Guild Wars 2

Mbelch.9028:

I was flamed on another thread for saying this, but I’m doing really well in SPvP on my ele, and no you won’t find in my post history that I’m a closet warrior.

I worked hard to make a build I felt countered the two different offenses, conditions and power, and I built around that to buff my damage after I built tanky.

I die less than once per game, and when I’ve dueled in SPvP, I’ve had almost a flawless record, but I did come across one build I simply couldn’t beat. The terrormancer necro spec.. I am sure if I dueled it more, I’d come up with something, but I only dueled the guy about 4 times and I lost each one.

I have yet to come across a build I can’t tie at least minus that necro spec. (What really got me were the constant fears plus his dual health pool. I got him to 30% just about each fight despite that)

I’ve played ele for a long time, but not since beta (I play on a mac) and I think if you really practice your build and balance it to all situations, you can do well.

Now I’ll restate what got me flamed in the other thread — I do think we need major help, but I think those who are skilled can make it work.

Guild Wars 2 is very much about player skill. Someone skillful enough can be anyone (theoretically anyway).

Those who are very skillful can do well as an elementalist, but I would argue that they could do much better with any other profession.

Playing as a elementalist is a lot like playing on hard mode. Many times missing with a dodge means death, where other classes have room to make 1 – 3 mistakes. Our DPS is split between Direct Damage and DOT for every weapon set (more noticeable on the scepter and Staff). Our DPS can burst very well, but it is as good as what other classes can achieve (some can do better). And don’t forget most of optimal builds involve a lot of attunement swapping, skill selecting, and ground targeting which is just a ton of information to manage all while having to memorize the animations and cool downs of other classes to time dodges and other active defenses.

If you can spend anytime playing as an elementalist you pick up some really good habits (and lose some bad ones, or die a lot). I do not think many people will challenge that the elementalist is so weak that it cannot do well, most of the agruments are that elementalist have to work harder than any class and sacrifice more than any class just to stay in the game.

When we are finally balanced out there is going to be a lot of other classes crying the Elementalist is OP because we have gotten used to playing on hard mode. I look forwards to the day that a mediocre Elementalist can beat a mediocre warrior about half the time.

We used to have little to no cooldown (alpha) when switching attunement. Then they put in traits and needed a 5th trait to do a class specific assist (as near as I can figure).

also kits use a utility slot, ours is a f1-f4 slot.

I will have to chime in the Earth Elemental makes a great tank.

• I regularly solo WvW camps letting them wail on the Earth Elemental while I use a staff or scepter to hit them all.
• In PvE it can normally stand against a champion long enough to take the pressure off you or someone else.
• The Ice golem has a useful heal, and is still hard to kill.
• I have yet to find a good use for them in PvP yet. Does anyone have any good ideas?

If you already have a tank there is probably little need for them as there are better skills for DPS, but if you are looking for something to hide behind, I recommend elementals.

Josh Davis.6015:

Friendly neighborhood Grouch here (oxymoron?). Starting in early January I’ll be working more closely with the Skills and Balance team and with you all as well. While our Skills/Balance designers do read the forums quite often, they don’t have as much time to post and drive discussion – and that’s what I’ll be stepping in to help with.

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

I think more visibility and discussion focusing will definitely help the tone of the Elementalist forum. I for one can vouch that my tone turned bitter from the feeling of being ignored.

Enjoy the holiday.

Ether renewal has saved my kitten more than a couple of times. It may be passive, but it is alarming on how easily some classes can chain immobilize (or cripple). (I also really like the 15 second CD)

Each skill has its advantages and drawbacks though, so there is no best heal. There is only an optimal heal in different situations. (In PvE I have made good use of signet of restoration on a set in Stone build)

I watched the 12/20 Twitch TV and found some interesting information out

This is all from Tyler Chapman

• There will be a balance CDI coming next year
• Elementalist will be getting more love in the next balance patch
• Tyler plays an Elementalist (d/d 0 30 20 15 5 zephyrs boon, zephyrs focus, tempest defense, elemental shielding, rock solid, vital striking with soldier amulet zerk jewel)
• There will be a balance stream coming up (I think the next one) in two weeks.

Not that the Protest has a lot of momentum, but I think we should wait and see what happens in the next few months. We have already waited this long.

Tyler Chapman joined the chat channel. He mentioned that Balance will be a CDI discussion next year.

They are going to wait about a month anyway for this balance patch to work its way through.

Those of you who have seen my posts can see that I am not an Anet Fanboy, but I will hold out hope that when we get to the CDI we can convince Anet to take a close look as the Elementalist mechanics.

@FrownyClown,

I agree that all of them taken in one patch we make us overpowered, I just thought I would create a short list of inequities I have either noticed, or that I have seen posted on the forum a lot.

If we go for all of them Anet will write us off as unrealistic, but if we carefully select just a few I think Anet will take notice. The big hurdle is going to convince Anet that there is a problem (I have a feeling that class balance may not be only an Elementalist problem as well, this may precipitate as large of an overhaul as PvP, or horizontal / vertical progression).

I would even be happy if they put us on the agenda for a CDI (not just balancing the Elementalist of course, but general class balance). This way we could state our case in front of everyone and get Dev feedback.

