Guild Wars 2

My elementalist is only level 41 and I have been playing around with different elites in spvp and pve. I have found that in both I prefer flamesword over anything else.

The elites for the ele seem to be very lack luster to me. Tornado is pretty much useless, the pet thing doesn’t really seem to help and usually easily killed. Not very good for thieves because they can CnD off it.

So I tried running flamesword in spvp and I loved it. The mobility on it is crazy. Lots of aoe and good damage.

I had some questions tho, when running with the flamesword I noticed sometimes it just drops (doesn’t run out of stacks or time). Usually when I mist form or switch attunements in combat, but not all the time.

What is the in’s and out’s of the flamesword? What skills cause it to disappear? Why don’t I see more ele’s using this?

I usually just attune to water and use flame sword so I regen health while using it. I use the heal that gives regen also, so getting HP while using flamesword usually isn’t too hard and with the 3 cantrips, I don’t get caught very often.

Are there any builds for the flamesword specifically? I’m running 0/10/0/30/30 bunker build.

Fiery greatsword is indeed awesome. I use it all the time in WvW. I usually swap all 4 attunements while using fiery greatsword to get benefits of all the boons. I stay in water until attunement cooldowns are ready to swap again.

Fiery greatsword disappears after 60s or after using 15 skills (including anytimer) whatever comes first. The second weapon on the ground also disappears. But you can pick up the second greatsword from the ground before it wears off to get another full 60s/15skills.

Im using 0/10/0/30/30 with a balanced item set. Fire traitline is subpar, so forget about traiting for fiery greatsword.

It works with any build, but if you want to see a lot of damage out of it you’ll have to climb out of your bunker. I know, it’s safe and warm down there, with all those emergency candles, stacks of ramen and porn, but you’re just made of pixels anyway….

I don’t play much sPvP, so my perspective is mostly WvW oriented. I always preferred riding my skateboard along the bike path by the beach to the ramps at the skate-park, it’s the same in video games.

If you can live with it, I’d highly suggest 25 points into air for “weak spot” and taking the “piercing shards” trait in water with a high crit build (at least 30% without fury). Personally I am currently running 0-30-0-30-10 with soldier armors, boon duration runes, knight’s trinkets with rubies, and knight’s/valkyrie’s weapons. I can’t make anything like this build with the limited amulet/jewel combos in sPvP, which is one reason I avoid it generally, except to test general ideas.

As far as using the big flamin’ sword, it’s all in the positioning. I’d disable the auto-attack so you don’t burn charges, the #1 is good in some cases but you don’t want it channeling all the time. #2 just sucks, takes forever to cast and makes one pitiful little lava font, don’t use it on anything but downed players. Try to achieve the flaming blender effect, it’s all in the positioning (much like many fun things).

The only time I’ve seen it disappear other than from timing out or using all charges was going into mist form. That will do it every time. I don’t know if it’s a bug (hope so). Sometimes it will randomly stay in your hands after the timer runs out, I’ve run around with one for quite a while just for looks this way.

I’ve run into a few Eles using the flamesword in sPvP tourneys….

They died pretty quick though so I didn’t get to see it in action for that long

/shrug

I love the greatsword but the pet is awesome too. Just keep healing it with your water heals and you can keep it up. great for putting pressure on guardians or bunkers on points if you just keep healing it since they probably cant out damage your heals (and if theyre not that good, probably wont focus the pet either).

Fiery GS though for WvW is awesome. Especially when you are running with a zerg and fighting other zergs since your whirling attack and AOE can tag a lot of people = lots of loot bags.

it would be nice if there was a build for elementalists to effectively use conjured weapons, and i dont mean situational. kind of like engineers with kits.

exos.6831:

it would be nice if there was a build for elementalists to effectively use conjured weapons, and i dont mean situational. kind of like engineers with kits.

