Elementalists who won't make use of their Elements
1 2
Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun. If you are in a good dungeon group your biggest asset would be dps and with your “support” builds many of you probably aren’t providing much. If you aren’t good enough to stay alive in just fire then you probably need to swap attunements often to make up for your mistakes. Sure it is boring sitting in one attunement, but it is the most effective dps (for staff).
Side note: I think the lack of parsers are why so many of these people like eles. They are probably the people that were never competitive for top dps in raids, etc in other mmos. Without parsing, they are happy to be oblivious to the fact that eles are inferior to the other classes and are simply mesmerized by our pretty spell effects.
staff is great as long as you dont pull agro from more than one mob.
occasionally switching over to healing is good but the rest of the support in staff is not that useful in group combat.
Now switch over over to something else like dagger/focus or my favorite scepter focus and things change.
Now i can blind mobs and knock them down and burst damage from fire.
I can also protect myself when things get dicey or i need to go do a combat res.
but im only 36 on my ele so what do i know. I only have one or two good ac exp runs done. I still feel a little unsure of what to use best where.
its a complicated class. but i feel pretty strongly that defense and utility is better than DPS in most every situation in the game. Not to down play DPS that much as its still important. But if im not down or dead im still doing DPS and in 8 secs an ele can do a lot of damage and take none while under attack by multiple enemies.
I run a 20 fire, 10 air, 10 earth, 30 arcane D/D build, I switch attunements a lot and I can’t play another class for more than a few minutes because I get bored.
Arcane line is what make me love so much this profession and more specifically because of Renewed Stamina and Evasive Arcana: the former gives me permanent vigor buff, I can dodge so much i end most of the fights against slow attacking mobs without being hit.
Evasive Arcana is OP, yes i said it, an elementalist’s skill is overpowered: for each attunement it gives a different effect while dodging (hello renewed stamina!) and a blast combo finisher!
Fire has the same effect of staff n3: aoe flaming burst, this means i can use Burning Speed, dodge back on the trail of flames getting 3 stacks of might and setting mobs on fire for a quick Firegrab.
Earth deals some nice damage, plus bleed and cripple, the only cripple on D/D beside Churning Earth’s (wich is pretty useless if the enemy is coming for you).
Air will aoe blind mobs. Lifesaver.
Now water attunement’s effect is ridiculously strong: it will aoe heal and remove a condition. Yes that’s d/d’s water fifth’s skill on a 10 second cd plus blast finisher.
This is what i was looking for when i rolled an Elementalist and this is partialy in line with ANet’s description of the profession: versatility. Each attunement with Evasive Arcana is boosted and has a purpose beside spamming cds.
Took me more than 80 levels to discover this gem, I tested out every build you could imagine: conjure, staff dps, support, scepter/dagger, scepter/focus… i struggled with most of them, found good use for some, but this one is what I’m going to use for most of the time on my Elementalist.
(edited by Mik Hell.8206)
Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun. If you are in a good dungeon group your biggest asset would be dps and with your “support” builds many of you probably aren’t providing much. If you aren’t good enough to stay alive in just fire then you probably need to swap attunements often to make up for your mistakes. Sure it is boring sitting in one attunement, but it is the most effective dps (for staff).
Side note: I think the lack of parsers are why so many of these people like eles. They are probably the people that were never competitive for top dps in raids, etc in other mmos. Without parsing, they are happy to be oblivious to the fact that eles are inferior to the other classes and are simply mesmerized by our pretty spell effects.
And another bad elementalist claiming that if you tunnel vision fire attunement you’re better. DPS isn’t everything and sitting in fire doesn’t top your charts. Blast combos > fireball spam every second of a fight.
I’d switch more often, if switching back didn’t have such a long cooldown. I don’t understand why that’s there.
Unless it is paired with Soothing Disruption, Lightning Flash is basically an extra dodge and is not nearly as useful as either Mist Form or Armor of Earth.
Agreed with Mist Form, disagreed with Armor of Earth. Lightning Flash is on a way shorter cooldown(half the cooldown, actually) than Armor of Earth, an extra dodge is better than just a short duration stability and protection.
burning retreat
… Really?
Yes really, Burning Retreat grants invincibility like dodge roll does. Rolls you back slightly further, too.
and signet of restoration
REALLY? The Glyph is far superior for reactive healing. The Signet of Restoration, ironically, doesn’t really give you that much support unless you have a great deal of +healing (or are in a DE where you rarely get hit). In all other situations, Glyph is superior.