Lian Olsam.9541:

so finally i’ve decided to left this class, is too underpowered in front of other classes, there is no point to play it on pve… i wrote alot of suggest (like others) but it seems anet doesent care or think ele its fine like that…. i already have guard and war, i’ve decided to switch my war as main character.. with him i can go full dps w/o any problem in any content, with my ele with zerk gear and bunker build (for stay alive) i have same survivability but i do 1/4 of damage doing alot of combos switching dodging blablabla with war autoattack i do more dmg, 100b, eviscerate, longbow #3 is better than every kind of ele combos (i’m talking about war but it’s the same with guards mesmer etc etc…)

there is no point to play it anymore, it hardest to play (i like that, you need skill to play it and i love it) but there is no benefits, i dont wanna do more dmg then other classes, but i wanna have same dmg and same survivability, and actually i have less of anything… i’m forced to play 30 in water for some nice traits and more hp, same on arcana for evasive arcana and elemental attunement…

someone told me on forum he can play 30 30 0 0 10 or something like that in any contents, i’ve just saw alot of ele spend more time downed than fighting… i’ve also saw alot of speed run videos, like to do cof in 47 seconds, all coe path in 20 min etc etc, all party full zerk, play on rally kill kill fast fast jump skip stack stack… i’ve tryed, it works with a good party, but i think it destroy the game, i’m not a farmer (i dont wanna be), i wanna play contents for have fun, sometime i’ll farm cause u will need gold in this game, but my goal is not have the powerfull pg on tyria with 50000 legendary… onestly there is no fun to play a no sense classes, when everyone in this game can do dmg and support better than you…. so if i wanna do some dmg will play my war, if i wanna support team i will play my support guard… there is no more spot for elementalists

welcome to guard wars 2… feat mesmers….

join us “resistance is futile”…

i lost i’ve joined the borg

Don’t give up on the elementalist, join our protest. I am pretty sure Anet does not read our forum (maybe any class forum?). If we organize something in game maybe we can get them to notice.

FrownyClown.8402 is organizing the protest send him an in game mail. If he gets at least 50 we can protest this sunday

If we get a protest going, we should probably figure out what exactly we want. I am thinking a few different items (I do not necessarily want all of them, but we should focus on some):

1) reduced cool downs on our weapon skills (to make single / double element build more playable).
2) greatly reduced attunement swap delays but ICD on switching abilities to prevent abuse.
3) Attunement abilities not tied to traits and that happen when not switching (i.e. like in alpha where just being in Air magic sent out a single target shock, this way Aeromancers can sit in air and still not loose too much power).
4) Balanced Health between all of the classes (preferably all equal, but I would settle for a much smaller gap between high and low HP classes). Make armor a bigger factor, but in its current state is a 1000 stat point difference is hard to overcome.
5) in lieu of balanced health, grant bonus power/ precision (or just better skill coefficients) to low HP and Low Armor classes.
6) remove the 5 target limitation on AOE skills (If melee can hit 3 targets, we should be able to hit as many targets that are dumb enough to stand that close together. It does not happen that often anyway).
7) Increased DPS on our AOE skills for PvP. (I.e. increasing DPS of Lava font on targets not immobilized, crippled, or chilled, because it is just too easy to walk out of (much like the DPS increase on warriors hammer skills when not.
8) our weapon 20% cool down reduction skills should be paired with something else (like all of the warrior skills) (i.e. 20 % cool down reduction on earth skills with 20% increase bleed duration).
9) Ride the lightning cool down restored to 16 second and split for PvP. Or replaced/modified to be affected by cripple, immobilize, etc.
10) A Dev Gameplay tracker (like the dev tracker that reports posts, but instead gives stats on how many hours that have logged on which class, on which server split between production and QA and PvE, PvP, and WvW). I think this would help with the feeling that they do not play the Elementalist (or prove that they do not).
11) PvP and WvW stats on frequency of classes, average kill to death ratios, DPS, and a few other stats. This would help provide some data to compare classes.
11) I am sure that many Elementalists have a lot more ideas (There are surely many posts in this forum with a lot of ideas on how to balance out our class).

I think for a protest to work we will need to focus on just a few key items, that will fix our class, or at least bring a lot more balance to our class.

Guild wars 2 is a very good game, but I think the last time Anet really sat down and looked at our class was in Alpha when abilities still used energy and traits did not exist or were something completely different (read the manifesto or the Elementalist description and see if you agree). Maybe if we band together we can have them take a good hard look at our class.

I just sent another your way. Hopefully we can get some more traction on Friday when more people log on.

Count me in. I think Anet needs a good hard look at class balance particularly in the health and armor tiers and Range vs Melee DPS. I also think cool downs need to be addressed for Ele’s that want to specialize in 1 or two elements (50+ seconds cool downs just are too much higher than other classes).

I would also love to see them look back at balance in and before beta when attuning to an element did something (I.e. where water would freeze nearby enemies without traits required). I think the Elementalist was balanced against gameplay mechanics that were changed (before Traits and when skill use would cost energy), and that was the last time they look at our weapon skill balance (can anyone confirm if the skill cool downs have changed since alpha?).

The Elementalist is still a very fun class to play, but I always feel like I have to work 2+ times harder for the same effect as other classes.

I would also like to point out that in Everquest the warriors had a sit-in protest in the game because they were tired of boring class mechanics (before they only had auto attack, taunt, and kick). It worked, the Devs came up with some melee maneuvers to give them some more variety in their fights.

We initially had one, and a good one too.

Water would do an AOE chill, Fire would burn targets, Air would periodically strike targets, and I can’t remember earth (I think it was increased defense).

The removed it doing something in favor of spending trait points.

And I have no Idea why they thought this was good change.

Xenon.4537:

Well there is the part where you don’t have to do:

• Crafting System
• Ascended Armor
• Lengendaries
• Dungeon Armor

in order to jump right in and have fun. I got to 80 on my first toon without touching crafting. I was able to participate in wvw, dungeons, general pve, and mini games with naught but a set of yellows I collected and bought off the TP for a rough total of 2g which I had earned along the way to 80. It wasn’t long before I had enough gold, karma, and dungeon tokens to get a full set of exotics from the TP, Orr vendors, and dungeon merchants.

Sure I did some dungeons and got some dungeon armor, but it wasn’t much of a grind given the 2 other easy sources of exotic armor. In fact nowadays when I make a new 80, I can afford a full set of karma armor right away. As for ascended armor, sure I suppose you need that for fractals, but only high level fractals. Not to mention fractals is one dungeon which is one small part of the game. There are plenty of other activities, making fractals entirely optional.

And point me to the part of the game that requires 100% you need a legendary in order to participate.

