Guild Wars 2

For the record, just tested.

If you get that self stun glitch with RtL while attacking someone, you will get the 40s cooldown.

Goodbye, focus, my old friend. Those trebs you kept alive will miss you.

CorliCorso.6254:

Goodbye, focus, my old friend. Those trebs you kept alive will miss you.

How dare you try and use your focus to survive against the opponent who outmanned you b/c you don’t have enough people/supply to storm SM and take out their trebs! Didn’t you know that defense has no place in this game! Hop on the zerg train or get out!

Hyo Jin.5630:

rhodoc.2381:

Zero buffs with drastic nerfs. R.I.P ele.

You obviously didn’t read all the way down to the patch. D/D needed a nerf, obviously was way too much OP. That IS a fact. So don’t complain like an idiot. Elementalists still are awesome. It’s a bit more balanced now.

You might want to stop calling people idiots when what ANet did ended up really nerfing every build BUT D/D, and ends up pushing alternative weapon set users towards D/D.

D/D didn’t need a nerf. This is propaganda of the terribad players who get rolled by any player in bunker spec. D/D was a powerful defensive build yes, with terrible damage output. The people who claim D/D was OP were the ones rolling around in full zerker, with no stunbreaks, and no CC (or didn’t know how/when to use it).

ANet bought in to the propaganda, and here we are. D/D Eles were actually pretty easy to counter, in any game mode well before the last couple rounds of nerf patches, by simply getting them to burn their cantrips, a quick stun and some burst. The problem is 95% of the playerbase out there is too thick to figure it out, so whined and cried until ANet nerfed the only fun and interesting class into a free kill again.

So no, D/D being OP is NOT a fact, its simply an opinion popularized by lots of crappy players whining in chorus at the top of their lungs.

Comet nerf, ouch. Now focus has no reliable heal in water (it’s not too hard to find a water field in WvW, but one with an enemy standing in it to target, which is safe enough to stand in yourself, yeah….).

It’s a terrible damage skill compared to phoenix or dragon’s tooth, the daze effect is nice but such a short duration and such a small aoe radius compared to hammer warrior’s f1 and muuuuch longer cooldown, without the reliable blast finisher it’s just a half kitten mess of a skill.

Mist form change I don’t agree with, but knew it was coming. I was hoping to make a working build around focus, but apparently that would be OP as well.

I will not use mist form anymore. I am making a new build with 120 more toughness and 2000 more hp and will use the 3 conditions-removal-skill instead of Mistform. I will do less damage with my staff (we already did less than any other class except when nuking a frozen zerg) but I have no choice. It will just be less fun but perhaps that way it will be possible to join the fight and not just stay behind.

Oh wow, RtL is even worse than I expected.

Scepter/dagger doesn’t even have have reliable access to Swiftness, how am I supposed to get close enough to use my fire attunement skills?

Chaosky.5276:

Oh wow, RtL is even worse than I expected.

Scepter/dagger doesn’t even have have reliable access to Swiftness, how am I supposed to get close enough to use my fire attunement skills?

I wanted to make a thread titled: “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo” but then I changed my mind…

They will have to fix this back to how it was eventually.

Woohoo! Glorious… I’m totally having a blast farming Eles in WvW now. I met a couple and they are much weaker now really.

The dude I met 1 on 1 20 mins ago had no chance to escape ever with his RTL being on 40s cd.

Now Eles can’t run away from my Mesmer anymore. Awesome

Don’t be sad guys – just reroll Mesmers – we got 900 range instant teleport on 32 sec cd. Sure, we are the next on the chopping block, but hey, you will have fun for 2 months at least

/kiss

Blackhat.4016:

Don’t forget the nerfs on Spirit Watch:

• Ride the Lightning distance is reduced by 40% while carrying the orb.
• Tornado move speed is now correctly reduced while carrying the orb.
• The orb is dropped if the orb carrier uses an invulnerability skill.
• The orb now spawns 10 seconds after match start instead of immediately.
• Increased altar commune time from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

All of those nerfs hit the ele really hard. There is absolutely no reason to use an ele as the orb runner anymore. Well done Anet, well done…

Maybe because there was no reason to use any other class as the orb runner? Stop whining about no longer being overpowered, just learn to adapt and play like everyone else. Get over it.

it makes me smile how ANYONE can defend anet considering they applied nerfs to PvE.

And buffed warriors…..

Now show me you have the courage to say they know what they do…
Do you think so?

Then think to their Patches as monthly nerfs….and you understand how bad they are at their work.

LordByron.8369:

it makes me smile how ANYONE can defend anet considering they applied nerfs to PvE.

And buffed warriors…..

Now show me you have the courage to say they know what they do…
Do you think so?

Then think to their Patches as monthly nerfs….and you understand how bad they are at their work.

It’s likely they don’t play PvE nor do they take it seriously :/

Yep, rangers/guardians weren’t used at all for orb running.

TheGuy.3568:

Boon hate will have no effect. Look at the warrior tree its in and you’ll figure it out. Boon hate won’t do a thing. The changes to sword for thief will.

I’m not so sure about the Thief sword thing, FS already would strip 1 boon. Now it can take 2 IF a bunch of Thieves start running sword/dagger again ( I don’t see many) it could be a problem. I guess we’ll see

On the bright side warriors wont get their adrenaline spent when they steal our elite skill!
REJOICE!!!!

DiogoSilva.7089:

Glyph of Storms might be nice for pve now.

