Guild Wars 2

Nope, I barely use mine.

Elemental: Boring, not all that strong. The fire and air versions die when something sneezes at them, none of them deal much damage. None of them feel even remotely elite.

Tornado: Weak damage. Annoying in PvE, easily avoided in PvP.

Greatsword: Trade 20 skills for 5 skills that have little synergy. The sword has 2 gap closers to get in melee range, so you can….use your 3 ranged attacks on the target? It makes no sense, it’s a mid range weapon, why does it have 2 gap closers? I mean sure they can be used to gain distance as well, but they’re clearly designed for offensive purposes (since they deal damage in the process).

I enjoy Elementalist, but things like our terrible elites and terrible downstate really frustrate me with the class sometimes. Makes you feel like Anet doesn’t care about your class at all, to have the released the game with those abilities in this state, and then continue to ignore it.

Kurow.6973:

This has got to be a joke thread…right?!?

…or are people really just this bad at attunement swapping?

GW2 is NOT like your typical MMO. You CAN’T expect to 1-2-3-4 to victory. Get better at YOUR class, and learn BOTH the mechanics AND the skills of OTHER classes. So you know what to look out for, and how to adapt accordingly.

Can you tell me which attunement I should switch to to get elites actually worth using?

Which attunement for a downed state that isn’t a free stomp?

Infamous Helba.3024:

A lvl 20 geared can reach way better stats than a lvl 80 just FYI (on a low hp pool class I can reach 25k+ hp while having 3.2k dmg), not all of them were 80 but if you open your eyes you will be able to recognize some lvl 80 armors. Also good thieves using dagger storm, do they really exist ? Don’t make me

Someone who is level’d in WvW is way weaker than a true level 80. You need to take some low level classes into WvW and try it. When I was leveling my Elementalist, I didn’t notice this, it seemed fine, but that’s because everybody was leveling at the time. Now taking other classes into WvW as low level, I notice just how bad my damage output is (even more so if you’re condition based because you’re stuck with the ticks for ~45 instead of ~110), and just how squishy they all are, and that’s not even taking into account the missing skills and missing traits, which for some classes are huge game changers.

In WvW I’m mostly running a staff support/AoE build, aka a terrible 1v1 build. I got jumped in the borderlands jumping puzzle at the chest by a thief. I was actually not paying attention and was looking at something on my second screen, he got a full pistol whip off before I even tried to fight back, and the damage was just pathetic. I bet I could have stood there and tanked his pistol whip spam while auto attacking him to death. Really, I should have been a free kill, instead he didn’t even stand a chance. I think you underestimate just how much of an advantage being level 80 in WvW is.

I must be missing something here. Video proof of Ele being fine, using a WvW video, against what is most likely a bunch of level 5’s running around in WvW with 1/10th of the damage, survivability, or skills of level 80 characters?

These people just about all died like they were class cannon specs, without the actual damage output you can expect from classes like that built as glass cannons, so I’m guessing they were low level.

Yeah, a level 80 with full traits/unlocks/gear and a solo spec can beat up newbies in WvW, that’s not really saying much. If you were a thief you’d probably have wiped out that whole group chasing you in one dagger storm.

Our elite skill is so elite I’d rather have another utility slot a lot of the time, thanks ANet.

Edit: Nm your changed your post.

Anyway I love the videos, thanks!

Replect.3407:

So if I use my arrow cart and see it taking something like ~336 damage secondly each time I fire it into the zerg, that means someone down there uses retaliation?

Yep. It’ll take out the arrow cart after 2-3 shots.

I believe it depends on the person doing the blast, not the person that placed the field. Without any healing gear it’s about 1300 aoe heal per combo.

The elemental or racial elites if some of them appeal to you. The sword does decent if you like the conjure based stuff, but it’s not really more powerful than your base spells, costs an elite slot, and means you sacrifice all utility you have from other elements. Tornado is useless in PvE, haven’t had a chance to test whirlpool yet now that it’s been fixed, I avoid water combat like the plague.

Staff is great in WvW. As support one of it’s big selling points is reliable water fields that can be combo’s for AoE healing (something the other weapons don’t have).

Yeah downed vs downed Ele does well thanks to mist form.

The problem is downed with teammates around. Other classes can postpone the stomp by themselves to give teammates a chance to help. Elementalist is a free stomp.

Bellok.4180:

Retaliation may be op as well, especially when los should be involved. Notice how I did adress that issue passively by stating that los is bugged right now. Usually when I see the big pink shield I don’t shoot at it.

I see, you don’t even understand what we’re talking about. I’m not talking about feedback, which is the big pink bubble. I’m talking about the boon called retaliation. There’s a couple of AoE versions of it, but the easiest way to AoE it is to blast combo a light field. There is no line of sight involved in any of this.

When you hit a zerg with retaliation, your arrow cart will take ~330’ish damage for each person hit, for each arrow damage tick. That means your arrow cart literally dies in 2 shots. There is no counter to this, besides not shooting. There is no clear indication who has this buff, and it’s fairly easy to apply for certain classes (especially guardian). Incidentally, using meteor shower on a zerg with retaliation is suicide as well.

