Guild Wars 2

ive tryed, d/d, d/f s/d s/f staff and every other weapon if im forgetting one but it seems the ONLY way to play this class is to be support tank, wtf happened to mages being the nukes u cant even call it a glass cannon anymore its more like a…. tissue paper squirt gun QQ

anyone know any ok hybrid tanky/dps builds?

ele is fine on every set trust me…
The elementalist is the most powerful solo profession in the game right now…right now believe me or not I can win 1vs1 against every profession using d/d or s/f, sure 2vs1 on ele is quite hard but still possible accordingly to the enemy skill level ( yesterday night after another tourny day, I did go to sPvP for some easy kill and I have beaten easily a warrior+engineer on my own from full HP start on both side)

I’ve finally managed to develep a winning strategy against mesmers in 1vs1 using d/d, and now I lose few times to them only if they use MoA form, so got a working strategy against all professions.

You need to find your style and build, study the enemy and you’ll reach a point where you can only lose if outnumbered, if you’d be part of my guild you could go and watch my videos on the forum, outside the guild I don’t share anything really…but just watch these couple of videos, I wasn’t using my common d/d build but rather a s/f variant for testing reasons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1GB1IQckA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlFETjgr3Uc

Some will call me bad, some will call me an elitist jerk…but the truth is that ele doesn’t suck at all, sure some things require attention from the developers ( RTL bug…-_-), I’m afraid if you want to see me you’ll have to join my guild, you’ll see what ele are capable off ( EG… me d/d and guildmate s/d, we did hold off against 5 people for half match…or a video of me,my friend and a thief losing by 1 pt against full team in tournament like 500 to 499..true story, the other 2 guys were just rage quitters who left after we lost both bosses at start).

Don’t give up on ele, it’s truly amazing, I never run out of options in Pvp, random people after playing against/with me invite me to their guild/group ( currently I’m member of 3 PvP guilds)…just keep trying, a good ele can beat the crap out of anything out there

Be glad you’ve never played GW1, Elementalists dealt even less damage in the predecessor. ;-)
Are you looking for PvE, Dungeon, W3 or sPvP builds?

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

You are right. Support tank is the only way. Never go glass cannon or other classes in wvwvw would just pass by you and kill you in the process that’s how weak gc elems are. If you want to go GC better go with thieves or warriors. They are stronger and can survive longer.

So hard to QQ less while we need more glass pew pew.

Alright, I’ve already commented on this to some length in another thread, but after having gone D/D glass cannon in sPvP and PvE alike, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Haven’t done W3 yet since I hit 80 and started gearing. I’ve tried more durable specs, but they’re not for me. I am as vulnerable as it is possible to be.

You can facemelt creatures in Orr in 4 seconds without their laying a finger on you. You can decimate a point in stalemate. I don’t know where these rumors come from that “ele can’t burst” or “ele is plenty glass not enough cannon.” I really don’t.

I would advise, though, that if you go berserker’s gear, be sure your fingers can keep up. If you’re slower, you will probably die very quickly. A normal kill in PvE might just take 3 seconds or less, but in that time frame, I’ll have pressed 9 buttons. Compare that to a warrior’s quickness/100 blades combo, which does a metric crapton of damage but requires 3 buttons (quickness buff, stun/charge move, 100b).

You have to work for your damage as ele glass cannon, but it pays off in spades. I might suggest going to the mist and using the training dummies and sparring npc’s to hone your combos.

@Arheundel.
You almost died in 1vs1 with noob thief. Why noob? Because HS spam for all initiative points when you in mist form. Ele is fine against noobs. But you shown us, even against noobs ele is hard to play. And you fight against dps build for 1:30-1:40 with your funny damage.
@LordXy
If you are not GC in WvW, you are almost useless at siege or wall defence. So…

Yeah, going glass cannon isn’t the best idea. Ele gets plenty glassy, but no cannon. Better off traiting for survival and gearing for a more balanced stat spread. Check out the Hydrospike. The trait set works with pretty much any weapon set, but I love my D/D.