It always was, but for damage there was never really a reason to switch outside of firestorm. Now there is. Simple as that. Earth retains it’s reason as a pulsing blind that is awesome for both WvW and PVE.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Glyph’s Fire storm also hits 11 times, like earth. For some reason, ice storm seems to last for a less amount of time than the three other storms, and about as much as the conjure’s version. It’s probably bugged.

It’s not a bug. Ice Storm applies large amounts of chill. The lesser duration is to balance this.

TheGuy.3568:

Elementalist

Comet skill: Blast finisher now occurs at the comet’s location rather than at the elementalist’s location.

This is a bug fix. This should be expected and is not a nerf. Taking advantage of a bug you should realize eventually the bug will be fixed.

Mist Form skill: Activation now locks heal, utility, and elite skills.

This should have been expected. You already get to be invulnerable which is a powerful skill in and of itself for keeping you alive. The healing and utility skills being available put this skill over the top. Learn to use it as it was intended.

Ride the Lightning skill:
Increased recharge increased 20 seconds to 40 seconds.
Recharge is now halved if the player strikes a foe.
Reduced the range to 1200 from the previous (hidden) 1550.

Hated by most of you I’m sure but I’ve been expecting big nerfs to RTL on my S/D ele for a very long time now. It was way too good. Excellent at attacking, closing the distance, setting up CC, escaping, and general mobility. With wise skill useage you could escape anyone as a bunker build.

Yes some classes could catch you, assuming you didn’t cripple, immobilize, or chill them properly. But the distance it required them to chase you to even try and catch you was immense an totally broken for having the tankiness + damage that was commonly used. They have now given it a role as a distance closing attack that can be used for a quick escape in a pinch. But it can no longer be used to run endlessly.

To be fair though, I think they should separate this change for PVE players. sPVP and WvW needed it, it does no real good for PVE.

Cleansing Water trait: Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds (only in PvP).

A fair change, too much condition removal was available. I hope they eventually port this change to WvW. I am unsure of PVE on this one.

Swirling Winds skill: No longer destroys unblockable missiles.

This wasn’t just used to block projectiles against defending siege. It was used much more often to defend attacking siege and keep walls. Being in a coordinated guild properly speed built counter-siege tactics were being ruined by this skill. Also the larger side benefited more from this skill.

This change puts more emphasize on properly organized counter siege and less on who has a bigger force and more ele’s that can cover more siege than your smaller force.

If it matters I main elementalist, regularly use mist form, and was called up regularly for swirling winds duty. My main build is built around Scepter/Dagger air spec with rampagers armor taking advantage of a high crit rate, hight power, and high crit effects. RTL is still going to be a mainstay of mine. I wield staff extremely often as well.

I think the d/d roaming days may be over…

dreztina.4820:

Welp, glad I quit the game a while back. Anet devs either don’t have the first clue what they’re doing when it comes to ele, or they secretly want everyone to run full bunker and nothing else. Again they nerf us in a way that barely affects bunkers but prison kitten everything else.

^ This.

Bunkers were actually nerfed significantly, but glass and other non 0/10/0/30/30 builds were downright DESTROYED.

For the last month I think I have logged in maybe a combined of 3 hours… I believe that said amount will drop even lower now…

It’s so freaking annoying to use RTL in WvWvW and CONSTANTLY worry about, oh am i going to hit this guy, what if i don’t, hmm i should save this till later because if i miss, i will have to wait 40 seconds before i can use it again, and what if he blocks it? maybe i should just wait a little longer and see what happens.

it’s not fun at all to have to worry about this…

some might say just adjust and that it now requires “skill” to use it and i’m not saying it useless now because it isn’t. All i am saying is that they made one of the most fun spells to use in the entire game into one of the most annoying spell to worry about in the game…

When i hear people complain about how eles die and mist form back to keep from forever ago to now, i’m like why would you be jealous of these guys, are they getting any bags or just trolling?

We are not trolling, what they have done to this class has dramatically decreased our ability to stay alive, and we already had the lowest health and thinnest armor of all classes. If you played an elementalist in PvP or WvW you would know that we were not OP, but the complexity of our class forced us to play very well with what we had. Now they didnt just change the stats on our skills, they changed up how they worked together (or prevented them from working together), therefore breaking our combos.

Raptured.9307:

When i hear people complain about how eles die and mist form back to keep from forever ago to now, i’m like why would you be jealous of these guys, are they getting any bags or just trolling?

We were not trolling, we have been heavily abusing the ability to re-enter the keep to do bursts of damage to the people outside that should not be possible without us dying. This will continue until our ability to mist-form back in is nerfed.

After all the only penalty for running outside with arcane shield and armor of earth to meteor storm an entire zerg for 2-4k damage a hit is that we have to hammer 3 and then rez back up inside. Might as well kill and tag alot of people for free.

Xillllix.3485:

We are not trolling, what they have done to this class has dramatically decreased our ability to stay alive, and we already had the lowest health and thinnest armor of all classes. If you played an elementalist in PvP or WvW you would know that we were not OP, but the complexity of our class forced us to play very well with what we had. Now they didnt just change the stats on our skills, they changed up how they worked together (or prevented them from working together), therefore breaking our combos.

As a staff ele in full rampagers I am one of the last people alive in any confrontation. A fellow guildie is hybrid, not even full bunker, and he is also one of the last alive…but one of the first into the fray. Don’t let people lie to you, ele’s have not had any survivability issues. They have bad players that are not using proper positioning and active damage avoidance. I laugh at every battle I am in the thick of things and outlive all the tougher people around me.

