Guild Wars 2

Just got killed by an elementalist in a 1v1 in wvwvw.

Normally i don’t have any sort of troubles with an ele (Or any class for that matter) but the dagger/dagger daze builds are really really beginning to trouble me. I’ve seen this sort of play before, loads of dazes and extreme mobility but usually i can beat it with an immo or knock down of my own. But this time, i could barely use any of my utility skills because of the constant non-stop flow of dazes that i was hit by.

I’m fairly sure he was switching through elements and on around 15000hp using dagger/dagger. I was hitting him hard as well (Went through the log, i ended up doing around 25k total damage – and i took around the same) but he continually healed. By the end of the fight, he was at full health again (Literally, he healed around 3 times during the fight and i knocked him below 25% hp 2 times).

What sort of play counters this? The only thing i can imagine is a knock-down or daze, which is hard enough to land when you’re dazed constantly. A good bolas would’ve really helped, but coming from Australia, theres a lot of really poor hit registration with it (While right in front of me, he managed to be out of range twice…).

My specs:

Semi-Glass Cannon Warrior with full exotics – Greatsword. 20k hp

Yeah, so D/D elementalists have only one skill that can daze, and that’s Shocking Aura. It lasts for 5 seconds and has a 25-second cooldown. There is also an air grandmaster trait wherein shocking aura gets applied when some form of CC hits the elementalist. It again lasts for 5 seconds and can only trigger once every 90 seconds.

That’s it. That’s all a D/D elementalist can do to daze you. He could have one more if he whipped out the Lightning Hammer conjured weapon, but I doubt that anyone’s doing such a thing.

So I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. The “loads of dazes” is probably you not noticing that he’s got shocking aura on and hitting him regardless.

If you’re also counting knockdowns/blowbacks, then a D/D elementalist has 2 others. Updraft is a blockback on a 40-second cooldown. Earthquake is a knockdown with a 45-second cooldown.

The aura stuns only, no daze there. If he had a dagger/focus spec, he would have one daze spell only. Comet.

Ooh, that’s right. I’m assuming the OP made the same mistake I did and conflated stuns and dazes.

A crap tonne of crowd control, the thing i noticed hitting me the most was dazes, and it was a lot more than just 2 (Fight lasted for a good minute)

Now can someone post some info here on how to counter it? And don’t assume i know everything about Elementalist otherwise why would i be posting here?

Did you not even read the posts above? A d/d dagger ele doesn’t have a single daze. Hard to give advice on how to counter something that didn’ t happen.

The problem is that people aren’t understanding how you’re getting dazed so much. AFAIK, the only daze skill that Elementalists have via their main weapons is with a Focus offhand (2 second daze on 25 second CD Comet, Ice #5). If they use the earth shield conjure, then they can get a 2 second daze on a 12 second cooldown, but with conjures, you lose the weapon if you drop it (meaning you’re locked out of Comet unless you drop it, which in turn means you’re either limited to one more shield or you can’t access the shield daze until you can summon another one). You said it was a D/D Elementalist, which rules out Focus/Comet daze. At most, the Elementalist was running around smacking you with the earth shield conjure, but honestly I found that kinda doubtful.

@besbin: Did you not even read the posts above? A d/d dagger ele doesn’t have a single daze. Hard to give advice on how to counter something that didn’ t happen.

Wut? I got dazed at least twice (Being in Australia probably meant that the longer dazes would have seemed like lots of short ones, it tends to do that for me, don’t know why but its probably ping related).

Because everyone thinks i wasn’t dazed lets change the subject, how do you beat a d/d ele using mass crowd control skills against you (Dazes, stuns, chills, immo’s etc.)

I’m certain i’m not the only one out their struggling to beat these sorts of ele’s especially melee classes.

Shocking Aura = 5 sec. If you hit him in melee, then it stuns you for 1 sec every time. It’s an instant spell, so it can be casted any time that he is attuned to Air. (When I play D/D, I usually have a trait to reduce its recharge time down to 20 sec. from 25 sec.)

The simple answer is that you either take “Balanced Stance” as a warrior if you’re going full melee, or take advantage of your range weapons (i.e., rifle or longbow), because shocking aura doesn’t impact long-ranged attacks. (Note: if he has a certain build, you will never actually be able to kill him but you can make him run, because he’ll be able to get away every time he feels threatened due to the elementalists’ high mobility and utility skills for getting out of CCs).

