[I see little practical difference between alliances and servers]

Hi, jumping by to add my 2 cents.

 

I am part of a wanna be alliance and for that beta we all join a "parent guild" in order to simulate the alliance mechanic. As far as I am concerned I see overall more commanders and fuller squad than before. Part of it is we asked ourselves in advance how to include people that were not part of the alliance so they don't feel left alone.

 

Overall the experience is positive and people outside of the alliance seems to enjoy the beta as well. But yes... The matchup probably need better tuning, which to be fair may very well come with divisions rank up and rank down.

[Question for a new Elementalist.]

For Core Tyria and story you could frankly go with whatever. Staff work decently for leveling because at first the monsters don't hit too hard. Essentially, you can afford to pull a group of monsters, land a carpet bomb at your feet and stand still while they die. Note though that it is a bad habit to develop outside of leveling and the game will make it abundantly clear as you progress.

If you want to keep using staff past that point, you will need to learn to use your Unsteady ground (Earth Staff 4) and Static field (Air Staff 5) to lock the enemy in place. Kiting is also an essential skill to acquire. Preferably you kite by rotating your camera toward the pursuing monster while running in the opposite direction. You can shoot every staff skill behind you even if you are not facing your target!

Overall, staff is rarely used outside of WvW and it is not considered super optimal there either. You can find a plethora of thread here about why staff does not see more play but in summary : it generally compares poorly to other weapon outside of some niche situation. That being said, I do play a very aggressive Staff weaver in PvE from time to time but that is just me enjoying some weird fun. 🙂

[Most played class\build for raids and such...]

8 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

(dont say Guardian, dont say Guardian, dont say.....)

 

Firebrand then. What?!? I did not say Guardian :D.

Gw2 wingman has a nice tab called Fancy stat that pretty much covers your question. You have squad composition and profession occurrences for each bosses, if you want percentages you just have to put the numbers into your computer and let it do the maths. Since I am a nice guy I have done it for you for Vale guardian specifically but feel free to do the rest if you are interested. Note that while it includes a good sample size, the sample itself is not necessarily super representative of the general player base so take these numbers with a grain of salt.

Profession --- (most common spec among the profession)

Guardian 21.01% --- (Firebrand 77.04%)

Necromancer 15.84% --- (Scourge 89.59%)

Revenant 14.77% --- (Renegade 97.80%)

Ranger 12.40% --- (Druid 74.12%)

Warrior 10.82% --- (Berserker 99.12%)

Mesmer 9.83% --- (Chronomancer 87.35%)

Engineer 9.08% --- (Holosmith 69.28%)

Thief 3.07% --- (Daredevil 91.59%)

Elementalist 3.03% --- (Weaver 55.77%)

Unknown 0.16%

[Joining a guild before lvl 80?]

Hi, welcome to the game!

Most guild I was previously or am currently part of welcome new player with open arms including player that only have character below level 80. It all depend on the guild you want to join though so if you are a specific guild in mind I advise you to contact the people in charge directly.

In general, some activity indeed require max level. However fellow guild mate might want to help you on a regular basis (joining you for hard hero point, answering your question, giving you starter gear, etc.) so I don't think you should be afraid of being left alone. If you are feeling limited by your level or if you join a guild aiming for endgame content please note there is plenty of fast leveling activities.

We all started somewhere and the community in general is very helpful toward new players. Have a merry wintersday!

[HFB gearing.]

Pretty much all of the above : Harrier is the standard in fractal and raid, getting a few Cleric pieces is a fractal thing because of AR conversion.

I personally run full minstrel. However it is tailored to my personal use. I often do fractal coaching, meaning I will need to talk and explain mechanics mid encounter, answer questions, etc. I am less focus on the actual fight as a result and sometime I even need to rez the trainee inside the big bad aoe they got caught on. The extra tankiness is put to good use in my case :D.

For a more general usage : My personal opinion is the extra damage you gain from Harrier is relatively small and not a game changer most of the time, it is however the standard. Outside of that, the difference between Harrier and Minstrel is that the first set is meta in raid while the second is meta in WvW.

