Do you think Elementalist is overused, underused, or used proportionally?

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

@Imperadordf.2687 said:You must be talking about PvP right there, but according to GW2Efficiency stats Elementalist is the 2nd most created and 3rd most played class.

and that there is the problem. Anet should really say about each mode, rather than over all. I would bet its high for PvE, when it comes to PvP and WvW i would say its middle (at best) maybe even on the lower scale. 2nd most created means nothing really, I wonder if they have a stat of how many characters have been deleted of each class. That would be interesting to see.

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:well first of all, eles do not 'hope to have is a functional DPS build that is pretty forgiving' just like every other player including yourself i'm sure, what eles players actually want is the satisfying complexity of the ele skills set +COMPETITIVENESS. None of the current builds are competitive appart from the weak FA builds that rely in a burst gimmick. Playing defensively does not win pvp, never has and never will because it does not advance the team position. being a punchbag with no teeth is as dull as it sounds ultimately.

Also. This. The reason i LOVED ele was because it was complex. It wasnt about bashing the crap out of every button as quick as you can (excluding the horrible FA Scepter build...) It was fun and a challenge. These days its a chore. Its still complex but the challenge has gone through the roof and that would be fine if it was a challenge against other high complex builds, it is not. Some builds just mindlessly press a few buttons or use a macro and win due to broken burst. Its just not fun to play this game anymore :/

[Lyros.4673]

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Lyros.4673 said:

@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:

@Lyros.4673 said:Hard to say without Anet giving statistics. But this class gives everything. Healing, damage, conditions, crowd control, and tons of survivability if you actually move and don't let enemies hit you. It's far and away one of the easiest classes in the game simply by the sheer amount of, not just utility, but everything it can give.

Also, you can do most of it at range.

Right. Lets get into this shall we? You are NOT going to get all of that into a single build. Why? Because it all requires being built for. Unless you're going full cele at which point then maybe but you are then sacrificing all of the stats. You lose in every area. You become a okay at everything, great at nothing. Conditions? You mean the Burning and The Bleeding? Sure if you ignore what attunement they are in then you could get chills or what ever but at any one time. You might have access to 1 or 2 damaging conditions (ele only has 2...) and maybe the odd vul or something but nowhere near the level pretty much everyone else (except guardian...) has access to. Crowd control is also rather meh, high cool downs, requires specific attunements. Quite reasonable to count for most people that have played against an ele. Depending on their weaponset they will have access to maybe 1 or 2 at a time. All on high cool downs.

Ele is nowhere near the easiest class to play. Just no."most of it at range" ah, you mean mindless staff spamming? Because Ele gets WRECKED when they run staff. They need to be heavily protected. Scepter is mid range and basically spam the crap out of air lol you know what you are facing the moment you see them with a scepter, because its the only viable build lol

@Lyros.4673 said:Let's put it this way; I had less than half the deaths playing as a Condition Elemenatlist than I did with a regular Warrior. The ability to do competitive damage at even more than an arms length away (that most melee classes are limited to) makes it exponentially more survivable. In fact, it's my most survivable class in WvW simply because it's capable of doing killing damage without being in melee range, while having access to every kitten out button. It's one of the most annoying classes to down as well, since it has guaranteed mobility.

Lets put it this way; Your deaths, kills, wins, loses mean nothing from one class to the next. Unless of course you are facing the EXACT same people each time. They cant be compared. Condi ele is the WORST condi build in the game. Bar MAYBE Revenant...That says you played REALLY bad people that refuse to use a single condition removal. Also you mention not being in melee, you running Condi staff or scepter? Good luck against ANYONE that is semi skilled.

The most annoying to down? Has no stealth, limited stun breaks, reasonable mobility (it needs it, it dies otherwise...) I would say it says more about your skill on other classes than it does on how good ele is, because there are MANY other builds that are as strong, if not stronger in terms of staying alive.

