A few things that may be relevant:
People in this thread have claimed this class ‘will instantly replace all instances of [Monk, Titan, Frostmage, Thief] on their teams in many/all game modes unless the event requires a different class’.
I am not. I am very much interested in GW defences, if you insist on keeping the two separate entirely. I did not add the Firebomb reference to belittle anyone’s interest in PvP defences, I added it to sprinkle humour into an otherwise dry post. I even put it as a question in an attempt to get someone to give me concrete examples of Elementalist replacing their current defence. I will be more explicit going forward.
I am very much interested in GW defence, still! Whether or not your contention is ‘immaterial to me’ is immaterial to establishing how powerful this class will be 6 months from now - which is what I am interested in.
“This Gem will cause a random Enemy to be inflicted with Frozen, stopping its spells and mana from giving extra turns.”
This one’s been in the game files for a while. Are we going to come back here and complain about Elementalist having been obsoleted by a gem - 6 months from now?
I’d be really happy if people showed how they’re planning on replacing their current teams and classes with Elementalist teams, broken down by game mode.
Thank you for the correction. This is not my belief, and I hope it is not what most people believe.
I think they do have to be treated separately, because people will try to counter your GW defense much more than your PvP defense, so a gaping hole is fine in the latter but not the former. And I prefer to talk about PvP defenses because I’m not too familiar with the intricacies of high-bracket GW, so there’s little value I could add there. I still think it makes GW defenses more restrictive, but I could well be wrong, so I’ll defer to you.
No problem, I didn’t view it that way. I’m using Centuragon to trigger 4/5 matches for Elementalist and Zuul to soak up the mana from the resulting matches.
I’d like to hear about your reasoning as to why you think Thief is still better in many cases, but I suspect most would not want to go into GW specifics publicly…
I’m not too bothered by this because this will presumably be transient, though maybe we’ll have a few extra relevant troops that make use of this effect. My problem with Elementalist is not Freeze in isolation, it is the combination of Stun and Freeze (in that order!) on the same target, which is bad enough, and then you add Entangle to the mix, too…
For me,
E12: I agree that Slayer is still best. I pair Elementalist with Venoxia when I want to grind without paying too much attention—Freeze is valuable to stop the opponents from taking extra turns and wasting time.
Events: Elementalist might be useful for disabling high-level enemy troops. I doubt I’ll use it much here.
Delves: Elementalist seems like it can be very strong here, though lack of Root Trap is somewhat debilitating.
PvP Attack: I usually reserve this for leveling up classes, but I think using it with the standard Phoenicia team can work well—the 50% start doesn’t matter because you should be winning with one Phoenicia cast anyway, and the third trait helps disable annoying summoning troops.
PvP Defense: Mentioned above.
I’m pretty much in agreement.
Titan is for the Enrage on the rare occasion I want it these days — Elementalist doesn’t do that, so it doesn’t replace that.
Monk can’t be entangled AND generates mana — I use it for an unencumbered first-slot that can cast over and over quickly. Elementalist can’t do that, so it doesn’t replace. It might see the light of day against teams I really need to stun, and don’t have a better option.
I think it is rather fair to say elementalist is better then Frostmage in most instances— but I never use the latter these days, so there’s nothing to replace. If anything, maybe a couple old chestnuts will be dusted off, viable for the first time since the introduction of Beetrix.
I’m sure I’ll have a better, more grounded assessment after the next guild war, but for now I’m not bothered by elementalist on its face. Its trait is OP, I agree it’s basically mini-EoE without toad/lycanthropy drawback, but the rest is commensurate with other good classes that I’ll likely still be choosing due to speed. Because elementalist looks pretty slow to me most of the time. Most of the time, I think I can prevent myself from being looped.
Rather than a nerf, I’d like to see some more decent cleansers enter the game — we need Beetrix-likes on non-Beetrix colors, is all.
That’s what I’m saying - it’s not that one OP class that you can just throw on any team and boom, it will be great.
It’s a good class, it’s very safe in offense - but it can be countered, and it doesn’t make every team better.
I’d forgotten about delves 
. Elementalist would be a good choice here indeed. But I’d still pick Titan for its 50% mana start. Dying isn’t really a concern.
I’ll give that a try, thank you.
My thought process:
The game is designed such that the attacker gets board advantage on turn 0, the defender gets trait/talent advantage on turn 0.