Celestial/Seraph is also justifiable both for pugs, as you gain a lot of carry potential, and for statics, as they need less healing to survive overall.

[Constantly dying in game, it's very frustrating]

While some profession and gear combo can sustain really well through most attacks, at some point you will need to use defensives cooldowns to stay alive regardless of your build. The most basic defensive action you should learn to use is dodging but every class have access to defensive traits and utility skills.

 

Guardian specifically is a low HP class with plenty of defensive tool at his disposal. People often say it is a tanky profession because of those tools and not the size of his HP pool. But remember, not every situation require the same tool ! For example : Aegis may be an incredibly powerful boon against one big hit, but it is quite poor against a swarm of rapidly hitting pocket raptors.

 

If you are looking for a "facetank" open-world profession you may have more success with a bruiser-ish high sustain build. Various Necromancers build and celestial Revenant with the battle scar trait line are often recommended for this style of game-play. Personally, I got good result with celestial elementalist but that is me and you may prefer another class.

 

I would say : if you are attached to your guardian try out celestial Firebrand. But really, if a profession does not float your boar, try another one... then another one... until you eventually find something that really get you engaged.

 

Have a wonderful day. 🙂

[What's the average heal per second on Healbrand?]

Hello,

As far as I know it is way harder to get a meaningful value of how much healing per second a class can deliver than it is for damage per second. Basically, the reactive nature of healing means you cannot really copy/paste a rotation and extrapolate numbers ; in a real situation you spam your "soft" heals to keep your team's life pools high and save your burst when needed. So how does a real situation fare? Let's look at some arc-dps log from gw2 wingam and find out shall we.

 

Well, I have found an interesting strike run against the kodan bears that will perfectly illustrate my point. The firebrand got between 250 and 300 healing per second consistently. Then, in the last few seconds, the bears enraged and the healing suddenly spiked. The healbrand ended up doing more than a third of his entire healing over the last 1,5 seconds of the fight (he/she provided 5.355 healing per second shared between 3 allies if you are curious). The point is: you cannot heal the damage that has not been done yet and it does not takes much dodging from your mates to hard cap the healing that you can do.

Ok so what number should you aim for then? I have looked at a modest sample of arc-dps log for fractals and strikes (not just the one mentioned above) and it seems that the routine healing per seconds needed to keep a competent team healthy kinda depend on the fight but is often low enough that i feel every healer should be ok. As far as the burst heal is concerned, a healbrand* can in theory do 18.375 healing on 5 targets over 1,5 seconds with tome 2 (skills 5-1-1-1-1) but that is a high cooldown overkill move. For reference empower (staff 4) provide a more modest 6.922 healing on 5 targets over 1,75 seconds on a 20 second cooldown (16 with the trait Honorable staff).

 

Note that those values may not necessarily reflect a real fight and you should not try to fixate on those anyway. For example people often casually dodge away from symbols completely negating them ; a weakness that specter targeted healing - with all the drawback that come with this unique feature - do not have.

I hope it answers your questions.

 

*: In this example the firebrand uses harrier gear, fully stacked monk rune, sigil of transference, delicious rice ball and bountiful maintenance oil.

[Catalyst update for beta 4.]

I am cautiously pessimistic if that makes sense. I was hoping they would address the UI complaints about the weirdly small energy bar and probably rethink one traits or two. But it seems we are hitting the number adjustment phase.

 

Don't get me wrong, all of the proposed changes are good for the spec for sure and they answer specific issues I had with the previous iteration. Plus, if they keep pumping the numbers up, Catalyst might even be meta on release! But I am worried they are skipping steps on a spec that fail to deliver something unique. I get it : it is the spec if you want to use combo a lot... but every classes have access to combos!

 

I guess we need to see it in action but the hype I had for the spec has certainly dwindled down a bit.

[Can Anet devs actually play ele without godmode code and zero attunement CD?]

On 10/20/2021 at 6:41 PM, Bleikopf.2491 said:

I do believe it's an issue of numbers as well as design.

You could probably make Ele 'balanced' with number changes alone. That said, some players are doing fine with Ele as is. The notion that Ele is 'unbalanced' is difficult to track objectively, although I don't disagree with it.

