Guild Wars 2

Ele shines best in a group situation. If you do a lot of group activities and play with friends frequently, Ele is a great profession.

Outside of that it can go quickly downhill, especially if you don’t know what to do.

Not many good builds to choose from. And a good build can be severly kittened if you don’t buy the right gear to support it. I feel they suffer much more than this than any other professions.

Still, if you are an experienced MMO player you’ll probably love the profession once you get your head around it, so go for it!

For a DPS/support, you can try…

Berserker (Pwr, Pres, Crit) stats on your armour.

With

Apothecary (Cond, Tgh, Heal) for Trinks.

Gives you a good range of stats. In a group, you get some burst damage in through air, fire and earth. Swap to water for support. Then go again.

Some people would disagree with taking condition damage, saying power is a better overall DPS increase. Truth is, that it can be pretty situational. You can swap out Apothecary for Cleric’s, if you like. You probably wouldn’t notice any difference, really.

The build lacks Vitality, so you need to learn which abilities in a boss fight will one shot you. And be ready for them. Watch players who drop light fields, combo with them to cure conditions off yourself.

For any stats you feel you are still lacking in, or want to buff more. Use the upgrade slots in your trinks to fill out you character as you see fit. Thats a further 6 slots worth of stats that you can play with.

Also, “on kill” weapon sigils that increase your stats are good, if you can stay up. The precision one or the heal one, would both support this gear well. If you struggle to stay up, you can go for “on swap” sigils. Since swapping attunements counts as weapon swapping. “On swaps” are probably the better choice if you prefer melee over ranged. Sigil of Energy for more Dodges is a great one.

FYI, I use a D/D Cantrip based, might stacking, Auramancer build. Which is pretty standard these days, it seems.

Hope I’ve helped. Have fun.

/agree

yeah i pretty much agree with everything said here.

—11. Bugs and lack of communication about bugs are demoralizing. —

I also agree with this. I understand bug fixes can take a lot of time to get done, especially if you want it done properly. But Anets ability to communicate clearly about what is happening is very poor. In comparison to other MMOs like WoW, anyway.

Honestly, a “we are aware of the problem, and we are trying to fix it” is probably all that needs to be said half the time. But we really get minimal understanding of what the Dev’s are thinking or doing. Are they happy with elementalists the way they are? Maybe, who would know?

Anet should consider hiring someone “who can cast the vision” and lets us come along for the ride. As well as let us have our say along the way. I find the lack of clear and concise communication frustrating.

Just my opinion.

Missing out on an event sucks, but missing out on a chance for a precursor is unfair.

The prize is too good to not let everyone have a chance.

Either give everyone a chance at it or don’t give away precursors.

Sadly in either case Anet could have done this is a much much better.

The Ugly

So we finally made it to Phase 3! Now we get to finish off the storyline and take part in some world boss battle that was sure to be epic!

Sadly… no. Why? Because we are Australian and the event was held over a working day (Monday). So despite the generous 12hr window, by the time I got home from work and made dinner for my wife and I, the event was over. In fact, it was over before I got home.

To add salt to the wound, I understand that pre-cursors had a 15% chance to drop and people played it through multiple times. To be sure, for us, it was anti-climaxtic. We didn’t even get to finish the storyline… So we started a story, it finished on a cliff-hanger… but the sequel never got made… (At least thats the way if feels.)

What frustrates me most though is missing out on a chance for a pre-cusor since I would love to go for a legendary. But we all felt let down. And we probably felt it more acutely because when Anet gets it right, its pretty darn good.

We went to the party but didn’t get a party bag at the end.

Conclusion

There were some real highlights for us this weekend but sadly were overshadowed by a number of failures. In the attempt to give constructive criticism I submit the following.

Personally, I would like to see some more clarity before events happen about what is actually going to happen and the timing of things. I would like to see direct links off start-up client to those things. I would like to see specific NEED TO KNOW information on those pages.

For instance, this notice does not say, there is a specific 12hr window that this must be completed in. You will need to set aside at least 3hrs minimum if you want to enjoy the event from beginning to end. It fails to give a true impression of the situation.