To win against an attacker, the defender must survive at least one turn.
Thus, delaying or preventing an attacker from killing your most valuable unit (more often than not Doomed Book) is paramount.
The best tools at our disposal to delay losing on turn 0 currently are: ‘Flash Freeze’, ‘Stealthy’.
One depends on the inability of the enemy team to get rid of the ‘Frozen’ status, the other on the inability of the attacker to stun away ‘Stealthy’ and instantly kill your MVU.
The value of these talents varies wildly depending on the colour of the day.
Your team might encounter an attacking Obsidius on three days, dramatically lowering the value of ‘Stealthy’ on those. This can be partly offset by using Mercy or Sister Superior on your team.
Conversely, ‘Flash Freeze’ tanks in value if the enemy has easy access to cleanse/bless, which is true of at least green, blue, yellow, purple, red days.
→ Getting to turn 1 as Elementalist is not as easy as it is for Thieves on most days.
Assuming both teams get to turn 1:
Elementalist has access to 50% mana start on a single day (if you want to avoid the point penalty), making it quite a bit harder to fill your weapon.
Thus, you should consider alternatives or additions to Empowered Converters to gather mana for your hero.
However, your trait only activates on match-4s.
Thief already starts with 50% mana. It is more likely to fill itself on turn 1 and proceed to win on the same turn.
→ Thief tends to have a better turn 1.
Slow battles:
Elementalist lacks strong comeback mechanics. Once the rest of your team is gone, you need skyfall luck and hope your weapon is powerful enough to win the match.
Thief has several comeback mechanics (resummon on enemy death, resummon on cast, resummon on ally death, ‘Rising Shadows’).
→ Thief is more likely to claw itself back.
This is why I do not think Elementalist is the best class for GW defence.
Edit: I’ll be using Elementalist on 2 out of 6 days because I believe despite those shortcomings, Elementalist has its merits and might outperform Thieves on those days.
It will be interesting to see defences next month in GW.
In general Thief is used in B1 on PC/Mobile (and I’m generalising on anecdotal observations, although I can access exact rates) for hunter’s marks, backup, other summons (Child of Sky), 1/2 start, rising shadows; and on certain days where stun is more difficult to have. Elementalist does help vs it now, as we have RNG stun every day if we want it.
Elementalist offers maybe some protection, will it be better than other more widely used classes. I’m honestly just going to wait til next time and see what the defences offer and see where they can be countered/neutered or not.
It may be involved more on offence, but generating mana on colour of the day, with no converters that would - on certain days, will become more of an issue than other classes. I ran Elementalist at 100 over the GW weekend, my observations were that it was good, but generating mana other than front slot could be an issue, unless your choice of weapon could be filled by one of your other troops.
It lacks cleanse, it will get entangled by Elementalist counterpart, so we shall see. I don’t want it nerfing, I’d like to see chaffe like Oracle, Knight, Warlord and Warden to name a few, gain some boosts. We were told that Warden was supposed to be boosted - particularly the traits, but…
There will always be instances where some of the better other non elementalist classes will be used. For offense monk will always hold value in the fact that you can get mana from 4 of a kind matches of skulls that otherwise dont much help in the generation of mana unless doomskulls are exploding or matches are falling into place. Having your stealthy classes be stunned has always been a concern obsidius on your team takes a slot but will stun all enemies on one 4+ match with elementalist you have a 1/4 chance on any 4+ match to hit the stealthy troop. (as long as there is a full team of 4 still)
Classes like assasin and thief have the 7% chance to kill when killing an enemy troops and archer has that 15% chance to be lethal skull dmg. Any class without fortitude has to worry about stuns and curse has been around quite awhile which can neutralize any ability to resist status effects and remove positive status effects so I think the meta can survive around elementalist. Sure it is strong and has to be considered but is it unbeatable? No not really. Will it replace every class? no not really it sure doesnt provide the team synergy for weapons that work based on kingdom or troop type bonuses (unless using an elemental or nexus boosted weapon) It might be more prevalent in teams that dont need a speicifc class to function well but it always comes at a loss of things like barriers that sentinel puts out resummons that orbweaver or thief do or insta kill mechanics or enraged or dispelling enemy team etc.
