Guild Wars 2

I’m liking S/F fresh air ele a lot lately, may be because I’m super bored with playing D/D ele and D/D zerk is not really an option for me to play lols and I have played Staff ele a lot as well so fresh air is quite refreshing for me. Despite a lot of people saying it’s damage is just average and it’s just an ok build, I disagree! May be they are comparing it to what it used to be. I seriously see no issues with its damage outcome in solo q ranked matches. I mean it just works fine, normally I run this build with my brother who uses shoutwarr, our combo is pretty deadly cause I get a lot of DPS boost from him and timely shout heals to survive more, however, this time he decided to play turret engi lol. So Fresh air ele is not used by high level players because d/d cele simply provides more of everything? I know cele is surely more balanced but Fresh Air builds need some love!!! What are your thoughts about standard s/f fresh air builds in 2015?

Here is one gameplay video I recorded today if anyone is interested to watch!

Gameplay Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UbfqX06WM

I used the standard S/F fresh air build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhcM6cWywyBd0AOAGxiQMQcEIA0BLeFWCA-TJBFwACOBA12foaZAAPAAA

Also, considering last time feedback I received on my Fresh Air Scepter/ Dagger combos video , I have not changed the speed of the video and no music this time either to bring in more transparency in game play, those were actually fair points. Feel free to give constructive feedback but try not to be rude. :P

i prefer rune of the ogre ( for the dog) and i would trade mist form for arcane shield . Another thing i usually to is to trade air X trait with Air IX trait … the reduction of the air cd is quite strong imho . I’d also trade arcane blast for arcane wave. If you land firefield and then you opponent you have more blasts for increasing your damage

S/F fresh air is certainly fun, and works great at every level until you start playing against thieves who are actually good (and patient). Because your survivability comes from very long CD’s where you can pop an invuln (obsidian flesh, arcane shield) and then burst, smart thieves learn to just force your invulns then going stealth/shadowstepping/retreating, then coming back and wrecking you afterwards.

Also, its not used in high level because you are strictly inferior to thief at the roaming dps role. You rely on skills with actual cooldowns (namely phoenix) for your backstab-type burst, you don’t have anywhere near the map mobility, and you can easily be farmed by a thief who knows what they are doing.

That being said, S/F is super-fun to play in matches with lots of rangers and engineers, against whom you have a very strong advantage (due to all the projectile hate).

PierPiero.9142:

i prefer rune of the ogre ( for the dog) and i would trade mist form for arcane shield . Another thing i usually to is to trade air X trait with Air IX trait … the reduction of the air cd is quite strong imho . I’d also trade arcane blast for arcane wave. If you land firefield and then you opponent you have more blasts for increasing your damage

Hey you mentioned some nice changes specially CD on air skills, however, without “Pack” runes, generating fury would be difficult I think which is very useful for this build. Pack gives swiftness, might, fury to nearby allies as well. Only reason I preferred arcane wave over blast is lower cd, it’s great for single target burst together with my weapon skills. Definitely gonna try Air IX trait. Thanks!

What @Blackbeard says.

There is just that much your team can do to keep you safe, that’s why at high level is safer to rely on builds that don’t require as much team support to do their job.
Unfortunately in this game mode, mobility is key, something that s/f build lack on top of that as it has been stated million times already, the thief is too proficient in getting rid of zerker builds

ohhh so bloody thiefs are spoiling our business!! :P I see how it is!
But guys, ele do give a lot of healing/ boons support which a thief wouldn’t? I guess every class/ builds have their pros and cons and mobility issue could be fixed with fiery greatsword or even perma swiftness is possible with ele. What you guys think?

S/F ele boon-share is very minimal, b/c it wants to be positioned at range and boons are shared in a 240 aoe. Sure, there are some times a team-mate can run toward you so you can swap to earth/water for some prot/heals, but for the most part you should be positioned away from the fringe. As such, you probably share a similar number of boons as those a thief shares with steal. The healing pretty much comes down to soothing mist and trident, with a very rare water-swap, but shadow refuge heals for just as much, and works on down-state players too (acts as an added resser) while also securing that res.