I would also like see Anet take care of non-american players. We already play PvP at a disadvantage due to our server being in America. Phase 3 could have been open for the full 24hrs. Even longer. Remember the other 6.7billion people outside your country! We are human too! And we wanna play! (I know, first-world problems, right!?)

A lot of PvE content that is released is released at beta quality.

• The bugged NPCs are the an example of this.
• In the dungeon, we lost a player and were forced to restart because the new player could not enter our instance. This was a problem for dungeons on the games release. Why is it happening again?
• “Citizens!…” “Citizens!…” “Citizens!…” “Citizens!…” …. need I say more?

There needs to be more testing before some things are released.

If you have actually read this far and feel you have some feedback you would like add, feel free to add it below.

First up, let me say this was my first GW event that I really got into. Halloween never interested me, it seemed all a bit…. lame. After the Halloween event though I discovered that there were a few items and jumping puzzles I really would have liked. I really had no idea what to do where to go and discovered things way to late to get involved.

So this time, my brother and I decided we were going to get into this event and play this through together and enjoy it from beginning to end. We got friends of ours who had left the game and encouraged them to get on for it.

The Good

By far the best experience we had over the weekend was the Fractual Dungeon. We only did level one. I loved that not everything was about killing the trash, then killing the boss. We had to talk through it each step and play as a team. The scenes looked awesome. Each mini dungeon has had a lot of creativity and thought put into it. Some of note were:

We had a throughly enjoyable sense of excitement once we got to Southsun Cove and began to explore through the zone. Doing the frustratingly fun jumping puzzles and taking part in the events was great fun. I love how this game rewards exploration.

Side story
We encountered a Veteran Karka for the first time. At first we didn’t notice that it would buff itself with retaliation. So we pounded it hard and it pounded us back. Only our groups Necro managed to stay up. Some how we managed to get it down. When suddenly it gets full health back. We’re all gob-smacked at first, thinking it glitched. We finally, got it down again and breath a sigh of relief, saying “We’ll avoid those in future.”

As we walk over the top of the next hill, we surveyed the land and saw the whole area was covered with them. The sense of fore-boding that fell over the group was palpable.

Now thats a game that has sucked you in! Loved it!

A handful of similar moments really made the weekend for us.

The Bad

Playing through the story was a bit rough at the beginning but that was, in part, due to us not reading carefully and not understanding that things won’t be available until later. We were under the impression the only thing to wait for was the final event. But once we got going it was fun… until we hit the first bugged NPC.

Then we frustratingly kept teleporting back to see whether it had been fixed yet or not. Wasted time and a small pile of silver. Still, we were determined to play it through and follow the story from beginning to end. Even when Phase 2 was released we didn’t go there until we finished Phase 1.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Pressing H or I takes an extra second, is it seriously that big of a deal, since you can just turn on auto run and do it real quick.

I disagree with you. If you like looking for crap in your bags and wasting time, that’s cool, but don’t try to make it so other people have to as well. That’s just being silly.

It would be a very good “quality of life” change for the game when it comes to dual weapons. I find I also have to go find my off weapon in bags when I need it cos it gets lost and changes locations.

I would really appreciate a keybind that would allow me to swap weapon sets in and out without having to doing all the fiddly stuff. Especially since I get bored and like to mix up what weapons I use.

I support this post and hope that one Anet will consider doing something like this. Weapon Bags aren’t a good enough solution for me.

I had a similar experience, in regards to PvE, so I agree with you.

What I Leveled as

Leveled as to 80 as an Ele.

Then leveled a Guardian (currently lvl 72) and I was laughing the whole way.Why? because the difference in ease increased substantially. I am leveling a Warrior now as well (level 26), so I know what you mean.

What People Think

Now, people will say something like “Eles are meant to be harder they have a higher skill-cap.” or “You suck as an Ele player, lrn2play noob.”