I think everyone is jumping the gun here and should let the meta settle a bit before crying nerf it into the ground keeping in mind many of the things they decide to nerf they nerf so fully it becomes fully useless in almost all cases.
I think the biggest concern I have is in B1 GW, where 1 wrong move generally leads to you getting looped out by a book.
Pre elementalist you could probably survive 2-3 casts and if it stops looping, you can recover. Now vs a hero that can freeze and can’t be stunned, you could see the loop stop with 2-3 troops frozen, making it insanely hard to recover.
The proliferation of double converter defences also gives rise to the issue if you can’t break one or both ET’s. Again the 3rd trait makes it a lot harder to recover from that compared to before.
This will be especially problematic on days with no reliable cleanse aka Brown, which is already difficult enough without this added complication.
Having had time to play with the class, I still prefer Warden/Slayer in e12 and Hierophant in e7, Orbweaver in delves etc, so I can say it won’t be my 1st choice outside of PvP modes.
TL;DR Elementalist 3rd mainly concerning when paired with Book in GW.
I’d rather seem some of the older and weaker classes get buffed to be close to this power level than see the strong classes get nerfed.
Elementalist class is ideal for countering loops teams.
As always in GW, you have to get the upper hand quickly.
I had an idea for that, which I brought up back in March…
… 2018 …
But y’all didn’t listen and now where are we.
In PvP, an elementalist enemy with any empowered card is an auto-skip for me simply because its annoying. I’m not sure if this is a good thing.
And yes, PvP is essentially unplayable at the moment barring a few selected teams, being considerably worse with this new class even compared to already existing annoyances.
I dunno me and a lot of the players in my guild do a lot of PvP and we are having a lot of fun facing these teams. Maybe you just need to switch up your strategy a bit? PvP is far from “unplayable” at the moment. Sure it allows some teams to pose a higher threat than they used to if you are using teams that haven’t been adjusted but as always there are counter strategies for offense teams vs any defense teams.
I understand your sentiment here. However, please note that I am with GoW and this community from the very start, and judging from a time perspective, PvP has known much better and considerably more enjoyable times previously. While current meta(s) visually may seem more diverse, they are actually not as it all comes down to some crazy overpowered weapons and empowered converters with simultaneous as little as possible input from the players in terms of mental activity. To put it bluntly, and as I said previously a few times already, the game is steady moving in the direction of dumbed down flashy casino. Which is not necessarily a bad thing per se and might even provide some better income for the developers. However, it is drifting from a completely and conceptually unique experience into something mainstream and simply silly from my personal perspective. So, here lies my annoyance, of course coupled with multitude of bugs and glitches, which are simply being ignored for some reason. I presume the team of developers that currently deals with GoW is becoming more and more detached from actual understanding of increasingly complex code, which may result in complete collapse of the franchise at some point. However, I still have faith in the main developers as this situation has been previously experienced at some points and was rectified after some considerable time and effort to revert the game to a reasonable state.
On the point of this thread, in my opinion, the elementalist class is a further detachment from being reasonable, so I simply state that fact.
Most of the comments here are about end game, which is what? 1% of the player base? For the other 99%, elementalist is awesome and why it has replaced all my classes right now.
I’m not as much of an endgamer as others (if that makes sense - still lack a few mythics, not all delves are 2500 yet, that kind of stuff) and I like it as well.
To me, pvp is more fun right now. I played a lot more than I usually do but am ranked comparatively low which makes me think I’m not the only one.
Yeah a lot of people are only thinking in terms of pvp and have options like obsidius and voice of orpheus and zuul goth to choose between for options. For newer or more casual players I would assume it is something that gives the option to better clear challenges and explore 12 and stand more of a chance in pvp where a lot of players heavily out stat them even often on pvp1. I highly suggest people take the time to evaluate where it sits in another month when a lot more elementalist players have fortitude and see how things shake out and as people develop and share defense teams and counter strategies. I think we might find like this poll which originally was heavily leaning to “nerf it” things will turn around and we might have a lote more “keep as is” sentiment among players.
I propose a nerf to the 3rd trait. Instead of
Stun, Freeze, Burn, and Entangle a random enemy when matching 4 or more Gems.
Stun, Freeze, Burn, OR Entangle a random enemy when matching 4 or more Gems.
I propose to correct all the plenty of bugs before lose time on some nerfs.