Elementalist Discussion

[Keosen]

People will eventually get used to it and become better.
I'm really low level (17) to judge the profession in total but i see it while progressing, at the beggining i was dying even when fighting one mob now i can pull three and still manage to beat them.

[Luko]

People will eventually get used to it and become better.
I'm really low level (17) to judge the profession in total but i see it while progressing, at the beggining i was dying even when fighting one mob now i can pull three and still manage to beat them.

And it just gets easier from there, as long as you never challenge yourself much. Dont let the posts lead you to believe the class can't do anything at all. There's plenty of 80 Ele's out there. The problem is that it's damn near impossible to rise above a challenge in the same way other classes can. Possible? Sure, I see good players do it all the time, but 9 times out of 10, it's safe to say your average elementalist is just going to end up eating the death and waypointing when a warrior only needs to throw in a few dodges and otherwise hacks away effortlessly without breaking much of a sweat.

I think the biggest shock for new elementalits, (it definitely was for me) is the role you'll play in a dungeon. Even with absolutely no forewarning, you quickly realize how slowly you're damaing compared to the other classes and how much harder you've got to work to stay alive. Before long, you've likely switched to staff and are sitting pretty in Water attunement, making sure everyone else is having fun.

[Deleted]

the amount of spells available and their possible combinations.

gotta say i wouldnt mind being able to weapon swap (some will call me crazy but i do think eles lack flexibility because of that), and many traits (even passives) are meh in comparison to what we get with some other classes. as for damage, i'm under the impression i have to toss twice as much spells to match some other classes speed like say... warriors/rangers/guardians.

all in all, eles would probably need some love but even then, i like it.

I agree with the weapon swapping. The problem is that with attunements, regardless of which weapon you're using, your spells are going to (most often) fall into the same category. If you use dual daggers, for instance, almost all your spells are melee/short range, and you get alot of mobility, whereas with a staff you get long range aoe, almost exclusively. The problem with this is that you have to know beforehand what kind of fight you're going into. If you decide to go with the double daggers beacuse you only see one enemy and you think you'll burst it down fast, but then four adds show up, you'd better still have your mobility spells available because you're going to be on the run.

Other classes lack this problem because with a weapon swap they can change their entire skillset, for instance a warrior swapping from axe/shield to longbow can go from being a single target melee focused character to a long range aoe character in a second. Elementalists can't do that.

[Eggoman]

I switched to a D/D build and have mostly Carrion Armor w/ Necro runes. I think I am going to switch to something with even more health for this build. I am 0/10/20/20/20. It is a work in progress but so far it has had the most success as I have been able to match up with various classes by myself or take a 2 v 1 pretty far vs decent players. I can aggressively attack as Protection is constantly up while I am in attack mode with the various traits. But I also have really good outs as well.

I rush in with ride the lightning and then pop shocking aura. This gives me fury+protection+swiftness and then I'll switch to Earth and drop a quake then wind up a churning earth. Now at this point people either run or try to hit me. If they try to run out I lightning flash to them and finish Churning Earth and go into fire and faceroll. If they try to hit me I will lightning flash in back of them and by the time they realize what happened my churning earth has finished and i'm rolling into fire. My escape route is usually water attunement then frost aura->frozen burst -> updraft then ride the lightning out of there.

This has been my WvW/sPvP build and I will switch out to staff and get blasting staff for castle assaults. The weakness in this build is I suffer hugely if I'm not attacking or I'm not running and lack of cleansing ability even with cleansing flame.

[Ashnazg]

People will eventually get used to it and become better.
I'm really low level (17) to judge the profession in total but i see it while progressing, at the beggining i was dying even when fighting one mob now i can pull three and still manage to beat them.

PvE ele's dont really have a problem, imo. Yeah, we're complete crap when it comes to damage, but we do pretty decently at outlasting and sustaining dps, if you can be mobile.

PvP - different story. Especially downed state..don't even get me started on that.

[Lilly32]

Eles will get much love in the first balancing patch. If ANet said warriors were the most balanced and finished class as of now then they will do the same to elementalists letting us also faceroll mobs without having to use more skills than a TBC feral druid combined with a Cata Warlock. I just dont understand why any class should have to work much much harder than another class just to be half as good. Its almost like the class isnt even finished and is obviously broken if you have to put so much effort into killing something using 62343264 abilities while dodging all over the place while everyone else around you is killing with 2-3 skills and in half the time while facetanking them.

[Cyclone Jack]

Its almost like the class isnt even finished and is obviously broken if you have to put so much effort into killing something using 62343264 abilities while dodging all over the place while everyone else around you is killing with 2-3 skills and in half the time while facetanking them.