You would be better off if you argued that the staff has a larger cast time on pretty much every skill compared to daggers, hence the slow activation of skills would have prevented the full utilization of the signet. The signet is actually a lot better for a mobile daggers build over the glyph.
The thing you seem to be missing is that when you’re dying all of the time and going into downed state, you’re not dealing DPS. On top of that, someone has to stop THEIR DPS to get you off of the ground.
I run an almost full damage set and traits (with some survival stats like vit) and switch attunements in dungeons all the time. In outdoors PvE, I hardly switch; I, like you, sit in Fire and DPS mobs down. But in dungeons, where not only do I need to survive, but so do my group members, I switch attunements frequently.
Uh, you do realize that a dungeon group doesn’t generally need more than one support? Who really wants to have 2 or more support eles in a group focusing on healing rather than burning the mobs down before they overrun the group?
First of all, even with 0 healing (why are you running Signet again?), Healing Rain is nothing to be trifled with.
Agreed.
Also, if you used combos effectively, you can start in Earth, use Eruption (which should deal appreciable damage with your gear and traits), quickly switch to Water and chain Geyser + Healing Rain together. Not only will you get healing from Rain and Geyser, but Eruption is a Blast finisher and also perform a very nice AoE heal for your group. Even with 0 healing, you’re looking at 60% health restoration AT LEAST for your GROUP that you just did (and don’t forget that HR removes conditions).
Waste of time, refer to the part where there are sufficient support elements in the group as it is. He would have been better off focusing on burning down targets rather than attempting to heal. Leave that to the lvl 50 ele to heal and provide support, and not overlap roles.
I also don’t see how you would never think to switch out of Fire to snare mobs, because Burning Retreat does not cut it in dungeons. If you are dying a great deal then you aren’t being an asset to your group.
Why does he? A single support staff ele is more than sufficient to keep mobs controlled. Burning Retreat is better than a dodge roll, and dodge rolls are more than sufficient to survive encounters where there are enough support elements, once again, refer to that part.
Don’t be mad at the OP for being frustrating that someone was playing poorly and said person decided to call HIM the noob.
Why shouldn’t he be? He is more than entitled to be mad at the OP who played his role poorly, came to the forums seeking to lambaste someone who didn’t help cover his inadequacies and lack of skill.
I can walk into a dungeon on my staff ele and singlehandedly control and debuff every mob appropriately by myself without the help of another player, leaving the rest of my group to focus on burning said mobs down.
If anything, the OP is the one who needs to be lambasted for being unskilled. The lvl 74 ele is right to admonish the OP for trying to teach him something the OP himself is terrible at.
(edited by Pikafan.3792)
I’d switch more often, if switching back didn’t have such a long cooldown. I don’t understand why that’s there.
Spec into arcane, it lowers the CD between switching plus gives you access to party boosting traits.
Playing one element does NOT make you noob.
Its the inability to adapt to a scenario that makes you noob. This does not necessarily mean you need to switch to all elements as soon as they are ready to be effective in all situations.
2 ppl who think they’re good… get over yourselves.
Element swapping is ONE way to play elementalists but NOT the only way…
Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun. If you are in a good dungeon group your biggest asset would be dps and with your “support” builds many of you probably aren’t providing much. If you aren’t good enough to stay alive in just fire then you probably need to swap attunements often to make up for your mistakes. Sure it is boring sitting in one attunement, but it is the most effective dps (for staff).
Side note: I think the lack of parsers are why so many of these people like eles. They are probably the people that were never competitive for top dps in raids, etc in other mmos. Without parsing, they are happy to be oblivious to the fact that eles are inferior to the other classes and are simply mesmerized by our pretty spell effects.And another bad elementalist claiming that if you tunnel vision fire attunement you’re better. DPS isn’t everything and sitting in fire doesn’t top your charts. Blast combos > fireball spam every second of a fight.
And another misguided elementalist that thinks pointless attunement swapping to use mediocre abilities makes him good. That’s why I want a parser so I can say, “Hey moron, while you were switching attunements for no reason I doubled your dps! L2P!”.
I swap attunements when it is NEEDED, not just because they are up. Word of the day for you: efficiency.
This couldn’t be any more inaccurate. Not leaving fire while meteor storm, lava font and flame burst are on CD to hit earth and drop erruption/shockwave, then to water to cast ice spike, then back to fire is just playing your class about as poorly as you can.
Plus if you aren’t utilizing your own burst combo fields with erruption then you’re even more unprepared not only on how to play your class properly but in how to provide proper boons for your party.
You still get the dmg boosts to targets burning in any attunement.
