Want to roll an Ele, but am i wasting my time?

[Gibson.4036]

I’ve been having fun on cele staff weaver in open world. Some of my other characters are definitely more reliable in tough situations, but not to the point where I lose the enjoyment of playing fire/earth wizard.

Tempest is a ton of fun in PvP.

[soulknight.9620]

15 hours ago, Vordrax.5243 said:

I think newer Elementalist players have, in particular, been steered away by the notion that the only meaningful way to play the game is to go full glass cannon, and if you have a bad time, it's because Elementalist is a bad class and/or you're a bad player. In my WoW raiding guild we used to have this saying that taking risks is fine but your DPS is zero when you're dead, so I am all for suggesting players keep survivability in mind when gearing up.

Well the problem with this is that you need to fulfill your role in high end content efficiently. Survivability in high end content is basically a "dont fail a mechanic" thing, instead of a "defensive stat check". There are supports that are constantly providing sustain to dps players. And ofc there are classes that have built in sustain that would help them slack a bit if they fail a mechanic or two. Why would i take a 20k dps ele that invested in sustain over 35-38k dps virtuoso/mech that has built in sustain? That would criple my run and other people at my group would have to pull more weight to compensate for that 20k dps ele. So to actually pull ur weight ele players have to go full glass cannon and hope that their knowlegde of mechanics is enough to perform well. Swapping a single utility from dmg to defensive/sustain will cost you dps and a lot of it. 

And gw2 is simply built around the core principle that it is better to go full zerk and burst the target down before it has the opportunity to get you down. That applies to raids/t4/strikes too. The longer you take to kill a boss the more mechanics your group have to do without failing. 

 

12 hours ago, Guybrush.4762 said:

PvE :

1. [HEALER] Heal Alacrity Tempest - nice heals and good boons ; lack stability and fury to really tackle on other healers, contrary to other healer this build has a rigid rotation structure, you can't just use skills when you feel like it
2. [DPS] Condition Scepter-focus Weaver - good damage ; the rotation is spammy and fast paced, reliant being at melee range because of Primordial stance, it is a bit fragile and the weave self rotation is complex but you can simplify it by a ton by taking Glyph of Elementalis instead

HAT can actually have group stability on par with HAM atm. Same goes for fury, if you rly need it you can spec air instead of arcane and get 100% uptime. Although fury is such a common buff on quick supports that u dont usually need to invest in it. 

 

I would add a few builds extra:

3. Sword/fc condi weaver. Really good sustain, does a bit less dps than Scepter.

4. Power Catalyst. Does decent damage if player right. Has some boon uptime built in. Decent survivability due to water skills and earth skill being a part of the rotation and Hammer 3 sphere buffs. 

5. Quick Catalyst. A bit lacky on the dps side, but is quite potent at offensive boon support. Requires the knowledge of the rotation and resource management of catalyst. Decent survivability due to water skills and earth skill being a part of the rotation and Hammer 3 sphere buffs. 

6. Condi alac tempest. Does a good amount of dps for alac dps. Around 22-25k. Provides 100% uptime on alac and a few minor boons. Basically uses 3 OL attunements in rotation. 

7. Condi staff weaver. Good dps on large hitboxes, decent dps on small ones. Easy to play, the rotation is on the lvl of sc/fc condi weaver. The benefit is that it can do dps on long range (although not prefered due to primordial stance). 

And a few builds for open world:

1. Cele sw/fc weaver. A lot of sustain, decent dps.

2. Cele staff weaver. Good support, decent long range dps.

3. Trailblazers sw/fc weaver. Godlike durability. Lacks a bit of sustain, but has good dps.

4. Cele hammer catalyst. Quite a strong pick dps/sustain wise, lacks range for taging mobs during meta runs. 

Edited November 2, 2022 by soulknight.9620

[Joxer.6024]

I rolled a Mech........    😉

[poop.4183]

catalyst is a weird e-specs

They should add that -10% damage dealt from spectacular sphere to each trait giving alacrity or quickness to all classes ....  no ? ofc no ! Spectacular sphere is an amazing trait , .... till you read "you deal -10% damage" yuuuukkkkkk , but yes for meta runs not for endgame run , was that -10% necessary ? having quickness baseline sure isnt right but the trade off was already there :

- some diviner stats for boon uptime

- already -10% damage looses from the trait just above spectacular sphere , emp. auras

- and -10% stats loosed from empower empowerment

is there another quickdps trading off so much damage in the game ? (-20% damage , -10% stats)

Anet wanted catalyst out of the meta , and they succeed , while i think Hat is okayish (not even close to a HAM or HFB, but it ll do the job boonwise) , what kind of game design is "you deal -10% damage" on a class who is obvioulsy designed to be a dps ?