Getting to 80 is not a huge grind (I rather enjoyed the climb), but now that you are at level 80 what are doing? Guild Wars 2 expects you will get to level 80 with such a flat leveling curve. Also all of the skills and traits are balanced for 80 (i.e. take PVP and WvW for example – they scale you to level 80, there are no lower level PVP).

After you hit 80, there are not a lot of additional ways to develop your character. They have a CDI right now on progression. See here

I am not the only person who thinks GW2 has gotten very grind heavy.

I completely agree that Conjured weapons should work like the engineer kits. especially since they keep trying to cram them down our throats as a useful alternative.

Don’t get me wrong, I love them (I.e. FGS and Lightning Hammer), but in their current state they just can’t offset some of the imbalance.

Yes, and if you ever want to see a game scramble to appease its fan base it is when another game is released.

I think Anet could learn a little from some of the newer games that are coming to the market. They mention that they hate the typical RPGs, but the newer ones are not the typical RPGs.

There is a lot of variation, but the three core classes to every RPG is Warrior, Rogue, Mage (Clerics in MMOs typically). I think Guild wars has really let the people who enjoy playing mages down. Their vision for a rogue is a bit lackluster as well.

When another game comes along that challenges GW2 Anet is going to try to solidify their player base (they are already in the works, why do you think there is such a huge push for DLC every 2 weeks).

They are already modeling for the % of their base that will leave (some temporarily others permanently). To combat some of that loss they will have to evolve and incorporate some of the winning ideas of the competition into their own game / players will have new expectations of Anet. about 6 – 9 months after the releases Anet will go on a large campaign to try and convert the players back (after the shiny new game feel has worn off).

I think that this will finally be the time they focus on the Elementalist. While they are looking at the data and demographics of those who switched, I think they will that the Elementalist needs some improvement.

Maybe that will go back to the original Elementalist Idea where attunements actually did stuff naturally (read the manifest and you will see they gave the example where water attunement created an AOE freeze field, just for being in water attunement). Maybe they will balance out the durability discrepancy between the classes, or boost out DPS to compensate.

I do not know what action they will take, but I do know if right now fixing the Elementalist is not on their priority list. It is not going to be on their priorities until they see financial consequences. Even then, they still may not fix us, but I think it is our best shot before Guild Wars 3.

Is anyone else excited for early April, when we can finally play a caster done right?

It looks like you put a lot of thought into the Elementalist. I am afraid that this is the wrong place for the post.

Yes I know that this is the place to discuss the Elementalist, but you want feedback from Anet, which is not going to happen with posts here.

• I am pretty sure the Anet does not read the Elementalist forum.
• I have not seen them post something here in a long time (outside the Dec 10th update in which they did in every profession page).
• Anet does not understand the Elemenstalist (probably since they do not play it, take the Arcane Wave redesign or Lingering attunements as examples).

Lord of Rings.5371:

The quote is from “Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto” by Mike O’Brien on April 27, 2010.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

It made playing an elementalist seems really fun.

Why did they change from the Manifesto?

They changed more than the Ele’s skills.

The Enviromental weapons are mostly an afterthought. How many people use an oakhearts branch against it? How about the jar of bees?

One of the best parts of it is:

“GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.”

• Crafting System
• Ascended Armor
• Lengendaries
• Dungeon Armor

… remember Guild Wars 2 is not a grinding treadmill after your 5th speed run through the same dungeon.

I think more then the Elementalist has strayed from the Manifesto.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

I have 5 level 80’s.

1. Elementalist

2. Mesmer

3. Guardian

4. Warrior

5. Necromancer

Out of those five, as of right now, I’m strongly drawn to the Elementalist for some reason.

Anyone using Elementalist as a main ? If so, what are your feelings as having an Elementalist as a main and would you recommend the profession as a main ?

If you like games like Dark Souls, or just bump up the difficulty on all of your games to hard then select the Elementalist.

If you do not want to play the game in hard mode (working 2x as hard for the same reward, play any other class (but the Ranger)).

I think the Elementalist is more fun to play (with the Engineer a close second) but the class balance is awful and Anet is not apt to help things along. Take Lingering Attunement as an example of Anets commitment and QA testing of Elementalists.

Did you honestly think Anet was going to give the Elementalist a completely OP buff?

I really believe Anet does not care about (and does not play) the Elementalist.

I used to. Now I don’t.

I did not switch to another class, I just don’t log into guild wars anymore.

Maybe when they fix the class in a few years or release Guild Wars 3 I will come back.

I understand your pain. I have invested a lot of time into the Elementalist as well. I really like Guild Wars 2, but I really believe that Anet just does not care about the Elementalist.

I always gravitate to the mage classes, and I have to say that Anet’s vision of the prototypical “Wizard” is the worst I have ever seen (some games had terrible wizards, but were just terrible games, so they are excluded). The stealth and crafting systems are also the worst (but that is another discussion).

Anet talks about a “Great Migration,” well in about 4 – 5 months I think we will see just how many casters migrate from GW2 to a game with a decent mage class.

I do hold out some hope that Anet may do an overhaul because of the changes to the PvP system, and the collaborative efforts. The biggest challenge is going to be getting Anet to realize that the Elementalist cannot be balanced with a few trait modifications.

I remember around Eye of the North they rebalanced the Guild Wars 1 Elementalist. They changed the whole exhaustion system up, and really worked on some unique skills. With that track record maybe in a few years I will pop back into Guild Wars 2 (or just wait for Guild Wars 3).

I watched the video, the Ele is exploiting the FGS Teleport glitch. That is not skill, that is pure cheese.

I do sometimes play with a controller setup (I use pinnacle). It makes it much easier to swap through skills, but harder to quickly aim a lot of staff skills.

As an Ele there are a lot of buttons we need access to (it works well with an engineer as well with 4 kits, button mashing madness!). A good controller set-up or just a lot of practice really makes the difference in our class.

