Guild Wars 2

For PvE/Fractals I run full berzerker + staff 30/20/0/10/10 (Blasting Staff instead of Stone Splinters, deal with it :P) with the keys to survival being:
> Don’t get hit
> Maintain maximum distance to give yourself max reaction time
> Use water field blasts and defensives

There are times where getting one-shotted is unavoidable because you’re out of cooldowns/dodge, in which case all you can do is hope there are rally sources (low-hp mobs) OR wait for a res. It’s just how Ele’s are, get used to it. We are not Warriors with endless room for error.

At higher level fractals Ele’s start getting one-shotted regardless of build so you might as well do some decent damage before you die, the fight only ends when the boss goes down

Lotus.1682:

Maybe this is just because I’m in a lower skill bracket, but I don’t understand why people are saying that Thieves are low skill high reward. If I just spam pistol whip against every kittening class, I die every time. Unlike MM necros and Spirit Rangers and Condi Warriors, I think Thieves take an extraordinary amount of skill to play well. You screw up you die. >.>

You haven’t played an elementalist have you?

Not really, no :P

Sometimes solo queues take 10+ minutes to pop so it’s not uncommon for people to go AFK for whatever reason. Once their queue pops, the player doesn’t hit the “Enter Match” button – so the game KNOWS they are AFK, yet it puts them into the match!
Why is the queuing system so dumb? Why?? I’m willing to bet that is the #1 cause of 4v5’s right now.

Why can’t the system just kick that person from queue and replace them with someone else who is actually ready? You know, something that World Of Warcraft has been doing for 5 years with it’s queuing system.

James Megawatt.9021:

AlbertoUlkesh.4517:

Yes, there was a post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Re-Leavers

Thanks I missed it! Judged Allie too quick

You mean didn’t judge her quick enough. She handled that discussion by closing it, how unprofessional is that? Players with genuine suggestion/discussion material didn’t even get a chance to post in that thread, is that how she handles topics? The same thing had happened in the Skyhammer thread, Allie gave a terrible response and then the entire thread got deleted.

It’s a joke at this point that they are still “investigating” when the biggest sources of 4v5 matches are:
> A ready check button that doesn’t work
> A ready check button that doesn’t work
> A ready check button that doesn’t work
> Skyhammer

Sometimes Solo Queue takes 10+ minutes to pop it’s not uncommon for people to go AFK to do something. They don’t hit “Enter Match” button, so the game KNOWS they are AFK and yet it puts them into the match. That is the dumbest thing ever.

Phadde.7362:

Good point. Elementalists have knockbacks on Staff and OH Dagger, and on Lightning Hammer.

30 secs on Gust with a slow telegraph, 40 secs on Updraft needing melee range.

even though there is a trait which gives you 2 sec of Stability upon attuning to Earth, It’s easy to imagine why people wouldn’t want to change their traits each time they randomly get into “that map”.

20 points into earth would require a complete build overhaul unless the Ele was already running an earth build, most are running fresh air or water+arcana support : /

Justin ODell.9517:

I had a match that started 4v5 today, we won but it’s still annoying.

We’re working on a solution that is both fair and, hopefully, doesn’t waste people’s time. Not ready to talk about the details yet, but I will say we have definitely incorporated a lot of the community’s feedback. Unfortunately, it won’t be in this feature build because it’s part of a major refactoring of our back-end systems.

Good news is good news Justin. Take the time to plan it all out, but when it’s time to implement I hope the entire 4v5 debacle is FULLY addressed in one go.

Some classes have significantly better CC that suits Skyhammer (knockback/pull/etc) than other classes. For example Elementalists have basically non-existent knockback or stability while Engineers can endlessly troll people with knockbacks and toolkit magnet pull.

On points A, C and Skyhammer Room there is actually no PvP going on, purely a competition of who can knock/pull someone to their death.

Then there’s Skyhammer itself which is absurdly overpowered – radius is bigger than capture points, hits hard, knocks down, can’t be dodged/blocked.

