Originally posted by General Kaliero
How the heck is your ele so fragile? At level 15 I can solo groups of 5-6 without a worry, and not be near dying. Water attunement offers plenty of heal opportunity, Air greatly increases your own positioning, and Earth grants great crowd control.
At lvl 1-10, no doubt 5-6 mobs is doable. Beyond that, kiting is an absolute necessity and mixing up your attunements is a must with anything past 3 mobs. But 3 mobs is always doable for any class at those lvls.
Water offers low lvl heals unless you're abusing combo fields. It gives free regen for a short time if you use the glyph heal. But it is not comparable to healing spring at all (15 seconds of water field). Air perma-movement bonus is good, yes (s'how I managed to speed lvl my ele) but that's about it. What CC does Earth provide that's "great"?
Level 15, buddy. Not 1-10.
With daggers and Earth attunement, main hand dagger immobilizes your target, and off-hand has AoE knockdown and crippling/bleeding, both with great damage. Scepter and Earth offer a quick Blind. Staff and Earth reflects projectiles, and has a targeted cripple and an AoE immobilize. All of these are useful as long as you're not standing in one place, so whatever weapon you're using you have options.
"Pulling carefully and thinking things through"...yeah, that's not hard to do. That's how you should be playing the game. As I've said already, my main is the most difficult profession in the game to play well. Things like careful pulls, watching enemies for their skill animations, thinking out what I'm doing, and keeping on the move are second nature to me because I would not be able to play a Mesmer as well as I do without those things.
I've got every profession above level 10 now, except for my engie who's still level 8. My thief is 28, my ranger is 25. Ele is definitely one of the easier ones to level...so long as you actually pay attention and think things out. Even just primarily sticking with staff, as I've been doing, it's ridiculously easy. Water for heals and snares, air for blind and damage, fire for mass AOE damage, earth for bleeds and knockdowns. Sure, it requires you to think a lot more than, say, playing a warrior, but it's by no means harder. You just can't 1-2-3-4-5 enemies.
In fact, I find my ele much, much easier to play and level than my warrior. And I say that where nearly all of my ele playtime was solo (but for two story missions GK and I did together) and nearly all of my warrior playtime has been in a group.
Also, saying a mass "revive defeated players" skill is only good in WvW makes me think you've not been doing dungeons.
Originally posted by General Kaliero
Level 15, buddy. Not 1-10.With daggers and Earth attunement, main hand dagger immobilizes your target, and off-hand has AoE knockdown and crippling/bleeding, both with great damage. Scepter and Earth offer a quick Blind. Staff and Earth reflects projectiles, and has a targeted cripple and an AoE immobilize. All of these are useful as long as you're not standing in one place, so whatever weapon you're using you have options.
I've got about close to or over 200 hours logged on my elementalist and I'm pretty familiar with the skill choices on each weapon type. MH dagger means you stay close to opponents in order to DPS w/c means that you die even faster once mob dps and health start climbing in difficulty. Sceptre/Focus, Sceptre/Dagger and Staff are far more viable for pulling multiple mobs at a time. Admittedly, MH Dagger is decent when pulling mobs a few at a time cuz of the higher DPS and good spread on the skills.
Dagger OH Cripple/Knockdown requires targets to be in melee range and that means that they'll be beating on you (with your low armor and health = bad) and are on long (30+ second) CDs w/c means that you get to use them once and hope that the delay they give you will be enough to whittle down mobs with your low DPS. CCs are only effective if they allow you sufficient time to kill the mobs within the CC duration. But in GW2, CCs have short durations (other than cripple) and mobs have a lot of life (at higher lvls).
Admittedly, staff has solid CCs (this is, however, offset by its long autoattack cast times and thus comparatively low dps) and air blind is decent but has a small area of effect and only really works on one target if your opponents are spread out (w/c is common when kiting). Earth staff reflect is on a 30 second CD and lasts only 5 seconds and is hard to time in the midst of chaos of fending off multiple mobs on you.
Again, my basis of comparison is the lvling difficulty I had on my ele compared to my ranger/thief/warrior. Def several orders of magnitude harder. Will lvl a mesmer as my 5th.
Originally posted by Peach
"Pulling carefully and thinking things through"...yeah, that's not hard to do. That's how you should be playing the game. As I've said already, my main is the most difficult profession in the game to play well. Things like careful pulls, watching enemies for their skill animations, thinking out what I'm doing, and keeping on the move are second nature to me because I would not be able to play a Mesmer as well as I do without those things.I've got every profession above level 10 now, except for my engie who's still level 8. My thief is 28, my ranger is 25. Ele is definitely one of the easier ones to level...so long as you actually pay attention and think things out. Even just primarily sticking with staff, as I've been doing, it's ridiculously easy. Water for heals and snares, air for blind and damage, fire for mass AOE damage, earth for bleeds and knockdowns. Sure, it requires you to think a lot more than, say, playing a warrior, but it's by no means harder. You just can't 1-2-3-4-5 enemies.