To which I have two replies:

1. Show me anywhere where Anet says that the elementalist is an elitist (non-core) class only for the more skilled GW2 players. Truth is, if you give a skilled Elementalist any other class and they will own. Meaning, that just because there is a higher skill cap, doesn’t mean there should be one. The fact that there is indicates there may be something wrong with the balancing of the class.

2. I am skilled with my Ele and with MMO gaming. I know how to learn a new class, test things for myself, build and rebuild specs. Not boasting, just believe me when I say, I have enough skill to make educated comments about this topic.

My Conclusion

I LOVE my Ele but I have come to the same conclusion. I play my Ele for dungeons and thats it. I would play my Ele in WvW but the build I would use would be a Staff build that conflicts with my Daggers build. And I don’t like re-speccing all the time, it’s a pain. Also Staff builds are…. kinda boring, effective, but boring.

Some Reasonings and Thoughts Regarding this Topic

The reason (or a reason) I believe, is that, Ele’s are far more gear reliant than other classes. You can have a great build, but without the right gear to support it can effectively become ineffective. While other classes, particularly, Warriors and Guardians, can swap around far more easily and with far fewer restrictions.

Also heavy armour is basically free toughness, which Ele’s are in short supply of. Which means we have to sacrifice even more offensive power to get to a similar level to these other classes, and when we do, we still have substantially less hp then they do. Effectively forcing some players into a tanking build just to “get by.” While if that player played another class, that same person wouldn’t even have to think about making a tank build. They would just play what they want. In other words, there may be an issue with Power to Survivability issue with Ele’s.

Thieves and Mesmers, for instance, get a lot of defensive capabilities passively built in. Ele’s don’t. What abilities we do get can often be glitchy or unavailable due to stance dancing CDs.

To be honest, seems like a troll post to me.

- you’ve played til lv 30 in PvE (not that that makes your opinion worthless but wait til you have to play against risen by yourself)
- you do ok at PvP (not any different to most people here, also you play a tanking build)

Maybe you should play the class longer, you might get to understand the nuances of the class that people are taking about.

Seriously though, if you have played other classes and played an elementalists with any real degree of thought, you would see some gapping holes when you have them compared to other classes.

There is some not so great things going on with our traits. Our choice of truly effective builds seems quite limited.

Anyway, good to see your enjoying the class. I love my elementalist too.

Good thoughts.

We do get some good abilities. But we have a lot of restrictions when it comes to using them as well. Since we have ability cool downs and attunement cool downs. So just because we have them doesn’t mean we have them when we need them. Especially in PvP, simple is simply better.

Bad Builds and Weapon Swapping

Unfortunately for us, it is just far easier to create a bad build than it is for other professions. And the fact that we can’t swap weapons while in combat, can force us to get stuck using abilities, which aren’t what we actually need for the situation. Eg Sometimes a D/D Ele needs to swap to a staff because range is sometimes a majour factor in a fight.

Which means we have to build our builds around our weapon choice. While other classes can build effective builds and swap weapons in or out according to taste. We can’t do that, at least not as easily and not without making some majour sacrifices. Because the traits I go for with D/D are different to the ones that I would play with using Staff.

Who said Ele’s are meant to be hard to play?

I disagree with this idea that elementalists are meant to be hard to play. Where did it ever say that? They aren’t a “hero” class. They aren’t something special to be unlocked by players who have the skill and time to unlock them. They are a standard core class. Any player with any skill level should be able to enjoy them. With the option for more skilled players being able to take the class to another level. This is the goal that Anet set for themselves. Attunement swapping is meant to be a different play style choice. Not a handicap function to make it harder for the elementalist player.

Conclusion

Ultimately I disagree with you. There isn’t a pay off for the all the extra things we manage. A thief can nuke 70%-100% of my life in an opening combo, when done properly. We don’t have the option to return the favour, even if I make a glass-canon style build. At very least we have to go through a lot more button clicks to achieve the same result.

Yes the change to downed state was a noticeable improvement. I don’t think we get the best downed state abilities but now I feel like we have something! Wisp Away!