Lowest health and thinnest armor doesn’t matter much when you can control your positioning and the enemies. Protection, mobility, regen, and ready condition removal also blow such arguments out of the water. Warriors can keep their leaps, staff ele’s can control the movement of entire zergs and D/D ele’s have far more movement controlling abilities than mobility warriors. Higher mobility doesn’t mean jack when you cannot use it, we can stop you from using it very effectively if we play correctly.

Ralathar.7236:

As a staff ele in full rampagers I am one of the last people alive in any confrontation. A fellow guildie is hybrid, not even full bunker, and he is also one of the last alive…but one of the first into the fray. Don’t let people lie to you, ele’s have not had any survivability issues. They have bad players that are not using proper positioning and active damage avoidance. I laugh at every battle I am in the thick of things and outlive all the tougher people around me.

Your may be one of the exceptional players at surviving I can believe that, but lets not pretend everyone that play that class can survive as easily. I played hundreds of hours and have high level equipment and a build I developed. I could stay alive as well until the end of a zerg battle when I was beside the amazing guardian commander we have, and could cast mistform-heal at the worse moment (to heal from stacks of bleeding for example), else I would have died way earlier in the battle. However in reality and in 90% of the case the Elementists die easily, in 1vs1 they rarely survive, and with a staff they have no chance at all.

Now you cast mist-form and you still bleed to death and there is nothing you can do about it for 3 seconds, it’s broken.

Xillllix.3485:

Your may be one of the exceptional players at surviving I can believe that, but lets not pretend everyone that play that class can survive as easily. I played hundreds of hours and have high level equipment and a build I developed. I could stay alive as well until the end of a zerg battle when I was beside the amazing guardian commander we have, and could cast mistform-heal at the worse moment (to heal from stacks of bleeding for example), else I would have died way earlier in the battle. However in reality and in 90% of the case the Elementists die easily, in 1vs1 they rarely survive, and with a staff they have no chance at all.

Now you cast mist-form and you still bleed to death and there is nothing you can do about it for 3 seconds, it’s broken.

Part of the difficulty of becoming a better player is learning not to rely on crutches. Some skills allow you to survive in situation you certainly would not have. Using those types of skills before gaining proficiency at a class can easily stunt your growth as a player.

I was not a good player when I started playing MMORPG’s either. I played Dark Age of Camelot for 5-6 years. I got wrecked for the first 2-3. I learned. Now I avoid the most popular builds as a general rule because they rely on broken game play mechanics destined to be changed normally. Instead I gravitate towards either the “underpowered” or the team based, which actually improves my playing ability and normally get buffs instead of nerfs.

I’ve looked up a goodly amount of info for the game and when this game released I practiced my dodging and positioning on the highly deadly original incarnation of the Fire Elemental before they nerfed it’s difficulty into the ground.

I’ll tell you learn to play, but I’ll also try to give you the tools you need to learn. It’s not a disparaging comment from me, but one that hopes you will honestly stop depending on powerful builds and start improving your own play. When that happens a new world of builds will open to you as viable or good. You’ll see greater success across all characters and likely all MMORPG’s in the future as well.

Also, once you reach a certain level and see things as the optional tools they are instead of necessary you’ll find the skills that used to be crutches can be used to much better effect. To accomplish specific goals instead of just to save your butt or do your work for you.

When I use a staff, I run a 0/20/0/30/20 (Valkyrie’s amulet/Berserker’s jewel in SPvP, mix of Knight’s, Berserker’s and Valkyrie’s in WvW) build. Even with the nerf to Mist Form I can still survive fine 1v1, and against multiple enemies with allies to back me up.

However, surviving doesn’t mean much if I can’t actually accomplish anything. Staff eles serve absolutely no purpose in SPvP, and in WvW (unless they’re using full ’Zerker’s, in which case they’re a mobile arrow cart used for assaulting/defending structures that the zerg has to keep thieves off of) their utility is outdone by mesmers and guardians, despite support being the only option a staff ele has.

Chaosky.5276:

When I use a staff, I run a 0/20/0/30/20 (Valkyrie’s amulet/Berserker’s jewel in SPvP, mix of Knight’s, Berserker’s and Valkyrie’s in WvW) build. Even with the nerf to Mist Form I can still survive fine 1v1, and against multiple enemies with allies to back me up.

However, surviving doesn’t mean much if I can’t actually accomplish anything. Staff eles serve absolutely no purpose in SPvP, and in WvW (unless they’re using full ’Zerker’s, in which case they’re a mobile arrow cart used for assaulting/defending structures that the zerg has to keep thieves off of) their utility is outdone by mesmers and guardians, despite support being the only option a staff ele has.

You are out of your mind. With tools like Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, shockwave, and healing rain (on call large water field with good duration!!) elementalist is one of the core utility classes in a large WvW conflict.

The more I’ve played staff ele in WvW, the more I realize that my job is support first and damage second. This is true even built glass cannon. I still do my large masses of damage, but laying down those crucial abilities that do far more to determine the fight always takes priority.

Ralathar.7236:

You are out of your mind. With tools like Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, shockwave, and healing rain (on call large water field with good duration!!) elementalist is one of the core utility classes in a large WvW conflict.

The more I’ve played staff ele in WvW, the more I realize that my job is support first and damage second. This is true even built glass cannon. I still do my large masses of damage, but laying down those crucial abilities that do far more to determine the fight always takes priority.

Good, yes, but that hardly makes up for the staff’s inability to function effectively in a non-support role.

If I want range, I’ve gotta go staff, so that’s a major gripe for me.