I 2v1 regularly on it and come out on top fairly regularly. Yeah, sometimes that Thief just lands that backstab while the Warrior is 100Bing my face off, but if I play right I really do feel quite sturdy, and comboing correctly can net a lot of damage. Biggest problem is how easy it is to avoid, but if you can get an immobilize off before a Fire Grab while they’re burning, well, it hurts.

I like Valk’s ammy/zerker jewel with 2x Water, 2x Monk, and 2x Prot uptime runes. Can get 80%~ uptime on prot, 100% uptime on Fury and Swiftness, and easily maintain 10+ stacks of Might throughout a fight with around 5k in heals without using your healing skill. Fire Grab crits for 3-6k, Churning Earth similarly. Try Sigil of Earth if you need help landing those FGs. Mist Form has some nice uses, but I find the CD (and the fact that the trait is bugged) makes it less desirable in some situations.

This is for 5v5 or 8v8, never tried it in WvW or PvE. I can’t imagine it does too incredibly well during keep fights with it being melee range in WvW.

I build Glass Cannon Staff and just hide in the back pew pewing things. It’s kinda boring though, Lava Font + fire AA does the most dps with staff builds. It does do a strong amount of sustained dps and it’s all AoE, even the AA has a small AoE.

Said it already will say it again.

Spec defensively or die. That’s it.

@Arheundel.
You almost died in 1vs1 with noob thief. Why noob? Because HS spam for all initiative points when you in mist form. Ele is fine against noobs. But you shown us, even against noobs ele is hard to play. And you fight against dps build for 1:30-1:40 with your funny damage.

^this.
Arhuendel is always in these threads telling anyone and everyone complaining about the state of the Ele to “L2P” and that the class is awesome, he can 1v1 any other class.

Generally I agree with him that the Ele is mostly fine, I’d like to see our bugs fixed and perhaps a tweak to our downed state and we’d be more than fine, but he always comes across as a total elitist in all his posts, so when he presented these two videos, I watched them like a hawk. Needless to say, not impressed.

If his intent with those two videos was to show how powerful the Ele was, he failed miserably. Both of those “duels” were horribly played. He barely took down a ridiculously noob thief in 1v1 when said thief spammed all his initiative away into his MIST FORM (it’s not hard to see mist form). First, the thief spams into his reflective shield, then he spams into mist form. Never once does Arheundel put up rock barrier or use dust devil to blind. He doesn’t use lightning strike (instant while channeling/moving) a couple times during air attunement. He doesn’t put up fire shield when he first moves to fire to use the DT combo. He DOES use water trident to heal himself (good move) but neglects to use freezing gust or comet while he’s in there. And finally stomps the thief while the noob neglects to shadow escape or smoke bomb. Yeah, leet skills.

The fight with the ranger is almost as bad. He uses blinding flash while swirling winds is still up (projectiles are destroyed, why blind? save it), moves to earth and again neglects to put up rock barrier or use dust devil when his magnetic wave ends. Moves back to air (again doesn’t use blinding flash, the instant blind on the 10s cooldown) then whiffs on a DT combo cause he mindless spams the button presses without making sure gale actually hit. Then he pops “mist form” as an “oh kitten” cause the DT combo failed. At least he uses fire shield this time. Moves back to earth (no barrier, no dust devil) but cause his auto attack isn’t turned on only gets off two stone shards in about 8 seconds. That ranger was awful, not as bad as the thief, but not very good to say the least.

Again, needless to say I will not be hunting down his guild to get leet tips from him, I might have played better as a level 1 rabbit. Man, if this is the level of competition in tPvP (I’ve neglected tournaments so far cause I wanted to hone my skills first) kitten I needs to sign me up for some tournies and rolfstomp some noobs. But alas, these are probably isolated incidents…

….haters gonna hate.lol just as expected….and anyway they’re no worth of being even answered, keep hating and QQ in the little dark corner over there

Rhyse.8176:

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

Eicherjw.3926:

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

I highly doubt that you can 3v1 DECENT people with a glass cannon build.

