Guild Wars 2

I believe the majority of ele players place more emphasis on healing and self sustain rather than improving direct damage and manouvreability during combat.

I’m a GW1 ele veteran and there the only source of healing for the ele was from few enchantments, people were more concerned with actual dmg and control rather than trying to facetank everything.

Maybe many won’t remember it but the initial description for the ele in GW2 was this :

" A highly versatile profession, very strong( not the best) in 1vs1 fights and during assault/support, you won’t be able to survive long on your own against multiple opponents"

The recent nerfs I believe is an attempt by Anet to push ele in this direction, nobody is supposed to be immortal and fight against multiple opponents and I’m not talking from a wvwvw point of view but from a tpvp perspective.

The mist form-ether renewal combo was getting really out of hand, I experienced firsthand these eles zipping in, getting loaded with conditions then mistform/ether renewal away….

Now is the ele useless after these nerfs?..absolutely not, mist form still remain the best skill on my bar:

ressing my ally under heavy fire? NP
getting away when heavy focused by enemy team with their dogs, cats, clones, minions etc etc? NP
out of dodges and about to be sent down by a mesmer/thief? NP

…mistform FOREVER
If you go down for bad use of it…well everybody does mistakes and you must pay for them.

Sure the ele still need help with the fire traits, we need better grandmaster/master traits ( fire embrace/pyromancer alacrity/burning precision are the best ones for me) and some skills need to be buffed:

Scepter
-shatterstone
-dust devil
-ice shard

Staff
-gust
-unsteady ground

Focus
-freezing gust

And of course the conjure utilities ( save the FGS), their stats are far too low to justify any possible use, but for now I’d like to thank Anet for the recent buffs on glyph and signets, the new elemental are amazing( well the lesser elemental are still good only for PvE) and glyph of storm is pretty sick now.

About the weapon sets diversity, in the end I had to accept the fact that every weapon set cannot be good at everything, we can’t have a staff user strong in 1v1 as a d/d..that would be a nightmare to face, likewise we can’t have a dragon’s tooth to land 100% of times, the scepter burst sit in air attunement along with phoenix, that’s more than enough to kill any opponent ( if you’re full burst).
Always start in earth, switch to air when enemy in range for double lightning strike, follow with ring of fire+phoenix and use dragon’s tooth during team fight or when the enemy is out of dodges and stunbreakers.

When I beat somebody, I want them to say :" GG you’re good", rather than " lol you can win because you play that noob profession"

I don’t want Anet to introduce something similar to the KD lock combo like in GW1 where after that I had to quit because 80% of the playerbase were eles spamming KD-shockwave…playing an ele after that was really embarassing

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

It’s easier to play10/30/30 air/water/arcana builds with clerics amulet than an offensive 30/20/20 or 20/30/30 builds with valks or berserker amulet.

I quit pvping after the 2nd month the game was out so I’m sure the meta game is totally different.But personally felt like offensive builds with valks or berserker amulet was always more effective than a clerics elementalist.You could still sustain yourself in a 1v1 for quite awhile .But you could also arrive at point kill someone mist form stomp then leave before the other team realized what happened.

The control aspect of ele is not nearly as effective as it was in gw1 were you could stop a spike with one blinding flash.You could help your front line land a kill by knocking down a monk during a spike or landing a snare on someone trying to kite.

Anet is trying to push ele in an offensive direction, but they are going about it the wrong way.What they should have done was give us a way to get rid of the 40 second cool down on ride the lighting by picking offensive traits.For example if you get grounded with is a 30 point trait you’ll always have a 20 second cool down on ride the lighting.But if you don’t you’ll have to hit someone to get a 20 second cool down on ride the lightning

Alternatively anet could always just reduce the healing power on clerics and shaman amulets and replace it with something else.That would probably be the easiest way to get rid of most bunkers specs.

Explain how a DPS oriented staff Ele is supposed to facetank multiple opponents. Don’t make the mistake of generalizing everything into bunker D/D.

By dps ele i mean scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger.Weapon skill healing,healing ripple ,soothing mist,regen and self healing is more than enough to keep you alive in a 1v1 fight

Smooth Marc.8743:

By dps ele i mean scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger.Weapon skill healing,healing ripple ,soothing mist,regen and self healing is more than enough to keep you alive in a 1v1 fight

Right, sorry I was referring to OP—should have quoted.