That's really my only complaint. Last night I was working on getting a skill point in Orr that had a number of enemies in front of it, and a champion right on top of the skill point. This was something I was going to have to fight through. By the time I had killed the 4th enemy, the 1st one had respawned and was on top of me. The next 5 enemies were all just respawns and I was not making any progress towards the skill point. While this does speak volumes for our survivability, it just takes so damn long to kill something, especially once your bigger abilities have been used. I finally made it to the skill point when 4 other players showed up.

I take it back, i have one other complaint. Underwater combat on an Elementalist. It's a combination of boring and terribad. I get my map completion and get back on dry land as fast as possible avoiding combat as much as I can, even wasting money on waypoints just to speed up the process of getting back on dry land. It was OK in the lower levels, but the higher I got the more I hated it. Couple it with how buggy air and earth base attacks are (completely missing enemies right in front of you, forcing you to constantly reposition yourself while praying that the enemy does not move).

Still, the class is very fun to play, and the mechanics are very solid. It is a very active class that can be rewarding, it just has a few issues that need to be ironed out.

[Alilei32]

I will keep leveling mine only because I didnt like the other two choices for a cloth caster but I feel like Im about as useful as a Vanilla Ret Pally. Also if I play it like weapon swapping using only 2 attunements will I suck. I just think using 4 is too much work. And like people have said they play the class because its fun and even with its shortcomings they enjoy it. So if I find it fun to only play with 2 attunements is that OK and will I be just as good and plowing mobs as if I was on my Guardian?

[DrakeWurrum]

And it just gets easier from there, as long as you never challenge yourself much. Dont let the posts lead you to believe the class can't do anything at all. There's plenty of 80 Ele's out there. The problem is that it's damn near impossible to rise above a challenge in the same way other classes can. Possible? Sure, I see good players do it all the time, but 9 times out of 10, it's safe to say your average elementalist is just going to end up eating the death and waypointing when a warrior only needs to throw in a few dodges and otherwise hacks away effortlessly without breaking much of a sweat.

I think the biggest shock for new elementalits, (it definitely was for me) is the role you'll play in a dungeon. Even with absolutely no forewarning, you quickly realize how slowly you're damaing compared to the other classes and how much harder you've got to work to stay alive. Before long, you've likely switched to staff and are sitting pretty in Water attunement, making sure everyone else is having fun.

I'm of the opinion people need to stop trying to compare to other classes so much, as you're only ever going to end up disappointed. This same level of complaining was present back in WoW, for years on end. I should know, as a (former) member of the Enhancement community in the official WoW forums. I did my own fair share of bitching and moaning. Enhancement Shaman haven't stopped complaining since we were still using the OLD forums back in TBC.

But in the end, it didn't matter who was the absolute best, numerically speaking. I wasn't in Paragon, so I didn't need to worry about those statistically small differences. I still ran into dungeons and raids and performed well beyond the expectations of my gear level, to the point of impressing anybody I ever played with. Forcing people to see that, in the right hands, an Enhancement Shaman could be amazing.
Could I have rerolled to a Rogue and done better? Maybe. You can't say that objectively, since the two playstyles are different, down to the pattern of their DPS "priority" rotation. I did eventually reroll Rogue specifically because I was promised (and unfortunately, denied, ultimately) legendary daggers, and I did perform exceedingly well. Probably better than I could have done as Enhancement Shaman.

But I still preferred my Enhancement Shaman, and enjoyed him much more, as I could do things on him that I couldn't do on my Rogue. I couldn't support the group nearly so well. I still, to this day, loathe the idea of wasting MSW charges on Healing Rains for when the group could use some extra healing, but it's still something a Rogue couldn't do. And now, upcoming in MoP, if I were still playing with the intent to raid, I have ways to offer that healing support without having to waste DPS opportunities.

Could a dagger/dagger Thief be in the group in your place and provide better burst damage than a dagger/dagger Elementalist, and likely be more survivable at the same time? Probably. But so what? You're there right now, on your Elementalist. Play to the best of your ability, kick the dungeon's ass, and if you're a good player, you'll impress everybody in the group who simply assumes that Elementalists are weak and useless. When you're used to being the red-headed stepchild among the classes, you learn to either reroll, or you deal with it and simply strive to be the best that you can.

Complaining about weakness and imbalance is only useful to the point of bringing it to the attention of the devs, and after that, it's just belly-aching.

[Deleted]

I think the biggest shock for new elementalits, (it definitely was for me) is the role you'll play in a dungeon. Even with absolutely no forewarning, you quickly realize how slowly you're damaing compared to the other classes and how much harder you've got to work to stay alive. Before long, you've likely switched to staff and are sitting pretty in Water attunement, making sure everyone else is having fun.