Chaosky.5276:

Ralathar.7236:

You are out of your mind. With tools like Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, shockwave, and healing rain (on call large water field with good duration!!) elementalist is one of the core utility classes in a large WvW conflict.

The more I’ve played staff ele in WvW, the more I realize that my job is support first and damage second. This is true even built glass cannon. I still do my large masses of damage, but laying down those crucial abilities that do far more to determine the fight always takes priority.

Good, yes, but that hardly makes up for the staff’s inability to function effectively in a non-support role.

If I want range, I’ve gotta go staff, so that’s a major gripe for me.

While it doesn’t bother me as much as it does some, this is the real crux of the problem. What they should do is repurpose the Staff for damage primary and utility second,ary and introduce a new weapon type, like maybe a Tome/Book, with a heavier emphasis on support/utility.

In other words, the problem is having only one long range weapon, and that weapon having a very specific play-style requirement.

Einlanzer.1627:

Chaosky.5276:

Ralathar.7236:

You are out of your mind. With tools like Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, shockwave, and healing rain (on call large water field with good duration!!) elementalist is one of the core utility classes in a large WvW conflict.

The more I’ve played staff ele in WvW, the more I realize that my job is support first and damage second. This is true even built glass cannon. I still do my large masses of damage, but laying down those crucial abilities that do far more to determine the fight always takes priority.

Good, yes, but that hardly makes up for the staff’s inability to function effectively in a non-support role.

If I want range, I’ve gotta go staff, so that’s a major gripe for me.

While it doesn’t bother me as much as it does some, this is the real crux of the problem. What they should do is repurpose the Staff for damage primary and utility second,ary and introduce a new weapon type, like maybe a Tome/Book, with a heavier emphasis on support/utility.

In other words, the problem is having only one long range weapon, and that weapon having a very specific play-style requirement.

IMO, the problem is that the only real customization we have is the damage-survivability tradeoff. There’s no true customization beyond that, no modding attacks for specific effects. We can’t have an efficient 1200 dps range weapon because that weapon always has to come with cc, and in a game where dps is king it’ll always be a mediocre weapon set.

This problem of shallow customization is an issue with all professions in the game and it’s why we have very cookie cutter sets.

Right when the game launched Elementalists were deemed to be useless by the majority of players and I’ve been kicked by groups just because I was playing one (I mean as soon as they saw my class).

I got up to level 40 as Staff and Scepter and then I went D/D, I loved it, the play style was far from the classic mage, I felt more like an Arcane Trickster, half rogue half wizard, and it was mostly a support build: I buffed my group with might stacks, I cleansed conditions, shared auras and aoe heal them.

Back then I was one of the few people on my server to play an Elementalist, many gave up after a few level seeing how other professions streamrolled through the same content they were struggling on.
The number of D/D user was even lower, I think I had only one in a group in about 4 months and it was a blast.

I just came back to the game since I have a lot more free time now and all I read on the forum are complaints about the Elementalist being OP.

I was shocked tbh, I scrolled through patch notes searching for buffs and all I’ve found are nerfs.

Then I understood: all the fuss was about a very narrow portion of the Elementalist comunity being able to waste the time of groups of bad players who can’t use their cc. And I am sorry for the people who belive the contrary, but if one person keeps 5-10 people busy and does not die then it’s the 10 people’s fault.

I’ve seen the videos of those few players they are incredibly good, it can’t be denied, but it can’t be denied that the people they’re fighting are mostly upscaled and/or poorly equipped while the Elementalist is geared with endgame equipment often worth hundreds of golds (like the triforce pendant), buffed with food and consumable and using builds perfected by hours of theorycrafting… What would happen if said Elementalist were to face an opponent who put the same effort into his character?

I’ve also seen videos of other professions stomping said build, I’ve personaly seen other profession pull the same exact feat of the hated Elementalist: dive into an enemy zerg and get out alive. So it’s not just Elementalists, still they are the ones attracting the hate.

GW2 has been made by ANet, that’s a fact, they belive cantrip bunkers to be op, that’s ok I guess, as I said this is their game and I still think it’s better than the other since I came back to it instead of playing what the competition has to offer…

So they want to nerf cantrip bunkers, they remove the ability to heal and use utilities during mist form, which is a cantrip, and that’s ok.

Then what do they nerf in order to tune down cantrip bunkers? Do they reduce protection uptime? Since being a bunker means to reduce damage it would be an understandable move… No.
Do they reduce the amount of self heals? Being a bunker also means to outheal damage… No.
Do they truly reduce condition cleanse? Being a bunker means to remove hurtfull conditions… Nope, the internal cd applied to Cleansing Water is a joke, no one in their right mind will blow 3 very long cd utilities just to cleanse conditions. All this change does is nerf Staff supports which is one of the weapons ANet wanted to buff.

I am confused.

What they nerf is mobility, which is not related to being a bunker: what a bunker does is sit on the node and defend it untill his teammates move to said node and help him fending off opponents.

Correct me if I am wrong, I mean is it false that a bunker sits on the node he’s defending?

If I am not wrong then why nerf RtL if they wanted to balance bunkers.

RtL is part of the reason I stuck with the Elementalist at the beginning of the game, it’s so fun to zipp around maps (spvp, wvw, pve), but it’s not like Eles are the only able to move around that fast, I’ve heard other professions can be even faster and yet it’s the Elementalist who takes the nerfbat.

