Guild Wars 2

How about guild armor? And if you want it without the logo, there’s a Norn karma vendor near the Maw starting point that sells them without logo.

You just gotta ask yourself the question wheter that extra healing’s really gonna do it for you.‘You get some vitality out of it too, so your defense won’t suffer that much…

That depends on your weapon. On staff I’d say no. On dagger I’d say maybe. On scepter I’d say…yeah, could work.

Baladir.2736:

The only defense is offense, damage per second, not over time.

That’s actually the same thing, but I get what you mean.

Fishbait.6723:

ThiBash.5634:

Frozen Ground, blast finishers and aura traits are the reason why that’s not a viable option.

But to make use of things like that, you`re going to blow attunement cds etc, which means you`ll more then likely be screwed when swithching back to two handers.

I think if you can give a whole party 2 minutes of Fury/Swiftness/Protection in roughly 4 seconds (through Powerful Auras), the potential loss of cooldowns is a minor thing. Especially since you have no intention of switching back (just don’t want to get caught carrying a staff to a knife fight).

Bluefox.9580:

The elite glyph also does not trigger a boon if you have that traited.

Yeah, they should really fix that. But then again, if I’d took that trait it’d be for Glyph of restoration mostly anyway.

Hmm…to me, it seems a bit…random. You seem to be torn between a signet build and a water focused build, but you end up not fully utilizing either. I can understand Arcane Blast somewhat, but why not use Signet of Restoration? The way you traited for water can be useful support (though mainly against very condition heavy foes), but I’d replace the earth traits and signets by something that’d hit a bit harder.

Also, I presume you know Cleansing Water has an internal cooldown now?

Maybe you should add a link to or a description of your build.

SQLOwns.7316:

eles don’t kill anything, you should know this by now.

Hmm…I wonder how I got that staff weapon master achievement then…

SQLOwns.7316:

I think you mean 1v3?

No wait, you’re right, they can’t 3v1 another player anymore, lol……..

Question: why ‘SQLowns’? Is MYSQL too egocentric?

Glyph of Elemental Power used to be end attunement as well. And to be honest, I use that effect a lot during my gameplay. Sometimes I change my mind which effect I want midcast and then switch. Sometimes it just saves time (get that spell casting, I’ll change attunement later). It can be a downside when you’re already working on your next move while the glyph is still casting (happens to me occasionally). But I do prefer the way it works now. Makes for faster gameplay as you don’t have to sit in an attunement waiting for a spell to cast. But that goes for normal spells too. Why cast Meteor Shower in Fire when you can switch attunement midcast to Water (for Fury and an Ice Spike/Frozen Ground)?.

Celestial is NOT over budget. The dps it gives is pretty much equal to PVT, which makes sense seeing both serve the same purpose.

Unless I’m mistaken, the elementalist isn’t really supposed to focus primarily on conditions. They’re part of the build, but not the main focus (I think Anet sees them more as a way to get double benefit from Might). I greatly oppose this change for the reasons I’ve mentioned earlier, but I suppose we’ll have to let the devs make the final decision.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Make this change and then swap out the poorly-named “Diamond Skin” trait for something that applies Poison and then Condi Eles might be more of a real thing.

If you take the ‘poison on swap’ sigil you can get 50% poison uptime without condition duration. Maybe something to work with?

Blaine Tog.8304:

I do. Through GoEP. It would give Conditionmentalists better options and everyone else would still have CC from casting it in Water.

Except that the cripple lasts a lot longer. Also, why? You can stack bleeds and burns using GoEP in Fire and then use Stone Shards or Impale. You can even use Burning Precision if you want to. Why on earth would you ruïn an awesome skill just to change the attunement in which you can stack your conditions?

Fishbait.6723:

Easy fix.
Give ele weapon swap (which it should of had since beta..), but make it so you can only equip D/D – S/D – S/F in first set & can only equip Staff in second set.

Frozen Ground, blast finishers and aura traits are the reason why that’s not a viable option.

covenn.7165:

Depends ThiBash cause your survivability would be lower… against anything other than scripted AI, that makes a huge difference.