@Lyros.4673 said:Needless to say, the only reason I think it's not the most popular is because the class carries the veneer of being more difficult than it actually is. It's really not. You just have to be mildly proactive about attunements and you're already better than most other classes. Once you know what your skills do, all you have to do is tap two buttons and you're already 600-1200 range away from the kill zone. Or dropping heals and condi cleanses like candy. However, for that reason it is also one of the most popular.

No. I would say its down to needing to remember you attunements, all your skill cool downs and everything else. A good ele is good. A bad ele is dreadful. you make mistakes as an ele. You die.

Really? I can't think of a class that at will, has access to as many heals, controls, and AOEs at the same time. Sure there's a ton of nuance of player interaction with those various skills but it has at any point, access to 25 skills at any given time with attunements and the hilarious 5 slot ability bar. There is no comparison to the 12-15 that most other classes have. That 1300 HP heal with a water attunement at 0 healing power is better than having access to only a single heal skill that most other classes have, not to mention that most heals are AOE centric and can provide an extra touch that might tip the scales in your favor. In WvW and PvP I'm pretty sure celestial tempests/elementalists are strongly effective for that reason because even if they don't excel at any particular thing, they have access to everything they need at any moment. Your crowd control skills are just a single attunement away without the need of speccing into them or trading off a weapon that needs it. The class already has so much base damage on fire skills you pretty much just need to use that for damage.

Regarding the "at range" comment: the dagger has more range than most melee weapons depending on the attunement that's used. That alone gives it immense flexibility. You never have to get within damaging range of most melee classes once you cause them to exhaust their mobility. Honestly your call outs on attempting to lessen whatever "skill factor" that went into my experiences make no difference. It'll be an endless circle of saying "but in this scenario this effect can be mitigated if X was skilled enough."

Sorry, but I hate to tell you that in my experience, people get silly and become easy to run around with Dagger's ~400 range in WvW. Not to mention that if you have a brain and a teammate or two, you can flank and catch people off guard nullifying their capabilities to engage a head on encounter. Rangers blow their physical damage invincibility while their condi clears are spent on my smaller earlier conditions before I unload the main conditions. And do it enough times, and people end up eating dirt. It's all attrition, and eventually someone breaks regardless of people "crying" about how X Build is better than Y build. The point is that these builds are good one way or another, but it all comes down to how you use it instead of the hypotheticals and spreadsheets people want to chalk the game up to. And elementalist has some great disengages, no matter what weapon you're using, barring Scepter/Focus maybe. Any real pursuer could catch up with me if they wanted to, but most people give up as soon as you drop back 1800 range, which isn't hard on an elementalist unless you're flying solo, which is far from ideal in any situation regarding PVP. Even then, you're going to have more fighting solo. Let's not forget that Elementalist does a fantastic combination of Power and condition damage at the same time. Maybe not as much as other classes when building conditions but the difference between a condi Zerker and a condi elementalist is quite honestly hilarious.

The only bad Elementalists are those that stand still and don't actually be proactive. That's the nuance of my statement you quoted. Anyone else who actually knows how to play the class, or even just attempts to make use of their abilities, even while fumbling, will be exponentially more effective and useful than the one guy who sits in the back of a zerg and mashes Staff Fire 1 for that no-effort AOE auto-attack at 1200 range. In min-max situations such as raids, there's no question in that Elementalist does have a more harrowing combination, but it's just memorization at that point in PVE. The key is that Elementalist has an incredibly dynamic set of skills that there is 0 comparison to other classes. You can play the Meta Elementalist DPS builds and still have more utility and sustain than any other class outside of hypothetical maximized scenarios. Other classes have to sacrifice everything else in order to attain their theoretical DPS. It is simultaneously the most capable, yet flexible class in the entire game. That's the point. You have options no matter what the scenario even if you don't have numbers that build up healing to be +5000000 HP in one millisecond.

Regarding staff and Eles getting wrecked. Yeah, no surprise there. It's a weapon meant to drop AOEs at range. You mean to tell me you don't swap weapons out of combat according to the scenario/situation? If you get caught in a zerg, all you have to do is swap to a staff and rain fire on enemies. Properly placed, two elementalists' AOES can break a moderate sized zerg, scenario depending. But as soon as you're done assisting a zerg and are back to roaming with your buddies after you pass by, you swap up to dagger/dagger or whatever other combination you have and charge right in.