Edited November 2, 2022 by poop.4183

[Guybrush.4762]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:56 PM, Joxer.6024 said:

I rolled a Mech........    😉

I guess it is fair but also... I never felt that let down since the final season of Game of Thrones. 🤣
That is ok, we are going to convince you next time, have a wonderful day.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Guybrush.4762

[SleepyBat.9034]

On 10/31/2022 at 2:48 AM, Joxer.6024 said:

Ele is like the only class i dont have an 80 of and figured why not, give it a go. But man o man from what I have read and seen (or dont seen) they just dont seem to be worth it. Am I wrong? I have high ping but meh, I am used to it so would like a mostly fire Tempest be any good in like Open World stuffs or will I die...alot.? I dont mind a bit of a challenge but also dont play piano for a reason... ;)]

It is sad that ANET has allowed one of their classes to fall thru the cracks but it cant be that bad, can it?

Anyone who claims Ele is bad doesn't know how to play the game.

[Nemesis.8576]

I wouldn't say it's a complete waste of time; however, the elementalist continues to feel week and is a lot more effort to play than other professions.  It starts with lowest health category and then it takes more damaged because it wear cloth and to make things worse it does not compensate by having an increase in damage abilities.  It's a glass firecracker.  I have all my professions equipped the same way just to show how inconsistent the game is between them.  You'd think they'd be equally capable, but their not.  To make things worse, all the light armor professions seem to suffer from a serious vulnerability to knock downs and interrupts.  Yeah, I know there are ways to compensate for this.  The game is overloaded with so much complexity, it's nearly impossible for beginners to come up with effect builds.  Build complexity is the single biggest barrier to new players enjoying this game.  If it does not get fixed, Guild Wars 2 will forever be a niche game.  If that's the goal, fine, but you'll never see the kind of success other games have managed.  If I had to sum up Guild Wars 2, I'd say that it's wildly inconsistent and needlessly complex.

 

[WhimsicalPacifist.2943]

8 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

I rolled a Mech........    😉

 

No worries, you have 10 years of precedent there.

[PrinceValentine.9320]

17 hours ago, WhimsicalPacifist.2943 said:

 

No worries, you have 10 years of precedent there.

Oh, that was hotjoin and the old HOTM map. Memories. 

 

Edit: 

That HS spam. Lol

Edited November 3, 2022 by PrinceValentine.9320

[Kuma.1503]

On 10/31/2022 at 2:48 AM, Joxer.6024 said:

Ele is like the only class i dont have an 80 of and figured why not, give it a go. But man o man from what I have read and seen (or dont seen) they just dont seem to be worth it. Am I wrong? I have high ping but meh, I am used to it so would like a mostly fire Tempest be any good in like Open World stuffs or will I die...alot.? I dont mind a bit of a challenge but also dont play piano for a reason... ;)]

It is sad that ANET has allowed one of their classes to fall thru the cracks but it cant be that bad, can it?

I have roughly ~2k hours on elementalist at this point spread out across multiple characters. 

I'll give a brief (*looks at length of post*) overview of each proffesions and how they perform in each game mode. 

 

Open World

General - As soon as you can I reccomend getting a set of Celestial gear. It will give you a little of everything you need to survive Solo. You should have no issues dying with it. You can also use it in endgame content like fractals, strikes, and dungeons! (Raids too, but you'll end up tanking in some fights)

Core Ele - Surprisingly capable in Open World. You'll most likely swap off and never look back once you unlock Tempest, but while you're leveling, it's a surprisingly painless process. 

I always unlock the air traitline first. For utilities, I unlock glyph of lesser elementals. I run around open world with my army of air elementals. They give me permeneant swiftness, and will gun down any mob that dares approach me. I can run any weapon i want with this setup, but I normally go for staff simply because the playstyle is fun. 

 

Tempest - There are a lot of tempest builds that work in open world. Feel free to experiment and find what works best for you.  Here are a few examples: 

Fresh air, Condi burn tempest, minionmancer tempest, Signet Tempest, Heal Alac Tempest (for meta events), and lightning rod tempest. 

 

Weaver - A lot of new players who get into weaver copy snowcrows or metabattle and try playing it with glass canon stats. Those same people are usually the ones who come back and say that Ele is garbage some random deer in shiverpeak mountains oneshot them. 