Conncept.7638:

I’ve been using a 30/10/30/0/0 tanky condi build since back when most eles were using the DD heal-bunker, and yeah, this is yet another addition to the growing list of failed attempts by the developers at giving us the defense they know they unreasonably took.

Why are the developers so against giving us any defense? We are the ONLY class to fall in the lowest tier for both health and armor. The other classes with the lowest armor have inherent defense in their class mechanics (The mesmers illusions and necromancers Death Shroud), the other classes with the lowest tier health have the most defensive abilities in the game (the thief’s stealth and evasion and the guardians blocks and buff uptime).

Personally, I don’t think they can, and the developers just need to admit it. They are never going to balance a class’s defensive abilities solely with traits and abilities against classes with such severe differences in base stats. I’d say the developers were trying to balance apples and oranges, but that’s not an apt analogy, it’s more like they are trying to balance apples and orange against just an apple.

Normalize the defensive stat tiers, there is no reason whatsoever for such a severe difference and you are never going to balance this game with them as they currently sit.

Mesmers and Necros also have more health than we do. Necros have as much health as a warrior and Mesmers have as much as a ranger.

I am not too worried about the different armor tiers since there is not a hugh disparity in points, I am more worried about the HP disparity (800 vitality for high HP and 400 vitality for medium HP).

Armor is far more tame, with only about 300 toughness between heavy and light and 140 between medium and light.

(That is a 1100 gap between Warrior and Ele, just imagine the balance if we had a 1100 boost to power, or 800 to power and 300 to precision?)

Elaron.8150:

Lets discuss the playstyle in general.Our role in party.We arent heavy hitters(hello warriors),we arent supportive(lfg fractal 99+ guardian only), we arent utility based (portals from mesmers).yet we are given lowest base hp and armor.What is idea of our class?

I am pretty sure in WvW our purpose is to help other classes get enough badges for ascended armor.

More seriously though (although there is some truth to the above statement) we are supposed to be AOE damage dealers, with some utility and a combo field machine.

How well we perform that role is debatable. It is hard to retain the AOE damage title when we are limited to 5 targets and melee can hit 3 targets.

If you came to the Ele class expecting the typical mage class like every other RPG (A DPS class with unsurpassed AOE DPS, good single target DPS, and some unique utility) you will be very disappointed. We have terrible durability and pretty spells and that is were the similarity ends.

Ele’s can do just about any role in a group (except tank), you just need to work twice as hard and be prepared to either get rezzed a lot or not do much damage.

You know someone made a post about quitting their Thief and Anet got back with a response fairly quickly. See Here

What do you think the odds are that we get an Anet response?

Shockwave.1230:

Nostromo.4126:

Ok, we’ll just have to agree to disagree then. I can’t see anything simpler, cheaper or easier for PvE exploring than a single minor (adept) trait to give you near perma-swiftmess after just 50secs, which can also be very easily swapped out for something more functional if you’re traited for air anyway. Other classes like ranger & necro have a single signet to achieve this, elems unfortunately don’t. (For reference, I run my necro with the Signet of the Locust & even add Spectral Walk when I’m just exploring or doing non-combat Daily crap – easy enough to swap both out for more pets or other skills b4 getting into more difficult combat – I used to run twin dagger with the 25% speed trait, but changed to all-ranged staff+scepter/focus build more recently for various reasons).

As it stands now, you have to use some combo of the following to gain permaswiftness:
Windborne Speed, Glyph of Elemental Harmony/Power and the Inscription and/or Elemental Attunement traits. How this is ‘better’ overall in anyone’s right mind, apart from the 8% more speed, is beyond me.

Thank god they didn’t also hit Ride The Lightning with the nerf bat is all I can say!

Ele’s have signet of air, which grants a perma 25% IMS. Soon Windborne Dagger will be an out of combat trait as well. So you’ll probably be able to stack Signet of Air and have 1 dagger equipped to get the effect you want instantly, which used to take however many seconds to acheive.

Windborne Dagger does not stack See here

Anet just likes thieves more.

MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs

What massive boost did Elementalist get across the board in the Dec 10th patch?

And attunement cool down does not really count for 2.5 reasons

1) It was only decreased by 19%
2) They nerfed the % reduction from 2% to 1%, so there is no net positive gain.
2.5) They moved Elemental Attunement to master tier, which is going to have a lot of builds going to 20 Arcana.

I think the devs (and more than enough players) like the idea of a class that can just walk up to unsuspecting players and backstab them with their target having little to no defense (the re-stealth backstab do-overs are really cheesy though, even by other MMO standards). There is a whole community of people who really get off on that.

There is also a whole community of people that like to blow stuff up, maybe Anet will realize that one day, or maybe there are too few of us for them to care.

And lets face it in games with actual class balance, the rogues are normally the natural balance to mages (now if only we were the counter to warriors). So this will probably never change.

Level 20 can be a bit rough, that is when the monsters start hitting back pretty hard.

1) what weapons and Armor are you using?

• You probably want might and Vitality items
• Condition damage can also work well (1 -2 hits with Eruption, or a few earth scepter wands, is a death sentence to most mobs).
• You will probably want to use the scepter or staff (probably the scepter, when solo).
• Daggers are very strong, but can put you a bit close to the monsters.

2) Where are you trying to level?

• you can always go for map completion or at least get the skill points in all of the low level areas before moving on.
• I tend to do this and I am normally level 25 – 30 before I hit the Level 20 zones.
• Kessex hills is pretty brutal for a level 20 area, bring ether renewal because of the poison.

3) Keep moving and dodging. It took me a while to adjust because I was used to guild wars 1 where moving interrupted you, but in Guild Wars 2 is rewards you for constantly moving (except for a few select skills where you cannot).

• Ele’s have no health, no armor, and no special defenses. All we really have is dodge, Range, and a few blinds.
• Air signet is useful for this reason, moving 25% faster is always useful, and an emergency blind can help.

Playing an Elementalist is a little like playing on hard mode. It will give you some good habits when going back to other classes, but can be frustrating to master (No other class requires so much button mashing and control that I am aware of).