I think people are focusing way too much on new GM traits with zero thought given to what trait-lines they are sitting in (what if that line is terrible for the build?), or what GM traits people have to lose to gain the new ones.

I know ANet has stretched the whole “wait for meta to settle yo” thing way beyond reason, but in this particular case it would really be quite wise to wait. Some of the traits may turn out to be horribly broken/OP/UP but only time will tell.

I think people are focusing way too much on new GM traits with zero thought given to what trait-lines they are sitting in (what if that line is terrible for the build?), or what GM traits people have to lose to gain the new ones.

I know ANet has stretched the whole “wait for meta to settle yo” thing way beyond reason, but in this particular case it would really be quite wise to wait. Some of the traits may turn out to be horribly broken/OP/UP but only time will tell.

Lightning Flash + Rush needs to be fixed, but wall/corner + Rush is fine because it’s extremely situational.

Thank heavens I used an anonymous VPN to find this thread. Clearing cookies worked for me in Chrome, but I wonder how long it will be before others figure it out.

edit: Oh god looks like I have to manually clear cookies for this regularly. ANet, please fix!!

The only real counter-play to thieves is to join the bunker meta and have fun sitting on nodes all day. I personally don’t find that very fun.

I mostly play Ele (surprise!) and static discharge Engineer so that’s probably the reason I find Thieves extremely frustrating to play against. Even if I out-play them they just stealth and run away, then kill me a few seconds later when I’m busy fighting someone else. It’s infuriating.
Most of them run extremely cheesy builds that either appear to evade-spam like 6 times in a row (I’m not even exaggerating) or just heartseeker-spam when they find me around ~50% health, or troll with constant back-capping our home point with stealth. There is some other build that seems to apply blinds with almost every attack, or heals the Thief every time they dodge or enter stealth.

Most thieves are running builds that seem to revolve around ridiculous extremes whether it be stealth, evasion, mobility, CC, damage, self-healing or some crazy combination of those.
I don’t bother with WvW because I know I’m going to get DESTROYED by Thieves all day long, they are the undisputed kings there.

DeceiverX.8361:

So basically because glass builds are afraid to die, it makes thief OP?

You need to re-word your statement to this:
“So basically because all glass builds get destroyed by thieves, it makes thief OP?”
To which I would respond “Yes”.

The rest of your post solidifies my point further, because you openly admit that thieves hard-counter all other glass builds and trying to justify why it should stay that way:

I don’t understand. The whole point of building an assassin in any game is to deny the opponents’ DPS. Most of this “drive away” has to do with offhand pistol blind field and less with stealth, seeing as in sPvP thief burst damage is just straight up bad because crit damage caps at 60% as opposed to 122% in WvW. The blind field simply prevents easy retaliation and allows for HS-permastealth. I need to keep iterating this in every thief QQ thread I see, because the hate is misdirected. The counter to DPS is to assassinate them. What does this mean? The thief if matched up against a player of equal skill will be at a stark disadvantage of the opponent isn’t a GC because they lack the burst to kill them efficiently and the staying power to actually deal sufficient damage to finish off a tankier foe.

And don’t let anyone tell you FGS is overpowered in PvE, because it’s totally NOT and I will slay anyone who dares talk badly about my gigantic flaming sword that is totally NOT compensating for anything -_-

NinjaEd.3946:

So you don’t mind being trolled by the AI from a Mesmer as they sit in stealth and melt you?

Those are also extremely annoying, if not even more frustrating to play against than Thieves. I’m not a fan of stealth in general because it hasn’t helped class balance in any MMO, you’ll always see the Rogue/Thief/etc style classes hovering around the top of PvP.
I don’t care about immortal bunker warriorsguardians, at least I can SEE them and they won’t be killing me any time soon. I can at least track their boons and attempt to time some CC to damage them, at least I know their LOCATION so I can simply avoid trying to 1v1 them. Not the case with Thief.

In GW2 a Thief remains in stealth regardless of having a billion conditions stacked on them or being pummeled into the ground with a greatsword, it makes no sense. Stealth-stomping or blind-field stomping has virtually no counter-play, nothing even comes close to Thieves at finishing off downed players.