THANK YOU!! <3

Mixed gear Set.

Note: Daggers glow blue in darkness, which is pretty cool.

Burrid.4739:

Pyrial.2917:

Burrid.4739:

@Pyrial, I don’t think elementalist is fine with just that.
They need to relook at our traits to make other builds viable as well, not just earth/water/arcane..

We have as many viable builds as other professions, imo.

Not in my opinion.

Have to agree with Burrid here.

Ele isn’t broken but its not balanced well either.

Yeah I remember doing that, such a pain. I was a glass cannon type spec at the time too. That made it a hundred times worse.

Problem I found at the time was that you had to kite them, but kiting them minimised my DPS a lot. It was pretty painful.

Solutions

1. Just get a friend or a guildie to help you. Thats the easiest way.

2. Conjure Flaming Greatsword is a great kiting tool with good damage and cripples thrown in. If you have that skill, use it. You’ll suddenly find it much much easier to get through by yourself.

3. Re-build your spec and go for toughness, slows, speed boosts, vigor. Maybe even buy some greens off TP to buff up some stats, especially if some of your gear pieces are lower level then the recommended quest level. Also consider buying sigils like Majour Energy, which give you 25% more endurance everytime you change attunement.

Good luck

I would love it if Elementalists could use Swords.

1. You admit yourself that your elementalist doesn’t compare to your guardian.

2. Seems that you are complaining about complainers ; P

3. Sadly, things don’t change unless people complain about them.

4. People don’t complain about something they don’t care about.

5. Glad you love your elementalist, cos we all do! Thats why we are here!

Welcome to the club! /hug

/disagree

I think saying “If your having trouble with your elementalist, then your just not very skilled.” is an over simplified and somewhat arrogant stand point.

Elementalists aren’t a broken class but they aren’t well balanced either. And if the answer was that simple, it wouldn’t still be an issue. But it is still an issue. The problem is far more complex than simply rotating through your elements and making sure you dodge…

I, for one, love my elementalist despite any flaws in the profession. But having played other professions, I can see that the class lacks potency for the amount of effort you need to put into the class. For us Eles, we have to live with the fact that our profession is a hard one for Anet to balance. It seems we can very easily become under or over-powered with little middle ground to work with.

/agree

I would like to see Anet manage abilities in a balanced way within the context of the world.

While in mist form you should remain invulnerable and not be subject to cripples, bleeds and other conditions.

When you start to compare what other professions can do it doesn’t seem fair. But I won’t go there…

Where World of Warcraft went Wrong

Sadly I think they are following World of Warcraft down a dark road here. The road where they change things but no one asks, “How does this change fit into the world the characters live in.”

A good example would be the Misdirect ability for hunters, in WoW. It was an ability that was an solution to a question, “How do we make Hunters the class that makes the pulls in dungeons? What tools do they need to do this effectively?” So the hunter can now shot someone in the head and the guy that is hit is so angry that he ignores the hunter that shot him and attacks the most heavily armoured and toughest person in your group. It works in practice, but makes no sense within the context of the game world.

Where GW2 can go Right!

Mist form shouldn’t be affected by conditions before or during the effect. Because that makes sense within the context of the world. But when it comes to changing something the question that Anet has failed to ask is, “Does this ability still make sense and have context within the world we have created?”

Sometimes, it better to replace the move entirely but this is rarely done as it may require new animations to give it context.

I hope GW2 doesn’t go down this road and works real hard at making the best game possible. But I think as time goes on and changes are made, its the path of least resistance that is followed. I don’t want another Wold of Warcraft, I want something better.

Haha, I agree.

I’ve often used that shout and thought, “But retreating is the exact opposite of what I am doing.” In fact I almost never use it to retreat.

I don’t know what you can change it to but it does feel weird when you are using it but not retreating, lol.

After playing an elementalist, playing a guardian was pretty easy breezy. GW2 on easy mode. However, that doesn’t mean the class has no weaknesses. As we all know, once a player has discovered a weakness of yours, he will exploit it as much as he possibly can.