Eicherjw.3926:

Rhyse.8176:

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

Whatever you’ll ever say…it’s because you fight baddies, certainly all people complaining about ele must have fought against people from highly renowed teams like : Tsunami, Paradigm,SuperSquad therefore they can tell you that ele suck
(sarcasm off)

Eicherjw.3926:

Rhyse.8176:

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

Wrecks people or npc mobs? If you’re talking spvp I don’t believe you can 1 v 2 anyone unless they are afk or horrendous. It takes my thief about 3-5 seconds to kill a glass cannon ele and I’m not great with him. Eles are weak especially in glass cannon mode.

elchulo.3148:

Eicherjw.3926:

Rhyse.8176:

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

Wrecks people or npc mobs? If you’re talking spvp I don’t believe you can 1 v 2 anyone unless they are afk or horrendous. It takes my thief about 3-5 seconds to kill a glass cannon ele and I’m not great with him. Eles are weak especially in glass cannon mode.

I’m talking WvW. I don’t SPvP. I spot a group, RTL in, updraft, burning speed, ring of fire, fire grab, arcana burst, earth attune, run away, start churning earth, teleport in, cast churning earth, earth 4, earth 2. Rinse, repeat. I have my all my attunements bount to the D-pad of my nostromo and 1-5 on my mouse. Mist form and the trait for arcana shield are your friend.

I’m talking WvW

Congrats on being able to 1v3 people who are undergeared/levelbuffed and/or who might not even be able to see you on their screen due to culling.

You could run any build you felt like in WvW and find reasonable success with it. It’s a numbers game, and the class you play has very little bearing on the outcome of engagements that involve more than 15 people on each side.

There are plenty of good builds that do damage. You’re going to have to take some defensive utilities and know how to use them and know how to use your dodge, but that’s just part of the game. And by the way, everyone (not just us) is super easy to blow up when they build glass cannon.
Also, this is Guild Wars, not WoW. The Elementalist is not a Mage. That’s probably part of the reason that they chose specifically NOT to call it a mage. If you expect it to be a WoW fire mage (like most people seem to expect for some reason that I don’t understand), you’re going to be disappointed. Guild Wars is its own game. It’s allowed to do its own thing with its own archetypes. That’s part of what makes it an interesting and refreshing game. Don’t project your ideas onto it. Use it as it’s given to you.

Eicherjw.3926:

elchulo.3148:

Eicherjw.3926:

Rhyse.8176:

No character should ever build as a glass cannon, ele or otherwise. It doesn’t work well in gw2 because each player must have a certain level of indepence. The question is the proportion of DPS/Tank, not the presence or absence of them.

Are you crazy? My glass cannon build wrecks people. I can 2v1/3v1 and drop them all before I drop.

Wrecks people or npc mobs? If you’re talking spvp I don’t believe you can 1 v 2 anyone unless they are afk or horrendous. It takes my thief about 3-5 seconds to kill a glass cannon ele and I’m not great with him. Eles are weak especially in glass cannon mode.

I’m talking WvW. I don’t SPvP. I spot a group, RTL in, updraft, burning speed, ring of fire, fire grab, arcana burst, earth attune, run away, start churning earth, teleport in, cast churning earth, earth 4, earth 2. Rinse, repeat. I have my all my attunements bount to the D-pad of my nostromo and 1-5 on my mouse. Mist form and the trait for arcana shield are your friend.

WvW is soft though, it’s not that hard when you’re running with a zerg

Pinkerton – no profession is supposed to have designated roles so you’re wrong if you say it isn’t/can’t be a mage. The Anet description makes it sound like a mage. If I spec full glass cannon it SHOULD play like a mage, but it doesn’t. That’s the whole problem!!! Other classes can do glass cannon like thief but eles can’t. So we have the lowest base HPs for no good reason.