Anyone just sitting in staff water is doing it wrong, I cycle between all 4 pretty constantly, using the majority of cooldowns and stacking buffs and removing conditions as much as I am actually healing. I don't find my DPS that weak either and if I have to work harder to stay alive it's because I have slow reflexes more than my class. I absolutely love dungeons - including explorables - as staff elementalist but I spend the least time in water if I'm honest, even with my support build. I offer far more by switching to it quickly, getting my spells down and switching back out again.

I'm of the opinion people need to stop trying to compare to other classes so much, as you're only ever going to end up disappointed. This same level of complaining was present back in WoW, for years on end. I should know, as a (former) member of the Enhancement community in the official WoW forums. I did my own fair share of bitching and moaning. Enhancement Shaman haven't stopped complaining since we were still using the OLD forums back in TBC.

But in the end, it didn't matter who was the absolute best, numerically speaking. I wasn't in Paragon, so I didn't need to worry about those statistically small differences. I still ran into dungeons and raids and performed well beyond the expectations of my gear level, to the point of impressing anybody I ever played with.

Could a dagger/dagger Thief be in the group and provide better burst damage than a dagger/dagger Elementalist, and likely be more survivable at the same time? Probably. But so what? You're there right now. Play to the best of your ability, kick the dungeon's ass, and if you're a good player, you'll impress everybody in the group who simply assumes that Elementalists are weak and useless.

Complaining about weakness and imbalance is only useful to the point of bringing it to the attention of the devs, and after that, it's just belly-aching.

I agree to a certain extent, complaining about stuff and trying to compare elementalist to every (or even any) other class to a certain point just ends up seeming like a rant and not constructive, but it's really still good to have some sort of constructive overview of how the class compares to other classes. Although GW2 isn't exactly "competitive" content in the same way as a lot of other games, a class can still fall to the point where if Person A is looking for one more for Arah explorable, and gets 2 whispers, one from an elementalist and one from a different class.... you do not want class balance to be at the point where the elementalist is immediately dismissed because it's known that the class is weaker.

On some other popular GW2 forums, it's already clear from the elementalist sections that elementalists do feel that they're suffering in tournament team choices although I have no experience of that personally.

Also just to be clear I'm not saying we're at that point, I actually don't think elementalist is in that bad a spot myself... but if everyone just sits back and says "well there's no point in complaining let's just make the most of it", the devs won't get enough feedback and eventually there could be a knock on effect when it comes to building teams in game.

In that respect it really helps if people try to feedback constructively (and on the official forums as well where possible) so the developers get enough information to work with when they make changes.

[DrakeWurrum]

I agree to a certain extent, complaining about stuff and trying to compare elementalist to every (or even any) other class to a certain point just ends up seeming like a rant and not constructive, but it's really still good to have some sort of constructive overview of how the class compares to other classes. Although GW2 isn't exactly "competitive" content in the same way as a lot of other games, a class can still fall to the point where if Person A is looking for one more for Arah explorable, and gets 2 whispers, one from an elementalist and one from a different class.... you do not want class balance to be at the point where the elementalist is immediately dismissed because it's known that the class is weaker.

On some other popular GW2 forums, it's already clear from the elementalist sections that elementalists do feel that they're suffering in tournament team choices although I have no experience of that personally.

Also just to be clear I'm not saying we're at that point, I actually don't think elementalist is in that bad a spot myself... but if everyone just sits back and says "well there's no point in complaining let's just make the most of it", the devs won't get enough feedback and eventually there could be a knock on effect when it comes to building teams in game.

In that respect it really helps if people try to feedback constructively (and on the official forums as well where possible) so the developers get enough information to work with when they make changes.

Why do you think I'm desperately wishing for an automatic grouping tool? :P

I hate to bring that up here, but LFD was one of the best things to happen to WoW specifically because online gaming communities get that way about class balance. There's no guarantee that the Thief whispering you will actually be better than that Elementalist. He might be a total noob, he might be a complete idiot, he might even be stubborn about what build he uses, refusing to change to fit with the group better.
But if you're the sort of person to jump on the bandwagon, and believe that Elementalists are flat-out weaker than Thieves, you're going to make that choice automatically based entirely on the least accurate measurement: public opinion.

If it weren't for LFD in WoW, I would never have been able to get into 5-mans on my Shaman, at least back when T11 and T12 were still the current content. All thanks to Paragon making public statements about Shaman being useless in cutting edge content.
I would never have even had the chance to run through those 5-man dungeon groups and top the DPS meters 9 times out of 10, causing people to realize "holy shit, you're Enhancement and NOT sucking!"

(It's also part of why I lament the lack of combat meters)

[Deleted]

Why do you think I'm desperately wishing for an automatic grouping tool? :P

I hate to bring that up here, but LFD was one of the best things to happen to WoW specifically because online gaming communities get that way about class balance. There's no guarantee that the Thief whispering you will actually be better than that Elementalist. He might be a total noob, he might be a complete idiot, he might even be stubborn about what build he uses, refusing to change to fit with the group better.