Lava font has 4 sec CD. When you switch attunement, you get 15 sec CD. So your DPS is greatly reduced for 11 seconds if you have 20 or more points in fire. This is because most traits are specialized and support only one attunement. And all traits for attunement swap are arcane, but arcane tree doesn’t provide any stats, so it’s almost useless for DPS build.
So attumenet swap is needed when it’s dinamic boss fight and you need buffs from attunement switch. But switch when you need high DPS for standing target is just pointless.
(edited by Kreit.4709)
Element swapping is ONE way to play elementalists but NOT the only way…
these people still exist?
In my opinion this whole discussion is pointless unless someone can proof their point.
I think that EVERYONE should play a game the way he gets the most FUN from it.
And if you like just staying in one attunement it is fine. It is nt important if you do more damage or not. ( still not proven what is best to maximize the damage)
I swap attunements to cleanse 2 conditions from my whole team. Just from swapping.
I swap attunements to quickly pop long-lasting swiftness on my whole team.
I swap attunements to reflect projectiles, allowing me to clean A LOT of trash mobs with just one aura skill.
I intentionally stay in something else and swap attunements before a fight to provide everyone a stack of might – and the first stack gives you most.
If i were to maximise my DPS while staying on one attunement, fire, occasionally popping air/earth for some control if needed, i would play scepter/dagger – and i sometimes do. S/D fire skill outclass the staff’s DPS by a mile.
If you’re sitting on staff’s fire and talk about ‘parsers showing my uber mega l33t DPS’, you’re doing something VERY wrong.
Perma chill on bosses means facetanking them by the whole team, even the squishiest thieves, because the bosses’ DPS and annoyances are halved.
Chill/cripple/daze on annoying groups, like the Leurent fight, is a life-saver.
If your more DPS-oriented (aka non-elementalist) teammates don’t have to dodge that often, slot that many defensive utilities or worry about conditions on them that much, your WHOLE TEAM can get much higher DPS than you’d get if you were just a fire-sitting staff ele.
A staff ele that doesn’t swap attunements is a bad ele.
If you want glass cannon DPS build, go S/D.
Also:
“But switch when you need high DPS for standing target is just pointless.”
I believe you are simply oblivious to DPS-boosting combos like Eruption quickly covered by Lava Font, granting 3 stacks of might to all your melee allies. Also, keeping perma chill on boss > dealing damage with A STAFF, because not only eles are not the damage dealers right now, but the staff is not devised to be a single-target damage dealer.
.
(edited by drkn.3429)
elementalist who just stay in one stance? they MAKE you people? heres a ticket BACK to world of warcraft. go have fun with your pandas.
Im all arcane… should I stay in ARCANE stance??
summon my ARCANE elemental?
tell you the truth, arcane spells arent even on my BAR.
but i must say i really DO enjoy the 15 stacks of might I get by using my blast finishers from switching from fire to earth. and then the fury i get by switching to air and putting on ice aura. so i wind up putting my damage out in air…
who cares about 10% more damage? Ill take my 15 stacks of might over your 10% damage.
who cares about 10% more damage? Ill take my 15 stacks of might over your 10% damage.
Finally, someone who knows how attunement switching works on staves. The only thing you forgot to mention is that it’s AREA might…so your whole party gets the bonus if you’re good.
FInd me a fire ele that can outdps 15 stacks of might on the entire TEAM, and I’ll concede that staying in 1 element may be better.
Also, there’s the fabulous Sigil of Battle, which grants you might just for switching attunements, the vulnerability from static field combos, the snares that make enemies easier to catch from water, etc…
Staying in 1 element is fine, but don’t claim for a second that you’re more useful than someone who does not, because it’s simply not true.
If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.
Some of the original discussion was related to staffs in dungeons so your comments about S/D are pointless since my posts were only related to staff. I think many eles pointlessly switch attunements and mash buttons thinking they are good. Don’t confuse attunement switching with skill. Since ele attunements have almost no synergy you actually lose TONS of dps in staff by switching. This isn’t needed on trash mobs aka 80-90% of dungeons unless you are in a crappy group. Is it boring? YES!
Do I switch on bosses? Yes, a lot. Do I switch attunements when I run S/D? Yes, more frequently than staff due to the long fire cooldowns. Do I switch attunements in spvp with my D/D build? Tons. Do I switch for no reason so I can feel needed and warm and fuzzy because I gave the group an unneeded 1k heal? No.
(edited by elchulo.3148)
You’re still missing the point then – if you want to sit on one attunement and dish out damage to mow through trash faster, swap to S/D for that group – i guess you already have an exotic S/D set aside of a staff, so it’s no biggie to open inventory and do so. You’re kittening yourself by staying in fire on the staff because S/D set is much better if you really want to do it (and you can stack 15 mights and dish out even more AoE damage with fire/earth on S/D). If mowing through trash asap without cycling is what rocks your boat, just don’t use staff for those encounters.