In fact, I find my ele much, much easier to play and level than my warrior. And I say that where nearly all of my ele playtime was solo (but for two story missions GK and I did together) and nearly all of my warrior playtime has been in a group.
Also, saying a mass "revive defeated players" skill is only good in WvW makes me think you've not been doing dungeons.
I've got at least 1k tokens collected on CoF and about 500 tokens collected on HotW (warrior gets all the gear from my tokens as I'm full Cleric Exotics on my ele) as well as done EMs on CoE (just once tho, it was easy) and Arah (have yet to complete it post patch, hard to get groups these days during my play times). Done SMs for CM, AC and TA. Believe me, reviving defeated players isn't as powerful as it sounds (especially in mid-decent grps where revives are quick and ppl die less. Admittedly, in crappy groups it does get more useful). Hell, I've taken it out of my bar (after frustratingly trying to find a use for it halfway thu a CoF, finished CoF and then ran HotW today and I don't miss having it at all.
By "thinking things thru" I meant that as long as things go according to plan, it's all good. But that applies for ALL classes. It's when things get wonky soloing (pulled extra mobs as they respawned on you, or if you accidentally walk into a massed grp of mobs or if you accidentally pulled a veteran) that a class' soloing ability is tested. No problems with my warr, WRECKED things with my ranger and handled it well on my thief. Ele? Run away (tho, admittedly Ele's do that rather well due to air attune) or die.
Originally posted by Peach
That's easy. That's extremely easy, in fact.If you think that's hard, you are never going to get the hang of Mesmer.
When you're being shot at by low lvl mobs attacking you one at a time, sure. If you're being attacked by multiple melee mobs with snare/knockdown/stun while a ranged one is sniping at you outside of camera view? Not so much.
I'll take that dare and will prolly lvl a mesmer 1-80 in one week once I start it.
Story mode on AC, CM, and TA are all very easy - I've done them all repeatedly (CM in particular - we were convinced there was more to the dungeon than what we did once we got to the end). CoF tokens is not impressive at all considering how easy that explorable is to speed run. I haven't done Honor of the Waves at all yet but I've heard from friends it's also very easy in explorable. Of course, we don't do random groups, so we may find it easier because we only play with friends that know how to play 😛
Reviving defeated players is highly powerful. Sure, it's possible to four-man some things (I've done it), but generally it's so much better to get players back on their feet ASAP.
Things can go wonky when soloing stuff, yes. I know this - I've 100% two areas in Orr and was completely solo for all but about 5% of it. The Temple of Balthazar had been perma-bugged for ages on my server so I had to dash in, grab the skill point, and dash back out. Or try, anyway - I wound up fighting something like 4 vets and 7 regular acolytes in a row - sometimes multiples at once - without ever being downed, let alone defeated. As a spell-casting class, that has much fewer options for healing/support than an ele does. It's thinking, and swapping, and using stuff at the right time to get the best effect out of it.
However, I also played Mesmer in GW1, which was infinitely harder to play than anything in GW2, so maybe that's why stuff like that feels so easy to me. I'm used to it being much harder.
Originally posted by Nibedicus
When you're being shot at by low lvl mobs attacking you one at a time, sure. If you're being attacked by multiple melee mobs with snare/knockdown/stun while a ranged one is sniping at you outside of camera view? Not so much.I'll take that dare and will prolly lvl a mesmer 1-80 in one week once I start it.
Do it all the time. It's not hard at all. You just have to learn skill animations. I can land Feedback on enemies at the precise moment to completely screw them over with 95% accuracy - even if I'm in the middle of reviving someone.
Originally posted by Peach
Story mode on AC, CM, and TA are all very easy - I've done them all repeatedly (CM in particular - we were convinced there was more to the dungeon than what we did once we got to the end). CoF tokens is not impressive at all considering how easy that explorable is to speed run. I haven't done Honor of the Waves at all yet but I've heard from friends it's also very easy in explorable. Of course, we don't do random groups, so we may find it easier because we only play with friends that know how to play 😛Reviving defeated players is highly powerful. Sure, it's possible to four-man some things (I've done it), but generally it's so much better to get players back on their feet ASAP.
