Okay, Now Let's Talk About Something Positive

[ippy.9048]

It's unfortunate, but there's no doubt that we haven't achieved the "long-range attack mage" concept with Guild Wars 2 Elementalist. I believe Anet understands this as well. Furthermore, defending against the criticism that the Elementalist is not a "long-range mage" as described is futile. It can't be helped, Anet.

However, let's talk about the positive aspects of our Elementalist and provide positive insights for those who might be interested in Elementalists in the future.

1. Fighting Like Dancing: For example, in other games, classes like Sword Lancer or Elemental Dancer closely resemble our reality. Stepping and dancing, utilizing all four elements in combat. Not green or purple, but red, blue, ochre, and cyan, fighting flamboyantly. Combat is beautiful, that's one of our realities for sure.

2. Top-notch Number of Skills: In Guild Wars 2, an MMO where weapons come with skills, each weapon has skills for all attributes, making it simply four times the number of skills. Although (in a somewhat sad way) there are many skills, each one is simple. In other words, you can feel smarter.

3. Feeling Stronger: Despite having so many skills and such beautiful combat, it is balanced with other classes, and pressing many keys doesn't necessarily increase damage. In fact, if you dance poorly, you won't deal any damage. If you can fight on par with others with such a weak class as the Elementalist, it shows that your player level is at a "braggable level." You need proper equipment too, otherwise, you're really weak. So, being average with an Elementalist means having a high player level. Congratulations.

I'd like to praise more, but it seems I've reached the character limit of my translation software, so I'll leave the rest to you.

Oh, and don't forget. This thread is for placing positive aspects.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

There's a reason why it is that Ele is main (and basically only) toon in WvW.  It's the fields.  Ele was designed back before everyone had a "give boons" button, and a lot of that still lingers today.  There's a lot of inherent flexibility that comes with combo fields and finishers that people don't take advantage of that often.  I frequently run celestial in WvW (judge me fairly), the while alone or with small groups it is really beneficial to pivot depending on circumstances.  With ready access to both fire and water fields, I can run as a miniature cleric for my team, group cleansing and healing.  Or, I can stack up a bunch of might and boost their finishers with the fire field.  Those Fire Auras aren't to be underestimated in PVP settings, since it is the closest thing to old-school retaliation that we have.  When running Staff, the standouts are the CC.  Unsteady Ground and Static Field are great at staggering an offense or catching feeling players, with Lightning Rod raining down weakness the entire time.

That wide array roles to fill is unparalleled IMO.  I can be an excellent healer with stun/reflection fields that stick to allies, or I can cause immense group CC/Damage with staff, or I can be rather effective duelist and skirmisher.  Just press a few buttons, swap the template, and then I'm done.

With my recent purchase of Soto, I've been practicing the pistol by benchmarking on the treasure mushrooms.  The standard builds have condi scepter/pistol standing in melee range, but it isn't necessary.  All of the condi sets have a wide variety of options to choose from depending on circumstances.  Swap out Primordial Stance for something like Glyph of Storms or Signet of Earth, and you'll do nearly all of your damage at 900 range.  Signet of Earth is a standout, both due to the high amount of damage it does, and because it acts as a second source of magnetic aura.  I use this to great effect while fighting champions, since it allows me to trivialized the projectile fighters.  It also helps to shred beak bars, since all of those disabling condis are draining the bars down by up to 138 defiance per second.  

[CafPow.1542]

2 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

There's a reason why it is that Ele is main (and basically only) toon in WvW.  It's the fields.  Ele was designed back before everyone had a "give boons" button, and a lot of that still lingers today.  There's a lot of inherent flexibility that comes with combo fields and finishers that people don't take advantage of that often.  I frequently run celestial in WvW (judge me fairly), the while alone or with small groups it is really beneficial to pivot depending on circumstances.  With ready access to both fire and water fields, I can run as a miniature cleric for my team, group cleansing and healing.  Or, I can stack up a bunch of might and boost their finishers with the fire field.  Those Fire Auras aren't to be underestimated in PVP settings, since it is the closest thing to old-school retaliation that we have.  When running Staff, the standouts are the CC.  Unsteady Ground and Static Field are great at staggering an offense or catching feeling players, with Lightning Rod raining down weakness the entire time.

That wide array roles to fill is unparalleled IMO.  I can be an excellent healer with stun/reflection fields that stick to allies, or I can cause immense group CC/Damage with staff, or I can be rather effective duelist and skirmisher.  Just press a few buttons, swap the template, and then I'm done.

With my recent purchase of Soto, I've been practicing the pistol by benchmarking on the treasure mushrooms.  The standard builds have condi scepter/pistol standing in melee range, but it isn't necessary.  All of the condi sets have a wide variety of options to choose from depending on circumstances.  Swap out Primordial Stance for something like Glyph of Storms or Signet of Earth, and you'll do nearly all of your damage at 900 range.  Signet of Earth is a standout, both due to the high amount of damage it does, and because it acts as a second source of magnetic aura.  I use this to great effect while fighting champions, since it allows me to trivialized the projectile fighters.  It also helps to shred beak bars, since all of those disabling condis are draining the bars down by up to 138 defiance per second.  

Well said.

i do it quicker: ele is fun. Period.

for me it is fun to do 2-3x more than other classes for the same result. Cause if i wanna have it simple, i can play let’s say necro. (I love necro too, no banter)

 

wvw d/d ele especially tempest is super fun and as you said, super versatile. You can camp in water and spam frost aura forever, providing heals and a huge amount of condi cleanse while others sit in a siege and break the wall while AC shoot at us.

boost power by fire overload and then give cripple, inmob and damage to enemies while simultaneously giving stab to your frens when overloading earth etc.