Oh here’s another one, if I kill a stealthed thief and they remain stealthed in downed state – what??? One time that happened I didn’t wait long enough (was in a rush) and assumed the Thief had escaped in stealth, only to come back like 30 seconds later and see him ressing from that spot and running away. Next time I guess I’ll just waste time and keep sitting there doing nothing, waiting for his downed body to appear like 20 seconds after I had killed him. Or perhaps he escaped in stealth, no way to tell. Takes trolling to whole new levels lol.

Final point, and this one is completely valid and not me venting my frustration – Thieves have all the tools to completely destroy all other glass/zerker builds and are basically driving glassy PvP builds to extinction. Big thread about it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first

“Why do people think we are OP” because thieves can do the most ridiculous stuff with evade-spam, stealth or mobility builds. Nobody likes being trolled by thieves when they are extremely difficult to attack back, not to mention getting that guaranteed stomp on almost every class with stealth/blind-field.

Especially in WvW, good lord thieves are downright broken for roaming. I don’t mind going toe-to-toe against good thieves. But the fact is that they usually decide when or where the fight takes place, and they always have the option to just say “bye” and stealth away if the fight isn’t going in their favor.

The only reason Thieves aren’t topping PvP right now is because bunker guardians, warriors and engineers can somewhat keep them at bay and the game mode (conquest) doesn’t favor stealth. Despite that, Thieves are still the best class at back-capping and roaming in SPvP causing unbalanced fights and stomping people, they still have an extremely well-defined role.

The moment we see any game mode along the lines of “kill everyone else and stay alive”, Thieves will be #1.
WoW Rogues all over again lol.

infantrydiv.1620:

-Sword/Pistol Thief: The idea behind thief sword gameplay appears to be using 2 to port to your enemy and then being vulnerable while you deliver burst, and then being smart about when to port back or swap weapons. Well, GUESS WHAT with sword/pistol you get to evade during your burst. Another stupid spec which should be fixed.

This this this. It’s is extremely stupid to run into a constantly evading thief who is also killing your teammate and there’s nothing you can do about it….even after your teammate goes down they just get stealth stomped before you can res them.

Warriors, Guardians and Engineers are somewhat masking the true strength of thieves and allowing thieves to fly under the radar.

Cynz.9437:

FGS exploiters insta one shotting trebs, players etc.

Killing a treb with a 3 minute CD elite is fine.
As for one-shotting players…sorry what? If you’re referring to Rush + Lightning Flash trick, the AoE is absolutely tiny. If the target even moves a few inches they will be out of it, moving targets are out of the question (and everyone is always moving). Whoever dies to FGS should feel bad.

Arcturus.8109:

Ele sucks, dont hide it behind mythical “skill curve”.

Lately I’m starting to see that argument more and more with things that flat-out suck…not specific to GW2.

For example, in first person shooters where you’ll occasionally come across a terrible weapon (i.e. it’s stats are terrible, not up to opinion). At some point the “it just needs more skill, L2P lol” bandwagon comes through.
Then someone will bring up like 1 or 2 people who have forced themselves to use that weapon and get kills with it, which is apparently “proof that it’s fine”. They completely ignore the fact that if those people used superior weapons, they would do far better.

Though not as extreme, Ele is in a similar place. Sub-par and unused. The few pro Ele players would perform better if they played any other class.

ThiBash.5634:

If a 1000 people pvp as a warrior, and only 10 pvp as an elementalist, how likely is it that there’ll be more warriors at top level PvP? And how likely is it that people will start playing the ele in PvP if they rarely see them and have a rough start? Most will give up before they can truly get good with it.

Sounds like a huge balance issue and a badly designed class.

ThiBash.5634:

You can’t all blame it on the profession. Social interaction and perception play a large role too.

Alright then, I won’t blame it on the profession since 1% of players can clearly make it work. I will blame ArenaNet for having no concept for skill vs reward and for designing a class that is garbage in the hands of 99% of the playerbase.

