Guild Wars 2

So I found myself against this Ele today. Player went by the name Abzu, not sure what spec he was, but it was the most broken thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve played about 200 Tpvp tournaments with a 80-90% win ratio and faced every Ele under the sun. I win some I loss some, but I was going pretty heavy burst (ranger) and there were 2 others of us hitting on this one ele for about 2-3 mins. His health never budged, it seemed as though his regen alone tanked all our damage. For a moment he went down to 25% then went to water and healed to full. He killed me with conditions over the course of time at 100% health and then took on the other 2. Not once did he do the ele shuffle and leave to recover. Not once was he overwhelmed. I hit him with 6 seconds of quickness which he ate and his health never moved (he wasn’t in any mist form). Never seen anything like it……

I was on the server when you encountered him and he said that he was running a tanky build – 0/0/10/30/30 but since there are no videos or anything of this we can’t really know what exactly happened.

Maybe he combined the signet with a massive amount of healing power, and maybe a dolyak signet added to that.

With the proper setup, he could basically get 4 types of ‘permanent regeneration’. They would be normal regeneration, the passive from the signet, the passive from water attunement (which can be made permanent with the arcana major trait) and the passive regeneration from the dolyak’s rune.

Combine that with toughness…

If he’s ticking you to death with conditions he’s on a shaman amulet and probably undead or nightmare rune. Staves are much better for conditions than people think; Eruption on my condi build does about 7.5k because of bleeds. Condi builds are also much more able to take advantage of Evasive Arcana’s full spectrum of spells.

I highly doubt that in 2-3 mins of being attacked by 3 players, that he never once used his heal, and simply tanked you with regen.

Nothing about your post makes me think you know anything about Elementlists, despite your ‘credentials’. You don’t even mention his weapon set.

Look up Ether Renewal, that heals in pulses (which might explain why you think it was ‘regen’), has a low recharge (15 secs) and with a high healing stat, will take an Ele from low health to full when they are running 13.8k health.

And yes, it is pretty broken, as it can be shielded with Rock Solid. But there you go, you need to wait until he heals, then burst him down within that 15 sec period. That being said, if he wasn’t running 0/0/30/30/10 then he wouldn’t have Rock Solid, in which case you need to learn the animation for Ether Renewal and interrupt it.

Zantetsuken.9051:

I highly doubt that in 2-3 mins of being attacked by 3 players, that he never once used his heal, and simply tanked you with regen.

Nothing about your post makes me think you know anything about Elementlists, despite your ‘credentials’. You don’t even mention his weapon set.

Look up Ether Renewal, that heals in pulses (which might explain why you think it was ‘regen’), has a low recharge (15 secs) and with a high healing stat, will take an Ele from low health to full when they are running 13.8k health.

And yes, it is pretty broken, as it can be shielded with Rock Solid. But there you go, you need to wait until he heals, then burst him down within that 15 sec period. That being said, if he wasn’t running 0/0/30/30/10 then he wouldn’t have Rock Solid, in which case you need to learn the animation for Ether Renewal and interrupt it.

I hear you, everyone likes to cry on this forum, and this is not a cry post. I’m interested in knowing what he was running. I am aware of Ele’s to a decent degree, but ya still could learn more. Still what ever he was running stood out like a sore thumb in relation to hundreds of ele’s I faced. He even offered to 1v1 me so I could learn, but I dced and it was 5:00 am in the morning. Hoping he posts when he see’s this because I’m not sure what to think since facing him. Hell I even dodge most of his ride the lightning to updraft, to flame grab combo’s. Avoided most of his churning earths. Hell I may even want to do tournies again after my break with this guy.

ThiBash.5634:

Maybe he combined the signet with a massive amount of healing power, and maybe a dolyak signet added to that.

With the proper setup, he could basically get 4 types of ‘permanent regeneration’. They would be normal regeneration, the passive from the signet, the passive from water attunement (which can be made permanent with the arcana major trait) and the passive regeneration from the dolyak’s rune.

Combine that with toughness…

After reading the OP seeing he didn’t burn you down and reading this I think ThiBash might have hit the nail on the the head so to speak. However we can explore farther.

A few questions for the OP

Now remember there are a lot of DD eles here and we are a pretty open community so even if the guy doesn’t post we would likely figure out most of it not all the traits depending on your recollection.

1st did he pop stability? If so was it at 50% life or before that?

2nd You said he didn’t pop mist form? if that is correct I would like to know if he popped a shield?

3rd How was he on cleansing conditions? His attunment rate should be fairly long with only 10 points into arcane so was he removing 2 on attunement or 1? At other times were conditions being removed regularly as you saw his health bar tick up?