Lower than PVT? I’d love to see the math on that (seriously, haven’t done the calculations myself, only on the damage part).

Keep in mind you wont hit as hard as someone focusing on damage, you wont survive as long (or be able to sustain dps as long) as someone who is focusing on being tanky, and you won’t provide group support as well as someone focusing on that either (though lol about that, just group a guardian).

True, but that can be reversed too. You won’t die as often as someone who’s focusing on damage, you won’t deal as little damage as a tank. As for the support, Elemental Attunement and boon duration runes are all you need for perma might, swiftness, regeneration, Soothing Mist and and protection. Gear’s got little to do with that.

The problem is that healing is just one of the many tricks in the Elementalist’s arsenal. There are no dedicated healers in Guild Wars 2. Instead, players are mostly intended to keep themselves alive and even if they weren’t, the elementalist’s healing skills are far to weak to replace them, even at maximum healing power.

If your friend wants to support parties, she may be better off with a boon-based build. By using Elemental Attunement and combo fields/blast finishers, she can share her boons with the rest of her party and thus increase their effectiveness and survival that way.

But just focusing on healing your party is not a very good idea.

LordByron.8369:

This is easily confutable.
The playerbase playing PvP is so tiny that doesn t have any impact on stats.
Since ele have OFFICIALLY only been OP only in PvP since release (beta doesn t count) its obvious its not the reason.

When ele was considered the worst class in the game, was still in the top 3.

The reason is probably tied to being the “mage class” of gw2 expecially for new players.
And mages are really popular in games.

A fair point. Probably correct too. However, there was a time when D/D eles were very popular, and I suspect we still lost a share of active players when RtL was nerfed. Your post makes more sense though.

LordByron.8369:

warrior can …..switch weapon

True, and he should. But then he’d be using his weaker long ranged weapon while you still attack at your normal power.

LordByron.8369:

P.S. 600 range with water 1 i m gonna kill so many rabbits with it.
If you PLAY D/D you are melee mostly because you need to use all you have, thus the shortest skill is your actual range.

Yeah, you’re right, but I didn’t mean it like that. More like: if you fight a warrior, his range is 150, while yours is 300…with the right movement he can’t hit you while you can hit him. As for Vapor Blade…you can use it while trying to catch up a ranged if your leaps are on cooldown. Sure it’s not perfect, but why just run when you can run and damage? And when you catch up, you can switch to your more damaging attacks again.

Like you said, you need to use all you have…so if you have extra range, why not use it?

Another thing that confuses me is that they have a lot of leftover lore from GW1, like the Mursaat, Palawa Joko, the Tengu, Order of Whispers, etc.

And instead they keep introducing new groups and villans. How awesome would it have been if Scarlet were a Mursaat instead, or maybe even controlled by the Mursaat?

But instead we get Aetherblades and Zephyrites. Which are cool in their own way, but using the existing lore could have enriched the story because the basis was already there. Now, the little lore texts there are go to waste introducing the new guys, while the old guys could have just shown up and continued from what they had.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . you choose Seiran as a “well-written character”?

I chose her as a “well-written Sylvari”. It takes the Battle for Claw Island to have Seiran realize that the world isn’t all fun and games, and that she can’t always rely on others to sacrifice themselves for her personal welfare, to clean up her mess. That’s character progress to me.

There are other characters I like more, but insofar Sylvari go, it’s only Seiran and Caithe that show any form of character development (Caithe wanting to go on a needless murder spree a bunch of times, thus showing a less noble side). The rest of the Sylvari are either super noble, or (the villans) super not noble. They have no character flaws either way though.

Mr Mango.3504:

I don’t understand why people have an obsession with seeing progression for NPCs first hand.

What annoys me most is that she outranks all Asura in intellect, and not by a small margin. Even the Skritt, when at their most intelligent, simply show a different kind of intelligence. The fact that she was a star pupil of the other races as well just adds to that. I disliked Sylvari for their perfectness before Scarlet, and then Anet went and added an even more over-the-top Sylvari.