I’m starting to doubt you take issue with meteor shower specifically, and are either just trolling or hate elementalists. There are so many other things wrong with arrow carts, including retaliation already mentioned before (which is far worse when it comes to ruining arrow carts than meteor shower), yet all you do is post the same statements over and over, stubbornly refusing to address anything that you can’t answer with “lol meteor shower OP”.

Mist form is great for a downed skill, it’s very useful. Too bad you won’t see mist form 99% of the time in PvP because you have no way to interrupt the stomp. Every single class besides elementalist can interrupt one stomp, many of them can do it to everything (so that multiple stomps at the same time still fail). Elementalist is the only class that can’t prevent a stomp, mist form takes too long.

Why should every class in the game get the chance to interrupt it, except the class that is the squishiest in the first place?

CoF runs is another popular one

You’re still ignoring the point that meteor shower can be avoided with good cart placement (although I’ll grant you that some towers/keeps are really bad with this) whereas AoE retaliation simply has no counter besides not shooting.

Arrow carts in general just don’t feel like the zerg breaker I thought they were designed to be. Put, say, 10 people on arrow carts, throw a huge zerg at the keep, and they’ll still take it anyway. Arrow carts don’t put out enough pressure to force a huge zerg away, and if some of them are actually smart enough to use retaliation your cart will vaporize.

The solution is to place arrow carts on the back end of the wall, not the front. With some camera turning, you can still easily shoot where you want with the cart, but you’re far less susceptible to AoE’s.

The main thing with Meteor Shower is, it’s one of the few areas where it’s actually really useful, hitting people on walls. When hitting the zerg in open world, it typically won’t hit much unless you walk really close to hit it in their middle (at which point you’ll die trying to cast it), and when defending keeps, it’s far easier to dodge for the attackers because of the amount of room they have to work with. Basically, it’s superb area denial, but the place that most strongly applies is walls because of the limited area to work with.

I’m not sure it’s overpowered, because it’s rather limited and can be countered with better arrow cart placement. As far as arrow carts go, I find AoE retaliation far worse. Nothing worse than hitting a zerg with your arrow cart and watching 2/3rd of it’s health disappear due to retal.

It’s not just you. Elementalist underwater combat feels terrible, like I’m 20 levels below the mobs or something. On some other classes (not all), underwater combat feels great. I enjoy it on my thief. On the elementalist though, I want to avoid it at all cost, and is I am forced to do it, I just want to get it over with ASAP.

Above water, I can kill mobs in under 10 seconds pretty easily. I can aoe groups of mobs pretty easily too. Under water, even a single mob feels like some sort of epic encounter that I can easily lose (a single friggin mob) and that drags on for entirely too long.

If they ever add major underwater content, I’m just plain skipping it in the current Ele state, it’s not enjoyable at all.

If you get disconnected while in a dungeon, forget it, you’re screwed. Either start over or the rest will have to 4 man, because it’s impossible to rejoin.

If someone leaves or gets kicked mid run. Yep, you’re done again, can’t get someone new in.

If you looked at the portal the wrong way, forget it, it’ll just split your party.

As I’m writing this we’ve now been spending 20 minutes trying to get into the same instance again after a disconnect. We’ve already had to accept we’re starting over, but on top of that we can’t even start a new one because it keeps splitting our party. What on earth is going on with this? Why on earth is it so difficult to put 5 people into the same area, and how was this not discovered during beta? It happens just about constantly. Was this just ignored, or not tested at all?

Something I’ve noticed, whenever I throw grenades up at people standing on a wall that can be destroyed, it simply doesn’t seem to do anything. No detonation, they just disappear. Am I missing something here, or is this a bug?

I agree that the healing turret is very useful when detonated to combo it’s water field, but the water field combo isn’t anywhere near as strong as the turret’s own heal. Turret heal is like 5k without gear, and the water combo is like 1300 without gear. That’s not two big heals, that’s one big heals and a nice bonus (with the added benefit of it being AoE).

Compare it to the medkit, which heals for the same, typically with a slightly lower cooldown (thanks to traits). Medkit also gets 3 medpacks for ~1k each (again without gear), a condition removal, and the fury/swiftness.

In the end, which is more useful is gonna depend on the situation. Using the medpacks is more time intensive, but it also heals for slightly more (on one target). The turret is by no means a stationary thing though, you can run away, drop the turret and combo it without missing the combo heal, so it’s not as if you need to huddle around it waiting for the combo.

Main issue I have with the orb is that it’s starting spot is just terrible. I’d much prefer if defenders had the ability to move it to the garrison whenever they wanted to, instead of having to wait for attackers to take it, all so they can move it. Pretty silly that the defense can’t move it to a safer location unless the enemy takes it first.

Strang.8170:

Quickly counted 7 threads on the first page that are about or have devolved to being about eles being underpowered. That´s my problem, not the fact that there´s A thread about it. (and also to lesser extent the fact that it´s mostly people raging about it rather than discussing).