Even ANet themselves admitted that Ele issues are valid, buffs are on the way (which IMO won’t be enough), so I don’t even know why we’re having this discussion.

Btw a huge chunk of pro Ele players (and high-level players in general) have already quit the game due to being extremely disappointed with ANet’s approach to balance & structure. That is the reality.

ThiBash.5634:

silvermember.8941:

A lot of “pros” are going to tell you that the ele has not problems and they would be lying.

Yet the ele is working for them, so clearly they knowing something you don’t.

“Working for them” in the sense that Ele’s are almost completely absent from most high-level tournament teams.

Skill level has nothing to do with it. Class flaws are class flaws.

Odin.1354:

Dekeyz on youtube. She will tell you how to roll an ele

She usually rolls with LH builds which I would never recommend for a new player, and especially not WvW. LH is extremely group-dependent to function properly.

Staff can do solid DPS regardless of the situation and lets you focus on the fight due to simple rotations.

Staff is your best friend for WvW zergs and PvE dungeons. Build/gear is up to you, whether you want to maximize damage or have a mix of survivability damage.

I’ll go through zerker staff setup:
Traits:
> 25-30 points in Fire – Internal Fire, Pyromancer’s Alacrity, Persisting Flames, etc
> 20-30 points in Air – Bolt to the Heart, Arcane Lightning, etc
> 10 points in Water – Vital Striking
> 10 loose points – Stone Splinters (Earth), Blasting Staff (Arcana) or rest into Fire/Air.

Slot skills:
> Arcane Wave/Blast (or both) for instant damage + blast finisher
> Optional Frost Bow for crazy AoE burst or Glyph Of Lesser Elementals for a pet
> Signet Of Fire for extra crit chance or Arcane Shield for extra survivability.

Healing slot is up to you. I have always stuck with Ether Renewal for it’s short cooldown, decent heal and awesome condi cleansing.

Weapon sigil:
> Force or Fire. If you really want to maximize, have Scepter+Dagger in inventory with dual-Bloodlust sigils (not cheap). After 25 stacks switch to Staff for INSANE damage, just make sure you don’t get downed :P

This is my current build tailored to my taste: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAWhMMKbW9wlBfEBApAKhHEwQBCFWARpwOA-zgxAYLAqAQyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER1AA-e

I love Blasting Staff too much to give it up for extra damage :P

Staff balanced/survival build:
Just sink more points into Water/Arcana and wear toughness gear (cavaliers, celestial, etc). It would look something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAWhMM6ZW3wlBfEBA5BKvwSoABiCWUUkzMA-zgBBYLAUBApqFRjt4qIasabYqYER1AA-e

Jil Dongha.4658:

The ratio Damage/Defense is perfectly balanced on Eles.. as FrownyClown.8402 this one should be terrible.

I take it you’ve never seen a glass thief or static engineer.

I think just a base HP boost (combined with upcoming buffs) will be enough to solve most, if not all of Ele’s problems. The step up from 10.8k to 15k hp…that extra 4.2k will make a ton of difference.

The only real counter-play to thieves is being a bunker and holding the point.

Baladir.2736:

Personally I don’t mind running into a thief who runs away. It’s ok.

It’s not “runs away”. It’s denying your team 5 points from the kill, and every time he gets away he is at another node causing an unbalanced fight finishing-off weakened enemies there. It’s called “roaming” and no other class can even TOUCH thieves at doing that role, not in SPvP and not even in WvW.

Baladir.2736:

Other threads have mentioned all the classes have something like that. I didn’t build my elementalist to run, so I die more than most lol. Players who don’t have great skillz should have an option to avoid combat. Why should they be fair game for anyone who walks by?