Wut? I got dazed at least twice (Being in Australia probably meant that the longer dazes would have seemed like lots of short ones, it tends to do that for me, don’t know why but its probably ping related).

Again, a D/D ele does not have a single daze in their arsenal, not a single one. In addition, the Elementalist, as a class, does not have a single utility skill that procs daze unless they use Magnetic Shield which I seriously doubt the Elementalist was using.
In addition, I don’t think there are any sigils that proc daze. If the Ele did not have a shield in his hand then you were not dazed even once throughout that fight.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

Because everyone thinks i wasn’t dazed lets change the subject, how do you beat a d/d ele using mass crowd control skills against you (Dazes, stuns, chills, immo’s etc.)

A D/D elementalist has 6 crowd control skills on their bar, total. Frozen Burst and Frost Aura are both chills in water (15s and 40s cooldown’s, respectively), Shocking Aura and updraft (25s and 40s cooldowns, respectively), and earthquake and grasp (45s, and 12s cooldown, respectively). For both the aura’s, e.g., frost and shocking, simply don’t use melee attacks against them for that duration if you want to avoid the CC associated with them (note, that the Ele will still eat the full damage if you attack them). If they conjure an earth shield to get a daze, they lose access to ALL of these other Crowd control abilities unless they drop the shield, it has a 60 second cooldown so they will only conjure it once.

Regarding updraft and earthquake, the cooldowns are WAY too long to be spammed. Perhaps the Ele had various signets (e.g., signet of earth immobilizes, or signet of water chills, etc.) but both of those are on 30 second cooldowns, so THEY can’t really be spammed either. Signet of Earth and magnetic grasp are the two immobilizes a D/D ele has access to, by the way, try to dodge grasp if you want but it pulls the Ele towards you (and he won’t want to be in melee range of a warrior if he’s smart).

In summary, this crowd control spamming D/D elementalist is a very rare breed and is probably fully earth specced (to get written in stone, since they’re likely running dual signets of earth/water)., they will be tough to kill, but are sacrificing a TON of raw damage to be so. In addition, the only CC they can really spam is chilled, at which point do what every other class has to do, bring condition clears to the fight (you’ll also want these to clear bleeds, cause if he’s earth specced he’ll be using these as well)…

I’m not sure why you’re asking how to kill us better, I’d rather you didn’t know :P

This sounds like a D/F loadout. Did he ever use the ball-lightning gap closer or ring of fire? How about invulnerability, reflecting projectiles, or that giant swirling wind wall?

Either way, it seriously sounds like you were just smacking a lot of Shocking Aura. There’s nothing else we can do that resembles a “nonstop flow” of dazes. That’s completely countered by attacking from range or using Stability, since it doesn’t do any actual damage.

Either he’s got the weapons wrong, or he’s mistaking Shocking Aura for daze. The stuns last only a half second each, and apply as soon as he hits the Ele, so it can feel like being dazed – especially to an Aussie.

Probably an auramancer, and maybe running healing power/power/toughness. I play a similar build in sPvP, and it can heal for a lot, and repeatedly, and I love that Shocking Aura. As above, attack from range, or stop attacking him until it wears off. The icon is a pink spiral in their boon bar. Or just pop stability.

It is a powerful build, with a lot of staying power in 1v1, and plenty of damage/CC. A good condition build can counter it; the low HP makes them susceptible to it. Poison is a hard-counter. Any build that can keep poison up will win out, or stalemate it when the Ele disengages.

The other way is to instagib him. Try to force dodges/stun breaks and use 100B, Backstab or whatever. Just trying to nail him right off the bat with that stuff will likely waste it, so time it accordingly, and watch for utility skill use.

u – s k i l l u s e right next to each other is censor-worthy.

I like how this went from getting constantly non-stopped Dazed to the point he couldn’t do anything, to two dazes over 60 seconds of combat.

And here i was reading this hoping to FIND an insane CC d/d build. fooey!

What I find funny is how he comes here and posts this because he lost a single battle. He even said he usually wins the others eles using this sort of thing. I agree that you were probably just hitting the shocking aura from the trait and dagger skill. If you win most of them, then you probably know what you’re doing and just ran into a good player/got unlucky.

Like everyone else said you might of been smacking shocking aura which is an electric bubble around him. If you see it in the future don’t attack him in melee while its up.