I don't know why you're even bemoaning the situation, because frankly what I'm saying is that Elementalist is probably one of the best classes in the game and there's no point to make it harder than it actually looks. My only point of contention is that people think it's hard. Maybe I should put it more bluntly.

It's not.

As long as you actively make an effort to make use of everything Elementalist offers, even if you're clunky and slow at first, you're going to be exponentially more useful than most other builds to begin with. Once you know what skills you're comfortable with, you can easily make use of everything on your toolkit. Other classes do provide some level of competition against Elementalist, but unlike the other classes, Elementalist has to sacrifice the least in order to get the most of their effectiveness.

Tbh I feel like your entire post has been nitpicking at scenarios that Elementalist might suffer in. No class is perfect, but do we really want to argue that Elementalist doesn't have access to 25 skills at any given moment that can provide a wide array of abilities that you can use at any point to a degree of effectiveness if you have a brain and don't rely on a set build?

That’s why there is a ton of threads in forums complaining about how OP Elementalist is. You are literally the only one to think that Ele is op. Lmao.

This doesn't even make sense. I never said anything about being overpowered, merely that it objectively has more buttons and utility than any other class at any given moment in time, without the need to spec for it whatsoever, and that it's not hard not play. Whether or not it is overpowered wasn't even mentioned, much less relevant to my points or discussion.

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

@Lyros.4673 said:This doesn't even make sense. I never said anything about being overpowered, merely that it objectively has more buttons and utility than any other class at any given moment in time, without the need to spec for it whatsoever, and that it's not hard not play. Whether or not it is overpowered wasn't even mentioned, much less relevant to my points or discussion.

At anyone time, it has the same number of skills as other classes, in fact less than Scourge, Engineer, Guardian and such (Ele F skills Anret true skills) they have 5 weapon abilities. Like every one else. 1 heal button, 4 utility buttons and 1 elite skill. Like everyone else.

Quantity of abilities isnt as important as QUALITY of abilities. It doesnt matter how many skills it has, when most of the skills are rather trashy anyway, take staff, take out Meteor Storm, what does it REALLY have thats actually worth using? most of them are filler buttons and very little else. You get a decent heal ability in Water, a pointless (due to huge stability access) AoE stun in Air, lets not even waste time talking about Earth skills.

Well, yeah it DOES have to specced for. You arent going to be a great healer without actually building for it and even then, its not exactly a great group healer either. most of its utility isnt that great either, It offers boons (like most class, most builds) what does Ele actually offer that others cant? What ele can do, so can pretty much any other build when made for it.

[Imperadordf.2687]

@Lyros.4673 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Lyros.4673 said:

@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:

@Lyros.4673 said:Hard to say without Anet giving statistics. But this class gives everything. Healing, damage, conditions, crowd control, and tons of survivability if you actually move and don't let enemies hit you. It's far and away one of the easiest classes in the game simply by the sheer amount of, not just utility, but everything it can give.

Also, you can do most of it at range.

Right. Lets get into this shall we? You are NOT going to get all of that into a single build. Why? Because it all requires being built for. Unless you're going full cele at which point then maybe but you are then sacrificing all of the stats. You lose in every area. You become a okay at everything, great at nothing. Conditions? You mean the Burning and The Bleeding? Sure if you ignore what attunement they are in then you could get chills or what ever but at any one time. You might have access to 1 or 2 damaging conditions (ele only has 2...) and maybe the odd vul or something but nowhere near the level pretty much everyone else (except guardian...) has access to. Crowd control is also rather meh, high cool downs, requires specific attunements. Quite reasonable to count for most people that have played against an ele. Depending on their weaponset they will have access to maybe 1 or 2 at a time. All on high cool downs.

