3 so called unreliable traitlines. I do perfectly fine whether I am running by myself, in group and even in Zerg.

Ok then, let’s start with skills ok?
RTL – everybody knows how reliable this is.
LF – Well, pretty much the same case.
Eruption/Shatterstone cancelling bug (still not fixed if I remember correctly.)
Fire grab reliability is really low – due to network issues/hitbox registration (and that’s the skill with kitten CD? /facepalm)
Gale – Kinda the same case as Fire grab, but with even bigger CD…..

Traits:
Lingering elements – still not working properly, it’s like that since beta, replacement was promised though, but nobody ever cared for that and the promise vanished….
Persisting flames (Haven’t confirmed myself directly) – Lava font has no benefit from it while Blasting staff is traited.
Burning fire – I’ve seen issues reported with this one too, but I don’t use it so can’t confirm myself.
Arcane abatement – Water attunement lacks cleansing wave – Also not from my experience.

And I’m not talking about the skills/traits that are totally useless and nobody would ever use them, although half of those are minor traits that you can’t decide to replace.
Also, the double-cooldowning solution of our skills/mechanic seems like a bug to me too, because nobody with a sane mind would create such penalty for a class he would like to see balanced….

Ok you listed mostly some skills you personally consider unreliable which is only opinion and I respect that while I have a complete different perspective towards them. The main point is they are not bugged. I believe shatterstone was fixed because I don’t encounter that issue anymore. Granted lingering element is still bugged. I have hear rumors about burning fire but will have to test it to be sure. The other 2 I never hear of till now. That makes up only 4 so far…. Is that half to you?

STRanger.5120:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Again with the lowest hp and armor excuse….. The ele has plenty of defensive skills, traits and utilities.

Yeah, ele also have half of them bugged/not working correctly/heavily dependant on two of our traitlines out of five.
Seems legit….

List half of these suppose bugged skills/traits because I only know very few of them. Your dependency on only 2 of our traitlines is just your own choice. I spend only 5 in arcane, 0 in water while spending the other points on the 3 so called unreliable traitlines. I do perfectly fine whether I am running by myself, in group and even in Zerg.

Again with the lowest hp and armor excuse….. The ele has plenty of defensive and offensive skills, traits and utilities to compensate for this minor set back..

Spvp gets very boring after a bit while due to its limitations for build variety. In pve, WvW solo,small group roaming and specially in zerg the ele completely shines but it needs to be played right.

Thank you for the test Ozii. I’ll probably start running this rune for a specific s/d build.

Fishbones.6914:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Jabberwock.9014:

I’ve had good success with d/f condition build in the past, but I just hate the mobility too much, and it’s worse for soloing camps. For strict dueling though I think it is superior to d/d. I always took 20% off earth cooldown instead of rock solid since earth focus skills are by far the most important focus skills.

I don’t fear any class but thief in duels. But oh man do thieves scare me. I suppose I have been running D/D instead of D/F lately, but I’m finding good thieves are getting harder and harder to beat in any build. I’m interested how you fare against d/p or s/d thieves in WvW.

Against condition based thieves, focus skills is a major counter to them from my experience with s/f (plus the range burst from scepter helps a lot too). Now against a good power/bunker based thief running s/d you won’t be able to defeat him because s/f or d/f doesn’t provide the enough burst to down him before he can stealth and recover again. For those type of thieves you need bursty d/d or s/d playstyle.

cant say ive ever fought a power / bunker theif, but i have yet to have any REALLY long drawn out fights using d/f, the damage can be huge… 10% more damage when endurance if full and 10% more damage when ur close and sigil of force all add up nice. the only extra damage off hand dagger provides during duels is firegrab (which can be quite alot) and fire 4, unless your using churning earth and its actually hitting ppl. but like i said, dont see many bunker theives… cant imagine they hurt very much though

There aren’t that many. I have only encountered 2 players executing this playstyle from close to a year I have been roaming in wvw with my ele.They don’t hurt much but they can’t be downed with average consistent damage. Massive d/d or s/d burst is absolutely a most to down these thieves otherwise the fight can go on forever or them downing you with 4-6k consistent back stab damage if you don’t have at least 2800 armor.

Jabberwock.9014:

I’ve had good success with d/f condition build in the past, but I just hate the mobility too much, and it’s worse for soloing camps. For strict dueling though I think it is superior to d/d. I always took 20% off earth cooldown instead of rock solid since earth focus skills are by far the most important focus skills.