If it is because they can also be extremely hard(edit) to kill (bunkers) then I’d prefer if ANet worked on actualy nerfing sturdiness than mobility, give Elementalists other viable options than running 0/x/x/30/30 and they will diversify their builds.

A final thought, shortly before I took my break due to my job, I saw some videos about a guild(can’t remember the name, sorry) stacking heavy armored (wars and guardians) smashing through enemy zergs 4/5 larger than their group and actualy wiping them instead of wasting their time.

Is there realy a difference between 5 people killing 20-25 enemies and one single Elementalist mocking 5 players?

I personaly do not think so.

The true problem is people do not actualy know how an Elementalist works hence they can’t stop them. That’s laziness on their part.

P.S. I’ve been writing all this defending a profession I don’t even play anymore, I am levelling a Ranger(and from before the announced buffs to them, check my post history).

RTL nerf should have been pvp only, S/D ele already had terrible mobility, agreed Signet of Air should have been changed to a stunbreaker, make that actually worth taking.

its the 3rd patch in a row that nerfs balanced and glasscannons…..
And hinders PvE/WWW more than PvP…..

They said their purpose was nerfing S/D in PvP….
Now you would discuss with someone with such distorted idea and so low opinion of pve players?

Only thing i can think of is they all play warriors and thieves….

If you just pass in thief forum you can see how they defend a class that we all know is horribly OP

And when they had to talk about Warrior PvE they said they are FINE <==
Other classes are worst (thus you nerf them)

They could’ve increased the cd on burning speed and the earth one instead of this RTL nerf. I want the short cd back in world PvE.

Also, want staff buffs! Reduce activation times or something, anything!

Einlanzer.1627:

Good, yes, but that hardly makes up for the staff’s inability to function effectively in a non-support role.

If I want range, I’ve gotta go staff, so that’s a major gripe for me.

You can go Scepter for ranged easily single target. It’s AOE is currently on too big of delays for WvW, but I would bet RL money that that will be remedied. But before they buff the weapon they have to balance out some of the stuff that was making the weapon combo too good and then data mine. Hence this series of nerfs is actually a step towards that.

Your gripe about long range AOE options is fair atm, but I heavily believe that will be remedied.

While it doesn’t bother me as much as it does some, this is the real crux of the problem. What they should do is repurpose the Staff for damage primary and utility second,ary and introduce a new weapon type, like maybe a Tome/Book, with a heavier emphasis on support/utility.

In other words, the problem is having only one long range weapon, and that weapon having a very specific play-style requirement.

Staff can do both damage and utility equally well. In fact alot of the utility is there to ensure that you land your damage vs opponents by robbing them of mobility. Meanwhile Staff is not designed for 1 on 1 so of course it’s not going to perform well in 1 vs 1. It gains power with the number of people involved in the fight.

With full rampagers I hit entire groups extremely hard and I can wipe groups by myself if allowed with good targetting and other people keeping their attention. Having to scurry around to survive reduces my DPS somewhat, but that’s mainly in the loss of Meteor Shower. With Rampagers my mobile DPS is still almost as good as my stationary DPS unless I am needing to use many abilities to keep myself alive.

TwoBit.5903:

IMO, the problem is that the only real customization we have is the damage-survivability tradeoff. There’s no true customization beyond that, no modding attacks for specific effects. We can’t have an efficient 1200 dps range weapon because that weapon always has to come with cc, and in a game where dps is king it’ll always be a mediocre weapon set.

This problem of shallow customization is an issue with all professions in the game and it’s why we have very cookie cutter sets.

Staff can successfully be support, direct damage, condition damage, utility, or CC oriented. It is quite efficient at all roles. The only thing staff isn’t efficient at is single target. Elementalist is NOT cookie cutter, people choose to play it that way but it actually has a variety of capable builds. Take my Full Rampager’s build instead of traditional beserkers. Made to change utility skills and the major water trait and instantly become Scepter/Dagger build focused on Air and large amounts of vulnerability/bleeding/burning procs.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.1o.h16|0.0.0.0.0.0|1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3|1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1g.63|a5.u469.k18.a1.0|2e.1|1m.1q.23.1y.g|e

You’ll notice I don’t have any Arcane “MADNESS!!” everyone shouts. Also I use Hounds of Balthazar for reliable burst AOE regardless of attunement. “MORE MADNESS” people shout.

Utilities include Arcane Shield (always), Glyph of Storms, Ice Bow, Armor of Earth, and Mist Form in some combination when wielding staff. Arcane Shield, Arcane Blast, and Signet of Fire when wielding Scepter/Dagger.

Certainly not cookie cutter, but quite effective and versatile I assure you.

Ralathar.7236:

“MADNESS!!” “MORE MADNESS” people shout.

It might be madness. Most of the QQ directed at Eles was legitimately because of sPvP, where you can’t use racial skills.

It ballooned out of control because terribad upleveled noobs were getting killed by top Ele players in full Ascended/Exotics in WvWvW.

Also, Hounds for “reliable burst AoE.” Every four minutes is reliable? No wonder the pro-nerfers drive me insane, the amount of hyperbole that is spewed is remarkable.

In case people haven’t checked it out yet or it hasn’t been posted somewhere else in the ele subforum, arcane wave also got a stealth nerf as an extra.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Bringing-down-eles-more-unannounced-nerf/first#post1942177

Navzar.2938:

In case people haven’t checked it out yet or it hasn’t been posted somewhere else in the ele subforum, arcane wave also got a stealth nerf as an extra.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Bringing-down-eles-more-unannounced-nerf/first#post1942177

They just fixed the tooltip,

Kaleban.9834:

Also, Hounds for “reliable burst AoE.” Every four minutes is reliable? No wonder the pro-nerfers drive me insane, the amount of hyperbole that is spewed is remarkable.