If you can't get your hands on cele stats yet, don't worry because you can play a burn weaver build with Dire/Trailblazer stats. Just slap on balthazar runes and/or a sigil of smoldering to cap out your burn duration

You'll be able to melt through things with ease, and you'll be tanky enough to survive whatever open world throws at you.  You can spend most of your time camping fire and earth attumenents so you don't have to worry about playing piano. Fill your bar with stances, and run all of the bottom traits in the weaver traitline. You'll be spamming so much barrier that you'll feel invincible at times. 

Sometimes I play this in fractals as well, and the damage you can pump out is surprising to say the least. 

 

Catalyst - I heard someone say there are no easy builds for catalyst... BEHOLD

Minionmancer Catalyst

Remember the core ele build from earlier? This is that on sterioids. You choose your own level of difficulty with this build. If you want to relax, just camp fire attunement and spam fire elementals. Your auto attacks will burn foes and give you might. Your other weapon skills are there for extra burst damage and cleave. Use them as you see fit... or don't. You get a lot of milage out of just spamming 1111111111 with your minions by your side.  This also works well with staff if you prefer that playstyle. Lots of AoE cleave for farming. 

Want to take things a step further? Use water attunement for sustain, Earth attunement for a bit of extra damage, CC, and an on demand block, Air attumenet  for more CC, and to give youself quickness... so you can go right back to spamming 1111111111 in fire attunement. 

It's one of my favorite builds to relax on when I don't want to think. 

 

...I have also played this in T4 fractals before. Did not go poorly. People seem more confused by the fact that there is a catalyst existing on their screen than they are about my build. Clears usually go very smoothly. 

 

These other secions will be brief, (edit: lol no they won't) but I will  go over ele's place in the meta in other game modes. 

 

Player Vs Player

 

Tempest - THE best support in the game. Period. Tempest is in the perfect spot to counter the most prevalent builds in the meta. EoD brought a lot of projectile heavy classes into the game. Virtuoso, Harbinger, Rifle Mechanist, (longbow) Untamed, Specter, and it buffed Deadeye. 

Tempest comes in, demands that people stop with the violence, and then stunlocks them into oblivion while doing entirely too much damage for a "support". VERY good build to climb with, especially if you have a DUO to play around you. You will hard carry teamfights, especially if the enemy team does not have their own tempest. 

 

Catalyst - If not for Vindicator being... lets just say, a tiny bit strong right now, Catalyst would be inarguably the best side noder right now. It shuts down so many matchups with its magnetic aura and shocking aura spam. It does incredible amounts of damage even when build tanky (i frequently top dps with avatar amulet and dolyak rune). It has blocks, reflects, invulns, earth shield to survive when it gets focused... Good sustain... If you take the time to master catalyst, it will reward you. 

Or you can do what I do and run into PvP, turn your brain off, do your raid rotaion on people, and watch as most of them drop like flies because they don't expect that much damage to come out of you. Epecially if they're one of the people who thinks ele is bad. 

 

Weaver - The worst ele spec right now. It gets outclassed by catalyst as a side noder, and isn't as valuable in teamfights. But don't let that fool you into thinking weaver is a free kill. It can still surprise people with it's durability, and condi burst if they make the mistake of underestimating it. 

Core - It's there for memes, but you should really just play tempest. Lol. 

 

PvE/ Raids/ Fractals

Core - Why are you playing this? 

 

Weaver - The metabattle/Snowcrows builds take a lot of time and effort to see results with. They can be good builds, but the learning process can be very demoralizing for a lot of people. 

I hinted towards this earlier, but you can play a trailblazer/cele burn weaver with Sword/X in Fractals and it works pretty well. It does good enough damage, that people don't give me flak for pulling low numbers whenever I play it, and Its easy to survive with. 

 

Catalyst - I love cata, I really do, but there's no getting around it. Catalyst is underpowered right now. It's not unplayable. I still use it in T4 fractals, raids, and strikes, and it works out well enough, but there are better options right now if you care about optimizing your play. 

On the bright side, people have memed Anet about it so much that there's a good chance they get buffed in November. Ele has gotten a lot of good buffs lately. It looks like Anet is trying to push it into the meta in PvE. 

 

Tempest - HAT has a lot of flaws that make it cumbersome to play at times. Getting CC'd mid overload makes me want to rip my hair out... BUT

It's a good build. Very strong in the right hands. You can hard carry groups with it if you know what you're doing. Just be patient as you practice it. It has a pretty steep learning curve if you're still new to ele. 

Condi Tempest is also a good build. It's  easy to play and it's got some nice built in utility. I recommend it if you're still learning ele. 

 

WvW

 

Core - Why are you playing this?