I don’t fear any class but thief in duels. But oh man do thieves scare me. I suppose I have been running D/D instead of D/F lately, but I’m finding good thieves are getting harder and harder to beat in any build. I’m interested how you fare against d/p or s/d thieves in WvW.

Against condition based thieves, focus skills is a major counter to them from my experience with s/f (plus the range burst from scepter helps a lot too). Now against a good power/bunker based thief running s/d you won’t be able to defeat him because s/f or d/f doesn’t provide the enough burst to down him before he can stealth and recover again. For those type of thieves you need bursty d/d or s/d playstyle.

Fishbones.6914:

yea, i am not a fan of s/f the damage doesn’t seem to be there (because of awful autoattacks), but with d/f your autoattacks put out nice damage so you can keep up constant pressure. when all else fails – lightning whip!

I’m just a big fan of scepter burst but you are right on the auto attacks about it. I just looked at your build and notice your armor number and health pool is to what I consider to be very vulnerable to burst. I know you have focus inavulnerability skill to avoid them but if you faced a skillful burst type of player that pay close attentions to your active attunement and skills you are casting and already casted I believe your undefeated streak would stop

I find focus to be really good too now that I started using it 2 weeks ago in WvW. I’m only missing to try d/f but that will be after a month or so from now. I do notice that the number one enemy I find to be very easy to defeat with s/d becomes kinda of a pain with s/f and that is a power bunker thief that constantly steaths. With s/f I just don’t have the burst necessary to bring it down before he can resteath and recover. Against condition based players, focus is very ideal to counter them.

Ogre or Scholar

Belial.1605:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Belial.1605:

Hi all,
In my honest opinion Elementalist is now unplayable in WvW and in pvp.
In 1 vs 1 there is no way to kill a guardian or a warrior, i have to wait 14 seconds to make a combo with fire field (with 30 points in arcana), and when the combo goes well there aren’t other options to damage seriously the opponent which is still alive.
Physical resistance is ridicolous against heavy classes( i have 3000 armor, not bad for a light class). I’m not leaving water and arcana too, i had to spent 20 points in water to have cleansing wave and 30 in arcana to have a good mobility and cooldown times reduced as low as possible. The situation changes against light enemies, but for me and my experience (5 months only ele) this class is the worst of the game in most of the situations. I use S/D. Sorry for my bad english.

You are focusing too much on defensive traits. Pre-patch I was also running 3k armor with rock barrier up and my burst was still high to defeat any warrior and guardian. I lowered it now to 2857 because I prefer more offense rather than defense when it comes to solo and small group roaming. The defensive utilities and sigil are way more than enough to have great survivability along with good armor and hp pool but don’t over do it to the point you are not dealing more than just average damage with s/d. I have been playing ele since beta; I am still learning and finding new ways to play this profession very well… so your 5 months playing ele is still not enough to master the class. If you are stuck on a single build/gear for many months you just won’t become better with the profession, you gotta keep experimenting and finding new ways to improve even more.

I think that you are right man, although my build worked properly since new patch. i’ll redesign that. So i need an advice, which kind of weapon set do you suggest?

Try them all for a good amount of time. I have played D/D, Staff and S/D each for various months before I decided to test other weapon sets. I’m recently trying s/f and I love it. D/F will be next. Just keep in mind a build and a weapon set alone doesn’t fully define how great you will do with the profession, what might work for others may not work for you and vice-versa. There are other important aspects you need to consider like watching your opponent buffs, skill animations, when to go close and personal and when to dps/burst at range with range weapon sets., when it is best to activate skills and utilities etc. Keep experimenting with an open mind various options the ele provides.

Edit: Most importantly completely ignore what others from the forums consider what is and what isn’t “viable”. When I was using s/d burst build (with 30 in air) before fresh air trait was introduced, many considered it to be unviable but I was doing awesome with it. Test it yourself first for a good amount of time. Every build/weapon set has it advantages and disadvantages across all the professions.

Belial.1605:

Hi all,
In my honest opinion Elementalist is now unplayable in WvW and in pvp.
In 1 vs 1 there is no way to kill a guardian or a warrior, i have to wait 14 seconds to make a combo with fire field (with 30 points in arcana), and when the combo goes well there aren’t other options to damage seriously the opponent which is still alive.
Physical resistance is ridicolous against heavy classes( i have 3000 armor, not bad for a light class). I’m not leaving water and arcana too, i had to spent 20 points in water to have cleansing wave and 30 in arcana to have a good mobility and cooldown times reduced as low as possible. The situation changes against light enemies, but for me and my experience (5 months only ele) this class is the worst of the game in most of the situations. I use S/D. Sorry for my bad english.

