Guild Wars 2

Exactly like the title says; are we being forced into running with Arcana in sPvP to be effective?

I main Ele since shortly after launch and have endured the ups and downs of our class stoically. I’m experienced enough to be able to run with various builds from Zerg Staff to Cele D/D and even the fun Fresh Air build! After this patch I thought it would finally be possible to drop the Arcana line and mix it up with something else that provides a bit more… flavor.

Sadly, after experimenting I find that I am either a long-range nuke that needs constant healing and protection from my team, or at best a semi-effective bruiser. I guess all I am looking for is a viable sPvP build that doesn’t force me into running with Arcana. After all, isn’t variety the spice of life?

What are your thoughts? Did anybody try experimenting with a build that revolves around three elements?

In pvp I say water is a necessity not arcane. A lot of conditions being thrown around nowadays and most of your healing comes from water. Been testing builds with earth instead of arcane and it has been working out.

I’m quite a new player and also a new elementalist, and from my recent foray into unranked pvp arenas I feel I rely too much on arcana to drop it – elemental attunement, evasive arcana and the attunement cooldown reduction are all too useful to give up, I feel.

I should probably try going without arcana, but the popular traits (and core trait of elemental attunement) fit so naturally into the playstyle that I’m not sure I’d be comfortable without them.

It’s worth mentioning that I’ve been paying d/d celestial so far, loving the battle mage feel to it.

Ulion, thank you for your reply. I agree, Water works amazingly well with cantrips and it sure lends a lot of weight to our support and sustain capabilities. I’ve been trying to mix up water, air and fire, with staff and the cantrips and a zerky trinket.

While I have some defense, I’m still quite glassy even though it is hilarious to drop meteor shower on a point and watch the enemy melt. Earth on the other hand doesn’t seem to work well with staff. Perhaps it would be better with scepter and maybe a condi trinket? Not sure…

Humblekain! Welcome to Guild Wars and of course the ele! You will love this class. We provide a lot, and pre-patch had builds that were useful in every single aspect of the game. I understand exactly what you are saying regarding Arcana. I feel all empty when I dodge and there is no magical boom(!) to accompany it. Also, without Arcana dodging is purely defensive and offers zero offensive capability. I loved the blast finisher we had in Earth, or the blind, or… well, you get it. At the moment it seems like Arcana is a must if we want to be able to work well together in a sPvP team.

After the Vigor nerf and the decline of Celestial I made this :

http://intothemists.com/guides/5552-dd_truely_fresh_air

My answer is no, Arcana mandatory no more.

You are actually forced into Arcana and Water line. Arcana,because all of the buffs it gives from attument to attument,then there’s GM Evasive Arcana….just too good to pass up. And Water,because of condi cleanse and synergy with Cantrips.
3rd choice is up to player’s playstyle. I am talking this as spvp. In pve you probably can choose 3 elements,but for spvp,you’ll go Arcana and Water mandatory and 3rd one up to you.

First time I am forced to use Stone Heart. Yes, Water and Arcana are mandatory for me but also Earth after the patch with all the crazy dmg going on and the Elementalist seems to not be scaled up in spvp with the rest, for diffrence of the pve dmg.

d/d and water/arcana/earth :/ Fresh air doesn’t seem to fit as good as it was, and zerk staff just gets wiped out without the dmg it had.

I think the problem is earth isn’t measuring up to the job quite as much as arcana. With the arcana line you gain boons on switching elements, most of them pretty decent and your dodge roll becomes a blast finisher in earth, a cleanse+heal in water, blind in air and something kinda lame in fire.

Compare that to something like earth, sure the adepts are nice, the GM minor is alright for the -10% damage but generally the rest of it I feel is kind of lame. Stone heart is good for tanking damage but you will find it hard to survive like that if forced into earth. As our heals are elsewhere usually. Written in stone…our signets need to be more useful I feel for that one and diamond skin needs reworking.

Don’t get me started on the masters, I’d rather take the masters in arcana over the ones in earth 9 times out of 10. Nothing measures up to the healing, cleansing and protection you get from arcana and water combo.

Yeah in my opinion earth is only really viable on staff builds and D/D builds that want to be the primary point holder for their team.

Also with only 10% boon duration from arcane, is 100% uptime on protection with elemental shielding (and soothing ice) even possible anymore? And is that worth losing the extra might stacking from a fire/water/arc build? I guess that will depend on your role in the team.

nearlight.3064:

Yeah in my opinion earth is only really viable on staff builds and D/D builds that want to be the primary point holder for their team.

Also with only 10% boon duration from arcane, is 100% uptime on protection with elemental shielding (and soothing ice) even possible anymore? And is that worth losing the extra might stacking from a fire/water/arc build? I guess that will depend on your role in the team.

You don’t even have to take Elemental Shielding, I would say. You’re not going to have perma protection, but you’ll be close to it with Elemental Contigiency and Elemental Attunement, so you can go Fire/Water/Arcana.

I’d say that after the patch were forced much more into water than arcane.

The main thing we use arcane for is protection and evasive arcane (with the vigor nerf renewing stamina isn’t much better than an energy sigil anymore). We can get protection from auras and with Fire-Swap now giving an aura when traited that’s a lot of auras. Evasiva Arcana can be substituted by other defensive grandmasters from earth also – there’s been specs without evasive arcana before, but never specs without elemental attunement.