 

Tempest - Good choice for zergs, and deceptively good at 1v1s. It hard counters some of the more popular builds like Rifle Mech and Ranger. It's very tanky and does a lot more damage than people expect. 

Catalyst - In zergs, they have some memes with double meteor showers. In 1vX is where they shine. If your enemy is foolish enough to fight you head to head... They will die. Catalyst just has too much tankiness, damage, and sustain to brute force your way through.

It will struggle against enemies that know this and kite you to death while slowly chipping away at your resources. 

Good mesmers and thieves can make you feel completely helpless if you're stuck somewhere with no walls to hide behind., but when you get those fights where you get to brawl it out, you feel invincible. 

Weaver - Gets underestimated in WvW Tbh. It still does its usual stuff. It's very tanky, evades a lot, does a LOT of damage once they finally get their hands on you. Unfortunately, they get kited to death even harder than catalyst... That is unless-- 

You play Fresh Air weaver. This is a ranged build that thows all of its eggs into one basket. Your one and only goal is to single out one person, lock them down, and burst them down quicker than they can react. You may have to kite a bit, and burst them a few times to get through their defenses, but once they have that opening, they can get kills faster than people can blink. 

This build is difficult to play, but it's very fun once you get the hang of it. 

There's also lightning rod weaver. I don't see it very much, probably because it gets hard countered by stability. It's extremely annoying to deal with for builds that don't have a lot of stab or stunbreaks though. 

 

 

And that's Elementalist. It's a long post, but hopefully this answers the questions you had about it. 

 

 

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[tiagotatico.6304]

On 10/31/2022 at 8:34 AM, ZloyMakak.1429 said:

Of course you should try it! In my opinion ele is one of the most fun professions to play. It will take a bit of time to get used to a lot of skills but it's not really a piano as a lot of ppl like to say. (except some builds). For end game content there are many builds like: 

Power dps tempest, weaver, catalyst

Condition dps tempest, weaver, catalyst

Quickness provider dps catalyst (condi and power) 

Alacrity provider dps tempest (condi and power) 

Heal alacrity tempest

Heal quickness catalyst (cleared all raids with cms on it as tank heal quick) 

____

Ele have very strong open world builds with lots of aoe. Numerous pvp and wvw builds. Ele can take all roles in group composition. 

So this is my take on it. 

P. S. You just need to invest some time to learn what skills do and some base rotations. 

P. S. S. After you learn ele most other profession will feel very easy to play. 

 

And at last in my opinion specialisations by difficulty to play: (from easiest to hardest) 

Tempest - catalyst - weaver

 

source : trust me bro, i locked your name on wingman and only found 13 catalyst games, 3 weavers, 0 q1 and 0 dhuum kills, the only two good ele builds right now are cweaver and heal alac temp, 

[Hindenburg.3415]

I just love topics like this.

"Bad" ? What do you mean by it ?

Any class with any build can complete any content in the game.

In pve 90% of "oh no my class has 3k less benchmark dps than that guy it's complete trash now" people can't reach those benchmarks anyway.

In pvp 90% of the time it's LTP and performance issue not class issue.

 

You can pick up any class and perform well in any content.

 

Only small percentage of people can actually reach the point where class balance is the thing that impacting their performance.

 

 

[Joxer.6024]

On 11/4/2022 at 6:57 AM, Kuma.1503 said:

I have roughly ~2k hours on elementalist at this point spread out across multiple characters. 

I'll give a brief (*looks at length of post*) overview of each proffesions and how they perform in each game mode. 

 

Open World

General - As soon as you can I reccomend getting a set of Celestial gear. It will give you a little of everything you need to survive Solo. You should have no issues dying with it. You can also use it in endgame content like fractals, strikes, and dungeons! (Raids too, but you'll end up tanking in some fights)

Core Ele - Surprisingly capable in Open World. You'll most likely swap off and never look back once you unlock Tempest, but while you're leveling, it's a surprisingly painless process. 

I always unlock the air traitline first. For utilities, I unlock glyph of lesser elementals. I run around open world with my army of air elementals. They give me permeneant swiftness, and will gun down any mob that dares approach me. I can run any weapon i want with this setup, but I normally go for staff simply because the playstyle is fun. 

 

Tempest - There are a lot of tempest builds that work in open world. Feel free to experiment and find what works best for you.  Here are a few examples: 

Fresh air, Condi burn tempest, minionmancer tempest, Signet Tempest, Heal Alac Tempest (for meta events), and lightning rod tempest. 

 

Weaver - A lot of new players who get into weaver copy snowcrows or metabattle and try playing it with glass canon stats. Those same people are usually the ones who come back and say that Ele is garbage some random deer in shiverpeak mountains oneshot them. 

