Not everyone can do everything, a recurring theme with ANet’s game design. However, it is logical design to an extent. If everyone profession could do damage healing and tanking then what would be the point of making alternative class?
However, while most the other classes have their niches, elementalist niche is to do everything and have more skills then everyone. So everything we have is shafted.
In all honesty, the elementalist could be a great profession once again with a tweak or 2 here and their.
Our armour, health, healing, dps, support and movement (just to name a few) have all been shafted so you don’t out perform other classes. Imagine if we could do similar damage to a thief and also do our healing, or if we could out bunker a guardian and also out dps him. Why would anyone play those classes?
Unfortunately to add to our other disadvantages is the skill cap the elementalist requires. Many other professions are spam and forget. I can play a spirit ranger whilst watching my favourite TV show, but to lose concentration for a second with the ele is near certain death. I’m not saying other classes and other builds don’t require skill, but there are some very good performing builds that are set and forget, that can perform much better then we can and don’t have to put much effort into their play style.
The elementalist has 2x as many weapon skills as other professions, but is that an advantage or a dis advantage. Remember those other professions have 2 weapon sets, so 10 skills but multiple combinations. As an ele we are forced to take 20 skills related to our weapon set. So a warrior could take a long bow and his mace shield but us eles have to decide ranged or melee, support or damage within our build as there is no, “oh hes kiting me switch to range weapon” for us. With 20 skills comes the balancing as well, our damage, healing and boon support through weapons is lower then other classes weapons. While we have some good skills with high damage, in the end they are either hard to land (Dragons Tooth, phoenix to an extent) and on long cooldowns (phoenix, shower of the meteor, fire grab).
Combined with our slow cool down skills are skills that seem to be either useless or in serious need of repair. Take for example the focus, while a powerful weapon, to get it’s full power you must use it in the very right place. Looking down fire we have Fire Shield, which has a cool down the same as frosty aura but is nowhere near as good. Gaining 5 stacks of might and 5 seconds of burning (vs 1 other foe, more when there are more around) doesn’t seem like a good ability for a 40 second cool down. Frosty Aura lasts an extra 2 seconds, grants a better condition and reduces incoming damage by 10% and shares the cool down.
I believe if you take away some of the passive play, the petting zoo and increase the else power by a little (mainly tweaking the weapons to make them all viable for all the gametypes) we could have a decent class the could stand up to other players.
Currently passive play, hiding in minons and abusing the broken stealth mechanics are ruining pvp and are probably worse in WvW (esp against new players). I would much rather see a Skill vs Skill game, not a “I summoned a bunch or crap and auto attack dodged you to death, I so leet”, or “I can hit you with 8k every 4 seconds and you can’t see me do it” type of game.
Slasher Sladorian – Charr Warrior – [DECM] | Sea of Sorrows
Sophea Sladorian – Charr Ranger – [DECM] | Sea of Sorrows
Sophea Of Elements – Human Elementalist – [DECM] | Sea of Sorrows
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