Leablo.2651:

thefinnster.7105:

personaly i realy dont like that these acheivments are comeing back coz it feel like you are be-littleing my past acheivments i put in the work when it was around and got all those acheivments when i was suposed to if others missed out coz they droped the ball or just plain couldnt be botherd first time round they don’t deserve a second chance now that acheivment points are actualy worth something

there are certain acheivments i didnt get and will never have the chance to get again and i can live with that but if your gona bring these ones back to give others a chance why not do it with all the past acheivments

of course we all know that will never happen so why do it this one time i say no exceptions you snooze you lose you dont deserve a second chance to get past AP you missed out on

That post reeks of desperation to distinguish oneself. I have all the SAB 1 achievements and would like nothing better than for new players to receive the same opportunity to challenge themselves with this content.

Buying the game first does not make you a better player or person; achievement points should reflect your progress and ability, not when you bought or played the game.

Seeing as how I dislike time-gated content, I actually see this as a VERY GOOD MOVE ON ANET’s PART!

And yeah, I already have them all…and I still don’t mind that others get them too.

Nihilus.3015:

I think that’s an exaggeration. We know that of the 50 (or was it 100?) ANet testers that fought Liadri, only 6 of them managed to beat her. Still, that’s about 15% of the playerbase. When you multiply that across 1 million+ players, that’s 150,000 players who should have the skill necessary to beat her.

Im sure its a lot more than 15%, I see a lot of minis on just Stormbluff. Some people who I thought would never get it, have it.

Maybe you server has a bigger share of the good players, or maybe the testers had less time to work on their build/train their tactics/etc.

Whatever the case, in my guild too, it’s apparent that only a few get the mini. At the moment, as far as I know, only 2 out of 15 active people have it.

Unahim.1036:

Conclusion: It’s not Scarlet who’s a Sue, it’s just the inevitable direction of the entire race.

That’s even worse…

The Gauntlet was designed to be beatable by any profession. It was not designed to be beatable by any build. In the end, I beat it by using the passives of Signet of Air and Water so I could keep running the circle without dodges. All the while side-stepping so I could keep attacking with my auto-attack.

So there’s a place where Evasive Arcana isn’t the ultimate answer. You should be happy! No, I mean it…you should be happy.

silvermember.8941:

A whole playstyle or weaponset SHOULD NEVER BE DICTATED by a trait. A trait should only enhance the playstyle. So what you are saying is that we should dump 30 points in to arcane for a trait that contradicts a weapon’s purpose and puts us at risk with no escape except our cantrips then when you burn your cantrips become a sitting duck, correct? Just because you want to use a trait that requires to give up a dodge?

You are right our attacks don’t get weaker at range, but they are still extremely slow and weak. the mesmer’s greatsword actually has 4 other useful skills that are almost always guaranteed to hurt and almost hard to evade. Most of the other 17 skills are extremely slow, obvious and easily evaded.

Do you even listen to yourself when you type these things? It’s one thing to want to win an argument but at least do it without overreaching aka grasping at straws.

But that’s exactly what the traits do. They enhance the staff’s playstyle so it becomes useful both in melee and at range. You mention cantrips, but have to ever played staff without cantrips? Have you considered that being in melee allows you to make use of your Ice Elemental’s heal and Ice Field? Your Earth Elemental’s protection boon? Using Stoning at short range to make sure it hits, cutting your opponent’s damage in half? Or even getting in melee to do the aforementioned, then gusting them away while burning retreating back to 1200 range?

Playing the staff elementalist is a dance, and melee is part of it. Also, I would really appreciate it if you’d stop accusing me of being rediculous. It’s clear by now that you don’t play the staff the way I do, and I don’t fault you for that. I’m not saying my way is better either. But maybe, just maybe, I have a few insights you don’t and if anything, I have just as much right to share them as you have without being called an idiot 3 posts in a row.

Avatara.1042:

silvermember.8941:

What made celestial gear special wasn’t MF.

Past tense? And for eles, it was the MF.

For D/D and scepter, your dps would be higher in Celestial Gear than PVT.

mikolash.2741:

So I just started GW2 acouple weeks ago.