Epic.3950:

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

Wrong! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh
People are qqing about the fact that the nerfs hurt non bunker eles more than bunker eles, who can still bunker quite well. Of course idk why I’m explaining this considering your post history in the ele forums clearly shows your think otherwise.

People have yet to experience true bunker eles. D/D is good at staying alive, but focus is many times better at it. It has its drawbacks of course (less damage and mobility), but when it comes down to being unkillable, it’s much better at that.

Maybe some day we all end up playing that just to be able to survive a fight.

Once I finish my PVT gear I’ll go D/F and show you what a real bunker ele can do.
Currently I am that D/D full cleric healer guy but since the last two patches I’ve found that in some situations the D/D cleric build won’t get me through. Problem is that none of the other options I tried so far work either.

I’ve never used a single piece of clerics.

That’s the beauty of the new patch….
Anet wanted more viable builds and less Bunker builds… So they nerfed our escape ability and survivability…. Oh how mysterious because of that people were forced to go more into bunker … how can that be?!
LoL Anet u failed on the whole level! :P

Sceptre and Staff both need faster animations, at the very least.

GW1 Eles could build squishy because they were outsourcing their healing and tanking to other professions and their burst was fast enough to kill targets before they could kill the Ele. You didn’t have to worry about your own health bar so much because that was the Monk’s job. GW2 requires everyone to be able to do everything to some extent which makes it harder to specialize.

In the Ele’s case specifically, their base health and armor are so low that they are way too vulnerable to being one-shot killed if they go too offensive. The profession has a lot of heals and active defenses, though, so loading up on those allows you to outlast most opponents.

Compounding this, the Water and Arcana lines have substantially better traits than the damage lines.

Finally, Ele burst when you do go full DPS is pretty fragile and, consequently, isn’t usually enough to burst through a foe’s active and passive defenses. Eles have good potential numbers but they require landing multiple slow attacks. Since everyone has multiple active defenses, it’s extremely easy for a competent opponent to negate a large portion of your burst, at which point they can turn around and kill you instantly with their much sturdier burst. ANet has been intentionally trying to slow down combat but nothing is worse for a super-squishy burst spec than being made to slow down.

Blaine Tog.8304:

…ANet has been intentionally trying to slow down combat but nothing is worse for a super-squishy burst spec than being made to slow down.

Your entire post is very well said. It appears many of Ele’s difficulties are fundamental in nature.

katniss.6735:

I’ve never used a single piece of clerics.

This.

I use it on my warrior though, go figure.

Not sure what this thread is about, the title asks a question then the OP goes on to give a generic anti-tank/pro-dps rant with some suggestions for our less popular weapons thrown in. The title suggests a desire to know why people use cleric’s gear but the OP doesn’t really even talk about that much.

In pvp – chosen role I guess.
In zvz/pve – much more room for mistakes.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Hey, I’m all for scepter buffs, but maybe try to be less confusing/rambling and ANet might take it somewhat seriously.

Reduce dragon tooth’s damage and burn duration by 33%, and make the spell start dropping the moment casting ends. It still has a pretty flashy warning sign during casting though and a total of ~1.5sec before impact, so it should be fair.

I run a few pieces of clerics gear because I like the extra heals I get in water attunement swap/arcana roll.

Avatara.1042:

Sceptre and Staff both need faster animations, at the very least.

Agreed. Staff feels extremely slow with auto-attack, and when I use a sceptre it takes roughly 5s to switch targets on autos. Also, beam tech on sceptre seems to have been nerfed without mention in patch.

Navzar.2938:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Hey, I’m all for scepter buffs, but maybe try to be less confusing/rambling and ANet might take it somewhat seriously.

Reduce dragon tooth’s damage and burn duration by 33%, and make the spell start dropping the moment casting ends. It still has a pretty flashy warning sign during casting though and a total of ~1.5sec before impact, so it should be fair.

I’d be down with that. Or double the current damage and keep the hang time as is, that might reward skilled play better.

With 3k power and 70% crit damage I only see about 5k max hits on geared 80s, and while that is definitely significant damage my thief can hit as hard with cluster bomb every 3 seconds and it’s a LOT harder to see coming.