Yes, it’s quite reliable. I cast it and it does exactly what I want every time regardless of the situation. If I need to use my elite more than every 4 minutes my side is doing something wrong or it’s a stalemate battle in which case it really doesn’t matter. I am part of an organized guild and even the largest zerg battles are normally won within the first 60 seconds, exceptions possibly being 3 ways or areas where we get corpse rushed.

The hounds are not terribly survivable but they quickly leap into combat using an AOE flame burst attack then chew on one target. They have a reasonably good alpha. I was doubtful at first myself and was on the fence for a good time while I weighed my options.

Push comes to shove I start battles normally in either Air or Water. I travel in Air. Air Elemental does not fare very well against zergs, starting a battle I only want to be in water long enough to drop frozen ground (I switch back to it again later), Fiery Greatsword doesn’t add terribly to my anti-zerg DPS and greatly increases my risk, and Tornado does not fare very well when built as glassy as I am vs ay decent players.

I have to react quickly and drop my frozen ground/static field at the start of combat and combat is not always pre-planned in a way convenient for attunement swap just for a useful elemental. Also, while my foe is stunned/chilled I should be unleashing AOE death or yet more CC, not pets that will die quickly regardless of which pet I use. Pets are before planned combat or after my initial cooldowns from whatever improvised skill chain I just used. (ending in water always btw)

@Ralathor
Efficient? Hardly. The only it’s efficient at is covering the field in pretty particles. The damage is subpar in PvE and PvP compared to D/D. Ranged AoE isn’t as useful as it sounds in PvE when you can simply facetank mobs and dps them down, in which case melee cleave is superior than the staff’s AoE. The staff’s only saving grace as a ranged dps weapon is WvW and that’s if you hide behind allies or keep walls, but it’s greatest utility in WvW is (surprise surprise) ranged AoE CCs. And lol Hounds as AoE…

But I digress. Rebutting your blind defense of the staff besides the point. The point is that traits need to provide actual tradeoffs; they need change the properties of skills, let players choose between damage cc, etc. All they’re doing right now is sometimes tweaking skills a tiny bit, and mostly changing their damage values. We’re only provided the illusion of customization of playstyle when all that we can adjust is the speed at which health bars go down. That’s why we have very cookie cutter builds with each weapon set.

Ralathar.7236:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.3|6.1o.h16|0.0.0.0.0.0|1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3|1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1g.63|a5.u469.k18.a1.0|2e.1|1m.1q.23.1y.g|e

This build really isn’t optimal. Sigil of Earth’s effect (2 second internal cooldown, one stack of bleeding on application), will only grant you a maximum uptime of 2.5 stacks of bleeding in a perfect scenario in which it always activates, which it won’t. Furthermore, you lack the sustainability to really take advantage of condition damage, and you’ll lose a lot of damage whenever you switch out of the air attunement (which will happen, because healing) due to the lack of sustained damage in other attunements, the decreased bleeding and burning uptime (well, earth won’t have a problem with bleeding, nor fire with burning), and the massive 16 second wait to get back into the air attunement.

Bottom line: This build has neither the survivability nor the burst damage necessary for effectiveness in 1v1s, and due to the lack of damage potential in other attunements, you’ll end up fighting against your class mechanic.

The scepter simply isn’t effectively designed for ranged combat; the best I’ve been able to get out of it is an extremely boring 0/0/30/20/20 signet condition build, and it’s simply a poor choice compared to other builds.

TwoBit.5903:

@Ralathor
Efficient? Hardly. The only it’s efficient at is covering the field in pretty particles. The damage is subpar in PvE and PvP compared to D/D. Ranged AoE isn’t as useful as it sounds in PvE when you can simply facetank mobs and dps them down, in which case melee cleave is superior than the staff’s AoE. The staff’s only saving grace as a ranged dps weapon is WvW and that’s if you hide behind allies or keep walls, but it’s greatest utility in WvW is (surprise surprise) ranged AoE CCs. And lol Hounds as AoE…

It is true that damage wise I will be beat by many others in PVE when you can facetank things. But I don’t just have damage. I also have control and utility built into my weapon. Even still there will always be a “most effective” build/class. There is a 7/8 chance that any one class will not have it.

The question isn’t whether something is optimal or not. But whether it is viable or not. Viewed from the position of the top dog a large % of builds will always be viewed as not competitive. But that doesn’t mean they are underpowered.

In fact middle of the road builds will always have one rather large advantage over your top dogs. I won’t be facing the nerfs you will inevitably receive and might actually get some buffs. Also, in regards to hounds their initial attack is essentially the skill flameburst centered on thier target. In zergs this almost always hits 3+ per hound. It’s not super deadly, but it’s reliable and it does make a difference. It’s extra dps I know what is going to do and can be cued up before a battle or during cooldowns. A plus no matter how it is viewed.

PVP is another animal. It would be difficult to make an AOE heavy weapon viable for PVP without making it OP for everything else. I don’t look for staff to ever be competitive with the nature of PVP being what it is. It will continue to be good in both PVE and WvW however. Not best, but good.

But I digress. Rebutting your blind defense of the staff besides the point. The point is that traits need to provide actual tradeoffs; they need change the properties of skills, let players choose between damage cc, etc. All they’re doing right now is sometimes tweaking skills a tiny bit, and mostly changing their damage values. We’re only provided the illusion of customization of playstyle when all that we can adjust is the speed at which health bars go down. That’s why we have very cookie cutter builds with each weapon set.