Ele is nowhere near the easiest class to play. Just no."most of it at range" ah, you mean mindless staff spamming? Because Ele gets WRECKED when they run staff. They need to be heavily protected. Scepter is mid range and basically spam the crap out of air lol you know what you are facing the moment you see them with a scepter, because its the only viable build lol

@Lyros.4673 said:Let's put it this way; I had less than half the deaths playing as a Condition Elemenatlist than I did with a regular Warrior. The ability to do competitive damage at even more than an arms length away (that most melee classes are limited to) makes it exponentially more survivable. In fact, it's my most survivable class in WvW simply because it's capable of doing killing damage without being in melee range, while having access to every kitten out button. It's one of the most annoying classes to down as well, since it has guaranteed mobility.

Lets put it this way; Your deaths, kills, wins, loses mean nothing from one class to the next. Unless of course you are facing the EXACT same people each time. They cant be compared. Condi ele is the WORST condi build in the game. Bar MAYBE Revenant...That says you played REALLY bad people that refuse to use a single condition removal. Also you mention not being in melee, you running Condi staff or scepter? Good luck against ANYONE that is semi skilled.

The most annoying to down? Has no stealth, limited stun breaks, reasonable mobility (it needs it, it dies otherwise...) I would say it says more about your skill on other classes than it does on how good ele is, because there are MANY other builds that are as strong, if not stronger in terms of staying alive.

@Lyros.4673 said:Needless to say, the only reason I think it's not the most popular is because the class carries the veneer of being more difficult than it actually is. It's really not. You just have to be mildly proactive about attunements and you're already better than most other classes. Once you know what your skills do, all you have to do is tap two buttons and you're already 600-1200 range away from the kill zone. Or dropping heals and condi cleanses like candy. However, for that reason it is also one of the most popular.

No. I would say its down to needing to remember you attunements, all your skill cool downs and everything else. A good ele is good. A bad ele is dreadful. you make mistakes as an ele. You die.

Really? I can't think of a class that at will, has access to as many heals, controls, and AOEs at the same time. Sure there's a ton of nuance of player interaction with those various skills but it has at any point, access to 25 skills at any given time with attunements and the hilarious 5 slot ability bar. There is no comparison to the 12-15 that most other classes have. That 1300 HP heal with a water attunement at 0 healing power is better than having access to only a single heal skill that most other classes have, not to mention that most heals are AOE centric and can provide an extra touch that might tip the scales in your favor. In WvW and PvP I'm pretty sure celestial tempests/elementalists are strongly effective for that reason because even if they don't excel at any particular thing, they have access to everything they need at any moment. Your crowd control skills are just a single attunement away without the need of speccing into them or trading off a weapon that needs it. The class already has so much base damage on fire skills you pretty much just need to use that for damage.

Regarding the "at range" comment: the dagger has more range than most melee weapons depending on the attunement that's used. That alone gives it immense flexibility. You never have to get within damaging range of most melee classes once you cause them to exhaust their mobility. Honestly your call outs on attempting to lessen whatever "skill factor" that went into my experiences make no difference. It'll be an endless circle of saying "but in this scenario this effect can be mitigated if X was skilled enough."

Sorry, but I hate to tell you that in my experience, people get silly and become easy to run around with Dagger's ~400 range in WvW. Not to mention that if you have a brain and a teammate or two, you can flank and catch people off guard nullifying their capabilities to engage a head on encounter. Rangers blow their physical damage invincibility while their condi clears are spent on my smaller earlier conditions before I unload the main conditions. And do it enough times, and people end up eating dirt. It's all attrition, and eventually someone breaks regardless of people "crying" about how X Build is better than Y build. The point is that these builds are good one way or another, but it all comes down to how you use it instead of the hypotheticals and spreadsheets people want to chalk the game up to. And elementalist has some great disengages, no matter what weapon you're using, barring Scepter/Focus maybe. Any real pursuer could catch up with me if they wanted to, but most people give up as soon as you drop back 1800 range, which isn't hard on an elementalist unless you're flying solo, which is far from ideal in any situation regarding PVP. Even then, you're going to have more fighting solo. Let's not forget that Elementalist does a fantastic combination of Power and condition damage at the same time. Maybe not as much as other classes when building conditions but the difference between a condi Zerker and a condi elementalist is quite honestly hilarious.