For any SERIOUS team, you would never take s/f ele because it doesn’t outclass thief in any way
- Lower map mobility (due to unreasonably long CD on fiery GS, which is just a mobility skill). This not only allows decaps, but also allows thief to get to fights way faster to +1 and end them.
- Equivalent burst, but with a cooldown
- Less escapability when caught out of position (due to no stealth, no leaps outside of a shorter-range LF compared to shadowstep)
- Loses the 1v1 matchup with thief, and is easily farmed by good thief
- Less defense due to reliance on long-CD skills, not on-demand stealth/ports that ignore LOS
+ projectile hate

At least something like medi guard has actual trade-offs like kicking thief tail in 1v1’s to help make up for its lower mobility.

This is not to say you can’t play s/f ele. You just are making a strictly worse choice if you really care about winning. I still play it all the time, and luckily most thieves I run into are really bad and try attacking while I have full CD’s and just get destroyed.

BlackBeard.2873:

S/F ele boon-share is very minimal, b/c it wants to be positioned at range and boons are shared in a 240 aoe. Sure, there are some times a team-mate can run toward you so you can swap to earth/water for some prot/heals, but for the most part you should be positioned away from the fringe. As such, you probably share a similar number of boons as those a thief shares with steal. The healing pretty much comes down to soothing mist and trident, with a very rare water-swap, but shadow refuge heals for just as much, and works on down-state players too (acts as an added resser) while also securing that res.

For any SERIOUS team, you would never take s/f ele because it doesn’t outclass thief in any way
- Lower map mobility (due to unreasonably long CD on fiery GS, which is just a mobility skill). This not only allows decaps, but also allows thief to get to fights way faster to +1 and end them.
- Equivalent burst, but with a cooldown
- Less escapability when caught out of position (due to no stealth, no leaps outside of a shorter-range LF compared to shadowstep)
- Loses the 1v1 matchup with thief, and is easily farmed by good thief
- Less defense due to reliance on long-CD skills, not on-demand stealth/ports that ignore LOS
+ projectile hate

At least something like medi guard has actual trade-offs like kicking thief tail in 1v1’s to help make up for its lower mobility.

This is not to say you can’t play s/f ele. You just are making a strictly worse choice if you really care about winning. I still play it all the time, and luckily most thieves I run into are really bad and try attacking while I have full CD’s and just get destroyed.

I agree to all your points, make perfect sense!
Do you think if enemy team doesn’t have a thief then playing S/F would be advantageous for my team? Also, with thief shadow step incoming, would S/X burst ele would become more viable? I just don’t see enough zerk ele in pvp and D/D zerk would not be very wise to play. Looks like celestial is quite popular in higher level teams

Thieves have been pushing out not so tanky builds since day 1. Anet must aknowledge this and eventually make the proper changes..

S/F is really fun and really viable if you play it for fun. In 1 vs 1 it is quite strong .. .and with focus you can survive quite well . I am not saying it is better than d/d cele or staff cele. I am saying that if you want to shot people it is fun. You have not speed, it is quite a lack and i find the same on d/d elementalist in any case ( low access to speed) but if you put on a point , tipically close and wait people to come 1 vs 1 … it is fun. If they come in 2 … if you are luck you can escape .. otherwise you die . I can ensure that with focus you can win against thieves in 1 vs 1 .. as you can lose… but obviously it is not optimal for a team. Arcane wave for me is much better than arcane blast in freshairs sf becouse you can put it in your combo , on fire fields and stack might … it raises up your damage .

PierPiero.9142:

S/F is really fun and really viable if you play it for fun. .

This^ I really don’t understand why people think it’s only for fun. I see it has a huge potential of bursting people down so quickly and with team support, it’s even better!! People need to stop comparing it to D/D celestial ele :/ which we all know it’s best for high level matches, however, S/X DPS builds work great in normal ranked/ unranked matches.

I just hope to see more of Scepter eles in pvp

it is for fun becouse if you find strong foes you see all the problem from it. If u get an organized team , usually you burst down one of them. Since there , when you arrive on a point you are immediatly focused and downed as the first target … so you risk that your team is always 4 vs 5. You have no clones, no stealth , nothing … and defensive skills of focus have long cd . It works and it works well but for organized match d/d cele or staff cele work better . You can go beresrker with thief or mesmer becouse they have evasion mechanics ( stealth , teleport … clones ) … you can also go with necro becouse you have double heal bar … but with ele you lack both of them …

Diva.1476:

ohhh so bloody thiefs are spoiling our business!! :P I see how it is!
But guys, ele do give a lot of healing/ boons support which a thief wouldn’t? I guess every class/ builds have their pros and cons and mobility issue could be fixed with fiery greatsword or even perma swiftness is possible with ele. What you guys think?