.
I don’t understand the people who only stay in 1 element primarily. You have instant access to 15 more skills, but refuse to? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
The only times I played with only 1 Element at a time was below level 10, just to get used to the skill sets.
Just who the hell do you think I am!?
I don’t understand how many people make this argument over and over. Why don’t they just go to the highest lvl zone they can go and test by doing just fire vs bleeding (earth) then fire and see which kills mobs faster. Switching is better and this is only 1 aspect which is dps. Staying fire lacks of other benefits such as crowd control, boons, etc. I stay fire only when fight becomes raid style on dynamic events.
Elementalist lover since GW1. It’s the only profession I play!
Just because we have access to 20 skills doesn’t make them all good. Many are worthless.
Would you people please learn how to read. We were saying in DUNGEONS it can be more efficient aka more dps to stay in fire for STAFF. If we had parsers I would show you. We switch AS NEEDED not “just because”.
Regular mobs are completely different than dungeon mobs (way less HPs) so your proposed test is pointless. I don’t use staff for regular pve either unless it’s aoe.
(edited by elchulo.3148)
Too bad they don’t have parsers or it would show that staying in fire with staff would way outperform all of your unneeded attunement swapping just for fun.
Huh?
Assume you’ve specced fire, all-out. You blow your cooldowns. In your world, you spam 1 for awhile doing puppy damage waiting for the cooldowns to dome back.
In another world, you switch. In the 15s (un-traited) that fire is cooling down, you switch to a couple of the others and blow a few heavy cooldowns, then merrily switch back to fire and continue.
This is completely ignoring the strategy of tossing the most combo fields you can, btw. You could toss 1 from fire, 2 from water, 2 from earth, and 1 from air in pretty short order. Get the timing right (e.g. use the water fields and announce on vent/TS/mumble so everyone knows), and you have something smart. Sure, your dps may not be top, but the number of buffs you’ll create for the group is pretty high. It’s not a way I want to play personally, but ignoring it as your post seems to do is silly, IMO.
-Jeff
elchuloSince ele attunements have almost no synergy you actually lose TONS of dps in staff by switching
Sure, Eruption + Lava Font…no synergy. Static Field + Stoning…no synergy.
elchuloJust because we have access to 20 skills doesn’t make them all good. Many are worthless.
Would you people please learn how to read. We were saying in DUNGEONS it can be more efficient aka more dps to stay in fire for STAFF. If we had parsers I would show you.
But that would be ignoring the incredible synergy the staff Elementalist has with other professions due to combo fields. A ranger shooting through static field will cause enough vulnerability to make your whole team deal more damage (25% vulnerability for 5 players means your fire dps would have to be 125% better than other attunements just to catch up).
The staff elementalist is a COMBO player. The whole weapon revolves around making all sorts of combos, both with your team and with your own skills. You cannot measure it purely by comparing dps, because that’s not what the staff is about.
Until you learn the value of comboing, you’ll not be able to use the staff the way it was intended. In which case you’re probably better off staying in fire, as you’ll hinder your team the least…
If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.
Lava font has 4 sec CD. When you switch attunement, you get 15 sec CD. So your DPS is greatly reduced for 11 seconds if you have 20 or more points in fire. This is because most traits are specialized and support only one attunement. And all traits for attunement swap are arcane, but arcane tree doesn’t provide any stats, so it’s almost useless for DPS build.
So attumenet swap is needed when it’s dinamic boss fight and you need buffs from attunement switch. But switch when you need high DPS for standing target is just pointless.
Or 9 seconds if you’re spec’d properly into arcane. Eruption does well over 10k damage in 6 seconds and is a blast finisher which is vastly superior to standing there derping it out in fire.
I’m going to have to go with:
For fire in general, staying in that attunement for dps reasons makes sense in a lot of scenerios. Mostly in group setting for example. Scepter, Staff or dagger, you have abilities like dragons tooth, lava font and fire breath that are always off cooldown once all your other skills are used, not to mention utilities, make staying in that attunement a better choice.
Also, for staff, fire auto attack is the only decent attack dps wise. AoE burst along with lava font. If your team mates are up in the fray and you are behind range dps’ing, you will do better staying in that attunement.
switching for no reason just to use cooldowns etc isn’t always the best choice.
Any ele that stays in one atunement is bad and needs to L2P or just roll a warrior or guardian.
