Guild Wars 2

So, I was tooling around with a crit Air/Water build and noticed that there’s a bit of synergy between the two trait lines where you get vulnerability stacks from critting, and vulnerability makes you do 20% more damage in water. In scepter this is a pretty good deal, because the auto attack hits 3 times and usually one of them will crit. Add in some Arcane utility skills and I’ll have 10-15 stacks of vulnerability on the mob by the end of the fight. This made it so I was doing more damage at the end of the fight than I was at the end of it.

The scepter-lighting auto attack does more damage at the end of the skill than it does at the beginning.

I’ve noticed a similar pattern in Fire/Earth builds. Bleed in condition builds typically does more damage at the end of the fight than it does at the beginning. Burning provides a consistent increase in damage, and does a lot more damage the longer the fight goes on.

Are elementalists designed to be long fight winners? Is that why there’s almost no burst to be found? PvP is usually decided by who can pile on the most damage the fastest (aka Front Loaded Damage). If it’s true that long, consistent damage output is folded into the fabric of the profession then it’s no wonder so many of us are so frustrated. Thieves, for example, have front-loaded damage folded right into their Initiative mechanic. They blow their Initiative in 2-3 hard hits, and then GTFO if their target isn’t dead. This approach is VERY beneficial in PvP (especially open world, WvW type PvP).

Elementalists seem designed around consistent, slowly building damage output that relies on stacking various conditions on our target so that if they don’t do anything they WILL die. While this sounds cool…how often is someone going to just stand around taking damage when they can burst us down in three hits? It almost requires a bunker build because you have to still be alive when this “mounting storm” finally pays off.

I noticed that aswell, elementalists are winning PvPs by surviving their opponents and dealing mid-continue damage.
For that purpose, you need a lot of survivability, that’s why bunky-builds aren’t that bad in elementalist.

Sadly that should be limited to 1 weapon, not for every weap that elem can use, and there should be at least 1 weap focused on burst damage, which actually we miss.

Interesting, I currently run 30earth/30 water/10 arcane pretty efficently.

I noticed this as well when I thought about why bunker type builds seem to strongest way an Elementalist can spec. While thats good on paper, in practice it can make things very frustrating.

I agree with you Enlight, I think one of our weapons (probably main hand dagger), needs to be changed a bit so we can put up a bit more spike damage. I don’t see it being a problem that out class has a base design of back loaded damage, but we really do need to have a front load option as well.

We’re a fight ending class, not a fight starting class, and the more I play, the more I think we don’t really need buffing (besides downed/underwater skills and bugfixes, that is) so much as a few other classes need to be toned down a bit. No one should be able to 1-2 shot someone else before they can react, but that’s a topic for another thread.

We used to be able to front load a good deal of damage, but a few highly skilled elementalists wiping the floor with opponents in beta labeled the phoenix/tooth combo and a few other things as “OP” so we lost that ability. We still can pump out a good burst IF we spec “right” and our enemy stands still and tries to face-tank our most obvious attacks.

For S/D (that’s how I usually roll) get a sigil or battle on your weapon to stack might on attunement swap, go fire>4-2-3>Earth>4-5>lightning flash to target>Air>2-3-4-5. Easier said than done, and there’s more stuff you can add even if you have ninja-fingers. It probably won’t instakill anyone but glass cannons even if everything crits, but at this point, if you want that experience, roll a signet>backstab thief.

I tested a bit with full 30-30-x-x-x builds and berserkers gear, and there is just no way to get anywhere near the front-load damage of a thief. My current build is sorta hybrid bunker/dodger to outlast enemies. I play mostly roamer in WvW, running supply and guarding/killing yaks. I can generally survive anything but the full zerg (by “survive” I mean run the heck away) and can put up a pretty good stand first if there’s less than 5 opponents. 5-10 people focused on chasing me down for an “easy kill” (ooooh, an elementalootbag! get im!!!!) can easily be kited into friendly forces or NPC (you’d be surprised how hard a veteran zealot will hit when buffed with 15+ stacks of might….) or just distracted running around for several minutes. In sPvP I can hold a point solo for a couple minutes usually, but I don’t play tournaments so I know that I’m not really any good.

tl;dr look up the trait “bolt to the heart”, we’re fight enders by design, make that thief blow his initiative and heal, make that warrior blow his adrenaline/CCs, wear them down, then BLAM! Survive, react, conquer (in that order).

Don’t forget the longer the fight goes the more might you’re likely to have, too, from your combos.

So, yeah. I think this is a fair assessment.

I never thought of the Vulnerability on Crit trait for water… I just assumed it was meant to be used with Shatterstone/Ice Spike/Vapor Blade…
So I guess the real problem in PvP is being force to play extreme defensive… Maybe I wasn’t too out of line to suggest that Earth isn’t defensive enough from skills XD

Thrashbarg.9820:

We’re a fight ending class, not a fight starting class.

One Major trait does not make us an end fighting class. In fact, the majority of our skills and traits all point to initiators. If you played the beta, you would know that Ele’s used to faceroll and that is no longer the case. With our current viable build, our damage actually comes from drawing the battle out because our survivability is much higher.

We do have one of the best stomps in the game though. +1 Mistform.

I just don’t want defensive builds to be the only way to go. Right now in tPvP the closer you get to the glass cannon side of a speccing the worse off you seem to be. I know this is likely the case for most classes in tPvP, but we should be able to do some really good damage just like most other classes can.

Even in sPvP when you go glass spec, the damage is just “meh”, its lacking considering most of your points are in your DSP related trees.

We shouldn’t necessarily be able to do everything with every class. Just because we’re not rolling the “holy trinity” in which some classes are clear dps, others clear tank, others dedicated healers, doesn’t mean every class needs every possible configuration. I rather like the way the Elementalist currently plays.

The +20% damage on vulnerable oppoents in Water doesn’t work. It gave me an idea to test something earlier, but on testing, it seems more like +10% damage to vulnerable opponents, making it no better than picking up the +10% damage in fire attunement trait for 10 points in fire, which isn’t conditional on having vulnerability on the target.

Would be a good alternative if it worked though.

hakurface.2619:

Thrashbarg.9820:

We’re a fight ending class, not a fight starting class.

One Major trait does not make us an end fighting class. In fact, the majority of our skills and traits all point to initiators. If you played the beta, you would know that Ele’s used to faceroll and that is no longer the case. With our current viable build, our damage actually comes from drawing the battle out because our survivability is much higher.

We do have one of the best stomps in the game though. +1 Mistform.

Quoting one line and responding out of context doesn’t mean you understood or read what I wrote either. Where did you get the idea I didn’t play beta? I specifically talked about how during the first beta we had a good spike damage initiator combo that was nerfed due to some people playing well and others complaining.

All that stuff about drawing the battle out due to survivability? That agrees with what I said….. draw out the fight, outlast your opponent, then finish them off. Where are these skills and traits that point to initiators? We have many things that add burning or bleeding and so many ways to increase that damage or spike off it, and so many survival abilities, that it really does seem we are supposed to wear our opponents down rather than burst them down.