FGS has a long CD, and Swiftness is alright, but an SD Thief has that and more (looking at my fancy pants infiltrator arrow). You’re right about the great healing and boon support, but Cele DD does that better than SF does. It sucks that Ele is pigeon-holed into DD cele, but you can thank the meta for that.

inb4 “Thief OP cuz counters other zerkers!” That’s pretty much the ONLY build that Thieves counter, and even a zerker medi guard counters a zerker Thief, so there’s that too.

First of all, very nice game play and video!!

Good to see people still play dps scepter ele though it’s not so common now a days (Thanks to cele meta). I also agree with most of the comments above, S/F is mainly got overshadowed by DPS Thiefs and mesmers as they are simply better for high burst damage and still carrying much better utilities as compared to scepter ele (unfortunately). Just my 2 cents.

Diva.1476:

I agree to all your points, make perfect sense!
Do you think if enemy team doesn’t have a thief then playing S/F would be advantageous for my team? Also, with thief shadow step incoming, would S/X burst ele would become more viable? I just don’t see enough zerk ele in pvp and D/D zerk would not be very wise to play. Looks like celestial is quite popular in higher level teams

When playing against good players, I almost always go s/f if there are no thieves. Without thief around to make you useless, you can wreck a lot people playing psuedo-thief yourself. If thief were removed from the game, s/f ele could challenge for the roaming dps spot quite effectively. S/F is not bad by any stretch, its just worse than thief. Also, most thieves you will run into lack the patience or experience vs. an s/f ele to be patient and force your CD’s rather than yolo in against you with full CD’s. It’s only the experience/good thieves who will know how easy the matchup is for them when they just force your invulns before trying to wreck you.

Beyond thief, s/f is very good in games with lots of rangers and engies due to all the projectile hate. Against lower-mid skill level players you can sometimes 1v2 if one of the players is a squishy longbow ranger. While S/F can 1v1 against a lot of builds quite effectively, most players don’t realize that you are most helpful to your team when you can roam and +1 fights to finish it quickly with your burst. The fact that s/f ele literally cannot kill a d/d ele 1v1 is irrelevant, b/c s/f should be +1-ing in that fight and spiking down the ele when he is at 50-75% health.

I’m not sure how much the shadow-step changes will impact thief mobility, tbh, but I am 99% sure thief will still be top-dog in zerk fights. You will see thieves initially whining b/c “thieves are the most nerfed class” (completely ignoring some the insane buffs thieves generally receive every time one thing is nerfed, helping them stay on top). Then they will see good teams still all have thieves and that it is still necessary on every team. Over-time, those players will return to the class and realize that even at a slightly diminished power-level, thief still has all the tools necessary to be top-tier.

Fresh air kills good thieves. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

problem is not killing thief. with focus you can kill it . the fact is that a good thief gives more than an s/f ele to a team . In my opinion it is not true that ele is bound to d/d cele . Staff cele and d/f cele work really well . the builds are quite the same than dd but gives different gameplays . it depends on team … opponents and so on …
The real fact is that ele is bound to celestial and to cantrips … it is the kind of build that gives you the best compromise between damage , survaibility and support …

and it is not true that an sf ele can not kill a d/d one … it depends on the level of the 2 players … but in 1 vs 1 s/f is really really strong … the problem of s/f is that you are not of great support in teamfight becouse if your opponent team is not noob , they target you quite always as first and you team have to play 4 vs 5 many times

if this game was a 1vs 1 probably s/f would be the meta ele and one of the best build of the game …. but the pvp is a conquest game so it is quite different

SobeSoul.6910:

Fresh air kills good thieves. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Ummmm, in what world? The opposite is true.

Also, don’t play S/F not being desired on Thieves. Blame ANet for doing a poor job at Ele traits. Being stuck in the rut of Arcana and water is really lame and it messes up a lot of build options for Ele’s to be more viable.

I’ve always thought that Ele’s should get the attunement boons without traits from launch. It just makes sense. Now, if the Arcana trait was only “share the boons from attunements with surrounding allies,” whereas without the trait, you wouldn’t share the boons, that’d be way more balanced and wouldn’t force Ele’s to go so much into Arcana.

