Guild Wars 2

So I’ve always wondered something..
I played at launch, but only for like 2-3 months. I quit and came back in q4 of 2013.
At launch and during the couple months I kept up with the game through forums, the ‘meta’ elementalist build was kind of the same as the wvw d/d ele. 0/10/0/30/30 or some variation on this. I can understand that we now know more about the game and dungeons in general and thus we now have the zerker meta as a result of people figuring out what a proper organized group can do with max’d might/fury/vuln and using active damage negation. But how did people back then think? Why was this ‘auramancer’ meta? And when and how did the shift towards what we have now begin? Like there’s even written guides still to be found by the more well known elementalists that made many of the zerker guides too. Even on youtube. When and how did the paradigm shift occur?

Ppl died a lot back then and need a bit of surviability. Dead dps is no dps remember. As ppl got better and figure out how much dps can be powerful if you stack damage multiplier, they abandoned all together these kind of hybrid like the auramancer.

PPl learnt that sustain and power for a dnd were better than burst and crit for a dnd ele.

So prior to the boon nerf , this was all the rage.

Then came the hardcore Condi meta that everyone and their neighbours started using so then became the need to change from signet of restto. to ER. At the same time came celestial gear and the boon nerf.

We have been smashed into the ground, but those that have remained eles for over 2 years enjoy the class alot. 80% of the eles i knew now no longer play ele. Hence why ele is in high demand in most guild groups.

I could go on for ever about what happened in this forum over the past two years
In short: it was mostly a matter of getting the information through. A lot of high level players played similarly to how we play now, but they could not be bothered to write guides. So people followed mass advice from PvP/WvW, like Daphoenix provided. It remained like this until Neko wrote his compendium. Neko’s work brought the behind-the-scenes theories to the public place: it revealed to the masses how a few talented players had managed to optimise the class. After this it was only a matter of dispelling common public misconceptions, like the value of the arcana line, active versus passive defence, and damage potential. It took some time to do this, because it required us to develop the tools to provide proof for our theories. People had trust issues. Even a few weeks ago on the French forums I had to explain that sceptre deals very weak damage by itself …
Bottom-line, this was all because of the elitist mindset: because talented players believed that it was too much of a hassle to demagogically explain to the masses the optimised way of playing, they simply gave up on it, and they shared their knowledge only among themselves. For example, when I wrote my first D/F guide I was contacted by Haviz who told me that he (and Lorek) had been using it for a long time already! What most elite players did not understand at the time was that guiding the general public would benefit them tremendously in the long run.

Oh and if we are talking history: I have played for two years, since day 1 we have complained about Lingering Elements, it is still not fixed. Way to thank us for our guiding work Anet

I remember finally stumbling on Dagger/Focus Ele and thinking it was like the coolest thing ever, though I more or less got the build from talking to friends who were far more talented than me. It also took a really, really, really long time for players to settle on the builds Eles have. I blame it on the fact that it’s easy to get intimidated at the low base stats, and unfamiliarity with the content will punish an Ele more than other classes, generally. In fact to this day, it’s still pretty hard for a completely new Ele player to pick up a full DPS Ele and run it through instanced content that they’ve never ever done (whereas Guardians and Warriors have so much innate tankiness that makes that content far more forgiving). The upside to Eles of course is that they’re just all around very useful and powerful.

Neko did you ever play in fotm level 80 as ele?

D/F in wvw or spvp with healing, condition and tough stats are pretty fun. And that’s why I have 3 main variation ascended sets and 4 exotic armor sets and 4 sets of ascended accessories. Ele’s are great, never stop short on one build. or weapon set.. the sky is the limit. We aren’t as cheese as some professions but when trait a specific way certain scenarios would be much easier then others. DPS is a variation and doesn’t determine the effiency outside of pve. Also as I read more forums from other profession. Ele’s actually don’t QQ much compare to the tiny nerfs other profs get.

Zelyhn knows his math.

Hey guys, I’ve been playing ele since launch and to start off with, I think your question is pretty big because it requires us to consider many factors. I should actually be studying for my exams so I’ll only go over the ones that I think are most important. I’ll also go about answering these from memory (which may or may not be accurate due to stress from finals), so correct me if I’m wrong anywhere.

But how did people back then think?
The ele mentality, which held up for a significant period after launch, was that you had to constantly be switching elements to maximize utility and damage. In fact, you were considered bad if you camped an element, so essentially camping fire in staff or air 1 with dagger didn’t exist (this is still true today, but slightly more accepted because now it is encouraged to camp fire on staff for dps and only swap when you need the utility. You’d use the skills, swap, and then use those skills – i.e. there was no autoattacking in fire for dps). The way to constantly swap elements was achieved through 30 in arcana, back then the attunement swap cooldowns were a little longer than they are now; I think they used to have a 15 seconds cooldown without 30 in arcana. So 30 in arcana essentially became mandatory.

Why was this ‘auramancer’ meta?
Arcana was essential to nearly all builds, for staff you’d need to go into 20 for blasting staff, there was also the boons on swap trait and evasive arcana. I think with the 30 in arcana being a solid backbone, we didn’t really have any other great trait lines which lead to dumping 10 points into air and 30 into water. Air traits sucked, there was no fresh air. Fire traits sucked as well, persisting flames didn’t give fury, so you really just had pyromancer’s puissance if you decided to go 30 in fire. The lack of good grandmaster traits in fire and air resulted in us being pigeonholed into water and arcana, giving rise to the auramancer. This was positively prescribed and made popular by top pvp/wvw gameplay eles like daphoenix, who even had a detailed guide written on the forums of this build.

And when and how did the shift towards what we have now begin? When and how did the paradigm shift occur?
When they buffed persisting flames, you had more s/x lightning hammer builds and you also got the manly man pure dps staff builds. When they added fresh air, you would be able to stray away from 30 in arcana since you weren’t so dependent on the reduced cooldowns for attunement swapping. As a side note, lightning whip sucked for a long time as well because it had trouble connecting with your target. With the buffing of fresh air, you got d/f fresh air builds rolling and the 30 in arcana mentality was broken. With the dps staff builds, the constantly swapping attunements mentality was broken as well, (for me at least) since I started to camp in fire for dps rather than swapping when it was unnecessary.

Hopefully my insights and experiences as someone who has played since beta and launch helped to show what was going through people’s minds early on but I’m sure different people had different experiences with the evolution of the ele meta, but this was just how mine went and I mentioned the things that affected me the most.

TL;DR – fire and air trait lines sucked in the beginning, everyone went 0/10/0/30/30. Fresh air added, persisting flames buffed lead to 30 in arcana not being a requirement and eventually this evolved into the meta builds today.

I enjoyed the times when there was something to theorycraft, it was like a new frontier. Now, due to the utter lack of content in the game, not only is there nothing to do, but there is also nothing to think about.
Thankfully my real life occupation keeps my brain busy, but I miss the sense of adventure.

Highlight of my time in gw2: playing in fractals up to level 80 with rT guildmates.
Lowpoint: finding out that, contrary to what Anet had told us, fractals had not only a soft cap (AR) but a hard cap as well (level 81), that the challenge was not infinite, and that it had to be removed. Also: the censorship when pointing this out to the devs.

But then I recently saw some member of SC use the lava axe in their record video, so I guess some people still find adventure where they can