 

and in pve i like me some scepter / wh weaver. Let’s face it for some fractals or strikes without CMs or whatnot basically anything works out. Just do what you think is fun and ele will be awesome.

[Dadnir.5038]

I'll try: "Minions on elementalist are good looking. I mean, visually, it's thousand time better than necromancer's scorched rats..."

[Einlanzer.1627]

I really think that while Ele does have issues, they are much, much smaller than a lot of people think. They are complex, by design, which also makes them highly versatile, and they are really the funnest class for anyone who enjoys complexity. 

There are two kind of major things that bug me:

1. DPS as a whole on staff is reasonable to good, and I actually like the fact that it's focused more around control and support than on burst damage or 1v1 combat. But two of the auto attacks (Air and Water) are so undertuned that it makes the entire weapon clunky in general play, like open PVE.  Chain Lightning and Water Blast both need an overhaul and/or significant tuneup, just like Stoning finally got last yar. The bounce mechanic is dated and overly punishing, and there's no reason for Water Blast to have such a low damage factor just because it includes healing - it really deserves to hit about twice as hard as it does. 

2. Tying orbs to hammers was an annoying design mistake IMO. Orbs should have been the profession mechanic for Catalyst, and the Jade Sphere should have gone to the hammer 3 skill. No one will ever succeed in convincing me they made the right choice here, and we're likely stuck with it forever unfortuantely. 

Edited July 12 by Einlanzer.1627

[draxynnic.3719]

On 7/12/2024 at 2:48 PM, ippy.9048 said:

 

1. Fighting Like Dancing: For example, in other games, classes like Sword Lancer or Elemental Dancer closely resemble our reality. Stepping and dancing, utilizing all four elements in combat. Not green or purple, but red, blue, ochre, and cyan, fighting flamboyantly. Combat is beautiful, that's one of our realities for sure.

 

This is a bit of a "too much of a good thing" here. The melee elementalist with this sort of style is a good thing to have - but elementalist got it twice, first with Weaver, and second with Catalyst being basically weaver with training wheels. Other professions got very different playstyles with each elite specialisation, elementalist should not have had Elemental Dancer twice.

On 7/12/2024 at 2:48 PM, ippy.9048 said:

1. Top-notch Number of Skills: In Guild Wars 2, an MMO where weapons come with skills, each weapon has skills for all attributes, making it simply four times the number of skills. Although (in a somewhat sad way) there are many skills, each one is simple. In other words, you can feel smarter.

2. Feeling Stronger: Despite having so many skills and such beautiful combat, it is balanced with other classes, and pressing many keys doesn't necessarily increase damage. In fact, if you dance poorly, you won't deal any damage. If you can fight on par with others with such a weak class as the Elementalist, it shows that your player level is at a "braggable level." You need proper equipment too, otherwise, you're really weak. So, being average with an Elementalist means having a high player level. Congratulations.

 

So you're basically making doing twice the work for less effect as other professions to be a good thing because you feel better than other players if you manage to succeed despite that handicap. Cool.

I think when there's genuine variety in the skills, there is a degree of this, where you pick the attunement and specific skills you use according to what fits the situation you're in. However, this approach seems to have been deprioritised over time in favour of "just shift through everything spamming skills on a rotation", especially with the newer weapons where you often don't really feel like you're doing anything different when you switch attunement.

On 7/13/2024 at 3:58 AM, Einlanzer.1627 said:

1. DPS as a whole on staff is reasonable to good, and I actually like the fact that it's focused more around control and support than on burst damage or 1v1 combat. But two of the auto attacks (Air and Water) are so undertuned that it makes the entire weapon clunky in general play, like open PVE.  Chain Lightning and Water Blast both need an overhaul and/or significant tuneup, just like Stoning finally got last yar. The bounce mechanic is dated and overly punishing, and there's no reason for Water Blast to have such a low damage factor just because it includes healing - it really deserves to hit about twice as hard as it does. 

I do wonder if one thing that could massively boost Chain Lightning is giving it a mechanic whereby if there's no bounce target, instead of just fizzling, it could do extra damage to the target as if if had bounced to another target and then back. Chain Lightning can be decent in the highly specific case when there are precisely two targets that it can bounce between - allowing it to do the same damage to a single target could give it a position where it can't match fireball for general AoE, but against one or two targets it can do better. Probably does need a buff to the basic numbers as well, though, given that fireball and stoning have been significantly powercrept and chain lightning... hasnt.

[Liewec.2896]

i've been trying to get the "long range mage" thing working for a very long time, and recently tried Weaver for the first time,

i've never really got into the whole "stance dance" attunement swapping theme of GW2 ele, i much prefer the traditional mage style of being a pyromancer etc.

but recently i did try using weaver and discovered my favourite (so far) long range traditional mage build!

with mainhand fire and offhand earth you trade Meteor Shower for what is essentially another lava font on a 15s cooldown, its pretty cool!

and also glyph of storms now has a 20s cooldown so you can use it a lot more!

the ultimate buff for ranged eles would be to allow us to cast tempest overcharges as ranged skills!

[Jski.6180]

Its nice that they are some what making combo more effective though relic i realty want to see what projectile / whirl will end up doing. Sadly leap realty not going to work out well for ele as ele has less leaps but the blast combo relic went realty far with the ele class and its fields.

That why i got into ele the fields and combos and i would love to see more of it.

I think that what ele ideal was when it started with the ranged of an class for its type was more on the lines 130-300 was melee ish and 600-1200 was ranged. For the "old" way of thinking for the classes but they are out dated for sure. Has anet every updated the ranged of skills in an real way with out comply reworking an skill?

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I like the fury and flow of weaver. To me it's the most engaging gameplay of all classes and specs of GW2.

[Twilightmage.8309]

i wish weaver got decent dual skills on the spear, it would be peak then

[asket.5674]

Weaver needs self quickness