I do find it rather exciting though to the point where I have a hard time going to some of my alts (except my engineer, with all of the kits) because I miss all of the skills.

Anicetus.1253:

STRanger.5120:

Anicetus.1253:

Back when tequatl was revamped there has been a reddit post, linking to a forum post, about a tequatl kill with using fgs and icebow , where some ArenaNet developer said the tequatl kill was legit and fgs working as intended. Just because the skill is ridiculously strong in certain situations doesn’t mean its a glitch or exploit. They already overworked the fgs some patches ago, fiery rush stayed same.

And even without the dev response, i don’t see why fiery rush should be an exploit. It’s bringing the elementalist into a good state in at least one of the tgree game modi and is bound to an elite skill on a 180 seconds colldown.

You don’t see it means nothing
Show a link to the Dev post which says it’s intended mechanics and I take that statement as final. Until that time, it’s an exploit for me, period.

It’s basically the same as the piercing skills damage was, hence that was corrected/patched. Well, where’s the difference between FGS issue and the piercing damage bug? And don’t say elite skill as a difference because there’s no other elite in-game capable of such damage output.

The difference is that the piercing bug allowed you to hit for up to 800.000.000 damage on a 12 second cooldown and a combo that takes two utilitys away and can be used twice per 180 seconds to hit for up to ~200.000 damage.

And one more about the pve aspect of the game: Eles are pretty much the strongest profession right now. Best self dps (aside from mesmer who can’t ever come close to pulling it of) and highest group buffing. 18
stacks might and fury permanently on your party, combined with some vuln stacks, extremely well dps and a projectile absorbtion skill on a 30 seconds cooldown seem pretty strong to me.

You do not play an Elementalist do you?

• In certain builds our DPS can be very good, but it is a long way from best. Every other class can reach our DPS, and have more survivability.

• You are correct that certain builds can stack a lot of might (aura build or Persisting flames). It is one of the few things we do well. We are not the only class capable of stacking a lot of might though, and more classes could do it, but do not take advantage of it.

In beta Dragon Tooth was ground targeted.

I could definitely get behind the idea of having ground target spells casting on you selected target if you press the number again (currently this will summon them at the cursor), or on top of you if nothing is targeted.

But yes, I agree that placing is randomly has to be the most useless option.

I definitely agree that the Elementalist needs some rebalancing. But I do not think Anet is going to fix the Elementalist any time soon (just look at Guild Wars 1). I understand that rebalancing will take some time.

I am hoping that I they change the description, it will be an acknowledgement by Anet that the Elementalist does need some improvement.

Because until Anet thinks there is a problem with the Elementalist they will not try to fix us (I have my suspicions on what classes Anet plays…). Right now I suspect Anets primary contact with Ele’s is only with the very good ones, that make this class look easy, powerful, and hard to kill. So Anet does not see any wrong with the current set-up.

I did a quick DPS comparison of Elementalist Auto attack DPS before

• The staff DPS is terrible with Fireball auto attack being medicore.
• The Scepter DPS was terrible at raw damage, but earth and Fire were one of the best when adding in conditions (assuming they go their full duration).
• The dagger DPS was very good at raw damage with (even the water auto attack beat out Fireball).

Just keep that in mind.

If you like the staff I suggest balancing condition damage with raw power.

• I tend to start fights off in earth to stick eruption under foes, then switch to fire for Lava font. (You will learn to live by blast finishers soon enough)
• If I am a lazy Elementalist, I will just stick to eruptions on my target and let them bleed to death while I run around looking for more victims (1 or 2 will kill most mobs eventually).

Also at lower levels, you may want to pick up the glyphs early on

1. Glyph of lesser elementals will let you summon a golem. You pretty much only want the earth one, but it tanks very well when you need it too.
2. Glyph of storms if very powerful. Fire is great for damage, but I almost always use earth for 10 seconds of constant blindness.
3. Glyph of attunement will give you a long buff to Proc a condition based on alignment (so that your auto attack is useful). The two best are Fire to set things on fire (when not using the scepter) and earth to Proc cripple so enemies have to endure eruption.

Conncept.7638:

We have devastating area attacks? On what weapon? The staff while sitting safely inside a zerg in WvW?

As much as I think the Elementalist needs some help, I think it is in the base damage of our skills. The actual Skills work well enough.

We have a ton of AOE skills, and I think there are more than a couple that can be considered Devastating.

AOE on Staff

1) Fireball, Lava Font, Flame burst, Meteor Shower (Devastating)
2) Water blast (anti-devastating), Ice Spike, Frozen Ground
3) Chain Lightning, Lightning Surge, Static Field
4) Eruption (Devastating), Unsteady Ground, Shockwave (when paired with Eruption, Devastating)

AOE on Wand

1) Dragon Tooth (Devastating), Phoenix (Devastating)
2) Shatterstrone (anti-devastating, but a fun way to get 25 stacks of vulnerability)

AOE on Dagger
1) Dragon’s Breath (Devastating), Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Fire Grab (Devastating on Critical)
2) Vapor Blade, Cone of Cold, Frozen Burst (all Anti-Devastating)
3) Ride the Lightning (don’t get me started)
4) Ring of Earth, Earthquake, Churning Earth (Devastating, but should be after that cast time)

Utilities

1. Arcane wave
2. Cleansing Fire
3. Lightning Flash (Devastating with all of the possibilities)
4. Glyph of storms (Earth is truly Devastating)
5. Explosive Lava Axe, Ring of Fire,
6. Frost Fan, Ice Storm (Devastating)
7. Lightning Swing (PVE Cheese, Devastating), Lightning Storm, Static Field
8. Fiery Eruption, Fiery Whirl (Devastating), Firestorm Devastating)

Tyranids.1369:

[…]So I ask you, my fellow elementalists, which class do you all like to play when you’re not rolling as the ele?

My other main is an Engineer. I have a lot of fun with the different kits (which can sometimes require as much button mashing as an Ele.)