1) “All the classes have something like that” – hell no, I have no idea where you read this. All classes have DEFENSIVE abilities/builds, sure, but the only classes that can simply vanish mid-combat to reset their health (or run away) is Thief and Mesmer. Every other class is still targetable by damage, immobilizes, knockdowns, CC, etc. But you can’t damage/CC a target that has gone invisible, in half a second they could have run in any direction.
2) Elementalists don’t run, lol. They die. A lot. Ele’s who pick defensive builds do such pathetic damage that it’s laughable. Take this from someone who has been playing Ele since launch.
3) “Players who don’t have great skillz should have an option to avoid combat” – ok I tried really hard to make sense out of this but I couldn’t. Did you mean “players who don’t have great skillz should play Thief or Mesmer”? But then currently the easiest Warrior, that’s what they should be playing.

Thieves aren’t particularly easy, but what they can do right now is DESTROY any other class that runs a damage/glassy build. Check the thread “Thieves driving away damage dealers” – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first

Stealth acts as both a highly offensive tool and highly defensive tool at the same time.

It’s WoW Rogues all over again. Stealth has allowed Rogues to reign supreme (or near the top of the food chain) for the majority of PvP seasons over the last 8 years.

Recently I’ve been facing thieves who hit stealth the moment I attack. That’s fine, just wait for them to attack….they attack, the I get a few hits in and they immediately hit stealth again.
Waiting…they come back with full HP a few seconds later, I attack and they hit stealth. Waiting…this time a bunch of my teammates come along. They catch the thief mid-attack, he hits stealth again.
The thief simply runs around multiple enemies with absolutely no fear of getting killed because stealth is a guaranteed escape. This is something I would expect a bunker guardian or warrior to do, except at least we can SEE them and attack them.

This has led me to conclude that thief stealth abilities either have an extremely short cooldown (5 secs?), or they have multiple stealth abilities which let them stay in stealth infinitely long.

Ultimately no matter how many enemies are there, it doesn’t matter to a thief because he can jump in the middle of all of them, kill/stomp all the downed people in stealth (or blind field), then just stealth away. This is on top of their evasion, mobility and damage. Obviously it can’t be some 30/30/30/30/30 build but there are definitely builds which can get a solid compromise between everything, i.e. multiple strengths.

Seems to be beyond broken.

garethh.3518:

If the game managed to stabilize with a small PvP population against nothing… I think subscription MMOs are going to be extremely challenging competition.

In that case WoW should’ve already robbed GW2 of it’s population, since it’s held the MMO crown for 8+ years and will continue to do that. ESO and Wildstar are nothing lol, watch both of them go F2P within 6 months.

Guild Wars franchise has never competed with subscription MMO’s and never will. The whole point it is to co-exist with subscription MMO’s.

ThiBash.5634:

Eles stay alive by being mobile. That’s what he meant.

Mobility is our survival mechanic?

Lawful.5314:

As i see, mainly comboes are with staff, with other weapons there are little to no combos.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_elementalist_combo_skills

With Ele the main ones you’re after are fire and water blast finishers. First make sure to slot Arcane Blast, Arcane Brilliance is also optional (you won’t get that till later levels).
If you’re using Scepter/Dagger then hit Ring Of Fire, land Dragon’s Tooth + Phoenix + Arcane Wave (all your blasts) in that for lots of might.
With Staff the might stacking isn’t as good, you only have 1 blast finisher with Eruption. But you get 2 water fields, Geyser + Healing Rain – blast those for extra healing. You can also blast Static Field to get swiftness.

Also remember you can blast other people’s fields as well. That’s all there is to know

I don’t think berzerker gear is even an option for a D/D ele doing WvW, you’re just going to get exploded.
Maybe if you were a staff ele who sat back and nuked from a distance.

Strang.8170:

Well to be honest you can just facetank regular mobs in normal zones.

For every 1 mob that an Ele can facebank, guardians/warriors can facetank like 3-4 lol. Bunker warriors are on a whole other level.

You know that molten furnace fractal in the weapons testing fight with all those AoE’s flying around? Yeah, I saw a warrior just stand in the middle of those and /dance while eating all the damage (seemed to barely budge his health).
Later in Mai Trin fight he just happily stood in the electric/fire AoE’s from Horrik, all while passively healing. That is insane. Like…how is that even allowed.