Other design issues do also exist. There is a void where Ele should bring something unique or at least rare to the table. Tempest does have Rebound, which is very useful, but that alone won't be enough.
That Ele is often a class that only brings DPS is an issue that is most often addressed by Ele players, as DPS is easy to replace.

I agree with that point. One of the problem of the Elementalist as a support is that they fail to bring any unique and/or fancy buff on the table when the current meta crave for such thing. If you add the relative frailty of the class on top of that, you have a situation where most meta support build can do your job (and a bit more) just fine while being safer.

For DPS specifically I think the Elementalist would hugely benefit from moving and sometime merging some damaging traits with the goal of making room for defensive and utility traits. Of course the numbers would then need to be adjusted to keep the DPS competitive. I hope it would open a path for a DPS/support hybrid that pleases the current meta like the condition quickness Firebrand.

[Decided to Return to GW2 - Convinced Others to Join me - Game is Broken and won't launch?]

Hi, the good news is there is simple temporary fix. It has already been shared on the forum but it is worth repeating as it is now buried beneath a wall of text:

-Open your Guild wars 2 install directory.
-Create a shortcut to your Guild Wars 2 client (the executable you need to target is "Gw2-64.exe"), name this shortcut "Gw2-64_windowed.exe" to avoid confusion.
-Right click on the new shortcut and select "Properties" (it may have a different name in different language)
-In the text area labelled as "Target", that's the first text area, add " -windowed" at the end (note the space at the beginning!) ; it should read something like that: "C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -windowed
-Apply the change and double click on the shortcut to launch the client.

 

The shortcut we have created force the game to launch in windowed mode (launching the game fullscreen is what is provoking the bug). Your game should launch now but it is in a small window and we don't want that. We are going to swap to the much better Fullscreen windowed mode:

-In the top left corner of the character selection screen, click the gear icon.
-A menu appear, click option and go to the graphic option (that is the double triangular icon that look like a Vista icon)
-In the Resolution option, that is the first option, Choose Fullscreen Windowed instead of Windowed.

For future launches you can use your regular executable, you don't need to keep the shortcut we have created. Also, note that other methods to force the Windowed mode as been reported to be working.

[Mantras have ranges?]

Non-stacking people in pug: -"That's a nice boon you got there ; if only I could have some." 😄

[How do you beat fire Weaver?]

Hi, from your description I have assumed you are referring to sPvP.

 

One of the strength of fire weaver (and most duelists for that matter) is the ability to waste the time of the opposite team. A weaver dragging a 1v2 or even a 1v3 create a lot of space for his team even if he ends up dying. Based on that, your most basic yet powerful tool to counter a weaver is to not allow them to waste your time and simply rotate elsewhere if you don't have the tool to kill him.

In term of skills, the most important thing you want to look for to predict the fight is attunement swaping, especially air. When an elementalist swap attunement there is a brief but obvious sparkling effect that match the new element and the attunement icon under their portrait change. If you ever in doubt you can also look at the elementalist's wrists but it is harder to see in the middle of a fight.

 

Here is a tldr of the skills you want to keep in mind (I assumed Sword/Focus since it is the most popular setup as far as I know at the current time):

 

CC:

Polaric leap (air sword 2) is a 600 range teleport with a short daze. The cooldown of 12 seconds is short enough to kinda spam it and it is typically used to engage, flee (the weaver needs to see and target an enemy) or interrupt impactful skills like your healing skill (which is a big no no).

Gale (air focus 5) is a 900 range, unblockable fairly long knockdown that you should dodge or stun break. Some weaver will try to spam it right after they attune to X/air so be ready for that. Here is what the animation looks like: the weaver is gathering a lot of sparkling lighting around his hands and then he reaches forward with his arms.

 

DAMAGE:

Pyro vortex (fire/air sword 3) is the most damaging skill of the weaver both for condition and power. The range is however atrociously small so kite the weaver ; in general kiting a weaver is a really good advice and it denies a lot of dps. If you kite too hard, some weaver will try to pre-cast this skill then teleport in melee range with lightning flash (a 900 range teleport). This is a huge commitment because it severely limit their ability to disengage if stuff does not go well.