A good way to counter these builds is some decent cc set up, you want to save your cc’s and burst the ele down to try and get him to use his heal. Then cc him once or twice to interupt heal and you should be good. A hammer warrior can be a pain if played right. Also stability will destroy a D/D eles main source of defense/attack capability, as most of them blow there 1st kb in the beginning of the fight and save the second for the middle. Cc’s are all an ele really has above other classes on D/D if you neutralize the cc’s (stability) you have just effectively castrated a large part of eles attack and defense and should have no problem winning.

Once you pop stability you should be good through the remainder of the fight as the cool downs are pretty hefty.

Some D/D builds have insane amounts of sustain.

I would tell you how to counter them, but then people would know something that doesn’t benefit me ;p

As for the daze thing, in my experience Shocking Aura never lasted long enough to make a substancial difference for me, it’s very situational. So yeah, you probably got unlucky and got chain KD’d right after his daze aura went out, seeming like a really long time, especially in pvp where cc’s seem to last forever no matter how small they are.

I’m assuming what happened was you dropped an ability that pulses constantly which basically stun locks you if you’re in melee range of the Ele when they have Static Aura up.

Happens all the time in pve.

i probably play the same build that wrecked you, if played well you can really mess with people.. however I am not about to give away any secrets to this playstyle (it really isn’t rocket science) becuase outside of this particular spec, their isn’t really many other ways to play an ele and be viable.

Shocking Aura’s duration is only 5 seconds, it’s an obvious bubble effect on the ele, my tip…don’t spam abilities and you won’t stun yourself :P

They didn’t drop a cow on you afterward, did they? I run into an awful lot of warriors who are thwarted by Shocking Aura, lol.

Allright, thanks for the really useful posts.

As someone said before, they’re a rare breed (Maybe less so in actual pvp, but in wvwvw that single target build seems really useless in team fights) so unless i see one coming for me would i change to stability and kick (Ditching bolas and endure pain – only really useful against bursts).

Range seems like a really good alternative cripple > volley > basic and if he gets close > rifle butt with a nice kill shot when he drops below half hp.

Basic gist of things: If you’re melee, don’t pound away at him when he has shocking aura – doesn’t work out so well for you, switch to your ranged weapon. When you’ve noticed he’s used a bunch of cooldowns, use some sort of crowd control on him and use your own burst.

I was, as everyone was saying, being stunned and not dazed constantly. The swirling thing above my head made me believe it was dazes (Went off the rangers thunderclap downed skill to work out if it was a daze or stun, looks like they have similar animations).

Rainshine.5493:

They didn’t drop a cow on you afterward, did they? I run into an awful lot of warriors who are thwarted by Shocking Aura, lol.

An no i was not cowed

The only way to kill a D/D ele is to wait until he leasts expect it and spike him down quickly using hundred blades / that whirling spinning attack through GS.

Watch out for churning earth (the long cast time spell) as most skilled elementalist will change that with a teleport and still hit you when your out of range. Dodge it when the countdown is ending (you need to mentally time when its going off).
Try and burn off his CC breakers to get that spike kill.

Also watch out for earth 4 (knocks you down), air 5(pushes you backward), air 3(shocking aura, dazes you upon hitting him). When an elementalist pops shocking aura, don’t use any of your high CD skills. You may want to either heal during this time frame, or blow off a low CD skill since the daze duration is only 1 second long.

It’s not really easy to kill a D/D elementalist that’s made to tank, because the D/D elementalist just has so many more tools, tricks, and versatility that the warrior does not have.

Its hard for 100b warriors to beat a really good d/d bunker ele, just like its hard for for d/d bunker eles to beat really good con necros, con thieves, con engineers, bunker guardians, hammer warriors and ANY good mesmer.

I didn’t say impossible, just harder than other classes/builds

Also, everything daphoenix said is completely accurate, I’d also suggest trying to immobilize us as much as possible, we will often use our cantrips on immobilize because we don’t like not being able to move.

Friend just found the exact same ele in the EB jumping puzzle, he used his normal backstab burst and nearly insta-gibbed him – so he went into that mist mode thing and logged.

So…3 of us came along to mess around with him (He’s just camping the close quarter parts of the puzzle, killing anyone he sees and legging it into the water (If he drops around 1/4 hp) – and using the bubble skill to get back up. Also he logs a lot)
We found out how good that build was v’sing more than 1 person. Its not very. Mass crowd control works wonders (I rolled: Fear Me, Stomp and Bolas) same with ranged weapons, his damage is pretty much all melee.