Those AoE attacks hit my Ele for like 30-50% of my health per tick.

garethh.3518:

Wow.
I didn’t think this game would fall that far that fast.
Seems GW2 might not even make it to the split, when TSO and Wildstar are released.

Subscription MMO’s affecting GW2? Lol, no.

infantrydiv.1620:

How is an ele supposed to beat a thief who can literally perma evade for the entire time the ele is in fire attunement?

They don’t.

In any case it’s impossible to kill thieves in 1v1. Any half-decent thief will just stealth away if the fight isn’t going in their favor.

Ugruk.4069:

If you die in pve it is your own fault sorry stop facetanking, you are not a guardian…

I swear that is word-for-word what I used to hear in WoW forums. I thought this game wasn’t supposed to have a holy trinity, i.e. no tanks?

Staff zerker in hotjoins is quite fun. It’s best never to take PvP seriously when playing Ele.

There are Ele’s who use Diamond Skin?

edit: Let me rephrase that, there are Ele’s in PvP?

Even on my Engi I feel like rage-quitting whenever skyhammer comes. Whatever entertainment is gained from killing people with knockback/pulls….it gets old very quickly and stops being fun.

But sadly I don’t think skyhammer is going anywhere. When ANet has openly seen the sheer volume of hatred for the map and they just shrug it off (by ignoring the topic and/or delaying)….nothing more can be done.

Hynoris.3684:

In all honesty … I play a ele since the start and just begin to play a warrior on spvp a few weeks ago and i just can’t imagine myself losing to a ele on spvp with my warrior.

And i love to be prove wrong on that, lets just hope for the next patch to fix some major issues.

After playing other classes in PvP with the skill/reaction times learned on my Ele, I can’t imagine losing to an equally-skilled Ele either. Yeah maybe if they catch me by surprise while I’m busy fighting, but no way in a 1v1.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Don’t forget FGS!
Hardcore cowardliness.

Whoever blows the most powerful 3 minute elite in the game just to run away…argh

Staff zerker all the way. Sure you’ll die a lot, but I prefer take that risk while doing some of the highest damage in the game because that’s what Ele does best :P

Yasi.9065:

Dont know what the problem is…

Fresh Air + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave. I absolutely LOVE facing Ele’s like that because 1 dodge/block = their entire burst sequence misses, and then I can proceed to auto-attack them to death because they have zero defenses (and I literally mean zero, arcane slot skills lol).

Liewec.2896:

in tournament games a glass staff ele can be the difference betweena win or a loss, if played right you can dish out a colossal amount of damage on a large area.

Assuming the enemy team is full of blind sheep who don’t even notice that a staff Ele is about to nuke them all. All it takes is 1 person to focus the glass staff ele…that’s it, the Ele is done for the rest of the round. Especially if it’s an enemy thief or mesmer, at which point the staff zerker ele might as well quit the match to stop giving the enemy free points.

Liewec.2896:

and scepter ele can put out ridiculously insane burst with the right combos.

1 trick pony, after which they spend the next 40-45 seconds either being downed or waiting for respawn. That’s usually how it goes in tournaments, look it up.

Liewec.2896:

ele is a very high risk, very high reward class, the problem is that other classes can get the same reward with very little effort or risk.

Umm so why on earth would you say Ele is a “very high risk, very high reward” class? In what context, compared to what? If others can get the exact same reward, why would you even use the words “very high”?
English/logic fail or am I missing something here…

Splatter Paw.7238:

Ele has plenty of tools to down a thief, like idk chill, immobolize, and any number of blocks.

Ele’s have 1 immobilize on 1 of their weapons (Staff #4 earth), which has a crazy slow telegraph, 30 second cooldown and will never hit anyone who is moving around.
“Any number of blocks” – block 3 attacks on a 75sec cooldown with Arcane Shield. At which point the thief simply stealths and comes back a few seconds later to blow up the Ele.
Chill – Frozen Ground or Frost Aura, both of which have 40 sec cooldowns and don’t stop the thief from simply stealthing away and coming back a few seconds later to blow up the Ele.