Swagg.9236:

Shadowfall.6543:

Swagg I hate to be a bit of a downer, but is there any precedent for Anet actually listening to posts like these.

You’re just being realistic. And while the answer to your question seems to be “no,” there is a precedent for me making plenty of these posts anyway in the Engineer forums.

Shadowfall.6543:

I also think Air staff needs some decent DPS, it is supposed to be one of the high damage attunements, but is one of the worst (it may not be so bad if water staff did not have the worst DPS of any weapon).

I still think that staff ele could get away with just a few minor tweaks, but given the arguments made against it, I guess I couldn’t really argue too much outside of quoting “balance” or something like that.

I just think that adding any more DPS to any part of staff is just catering to the super-burst/face-rolly meta that plagues GW2 PvP. The game could honestly stand to slow down a bit, or at least let ele staff serve as a pace car for a lot of combat.

Maybe a better way to approach this would be to ask, “What would you do to ele air staff to give it a badly needed DPS increase or whatever?” It’s a very solid weapon set by itself. Just because the auto-attack doesn’t wreck people like warrior axe doesn’t necessarily mean that its a true poor performer, and I’m not sure that restructuring the 2 skill would be a great idea (since I can’t really see 3-5 changing because they’re pretty good standalone skills in concept).

1. Change Auto Attack Damage from 203 to closer to 300 (closer to Fireball damage).
2. Add in a feature that a) increases damage by X% if it hits only 1 target or bonus damage if it criticals.

Nikkinella.8254:

The description should just say “elementalists are the profession of choice for masochists. They harness elemental powers to make pretty effects that do little more than just act as eye candy. Their bark is much worse than their bite, and regardless of how bad a player you are, you’ll be able to take down eles of higher skill level than you. They have twice as many skills, but more than half of them are useless and have double or triple the cooldown of useful skills on other classes that do the same thing.”

While I agree with you, I am serious about changing the Elementalist description. It will take a long time for the Elementalist to be balanced out in Guild Wars 2 (look at Guild Wars 1 and the Ele).

I suspect that in a year or two that they may find a good balancing point (or I can at least start campaigning for Guild Wars 3). I know it is a lot of work to balance out the Ele, so at least as a short-term fix I ask that they fix the description.

P.S. They can also fix the class too, but I think if there was an easy way to do that they would have.

I am going to seriously question that it is working as intended. They may not ban people for using it, but I cannot believe that is how they intended it to work.

Second, in the description I added that they have great area of affect damage. Meteor shower and Ice Storm both are very good AOEs, but I would not say they have a greater effect than any other professions skills.

• The base damage on meteor shower is 481 per meteor, with a total of 20. Now most targets dumb enough to stand in the middle of the field still will no get hit with every meteor (the total area is 360, while the blast radius is 120, so I think 10 of the 20 hitting the target is reasonable).
• That is 4810 damage (3.5 seconds channeled and 30 second cool down). That works out to about 141 (171 with 20% cool down reduction) Damage per second. Add in the Fireballs DPS with Lava Font and Flame burst DPS (around 400 for Lava Font and Fireball and 164 from Flame burst) and you get about 800 DPS. This is only if the targets do not move.
• This is approximately the DPS of the warriors Flurry auto attack.

Now these are some rough numbers, but even the Elementalist emptying their entire Fire skill bar is good DPS, but other classes can and do match it (or exceed).

The point is the “Massive Damage” is nothing that other classes do not already have. And no other class has to endure the lack of durability with no defensive gimmick like clones or stealth (maybe the Ranger, and we know the state of their class.)

Anicetus.1253:

Fiery Rush combined with Lightning Flash is about as much damage as 8 100b’s in a row.
In my opinion that justifies some sacrifices in health and armor.

Yes, but that is probably not the intended game mechanic and I expect that to be patched soon, especially if people start using it regularly.

Swagg I hate to be a bit of a downer, but is there any precedent for Anet actually listening to posts like these.

I also think Air staff needs some decent DPS, it is supposed to be one of the high damage attunements, but is one of the worst (it may not be so bad if water staff did not have the worst DPS of any weapon).

Swagg.9236:

Shadowfall.6543:

Interesting notes on staff ele DPS

This sort of analysis is too focused on single skills when staff elementalists are often chaining their low-recharge 2 skills to supplement their auto-attacks. I honestly don’t believe that it gives a good objective opinion on where staff stands. While it is true that the earth and water options deal rather low damage, the air and fire options both are not only strong as individual packets of damage, but all staff auto-attacks are often supplemented by an attunement’s low-recharge, AoE 2 skill. Even the water 2 skill hits incredibly hard (same base damage as a meteor shower strike) and also possesses a large AoE radius.

Back to the air and fire auto-attacks, though, [Fireball] has a base splash of 120 which can be increased to 180 with blasting staff. Furthermore, given that [Lava Font] casts nearly instantly and also has nearly the same base damage as [Fireball] (302 LF vs 314 FB), an elementalist can simultaneously strike a foe with these skills with good positioning and timing effectively resulting in a double auto-attack and serving to either nuke multiple opponents on the spot or drive them away from a specific location.

[Chain Lightning] is great because of the bounce. It fries rangers because it can double-hit due to the pet and can also help clear mesmer clones and phantasms.

Even though they may be lack-luster, they are balanced, effective and each one has a tangible impact in combat. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing maybe the water auto-attack reduced to a 1/2 second cast-time. Again, though, I just want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with staff auto-attacks. By removing an emphasis on most auto-attack damage and skills that auto-aim for you, staff eles are forced to play around with the skills that they have in order to connect damage to foes. It’s very engaging, rewarding and fair.

I focused on Auto attacks since they are the easier to compare against the classes (cool downs can make it a bit more difficult). I have not had time to go through all of the different class skills and compare them (48 * 4 more plus multiple combinations).

