Hi, I'm coming here to explain my point of view as a pvp/wvw main ele. Maybe someone from anet will read that and think about. Well friends we are suffering, ele is doing things but it's never the best at it, it's most of the time the worst, except maybe aura share but nowadays wars are better support. Let's decompose this analysis based on specs and weapon. First of all core ele, not much to say it's just not doing fine at any spot, there are tons of class out there doing way better than core ele. Secondly tempest, the eternal healbot, it's funny but it's just about spamming auras, there are no any game breaking skills (maybe tornado) as other support class has. Also it does little to no pressure on enemy team. You can also play dps LR tempest, it's funny but against good players you'll never land any successful overload, rip. Finally the weaver. Oh man how hyped I was when they revealed sword on ele, I was thinking of it as a melee bruiser with lots of damage and mobility, the result ends up to be disappointing. Weaver mechanics is really good, but man, weapons skills... So let's now go into the deepest issues of eles, weapons! Daggers: I use to love DD ele, it was my first crush on the game back in 2012 and now it's just meh. The burst is low (if you are not full glassy which mandatory), mobility suck, dagger offhand is not used at all and main hand it's the best we have (we'll come to scepter). Daggers used to be the offtank weapons of ele, giving you damage, mobility and sustain, sadly it's been overperformed by almost everything. Focus: The best offhand weapon out there, simply because dagger sucks. The main issue there is you don't have any offensive offhand on ele. Still I think focus is our best weapon Scepter: Here we are, the most painful weapon. I used to love playing FA core ele, the scepter felt damn good and offers lots of counterplays. The burst was all nice and it has some blind which help. But again, as daggers, it's now completely under performing, after all nerfs to FA weaver you full burst is not able to kill anything. I played it again recently and it was just so bad, damage is low, mobility is non existent, defensive cd are just useless... This weapon is a shame on this state and because of it burst ele is just bad. And please, don't come up with the "yes but It could one shot someone so it needed to be nerfed". There are legit a ton a things that can one shot in this game, lot's of class can 100-0 in few seconds with the right combo, the difference was that zerk FA weaver was squishy as hell when reaper, reve, holo are tanky and thief/mesmer can stealth and got better mobility. Staff: not much to say, never been meta in pvp, in wvw it's meh. Warhorn: funny but skills are not good compared to focus Sword: skill are slow, so slow, animations takes forever which makes damages so easy to dodge. This weapon needs to be rework. All autos attacks are slow, fire 2 is nice but too slow to land, water 2 needs to be something else, air 2 is fine, earth 2 we need to be able to move while using it.... I'm not going to comment all the 3 skills it's mostly about slow animation. It's even worst if you compare to other classes swords like rev or guardian. Lastly I would also address some specific considerations about how low are damages on this class, disclaimer I don't care of pve meta, I think that PVP, PVE and WVW must all have separate meta otherwise ele is just impossible to balance. But please, nowadays any class got more damage than ele, the LR weaver requires you to go zerk to do something and because you are that squishy you get oneshoted by anything. I don't find it fair, on reaper, holo or reve damages are so much higher, any skill can be a 4-5k crit while on ele it's 2k max? If you beat someone that means you have to outplay him several times while he only has to hit you once... As I said anything ele does something does it way better so what's the point of this class? It's been underperforming for years now, since 2015 the only viable build at high elo was the aurashare support. Sure fire weaver had a spot but if a team had to choose between weaver or holo/soulbeast they put a cross on the ele. FA weaver was sometimes shinning when there were no good thief or mesmer but now it's pointless to bring such garbage... Other classes elite spec got reworked (reaper, berserker, scrapper, ...) but ele stayed the same, tempest hasn't moved since 2015 and weaver since 2017. Staff and Scepter got nerfed and that's basically it. The only rework we had was on.... AURAS, yes of course, let's change a bit the only thing that's viable... This rework was minor to nothing, hasn't change the playstyle, hasn't bring anything new, it's just meh.