The only bad Elementalists are those that stand still and don't actually be proactive. That's the nuance of my statement you quoted. Anyone else who actually knows how to play the class, or even just attempts to make use of their abilities, even while fumbling, will be exponentially more effective and useful than the one guy who sits in the back of a zerg and mashes Staff Fire 1 for that no-effort AOE auto-attack at 1200 range. In min-max situations such as raids, there's no question in that Elementalist does have a more harrowing combination, but it's just memorization at that point in PVE. The key is that Elementalist has an incredibly dynamic set of skills that there is 0 comparison to other classes. You can play the Meta Elementalist DPS builds and still have more utility and sustain than any other class outside of hypothetical maximized scenarios. Other classes have to sacrifice everything else in order to attain their theoretical DPS. It is simultaneously the most capable, yet flexible class in the entire game. That's the point. You have options no matter what the scenario even if you don't have numbers that build up healing to be +5000000 HP in one millisecond.

Regarding staff and Eles getting wrecked. Yeah, no surprise there. It's a weapon meant to drop AOEs at range. You mean to tell me you don't swap weapons out of combat according to the scenario/situation? If you get caught in a zerg, all you have to do is swap to a staff and rain fire on enemies. Properly placed, two elementalists' AOES can break a moderate sized zerg, scenario depending. But as soon as you're done assisting a zerg and are back to roaming with your buddies after you pass by, you swap up to dagger/dagger or whatever other combination you have and charge right in.

I don't know why you're even bemoaning the situation, because frankly what I'm saying is that Elementalist is probably one of the best classes in the game and there's no point to make it harder than it actually looks. My only point of contention is that people think it's hard. Maybe I should put it more bluntly.

It's not.

As long as you actively make an effort to make use of everything Elementalist offers, even if you're clunky and slow at first, you're going to be exponentially more useful than most other builds to begin with. Once you know what skills you're comfortable with, you can easily make use of everything on your toolkit. Other classes do provide some level of competition against Elementalist, but unlike the other classes, Elementalist has to sacrifice the least in order to get the most of their effectiveness.

Tbh I feel like your entire post has been nitpicking at scenarios that Elementalist might suffer in. No class is perfect, but do we really want to argue that Elementalist doesn't have access to 25 skills at any given moment that can provide a wide array of abilities that you can use at any point to a degree of effectiveness if you have a brain and don't rely on a set build?

That’s why there is a ton of threads in forums complaining about how OP Elementalist is. You are literally the only one to think that Ele is op. Lmao.

This doesn't even make sense. I never said anything about being overpowered, merely that it objectively has more buttons and utility than any other class at any given moment in time, without the need to spec for it whatsoever, and that it's not hard not play. Whether or not it is overpowered wasn't even mentioned, much less relevant to my points or discussion.

Quality, over quantity. Elementalist skills aren’t even viable nor worth to use sometimes. Seems like you got one shot by a Fresh Weaver and came to complain on forums.

Edit : You have to spec for it. For example Fresh Weaver isn’t viable without Air/Arcane combo. And Core Fresh Air can’t do anything in any competitive level.

Elementalist isn’t relevant in sPvP, and semi viable in WvW. They have a wide array of abilities, half of them are literally useless.

“Elementalist is one of the best classes in the game.” part gave me a good laugh.

[ArmageddonAsh.6430]

@Imperadordf.2687 said:Quality, over quantity. Elementalist skills aren’t even viable nor worth to use sometimes. Seems like you got one shot by a Fresh Weaver and came to complain on forums.

Yeah, i have a feeling someone might have lost to an ele and because they are SO good and lost, it MUST be that ele is overpowered or something :/

[EpicName.4523]

Elementalists are played a lot because they are incredibly fun, versatile and surprisingly complex. When I started leveling one, the difference between the number of skills and options it had compared to my guardian was staggering. You always feel like there is more to do while some other professions just feel...lacking and repetitive. No wonder they are popular.

