How are you doing in HoT PvE?
I play full glass everywhere in PvE. Packs with elites or champs I most often skip if I’m alone. It’s not that it’s impossible to kill a pack like this, but most likely it would take too much time and generally not be rewarding enough. But if you like to try it for the challenge, there are two possible approaches. First, you can change your build for extra survivability. It will make the fight even longer and I imagine the key would be good sustain – you’ll win by outliving the mobs. The second approach which is more to my liking, would be “getting good” – learning the attacks and surviving by not getting hit. If you choose the latter, be prepared to die often while learning. But eventually you learn and get rewarded by a warm fuzzy feeling you’re playing your class properly. Plus you have the added benefit of not having to swap gear/traits every time you change a map.
I have an idea! Why don’t you (fashion.6712), Feanor and I get together some time and run around the HoT maps? We can do events, take turns soloing champions, etc. You can see what full glass can do and at the same time see what a wildly un-meta playstyle like mine can do. If nothing else it will demonstrate the versatility of the class and probably give you some ideas you can use to adapt elementalist to your playstyle.
In the mean time, I advise trying different weapon sets and traits. Staff can deal great damage, but it’s not as bursty as scepter or dagger. Also, much of your damage is locked into ground-targeted area effects and you will often have to negate your range advantage in order to get the most out of these attacks in solo play. Also applicable to solo play, dagger and scepter have much better access to blasts for stacking might.
As for traits, you’re almost certainly going to want to keep tempest in whatever build you play. Overloads are just that good and the other traits/utilities you get are highly useful as well. However, you can still drastically alter the feel of the class by swapping the core trait lines.
Fire and air are a potent damage-dealing combination. But if you’re dying too much, try swapping out one or both trait lines for water and/or earth. Water will greatly increase your healing and condition cleansing potential while earth will take the bite out of incoming damage. I like arcane, but I have a hard time choosing it over the other core trait lines. It would have been easier to take it paired with any of the other two, but tempest is too hard to pass up.
I’ll offer two example builds that I actually use in open world. The first is the “multi-purpose” hybrid build. It features great survivability and retains solid (but not raid-worthy AMAZING!) damage. The second is full on tanky you-can-survive-ANYTHING even if you want to facetank champions. I choose dagger/dagger for my builds because it’s my favorite set, but feel free to look at these as templates you can adapt to whatever you like.
Don’t get too hung up on the stat sets either. Crafting celestial is expensive and there are cheaper ways you can go if you want extra survivability. This is just something I personally use for fun in solo play and if you want a tanky ele that can take on almost anything solo, it’s good for that. Examples of “anything”: all of the HoT hero challenges (except broodmother because you’d want more damage and probably range to overcome her self-healing), all of the bandit champions, the legendary executioner, chak crown, assault on SCAR camp event. Ele can do this stuff solo with the right build!
Ele can do this stuff solo with the right build!
Of course but… why? It’s group content, you most likely will have other players doing the stuff anyway.
Ele can do this stuff solo with the right build!
Of course but… why? It’s group content, you most likely will have other players doing the stuff anyway.
It’s a mystery, Feanor. How could anyone possibly enjoy anything that you don’t personally find worthwhile?
If you find it fun then please, by all means. But like you said, different people tend to like different things.
If you find it fun then please, by all means. But like you said, different people tend to like different things.
As I recall, one of us suggested that their preferred way of playing the class is the “proper” way. And it wasn’t me. So I’m glad you allow for the rest of us to do things our own way.
I never said it’s proper. If I have to label it, it will be “efficient”. Which it is, objectively. If you plan to play a class for a long time, sooner or later you’ll want to be efficient.