Considering an elementalist

[LucianDK.8615]

How are they regarded currently for PvE? Are they desired in groups?I have played necromancer for a great long time, and is getting weary of playing a class that have too much passive survivability and too low damage.I asume Elementalists mainly relies on active survivability due to their low base health?I am in particular eyeballing Tempest.

[MotherKitten.6795]

They are always wanted in groups and good at pve. The basic problem is that if you spec to be tanky you do useless damage. All classes lose damage when tanky, but ele damage goes down to so little. It goes the other way too, if you build for damage your tankiness disappears. So if you build to have good damage you can't really take your eyes off the action for very long without dying. This is even in open world pve. Some people get tired of having to work so hard mentally to do things other classes do so easily. The return is you get versatility.

[Nashkar.6071]

I had 2 necro lvl80 before leveling my Elementalist. Since then i never looked back, he became my main and he is the reason i'm still playing GW2 rn.Elementalist is one of the few class where i love both specialization. Tempest and Weaver are hella nice to play at PvE. Even core was fun during the leveling !I'm mostly playing fractal nowadays and it's both engaging and rewarding.Forget the dark side necromancer, join us and become an avatar of the fourth elements.PS : Do not use staff, their is weapons much more thrilling to play, especially during the leveling imo.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

@"LucianDK.8615" said:How are they regarded currently for PvE? Are they desired in groups?I have played necromancer for a great long time, and is getting weary of playing a class that have too much passive survivability and too low damage.I asume Elementalists mainly relies on active survivability due to their low base health?I am in particular eyeballing Tempest.

Tempest has almost no skills that root them, and Overloads cast while moving, so their "suvivability" is to just not stand still, unless they have alot of party protection, because there's just no reason to ever stay in one place. Even Daggers have some small range, you can move all around and over and through enemies to avoid all area attacks while attacking melee or low ranged, and its extremely fluid to play.

But it is a piano class, you need to be swapping attunements constantly, you need to know what order to cast every skill of every attunement, or not cast at all, and how all the timings work as well as synergy with Traits.

You must also pay attention to all your Combo Fields and Finishers (e.g, swap to Water, WH #5 then Dagger #3 for mass heal).

Health and armor are also extremely low, always take Healing Power because Ele can heal theirself in 1-2 sec to full health every 10sec or so. You just need enough health and armor to survive 1shots to have a chance to heal. I find the Toughness & Vitality from Celestial trinkets to be enough, and you can combine them with other stats on armor and weapons like Grieving or Marshal's and make out pretty well, I think.

Tempest makes a good hybrid supporter (25 Might, 25 Vulnerability), lots of CC, plenty of Reflects (Magnetic Aura), etc. They have access to Might, Fury, Swiftness, Vigor, Regeneration and Protection all at once to 5/6 allies depending on skill usage.

Weaver has much higher DPS, but is also glassier and even more piano class than Tempest.

Here's the build that I use since years, with occasional tweaks:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGEFgE2aYZEsK2CrhRilyUa7H-zRRYVB7G9tyI1qI9UR3DQo7n3yuDbA-e

[LucianDK.8615]

Hrm, dont have the best memory. So having to manage four skill lines for blasting fields is definitely a poor idea for me. Thanks for the answers.

[steki.1478]

@LucianDK.8615 said:Hrm, dont have the best memory. So having to manage four skill lines for blasting fields is definitely a poor idea for me. Thanks for the answers.

Honestly I wouldn't bother with ele unless you like the idea of having to memorize whaf each skill does on which weapon in order to be effective in every situation. Ele's already pretty worthless unless you're pretty good at it (or play heal staff tempest that's hard to fail at).