That seems the key phrase to me. It literally took me months to play the ele properly. It’s not an easy profession to play, and like others said, you have to work harder just to get the same results.

One thing I found helpful on D/D though, is that they’re NOT melee. Other melee professions have around 150 range on their weapon. The ele has between 300 and 600 range. Also, unlike most melees, you have quite a few skills that don’t require you to face the target. When duelling melees, exploit that.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Popular Ele combos?

Any combo really. As a staff ele, combos can add such power to your normal attacks that you’d better try to land as many as possible. A Stoning Fired through a Fire Field does more damage than a Fireball, while Eruption with Water Fields can double the heal. Just about any combo the Ele can make on their own is super useful.

• Popular Ele utilities/Elites?

Glyphs. Why settle for half a skill bar that changes on attunement swap when you can switch your entire skill bar? The ever popular Glyph of Elementals has massive utility, and the most often used Fire Elemental is actually the least useful of the bunch. The Ice Elemental even throws down a combo field!

• Popular Ele traits

As you mentioned, Evasive Arcane…it’s just THAT useful. However, Elemental Attunement (boon on swap) is also very good, as are 15 points in Water for an instant heal + regen + regen2+ condtion removal every 10 seconds…

• The elementalist mindset vs Mesmer (and any other class if you’d like to add. The more, info the better)

Mesmers are sneaky. They’re not direct. While they try to boggle the mind, the Elementalist is much more blunt about it. Fireball in the face. Let’s blow up that gate! Also, I’d say that despite the lore associatiing Mesmers with performers and artists, it’s the Elementalist that’s the more creative of the two. They not only have to learn a lot more spells, but they have to know what to use when, and how to adapt the Elements to their current situation. However, I think that in general, Mesmers have more self-control. Basically, if Mesmers are the Order of Whispers, Elementalists are the Charr Iron Legion.

• Any particularly notable Eles in the GW lore besides Zojja?

Well, there’s of course Cynn from Guild Wars 1. Orion (also GW1) apparently reached a bit of fame as well.

As for Guild Wars 2, you have Isgarren, the current owner of Wizard’s Fief.

• How do you “view” the standard Elementalist?

Intelligent, creative and rash, but also noble and well-educated. Of all the caster professions, they strike me as the least willing to use technology.

Like all professions, it has to click. Warrior may be uber and the answer to all things PvE, but I couldn’t play them well even if I’d practice for months. The same goes for eles…a lot of people made them when they were overpowered, and when the nerfs hit only the dedicated players remained to play them.

For those players, the Ele is much more powerful than their warrior. For the rest, the ele is just a place to store their leftover gear.

Finally some suggestions that aren’t extremely over the top. :-)

For the most part, I like them though I’m not entirely sure if granting stability on Magnetic Aura isn’t a little too much. As far as I know, no weapon skills grant stability and MA is a decent skill already.

As for Rock Barrier, 10 seconds crippling may be a bit much. The skill’s a bit niche, but it does have a solid (pun intended) use for either Earth/Air spike, or to instantly cast 5 projectile finishers. If you can get them to launch through an Ice Field (like for example that of your elemental summon), you can get quite a powerful effect out of it. Adding cripple to that might be a bit much.

But that’s just me. Leap finishers seem fine, just gotta be careful it won’t go overboard with Aura stacking.

zencow.3651:

You need to LH in PvE. It’s pretty godmode.

The way it’s described in this thread, it sounds more like ‘overpowered already’ than ‘needs a buff to keep up’ to me.

zencow.3651:

So even with ascended weapons, LH still only do 4k-4k-6k while everyone else apart from engineers and condition necroes will get an extra +15% damage boost from higher Weapon Strength.

Yes, but if they were only doing 3k damage to begin with, they’ll now do 3.45k instead…meaning you’re still ahead. :-)

Blaine Tog.8304:

That is literally exactly what I said.

My apologies. I misread and assumed you wanted to stack bleeds while in Fire. My mistake.