Elementalists aren’t underpowered but instead are a class for players that like a challenge.
Is GW2 a game or a virtual casino?
Just because we have access to 20 skills doesn’t make them all good. Many are worthless.
Would you people please learn how to read. We were saying in DUNGEONS it can be more efficient aka more dps to stay in fire for STAFF. If we had parsers I would show you. We switch AS NEEDED not “just because”.
Regular mobs are completely different than dungeon mobs (way less HPs) so your proposed test is pointless. I don’t use staff for regular pve either unless it’s aoe.
Problem with your argument is being successful in a dungeon isn’t determined by huge dps. If a mob can catch you and your toon is dead you’re not doing any damage.
Is GW2 a game or a virtual casino?
Lava font has 4 sec CD. When you switch attunement, you get 15 sec CD. So your DPS is greatly reduced for 11 seconds if you have 20 or more points in fire. This is because most traits are specialized and support only one attunement. And all traits for attunement swap are arcane, but arcane tree doesn’t provide any stats, so it’s almost useless for DPS build.
So attumenet swap is needed when it’s dinamic boss fight and you need buffs from attunement switch. But switch when you need high DPS for standing target is just pointless.Or 9 seconds if you’re spec’d properly into arcane. Eruption does well over 10k damage in 6 seconds and is a blast finisher which is vastly superior to standing there derping it out in fire.
I said about DPS build (because we was talking about trait specialization and DPS loss due switch attunements), what means 30 points in fire and trait bonuses are specialized for one attunement. 30 points in arcane means no points in fire, and this is not pure DPS build (or just not DPS build). So in this case you have stable DPS in different attunements and good bonuses for it’s swap. But arcane tree doesn’t provide any stats, as i said.
People should remember trying to stay alive in a dungeon should be top prioity, there is no way for heavy armour classes to direct agro onto themselves. Assuming everyone does the same DPS if you go down thats not just your damage that is taken out of the combat but also that of the teammate trying to res you – DPS goes down to 3/5 of the original if one member goes down. Stay alive and no one needs to res.
If you have agro from a melee enemy stay away by crippling/chilling or using swiftness them. If they are ranged cast Magnetic Feild (earth 3) and reflect the damage (this took a hell of a chunk out of Eir’s health in TA).
If you use all the skills properly and adapt to the situation regardless of where you put your attributes you will play better as an ele.
Because our traits are poorly designed, and Arcane becomes mandatory for switching. Also, how would switching to earth save someone, if they have no points in earth? Did I miss some innate toughness or something? You need 5 points in it for the massive (lol) 1 toughness per level. I guess they could have the protection on Earth attunement trait.
(edited by Avatara.1042)
Lava font has 4 sec CD. When you switch attunement, you get 15 sec CD. So your DPS is greatly reduced for 11 seconds if you have 20 or more points in fire. This is because most traits are specialized and support only one attunement. And all traits for attunement swap are arcane, but arcane tree doesn’t provide any stats, so it’s almost useless for DPS build.
So attumenet swap is needed when it’s dinamic boss fight and you need buffs from attunement switch. But switch when you need high DPS for standing target is just pointless.Or 9 seconds if you’re spec’d properly into arcane. Eruption does well over 10k damage in 6 seconds and is a blast finisher which is vastly superior to standing there derping it out in fire.
See, this is the problem with our trees. ‘Mandatory 30 arcane points’. It is ridiculous.
All the arguments for remaining in one element only take damage into consideration when every class—especially guardian and elementalist—is expected to do far more than just damage.
Any child can spam damage; that’s boring.
i5-2500K 4.2GHz | 8GB Mushkin DDR3-2133 | Gigabyte Z68XP-UD4, GTX580-882/2033
Crucial m4 128GB SSD (64GB SRT cache) | WD 2TB 2002FAEX | Antec Twelve Hundred
When I was your age, I could outrun a centaur…until I took an arrow to the knee
Crucial m4 128GB SSD (64GB SRT cache) | WD 2TB 2002FAEX | Antec Twelve Hundred
When I was your age, I could outrun a centaur…until I took an arrow to the knee
Anybody want to take these arguments to the field? Maybe agree on some sort of challenge (fastest clearing of an area, PvP victory, or whatever), have the advocates of switching get together and select a champion or three while the advocates of single-element do the same, and see who wins? Maybe throw in another class for those who are convinced Elementalists are too weak?
I honestly don’t know the answer. I’ve never been a powergamer; I just run water because i like water (though I will be experimenting with swapping now that I’ve read this thread). :p But empirical testing trumps pointless argument every time.
1 2