On a side note: He logged a grand total of 6 times (I counted) everytime we knocked him into downed state or whenever i hit him with a crowd control. He got quite teary near the end. I still think he deserved it, anyone camping the jump puzzle and preying on players just wanting to complete it should be punished.

You seem rather buttmad, obsessing so much over some Elementalist that beat you because he had a counterbuild.

daphoenix.4283:

You may want to either heal during this time frame, or blow off a low CD skill since the daze duration is only 1 second long.

This one second stun accumulates into a easy to pull off chain cc: air 5 → fire 3/4 (for dmg)→ earth 4.
You better dont hit an ele with shocking aura in melee.

Roots seem to counter me pretty well since I rely on confusing my enemy with my insane mobility.

suroktheslayer.9346:

Roots seem to counter me pretty well since I rely on confusing my enemy with my insane mobility.

Try Ether Renewal. It is by far the best heal, especially when combined with Lightning Flash or Mist form for a get out of jail free card.

To the OP: In 1 minute, a good Elementalist can use Shocking Aura 3x as well as Frost Aura 2×. You were more than likely shocking yourself causing the “daze” you are describing. On top of that, he could also use 4 different knockdowns and 6+ roots/chills on you.

If you do not have a way to heal yourself, you will never beat a good elementalist who will keep ticking down your health while keeping his up.

Not sure if OP knows what Daze is. Daze is an effect with a purple background and a white swirl on it. That’s daze.

If you are on ur kitten that is a blowback, blowdown, knockback or knockdown. If you standing there looking stupid, that is a stun.

D/D has a 2 blowback,blowdown, knockback and knockdown abilities (earthquake and updraft). We can also supplement that with a stun (the shield from air attunement)…. D/D has 1 immobilize (#3 on Earth attunement) and if the ele has a brown signet in their list, then they get 1 more immobilize (Earth Signet). Churning Earth does a cripple and so does water #3 (altho i think that’s a chill actually).

With all of that, the durations do not last long enough to be perma-stunned or whatever. In fact, you’re looking at like 10s or so. More if you kept hitting the stun shield but not very much. Unfortunately, most of those abilities are on long cooldowns. So, just outlast em.

Now, as a warrior? Get full adrenaline and hit kill shot. Most eles cannot handle the hit.

EnochDagor.6185:

Now, as a warrior? Get full adrenaline and hit kill shot. Most eles cannot handle the hit.

by far the easiest thing to dodge. no endurance→use vapor form or interrupt with e4 or a5

Air Signet Insta Blind is my favorite utility exactly because of moves like Kill Shot.

I wish I could find a decent D/F build, so I could completely nullify 100b with the Earth invuln but focus sacrifices too much mobility from losing RTL.

Blackout I feel like you’re bragging with that post + screenie but it comes across as being rather pathetically obsessive. Just sayin.

“Lol he couldn’t 3v1 us, the noob. He sucks for running off.”

I just realized that the D/D could have had a lightning hammer and managed to summon lightning field and then leap into it for a dazing strike combo. he could have then dropped the hammer and done magnetic grasp, then put up lightning shield. so that would have been 2 dazes and 5 seconds of stuns. pretty unlikely though. and certainly not a “nonstop stream of dazes”.

God forbid an elementalist ever actually wins in WvW. I’m pretty sick to death of ranger/thief (lvl 80s) damage. There is no hope whatsoever 1v1. I use 30 water, and knight’s exalted for the toughness (over the crit damage of zerker’s). So I have good survivability. I use s/d. I have 4299 wvw kills, so I’m not a baddy. I do not have exotic rings, or accessories. I do not have divinity runes (4g+ each).

I typically leave D/D Ele’s alone, they don’t do much but tickle in all honesty. I’ll call them out if I’m with my guildies (they are always down for a free kill, and who wouldn’t be, D/D is god awful, so is S/D). But if you insist…..the easiest way to deal with them is the same as with any other melee class.

You kite them.

Why you did not have Shake it Off or some form of Stability on your bars in WvW in the first place is beyond comprehension, but ignoring that for now, GS #3 away from him (or dodge roll once and do it anticipating the Shocking Aura or assuming you see a big ball of lightning flying at you). Turn around and hit GS #4 to scare him with some big damage and cripple him. Swap to Rifle of Longbow and start running around (Rifle #5 if he charged you again to Rifle #2 for the additional cripple followed by a #3 or Kill Shot would’ve been GG him and a good laugh for you) pegging him for damage.