Baladir.2736:

I would like it to be the way I thought it was all along. The effect changed depending on what attunement we were in when a skill procd the effect. I click the glyph and when in fire cause burning, when change to water cause chilling etc.

You’d give up on being able to cripple with a Meteor Shower for a few extra seconds of burn? I’d really prefer it to remain the way it is now…

Zaxares.5419:

I don’t know if we need TWO sigil slots on two-handed weapons. I think that improving the bonus granted by a sigil if it’s on a two-handed weapon would be sufficient. (Keeping in mind that two-handed weapons already have an advantage over single handed weapons in that their base damage is higher.)

Because the weapon’s skills are also different, it’s hard to quantify wheter the extra power on the weapon actually makes a difference. However…

…if the damage on 2-handed weapons is roughly 5% higher than on a 1-handed weapon, they’ve basically got an inherent +5% damage sigil. That seems like an acceptable solution to. 2 sigils of choice would just make things more complex without really adding much to the gameplay.

What worked for me were Signet of Air and Signet of Water (for the passives). The first gave me a permanent speed boost (without having to worry about casting speed skills) and the second handled most of the crippling. That allowed me to keep running the circle in the second phase with almost no dodges.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Expect her to be a long term villain.

Think I feel a migraine coming up…

Seeing how celestial gear is outperformed by PVT unless you can get at least perma burning (or equivalent condition damage), I believe a small compensation buff wouldn’t hurt. However, I’d prefer a +1 to all stats as that’s least likely to lead to problems.

ARM.3912:

Even with that change GoEP would still be a waste of a slot.

No, WITH that change it would be a waste of a slot. Being able to cripple enemies with your own Meteor Shower is awesome. As for the stunbreaker, it ties in with the flexibility of glyphs: instead of just choosing what condition to cause, you can opt not to use it and wait until you need a stunbreaker. It’s not awesome, but if any glyph should be a stunbreaker, GoEP makes the most sense.

Yes, it’s a staff ele skill, but it’s a very good staff ele skill.

Blaine Tog.8304:

That would be a cool change. Chill + Cripple are indeed somewhat duplicative, whereas this chance would let you cast the Glyph in Fire then switch to Earth or vice versa and be able to apply two damaging conditions at once.

That’s not how it works. The condition you cause is selected when you cast the glyph, not later on. This means that if you cast it in Fire, you’ll also cause burning when casting water, air and earth spells.

silvermember.8941:

This is one of the most ridiculous statements you have made. A range doesn’t define the weapon. If that’s the case why have RANGE weapon. Just make every weapon melee and call it a day.

Just to show how much in denial or naive you are, why does this range doesn’t define the weapon only applies to the elementalist. I can use RANGE weapons just fine with every other class, what makes the elementalist the exception to the rule?

Because of Evasive Arcana our spells actually become more effective as we get close to them. Elemental Attunement’s buffs require us to be close to others. So we can choose wheter to stay at range and out of harm, or close in and be more effective with the same weapon. Also, unlike the ranger’s longbow or the mesmer’s greatsword, our attacks don’t get weaker at short range. Range for the elementalist is just another stat, not THE stat.

Compare Scarlet to Seiran, and you’ll see the difference between a poorly and a well-written character. Seiran has talents and flaws, isn’t perfect at anything and is still struggling with worldly concepts like sacrifice.

Scarlet is a cartoon supervillan.

One action…so making a macro that ‘Targets the called target and attack it’ isn’t allowed?

You know a character is poorly written when a Hobo-Tron has a more believable character background…

When I got Priory armor, I though my ele was wearing pants underneath. Turns out it’s just the pipes and not the actual pants…

zencow.3651:

LordByron.8369:

If only mesmer and guardian had really low dps ………but they just outdps an ele without conjured by a mile.
I don t know without a fgs BUG if an ele can outdps a mesmer in the same situation where you can afford to melee with impunity.

Sauce?

I’m not 100% confident with the numbers but afaik vs mesmer with D/D your Lightning Whip is stronger than mesmer’s sword auto. Your bursts are more or less the same as mesmer’s other skills + mind wrack/phants assuming the phants die after 1-2 skill uses. Mesmers do have it easier in though against bosses with blurred frenzy and more so with sword offhand.