Also it can be hard to specialise in one way then have to deal with situations your build doesn’t cater for. Suddenly you can feel very under powered.

eg. My ele had a very good support based build. In group situations he shone, however, when it came to solo questing or certain personal storyline events… it was impossibly hard… and ultimately I had to drop the spec and create a whole new build, re-do my armour and re-manage my stats just to be able to survive in certain situations.

Guardian is no different (although, it is much harder to get it wrong).

As for the Greatsword nerf, Anet has messed around with something and the reason they gave for the nerf makes no sense. ie The problem: Retaliation, Answer: Move all the GS abilities around and increase the CDs of said abilities. Its all very confusing and frustrating for a lot of players.

/agree, good post

Anet needs to make a response.

The changes just don’t make sense, and someone should explain it all. By now, Anet should have made one of two actions:

1. Reset things, saying “Our bad, we are going to comeback at this later.”
2. They should have given a full explanation of their plan, whether they think it worked or not and what they plan to do in the future.

Its bad customer service to not have got a response by now.

The Lack of Response is a Bad sign

No response is probably the worst sign we could get. It possibly says one of three things:

1. Anet doesn’t think there is a problem. The problem is in the players and they just need to get used to it.
2. Anet doesn’t know whats going on or what to do about, so they are holding back to see “how it all pans out.” Maybe it will just go away.
3. Anet is aware of the issue but wants to keep something secret so they can announce later “hey we did this cool thing to guardians, aren’t you lucky that we just keep improving the game for you.”

Hopefully its the 3rd one but there should still have been a response by now.

But seriously, this update should never have gone live and I think Anet know it but won’t retract it. They are going to push forward with it. Which means things will probably get worse before it gets better. It seems in their efforts to make GW2 an e-sport they are pretty willing to sacrifice other parts of the game for it.

Bottom line

Bottom line, for me. They did nothing that I can see that nerfed retaliation. The GS rotation is less fun to play now. So I am still asking why?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Also, GS used to be very formulaic. There was a single optimal skill sequence, that was basically about using 2->3->4, and 2->3 when 4 was under recharge. Now that the symbol has double the recharge than Whirling Wrath, we’re going to see the wrath not combo with it half the times, and the other skills way less, giving some sort of decision making behind the symbol usage. Before, we could spam condition removal and retaliation. It was a mindless, noob weapon. Spam 234, and you get massive melee-range aoe, condition removal two times, tick damage, loads of burning, and loads of retaliation. You spammed 234 in pve, and you would win against almost everything. Now, the retaliation stacking and the two free condition removals are more valuable, because they’re less frequent, and that’ll lead to decision making about the best time to use the symbol.

I think it’s simply a funnier playstyle as it is now.

After playing the “new” GS for a bit, I have to say I disagree. This new style is more mindless. I have always saved Leap of Faith for when I needed it. Now I save Symbol of Wrath as well. So now I am spending 90% of the time doing whirl, auto attacks, whirl, auto attacks. Or you simply spend most of your time on my other weapon and coming back to GS only when I need to.

I get that there are some aspects that are better, like Leap of Faith on a smaller CD can potentially be good. But it is situational.

Overall, I find it to more formulaic then previously and less entertaining to play. Mostly cos your being re-active rather than proactive. The old style was more fun. At least before auto attacks were part of my rotation, now it feels like auto attacks are my rotation.

1-1-1-3, 1-1-1-3, 1-1-1-3, oh wait sorry… I mean 1-1-1-2, 1-1-1-2… my bad, old habits are hard to break :P

This isn’t a positive change, I still find myself shocked that this fix got through… Whose in charge?

I have 3 issues with this Greatsword change:

1. Despite reading the patch notes, I am still no wiser as to how re-arranging my buttons helps “the retaliation issue.”

2. Do we really have to randomly rearrange things? I felt like I was insane when I logged on today. I don’t normally look at my bars but now I have to constantly. At least till I get used to it.

So annoying. I thought you guys “didn’t rush to solutions” preferring to take your time and get it right first time. So seriously what happened? Who thought this was a good idea? Is this really gonna stay this way?