But water on the other hand, even if you didn’t want it for the condi removal (ether renewal was often used for non-water specs) now that signets don’t give auras any more there no reason NOT to use cantrips in pvp – if if you use cantrips it would be folly not to use water for the extremely good cantrip trait.

You can do with out Arcana water is the more forced line.

Haven’t we always been forced heavily into Arcana/Water?

At least now we can take more “Grand master” traits to offset it.

Honestly they need to:

• make EA baseline (remove from arcane)
• buff the arcane line to compensate losing it,
• then add condi clear and sustain into other lines like lifesteal type healing in air, or condi removal (non passive clensing fire) into fire like Clense a conditon when you enemy misses an attack/ you evade. add in some offence to earth (change written in stone to buff signets, change diamond skin to resistance when swapping into earth, change) and we have freedom in choice.
• The bottom line is beacause ele, unlike every other class, have no base defense or defense mechanism built into our class, we have to rely on boons and regen to stay alive, our weapons dont bring constant stealth, evades, blinks, blocks or buffs like other classes.
• Our low HP pool means we need condi clense because even weak condis eat our hp more than others. Which means we have to take defensive lines to be reach the level of defense native to other classes. This means water for clense and healing and arcane or earth for protection.
• But that leaves us with one line which means we need arcane because it brings us offence and utility other than just passive defense. but even with prot 11k hp and 2k armor is still 1shot fodder. so we pick amulets with tough vit. now wait whats that leave us 2 choices now? so we either pick up soldiers have no crit but from fury and no crit damage, no condi damage, no +heal so our regen and heals don’t even sustain us so boom back at celestial what a kittening surprise that is. So our entire build from 2 trait lines and amulet is JUST staying alive. so we synergize with arcane getting fury for extra crit, take fire for mass might stacking to supplement our damage we had to give away from two kittening lines spent into staying alive and an amulet we had not choice but to take. And boom were OP again with the one viable playstyle we have.
  If they normalized the defense types in air/fire to that of water earth and arc, and normalized earth to the level of arcane with utility (make all 5 lines defensive/utility/offense pick 2) then gave more complext amulet design (accesorys back) and then nerfed celestial stats back down to normalize us. we could be balanced AND actually play how we want to play.

I’ve played ele in water/arc since beta, i dont even know what to do with myself without that heal burst in water and blast finisher in earth and the buffs from EA. Playing ele without those isnt playing ele anymore. It’s just part of the class because we’ve always had to use it to survive.

Oh and dont get me started on how if they made our other utilities bring defenses (blocks evades or boons), stunbreaks, CONDI CLENSE and actually synergize with their respective line and function (really condis for arcane utilites… fire aura for conjures…)
I have another post entirely dedicated on how to fix utilities and their respective traits.

So TLDR: yeah water/arcane is required, and it will be until they rework A LOT of things

arcana → grp
earth → better for running solo

I use earth/water/fire now.

prepatch I was running 56021 zerk/valk/knights

I run fire/earth/arcane (previous water) Water was more sustain with cantrips but arcane allows me to bring down oponents and also helps the group more with boons and doing more pressure. I wanted to try air bit i see no real point to go F/A/E.

shinta.8906:

arcana -> grp
earth -> better for running solo

Funny, I run the exact opposite because of the variation in damage input :

WvW : Staff + Fire/Air/Earth (Persisting Flames, Lightning Rod, Stone Earth)
sPvP : D/D + Fire/Air/Water (Persisting Flame, Fresh Air, Cleansing Water)

water/arcane are too complimentary to give up IMO

I think the proper way to look at it is you are forced into speccing for condition removal. That is just the way the game is and every class is “forced” into whatever gives them best condition removal that could be traits, utilities or weapons.

I don’t think arcana is mandatory anymore, but you definitely want water.

From my other classes Medi Guardian is forced into Valor, virtues, and whatever else you want(usually radiance). Medi Guard has been forced there since well inception. Support guard is forced Virtues.

Should sound familiar.

Arcana definitely isn’t mandatory for a Staff Elementalist when I put on a staff I’m trying to nuke from 1200 arcana is a waste of damage in that scenario.

Thieves are probably all running SA which is “forced” because of conditions.

We perceive we are “forced” when it is something we don’t want to take, but find necessary based on the meta, we don’t feel “forced” when we can pick something we chose that doesn’t cause us to get killed.

My dream D/D trait setup? Fire/Air/+whatever

Thats right. And if you get a build done that has condi cleanse without water, then water is no longer needed. Thats what i did. I still use cleansing flame, but no other cantrips and water. Plus i have magnetic wave on my focus and am traited for geomancers training . Arcana helps my group and i get more damage off. So i went F/E/Ar and am fine with it.

The difference is that while a Medi Guard is forced into Virtues and Valor, Guardian as a whole isn’t.
Thieves aren’t actually forced into SA either because of how badly they nerfed the cleansing in that line. So bad, that a ton of Thieves now run Critical Strikes over it. Not taking into consideration other builds that used Acrobatics for survival instead of SA.

The Elementalist has been forced into Water since the beginning in every viable build ever. If they want to fix us, they gotta give us some better condi cleanse and sustain in another line. Doesn’t have to be AS strong as Water, but good enough.

I am not sure any more i been running fire air earth for staff ele in wvw it works out well. You do high end dmg in all atuments and are nearly unkillable vs most gank in earth. Though it is a bit less fixable then say going air fire arcana. I think it comes down to if you want to do more dmg you run arcana for the powerfull boon effect if you want to be harder to kill and have a bit more hard cc you go earth.