Arc.9374:

I’m talking WvW

Congrats on being able to 1v3 people who are undergeared/levelbuffed and/or who might not even be able to see you on their screen due to culling.

You could run any build you felt like in WvW and find reasonable success with it. It’s a numbers game, and the class you play has very little bearing on the outcome of engagements that involve more than 15 people on each side.

Congrats on assuming I roll with a zerg. I usally run alone or with 1-2 other people. I gank small groups of people trying to take supply camps or reform with their zerg. Also, undergeared/levelbuffed people are becoming less and less with time. So, once again, thanks for assuming I am using people’s disadvantage to my advantage.

If you have 1-2 friends with you it’s not a 1v3. If they’re already trying to kill something else it’s not a 1v3.

If they’ve slotted movespeed utilities, blown cooldowns or otherwise altered their build in order to reach the zerg faster then it’s a 1v3 with the odds heavily stacked in your favour, since you’re ambushing them in a sub-optimal setting with them at a disadvantage before the fight even begins.

On top of that, which I forgot to mention in my initial response, you have the benefit of vastly increased Power or Precision or Crit damage stats via PvE gear compared to an sPvP environment.

So I can believe you might be able to rofl through that combo unharmed and get kills, but that’s not how actual pvp works in a balanced environment, since you don’t get to stack the situation to your advantage in that way, and good players don’t just eat an 11-part combo without dodging, healing, stunbreaking, or otherwise making a mess of your carefully laid plans.

If it’s working for you, it’s because you’re playing against people who have no clue what they’re doing, or who are outmatched before the combat is even initiated.

Arc.9374:

If you have 1-2 friends with you it’s not a 1v3. If they’re already trying to kill something else it’s not a 1v3.

If they’ve slotted movespeed utilities, blown cooldowns or otherwise altered their build in order to reach the zerg faster then it’s a 1v3 with the odds heavily stacked in your favour, since you’re ambushing them in a sub-optimal setting with them at a disadvantage before the fight even begins.

On top of that, which I forgot to mention in my initial response, you have the benefit of vastly increased Power or Precision or Crit damage stats via PvE gear compared to an sPvP environment.

So I can believe you might be able to rofl through that combo unharmed and get kills, but that’s not how actual pvp works in a balanced environment, since you don’t get to stack the situation to your advantage in that way, and good players don’t just eat an 11-part combo without dodging, healing, stunbreaking, or otherwise making a mess of your carefully laid plans.

If it’s working for you, it’s because you’re playing against people who have no clue what they’re doing, or who are outmatched before the combat is even initiated.

Well, I’d SPvP more if SWTOR didn’t ruin that kind of pvp for me. Also, the fact most elementalists have to run support in SPvP proves that our class has major flaws.

lol, after seeying those vids all i can say is my engineer annihilates that ele build, infact the eles are so squishy for me they are easier to kill than necros, and i mean MUCH easier, ive only seen 1 ele which won a battle vs my engineer friend, the engineer was focused on pure dps but since he had no experience with what eles could cast he kept shooting himself most of the time.

The class isn’t fine, but much of the QQ here is due to build issues, or playstyle.

I 1v1 Thieves often. Late last night a Thief and I were the only two left, so we 1v1’d. I won every single time. I 2v1 Thieves, too. They are so glassy if you can line up just one burst they die. Warriors are a joke with Cleaning Fire and Lightning Flash. Escape every CC, proceed to blow them up. My God I cream my jeans when Burning Speed crits for 4k.

That said, Ele is riddled with bugs, unusable traits, and poor animations. Even WITH Sigil of Earth Fire Grab misses for no reason. It’s not just an animation issue with it. Our numbers are fine, but the bugs need to be fixed, and some skills/animations need to be tweaked. Like Fire Shield – pretty much worthless in its current interation, and stuff like Dragon’s Tooth just have the worst animations ever. Our stuff – and not just damage – is unreliable (RTL) and it makes the entire class suffer.