You are focusing too much on defensive traits. Pre-patch I was also running 3k armor with rock barrier up and my burst was still high to defeat any warrior and guardian. I lowered it now to 2857 because I prefer more offense rather than defense when it comes to solo and small group roaming. The defensive utilities and sigil are way more than enough to have great survivability along with good armor and hp pool but don’t over do it to the point you are not dealing more than just average damage with s/d. I have been playing ele since beta; I am still learning and finding new ways to play this profession very well… so your 5 months playing ele is still not enough to master the class. If you are stuck on a single build/gear for many months you just won’t become better with the profession, you gotta keep experimenting and finding new ways to improve even more.

Mbelch.9028:

LightningBlaze.4913:

The ele is the most fun class in the game imo. If you have played mages/casters type of professions on previous mmorpg and loved it…then the ele from gw2 won’t disappoint you. However, we never one shot players (except hitting chunning earth to an uplevel). What might look like a one shot to many is actually the execution of multiple instant cast skills/utilities/traits that are combined at the same time for massive burst damage. The ele is not as easy to do well compared to other professions but that’s also part of the fun.

Hmm. No I don’t frequently see myself one hitting people. I’ve one hit a few thieves, mesmers after I’ve stacked might from another fight, then LF-Churned on top of them and instagibbed them. That’s quite fun.

But I’ve 2 shotted a ton of people. Almost daily I’ll get a thief/ranger/mesmer with burning speed – fire grab combo while swapping to a different attunement.

4.5k burning speed 7.5+k fire grab = shattered glass. On heavier defense classes I can usually land 5k grabs.

I don’t one shot players either even though many tell me that I do but it is not one button pressed type of kill. Chunning earth can definitely one shot uplevels in wvw. Not even when I used to run with less armor and my chunning earth used to hit from 14-15k dmg to anyone below 2700 armor…. even then it would require for lightning Flash or any any other attack skill to down someone in a 2 shot kill. Now do I still down many players in 1-2 secs? of course.. that’s how powerful the ele can be against bad players or when you ambush someone from their blind spot (thief mode).

The ele is the most fun class in the game imo. If you have played mages/casters type of professions on previous mmorpg and loved it…then the ele from gw2 won’t disappoint you. However, we never one shot players (except hitting chunning earth to an uplevel). What might look like a one shot to many is actually the execution of multiple instant cast skills/utilities/traits that are combined at the same time for massive burst damage. The ele is not as easy to do well compared to other professions but that’s also part of the fun.

Ele is very challenging to do well in wvw roaming and even more in spvp.. in zerg within wvw is where we excel the most. It all depends on how skillful you are with the profession and your in depth knowledge of at least some of the major skills animation and rotations across the other professions to counter them.

During season 1 when BG faced maggma for the first time, there was this very skillful Staff ele player dueling and winning almost all the duels in 1v1. He came very close to defeat my ele. It was a very rare sight to see a Staff ele perform this great on 1v1 against various good players from diferent professions..

The skill isn’t as strong as I expected it to be for my burst non glass cannon Ele in WvW. The threshold gets bypassed too easily even when my burst Ele has 3k armor buffed. I can only see this trait working very well for those extremely bunker eles that run with 0/0/30/30/10 build or something very similar where even the gears are for bunker spec and probably even a defensive weapon set such d/f or s/f.

iBlasiannn.4279:

Why do you guys even bother playing ele… They are just so underpowered…, etc. QQ wow. I’m mad.

Feb! First time seeing you on the forums. This is Heidia. I play Ele because as you have seen I defeat every single player, build and profession except a very skillful Mesmer that constantly stealths. I have an alt for each profession and I kept coming back to my Ele to the point this is the only class I play now… It is that awesome.

I’ll call it first… OP!

Try s/d and take advantage of its burst and range capabilities. Even though pve is very easy, playing very well as an Ele isn’t.

The changes are awesome. I’m going to try each one of these new traits to see which is/are most efficient for my play style as a s/d and s/f burst Ele.

I’m doing perfectly fine as well with my burst Ele in both in pve and WvW… Specially now that I started experimenting with the focus as off hand in WvW solo and small group roaming.

If arcane blast still has lower cd and bigger range then I don’t see it to be replaced by wave for solo and small group roaming on my Ele.