Is it worth it to create an ele/get into the class in its current state, especially post-patch?

[Chyro.1462]

I just really like the class fantasy and skill animations, no other class ever felt 'right' to me. Since I mainly just play open world or story stuff, it shouldn't matter to much that I'm not playing one of the 'favored' classes / specs. Am quite comfortably doing any kind of open world content on my tempest, rarely ever getting downed anymore.

 

My build is somewhat support oriented, with water + air shared auras that give swiftness and fury (great for world exploring with others, being able to share perma swiftness) and might from fire overload + fire field blasting and warhorn might sharing (running dagger + warhorn) and alacrity from any overload. I use a mix of mostly celestial gear, with some zerker/assassin/marauder pieces in the jewelry slots, so more focus on direct damage but decent sustain, boons and some condition damage. ..and my runes are a guilty pleasure, runes of speed. Just feels really nice to be moving near max speed all the time even while in combat and makes things easier to dodge / move out of. Slightly under 20k health (with t10 jade bot, jade buffs + 'repair'), which I can easily recover with heal skill or water warhorn 4+5 + dagger 3 water field blast, and if that's not enough water overload on top of it. Earth warhorn 4 + overload for projectile reflect and protection (and boon duration extending), or warhorn 5 for blinding enemies.

 

But yeah, definitely nowhere near optimized for dps. Though never felt like my damage is lacking while doing any events, and for big meta bosses I just hope my boons and alacrity shared with others make up somewhat for my lower personal dps.

 

I'm having fun playing it, and I think that's the main thing that matters in a game.

[AliamRationem.5172]

33 minutes ago, Chyro.1462 said:

I just really like the class fantasy and skill animations, no other class ever felt 'right' to me. Since I mainly just play open world or story stuff, it shouldn't matter to much that I'm not playing one of the 'favored' classes / specs. Am quite comfortably doing any kind of open world content on my tempest, rarely ever getting downed anymore.

 

My build is somewhat support oriented, with water + air shared auras that give swiftness and fury (great for world exploring with others, being able to share perma swiftness) and might from fire overload + fire field blasting and warhorn might sharing (running dagger + warhorn) and alacrity from any overload. I use a mix of mostly celestial gear, with some zerker/assassin/marauder pieces in the jewelry slots, so more focus on direct damage but decent sustain, boons and some condition damage. ..and my runes are a guilty pleasure, runes of speed. Just feels really nice to be moving near max speed all the time even while in combat and makes things easier to dodge / move out of. Slightly under 20k health (with t10 jade bot, jade buffs + 'repair'), which I can easily recover with heal skill or water warhorn 4+5 + dagger 3 water field blast, and if that's not enough water overload on top of it. Earth warhorn 4 + overload for projectile reflect and protection (and boon duration extending), or warhorn 5 for blinding enemies.

 

But yeah, definitely nowhere near optimized for dps. Though never felt like my damage is lacking while doing any events, and for big meta bosses I just hope my boons and alacrity shared with others make up somewhat for my lower personal dps.

 

I'm having fun playing it, and I think that's the main thing that matters in a game.

For me, there's nothing more fun to play than weaver.  For the same reason, I'd like it to be in a good place in the meta.  Unfortunately, it really isn't because ANet's "balancing" for some reason allows for a class to bring nothing but DPS to a group with just about every restriction on its performance that could be contrived and yet place it behind classes that do more and more easily.

Melee should top range in maximum damage potential.  Selfish should top utility.  Lowest armor/health should be compensated in damage output.  Complex and sensitive rotations should perform the best when they're not prevented from doing so by dealing with mechanics.  Or else why even have these limitations?  It's supposed to be a tradeoff, right?  I don't see the balance in this design currently.

[ManaPotato.3279]

Is it worth it to create an ele/get into the class in its current state, especially post-patch?

No.

[Yirra.2981]

On 7/17/2022 at 10:56 AM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'm not going to tell you it's the easy way to go, but if you enjoy the spec condi weaver is easily among the best solo play builds available.  It's also perfectly viable in a DPS role for strikes, fractals, and raids.

Here's a recent video clip of the Trailblazer fire/earth build.  

Here's one getting crazy with the available open world masteries using Viper stats.  This is almost identical to the raid/fractal meta build.

Here's the celestial fire/arcane variant.  It's lower damage than the other two, but it's still quite strong and really a lot of fun to play!

And just to show that the foundation is sound, here's a Balthazar solo on condi weaver using all green gear with nothing worth over 10 silver.  This is using the fire/arcane build like the celestial variant but with Balthazar rune to compensate for the lack of expertise on green rabid/dire gear.

As Discretize.eu notes in their build guide for condition weaver, "This build is naturally tanky due to its rotation, having easy access to skills that provide evasion frames."  I find this to be accurate in group play because you generally only need to buy a second or two to give your healer time to top you off from any mistakes.  With condi weaver that's easy to do thanks to skills like earthen vortex, obsidian flesh, and riptide paired with your standard dodges.

