TheDarkness.6947

Agreed, they both need love.

It seems like anet wants to apply balance by making melee attacks high DPS and decrease DPS as weapon range increases. For professions that have a weapon swap, that seems OK. Personally I haven’t run into many situations where you can really stay out of melee for an entire fight, though. And since ele doesn’t have a weapon swap (let’s just make the assumption that conjures are not a good option at this juncture), you ultimately get stuck with a clunky, low damage weapon at some point during the fight, and you’re probably gonna have a bad time. I wonder if they could do something like make some of the staff attacks short range and high damage, and others ranged with lower damage and/or CCs. Make it a dual purpose weapon. I think that could be kind of cool.

My current working theory is that it is no longer modeled after a mage, but after a malfunctioning, high-tech toaster. It has a confusingly large number of buttons relative to the number of tasks it’s actually able to perform. Pressing some of them seems to have no noticeable effect whatsoever. Sometimes it emits showers of sparks. Occasionally it catches fire and poses a modest threat - mostly to itself provided someone notices it happening.

Far as I can tell elementalist is the most fragile profession in the game. That’s a really big downside compared to all the other professions. It also has the misfortune of requiring lots of clicks per minute even to kill trash mobs. So why shouldn’t it be top of the DPS chain, and have some good utility too? Is there a reason? I can’t think of one. Yeah, I think it needs a lot of work, if not a complete re-work. Signed, Necro main whose former ele main is parked at a JP until further notice

Just curious - is it possible to un-summon minions? Sometimes you don’t want them around (e.g. for a jumping puzzle).

I’m inclined to say none of the above. They should delete it and re-imagine elementalist from the ground up as a modern profession.

For me, I can say the decision to shelf the elementalist had little to do with complexity of operation. It boiled down to this. Ele has the lowest armor of any profession. Ele has the lowest health of any profession. It really has little in its trait lines to help mitigate that. In exchange for those rather glaring downsides, it has the following advantages that really stand out above other professions:

I’m sure you’re right - I’ve seen some of your videos and you certainly do well with it. To be honest though trying to figure out weaver’s rotations while also trying to learn a bunch of other game mechanics like tells for dodges, specific boss mechanics, etc. seemed like a bit much for me to take in all at once. Weaver also seems pretty hard-locked to sword/melee which isn’t my preferred play style. I’d chosen ele assuming it played more like a “traditional” caster. But maybe I’m wrong about that?

Makes sense. Seems to me this creates kind of a catch 22 for a new player who starts as an ele. Gear like trailblazers is a bit out of reach upon hitting 80 with your first character. So if core is weak and even the especs really need specific gear sets, it’s an uphill battle to farm out the things you need to get to actually get to a workable build. Meanwhile my experience with necro is that taking core trait lines and running in cheap exotic gear is good enough to farm the things needed for an even better build. I may return to ele eventually. There were things about it that seemed fun. Maybe it was just a poor choice for a first character. Core ele might be something for Anet to have a look at, though. This isn’t my first MMO, so I kind of get that it’s been balanced around the most recent espec leaving others lacking. But I could see where someone trying ele as their first class would simply conclude “I suck at this game” and move on to another one.

Thanks everyone for the comments here - they were helpful. My own conclusion was that for open world, dungeons, and low level fractals, tempest and core ele actually got worse at cap. After suffering through that, I didn’t feel inspired to farm out the hero points to try weaver. I ended up re-rolling a necro and can get far better results with a lot less pain and frustration. Maybe I’ll dust off the ele and try it again when I get into raids and competitive game modes and/or get more experienced with the game. For now it’ll probably get parked at a jumping puzzle or something. It’s possible that I just never reached the skill floor for it, but to me ele seems pretty terrible right now. Not sure why anyone would want to play one, at least in the content/modes I’ve been running. Unless you’re just such a good player that you need an additional challenge or something. XD

Conceptually I agree with you. I just don’t think it should be profession specific. Instead I think all classes should have enough depth and nuance that someone who has invested the time to master it should be able to shine with it. Profession choice should be more about aesthetic and play style than performance ceiling. I also agree that ele seems to be in a pretty rubbish state right now. I couldn’t find a compelling reason to keep playing it. In a nutshell it just seemed like I had to work 3x as hard to get worse results than other professions. I’m fairly new to GW, and the grass is always greener and all. But so far my experience with other professions substantiates this theory that ele has just been eroded to a “why bother” class over the years by nerfs to it and buffs to others.

I agree, complexity of play (clicks per minute or what have you) shouldn’t be rewarded from a class balance perspective. However professions have to be compensated for having lower base defense, lower base health, or both than other professions. Ele has the lowest of both of those. It’s not like it starts with higher power, precision, ferocity, etc than other professions. So the compensation needs to be in the traits and skills. So what really needs to be compensated is that there’s less margin for error than a profession with naturally higher health and defense. In my time playing ele recently, I didn’t sense that particular balance was quite right at this point. Or at least not enough to make me want to continue playing it right now.

