Guild Wars 2

Hi
I’ve been watching a few ele videos recently (as it’s one of the only classes i dont play and know very little about) and I really like the look for D/D ele for WvW. The mobility and number of engages/disengages/escapes and aoe damage looks very appealing.

My question for those of you who play one is: how is it really playing an ele in ZvZ WvW? Is it fun? Do they do lots of damage to lots of people? Are they last man standing due to their mobility or first man downed due to low health pool?

Also, how are they for small group roaming or even 1v1s?

Thanks in advance!

Mobility?

15 char

I’ll nip that in the bud right now. This wasn’t intended as a thread for people to complain about the RTL nerf. I’m aware of it. As far as I’m know though, they didn’t give you concrete boots and in the video I watched the ele was bouncing around all over the place leaving chaos in his wake. Looked cool.

I am not complaining about RTL, I am just saying that elems have low mobility.
For example: RTL used for mobility has 40s cd, 1200 range, that’s 30 units per second if you use it perfectly on cd, and if it is not bugging. This is the equivalent of a 14% speed boost to our in-combat move speed, or 10% out of combat.

Just for comparison, Warrior’s savage leap has 900 range, 8 second cooldown, so 112.5 units per second. This is the equivalent of 54% bonus move speed in combat or 38% out of combat. And it is far from being their only mobility skill.

Luckily we have an other mobility spell on D/D: burning speed!
Burning speed has 600 range, 15s cd, so it is a bonus to our move speed of 40 units per second. Yes that’s 33% more than RLT, but still 64% less than warrior’s savage leap.

Well ok, I guess I just complained about RTL, my bad.

Depending on how competent the zerg is, I can zerg dive on my 1400 toughness & vitality 3k attack 90% crit damage ele with some sucess.

Eles have a lot of get out of jail free cards, once you learn the class you can put them them through quite a bit.

D/D ele is still a good contributor in skirmishes and fighting at the fringes, but are not the best at blob v blob. If you try to “zerg-dive,” you will do very minimal damage before having to go defensive and high-tail it out of there. In situations with lots of people, staff ele is WAY more effective for static field alone. The other CC’s and bits of damage you output through fire are also good, while the heals in water can be great if you can blast them (by team-mates or yourself with evasive arcana or earth 2).

Also, check the dates on the videos you are watching. If they are prior to the RTL nerf, the play-style is entirely different. D/D can’t really out-run other professions now unless you are smart AND use your elite. We still have great survivability and can do some good burst damage once you learn proper use of your skills.

@Zelyhn

I take your point but I think that expressing the numbers like that, while possibly accurate, could be miss leading.

IMHO combat mobility isn’t about who’d win in a straight line race it’s about being able to move around the battlefield unimpaired, casting spells. Things like stability, vigor and swiftness uptime are relevant as is how many spells require a target (and you to be facing that target) and access to reflections, invunerabilities, stun breaks and even (arguably) condition cleanses.

You might be right that ele has low mobility, I don’t know, but you’re not currently telling the whole story. (Plus you’re comparing to a warrior which has the most gap closers/makers of all).

@Blackbeard

Yeah it’s the “zerg diving” that I thought looked fun. Shame to hear its not as effective as I thought.

Just because zerg diving is not as effective as other means doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining.

@OP

It doesn’t matter what I or you say. The goers at this forum are convinced that Ele is the worst class in the game and that they’re slower than everyone.

I’ll just say go look for daphoenix’s guide and forget trying to get any useful information out of this thread. People are going to just complain and tell you that things are terrible and awful and blah blah blah.

Zelyhn.8069:

I am not complaining about RTL, I am just saying that elems have low mobility.
For example: RTL used for mobility has 40s cd, 1200 range, that’s 30 units per second if you use it perfectly on cd, and if it is not bugging. This is the equivalent of a 14% speed boost to our in-combat move speed, or 10% out of combat.

Just for comparison, Warrior’s savage leap has 900 range, 8 second cooldown, so 112.5 units per second. This is the equivalent of 54% bonus move speed in combat or 38% out of combat. And it is far from being their only mobility skill.

Luckily we have an other mobility spell on D/D: burning speed!
Burning speed has 600 range, 15s cd, so it is a bonus to our move speed of 40 units per second. Yes that’s 33% more than RLT, but still 64% less than warrior’s savage leap.

Well ok, I guess I just complained about RTL, my bad.

You should put that in your sig lol.

RTL = 14% in combat / 10% out of combat boost … When not bugging.

Well if you like roaming it’s faster getting around with D/D ele than mesmer in WvW at least (significantly so if you use fgs), and soloing camps is easy. Additionally you can use the same build and just change to staff for zerg battles. However in open world 1v1s, eles have fallen far from grace. Fighting a fully geared and skilled phantasm mesmer is an invitation to get curbstomped lately with all the zerker ascended gear, and presumably this will become even worse when ascended armor is released. D/D eles on the other hand will likely become even worse comparatively, since they don’t benefit nearly as much from the holy stat trinity (power, prec, crit damage).