Depends what you mean by effective, and where. There was a thread somewhere about a Lightning Hammer dungeon speed run dps build, but I can’t find it at the moment. I tried a variation of it out in the practice lounge of the mists and was getting 5k crits on auto-attacks on the heavy target golems. The person who made the build did some math to show that it could out-dps a 100blades warrior. Not sure how really viable it is, but hey, it’s pretty subjective in PvE.

If the mobs die, and you don’t, it’s a good build. WvW and s/tPvP are different environments though. It’s hard to want to take any utility other than cantrips there, due to the low-hp/low-armor nature of the class.

The shield conjure needs a serious buff and the lava axe could use some work as well, to make conjure builds more useful.

The best fix, IMO, would be to combine all conjures (except the elite, it’s fine) into one utility that functions like the glyphs (even make it a glyph so traits synergize better). One slot skill that summons one conjure weapon based on attunement.

by “effectively” i basically meant make them more part of an elementalist… maybe even extend the duration or uses.

Try having a boss against a wall, and use fiery rush up against him without having anything targeted, the numbers are astounding.

exos.6831:

by “effectively” i basically meant make them more part of an elementalist… maybe even extend the duration or uses.

Number of uses isn’t so much the problem as much as the cooldowns on the skills are. You end up either prematurely dropping the weapon every time, or waiting on 20 second cooldowns, which no elementalist has the time for in combat.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

exos.6831:

by “effectively” i basically meant make them more part of an elementalist… maybe even extend the duration or uses.

Number of uses isn’t so much the problem as much as the cooldowns on the skills are. You end up either prematurely dropping the weapon every time, or waiting on 20 second cooldowns, which no elementalist has the time for in combat.

True, which is why conjured weapons are to be treated as utility spells and nothing more. I often pop greatsword when attacking keep doors, because the damage just can’t be matched by anything else. Ice Bow is also good for clearing walls… #5 hurts… a lot. I’ve been on the receiving end of it as a Guardian a couple of times and I had to move or get downed.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Number of uses isn’t so much the problem as much as the cooldowns on the skills are. You end up either prematurely dropping the weapon every time, or waiting on 20 second cooldowns, which no elementalist has the time for in combat.

I often find myself running out of uses before the 1 minute is over. Generally its a matter of how much I use the anytimer. FG 1 does great damage compared to the anytimers of our real weapons.

But the greatest part of FG is Fiery Whirl. 900 range okittens cd is awesome. Keep in mind that you cannot be hit while whirling around. So you can use whirl to evade hits. You can also combine whirl with FG5:

- whirl through your enemy
- as soon as you cross the enemies, press FG5 + click on yourself
- FG5 will then immediately be triggered when whirl ends

I would equip fiery greatsword 100% of the time, if I could.

Fiery greatsword is pretty excellent for WvW.

As was mentioned, you can queue up skills while whirling. FG5 is one, and you can actually cast it right behind you as you go so it hits the same people as the whirl. You can also have your whirl hit the same person twice by using lightning flash in the middle of the animation (takes some practice).

As you are whirling, you can also turn your camera around and queue up FG4 to run back through the people you whirled through seconds earlier.

Quite a bit of fun, except when the auto attack is sent back your way due to retaliation, etc. Then it burns!

teg.1340:

I often find myself running out of uses before the 1 minute is over. Generally its a matter of how much I use the anytimer. FG 1 does great damage compared to the anytimers of our real weapons.

But the greatest part of FG is Fiery Whirl. 900 range okittens cd is awesome. Keep in mind that you cannot be hit while whirling around. So you can use whirl to evade hits. You can also combine whirl with FG5:

- whirl through your enemy
- as soon as you cross the enemies, press FG5 + click on yourself
- FG5 will then immediately be triggered when whirl ends

I would equip fiery greatsword 100% of the time, if I could.

I was mostly referring to the utility skill conjures though reading through my post again, I can see how you’d make that mistake. The greatsword has comparatively small cooldowns to the other conjures.

I still think conjures should not lock out your attunements – FGS should replace only your fire skills, not all 20 skills. Or conjures ought to last until dropped, one or the other. In their present state, conjures are terrible.

You lose FGS if you dive into water or use mist form.