Fire: if your target stews in Lava Font it will get hit 4 times over 5 seconds (with cool down, but I have not taken into account the time to cast lava font and aftercast affecting Fireballs dps). That is an additional 242 DPS. That is at most 464 DPS. which is still less than the warrior’s axe at 900. My guess is it is practically closer to 400, which is good, but still a warrior or guardian is going to attack more damage (which cleaves so you only get the advantage with >3 enemies).

Air: you may like air, but the truth is its DPS is terrible and Lightning Surge is not going to make up for that. Even if there is a second target to hit, its DPS is weak. And for some reason it is the only chain skill I am aware of that has a built in 20% decrease in damage on the third strike. Air has no other attacks, so in the staff Air is just there for you to attune to grab swiftness or put up lightning field and push them out it before switching. It is not set up to let someone be an Aeromancer like you could with D/D or even D/F. (In a dagger build I switch to air when skills are on cooldown because the auto attack DPS is one of the best).

Water: This is a great healing skill, and if they had gave it to the monk class I think it would be great. I still do not see why our DPS is the lowest when another class has something similar with 1.5 times the auto attacking DPS of fireball. Even if you are dropping Ice Spike on someones head (540 damage every 4 seconds (1 sec cast with some casting delay) that only adds 138 DPS and that takes 1 second to cast so takes away 1 full casting of Water splash at a whopping 82 DPS, so it increases your DPS by about 15. This should confirm anyones suspicion that it is tedious to kill anything when attuned to water. this demotes water to either “quick we need healing” or another fly over attunement to pop in drop an ice spike/ chill field.

Earth: well, Earth has the only blast finisher in our staff line-up convienently timed so we can cast it then switch to another field. Eruption is very powerful and it adds about 92 raw DPS and the condition DPS is harder to count since it is 12 seconds and can stack with itself (somewhere between 250-500 depending on how many stacks you can get on the target). It is also stupidly easy to dodge in PvP and only works in select cases of WvW (and that is assuming no one brings a condition removal for it’s 12 second bleed). I will concede that eruption may atone for its miserable DPS, because as a lazy Ele in PVE sometimes I will pop this and just run around a few seconds waiting for targets to die, PvP and WvW is a whole different story though.

I would also like to mention the description for air does not match up for the scepter or staff.

By harnessing wind and lightning, elementalists can target specific foes with focused, high-damage attacks.

It would be more accurate if it was more like “By harnessing wind and lightning, Elementalists grant themselves the mobility and protection of air while disabling their foes with powerful gales and blinding lightning strikes”

The staff has chain lightning, which is not focused and it one of the worst damaging auto attacks in the game. It also has lightning surge which isn’t the most damaging skill at 400 damage with 10 second cool down. The other three are not attacks.

The Scepter is worse. The DPS on the Arc lightning is one of the worse in the game, and even adding in lightning strike it will still be lower than most auto attacks DPS. The foci does not attack and please do not get me started on ride the lightning.

First, before you make any judgements I would like to share an anecdotal story to set the mindset this post is written in.

I used to think that I did not like tea, because all I ever had was standard Lipton or Red Rose tea. One day I was exposed to a high end tea place, and they told me how to properly brew tea (don’t use boiling water, and black tea take 2-3 minutes).\

I was amazed that I had been doing it wrong this entire time. So I continued brewing tea properly and now I like tea (even the cheaper stuff). It took me a while to wonder Why had I been brewing tea incorrectly this entire time? I finally looked at the back of the Lipton tea box for instructions on how to brew, and it instructed: Brew 3-5 minutes in boiling water.

Now that is a long anecdote, but what I am trying to get at is one of the first impressions you have of the Elementalist is the Profession page, and I do not think that page reflects the state of the Elementalist.

First the actual Text of the Elementalist taken from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

I think something like “They reward player skill and creativity with strong support and devastating area attacks” would be a better description for two reasons.

1) I have played as every class but the thief, and I can safely say that to play the Elementalist well demands some of the best player skill because we are not given any class specific advantage (i.e. Stealth, clones, pets, etc.).

• We have some of the best area damaging attacks. This really shines in WvW were you can get a lot of targets in a small area.
• We have no specific defenses but dodge, so you have to get really good at the dodge button. (all classes have to, but Ele’s are so squishy there is little room for error)
• One of our greatest strengths is comboing off fields, something all classes do, but this is one of the aspects we really shine.
• We have some of the longest cool downs and worst auto attacks for weapon skills encouraging us to constantly change attunement. That is a lot of buttons to be hitting at any given time.

2) The phrase “what they lack in physical defence they make up for in massive damage in a single attack” is misleading.

• This implies that the Elementalist somehow sacrificed durability for greater DPS, or Skills that hit harder than a class that did not sacrifice durability at the very least. which is not true. I compare the Elementalist to the warrior, because the warrior has sacrificed no durability.

*The hardest hitting skill I can think of is Fire Grab, which does 941 base damage to targets on fire (588 if the target is not on fire, and this skill has a 45 second cool down). Level 3 kill shot does 1256 damage and level 3 eviscerate does 1006 (10 second cool down, but requires adrenaline).

*Lava Font is another one that hits for 1200 if the target stands in it for 4 seconds. Hundred blades does over 2000 unconditional damage (it takes 3.5 seconds, but has an 8 second cool down).

• I do not think I am the only Ele that was expecting since our practical maximum health around 20 K is about where the warriors begin, that our DPS would be noticeably higher to compensate.

Could they are least let us drop the conjured weapon and pick it back up. If you get knocked down there goes your conjured weapon which means it is very risky in WvW or PvP.

Swagg.9236:

Durzlla.6295:

Only thing I hate about ele staff is that our autos are lack luster, hell most the time I won’t even bother casting them because they’re so bad., they should just lower the cast time on them, or make them have A LOT faster travel time, either one (or both) would make me happy.

The auto-attacks on staff are incredibly balanced yet effective.