If you can't get your hands on cele stats yet, don't worry because you can play a burn weaver build with Dire/Trailblazer stats. Just slap on balthazar runes and/or a sigil of smoldering to cap out your burn duration

You'll be able to melt through things with ease, and you'll be tanky enough to survive whatever open world throws at you.  You can spend most of your time camping fire and earth attumenents so you don't have to worry about playing piano. Fill your bar with stances, and run all of the bottom traits in the weaver traitline. You'll be spamming so much barrier that you'll feel invincible at times. 

Sometimes I play this in fractals as well, and the damage you can pump out is surprising to say the least. 

 

Catalyst - I heard someone say there are no easy builds for catalyst... BEHOLD

Minionmancer Catalyst

Remember the core ele build from earlier? This is that on sterioids. You choose your own level of difficulty with this build. If you want to relax, just camp fire attunement and spam fire elementals. Your auto attacks will burn foes and give you might. Your other weapon skills are there for extra burst damage and cleave. Use them as you see fit... or don't. You get a lot of milage out of just spamming 1111111111 with your minions by your side.  This also works well with staff if you prefer that playstyle. Lots of AoE cleave for farming. 

Want to take things a step further? Use water attunement for sustain, Earth attunement for a bit of extra damage, CC, and an on demand block, Air attumenet  for more CC, and to give youself quickness... so you can go right back to spamming 1111111111 in fire attunement. 

It's one of my favorite builds to relax on when I don't want to think. 

 

...I have also played this in T4 fractals before. Did not go poorly. People seem more confused by the fact that there is a catalyst existing on their screen than they are about my build. Clears usually go very smoothly. 

 

These other secions will be brief, (edit: lol no they won't) but I will  go over ele's place in the meta in other game modes. 

 

Player Vs Player

 

Tempest - THE best support in the game. Period. Tempest is in the perfect spot to counter the most prevalent builds in the meta. EoD brought a lot of projectile heavy classes into the game. Virtuoso, Harbinger, Rifle Mechanist, (longbow) Untamed, Specter, and it buffed Deadeye. 

Tempest comes in, demands that people stop with the violence, and then stunlocks them into oblivion while doing entirely too much damage for a "support". VERY good build to climb with, especially if you have a DUO to play around you. You will hard carry teamfights, especially if the enemy team does not have their own tempest. 

 

Catalyst - If not for Vindicator being... lets just say, a tiny bit strong right now, Catalyst would be inarguably the best side noder right now. It shuts down so many matchups with its magnetic aura and shocking aura spam. It does incredible amounts of damage even when build tanky (i frequently top dps with avatar amulet and dolyak rune). It has blocks, reflects, invulns, earth shield to survive when it gets focused... Good sustain... If you take the time to master catalyst, it will reward you. 

Or you can do what I do and run into PvP, turn your brain off, do your raid rotaion on people, and watch as most of them drop like flies because they don't expect that much damage to come out of you. Epecially if they're one of the people who thinks ele is bad. 

 

Weaver - The worst ele spec right now. It gets outclassed by catalyst as a side noder, and isn't as valuable in teamfights. But don't let that fool you into thinking weaver is a free kill. It can still surprise people with it's durability, and condi burst if they make the mistake of underestimating it. 

Core - It's there for memes, but you should really just play tempest. Lol. 

 

PvE/ Raids/ Fractals

Core - Why are you playing this? 

 

Weaver - The metabattle/Snowcrows builds take a lot of time and effort to see results with. They can be good builds, but the learning process can be very demoralizing for a lot of people. 

I hinted towards this earlier, but you can play a trailblazer/cele burn weaver with Sword/X in Fractals and it works pretty well. It does good enough damage, that people don't give me flak for pulling low numbers whenever I play it, and Its easy to survive with. 

 

Catalyst - I love cata, I really do, but there's no getting around it. Catalyst is underpowered right now. It's not unplayable. I still use it in T4 fractals, raids, and strikes, and it works out well enough, but there are better options right now if you care about optimizing your play. 

On the bright side, people have memed Anet about it so much that there's a good chance they get buffed in November. Ele has gotten a lot of good buffs lately. It looks like Anet is trying to push it into the meta in PvE. 

 

Tempest - HAT has a lot of flaws that make it cumbersome to play at times. Getting CC'd mid overload makes me want to rip my hair out... BUT

It's a good build. Very strong in the right hands. You can hard carry groups with it if you know what you're doing. Just be patient as you practice it. It has a pretty steep learning curve if you're still new to ele. 