4th How hard was the guy hitting? I imagine no very much but you have likely faced glass cannons and bunkers in the past as well as some balanced builds so give an estimate if you can.

5th did you ever see the signet symbol above his head? If yes was it relatively often and different symbols? If not did you ever see him sort of crouch down with a glow?

Last but not least the boons how long were they up? Kind of tricky I know but his base boon duration is 10% this is not every long so if he was boon stacking we can get an idea of the rune set.

0/0/30/30/10 is a common build. There aren’t all that many combos that would make sense that aren’t known. He may have simply executed the build masterfully. Either way some of the questions I asked might help us nail down the build. The runes and sigils may be tricky but its possible to figure out the rough build.

Could well be a s/f bunker with Shamen/Carrion. Only question is which trait permutation he’s running. Answering the above post will make figuring out the traits alot easier.

MarzAttakz.9608:

Could well be a s/f bunker with Shamen/Carrion. Only question is which trait permutation he’s running. Answering the above post will make figuring out the traits alot easier.

I was wondering this too at first but no OP was pretty clear about the weapon set in the follow up post (gotta read those lol) saw both RTL and Grab combo.

The thing to take away from all of this, is that it is in fact possible to create builds that are practically impossible to kill for the average balanced build.

Switching to Earth with Rock Solid gives 2-3 seconds of Stability, and Ether Renewal takes 3.5 seconds to channel, meaning that the bulk of healing is delivered, safe from interruption. Using this combo you can essentially reset the fight every 15 seconds, leaving only a small window to actually burst the Ele down. Add in other heals from Water Attunement, and you are looking at a build that requires high burst and focused teamwork to take down.

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

Zantetsuken.9051:

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

I like that though. it helps add to the paper/rock/scissors element to it all, which to me, adds sooooo much more to the meta.

I could be totally off since im not in any high level tpvp yet. . .but i do enjoy that added layer of strategy/complexity/whatever you wanna call it

but sure, if you wanted to go 1v1 you’d need the silly high burst. focus fire works wonders though

TheGuy.3568:

MarzAttakz.9608:

Could well be a s/f bunker with Shamen/Carrion. Only question is which trait permutation he’s running. Answering the above post will make figuring out the traits alot easier.

I was wondering this too at first but no OP was pretty clear about the weapon set in the follow up post (gotta read those lol) saw both RTL and Grab combo.

True that, my bad, wvw’ing till 5am fries your brain when reading forums afterwards.

s/d maybe since no mention of burning speed or ring of fire, would make sense if running condition damage. Now the question is x/x/30/x/x signet build or a variation of x/x/30/x/30 with EA.

is that so impossibile he used a hack?

FourTwenty.4268:

Zantetsuken.9051:

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

I like that though. it helps add to the paper/rock/scissors element to it all, which to me, adds sooooo much more to the meta.

I could be totally off since im not in any high level tpvp yet. . .but i do enjoy that added layer of strategy/complexity/whatever you wanna call it

but sure, if you wanted to go 1v1 you’d need the silly high burst. focus fire works wonders though

In my mind a bunker should be a high health, high defense player, that takes a lot of time to kill. Fail to burst a bunker to death in GW2 and he resets the fight, and you have to start again from scratch. Instead of wearing him down, where everything you have done to him counts, his high healing nullifies it, meaning you wasted your time and cooldowns.

This is a bad way of doing it in my mind, as it requires co-ordinated teamwork (which isn’t going to happen in a pug) instead of just being able to blast away and eventually kill them.

It is because of this, that the sick burst exists. Add them both together, and people will complain because it simply isn’t any fun to fight against. 3 people being thwarted against a single player because they were pugging and unable to communicate and co-ordinate is bad design for a game that you want to market to the masses.

I’ve never seen any ele surviving 2-3 min of straight up tanking 2-3 guys in spvp at least. It doesn’t seem possible (i main an ele). But we’ll need to know what main weapon he was using. Only ele that I’ve seen that are impossible to kill are the d/d who use Ride the Lightning to escape.

I think I saw this guy in wvw once. I was bunker necro and doing near 0 damage to him. He never once fell before 75% health. I was flabbergasted. After about 1.5 minutes I got reduced to almost nil health. :O

Zantetsuken.9051:

FourTwenty.4268:

Zantetsuken.9051:

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

I like that though. it helps add to the paper/rock/scissors element to it all, which to me, adds sooooo much more to the meta.