This is what makes the discussion so tough…people ‘feel’ the ele deals less damage than other professions, but is that actually true? Anyone who’s got some good data?

Arheundel.6451:

@Poster above ( can’t write your name without the kitten with it..dunno why)

That seems odd…I wouldn’t know what part of my name would be considered offensive language.

Let me start by saying that I appreciate the time you took to write your response. It’s well argumented and you have a few valid points. And quite frankly, I agree with the basic sentiment of staff eles are less suited for duelling than some other professions. However, I disagree on 2 key points: ‘the severity of the issue’ and the fact that ‘range defines our weapons’.

Things are bad, but not that bad
Forums being what they are, people tend to exagerate their issues to get their emotions across. This comes in both forms, ranging from ‘the staff ele is absolutely worthless and deals no damage’ to ‘I can duel everyone 2v1 in WvW with my staff ele’. This sentiment is my main point of contention. While I do agree that there’s still room for improvement, I don’t find the staff ele to be nearly as bad as it’s portrayed on these forums. I don’t consider myself a god-like player and if these forum statements were 100% accurate, I shouldn’t have a 50%+ win ratio in WvW duels. insert ‘you only fight noobs’ here

However, what’s more concerning about these posts is that because of their exageration, they disregard key factors when it comes to balancing. Combo fields for example, are by their very nature, imbalanced. If you balance them around 1v1, they’ll be overpowered when multiple players make use of them, and vice versa. The staff ele solves this problem somewhat by being able to make use of their own fields. However, if you want to balance the staff for duelling, you’d have to remove the combo fields from the weapon or dumb them down greatly (guardian-style). I’d be very sorry to see that happen because combo fields in general, are a big improvement in Guild Wars 2 compared to other MMO’s.

Other factors that are often ‘overlooked’ are the dagger’s better-than-melee range, the range vs. melee balance , the AoE vs. single target effect and last but not least, support AND damage instead of support OR damage. When considering all these effects, the level of balance you end up with should be pretty close to the current level. Because in the end, most people ‘feel’ that there’s something wrong but few people actually ‘quantify’ it.

Range doesn’t define the weapon
For other MMO’s and certain other professions, this is certainly true. However, the elementalist is a special case in my opinion and for staff, this is due to Evasive Arcana. I’ve noticed that while playing the staff, I rarely stand back at full range throwing fireballs. Instead, I tend to rush in and support my team with fields and combos, dodging through stuff and generally increasing my chance to hit things by being in the thick of things.

For dagger/dagger, the opposite is true: while in melee, you can retreat to a range where you can still hit your melee opponent while they can’t, and you get a bucketload of gap finishers (3 on the weapon, and a teleport utility), not to mention permanent swiftness, to make sure you’re always in damage range. Scepter/dagger is even more like that, rather than being melee or ranged, you’re both.

Great wall of text, but where does this leave the discussion?
There’s room for improvement, but things aren’t as bad as people make them sound. Staff eles are perfectly playable in PvE, dungeons and WvW, and they deal sufficient damage to keep up. Any changes or buffs should be done in small steps, in my opinion. The previous patch was a step in the right direction, with a few casting time reductions and Healing Rain being castable while moving. What I’d like to see personally, is fields like Lava Font starting their damage at the start of their cast instead of at the end of the first second. Skills with a trigger delay, like Eruption and Ice Spike should have a low casting time OR a delay, but not both (to make them suitable for area control, and to keep the versatility in skill effects). The damage on the non-fire auto attacks could be buffed slightly without much risk to XvX balance. Finally, decoupling attunement recharges from Arcana could be a good idea.

Ideas I firmly do not support are weapon swapping, major cooldown reductions on skills and removal of utility in favor of more damage, for reasons I’ve stated elsewhere.

The staff’s problems with duelling are inherent to the combo fields that come with it, and I fear that the only way to make the majority happy would be to remove them. However that would be a sad day for people like me, who enjoy the staff as it is now.