If you stand under a giant lava spike for 3 seconds (or more commonly just run under it AFTER it’s cast because, really, it doesn’t usually hurt bad anyway) then you should take enough damage to teach you to stop behaving so foolishly.

As a noob (level 15 and new to the game), I find it very hard kiting with my ele because the auto-targetting locks onto a different target if I run around or roll so I have whole packs after me. The only way I can play it is by as you say “facetank” and so I concentrate on my healing abilities more than anything. Am I doing something wrong or is the game weak in the auto-targetting department?

Not much choice than to go bunker after the last patch. In my opinion the last patch made the water trait much better than the other traits (besides arcana). The extra vitality and healing is far more useful than anything else. They’ve unbalanced the class.

If you use pvt gear then face-tanking in pve shouldn’t be a problem. S/D offers huge burst, decent mobility and and defense for solo play, and with the sceptre in groups, you can just hang back in air 1, 2, 3 forever. I feel s/d and s/f haven’t been given enough credit for pve and wvw. So I keep posting about them, because I’m having a blast using them.

I’m clerics because I like healing people.

clerics S/D because the trident is a good guided heal and 5 is a cleanse heal pbaoe. Add some cond. dmg trinkets for earth 1 and 5 and some prec thingies for air and waters fast attacks. Plus use glyphs for the elementals and storm that all got buffed recently. and y’r set.

Navzar.2938:

Epic.3950:

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

Wrong! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh
People are qqing about the fact that the nerfs hurt non bunker eles more than bunker eles, who can still bunker quite well. Of course idk why I’m explaining this considering your post history in the ele forums clearly shows your think otherwise.

^this. True bunkers are the real winner after the nerf apocalypse who hurt WWW roamers/skirmishers the most.
Also, there are no word to describe how dumb balancing WWW with sPvP as reference can be.

Grevender.9235:

Navzar.2938:

Epic.3950:

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

Wrong! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh
People are qqing about the fact that the nerfs hurt non bunker eles more than bunker eles, who can still bunker quite well. Of course idk why I’m explaining this considering your post history in the ele forums clearly shows your think otherwise.

^this. True bunkers are the real winner after the nerf apocalypse who hurt WWW roamers/skirmishers the most.

So RTL Cd increase and range decrease, no heal in mistform and the internal Cd on condition remove makes bunkers to “real winners”? Did i miss some buff or are we “true winners” now because the nerf dindt just hurt us as much as zerker eles?

Scryar.2954:

So RTL Cd increase and range decrease, no heal in mistform and the internal Cd on condition remove makes bunkers to “real winners”? Did i miss some buff or are we “true winners” now because the nerf dindt just hurt us as much as zerker eles?

The nerfs hurt part of what made bunker eles so strong, but they also took away zerker eles’ best method of survival. If bunker eles lost 5% of their effectiveness, zerker eles lost closer to 30% since they’ll die a lot more now.

Scryar.2954:

Grevender.9235:

Navzar.2938:

Epic.3950:

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

Wrong! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh
People are qqing about the fact that the nerfs hurt non bunker eles more than bunker eles, who can still bunker quite well. Of course idk why I’m explaining this considering your post history in the ele forums clearly shows your think otherwise.

^this. True bunkers are the real winner after the nerf apocalypse who hurt WWW roamers/skirmishers the most.

So RTL Cd increase and range decrease, no heal in mistform and the internal Cd on condition remove makes bunkers to “real winners”? Did i miss some buff or are we “true winners” now because the nerf dindt just hurt us as much as zerker eles?

If you take 100 dollars away from poor man, is it the same as taking 100 dollars away from the richest man on planet?

Bunkers had and still have plenty of ways to survive. Glassier builds lost most of their survivability, and have to move towards more bunkery build or be kitten awesome players.

Strang.8170:

Scryar.2954:

Grevender.9235:

Navzar.2938:

Epic.3950:

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

Wrong! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh
People are qqing about the fact that the nerfs hurt non bunker eles more than bunker eles, who can still bunker quite well. Of course idk why I’m explaining this considering your post history in the ele forums clearly shows your think otherwise.

^this. True bunkers are the real winner after the nerf apocalypse who hurt WWW roamers/skirmishers the most.

So RTL Cd increase and range decrease, no heal in mistform and the internal Cd on condition remove makes bunkers to “real winners”? Did i miss some buff or are we “true winners” now because the nerf dindt just hurt us as much as zerker eles?

