Guild Wars 2

Not talking about 30 air 30 arcane s/d fresh air eles, I’ m talking about glass cannon 30 30 0 10 0 s/f eles.
+ very high damage on downed enemies
+ sinergizes well with longbow warriors
+ sinergizes well with staff guardians
+ sinergizes well with mesmers
+ 4 more seconds of invulnerability thanks to earth 5
+ an extra cleanse and projectile reflect thanks to earth 4
- very weak to sustained focused damage
- can’ t disengage as easily as thieves
- quite slower than the s/d counterpart
- very squishy when caught with his cd off.

To me it is a yes but i’ d like to hear the opinion of other pvpers out there.

I think i’ve never seen an ele with 30 in fire in my life

Writetyper.1985:

I think i’ve never seen an ele with 30 in fire in my life

30 in fire is actually pretty commin with a S/F build tbh you get way more survivability and if not more burst plus more access to burning than S/D.

anyway i think ele right now really. shouldnt have gotten nerfed down cuz atm everyone is running S/D burst glass cannon ele builds and its not really helping the team out imo.. its a more selfish roaming build. but i blame anet for that one thinking back as they said ‘ele is one of the more balanced classes’ yea.. w.e u say.. if its so balanced why is everyone taking up the same glass cannon build now >.>

Two words : NOT VIABLE unless your opponents got jumped by you, either by surprised or Stealth. However, if they survive the burst, you are TOASTED….

DPS eles are decent but need a bit more sustain. It’s hard to get much healing without having to dedicate yourself fully into a defensive traitline, but then you miss out on other things. In my opinion, if eles get an instant-heal move that possibly evades/or blocks it would help dps eles a whole bunch. It’s hard to heal while being pressure without being interrupted or dying due to cast time (and give you don’t have dodge => water heal)

fun to play,but only in hotjoin. in tournament you just get destroyed when you play it :s

Tamyr.3271:

fun to play,but only in hotjoin. in tournament you just get destroyed when you play it :s

^^ This.

Without a quasi-reliable way to disengage (which means stealth or the old version of Ride the Lightning) the Ele just can’t make it as a burst/roamer. With the low health, low armor combination for base statistics it is just too much to overcome with the amulets available. You will either get insta-gibbed due to low health pool, or do poor damage because you took an amulet with no crit damage on it.

It looks cool, probably plays fun, but I can’t see a way to make it work other than babysitting it with Shadow Refuges or smoke field combos everywhere it goes.

i dont understand why ele has such low innate survivability. mesmers can stealth and confuse with clones, necro has a whole extra lifebar, but what exactly is ele supposed to do to survive the massive dps output of this game? the xxx3030 boonstack build is obsolete and makes you work twice as hard for half the results. anything other than this build you die so quick thakittens impractical.

ele could really use more survivability. there’s just no payoff for being so easy to kill

This is the tier A ele IMO.

Sadly the CD lengths make the skill floor too high for most players. There are a few 50+ eles on EU running it (pretty much exclusively high ranks/LB etc), and I know lys has run a variant for months now on NA.

This build will beat warriors unless they nail their endure pain and immune their blinds. Without these tools an ele can win if the ele outplays the warrior.

Yeh, i was trying various GC Eles builds these days, but all of them look nice while you are hitting, and fail as soon as they notice you…. even using focus and mist form/arcane shield isnt enough, cause once the invulns are out you are 100% downed.
I like eles cause they got some cool mechanics, but atm i agree their longevity in a teamfight is definitely the worst, unless you spec on high healing power, which is what every ele was used to do, running cleric for bunkers or valkyrie for balanced damage, and 30 points in water.

I strongly believe that this game needs some well defined roles.

Guardian → bunker
Warrior → CC and dps
Mesmer → dps and group utilities (portals, iol, mass stealth, boonshare)
Necro → condition pressure
and so on….

while Eles should have a natural talent in group support/heals

GC ele plays like a ranged thief without stealth and mobility. If you can pop into a fight unnoticed, you can end it VERY quickly by chaining all your skills. But if the enemy knows to train you, you are almost guaranteed to die. Running a zerker amulet, you will die in one backstab + autoattack chain. If you pop shield, the thief can just stealth again then backstab you again later, which will kill you even if you pop your heals. If you pop lightning flash, the thief can inf. sig or steal to follow you and finish you off. So the only way to survive against thieves is to have great map awareness so that you never get caught off guard by the thief. Easier said than done, but certainly possible (if your team is good at communicating).