Cauterizing strike (fire/fire sword 3), Quantum strike (air/air sword 3) are clunky easily dodgeable, melee blasts. If you see a weaver doing his best to stick to you in melee range while pulling his sword backward with big sparkles then shoving it in front of him, that is one of these skills. Kite it or dodge it. Like Pyro vortex, some weaver will try to pre-cast it into Lightning flash.

Twin strike (Fire/Water Sword 3) is a deceptively ok damaging skill that inflict chill and a bit of burning. It's main important feature imho is being a good filler while waiting for the riptide sustain combo (see below).

Flame uprising (fire sword 2) is a 450 range kinda slow leap with good damage both for condition and power. It drops a damaging fire field and there is no reason to stay inside it.

Primordial stance (utility skill) pulses damage and conditions at melee range around the weaver. Yet another reason to kite a weaver.

 

SUSTAIN:

Riptide (water sword 2) while not scary this skill is still worth mentioning. It is a small backward evade (turn yourself for forward evade) that heals and create a water field. This is generally a skill that is casted right before swapping to another atunement. The most common scenario is swaping to water then doing stuff for 2-3 seconds - Water/x dual attack are ok fillers - and only then Riptide>attune to an another element (often earth)>combo into his field for maximum healing. If the weaver is already attuned to earth prior to water then he can combo with Magnetic wave (Earth focus 4) right away. For me specifically if I am safing (healing before an emergency), I personally try to combo with a leap to maintain the pressure (swap to either fire or air). If on the other hand I am in dire need of emergency healing or if I am expecting a burst, I often prefer to swap to earth and combo with Earthen vortex (Earth Sword 2). The idea is Earthen vortex includes an evade and if I can survive 3-4 more seconds I then try to swap attunement again and use Osidian flesh (Earth focus 5 - see below) then either Lava skin (Sword Fire/Earth 3 - also see below) to re-sustain or Polaric leap (Air Sword 2 - see above) to run away.

Lava skin (fire/earth sword 3) is a big barrier skill with stability and pulsing damage. Most weaver will try to swap to fire/earth or earth/fire every 18 seconds or so to gain a bit of sustain from Lava skin. It is useful to know so you can predict what is coming your way a bit better.

Signet of restoration (healing skill) heals the weaver every time he uses a skill. It is a good sustain tool BUT it is awful at burst healing on a class that already struggle against burst (due to low health and armour). Use this information at your advantage.

Stone resonance (utility skill) (proc form the trait bolster element) pulses a lot of barrier and stability. Bolster element is a trait that automatically cast that skill when the weaver reaches 50% health, the cooldown however is a fairly long 70 seconds. When a weaver approaches 50% health assume this skill is coming and play accordingly.

 

DEFENSIVE:

Magnetic wave (Earth focus 4) and Swirling wind (air focus 4) respectively blocks projectiles in an area and reflects projectiles. The first one drop a gigantic, obvious area that last 6 seconds, don't fight into it if you are using projectile. The second last 3 seconds and is way more discrete, don't use projectile while the buff last for obvious reason. If you have a weapon that does not use projectile you can swap into it to maintain the pressure.

Obsidian flesh (earth focus 5) is a 3 second invulnerability. Play passively for the duration. No reason to give the weaver what he wants, save your burst.

Fire shield>Transmute fire (fire focus 5) gives a fire aura that the weaver can transmute for a bit of might. With the correct traits that means cleansing 3 conditions. If you play an heavy condition build try to play around this big cleanse. If you can manage to move the fight away from his fire fields (and therefor deny his aura generation) that is also a huge benefit.

Twist of fate (utility skill) is a stun break and an evade with 2 charges on a very long 75 seconds recharge time. Why is this skill important? While 2 charge is good I would like you to notice the very very punishing recharge time. You should abuse that fact and force a weaver to use his stun break often until he runs out of them.

 

This is a quick summary and other skills are of course also relevant but I feel there is already a lot to read. Anyway that is the modest insight of a not so great PvPer so take it with a grain of salt. 🙂

TLDR : Kite them, Stun them, Burst them.