If you take 100 dollars away from poor man, is it the same as taking 100 dollars away from the richest man on planet?

Bunkers had and still have plenty of ways to survive. Glassier builds lost most of their survivability, and have to move towards more bunkery build or be kitten awesome players.

No but if you take a rich and poor man 100 Dollars away it doesnt make the poor man to a winner.he still looses something and dont get anything. the rich man is only less affected then the poor man. you would have to take every other man (nerf every other class more then the ele) away 101 Dollars to make the poor man to a winner.(in comparison to all other people)

Blaine Tog.8304:

Scryar.2954:

So RTL Cd increase and range decrease, no heal in mistform and the internal Cd on condition remove makes bunkers to “real winners”? Did i miss some buff or are we “true winners” now because the nerf dindt just hurt us as much as zerker eles?

The nerfs hurt part of what made bunker eles so strong, but they also took away zerker eles’ best method of survival. If bunker eles lost 5% of their effectiveness, zerker eles lost closer to 30% since they’ll die a lot more now.

yeah sure, i agree that the zerker ele is more affected that the bunker ele. but in comparison to all other classes they both loose strenght (although the zerker ele looses even more)

Scryar.2954:

Strang.8170:

Scryar.2954:

Grevender.9235:

Navzar.2938:

Epic.3950:

THIS^ ppl QQing about not having an impossible to counter full HP/cleanse anymore.

Wrong! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh
People are qqing about the fact that the nerfs hurt non bunker eles more than bunker eles, who can still bunker quite well. Of course idk why I’m explaining this considering your post history in the ele forums clearly shows your think otherwise.

^this. True bunkers are the real winner after the nerf apocalypse who hurt WWW roamers/skirmishers the most.

So RTL Cd increase and range decrease, no heal in mistform and the internal Cd on condition remove makes bunkers to “real winners”? Did i miss some buff or are we “true winners” now because the nerf dindt just hurt us as much as zerker eles?

If you take 100 dollars away from poor man, is it the same as taking 100 dollars away from the richest man on planet?

Bunkers had and still have plenty of ways to survive. Glassier builds lost most of their survivability, and have to move towards more bunkery build or be kitten awesome players.

No but if you take a rich and poor man 100 Dollars away it doesnt make the poor man to a winner.he still looses something and dont get anything. the rich man is only less affected then the poor man. you would have to take every other man (nerf every other class more then the ele) away 101 Dollars to make the poor man to a winner.

We can argue semantics all we want, fact remains that bunkers can live with this change rather comfortably while glasscannons can´t. Call it being a winner, less of a loser or whaever you want.

Scryar.2954:

yeah sure, i agree that the zerker ele is more affected that the bunker ele. but in comparison to all other classes they both loose strenght (although the zerker ele looses even more)

To strengthen the money analogy, take $1 million from Bill Gates and he’d hardly notice. Take it from a single mother working three jobs to support her two kids and you’ve forced her into bankruptcy.

On the bright side, hopefully more people will realize how strong focus is now.

Been using d/f for months now. This nerf didn’t really affect me, but I used to main d/d and I do feel their pain. :/

Navzar.2938:

On the bright side, hopefully more people will realize how strong focus is now.

it depends on many factors: it lacks self healing and mobility, so far I find it useful only in certain dungeons.

month ago i started to use focus.
I am not afraid to experiment….

The issue focus has in PvE is quite relevant.
Some classes have support on utility bar that are really useful….

Ele going to focus in PvE means the encounter they are facing doesn t let you go Zerker D/D.

So you get a weapon that cut you out from most damaging skills for some mostly PERSONAL support.
At if you switched to focus means facetanking the situation is not a good idea and you need some range (see scepter).

Even if you keep you zerker armor a scepter/focus ele loses all mobility AND damage.
That for improving almost only ELE self survivability.

For example, the best scenario where i find focus to be awesome is molten facility boss.
I ended up alone with 1 boss at 15% HP while i had my 90% zerker setup.

After 10 minutes i gave up….
0 DMG i could barely see the difference after 10 mins.

Guardian found itself in the same situation…in 5 minutes he got rid of the boss.