I could easily make a staff auramancer. a cc staff build, a staff tank, a support staff uild, etc. All of these would be viable options that could be successfully pulled off and be good. My play style could actually change dramatically and still be effective.

Ralathar.7236:

I could easily make a staff auramancer. a cc staff build, a staff tank, a support staff uild, etc. All of these would be viable options that could be successfully pulled off and be good. My play style could actually change dramatically and still be effective.

Lol.

Possible to make? Sort of. A build is a collection of gear and traits. Very few (if any) traits are conducive to something like “staff tanking.”

As to them being good and/or effective, just no. In a game with few customization options, the effective builds are few and far between. Could your staff tank do good? Yes, in Queensdale DEs. High level PvP or WvWvW? Probably, laughably not.

Kaleban.9834:

Ralathar.7236:

I could easily make a staff auramancer. a cc staff build, a staff tank, a support staff uild, etc. All of these would be viable options that could be successfully pulled off and be good. My play style could actually change dramatically and still be effective.

Lol.

Possible to make? Sort of. A build is a collection of gear and traits. Very few (if any) traits are conducive to something like “staff tanking.”

As to them being good and/or effective, just no. In a game with few customization options, the effective builds are few and far between. Could your staff tank do good? Yes, in Queensdale DEs. High level PvP or WvWvW? Probably, laughably not.

I’ve staff tanked zergs multiple times on my auramancer. The weapon skills to avoid/cripple/chill/immobilize/stun multiple melee at a time, shared reflect, protection and flame armor constantly, defensive utility skills, good dodge skill in fire, decent healing and water fields.

Think more creatively. I am a runner of wierd builds haha. Because used correctly alot more builds work well than the player base realizes. I don’t always intent to get stuck in staff, but sometimes it happens and you adapt. Adapting and learning is much better than giving up and flailing around complaining before exhausting your resources.

Chaosky.5276:

This build really isn’t optimal. Sigil of Earth’s effect (2 second internal cooldown, one stack of bleeding on application), will only grant you a maximum uptime of 2.5 stacks of bleeding in a perfect scenario in which it always activates, which it won’t. Furthermore, you lack the sustainability to really take advantage of condition damage, and you’ll lose a lot of damage whenever you switch out of the air attunement (which will happen, because healing) due to the lack of sustained damage in other attunements, the decreased bleeding and burning uptime (well, earth won’t have a problem with bleeding, nor fire with burning), and the massive 16 second wait to get back into the air attunement.

Bottom line: This build has neither the survivability nor the burst damage necessary for effectiveness in 1v1s, and due to the lack of damage potential in other attunements, you’ll end up fighting against your class mechanic.

The scepter simply isn’t effectively designed for ranged combat; the best I’ve been able to get out of it is an extremely boring 0/0/30/20/20 signet condition build, and it’s simply a poor choice compared to other builds.

I never intent to 1 vs 1 someone though of course I have won plenty of 1 vs 1. However I of course agree this is not optimal for 1 vs 1. I said small scale, not 1 vs 1. It’s not uncommon for me to quickly build and maintain 10 stacks of vulnerability n someone and spike as high as 16 stacks. This without any serious condition duration. The 60% on crit trait in air apparently has no ICD.

The condition damage is not so much based on DPSing someone down faster so much as it is stacking with the burning to take down runners and allowing me to take down toughness spec’s more easily. DPS and DPS that makes a difference is not the same thing. Alot of players choose to leave the battle late and fall to a late firing arcane blast + condition damage.

I can also easily switch to earth and focus on condition damage for those high toughness builds and still be quite effective. The short switch to fire for DT, and a phoenix that predicts the doge/causes it, then fire ring presets the earth attunement nicely. I do not lose alot of damage potential switching out of air because condition damage is equally effective with my build.

So yeah, it’s a scepter damage build capable of dealing high damage on both the power and condition spectrum. It loses a slight amount on the “optimal damage” to be more versatile instead. Even still it’s slightly less versatile as a pure scepter build.

BUT it’s not a pure scepter build. It’s a build meant to easily roll into staff. On staff the dividends paid back by a equal condition focus are paid back in spades. Not only are more of the weapon skills useful for high amounts of damage but the bleed ticks I am getting highlight my enemies for future AOE’s even when out of sight. All I have to do is track the bleed numbers to figure out where they moved to hide and AOE some more.

sPVP and PVE are very narrow spectrum of game play and lead to very narrow thinking and very narrow “best” builds. I have a build that does excels at WvW and does good at PvP. Only extremely select pigeon hole builds are viable for PVP. This will always be the case with it’s extremely specific focus. That is a no win battle.

Certain classes like Warrior might excel at PVE but then do poorly at WvW with the same build. Vice versa is true of many WvW builds. Thanks to the power and versatility of elementalist I can do both with a variety of builds. Again PVP will always be pigeon holed thanks to it’s very narrow focus.

Too many people build themselves into a tiny box focusing on excelling at Y or Z and then discount anything that doesn’t do as well as Y or Z completely ignoring the fact that the situation is not always like that.

Ralathar.7236:

I’ve staff tanked zergs multiple times on my auramancer. The weapon skills to avoid/cripple/chill/immobilize/stun multiple melee at a time, shared reflect, protection and flame armor constantly, defensive utility skills, good dodge skill in fire, decent healing and water fields.