With all of the UP U-skills and elites, we can’t even build any differently than cantrips or MAYBE signets. Glyphs and Conjures are useless. Thus, anything but a typical 20 Water 20 Arcana cantrip build is basically crap, and if you don’t spec this way you feel underpowered, and understandably so.

Am just telling you this : forget the staff for sPvP, AoE are sort of useles for just 8 people and when most of your spell need a 1-2 cast time people already dodge it with one dodge.

I mean you can try it and see for your self. But I recommend that you keep staff for WvW or PvE

I’ve just finished my exotic zerker’s set, working on runes for it. I play D/D. I still have some work left to go on my gear, but my crit chance is 70% from constant fury and crit damage is 83. Power is just shy of 3k, I believe. Also, my character looks kitten.

Playing Wv3, I make surgical strikes which decimate small groups of enemies, then I head for cover. Mist Form makes sure I survive while Ether Renewal makes sure also that I can run unimpaired. Granted, Mist Form is only every 75 seconds, but I consequently make less risky strikes until it recharges. I was very pleased with its effectiveness.

Also, if you want a huge burst with moderate toughness, go valkyrie set and use Arcane Power. Your sustained DPS will go down, and your burst will go down slightly, but AP will ensure that your initial hits — presumably Fire Attune, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Drake’s Breath, and Fire Grab — will crit 100% of the time. Arcana Trait III may assist your sustained damage.

ArenaNet — FIX RIDE THE LIGHTNING!!!

I played ele since the first beta and i still do almost daily (altho i rerolled)

you can’t be an ele glass cannon, you can be glass but you’re not cannon. The damage is kitten compared to other classes and the survivability… dont even get me started on this

spec defensively as ele or be kittened.. i really wanted to play a glass cannon mage with high risk and high reward, but currently even if you can make it work – the damage isnt at all that great and you literally get 2shotted. Glass cannon thief or warrior is so much better

for the record, scepter/dagger suck incredibly much and are unreliable (almost all of their skills are unreliable) when it comes to pure damage, and staff needs a damage boost/faster animations on several skills

I play ele as my main, but I also play every other class in tourneys/spvp and I can honestly say that ele is the weakest of them all. Ive been 3 shot (literally took 1 sec to do) by backstab thieves when i had 2200 toughness 18k life s/d or d/d spec in tourneys. This should not happen, period.
I decided to try out a full glass cannon build with 30 air, 30 fire, 10 arcane, with might stacking and divinity runes/ sigil of air+ sigil of battle/ beserkers amulet and arcane blast/the other arcane one that shoots missile . The damage was PATHETIC compared to every other class that ive tried a burst build out on. I think I hit a 9k one time with churning earth and the rest of the time I was getting 2-4k crits maybe a 5k crit fire grab?…. in spvp. The damage to survivability ratio just isnt there.
I refuse to run the tank staff build despite how strong it is at staying on a point (doesnt do anything else tho). I’m not saying glass cannon should be only way to go, I just wish running a balanced spec of 2k power 20k health 1650 toughness 12% crit would net the same results as some of my other classes.
The last comment I’d like to make is that it’s nearly impossible to run a successful condition build on an ele. The only viable one would be a burning and burst type build but that’s not really condition focused. WTB amulet with toughness/vita/condition dmg. (even if it does make other classes condy specs OP :P) Right now if u try to run one with an amulet you will either be around 13k life (making condition builds crap on u even with 30 in water) or 1k toughness (making burst builds crap on u). Other classes aren’t punished nearly this harshly.

I’ve been trying different builds as well with elementalist, with all weaponsets.
You can indeed only be a support character.
But hey, I guess that’s where Jon Peters wants us. Perhaps he just needs a good punching bag for his warrior.