Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m Little Fluffy Bunny from Anvil Rock. I’ve played about 400 games of pvp as an elementalist in both 8v8 and 5v5. My findings are probably biased towards ele than any other class, as I have most experience with it. I have played a guardian and engineer in pvp as well, and both can be more enjoyable after I die 2x in a row due to ride the lightning. I’ve taken some notes of what I’ve found buggy or straight up broken. I’ve posted this thread on 2 other sites waiting for the official forums to come up, so now I can happily post ’em here

The cool down on an attunement after switching out of it without putting points into arcana is 16 seconds. That is kitten ridiculous. If you put 30 points into arcana, you can bring it down to 9… which is still kitten ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if you are in combat or out of combat, the cool down is the same. I think putting it down to 9 seconds IN COMBAT and 6 seconds OUT OF COMBAT. There is also a 1.5 second global cooldown on attunements after swapping… I think it needs to be .5.

My highest crit with a single ability was 9k. That is the highest I’ve seen so far that has been done to me / I have done. The problem is, is that they were below 25%, knocked down, and on fire. Those 3 conditions combined with Fire Grasp did that. Other classes might not be able to burst exactly like that, but I know other classes (war / thief come to mind) can put up more damage with less effort.

I’ve tested a lot of different tank type runes with staff / dd / sd and none of them have been too successful. I found that being a guardian and going tanky / supportive is so much more effective than a tanky ele.

Since I’ve spent rank 10-20 as mainly dd I’m going to specify some issues with it:

frost aura : 40 sec cd. I feel this skill needs a little rework to be worth a 40 sec cd. I would think 15 or 20 sec cd would be better..

cleansing wave : 40 sec cd. A 1700 aoe heal around you. I think 30 sec would add a little survivability to our squishyness and in their face build.

lightning touch : Needs more damage. Even glass cannon, the spell is a wet tissue. This spell is way too situational.

Ride the lightning is extremely buggy. If target is moving you will get stuck in random places. I used this spell to try and get to an ele channeling meteor storm… I got stuck in front of him inside the storm without being able to cast / dodge / move.

magnetic grab is fairly buggy. Target can be out of range when near you and sometimes when used it will go on a 3 sec cd. Still needs to pull to person even if immune to immobilize. also spell can bug mid cast if affected by cc, unable to cast/move and stuck in pull animation. Just like Ride the Lightning.

Churning earth is in a really bad place, and should probably be reworked. The risk of casting it is not worth the damage reward. Might be better if we had more base hp or toughness.

Updraft (40 sec cd) and earthquake (45 sec cd) both have a very small range centered around the caster for knockdown effect. Why so long cooldowns? Both of these skills are extremely important to have up to do the damage that we need to do. Isn’t the guardian’s OH shield spell like 30 seconds?

When downed mist form is available after 8 seconds. Probably one of the worst downed 3rd spells. Our snare needs to turn into something better (worst downed 2nd spell by far) and mist needs to be up sooner and more often.

If burning speed is stopped for whatever reason, the spell will not finish, hurting our dps.

Ele can be really strong in team fights when fighting against people who don’t know how to focus you. An hp / toughness buff as well as cd reductions would help us out tremendously.

If you hit someone with a skilled base shot, I believe it should always hit. You didn’t just target them and hit the button. I probably started believing this in LoL, but I think it’s a good idea.

That is pretty much it for what I’ve found with the ele so far. Here is some other things I’ve found while floating around pvp:

Mezmer Mao bird is too powerful with no counter. Something like 15 seconds without being able to do anything? Talk about an easy win.

Targeting needs to persist through stealth. Kinda bullkitten that you can target, they stealth. You target again, they stealth again. Pretty dumb imo.

When I knockdown a thief with updraft then switch to fire and go in with burning speed, he’ll get up and stealth and I won’t hit… with anything. I don’t really know how to fight that.

Let’s not mention heart seeker or pistol whip. At least mist form will save me from the war that came from behind.

That is kitten ridiculous.

Now I feel mean, here’s a reply…

Churning earth is in a really bad place, and should probably be reworked. The risk of casting it is not worth the damage reward. Might be better if we had more base hp or toughness.

While it is easy to agree with this, the synergy with Lightning Flash and strength when used on nodes/bunkers make it a questionable buff over some other more pressing issues. i.e. more useless spells..

I would love to see a cooldown reduction on Earthquake and Updraft, nothing else really needs to be added to your reasoning especially for a D/D spec.

++1 For Mezmer morph 10 second cc.

Churning Earth is hilariously bad without the teleport utility. The cast time is astronomical, any class will have regenerated enough endurance during the cast to dodge roll at the end and avoid the whole shizz.

Mesmer Moa cancelling you out of Tornado is also one of the most kitten kitten kitten things ever.

Agree with most of what you said.

overall I agree with most of the things u said. definetly about our buggy skills that makes us incredibly vulnerable in pvp.

As ride the lightning is bugged at this moment. I have come up with an idea of how it should be:
1) should only go to the target which is in front of the character(can be seen on your screen) so not on the back. I dont know how many times I see my elementalist go to the target where Im actually running away from
2) if theres no target in front of u it should go to wherever we are facing.
3) make us invulnerable to cc during the skill (I believe thats partly how we get stuck in the middle of the skill)
4) whenever our skill gets stopped by an obstacle it should immidiatly end

Since writing this, I have watched some streams and looked at the ‘pro’ players builds. While I seen 1 ele go tanky staff point sitter and do alright, I did not see any high dps ele’s do well (mostly got dropped by something they didn’t see coming from off of their screen). There was too much focus on them. I also noticed that 1 had gone a d/d and another a s/d tanky dps build. I’ve been playing around with a d/d tanky dps build that I put together myself, and I think it’s working better than being burst. No, I can’t kill anything quick, But I can normally survive what they bring (gg haste).

I went from 30/30/0/0/10, serker amulet/jewel, and rage runes to 0/30/0/10/30, soldier amulet/shaman’s amulet, and still experimenting with runes (currently running eagle). Since I no longer feel the need to base all of my combos off of fire’s cool downs, I feel it has opened up more of the class to me. I have also changed my heal from harmony to restoration (and it’s working out surprisingly well!). I still believe everything I said, cool downs are a little too high and skills are still quite buggy (anyone notice that magnetic grasp can now fling you back and forth 3 or 4 times?) Higher base hp / toughness would always help, but I don’t think I’d be looking for as big of an increase as before.

I’m currently at 588 games played as an ele, and rank 28.

I have come to realize that part of our issue is not our class, it’s that other classes usually have haste in their kit. Odd how the high dps / low survivability class doesn’t the strongest dps buff in the game. I strongly believe this ability has to place in this game, and am wondering who let that 1 go through.

You forget to remember that Staff Ele has the longest ranged nuke in the game and if you can target the enemy, you can hit them no matter how far

While I have played staff, it was only from bwe1-rank 10. Rank 10-28 have been primarily d/d. Staff isn’t very viable in spvp, unless you’re a point sitter. Try assaulting a point as a staff ele vs people who know how to dodge…. not only that, gust and earth’s 5 seem extremely bugged by going through people / straight up missing if they side step.

@ BlueSpades – and you need to remember that it’s likely to be considered an exploit (as the skills is very clearly not working as intended), so be very wary of using it out of its normal range as if your reported you could get in trouble (temp banned).

I doubt it, it’s a bug yes. but not game breaking like some. and if it was really a huge problem they would just disable it temp. until it’s fixed, they have bigger bugs to take out first. but ty for warning ^^