On the issue of elementalist spec

Hi,

I have been pondering this question for a while now and can't seem to make up my mind. ELementalist - support or dmg?

My thinking at this point is that there are two things to be said in favor of damage:

1) A lot of the action in GW2 revolves around keep sieges. And there AOE is king. 3k+ hits with meteor shower own - all we need is a 2nd or 3rd ele and we are good to go on the zerg wipe front.
2) A propper support build would probably require me to use daggers; and that means melee range. So far, even with 18k HP and ~ 1900 armor, I usually explode like a firecracker if anything gets close to me.

Now, support can be usefull, I imagine. But the problems I have with that have largely to due with me not really liking to go into melee range as a caster as well as the difficulties of using some of the support skills effectively in a combat situation. For example, any type of field I can set has proven rather useless so far, because our people ran out of it trying to kill something. That is surely also a matter of practice.

At any rate, my current thinking is to keep doing CoF runs for money and buy the CoF armor with tokens while saving up for a more support-like set. The problem there is that the 2 dungeons in which those things can be obtained are never done by anyone. So I would have to go the Tp/karma route.

On that note, if anyone of you finds pieces of the Mhenlo armor set, gimme... ^^

I agree, in this state of the game it feels like DPS=King, but i think a more teamplay based gameplay where people fill certain roles will always be more powerful than anything else. That doesnt mean ofc that (taking example of elementalist) most of them shouldnt still be DPS specced. But in the later game i really think it will turn out that having some dedicated support (which is imo the only thing that wont be present automatically, as there are tanks and DDs on mass) can be very very useful, specially in group vs group fights, would love to see the difference of a regeneration field by an ele with 0 healingpower and one with max healing power. As you said making use of fields and maybe even use them for a combo is a matter of practice, i really see me making more and more use of them. Specially when people announce it. At the end, i think ATM it is not THAT important and it's up to everyone himself what he prefers to play, but personally i think having some almost assigned roles made things easier for a group.

Started another thread regarding this topic aswell.