Grevender.9235:

you probably already forgot about this:
[img]http://s9.postimg.org/s0c8mgc7z/gw083.jpg[/img]

and I wasn’t even full buffed.

Impressive, I’ll grant you that. However, I have little doubt that the cumulative damage Meteor Shower can be even higher than that.

BUT…. you missed my main point, which is never the amount of raw damage, as I am not talking of numbers: it’s the amount of effort to get the results that makes the difference, especially when fighting against other players.

If another class can press a single key and make 15.000 damage, and I have to press four to get there, I am 1/4 as efficient as it.
If another class can fully disengage from combat and get back to full health pressing two buttons, and I have to press eight keys to do the same (providing I can, which is not the case as we have been totally stripped of our mobility), that means I am 1/8 as efficient as it.

You have a point there, however usually the elementalist does more than the aforementioned action in those extra button presses. Not only do a lot of our skills affect multiple targets, they can also (when involving attunement swap) grant partywide boons or (when involving combos) combine damage with an effect. Wheter that little extra damage or boon is worth having is another discussion of course.

Why our 2% attack boost per running boon was overpowered and the 3% boost per active illusion on my Mesmer isn’t? (Ele has been nerfed to 1%, Mesmer is still there: why?)

Not sure, but I’m guessing because bunker mesmers base damage is less than bunker eles?

Why our Elite skills are so crappy that I even forget to use them? (at most, you will be stuck with Fire Elemental, all the rest is meh, the flaming sword got slightly boosted but it still is far from being “oooooooh….”)

Those elemental summons are awesome! Fire’s actually the worst of them in my opinion. Air’s got spamming ranged stun, Ice has healing and an Combo Field: Ice, and earth is a great tank in both survivability and aggro.

Why Mist Form shares cooldown with Vapour Form?

I don’t know.

What about RTL? seriously, 40 seconds?

Agree, seemed like a crude fix.

Flame Wall on focus? Flame Aura? with that cooldown? lol.

Agree with you on that too, it should be less to a focus-aura build would become viable.

Want to talk about conjured weapons?
Of our utility skills, how many are REALLY useful? and how many you NEVER equip? On my mesmer it’s always a pain to select the utilities, because they are all great. Same for my guardian, the thief and let’s not even talk about my warrior.

To be honest, when comparing it to the Ranger or Engineer, we have a great selection. Cantrips are most common, but signet and glyph builds are perfectly viable, and I’ve tried Arcane-based builds in the past: works well, if traited correctly (I just like the Evasive Arcane playstyle too much).

My love for the Elementalist doesn’t prevent me to see and acknowledge the poor state that afflicts it.

But your mood seems to affect your judgment somewhat. The last patch that buffed eles changed a lot of the most pressing quality of life issues and for the most part, we have stuff to work with now.

Is it perfect? No. Is it all gloom and doom…sorry, but I just don’t see it that way.

Neko.9021:

This is true, but the low damage of Staff leads me to tell people to stay away from it in most dungeon instances. The support of staff is decently interesting, but it does so at the cost of any good damage. People are certainly free to choose to run Staff, but I can’t in good conscience let them do so without stating the simple fact that Staff for Elementalist has very subpar damage.

What about Meteor Shower? Especially if you followup with an Ice Spike (for vulnerability and fury from attunement swap), it can make quick work of enemies. If anything, staff Fire’s damage is on par with that of Scepter.

ARM.3912:

Please oh please do not let them listen to this idea until they have made the class actually useful again first.

Guess they can listen to him then.

The idea’s cool, but I don’t think it would be good for the game’s performance given how often we swap attunements and all…

haviz.1340:

ThiBash.5634:

So let me ask you then, Grevender:

How much damage does a damage dealer need to do in Guild Wars 2 in order for them to be effective?

More than now if you don’t use conjures.

That’s exactly what I mean. Do you feel the elementalist deals less damage than other professions with similar roles? How much dps does a rifle warrior have? Does he have the same utility skills? Can he hit multiple targets? Are his fields combo attacks?