Condi Tempest is also a good build. It's  easy to play and it's got some nice built in utility. I recommend it if you're still learning ele. 

 

WvW

 

Core - Why are you playing this?

 

Tempest - Good choice for zergs, and deceptively good at 1v1s. It hard counters some of the more popular builds like Rifle Mech and Ranger. It's very tanky and does a lot more damage than people expect. 

Catalyst - In zergs, they have some memes with double meteor showers. In 1vX is where they shine. If your enemy is foolish enough to fight you head to head... They will die. Catalyst just has too much tankiness, damage, and sustain to brute force your way through.

It will struggle against enemies that know this and kite you to death while slowly chipping away at your resources. 

Good mesmers and thieves can make you feel completely helpless if you're stuck somewhere with no walls to hide behind., but when you get those fights where you get to brawl it out, you feel invincible. 

Weaver - Gets underestimated in WvW Tbh. It still does its usual stuff. It's very tanky, evades a lot, does a LOT of damage once they finally get their hands on you. Unfortunately, they get kited to death even harder than catalyst... That is unless-- 

You play Fresh Air weaver. This is a ranged build that thows all of its eggs into one basket. Your one and only goal is to single out one person, lock them down, and burst them down quicker than they can react. You may have to kite a bit, and burst them a few times to get through their defenses, but once they have that opening, they can get kills faster than people can blink. 

This build is difficult to play, but it's very fun once you get the hang of it. 

There's also lightning rod weaver. I don't see it very much, probably because it gets hard countered by stability. It's extremely annoying to deal with for builds that don't have a lot of stab or stunbreaks though. 

 

 

And that's Elementalist. It's a long post, but hopefully this answers the questions you had about it. 

 

 

 

NOW thats help!!! Cheers for that post, info was just what I needed. The cata build intrigues me but not until I have played the class for a bit, but have the link saved! With my aussie ping swapping attunements gets to be a pain so those suggestions are perfect. Again, a huge thanks mate!!!  😉

(edit) >Would you recommend that Weaver over Cata and is that build doable without all the constant swaps? If so, got a build? Cheers!

Edited November 5, 2022 by Joxer.6024

[Knuckle Joe.7408]

yes

wanna do dmg? other classes do similar or better with less effort
wanna do support boon? see above
wanna do healer? see above

[Alcatraznc.3869]

Elementalist could definitely receive some buff.

 

But a lot of people claim Elementalist is the worst class in the game, trash in every gamemode when in reality, despite its flaw it is a solid class in most gamemode.

 

Forums is filled with people crying Elementalist is trash everywhere and these people are either biased because they want Elementalist to be OP/broken or they are straight up garbage Ele player.

[AliamRationem.5172]

23 minutes ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

Elementalist could definitely receive some buff.

 

But a lot of people claim Elementalist is the worst class in the game, trash in every gamemode when in reality, despite its flaw it is a solid class in most gamemode.

 

Forums is filled with people crying Elementalist is trash everywhere and these people are either biased because they want Elementalist to be OP/broken or they are straight up garbage Ele player.

It is obviously doing well in PvP, with tempest support and catalyst side-node builds.  But in PvE I think it's pretty easy to make the case that ele is far from top tier on all available builds.  This matches up pretty well with its rock bottom representation in PvE content.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It is obviously doing well in PvP, with tempest support and catalyst side-node builds.  But in PvE I think it's pretty easy to make the case that ele is far from top tier on all available builds.  This matches up pretty well with its rock bottom representation in PvE content.

 

Not being top tier doesnt mean trash. Ele still has some solid build even if it's not "meta". Some build could definitely receive some buffs but if the reasoning is not meta = trash then I'm sorry to say there's barely 3 spec not trash.

[Dadnir.5038]

On 11/4/2022 at 3:18 PM, tiagotatico.6304 said:

source : trust me bro, i locked your name on wingman and only found 13 catalyst games, 3 weavers, 0 q1 and 0 dhuum kills, the only two good ele builds right now are cweaver and heal alac temp, 

Fact is that popularity is heavily impacted by prejudices and the elementalist's community like to draw a pitiable picture of their favourite profession. If you take the example of the OP, who hadn't yet played elementalist, he already come here fearing the prejudice that somehow you need to play piano if you want to play elementalist.

When scourge was labeled as the "noob carry" in PvE raids, only good at ralying low skill players, nobody played it. When a team start to threaten the speed clear record along with good survivability by exploiting scourge's strengths, it became the "easy to play OP spec" in people's mind and everyone flocked to it.