[The Power of the Catalyst!]

Catalyst looks good on paper but... You just assumed you have full uptime on every possible buff and let me tell you : you don't!

 

A combat just started and Billy the catalyst could really use some stack of elemental empowerment right now. A few second passes and he finally have enough energy to use his F5. Congratulations Billy you have a static field on your toes and you could start your combo. A few more seconds and Billy have some juicy stack. Good job Billy, but don't rest just yet you still don't have max stack.

 

Oh no... In the meantime Billy was still a 11k hp low Armor class and now he is dead/the fight has moved to another location/there is a big aoe that pushed him out of his F5 field. Too bad Billy, but at least you have above average DPS on a static large golem.

 

Now, I overdramatize for comedic effect and a beta is a beta but you get my point. I would replace the hammer 3 skills with the utility skills, replace the F5 field with the rotation orb from hammer 3, and replace the utility skills with the F5 fields and mark them as "wells" for good mesure. Adjust a few number, rethink some of the traits and ditch the current energy system and replace it with something more straightforward to keep track of and acquire. And... That is probably more promising.

[New Elite Spec - Disciple (Weapon swap and Longbow!)]

It is a high effort post I'll give you that.

The main problem I see with your design is that it does not feel like an elementalist. Furthemore I feel like what you trying to do conceptually is already covered by other bow users in the game. My point is, if you want to add the longbow to the elementalist weapon pool while protecting the identity of the class you could simply add it as a core weapon. It would still require a tremendous amount of effort but it would be way simpler than designing a whole new e-spec.

But to be fair to your passionate work and time spent, you are trying to pull out the load of an entire team of designer all by yourself so having a few rough corners is totally ok in my book (please have a like).

[Current State of Ele]

The general consensus is that the class is on the weak side at the moment. It boils down to the fact that there is often two or three classes that outperform an Elementalist for most roles you would want to play. The one exception I have in mind is WvW roaming where celestial fire weaver share the spotlight with a few other options. I have also heard some good things about fire weaver in PvP but I don't feel experienced enough with it to make a personal assessment.

 

Now, I don't want you to leave this thread under the impression that Elementalist is unplayable, because it is not! If you are a casual player you can very much play an Elementalist in all game mode and feel like you are contributing. But... it is not optimal in most scenario and if you aspire to integrate an hardcore guild or if you are looking for meta build you should probably be prepared to play other classes too.

[Catalyst Feedback Thread]

First impression : It felt kinda clunky. To be fair though, some of the perceived clunkyness has to be attributed to building new reflexes and getting used to the spec. The main potential design flaw I see is in the mechanics of the spec. It is slow to kicks in, which is another way to say "the spec is weak for shorts encounters".

 

Why ? In order for the spec to feels great and impactful you first want to gain a few stacks of Elemental empowerment (as well as stacks of Hardening aura and Empowering aura if you have the relevant traits). The problem is, before you even think to get there you need a field to combo into and proc Elemental epitome. And you have an obvious field at your disposal in the form of your jade sphere, so we are good right ? Yes and no, you can't use it at the beginning of the fight. First, you need to build up some energy and that means jumping into the fray without any of the buff that is supposed to make this spec hold itself in combat.

 

That is the main problem I see with the spec and the obvious fix would be to makes you start with some energy but I don't know how I feel about that. I'd much rather make the jade sphere work more like charges, a bit like mesmer clone if you wish, both for the UI and resource generation. The goal here is to make it easier to track and smoother to acquire which I think would make the spec feels better to play.

 

I also don't feel too good about being locked inside the tiny area of your jade sphere on a 11k HP low armor class but that part is probably learning the spec.

[Potential Combos for Catalyst]

On 9/18/2021 at 2:00 PM, SlitheSlivier.1908 said:

Conjure Thunderhammer will have more combo potential per second in its 5 skills+jade sphere than Hammer does in 20 (due to the finisher on auto chain and finisher in the shorter CD leap).