This often happens when people feel their issues are glaring, but the developers are not taking their time to talk to the community about things. It happens in every MMO forum there is. If the class is mostly fine, you might see the occasional post like this. If many people feel the class is broken, you’ll see lots of posts like this. It won’t end until it’s been addressed or the perception of the class has changed (because the meta game shifted/etc). Even rerolling won’t fix this, because plenty of people will troll their old class forum warning everybody else just how terrible the class is, simply because they are upset that they were “forced” to reroll.

And just why wouldn´t we put up with it? It´s fun, you play games to have fun, enjoy.
If it really needs balancing, Anet will balance it. People will can and should discuss the balance but i´m trying to say that we don´t need full forum to be dedicated on raging and flaming about it.

Exactly because it is a game. If someone has dedicated a large amount of time to their class already, they shouldn’t be told “Oh well you have chosen poorly, better luck next time”. People don’t accept that answer, nor should they have to.

If you´re kinda people who enjoys having the optimal build/profession/grop, you´re free to switch, and maybe come back again once future patch tips the balance in our favor.

So spend even more time leveling a new character, gearing it, etc, all to kill time until they fix the one you really want to play? You think this is a reasonable answer? The mass of forum posts you complain about certainly don’t seem to agree with this notion.

Personally I think Elementalist is a fun class. I do think it has quite a few issues that need to be addressed. The problem is, if this whole thing continues for too long without a reaction from Anet, we will reach a stage where it becomes “common knowledge” that Elementalists are useless, at which point they will struggle to find groups. This happens all the time in other MMO’s, and despite their whole ordeal about not needing the holy trinity, I’m already starting to see a lot of specific class requests for groups (especially guardian).

In solo PvE I feel fine, although taking a bit more effort to kill things than a warrior who can facetank everything I need to avoid.

In dungeons I feel very useful, although with a glass cannon build it’s not uncommon to get downed in 1 hit, so you need to be on the ball with avoiding things.

In sPvP I feel extremely limited in what builds are actually viable, because anything that’s not built for durability feels like a free kill.

In WvW I feel like a monster with staff AoEs.

I don’t think it’s as bad as people say. There’s some issues that I think need addressing, our boring and mediocre elites, our terribly downed state, etc. Overall, I think the class is quite fun.

Valhalla.5620:

Why is “Tornado” not deflecting projectiles? It doesn’t make sense right

The silly part is that a Thief spinning around can apparently deflect projectiles fine, but turning into air to form a tornado, not only has no effect on arrows, but they still damage you like before. ><

Pinkerton.5643:

With Tornado, you’re doing it wrong. I’ve done plenty of PvP, I always use Tornado, and I use it very often. At least once or twice a match. I have only ever died once while in tornado form. Also, I can stop an entire team from capping a point for a significant amount of time by myself when I use Tornado. I repeat, you’re doing it wrong.

Notice the WvW part? That’s not sPvP. In sPvP, there are very few people, and there’s a good chance you can shut down the ones that would be able to attack you. Try the same thing in WvW where there’s a few dozen people not getting hit by your tornado and able to attack you from range.

The only attunement I find lacking for staff is air. It’s still useful for its utility, but the first 2 attacks are very disappointing, and gust feels kinda meh for it’s cooldown and effect (it misses so easily, it just feels a lot less useful than the dagger and focus #5, which have relatively similar effects).

PvE:

Elemental: It’s alright, nothing spectacular. It’s useful, but it’s pretty boring, since we get the same thing (but weaker) as a utility skill as well. Don’t expect me to get excited about a copy/paste elite.

Tornado: lol

Sword: Meh. It’s alright damage, it looks really cool, but I just don’t feel it’s strong enough for an elite. It’s got the cool factor, but I actually feel more limited using the sword.

WvW:

Elemental: Useful in something like a 1v1, anything else it’ll be dead in seconds.

Tornado: When multiple elementalists use this at the same time against a zerg hitting the door, it can be devastating, but extremely situational. Very cool when it works, too bad it’s useless or plain suicide 99% of the time.

Sword: Again, doesn’t feel that special, and I simply lose too many spells using the sword.

Basically, the elemental is ok in PvE most of the time, but it’s a plain boring spell because it’s a copy/paste of a utility. Tornado can be ok in WvW, under the right conditions. Most of the time, I’d just rather have another utility slot. That screams of utterly failed design with elites, if I’d even consider wanting to use another utility slot instead. You have some classes who have extremely useful elites, where they can’t wait to unlock them. If they removed my elite slot entirely, I wouldn’t even notice most of the time. That’s just a giant failure by Anet.

Bibidiboo.6409:

EasymodeX.4062:

Bibidiboo.6409:

It does.
It hits 11 times AoE.
First 5 hits do 1500-3000 damage
Last 6 hits do 4000-7500

Depends on amount of crits.

Full lvl 80 exotic berserker gear.

Protip: your iWarden is hitting for 350-700 damage per hit.

I’m not sure what builds you use, but ill happily film it if you want.

For iWarden, and any other chain attacks like it, the increasing damage numbers are not individual hits becoming increasingly more powerful, but rather the damage is being added together. If your iWarden hits for 45k, then the final number you see before he finishes his spin is 45k. I highly doubt you see this.