[Jace al Thor.6745]

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Arlette.9684 said:Ele is severely underused, due to its complexity of play and its rather clunky mechanics courtesy of weaver. It’s a great class but it requires several of the current S tier specs to be nerfed for it to actually show what its true potential. I have a free character slot reserved for when Ele in any or all of its forms is ready to shine once again.P.S. It’s an extremely fun class to play, coming from a non Ele main.

You must be talking about PvP right there, but according to GW2Efficiency stats Elementalist is the 2nd most created and 3rd most played class.

Uh kinda. Arlette is more WvW focused.

Actually a guildie and I were discussing this the other day and maybe y’all can help. She’s being told that ele is trash in all game modes. She wants to do raids but the raid guild she is in won’t let her play ele in the raids because it doesn’t put out dps. It was my understanding ele performed extremely well in PvE and was one of, if not the, top dps class for raids.I know in PvP, what I play along with WvW, ele suffers a bit. Scourge boon conversation eats them alive. WvW it’s great in zergs but can suffer in small scale but still be good.

[Imperadordf.2687]

@Jace al Thor.6745 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Arlette.9684 said:Ele is severely underused, due to its complexity of play and its rather clunky mechanics courtesy of weaver. It’s a great class but it requires several of the current S tier specs to be nerfed for it to actually show what its true potential. I have a free character slot reserved for when Ele in any or all of its forms is ready to shine once again.P.S. It’s an extremely fun class to play, coming from a non Ele main.

You must be talking about PvP right there, but according to GW2Efficiency stats Elementalist is the 2nd most created and 3rd most played class.

Uh kinda. Arlette is more WvW focused.

Actually a guildie and I were discussing this the other day and maybe y’all can help. She’s being told that ele is trash in all game modes. She wants to do raids but the raid guild she is in won’t let her play ele in the raids because it doesn’t put out dps. It was my understanding ele performed extremely well in PvE and was one of, if not the, top dps class for raids.I know in PvP, what I play along with WvW, ele suffers a bit. Scourge boon conversation eats them alive. WvW it’s great in zergs but can suffer in small scale but still be good.

It doesn’t put out dps? Tell your friend to leave that guild. Lol. Ele is top dps in all PvE content. It’s rotation is a bit complex but it sure is the best dps class around.

In PvP it’s based around the Fresh Weaver and in WvW the Meteor Shower hitting 9K each hit is pretty nice.

[Jace al Thor.6745]

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Jace al Thor.6745 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Arlette.9684 said:Ele is severely underused, due to its complexity of play and its rather clunky mechanics courtesy of weaver. It’s a great class but it requires several of the current S tier specs to be nerfed for it to actually show what its true potential. I have a free character slot reserved for when Ele in any or all of its forms is ready to shine once again.P.S. It’s an extremely fun class to play, coming from a non Ele main.

You must be talking about PvP right there, but according to GW2Efficiency stats Elementalist is the 2nd most created and 3rd most played class.

Uh kinda. Arlette is more WvW focused.

Actually a guildie and I were discussing this the other day and maybe y’all can help. She’s being told that ele is trash in all game modes. She wants to do raids but the raid guild she is in won’t let her play ele in the raids because it doesn’t put out dps. It was my understanding ele performed extremely well in PvE and was one of, if not the, top dps class for raids.I know in PvP, what I play along with WvW, ele suffers a bit. Scourge boon conversation eats them alive. WvW it’s great in zergs but can suffer in small scale but still be good.

It doesn’t put out dps? Tell your friend to leave that guild. Lol. Ele is top dps in all PvE content.

I’ve tried. But she’s listening to them and they’re saying ele can’t compete other classes dps and it is too squishy to be used.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Jace al Thor.6745 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Arlette.9684 said:Ele is severely underused, due to its complexity of play and its rather clunky mechanics courtesy of weaver. It’s a great class but it requires several of the current S tier specs to be nerfed for it to actually show what its true potential. I have a free character slot reserved for when Ele in any or all of its forms is ready to shine once again.P.S. It’s an extremely fun class to play, coming from a non Ele main.