I couldn’t stand a full bunker build, so I made a hybrid build with enough of a tank and health pool to stay alive but also deliver tons of critical damage that works amazingly well. Of course this took me months of trial and error, which is what I assume people are not willing to do, so they go with the easiest builds to make and play, thus you have the common bunker/healing builds.

Arheundel.6451:

When I beat somebody, I want them to say :" GG you’re good", rather than " lol you can win because you play that noob profession"

That second quote is the general reaction for most people anytime they’re beaten. Its an ego-protection mechanism. They can’t believe THEY suck, so it must be the class that beat them is OP.

And that’s the basis for all the QQ against Eles. ANet could nerf them into the ground (and are on their way) and if ONE Thief or Warrior gets beat by an Ele, they’ll always go to the forum screaming that the class is OP, while dismissing the fact that they’re wearing all zerker with no CC, or took their level 22 Thief into WvWvW because they’re so “pro.”

Smooth Marc.8743:

By dps ele i mean scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger.Weapon skill healing,healing ripple ,soothing mist,regen and self healing is more than enough to keep you alive in a 1v1 fight

Really? Because in Valkyrie gear that D/P thief with a single backstab takes away half of my HP and then it’s 2 heartseekers to finish me off.

Same goes for mesmers or any decent trap ranger.

As an ele I can’t go berserker unless I get babysat by my team.

Smooth Marc.8743:

By dps ele i mean scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger.Weapon skill healing,healing ripple ,soothing mist,regen and self healing is more than enough to keep you alive in a 1v1 fight

I run Berserker’s scepter/dagger (in SPvP, WvW gear is different, of course), and I can tell you that against enemies that can survive your burst and hit you back for at least moderate damage (a.k.a. every dueling spec and nearly every bunker), you’re going to need to break line-of-sight or disengage to heal up.

If I go for a more balanced build, then yes, my healing is pretty good, but without a massive focus on offense my ranged damage is terrible, and I refuse to close to melee range simply to be functional.

Arheundel.6451:

ressing my ally under heavy fire? NP

Can someone verify that this guy is indeed NOT trolling?

Because I’m sure that you can’t do anything while in Mist Form, unlike Elixir S

you can do it if you start ressing then you go mistform.
almost any class can do that btw.

LordByron.8369:

you can do it if you start ressing then you go mistform.
almost any class can do that btw.

You can also roll dodge heal in mistform.

LordByron.8369:

you can do it if you start ressing then you go mistform.
almost any class can do that btw.

Welp, good thing to know. Will try it today

its not that mesmer can t do anything in 4 second of distortion….
Or war in dnure pain etc etc etc

They can do anything they want….

Ele can just move and do few minor things and they were nerfed ._.

Grevender.9235:

Navzar.2938:

On the bright side, hopefully more people will realize how strong focus is now.

it depends on many factors: it lacks self healing and mobility, so far I find it useful only in certain dungeons.

Self healing you do have to make up for yourself by using healing water traits or a high healing skill like ether renewal (only if you don’t spec into water or healing power, if you do the choice doesn’t matter much), but once you do it makes up for it with it’s strong damage mitigation abilities like reflections, invulnerability, and stuns+snares.

The lack of mobility was the main reason I wasn’t using it before, but that’s not as big of a difference now with the rtl nerf.
It’s definitely more of a defensive weapon though, you’ll lose a fair amount of offense.

focus got nerfed too <.<
In PvE they did a disaster….
I wonder how many more things not listed in patchnotes it cannot block.

I used to think focus was a PvE weapon…its no more.
in WWW focus is just useless….you give up most mobility and damage you have to get some seconds of inv or anti projectile…

Those things don t do much in www.

LordByron.8369:

focus got nerfed too <.<
In PvE they did a disaster….
I wonder how many more things not listed in patchnotes it cannot block.

I used to think focus was a PvE weapon…its no more.
in WWW focus is just useless….you give up most mobility and damage you have to get some seconds of inv or anti projectile…

Those things don t do much in www.

Could you please elaborate? I rarely use focus b/c I want to be the hare, not the tortoise. What was the shadow-nerf on focus?

I already written everywhere many boss Attacks, expecially those that pushed players into using focus are now unblockable by air 4 swirling winds.

They just ignore the skill at all like thet were trebouchet shots.

Few of them (found just 1 for now that is champion dredge at fractal) impacted guardians also but ele’s focus was hit harder (already found 3-4) and lost many more.