 

Yeah that was my though exactly. Not only that but the catalyst favor staying around a designated spot (aka your F5 jade sphere field) which conjured weapon also favor. For an hypothetical quickness catalyst build it is worthy to note that skill 2 of Thunderhammer can apply 3 second of quickness on you with a 8 seconds cooldown (down to 5 seconds with alacrity and 20% cd reduction from the fire trait "Conjurer"). Now, the fact that it only apply quickness to you is a bit of a bummer but considering it is a leap finisher you will use it to proc Elemental epitome anyway and a bit of quickness is a nice byproduct I guess.

 

For trait line here is my observations and opinions (TLDR: Imho Fire=good, Air=good for power, Water=good for support and power hammer, Arcane=decent, Earth=niche for condition):

 

Fire trait line seems to have good synergies with catalyst:

-For minor traits, Sunspot looks great. Gaining a fire aura every time you attune to fire works great with many of the Catalyst traits.

-For major traits Conjurer seems awesome if we use Thunderhammer (see above), the additional aura is cherry on the cake.

-Smothering auras looks like it could cleanse a fair amount of conditions and both PvP and support builds will love that !

Water trait line looks good for a support catalyst or DPS hammer build (what about support with decent DPS ?):

-Piercing shard increase your damage by a fair amount... and so far the "increased damage while attuned to water" portion of this trait remained vastly unused because water attunement has poor damage overall. But looking at the numbers, water hammer packs a punch so this trait might be really useful.

-Flow like water heals you when you block. Earth Hammer 4 and Fortify Eath (Catalyst utility skill) are both blocks. This trait also reinforce the idea of a water DPS.

-Powerful Aura makes you share your aura with 5 allies. Needless to say, this goes well with the amount of auras the catalyst can generate. And now, the nifty traits in Air and Earth that gives boon when you grant aura are extra neat.

Air trait line also looks promising for Power oriented and Quickness catalyst:

-For minor traits Aeromancer training is above average. My point is, if I am a quickness catalyst I will want to remain in air for as long as possible while my jade sphere field is active. This trait grants additional ferocity while attuned to air... not a crazy synergy but still worth mentioning.

-For major trait Zephyr's boon gives 5 second Fury and Swiftness when you grant auras. With Elemental epitome that means perma Fury and Swiftness, nice !

-Fresh air... oh Fresh air ! Energized element with Fresh air looks like it would grant a steady supply of energy which is great if you want to place your Jade sphere field often. Fresh air would also be great to do a fast combo for Elemental epitome in an undesirable attunement (and/or using hammer skill 3) then quickly switch back to air.
 

Earth trait line looks meh outside of condition builds:

-The only thing of note here is Elemental shielding which grant 3 seconds of Protection when you grant an aura. Catalyst generate a lot of aura, probably enough to apply permanent Protection and that is awesome. But, you already pulse protection with your Jade sphere field so I don't know if I like it too much.

 

Arcane trait line is decent:

-For minor trait Elemental enchantment gives you concentration. Concentration is desirable to make the boon of your jade sphere field last until the next cast of your jade sphere.

-For major trait Evasive arcana gives a blast finisher at the end of your dodge while attuned to Earth on a 10 second cooldown. More combo is great because of Elemental epitome.

-Elemental surge reduce the recharge time of arcane utility skills and that is great because some of them have combo finishers to use for Elemental epitome. While in earth attunement your arcane skill will immobilize and if you also took Vicious empowerment from Catalyst immobilizing a foe grants 2 stacks of might for 10 seconds and 2 stack of Elemental empowerment.

 

For weapons, I will not repeat what other have said but I noticed something that I have not seen anywhere:

-Staff is generally a power weapon but the Earth jade sphere is a poison field and that open up poison condition on projectile finisher. Most notably, Earth Staff 1 (aka autoattack) and Staff 5 are both projectile finisher. I don't think it will be used outside of some very niche builds though. The poison applied is just too weak.

 

The post is fairly long and if you made it through... well first thank you for you time I guess, and I hope you had a good time. 🙂

[Hammer Ele confirmed]

Initially I was more under the impression that the ball thingy was a stylized lighting spark, but hey the eternal alchemy theory got me interested and quite frankly super hyped. I don't know how I feel about hitting a tiny ball with a glorified baseball bat though... it just feels weird to me and it does not have the appeal of smashing the ground and creating fissures, streams of lava and general cataclysms.

