Guild Wars 2

Warrior is largely AoE centric with longbow and technically only has 2 “elemental” moves with it, Fan of Fire and the Adrenaline skill. Wouldn’t be hard to differentiate at all. Ele already has a “Water longbow” with the frost bow conjure which is why it might work as a full fledged weapon for us.

Just work outwards from frost bow as a base design to the other 3 elements.

Warriors, Mesmers and Thieves are what I see most. With some spikes in Guardian count here and there. But largely its the first three where you can easily get upwards of 5 in a single match.

My only problem with Mesmers is that it feels like too much of their damage is coming from their illusions and not enough from them. Locating the Mesmer themselves should be rewarded. Instead of continuing to be chewed up by illusions.

Well, that and Moa. Which is utterly ridiculous. Timewarp is pretty crazy too.

Elementalist is the only Scholar without a unique weapon option ( Mesmer has sword/greatsword, Necro has axe ). I would like to see us get one more option, but one unique apart from Mesmer and Necro. So not great sword.

Longbow/Shortbow might work for an arcane archer sort of angle and would give us a long range, single target damage option. Instead of the smattering of cones, AoEs and other “aimed” abilities we have littered through out our weapon sets.

Its hard to picture Ele with any more melee weapons though.

Cantrips are largely your “oh shi-” buttons and can be traited with some nice extras. Some of them feel pretty much required when it comes to pvp at times as they have very pvp centric utility. I’m not sure I would go glyphs over cantrips at this point.

Though I still use Glyph Of Elemental Harmony. It’s easily our best heal.

I don’t mind living by the edge of my teeth, what I mind is that I’m not similarly rewarded for living by the edge of my teeth as that Guardian lawl spamming GS skills 20 feet away. Chewing through mobs at twice the speed.

Really, the class being hard and taking a lot of effort to learn isn’t the problem. Its the pay off you get for your effort. Whereas if you go apply that level of skill and effort to Mesmer or Guardian or something, you get rewarded twice over. Thus is the issue.

Ele doesn’t need to be simplified, it just needs to be more reasonably effective compared to its peers for a similar level of effort.

Ride The Lightning is fine, it’s the rest of skill name “-Directly Into A Nearby Wall” that causes problems.

You’re confusing “Abundant” with “Redundant”. >.>

Ele should have been 5 weapon skills with context sensitive effects based on attunement + the ability to weapon swap. Not 20 skills spread across 4 skill bars that by and large have little overall mechanical difference, only different secondary effects. The Elements don’t really feel at hat unique from each other as they generally have the same playstyle just with different visuals.

The problem with the whole L2P argument is that it freely suggests classes using brainless burst combo should just get free kills whenever they catch someone whose block/stun break/vigor is down.

In which case skill has been removed from the equation and its just by and large a lottery. One withkittengood odds for the burst spammer as the only way they miss is if they hit an experienced, unlagged player paying complete attention with his cool downs up and some vigor.

Considering the level of skill required to use some of the popular burst combos atm, its a total and complete disparity in effort.

Who in the world is complaining about the ele in PvP?

As for 20 vs 5. The problem is they’ve taken 5 weapon skills than divided them by 4. An Ele has to be constantly rotating and spitting out 20 skills as fast as possible to maintain par with someone just rotating 5. That’s pretty much the crux of the entire issue with the class’s design.

Often times the skill combination or rotation you want is littered across 2-3 attunements and you need to stuff the 4th in just for survivability.

Its an awful map, Water pvp combat is just bad, period and the sharks make it all the worse. It needs to be removed from rotation frankly.

I haven’t seen a speed hacker in a week or so. Even at night ( PST ).

I have never seen 6 Elementalists or 6 Necros. I did just leave a match with 5 Thieves on my team if that helps. ;p

Seriously, can we stop shoveling that bs already? The Ele needs help and it has nothing to do with people playing WoW before this or not playing the class to its “potential” or any of the other bizarre array of assumptions a select handful of people keep repeating on here. The fact of the matter is you play twice as hard to keep this class at par when you could be playing practically any other class and keeping it at “amazing” with the same skill level. Save maybe Necro. The only class I pity when playing my Ele.

The complaints have increased over time not decreased and Ele’s are slowly vanishing from the realm of spvp/tpvp. Hell, I’m surprised when I run into another one in spvp lately. Aside from liking the look of it, there is pretty much no practical reason to play an Elementalist right now. You can and will do better on any other class with the same level of skill required to keep an Ele just on an even keel.

The “Meta” game has developed and it says “reroll”. -.-

Ahhh. Hell, if I could hit as few buttons as a Ranger does for the same damage as my Ele I wouldn’t have a headache. ;p

Yes and no. The class has rough edges and could do with some serious tuning especially with its Trait lines. But ultimately the core of its issue is with its base stats. Its super squishy, but doesn’t really gain anything as a trade off for its squishiness. If it had higher base HP or higher base DPS it’d probably handle better. But as is, its not really better at any given area than any other class and if you go from Ele to something like a Mesmer, the difference is stark and quite disheartening.

and those 24 buttons will be equal to 2 on another class. >.>

Ele vs Engineer is a curious combination. Engineer is much easier to tank it up with and has more ready access to some exotic conditions than Ele. But kits are prettykittenat the moment with the autoattack bug and not gaining any stats from your equipped weapons. That aside, Engineer is very much a jack of all trades sort of class whereas Ele is always going to be an angry dude in a dress.

In a nutshell, Engineer can do anything any other class can do but it will take 2 more button presses to do it. Engineer has some more breathing room and a bigger margin for error than Ele as well. With Ele you’re going to be basically balls to the wall at all times in PvP. If you stop pressing buttons on Ele, you’re going to die shrieking.

Both classes are quite adaptable to any given situation, though I would say Ele is ultimately the more adaptable class on the fly. Engineer has an easier time with survival however. Both classes require you to REALLY learn your kitten in this game. Engineer because its best bits are often buried beneath several layers of abilities and kits and Ele because you have to really learn your attunements. Ele I would say requires you to pay more attention to other classes as well as its pretty easy to burst down an inattentive Ele.

If you want to learn and make calculated decisions in pvp, go Engineer. If you want to learn and rely on intuition, snap judgments and muscle memory in pvp, go Ele. Engineer can stop and smell the roses a bit and has more readily available hard counters. Ele you have to remember where your counters are and you sort of have to get into a button rhythm and keep it up the entire time you’re in combat. If that makes any sense.

Ele requiring skill is kind of the entire problem. Namely you’re using twice as much of it to net the same performance as other classes.

Oh, well, there’s a screenshot now. Clearly that means everything is fine!