There could be truth to that. I actually started in Tempest because I’m more interested in a caster or at least ranged play style vs. a melee battle mage. The way it’s performing in open world and dungeons, I don’t even want to take it into any fractals, raids or PvP/WvW content. I realize those are different builds and might perform quite differently. But just based on my experience so far, I feel like it’s sort of a gamble to find out - might just be wasting more time when I could level something more fun. I admit it could be a PEBKAC, but I’ve been successful with squishy caster classes in other games. This one feels bad to me.

As a new player who recently leveled an ele to 80, I have to say I’m disappointed. Feels like kind of a noob-trap to be honest. Ele feels super clunky to play, and extremely squishy. I could live with those things if I could articulate an upside to playing one, but I can’t. My buddies who started with me on other profs (we are all experienced MMO gamers) seem to be having a much easier time achieving better results. Nothing about ele feels spectacular, other than that the visuals are cool. Your reward for performing all the maniacal button pressing and CD tracking well is that you don’t die. Sometimes. Neither the DPS nor the flexibility seem much better than what you’d get from another prof. So I’m going to re-roll another profession to main. Hopefully ele will get some love sooner or later so I can dust it off, and it won’t feel like all that play time was wasted. I wanted to love this prof but to me it seems pretty neglected and over-nerfed, at least in my experience.

Thanks for the taking the time to post answers everyone! I guess at this point I’ll suffer through to cap and unlock especs to decide for myself. Best case the secret sauce will show itself and main it. Worst case, I’ll have a L80 mule and you’ll have another voice on the forum asking anet to re-work this prof lol. Sounds like it will at least be better than pre-80, although if it requires absolutely perfectly timed coreography to play well, I might be mediocre with it. Complexity I can handle. Dexterity is hit and miss...

That seems like sound advice. I was really going for a caster play style. Staff ele does have that vibe, but it also felt pretty underwhelming to me. I wasn’t feeling like my shiny moments were quite shiny enough for as much tap-dancing and trying to stay upright as I had do do. Dagger/dagger feels stronger and more fluid, but less like a caster and more like a melee with some cool visuals. Maybe the whole package would feel better if you could switch weapons in combat. I assume that’s what the conjure weapons are there for, but they also feel a bit underwhelming. I really haven’t spent much time with scepter or focus. To your point though, if tempest plays like a caster maybe it’s worth sticking with it long enough to open up that specialization to check it out.

Anet’s balance release notes seem to indicate they think it’s nearly perfect. I know, it’s an MMO with PVP even, and so everyone is going to think their preferred profession is getting the short end of the stick. Just human nature. On balance though, seems like the player base thinks this prof needs love and from what I’ve played through so far, it feels that way to me too. But I haven’t unlocked elite specs yet, and thus the post. I might try something else for now and see what happens with elite specs in EoD.

Thanks, this is really helpful. My preferred play style is one that leverages positioning, movement, CC, and terrain for battlefield control, to be able to take out the targets I want to in the order I want to, with a good mix of DPS and team support. If I’m going to need to melee for decent performance, might as well run something with heavy armor and high HP. Even though at first glance it seemed like it was the best match, sounds like elementalist in its current state isn’t going to offer the play style I’m after, and I should maybe look at Mesmer, Scourge, Firebrand, or even possibly Ranger.

It sounds like at one time, reaching the skill ceiling for ele was over-rewarded. So it got over-nerfed, and just left that way? If so that’s a shame. I’m really drawn to caster types, but there has to be some incentive for learning to manage the squishiness and complexity and it sounds like there’s not with ele from what I’ve been reading. Are there other professions that play like a caster? I tried necro briefly but it didn’t have the play feel of a caster to me. Maybe it gets more that way at higher levels or with elite specs.

Thanks for the thoughts and even videos, everyone. Much appreciated. I guess I was hoping to hear something along the lines of “yes, it’s the most difficult to play and squishiest, but once you really learn it, it’s one of the strongest professions because of it’s [flexibility, adaptability, DPS, some other reason]”. I think I’m mostly hearing more a theme of: “once you spend the time to really learn it, it can be as good as any other profession.” That’s troubling... I like to research and experiment, but not sure I want to spend lots of time struggling only to be on par with the average build. That said, the videos from the fire weaver thread do look pretty fun.

Hello all, new player, first post. I’ve leveled an elementalist up to 50. Compared to the other professions I’ve taken for a test drive, it seems far squishier and also significantly more challenging to pilot. I’m fine with all that if there’s a strong upside in exchange for the extra learning curve and getting downed/defeated more frequently. But I’m not sure I’ve really noticed that upside at level 50. I haven’t noticed it doing significantly more DPS or being more flexible than other professions. It mostly just seems squishier and harder to play. This experience is based solely on open world PvE and dungeons. So, assuming I’m not just playing it horribly, which is possible, does it get better at cap? Are there some strong upsides to elementalist that will be realized at higher levels that I can look forward to? Thanks for your thoughts.