 

Thank you for sharing this and the videos! I've just started playing the game about 2-3 weeks ago and have absolutely loved playing elementalist. The learning curve has definitely been daunting, and I started playing at the same time as a few of my buddies (warrior, rogue and mesmer) and I realized pretty quickly my rotation was going to be a lot more involved than what they were experiencing, but I enjoy the challenge. I hit lvl 80 late last week though and as I started poking around at end content info it's been hard to remain as enthusiastic or hopeful about my potential contribution to groups. Everywhere I look it feels like people are just hating on the class, but it's so much fun to play, idk that I want to make an alt already. 

 

I did spec into condi weaver on hitting 80 because, honest to god, I wanted access to that beautiful flaming sword lol! I grabbed some dire armor for survivability because holy crap did I die a lot before, but now it just feels great. At least if Viper gets good DPS I can potentially get into some fractals and raids, which is what my buddies and I were aiming for in the first place. At least until I learn the ropes of the game enough to make an informed alt decision. I normally enjoy healing in MMOs so I'd like to go that route next but after playing elementalist and what I've heard about the rotation for engineer healing, I think I'd get bored with it quick. 

 

It's all a bit overwhelming and discouraging at the same time, a bit like playing fire mage on WoW after the big nerf that it never seemed to rebound from (the one just at the end of warlords of draenor, never felt the same after that and ice/arcane just never did it for me). Fire was the most fun but it was hard, and stressful, to perform as well in some of the late game dungeons and raids which were always my bread and butter. I don't want that all over again. This comment honestly gave me some hope for my ele girl though, so thanks again =) 

[AliamRationem.5172]

7 minutes ago, Yirra.2981 said:

Thank you for sharing this and the videos! I've just started playing the game about 2-3 weeks ago and have absolutely loved playing elementalist. The learning curve has definitely been daunting, and I started playing at the same time as a few of my buddies (warrior, rogue and mesmer) and I realized pretty quickly my rotation was going to be a lot more involved than what they were experiencing, but I enjoy the challenge. I hit lvl 80 late last week though and as I started poking around at end content info it's been hard to remain as enthusiastic or hopeful about my potential contribution to groups. Everywhere I look it feels like people are just hating on the class, but it's so much fun to play, idk that I want to make an alt already. 

 

I did spec into condi weaver on hitting 80 because, honest to god, I wanted access to that beautiful flaming sword lol! I grabbed some dire armor for survivability because holy crap did I die a lot before, but now it just feels great. At least if Viper gets good DPS I can potentially get into some fractals and raids, which is what my buddies and I were aiming for in the first place. At least until I learn the ropes of the game enough to make an informed alt decision. I normally enjoy healing in MMOs so I'd like to go that route next but after playing elementalist and what I've heard about the rotation for engineer healing, I think I'd get bored with it quick. 

 

It's all a bit overwhelming and discouraging at the same time, a bit like playing fire mage on WoW after the big nerf that it never seemed to rebound from (the one just at the end of warlords of draenor, never felt the same after that and ice/arcane just never did it for me). Fire was the most fun but it was hard, and stressful, to perform as well in some of the late game dungeons and raids which were always my bread and butter. I don't want that all over again. This comment honestly gave me some hope for my ele girl though, so thanks again 😃

Glad it helped.  Don't worry.  Ele has its issues that many ele mains are tired of waiting on ANet to resolve, but it's still perfectly viable and a fun class to play.   That includes group content. 

It isn't much of a focus for me, but here's a clip I grabbed doing T4 daily fractal pickups.  The damage is plenty adequate, in my experience.

 

[Yirra.2981]

5 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Glad it helped.  Don't worry.  Ele has its issues that many ele mains are tired of waiting on ANet to resolve, but it's still perfectly viable and a fun class to play.   That includes group content. 

It isn't much of a focus for me, but here's a clip I grabbed doing T4 daily fractal pickups.  The damage is plenty adequate, in my experience.

 

yes! this seems great, it's nice to know t4 fractals are very much a possibility. I'm going to stick with my tree-person arsonist, my current dire gear and just work on finishing out the hero points I need to complete the specialization. I expect at least some of the sluggishness I've been experiencing with it since 80 comes from not having access to the whole set of skills for the spec yet. Looks like it's going to be fun though 😃

[Ace.1784]

You can run raids with a whole comp of Ele's!

Before people get upset, just a fun video to share.

[Esorono.1039]

17 hours ago, Vinteros Asteano.1209 said:

You can run raids with a whole comp of Ele's!

Before people get upset, just a fun video to share.

I'm impressed.

There IS apparently a comp worse and glassy than four core thieves, four daredevils using a double pistol condi build without any alacrity, quickness, or a healer.