Let’s look at the Auto Attacks of the Staff (data taken from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki)

I decided to calculate the base DPS of every auto attack and see how ours stack up (48 auto attacks including Engineer Kits). Damage was calculated by Damage / attack cycle time (this includes the after cast). This is the Single target DPS, since it would be difficult to normalize for multiple foes.

Note that Raw Damage is the physical damage, Total Damage is raw damage + full condition damage (i.e. from bleeding, etc.)

• Water Blast is the worst DPS of any weapon at a total DPS of 82. This can match the Mesmer’s Winds of Chaos if it puts Vulnerability on a mob instead of bleeding or burning. I think we all knew how bad Water Blast was though.

I would like to note that it is one of two auto attacks that heal (excluding the Engineer if they invest in healing explosives). The Guardian’s True Strike heals for 335 every 3.26 seconds and has a DPS of 330 (about 1.5 * the DPS of Fireball).

• Stoning is the next worst with a Total DPS at 137 DPS and is the worst of skills that inflict weakness. The Elixir gun has a higher base DPS at 157 and inflicts 4 stacks of bleeding (4 Sec) for a total of 361 DPS. The Warrior mace smash has a DPS of 347 and inflicts weakness for 5 seconds. and the Thief Sword Slice inflicts 387 DPS with Cripples (2 Sec) and Weakness (2 Sec).

• Chain lightning is the 7th worst total DPS (It does beat out the Rangers Axe at 168 DPS and 900 Range).

Interestingly Chain lightning has slightly higher DPS than Arc Lightning 174 vs 161 DPS.

• Fireball is the 17th worst overall DPS at 224. This is actually virtually tied with Vapor blade at 222 DPS.

To put things into perspective most Warrior DPS’s are 347 – 490 with the longbow being an outlier at 178 DPS, and the Sword at 804 DPS (due to 2 * 8 second bleeds).

The Guardian’s Staff is at 222 DPS and the scepter is at 280 (although ranges from 414-420 with their melee weapons.

The Ranger’s DPSs are 248 – 485 (with the short bow, if they flank their target for bleed). with an outlier of the axe at 168 DPS.

I think you get the picture though. Our Best Staff DPS is on the low end for any other class, and the other three are setting low scores. There is a reason why there are a lot of D/D Ele’s, and why Staff Ele’s can virtually never win 1 on 1 duels.

All of these numbers are just for Auto Attack though. Other skills can affect the total DPS (along with Traits, equipment, etc.). But this gives a good idea on where our weapons stand.

On a side note the dagger DPS range from 378 – 488 with vapor blade an outlier at 222. and the Scepter has a good Fire an Earth Attack at 482 and 492 respectively (but have the lowest raw damage of any skill at 66 and 79 damage respectively) (and Air and Water are at 161 and 180 respectively).

Brigg.3961:

The suggestions for air would be awesome. As it stands right now, i only switch to air for the lightning field and the attunement zap. I love surge, but it is waaaaay too predictable. I completely agree about gust as well. Beautiful when it works, but that’s more rare than not.

Lava font is almost useless in duels or small man encounters, other than showing the enemy where not to stand. Having the damage start on cast would at least let the thing tick once before they leave it

Having a blast finisher on staff would be absolutely amazing.

We do, it is Eruption. A stable cycle is to put eruption down then switch to earth for Fire field. It will explode in the field.

Although it is impossible to pull off in 1v1 duel unless you immobilize them (shockwave on earth 5 can do that along with earth signet).

You can also use Eruption at max staff distance (so you can run into it) switch to air for lightning field and get AOE swiftness then follow up with air 4 for more AOE swiftness (and elemental attunement gives even more AOE swiftness). Great for running around.

Stephen.6312:

High-powered traits in the Arcane traitline include: Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana and perhaps a few more. I personally feel that Blasting Staff should stay in Master Tier, since it provides users with wider margins of error during play. Essentially, players do not have to be as precise in the placements of their fields and more specifically have greater opportunity to apply conditions. As such, Blasting Staff should remain in Master Tier.

However blasting staff is only really effective for 2 skills (Lava Font and Eruption). It nerfs static field (as it is harder to cross the border), and the two water fields it helps the placement is not as critical because people in need of health will move to the field.

Also with eruption in PvP or WvW those who notice the red circle have more than enough time to leave with or without the extended field. Those who get caught in the blast were probably not paying attention, crippled, or immobilized.

I personally use the skill, but that is because I live by Eruption and Lava font. I also use elemental attunement as my first choice, so after the patch I will still have 20 points in Arcane, and both of my traits will have switched positions.

In addition, Engineers have increased explosion blast radius as an adept skill.

I run a staff build many times in WvW.

1) To catch a runner hit the turn about button then burning retreat (It is a button that is not mapped). Extra fun if you follow it up with static field.

2) Try soloing / duoing a camp using earth golems as meat shields

3) Reflect projectiles can reflect siege attacks like the trebuchet (Magnetic Aura/Wave). You just have to make sure the projectile hits you (and the cool down is longer then the rate of fire, but it can still be fun).

As a Staff Elementalist from the first open Beta weekend, I understand.

I would like to offer some advice, on being a staff Elementalist.

1) Whether it was should be or not, the staff if not a good weapon for 1v1 play. Even in PVP if I am attacking one enemy at a time I like to use the scepter.

2) The staff really shines in WvW against several targets or assaulting walls (Meteor storming the siege equipment). With Blasting Staff using Eruption, Lava Font, Flame Burst (not boosted, but fun to set everyone on fire), and Meteor storm allows you to really punish a group enemies. You can even solo camps with a staff build if you use the Earth Golem (I suggest both glyphs for safety).

I will agree with you that the 40 second cool down on our skills really cripples us. It forces us to change attunements, but some attunements like air suck (unless you are just there to grab haste) or Water (I only go in here when I need to heal, but it adds some serious healing power without any need for a healing build).

If you want a powerful auto attack though try a condition build with earth scepter auto attack. It is a bit of a gamble, but if the opponent does not have enough condition removal, it can bleed them out quickly.