Everything an Ele can do only delays their death by a few extra seconds. There is no way to reliably hit a thief with ANY of Ele’s ridiculously telegraphed/slow-casting abilities since they are spamming evades & stealthing.

Splatter Paw.7238:

It really makes me chuckle to see after a year ppl whining over hs spam. Yesterday a thief spammed toward me, know what I did? Interrupted him in mid air and spiked him as he dropped problem solved not hard zerglings just stratigize.

Well done. Doesn’t change the fact that HS spam is still extremely high reward with zero setup and spammable.

Thieves aren’t anti-ele, they are anti-glass. Since ele is basically always squishy no matter what build they use they are easy pickings for thieves, but really ANY profession trying out a damage-heavy build is going to get destroyed by a thief.
They have too many tools to let them avoid damage, deal damage, close gaps or run away. Shadow refuge is ridiculous and they are the best class in the game at finishing-off people with blind field, stealth stomp, etc.

I tried out a bunch of dyes with this set

Vylor.3276:

The only thing ele is “struggling” with are scrubs who cant play a class that requires skill.

Why should scrubs bother getting “skilled” with a class that doesn’t even reward skill?

It’s far better to spend that time & effort learning to play an Engineer or Thief for vastly better performance.

Think before posting.

Watched a mesmer solo Mai Trin. Clones just absorbed all most of her attacks while the mesmer ran in circles spamming evades and occasionally running into do some damage.

kaikalii.4198:

3. Play a more reasonable yet fun build, and become so good at it, that you destroy these passive players.

tl;dr: Anet isn’t fixing their game any time soon. Make the most of it by working to become good enough to destroy OP passive builds. All is not vain.

That’s where your logic breaks down because the whole point of passive builds is that they CANNOT be out-played by getting “good enough”.
For every 1 player who attempts to play a unique build, there are 20 others sticking to cheesy/passive builds and completely facerolling that 1 player.

“All is vain” wasn’t just some joke created for the heck of it. All really IS vain.

BlackBeard.2873:

Cynz.9437:

I wonder how eles will be after next “balance patch”. Devs said something about staff eles being strong and such.

Well given the past track record, here are the options:

1. They will nerf a few of the key traits giving ele any semblance of viability, hoping that by making them worse, the garbage in most trait lines will look better.
2. The will give a few token buffs but not address the key issue really, which actually lies in other classes being unreasonably OP. Any buffs will be counter-acted by further buffs to thieves/warriors.
3. They will buff ele through the roof and make it insanely OP because doing #2 for a while didn’t work. If people don’t immediately realize this, they will do something like reduce the health threshold on diamond skin to 50% just to drive the point home.

My money is on #2.

I wouldn’t say other classes are OP.

Ele’s have always been crippled by long attunement cooldowns, long ability cooldowns and having the lowest health+armor with no built-in survival mechanic comparable to stealth or clones.
The only reason D/D Cantrip did well was because of very high healing coefficients, 15-20 second RTL’s and blast finishers all over the place. So there were 1-2 specific builds that worked extremely well in PvP/WvW and everything else was garbage.
Only once the supposedly “OP” things were brought in line, THEN we got to see the kind of issues Ele’s really suffer at the core…they always have.

Something felt off with Elethe moment I started playing GW2. The ridiculous cast/telegraph times (dragon’s tooth, seriously?), weak autoattacks, crazy long cooldowns and getting killed so easily didn’t make sense to me. I concluded that maybe I was just really bad at the game….only to realize later (while leveling any other class) that everything felt 5x easier in terms of killing stuff and staying alive.

Many others have expressed a similar experience from the opposite perspective, i.e. they leveled something like a guardian/mesmer/engi first, then started leveling an Ele only to realize that suddenly they were CONSTANTLY dying. So they concluded either “ele isn’t the class for me!” or “oh man, I’m really bad at ele!”. That’s just not right.