Just my thoughts. I’ve played both Thief and Ele since beta.

Anomaly.7612:

SobeSoul.6910:

Fresh air kills good thieves. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Ummmm, in what world? The opposite is true.

Also, don’t play S/F not being desired on Thieves. Blame ANet for doing a poor job at Ele traits. Being stuck in the rut of Arcana and water is really lame and it messes up a lot of build options for Ele’s to be more viable.

You’re wrong. Good eles like Shnicky or Zoose can handle thieves while playing S/F ele. Sure, they die when the thief +1’s them, but who doesn’t die when that happens?

I kill thieves when I play fresh air. Sure, good thieves can kill me, but it’s more of a player issue on my part than a class/build mismatch.

SobeSoul.6910:

Anomaly.7612:

SobeSoul.6910:

Fresh air kills good thieves. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Ummmm, in what world? The opposite is true.

Also, don’t play S/F not being desired on Thieves. Blame ANet for doing a poor job at Ele traits. Being stuck in the rut of Arcana and water is really lame and it messes up a lot of build options for Ele’s to be more viable.

You’re wrong. Good eles like Shnicky or Zoose can handle thieves while playing S/F ele. Sure, they die when the thief +1’s them, but who doesn’t die when that happens?

I kill thieves when I play fresh air. Sure, good thieves can kill me, but it’s more of a player issue on my part than a class/build mismatch.

Well, duh. Of course a PRO Ele can kill a thief. But in a perfect world on equal fields, if a Thief catches the Ele off guard in ANY situation, the Thief will win about 90% of the time if they steal and chill after they leave water while poisoning while they’re in water. The only chance the Ele has is if the Thief REALLY messes up. Like….Bad.

And hey, as a Thief, I can kill a Medi guard if they suck and I do everything right in the world.

You are just wrong.

The two names I mention play against equally skilled thieves and win those fights.

Just like when I beat thieves on my ele.

The match up isn’t some one-sided match up with thieves just dominating it.

Elementalist is forced to play Water+Arcana because anything else is pointless and not viable enough.

Why just swap atunements for nothing, when you can get something from swapping them, and simply being in that specific atunement? With Arcana each swap becomes a spell that helps the elementalist and the players around him/her. With Water elementalist gets removal of condition to self and others, health pool, healing and survivability. As Elementalist, you are somewhat forced to have these in PvP, or risk die extremely fast.

On the other hand, I am sure ArenaNet is scared by the amount of time in thinking ahead how to design this profession. Elementalists got 25 spells (5spells*4atuments + 1 heal + 3 utility + 1 elite); so why not crank it up to 29 spells with atunements from Arcana (or even 34 spells if we count Fiery Greatsword). With that much dynamic involved, any change needs a lot of thinking, because the possible combinations are so many and so hard to predict as the gameplay and team relation happen very fast in any match. This is another reason why Elementalist is the hardest profession in game to play, and the hardest to design. forcing PvP Elementalists to play Water+Arcana for such a long time.

It is easy and rewarding to play turret engi, running around turrets pressing “1”, or thief with stealth engage-disengage; but personally I challenge anyone to combine 34 spells in your mind and execute them very fast, winning every game for more than 2 hours.

killing thief with freshair s/f is not hard. it is a balance matchup . Killing thief is difficult if you go S/D becouse it is hard to survive to his burst but with the cc and damage mitigation of focus it is a balance fight.

PierPiero.9142:

killing thief with freshair s/f is not hard. it is a balance matchup . Killing thief is difficult if you go S/D becouse it is hard to survive to his burst but with the cc and damage mitigation of focus it is a balance fight.

I just wanted to clarify my earlier comments, b/c a lot of people don’t actually seem to understand. An S/F ele CAN kill a thief, esp when the thief just yolos in against full CD’s. Thieves inexperienced with the fight will often do this. However, even the best eles will get farmed by the good thieves who understand how to force your defenses, reset, then go HAM. A good thief knows to pop in, force obsidian flesh/arcane shield, and then back off again (generally break LOS) until these utils are used up. From there, they can then re-engage 1 more time chunk the ele down at the start, and then finish it while the ele relies on just dodges and CC’s (which are worthless vs. the good ones who have their cc breaks lined up). This is especially true against s/d thieves, who own the matchup when played this way.

Most thieves just don’t know this yet.