Think more creatively. I am a runner of wierd builds haha. Because used correctly alot more builds work well than the player base realizes. I don’t always intent to get stuck in staff, but sometimes it happens and you adapt. Adapting and learning is much better than giving up and flailing around complaining before exhausting your resources.

And I have a Raptor Jesus and Dino-unicorn living in my house.

Either you’re being intentionally facetious, or you think “zerg” means 1 person. A Staff Ele confronted with even a 5 man team is going down, much less a zerg of 20+. A Staff Ele facing off against one other competent player is at a significant disadvantage.

Or perhaps you’re confused and the zergs you were tanking were in the Super Adventure Box?

Kaleban.9834:

Ralathar.7236:

I’ve staff tanked zergs multiple times on my auramancer. The weapon skills to avoid/cripple/chill/immobilize/stun multiple melee at a time, shared reflect, protection and flame armor constantly, defensive utility skills, good dodge skill in fire, decent healing and water fields.

Think more creatively. I am a runner of wierd builds haha. Because used correctly alot more builds work well than the player base realizes. I don’t always intent to get stuck in staff, but sometimes it happens and you adapt. Adapting and learning is much better than giving up and flailing around complaining before exhausting your resources.

And I have a Raptor Jesus and Dino-unicorn living in my house.

Either you’re being intentionally facetious, or you think “zerg” means 1 person. A Staff Ele confronted with even a 5 man team is going down, much less a zerg of 20+. A Staff Ele facing off against one other competent player is at a significant disadvantage.

Or perhaps you’re confused and the zergs you were tanking were in the Super Adventure Box?

Ele’s built for tankiness can handle damage just fine. D/D bunker ele’s have shown that. The survivability that is lacked from direct mitigation is made up by mobility and boons. Staff isn’t much difference and a tanky auramancer is an extremely defensive build even using staff. Even more so if you have any sort of choke point with your ability to control enemy mobility and your ranged status honestly. Prolly doesn’t hurt that you can set up a healing blast finisher for your own water fields either.

It’s different, it was highly unexpected the first time I did it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Properly used burning retreat and magnetic aura are highly effective on a normal build. That only makes a bigger difference on a bunker build with constant protect and fire shield that still lays down AOE damage and CC (albeit much weaker AOE damage…being 500-800 per meteor instead of 2-3k…but it still does damage :P). Lets not even get into the LOLfactor defense on Tornado or Fiery Greatsword used in their proper situations on such a build.

In choke points specifically a staff ele is a far superior tank due to being able to use frozen ground, unsteady ground, and shock wave combined with magnetic aura and protection to vastly reduce the possible incoming damage while the enemy dies to your team. Meanwhile both you and the team are capable of providing you heal support.

Ralathar.7236:

Ele’s built for tankiness can handle damage just fine.

It depends entirely on:
1) Definition of tankiness
2) Relative distance to enemies
3) How much damage we’re talking about
4) Whether you confused “tankability” and “survivability” or not.

Staff eles do not wield the same mobility melee eles have. Staff eles do, in fact, have great survivability, they have quite a lot of mobility hampering skills, but they cannot “tank”, they simply avoid being wounded in the first place, which is mainly thanks to the fact they’re not at the front lines relative to melee units. A staff using ele facing a “zerg” (as in, more than 5, which is a raid party) will either:

a) Fought back for some time and die a moment later
b) Escape from the very beginning and survive

Unfortunately, there is no c) Fought back and escaped, unless you’re in front of your tower

Ralathar.7236:

Staff can do both damage and utility equally well. .

Attack speed makes impossible to hit thieves and mesmers (but aslo any strafing profession you can just sidestep Attacks….or slowly walk out of aoes….even standing in some without taking any damage):
Aoe are so slow that never hit anything

DPS is utterly bad unless you use conjured weapons that are a bad versions of other professions weapons (just roll other professions if you like them).

So no in real game staff and scepter can t hit things THUS cannot dps.
They can support and CC (CC almost completely negated in PvE) but NOT deal damage…as every ele weapon.

Raestloz.7134:

It depends entirely on:
1) Definition of tankiness
2) Relative distance to enemies
3) How much damage we’re talking about
4) Whether you confused “tankability” and “survivability” or not.

Staff eles do not wield the same mobility melee eles have. Staff eles do, in fact, have great survivability, they have quite a lot of mobility hampering skills, but they cannot “tank”, they simply avoid being wounded in the first place, which is mainly thanks to the fact they’re not at the front lines relative to melee units. A staff using ele facing a “zerg” (as in, more than 5, which is a raid party) will either:

a) Fought back for some time and die a moment later
b) Escape from the very beginning and survive

Unfortunately, there is no c) Fought back and escaped, unless you’re in front of your tower

I’ve actually done this on my auramancer when the situation called for staff or when unexpected combat happened while I was using staff for a specific purpose. I speak from experience when I say built tanky as an auramancer I can hang with the front line, staff or no, with no real issues. Magnetic aura being shared with the front line heavies is actually an unexpectedly nasty twist.

I wouldn’t call it ideal, I still think D/D and /F can tank better in close range situations., but staff can definitely get the job done without any real difficulties and does have it’s own specific large advantages.

Again, this is not from Idle speculation. I’ve been there on my auramancer in fights exceeding 20 members from both sides. PVE of course you can kite melee like a boss and avoid ranged damage just as well.

All ele weapons are mobile and the vast vast amount of bunker ele survivability is from the stats, boons, and mobility, not the weapon sets specifically. Perhaps with the exception of /F being exceptional in defense.