If it weren't for LFD in WoW, I would never have been able to get into 5-mans on my Shaman, at least back when T11 and T12 were still the current content. All thanks to Paragon making public statements about Shaman being useless in cutting edge content.

Don't need to sell it to me... if you can't tell from my name I am a die-hard shaman fan, but I had to bench enhancement for cata completely, and even at one point server first guilds were benching resto shaman's to take pretty much any other healing alt.

[DrakeWurrum]

Don't need to sell it to me... if you can't tell from my name I am a die-hard shaman fan, but I had to bench enhancement for cata completely, and even at one point server first guilds were benching resto shaman's to take pretty much any other healing alt.

Oh, I know it. The sad thing is, there were plenty of server first guilds using Shaman all through Cata. It's just the ones that struggled with it that decided "it must be the shaman's fault!"

[Profyrion]

Other classes lack this problem because with a weapon swap they can change their entire skillset, for instance a warrior swapping from axe/shield to longbow can go from being a single target melee focused character to a long range aoe character in a second. Elementalists can't do that.

This is a huge weakness in the class, given how strongly PvE encounters are designed around flexibility. If I misjudge the fight and bring the wrong skillset, I'm useless or dead.

[DrakeWurrum]

This is a huge weakness in the class, given how strongly PvE encounters are designed around flexibility. If I misjudge the fight and bring the wrong skillset, I'm useless or dead.

I don't see it as a weakness in the least.

Elementalists have four attunements instead of two weapons. Whenever I need to be at range with my daggers, I can switch to water attunement. Vapor Blade has a ridiculously large range for what is a "melee" weapon. Sure, it's only 600, and not 1200 or even 900, but so what? There's no PvE content that makes 600 range absolutely impossible. You'd struggle with it in WvW in massive zergs, but why in the world would you knowingly head for a massive zerg with daggers?

Frankly, it's not any bigger of a weakness for Elementalists than for other classes. What if I go to a fight with Greatsword/Hammer on my Guardian, and it turns out I need a ranged weapon? I'm boned!

At least Dagger/Dagger gets an automatically built-in ranged option, however short that range may be.

[Voorhees83]

Ok, so I love my elementalist. It was the only class I really wanted to play. I played tank/mage style in UO, Wizard in DAoC, Mage in WoW, and so on... I love the class. I started out scepter/dagger going from mainly air/fire and getting power/precision. Tried some d/d and staff and just didn't really like the feel/style of play. d/d felt pretty good damage, but more than 1 mob became rough especially if a range is thrown in. Now I generally like to be different than most and it actually makes me happy people are struggling with the ele because many will reroll if its not faceroll and "easy".

So I changed over my traits to Earth/water/arc and am going that route w/ D/D and more tanking/bleed style. I killed 5 enemies at once last night and I didnt try to kite i stood and took the damage. I fought 2 vets at the same time and trashed them. I was able to take several direct hits from a champion cave troll and not eat dirt. I liked the style of play alot and I felt so much more durable. It doesnt have that upfront load damage, but a decent upfront followed by heavy condition damage in the long run.

I am loving the ele and the game

I hope we can have a strong ele community forum here, or somewhere if they get official forums that aren't completely full of bitching and whining.

Just my 2 cents

[Morogoth]

Well, I feel like Earth/Arc and D/D are mandatory if you want to be viable.

Try a Fire/Air and staff build and you'll see why people say we are a glass canon without the canon part. Something is wrong when you're specced in power and precision and you do less damage than a thief specced toughness and vitality. I'm starting to hate my elementalist since I'm on Orr. I can't breathe 2 seconds because my burst damage is too fucking low.

I stick to my elementalist because I love the gameplay and I hope they will get fixed soon, but sometimes I feel like I play him only because I already have 60% map completion on him...

[Granyala]

Is it just me or is earth the best spec to be in during personal quests?

Fire's damage is not really all that good because you just can't keep the burning condition up at all times.
Earth lets me get a tank elemental and with stacking bleed it's damage is ok, while giving me more base survivability.

[DrakeWurrum]

Is it just me or is earth the best spec to be in during personal quests?

Fire's damage is not really all that good because you just can't keep the burning condition up at all times.
Earth lets me get a tank elemental and with stacking bleed it's damage is ok, while giving me more base survivability.

Are you nuts. Things die FAST when I'm in Fire. Any other attunement doesn't even come close...

[Morogoth]

Are you nuts. Things die FAST when I'm in Fire. Any other attunement doesn't even come close...

Fast is relative. They die fast when I have my 2 fire elementals + fire storm activated, but attack #1 is ridiculous.