About what weapon people wanted I was under the impression that bows had the most devotees on this forum even though I was myself in favor of rifles. Anyway, I am fine with the idea of a magical themed hammer to be honest; hopefully it will be more than a staff 2.0. I am also relieved we received a two handed weapon. I am kinda suffocating within the small selection of weapon elementalists have and adding a whole new kit is a fantastic breath of fresh air!

[Celestial Tempest/Weaver DPS request]

Yeah, pretty much this. People do not realize how decent celestial is damage wise. The thing is, when you add all the boons, what is initially a quite visible difference between tanky and glassy stats tend to shrink proportionally. Don't get me wrong, there is still a SIZEABLE dps loss, but it is not as big as some people would insist it is. That being said... If you think about it, you only get full boons when you have the safety net of supports behind you and being tanky is not as valuable anymore.

 

Long story short :

-Trailblazer has a bit more damage than Celestial. It really shines for solo open-world and is good for WvW roaming. It is good on Elementalist because we can make great use of 'Strength of Stone' (Earth trait) that convert 10% of Toughness into Condition damage ; the bad news is you are kinda locked into the Earth traitline as a result.

 

-Celestial have better sustain. It is great for solo open-world content and really shine for WvW roaming. It is good on Elementalist because we can use every stats effectively ; the good news is you have access to a lot of viable builds which may be more fun for some people.

 

-A quick mention about Viper stat. For Fractals, Strikes and Raids, people tend to prefer Viper. If you feel unsafe or if your healers are learning the game you could try mixing pieces with different stats to end up with some sort of hybrid tanky dps.

 

Good day to you, I hope I was informative.

[Is this class a scam for solo players?]

I kindly disagree with the stun break argument. As a Tempest for example every Overload is a stun break which is super neat, and if you run a condition build the glyph of elemental power is a low cd stun break mixed with a not so bad damage buff. I would agree though that it is very tempting to cast those on cooldown (and not doing so kinda skimp your damage, I give you that). For the boon access, Elementalist can generate an above average level of might with combos, Overload fire, Heat sinc (aka Fire Warhorn 4). Plus the Arcane trait line is filled with quite frankly basic yet serviceable boons so once again I kindly disagree.

 

For the rest of your points, the picture looks a bit brighter from where I stand but otherwise... yeah I am pretty much on the same page. Look, Revenant and Necromancer to name a few are insane solo classes and Elementalist does not compares to those. Is it below average ? Yes. Is it deserving some love? Absolutely. Does the fact your elementals disappear when you mount makes me sigh? You bet it does. Do my butter fingers awkwardly switch to the wrong atunement sometime? You cannot prove it! But still... it is not orange juice on freshly brushed teeth level of bad IMHO.

[Is this class a scam for solo players?]

Unpopular opinion: while the elementalist is below average, the balance is not as horrible as the memes imply.

 

You can certainly play solo elementalist with a fair bit of success and if you like the play-style you should absolutely do so. The trick is to not copy blindly the builds you find on the internet. Most of them are tailored for specific stuff like raid or meta events and they are awesome at what they do, yet they are typically not good for solo play. A good raid build will assume that you will have access to most buffs with full uptime, that you will be at 90%+ health constantly for rune of the scholar, etc. And this is just unrealistic if you are facing a champion alone.

 

For solo play you typically want to add some sustain, tankyness and basic boon access whether it comes from gears or traits. Condition cleanse and stun break are also nice to have for specific situation. You may be afraid that the damage lost will slow you down but more damage means nothing if you die and have to repeat your fight... or you know, loose the entire event for the other 49 people (yes twisted marionette I am looking at you, we had our fun! 😄).

 

Quite frankly even if the elementalist is currently not meta across the board, it is still very playable in most scenario. Tempest healer can do great in pug fractal and Celestial weaver is awesome in WvW roaming for example... these options are however often overlooked because other more popular classes exist.

 

So no, it is not unplayable and it is not a scam IMHO... still, some aspects of the class are lagging behind the 'ambient power creep' and I would certainly welcome a buff or two on the core traits for example.