^Not sure if serious. Were these eles afk? D/D is exceptionally mobile with tons of CC and several gap closers.

Now staff ele is a free kill on the ground unless they’re just exceptional. I call those out, too. D/D? No way.

I think papaj is saying that D/D is not great in WvW, and I have to agree. It’s my favorite weapon set with ele, but I am hard pressed to find a good use for it in WvW. It lets you take down stragglers trying to run away, gank solo players in some cases… that is all. Full support D/D can be helpful to allies if they run in and out of the fray, but not really any more so than staff.

Well-timed stability along with an immobilize will often allow you to kill them quickly once their slot skills are gone. Its not such a big secret. When facing a 100b warrior, if I only have one escape skill remaining, I get outta there.

You’re not going to kill a GOOD d/d elementalist as a warrior unless you catch them with no cooldowns up.

After having played a lot of d/d elementalist in WvW the classes that give me the most troubles are mesmers and thieves (big surprise there).

Thieves mostly because of rendering / culling issues. But I usually don’t have a problem getting away if they start to burst me. Also the fight usually goes in my favor, the thief just gets away because it’s hard to pin them down.

Mesmers can be kinda rough if you aren’t watching for confusion and get rid of it right away. Also harder when solo and not in a group. If you’re in a group, just mark the real mesmer and it’s a lot simpler.

Guardians and Warriors you can kite all day long. If they knock you down / hundred blows, just pop mist form, or lightning flash and it wastes all their cooldowns. Pretty easy to get around the one trick pony builds.

People say D/D isn’t very good in group pvp but I beg to differ. I’ve broken up many group fights, simply by going into the middle of everyone and unloading aoes. Since you’re flying around with so much mobility, it’s hard for people to target you, and when you do get targeted (assuming you’re not glass cannon) it’s relatively easy to escape.

D/D elementalist is one of the best dueling classes imo, but it’s also the highest skill cap.

Gavoll.9085:

I think papaj is saying that D/D is not great in WvW, and I have to agree. It’s my favorite weapon set with ele, but I am hard pressed to find a good use for it in WvW. It lets you take down stragglers trying to run away, gank solo players in some cases… that is all. Full support D/D can be helpful to allies if they run in and out of the fray, but not really any more so than staff.

…I’mma have to disagree here. Staff is good for nuking people ON walls, and nuking people FROM walls. Any battle on the ground and I contribute way more with D/D than I would on staff. Specced correctly you can participate in melee pushes while still putting out solid, steady damage.

I admit I find sieges more or less boring, and much prefer fighting over camps/delaying reinforcements etc. over banging on a door or trying to stop someone else from banging on a door. The only thing a staff ele brings that D/D doesn’t on the ground is a bit of area denial, and they’re sitting ducks without heavy support from their group.

Kill someone repeatedly because he was camping a jump puzzle in EB (PM’ing me trash talk and logging constantly) and according to some people i’m BFF’s with him as well as being butthurt and pathetically obsessed? Huh? If you’re gonna post nonsense, at least include something mildly relevant to the topic.

Other than that, thanks to the people above who posted some more helpful info, ranged weapons seem to be working well (Switching to GS when they’re up in your face works wonders).

I wouldn’t care even if he was drowning puppies and cackling maniacly while doing it.

It’s not relevant to this forum. you came here crying about losing to an Elementalist, whining about unfairness even when you had no idea what he did that made you lose. People corrected you, and now you’re gloating over killing an Elementalist as if you’re the first person to ever defeat someone in a PvP fight.

Rainshine.5493:

…I’mma have to disagree here. Staff is good for nuking people ON walls, and nuking people FROM walls. Any battle on the ground and I contribute way more with D/D than I would on staff. Specced correctly you can participate in melee pushes while still putting out solid, steady damage.

Yeah I was pretty much thinking of this, ankittenep a staff handy for siege. When I am running with a small group to hit camps, however, I go back to D/D because its much more fun imo and does as well if not better in small group fights.

“and” followed by “I” followed by “keep” spells a derogatory word for homosexual females

its sounds like D/F more than D/D to me
daze – imo – knock down and
when heath came to dagger zone does he become a stone first? coz focus can make him immortal for a short-time.