The irony here is that the same team that led scourge to it's popularity also used tempests in their team to achieve their speed clear time and they even unsloted scourge at time in favor of an extra tempest when more survivability was needed. Would you think that the elementalist's community would have capitalize on these facts to improve their main class popularity? Oh great god no, they would rather have people see their favourite profession as unplayable and useless.

 

What the elementalist need the most to see some play in end game content isn't buffs but some positivity from the elementalist's playerbase itself.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Fact is that popularity is heavily impacted by prejudices and the elementalist's community like to draw a pitiable picture of their favourite profession. If you take the example of the OP, who hadn't yet played elementalist, he already come here fearing the prejudice that somehow you need to play piano if you want to play elementalist.

When scourge was labeled as the "noob carry" in PvE raids, only good at ralying low skill players, nobody played it. When a team start to threaten the speed clear record along with good survivability by exploiting scourge's strengths, it became the "easy to play OP spec" in people's mind and everyone flocked to it.

The irony here is that the same team that led scourge to it's popularity also used tempests in their team to achieve their speed clear time and they even unsloted scourge at time in favor of an extra tempest when more survivability was needed. Would you think that the elementalist's community would have capitalize on these facts to improve their main class popularity? Oh great god no, they would rather have people see their favourite profession as unplayable and useless.

 

What the elementalist need the most to see some play in end game content isn't buffs but some positivity from the elementalist's playerbase itself.

I 100% agree that elementalist is in a way better spot in PvE then people make it out to be aslong as you are willing to play towards the ele's strengths. Condi Weaver is currently top tier for most condi fights without to much phasing. Heal Alac Tempest probably has the highest burst heal ingame atm and aftershock and EotS should be sufficient in most encounters for stabi/aegis uptime. 

The main problem arises when people refuse to play to its strengths. I'd say around 50% of the ele's arent running proper builds. The amount of catalysts, Pdps weavers and dps tempests i see getting sub 10k dps is insane (Also its lack for proper Alacdps and Quickdps is infuriating).

Yes ele has some long lasting problems and offers little build variety unless you're willing to give up large chunks of your dps. But for sPvP and instanced PvE its in a decent spot right now. 

For WvW its in my opinion quite frankly the complete opposite. Both staff weaver and support Tempest are imo very overrated atm. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by the krytan assassin.9235

[Brasides.9360]

Just read through all the comments above (mostly) and it is really interesting to hear such divided opinions on whether ele is an effective class vs. fun to play across the various elite specs. The people above have shared a lot of the sentiments I would, but more fully and in some cases vehemently.

 

As a newer player with a couple hundred hours in the game I'd just add one opinion from that perspective. I just fell in love with elementalist and sw/f Weaver in particular. All the complexity was very attractive and without looking too much into the meta, builds, or rotations on snowcrows I assumed there would be a big payoff for learning to melt so many disparate abilities into something which used those abilities to greatest effect.

 

However, after playing catalyst to learn about combo fields for a while and then switching to Weaver, I found that while fun in lower stress environments I tended to die a lot in what was more difficult for me - fractals and map meta bosses. Then I went down the snowcrows rabbit hole and tried learning the Catalyst rotation and barely hit 19k on the golem with an easier adjusted rotation using lots of fire summons. My guild said that was below what was required to start doing raids, and I started looking into other classes.

 

Since then I've tried condi Untamed because I was attracted by the ability to get self-quick and -alac, lower your own cooldowns, and have a diversity of pets to experiment with. Also some cool YouTube videos by Baym making it look super fun.

 

I found that it was much, much easier to survive and be effective as the untamed than as Weaver or Catalyst. Playing Untamed, it still feels like there is tons of room to grow and that it rewards excellent timing, positioning, and consistent attention to self boons. On the other hand even after hours with the Catalyst practicing on the training golem I could not match the untamed, and also do significantly more damage more consistently in fractals with great survivability.

 

So while there are other people out there who are really great with Weaver (specifically sw/f), and cata, I had to recognize that I am just not there yet, and the learning curve was just too steep and the playoffs not really worth it in terms of feeling like an effective member in a fractal group.

 

I wouldn't really recommend anyone play sword  Weaver tbh, though it is my favorite espec. Now I think of it as a fun class for doing easier open world content and making me better at playing other more effective classes. I really hope that is not always the case, or that once I am better at the game my opinion will change, because there is so much to love about the complexity, mobility, and aesthetic of sw/f or sw/d Weaver.