Things can go wonky when soloing stuff, yes. I know this - I've 100% two areas in Orr and was completely solo for all but about 5% of it. The Temple of Balthazar had been perma-bugged for ages on my server so I had to dash in, grab the skill point, and dash back out. Or try, anyway - I wound up fighting something like 4 vets and 7 regular acolytes in a row - sometimes multiples at once - without ever being downed, let alone defeated. As a spell-casting class, that has much fewer options for healing/support than an ele does. It's thinking, and swapping, and using stuff at the right time to get the best effect out of it.
However, I also played Mesmer in GW1, which was infinitely harder to play than anything in GW2, so maybe that's why stuff like that feels so easy to me. I'm used to it being much harder.
Do it all the time. It's not hard at all. You just have to learn skill animations. I can land Feedback on enemies at the precise moment to completely screw them over with 95% accuracy - even if I'm in the middle of reviving someone.
Never said dungeons were hard or impressive in any way. You were the one who said that you feel like I haven't done dungeons before, I'm just stating that I have.
And yes, soloing on other classes is very doable. But I'd love to see you solo what you're soloing with your Mesmer on an Ele at 80. Versatility in healing/support by no means converts to effectiveness in soloing. Heck, the very nature of heal/support is to enhance OTHER ppl's effectiveness/longevity. W/c brings me back to my other point that Ele's soloing ability needs work. Edit. W/c I'm not even sure how we got to this far in discussing it as my point was always how unnecessary the Glyph nerf was....
CoF is lol-lvl easy when you do Maggs, yes (tho the kiting near the door of the last boss is still annoying). I've completed it on 3 paths, not just Maggs. HotW is easy on butcher but I've completed it on all paths (w/c has annoying underwater combat) and even completed a bugged butcher run where the mobs kept respawning infinitely on the frost wizard boss.
W/c is all beside the point. Nowhere in my dungeons runs has the Glyph or Revival ever felt OP in ANY encounter. It's restrictive cast time and long CD makes it only SLIGHTLY more efficient over simply rez->port->run back zerg on dungeon runs at the cost of an entire utility slot.
Originally posted by Nephthys
Yeah, lrn 2 play noob!
Seriously? Expected this off a WoW forum, but not here. Jeez.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
To your last line- yeah, but if they are rebalancing skills that is generally done as a package of things that takes time. Conversely, removing something they don't want in the game- that was the last skill that did revivals from defeated, compared to a few that used to in beta, and I suspect they never meant to leave that in as it was- is something they can do immediately. The worst that happens is that one skill is buggered, and all classes have a few useless skills so that;'s not a huge deal. If it's no good, eventually they will re-balance it.
Well, I do agree with everything you said. Just found it unnecessary s'all. No big deal, I adapted and simply switched speccs to maintain my viability in PVE anyways. It's just annoying for them to murder a big part of the glyph specc that I was using and loved to use.
Originally posted by Nibedicus
Well, I do agree with everything you said. Just found it unnecessary s'all. No big deal, I adapted and simply switched speccs to maintain my viability in PVE anyways. It's just annoying for them to murder a big part of the glyph specc that I was using and loved to use.
I think, in the early days of a game like this, we all have to live with the possibility of a build being scuppered. Look how much some GW1 skills and synergies changed in its life- and still might, as there is at least one major profession overhaul still due in it.
Hopefully it won't happen as much as it did in the original, though, as part of the design philosophy for GW2 was for characters to have fewer skills available than GW1 in order to reduce the constant balancing issues, and they'll keep control of that in expansions. But for the first six months, I wouldn't rely on any single aspect too much.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
I think, in the early days of a game like this, we all have to live with the possibility of a build being scuppered. Look how much some GW1 skills and synergies changed in its life- and still might, as there is at least one major profession overhaul still due in it.Hopefully it won't happen as much as it did in the original, though, as part of the design philosophy for GW2 was for characters to have fewer skills available than GW1 in order to reduce the constant balancing issues, and they'll keep control of that in expansions. But for the first six months, I wouldn't rely on any single aspect too much.
Again, agreed. I do understand constant rebalancing as a reality in GW2. Just didn't find it necessary how they totally gutted GoR as it wasn't really OP at all. Just annoyed I guess.
My assumption is that the nerf was in reaction to ppl using it to find tricky exploits to bypass game content (such as the Magg GoR exploit).
Originally posted by General Kaliero
For the record, a friend of mine said last night that he feels more effective as an ele than he ever did as a warrior, and warrior is the character type he always plays in class-driven games.
Funny thing is, I've played wizard/caster character types in every class driven game I've played since I started playing RPG games and I find the warrior far more effective than an Ele in all roles except heal/support.
Funny thing is, now that the Glyph build is kinda pwnd by the nerf bat, I've switched to the only other viable support/heal build for Ele: The Arcane Evasion (0/0/10/30/30) that is considered bordering OP by many.