You must be talking about PvP right there, but according to GW2Efficiency stats Elementalist is the 2nd most created and 3rd most played class.

Uh kinda. Arlette is more WvW focused.

Actually a guildie and I were discussing this the other day and maybe y’all can help. She’s being told that ele is trash in all game modes. She wants to do raids but the raid guild she is in won’t let her play ele in the raids because it doesn’t put out dps. It was my understanding ele performed extremely well in PvE and was one of, if not the, top dps class for raids.I know in PvP, what I play along with WvW, ele suffers a bit. Scourge boon conversation eats them alive. WvW it’s great in zergs but can suffer in small scale but still be good.

It doesn’t put out dps? Tell your friend to leave that guild. Lol. Ele is top dps in all PvE content. It’s rotation is a bit complex but it sure is the best dps class around.

In PvP it’s based around the Fresh Weaver and in WvW the Meteor Shower hitting 9K each hit is pretty nice.

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Jace al Thor.6745 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Arlette.9684 said:Ele is severely underused, due to its complexity of play and its rather clunky mechanics courtesy of weaver. It’s a great class but it requires several of the current S tier specs to be nerfed for it to actually show what its true potential. I have a free character slot reserved for when Ele in any or all of its forms is ready to shine once again.P.S. It’s an extremely fun class to play, coming from a non Ele main.

You must be talking about PvP right there, but according to GW2Efficiency stats Elementalist is the 2nd most created and 3rd most played class.

Uh kinda. Arlette is more WvW focused.

Actually a guildie and I were discussing this the other day and maybe y’all can help. She’s being told that ele is trash in all game modes. She wants to do raids but the raid guild she is in won’t let her play ele in the raids because it doesn’t put out dps. It was my understanding ele performed extremely well in PvE and was one of, if not the, top dps class for raids.I know in PvP, what I play along with WvW, ele suffers a bit. Scourge boon conversation eats them alive. WvW it’s great in zergs but can suffer in small scale but still be good.

It doesn’t put out dps? Tell your friend to leave that guild. Lol. Ele is top dps in all PvE content. It’s rotation is a bit complex but it sure is the best dps class around.

In PvP it’s based around the Fresh Weaver and in WvW the Meteor Shower hitting 9K each hit is pretty nice.

Do you actually play an ele to make these claims or you simply use cases from the best players in the game using a particular class in this case ele? If you do play ele..by all means jump on it and duel me while using another class.To be TOP DPS on ele you must be a well experienced ele player with thousand of hours of gameplay and meticulous dps training - to play fresh air you must be an above average player or you will insta die.....9k meteor storm? yeah..only if you go around with 13-14k HP and zero defense and die to a sneeze if you make a wrong move and that must be the reason zergs in wvw are made 40% by scourge , 30% firebrand and 20% revenant hammer...where are these mythical 9k meteor storm eles in wvw?...

[Dadnir.5038]

@"Arheundel.6451" said:Do you actually play an ele to make these claims or you simply use cases from the best players in the game using a particular class in this case ele? If you do play ele..by all means jump on it and duel me while using another class.To be TOP DPS on ele you must be a well experienced ele player with thousand of hours of gameplay and meticulous dps training - to play fresh air you must be an above average player or you will insta die.....9k meteor storm? yeah..only if you go around with 13-14k HP and zero defense and die to a sneeze if you make a wrong move and that must be the reason zergs in wvw are made 40% by scourge , 30% firebrand and 20% revenant hammer...where are these mythical 9k meteor storm eles in wvw?...

Let's put thing simply. There are "simpler" elementalist builds that put out more dps than average (those averaging 32K dps) with simple rotation but are not optimals ( optimals doing an average of 36K dps), If someone have some issue performing with the optimals builds it's better to use those.

As for why, the WvW raid comp:

• scourge: here to remove all those outrageous boons on your foes.
• Firebrand: here to but outrageous boon on you and your teammates.
• Revenant: here to nuke the zerg that's in front of you and your teammates.