The TLDR is that I think GC ele is a decent, defensive support roamer and a terrible carry class. If your team is already competent at holding their own, you can swoop into fights to quickly down a player or two, then quickly swoop out (or get downed yourself but your team still comes out ahead). If your team is not competent at holding their own, then you will accomplish very little because you lack the sustain to remain in a fight.

2 things

A. Thieves are not the best argument against this build.. Running double arcane shield, invuln from the focus, and the ability to one shot a thief makes it hold its own vs such a strat, provided the players are at equal skill levels. D/P is more of a problem though there’s still ways of dealing with it.

B. 10 in arcane seems fairly mandatory.. Am I right?

Phaeton.9582:

2 things

A. Thieves are not the best argument against this build.. Running double arcane shield, invuln from the focus, and the ability to one shot a thief makes it hold its own vs such a strat, provided the players are at equal skill levels. D/P is more of a problem though there’s still ways of dealing with it.

B. 10 in arcane seems fairly mandatory.. Am I right?

A. Yeah, I’ll down the thief the first or second time because he’s overconfident and overextends. But after that, the thief knows to open up w/ backstab then he shadowsteps out and ports back in a few seconds later (again stealthed). In a duel-situation, I think the ele fares pretty well against both S/D and D/P thieves. But realistically, when I’m in a group fight, it’s pretty easy for a thief to pop out of stealth for a quick backstab, then shadowstep out or withdraw + dodge away (thus avoiding the one-shot). At that point, I can either run away (thus being forced out of the fight), or stay (and die ~10 seconds later to the next backstab). Moreover, just the knowledge that there’s a thief around will often force me to hold back on my burst skills because I want to be ready to nail the thief as soon as he appears. This means I’m not contributing as much to my team.

B. I don’t know if 10 in arcana is mandatory, but the benefits of taking at least 10 in arcana seem to outweigh the costs in almost every situation I can think of. I’m open to suggestions, though, if the OP would like to elaborate.

ResJudicator.7916:

Phaeton.9582:

2 things

A. Thieves are not the best argument against this build.. Running double arcane shield, invuln from the focus, and the ability to one shot a thief makes it hold its own vs such a strat, provided the players are at equal skill levels. D/P is more of a problem though there’s still ways of dealing with it.

B. 10 in arcane seems fairly mandatory.. Am I right?

A. Yeah, I’ll down the thief the first or second time because he’s overconfident and overextends. But after that, the thief knows to open up w/ backstab then he shadowsteps out and ports back in a few seconds later (again stealthed). In a duel-situation, I think the ele fares pretty well against both S/D and D/P thieves. But realistically, when I’m in a group fight, it’s pretty easy for a thief to pop out of stealth for a quick backstab, then shadowstep out or withdraw + dodge away (thus avoiding the one-shot). At that point, I can either run away (thus being forced out of the fight), or stay (and die ~10 seconds later to the next backstab). Moreover, just the knowledge that there’s a thief around will often force me to hold back on my burst skills because I want to be ready to nail the thief as soon as he appears. This means I’m not contributing as much to my team.

B. I don’t know if 10 in arcana is mandatory, but the benefits of taking at least 10 in arcana seem to outweigh the costs in almost every situation I can think of. I’m open to suggestions, though, if the OP would like to elaborate.

Well mine is far from the “main” GC build, just something i came up with.
I liked the idea to combo scholar runes with the extra damage from that water trait whose name i don’ t remember.
Probably last shielding from arcane would be more useful for such a squishy build.

My problem with glass ele is that i can’ t find a suitable role during ranked games. I am too slow to roam and too squishy to stay into a fight, i find myself hiding somewhere most of the time and getting the occasional 1hko combo on other frail targets.

What do you think should a glass cannon ele do during a team fight ?

Lachanche.6859:

What do you think should a glass cannon ele do during a team fight ?

Find some place with a good view on your surroundings and die. Corpse spy on farpoint FTW!

Lachanche.6859:

My problem with glass ele is that i can’ t find a suitable role during ranked games. I am too slow to roam and too squishy to stay into a fight, i find myself hiding somewhere most of the time and getting the occasional 1hko combo on other frail targets.

What do you think should a glass cannon ele do during a team fight ?

My experience isn’t too far off. I try to defensively roam between home point and mid fight, helping wherever the fight is. My goal is to join a fight that’s already in progress, burst down whoever seems to be low and out of evades/blocks/etc, apply pressure on downed enemies, and then leave.