[Hindenburg.3415]

20 minutes ago, Brasides.9360 said:

However, after playing catalyst to learn about combo fields for a while and then switching to Weaver, I found that while fun in lower stress environments I tended to die a lot in what was more difficult for me - fractals and map meta bosses. Then I went down the snowcrows rabbit hole and tried learning the Catalyst rotation and barely hit 19k on the golem with an easier adjusted rotation using lots of fire summons. My guild said that was below what was required to start doing raids, and I started looking into other classes.

 

 

 

Enrage times are very lenient in gw2.  In most fights 10-15k ( sometimes even 5k ) is enough to get a kill.

Everything else is varying degrees of elitism and gatekeeping from "we don't want to do mechanics" crowd

 

 

[Brasides.9360]

5 minutes ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

 

Enrage times are very lenient in gw2.  In most fights 10-15k ( sometimes even 5k ) is enough to get a kill.

Everything else is varying degrees of elitism and gatekeeping from "we don't want to do mechanics" crowd

 

 

Yeah, I ended up leaving that guild and am going to make a new guild for new people who want to do content blind together and just figure things out. I've learned that there is just a lot of gatekeeping around endgame content and the best way to get into it is form your own group over time and have fun figuring it out together. I don't even know what "enrage" mechanics are because that experience and a couple others like it convinced me to wait until I could do raids on my own terms, and I haven't looked at any guides.

The rest of what I said above still stands though. I'm either just a particularly poor player who will never be good with weaver or am just not yet good enough to play weaver - which maybe makes sense, since I'm a newer player. Playing condi sword weaver or hammer cata, while the most fun class while I wasn't dying, definitely felt like hard mode now that I've tried a couple other classes and have something to compare it against. Both in PvE and PvP.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

27 minutes ago, Brasides.9360 said:

The rest of what I said above still stands though. I'm either just a particularly poor player who will never be good with weaver or am just not yet good enough to play weaver

You did probably pick the 2 hardest ele builds and they currently offer low dps for the amount of coordination thats necessary to get high dps efficiency.  

If you ever want to get back into Weaver i'd highly suggest to start with sc/f atm. Basic rotation is very easy. Any1 with full exotics decent build and a pair of proper functioning hands should be able to reach 25k+ dps on Golem in like 15 mins of training. The dps is pretty reliable in actual combat. Should be enough dps for all strikes& raids (xcept for a couple of CM's).

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

I 100% agree that elementalist is in a way better spot in PvE then people make it out to be aslong as you are willing to play towards the ele's strengths. Condi Weaver is currently top tier for most condi fights without to much phasing. Heal Alac Tempest probably has the highest burst heal ingame atm and aftershock and EotS should be sufficient in most encounters for stabi/aegis uptime. 

The main problem arises when people refuse to play to its strengths. I'd say around 50% of the ele's arent running proper builds. The amount of catalysts, Pdps weavers and dps tempests i see getting sub 10k dps is insane (Also its lack for proper Alacdps and Quickdps is infuriating).

Yes ele has some long lasting problems and offers little build variety unless you're willing to give up large chunks of your dps. But for sPvP and instanced PvE its in a decent spot right now. 

For WvW its in my opinion quite frankly the complete opposite. Both staff weaver and support Tempest are imo very overrated atm. 

Surely you can trust the opinion of someone who says they see a lot of pdps weavers and tempests... 🙄

 

[Brasides.9360]

2 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

If you ever want to get back into Weaver i'd highly suggest to start with sc/f atm. Basic rotation is very easy. Any1 with full exotics decent build and a pair of proper functioning hands should be able to reach 25k+ dps on Golem in like 15 mins of training. The dps is pretty reliable in actual combat. Should be enough dps for all strikes& raids (xcept for a couple of CM's).

Yeah I've seen some videos of this on youtube, "Easy Mode Rotation Guide", stuff like that. I'm just not that interested in the combat style of scepter or staff weaver. I just like sword weaver and thought it would be a fun journey to get good using it while taking my first journey through gw2. Like climbing a mountain, and arduously reaching great heights. Turns out you're actually just starting deep in a pit and trying to climb up to everyone else.

Ultimately it just comes down to me underestimating the effort and skill required to stay alive and be effective as a sword weaver in group content, and me overestimating the limits of the skill ceiling.

I think I just didn't understand, when I started playing elementalist, how low its health really feels compared to others in group content where you are expected to run with no defensive gear/traits. I also did not understand at that time how beneficial it can be for the party for dps to add uptime on boons + vuln +etc, which is starting to become more clear to me doing pug t2-t3 fractals.

Maybe once I've fought everything and learned the mechanics of bosses with a class that can do more damage more consistently and has an easier time staying alive and provides boon support in its dps rotation then I'll try again with Weaver as a personal challenge. It would be a fun victory lap.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Brasides.9360