Still need players to destroy those bothersome WvW siege weapon on top of the walls and elementalist are the best at doing that since scourges don't do any damage if there is a pebble in front of him, Firebrand just don't deal any damage there either and revenant have LoS issues as well in these cases.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Arheundel.6451" said:Do you actually play an ele to make these claims or you simply use cases from the best players in the game using a particular class in this case ele? If you do play ele..by all means jump on it and duel me while using another class.To be TOP DPS on ele you must be a well experienced ele player with thousand of hours of gameplay and meticulous dps training - to play fresh air you must be an above average player or you will insta die.....9k meteor storm? yeah..only if you go around with 13-14k HP and zero defense and die to a sneeze if you make a wrong move and that must be the reason zergs in wvw are made 40% by scourge , 30% firebrand and 20% revenant hammer...where are these mythical 9k meteor storm eles in wvw?...

Let's put thing simply. There are "simpler" elementalist builds that put out more dps than average (those averaging 32K dps) with simple rotation but are not optimals ( optimals doing an average of 36K dps), If someone have some issue performing with the optimals builds it's better to use those.

As for why, the WvW raid comp:

• scourge: here to remove all those outrageous boons on your foes.
• Firebrand: here to but outrageous boon on you and your teammates.
• Revenant: here to nuke the zerg that's in front of you and your teammates.

Still need players to destroy those bothersome WvW siege weapon on top of the walls and elementalist are the best at doing that since scourges don't do any damage if there is a pebble in front of him, Firebrand just don't deal any damage there either and revenant have LoS issues as well in these cases.

The average? https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/ accordingly to this website the ele does like 1-2k more dps than the next one while having 3 less sustain...a hefty price to pay and there are no simpler raid ele builds in terms of sustain, people still want you to run full zerker and that means you die even faster being melee. Regarding wvw...no zerg needs an ele to clear siege because scourges will cover the area in wells and the hammer rev can reach just fine so don't lie. To talk about ele when only considering those people who spent thousand of hours on it, you don't magically become an adept ele over night like you can do with most other classes like warrior and guardian, ele gives up sustain for dmg differently from other professions and those who do well on it as said spent thousand of hours on it.

If people got problems with the dmg, then we take some dmg and give back some sustain....but really don't want to do that..they want to take away the dmg without compensation and which point any sane person would ask :" why should I play this class with the lowest Hp and armor if is not better than the next one?"

Also you didn't answer the question : "do you play an ele to make those claims?"

[Dadnir.5038]

I do play all professions equally (I've close to a thousand hour for each character, except for revenant) and no, you don't need "thousand" of hours of gameplay. Metabattle is not all there is to have builds and guilds like snowcrow display "optimals builds". The fact is that optimals builds in the case of ele are brittle but, non optimal builds are still top dogs that deal reliably damage while still giving you some leeway to survive.

Players like you are just blinded by the optimal stuff and forsake the non optimal stuff which is still competitive and can deal more damage than most other professions more reliably than the optimal stuff.

And no, to destroy things on top of walls, an ele is and will always be better. Seriously, do you just hate the elementalist to not see it's good point? The elementalist is not bad, in fact it's one of the better designed professions. And seriously did you really played GW2 to think that low health pool and low defense is in any way a disadvantage? It's not, the elementalist have plenty of active defense to use and this game is all about active defense and good positioning when it come to survive. Armor is trivial and hit points aren't super important. Thieves don't cry about their hit point, guardians don't either and both put themselves in much more danger than an elementalist have to put himself in since even dagger have a pretty long reach.

[Alomancy.9260]

OP here.For this being my first post/ question on the forums, I am a little surprised this got the amount of feedback it has now, so thanks!

When I go into PvP, I run the Tempest Condi build with staff, and I am mostly attuned to Earth or Water for the duration of the matches.I find sticking to other players while doing this (Large groups in particular) The healing output is far better, and I have a good reach if I need to stay a small distance away.

With this being the case, I am open to advice on how to better fine-tune this playstyle and build.