I can see you put them in order of CDs but are you really going to rearrange my buttons every time you change a CD?!

3. PLEASE GET THIS:
>>>> I want to do cool looking moves more often, not less. <<<<<<<

These patch changes highlighted this for me.

Symbol of wrath on a 20sec CD. Kinda cool looking.

Whirling wrath on a 10sec CD. The most UTTERLY STUPID looking move in the entire game, used more frequently, why?

Whirling wrath has an IDIOTIC animation! C’mon boys! Lets pirouette more! Can you please make my character look cool, not stupid. I know, lazy animators right? They think they are smart because they re-used the throw animation and made one animation into two. They think no one will notice, hehe… out-smarted everyone… -_-

Can we do the stupid moves LESS and NOT MORE!

WW should be an awesome move on a high CD to make up for the TERRIBLE ANIMATION! Instead its an ok move, that we have to do all the time…. every ten seconds to be exact…

I really hate bad animations and making them my highest used move outside of auto attack is irritating. I tolerated this move before but now…. the thought that the worst move also being the most common move, well… presses my buttons for some reason.

In any case, I don’t really care about retaliation issues… no offence, but thats your job. You’re making my favourite weapon worse! Not better! Find an intelligent solution to the problem and don’t release terrible animations in the first place please!

One (of many things) I would like to see improved is the flexibility and user friendliness of Elementalist.

When i have D/D out and I need to use my staff for a certain boss and some bright spark pulls before I am ready. I am stuck with D/D for that boss fight. Can’t swap. Or some phases I can’t effectively use my close range abilities but in other phases I can. I have to decide before the fight which weapon to favour and therefore which phase I will favour.

I can’t seem to get a build I like where I can use both D/D and staff, and be effective in dungeons and solo. Always seem to be having to sacrifice something.

You might say, I ask to much from the profession. Maybe, but when I play my guardian who has a large range of weapon choice, large range of play-styles and a large range of viable builds to choose from, I find myself asking, “Why can’t my Ele be a bit more like this?” Just a tad more flexible and user friendly would be nice.

I made a male charr ranger that I really liked. Then I saw charr with a fluffy white tail. (Bare with me, as I set the scene for my conundrum).

I like that tail better so I re-made my charr, only to discover to get the fluffy white char tail you had to make a female. Now as it happens, I don’t like the female voice. I really liked the male voice, especially in story mode. I want to have a fluffy white tail AND be male!

Seems a small choice right? But I find that either way I don’t feel very inclined to play the character now. Looks or sound… looks or sound…

I keep rolling humans… and I want to try something else but… I just don’t get into the other races in this game… why can’t I have the look and the sounds I want? sniff, sniff :’(

Am I the only one who wants more out of Chars? Has anyone else suffered this way? I ask you now brothers, should I choose to Charr or not to Charr?

Did Arah today. Got 20 badges instead of 60 even though its the next day…

Was so annoyed and distracted that I left without looting last chest. I couldn’t get back into the instance, (even though I was in the same group) to go in and loot it…

Have to say, not very happy with the way it works. I should be able to clearly see when dungeons reset. And any majour loot not collected should be mailed to you, or given a warning that you haven’t collected it or I should be able to go back in and get it.

When the dungeons are this hard and take so long (Giganticus waste-an-hour), to not get rewarded is highly irritating. This has destroyed all the fun-value I had in doing the run today. And lets not talk about those failed Arah runs where I got no badges from them…

Don’t get me wrong, I like hard, but I want to be rewarded.

My Ele, as he currently is Sept 22nd 2012

/agree

This is the best explanation I’ve seen so far that I agree with.

Have to say Ele is not completely unplayable but it lacks something, especially in PvP.

And the traits are boring and don’t synergise well at all. You do have to work a lot harder for Ele and for less reward.

Really really wanted to play a Dagger / Dagger Ele. But sadly its probably the worst Weapon combo for Ele atm. : (

Haha, HS Spam ftw!