This works best on maps where home and mid point are nearby — such as Foefire, Temple, and to some extent Kylo (w/ lightning flash). Mobility isn’t as big an issue on those maps, and you can get some good Z-axis angles for bursting people down.

One thing I’ve found helpful, that may seem counter-intuitive, is that when an enemy is gunning for you, sometimes you’re better off charging into the middle of the team fight than trying to run away. S/F has super low mobility so your odds of escape are pretty low. On the flip side, running into the fray and popping obsidian flesh might cause your erstwhile attacker to go down to all the AOE spam. At the very least, it’ll make it easier for your team to revive you.

I think they blow over in the wind, what makes me think that? I used to run a build like that. 30 30 0 10 0 S/F. It seemed that lava tomb was more effective then when I was alive, unless I caught a foe by surprize.

Just playing an elementalist puts you at a disadvantage 90.9% of the time, I imagine playing glass cannon would up it up to 99.9%. The 0.1% is from your laughing at the free kill and under estimating you.

I’ve honestly spent my breath on the matter of ele hate from ANet. I just rolled a kittening heal signet warrior for my pvp kicks and I’ve no intention on reviving my ele’s pvp career until the developers pull their heads out of their kitten and give the class back some means of survivability.

The only “dueling” pvp my ele gets is in WvW when I partner with a thief, being the bunker while he spikes down each of the four or five enemies we engage. It’s somewhat efficient, provided you don’t face a highly coordinated team. Other than that, my only player kills come from when my zerg smashes into another zerg and my staff AoEs tag everything in the attack radius.

In the rock/paper/scissors meta of this game, elementalists lose to everything. It’s pathetic for what was once an amazing class.

Guys i found my perfect glass cannon build xD
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmIblxzwjDAhHBQADiHW4gElC4A-ToAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNsYSA

the rotation is as follow starting from earth attunement with earth armor up:
5 2 switch air 2 3 5 switch fire 3 wave blast

the phoenix, the arcane wave and the arcane blast benefit a total of 70% damage bost without taking into account crit damage, it’ s just crazy lol

^ that lava font trait is so important in the build!!
I wonder what troll in anet decided to put a “good” downed trait in the tree that if you choose to invest to you end up downed ..They sure got some good sense of humor those devs

Lava Tomb is the best trait eles have.

As it currently stands, eles are one of the first classes to get focused in a tournament match during a teamfight. With this build, you will probably die before you even activate arcane shield, or your passive arcane shield will proc, block 3 attacks, whereafter you die.

Remember this is the same forum months ago that once said warrior was not viable and weak now everybody is crying how OP they are and they weren’t even buffed that much just a few streamers started to open peoples’ eyes.

I’ve actually seen people cry at ele dps saying the burst was too strong. Now anet will nerf ele dps and ele will have bad heals AND no dps so only the 1% of really really good players could only make ele useful with all the current handicaps.

And in Pve everyone just carries lightinghammer. Lots of build diversity, anet.

No pro ele cus I’m a thief main but…

1. Getting insta-gibbed with 16-17k health as a thief is a trip. Had to adjust to that spike.
2. As an ele I like everything combo except S/D and IMO with Focus + lightning flash you have all the base mobility you need + 1-4 anti burst defenses depending on if the burst is delivered via range or melee.
I think in many ways glass else is strong. Wave and blast are instant cash, sc air 2 is instant and sc air 3. Given that some or the attacks are instant I think making glass ele stronger in terms of Sc/x air would only aggravate the player base.
3. I do t fi d 30/30 dont flexible enough but I find the same situation for my thief at 30/30. Attunement swap is long.

Glass is not the right word for eles who do this. Glass is for classes who have more than the lowest base health and armour. Eles are wet paper.

meditation guardians, berserker amulet 0 10 30 0 30 warriors, other eles, conditionmancers , thieves, mesmers and engineers all are within my 1hko range.

golden targets are necromancers and engineers but sometimes i also get the occasional instagib on thieves that larcenous strike instead of autoattack + dodge

Avatara.1042:

Glass is not the right word for eles who do this. Glass is for classes who have more than the lowest base health and armour. Eles are wet paper.

Wet paper is stronger than dry paper depending on the type of paper aka some class have an advantage/strong depending on the class they fight, the elementalist lack any of that attributes.

They are more akin to the guy that brings a sword to a gun fight. Technically, the sword can kill anybody just like a gun, but the gun has the advantage in almost everything else that matters.

Indiana Jones Vs Sword guy.