I could be totally off since im not in any high level tpvp yet. . .but i do enjoy that added layer of strategy/complexity/whatever you wanna call it

but sure, if you wanted to go 1v1 you’d need the silly high burst. focus fire works wonders though

In my mind a bunker should be a high health, high defense player, that takes a lot of time to kill. Fail to burst a bunker to death in GW2 and he resets the fight, and you have to start again from scratch. Instead of wearing him down, where everything you have done to him counts, his high healing nullifies it, meaning you wasted your time and cooldowns.

This is a bad way of doing it in my mind, as it requires co-ordinated teamwork (which isn’t going to happen in a pug) instead of just being able to blast away and eventually kill them.

It is because of this, that the sick burst exists. Add them both together, and people will complain because it simply isn’t any fun to fight against. 3 people being thwarted against a single player because they were pugging and unable to communicate and co-ordinate is bad design for a game that you want to market to the masses.

Over 3/4 of those fightning an ele got no clue of how an ele work, I don’t see why somebody who practice for months should lose to a bunch of newbs who randomly spamm buttons, because only somebody who practice for months can survive against an onslaught:

http://i.imgur.com/0NK8d.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/JktJS.jpg

Do you see the difference between an experienced ele and a new one? This is not a profession that you start playing today and faceroll people and people should realize that

Biomanz.9302:

I’ve never seen any ele surviving 2-3 min of straight up tanking 2-3 guys in spvp at least. It doesn’t seem possible (i main an ele). But we’ll need to know what main weapon he was using. Only ele that I’ve seen that are impossible to kill are the d/d who use Ride the Lightning to escape.

Anybody who knows better will immobilize the ele when they pop rtl. good eles do it to each other all the time. The thing is most player think its burst or nothing. They try to keep fights short so don’t really use tactics like timing counters etc. This can be effective as a pressured spike can force you to blow cool downs as they blow their own. The problem is when players start using efficient counters that don’t rely on using every “trick in the bag” so to speak just to survive.

Arheundel.6451:

Zantetsuken.9051:

FourTwenty.4268:

Zantetsuken.9051:

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

I like that though. it helps add to the paper/rock/scissors element to it all, which to me, adds sooooo much more to the meta.

I could be totally off since im not in any high level tpvp yet. . .but i do enjoy that added layer of strategy/complexity/whatever you wanna call it

but sure, if you wanted to go 1v1 you’d need the silly high burst. focus fire works wonders though

In my mind a bunker should be a high health, high defense player, that takes a lot of time to kill. Fail to burst a bunker to death in GW2 and he resets the fight, and you have to start again from scratch. Instead of wearing him down, where everything you have done to him counts, his high healing nullifies it, meaning you wasted your time and cooldowns.

This is a bad way of doing it in my mind, as it requires co-ordinated teamwork (which isn’t going to happen in a pug) instead of just being able to blast away and eventually kill them.

It is because of this, that the sick burst exists. Add them both together, and people will complain because it simply isn’t any fun to fight against. 3 people being thwarted against a single player because they were pugging and unable to communicate and co-ordinate is bad design for a game that you want to market to the masses.

Over 3/4 of those fightning an ele got no clue of how an ele work, I don’t see why somebody who practice for months should lose to a bunch of newbs who randomly spamm buttons, because only somebody who practice for months can survive against an onslaught:

http://i.imgur.com/0NK8d.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/JktJS.jpg

Do you see the difference between an experienced ele and a new one? This is not a profession that you start playing today and faceroll people and people should realize that

While i don’t disagree with your point that ele is not a pick up and play class. Spvp numbers in a pug pick up are well “misleading” after you look at the ranks you sort of figure it out. The longer you play the more you learn. The class doesn’t matter in that zergfest because its very hard to paint a decent description of skill in that environment. The only real way to figure out who’s a better ele is to duel but this is irrelevant also given the nature of the game. In the 8 v8 zergfest we call spvp its nearly impossible to judge a players skill past whether they were smart enough to stick with the zerg or not. Being an ele or no makes next to no difference. If you play to maximize points you’ll do just that.

Case in point many bunkers wont get skirmisher because they sit on the capture point. This greatly decreases their score but their usefulness to the team usually goes unquestioned. The number of points hey receive has no real bearing on their skill level.

In any case, I’m still extremely interested to hear more about this build. I hope the OP comes back with more information soon.

Hey guys,

I was hoping Abzu would read this and we could all find out. I don’t have answers to most the questions, and as each day passes my memory becomes fuzzier. Perhaps I should just friend the guy and talk and maybe do some 1v1 (EU).

He did use mist form at one point, but during the time I went full 6 seconds of quickness burst, his health never moved more than 10% (who knows maybe it was bugged or lagged and I couldn’t tell, but still the whole 2-3 mins of me waling on him was not any different, and the other 2-3 guys were pug so maybe the just auto attacked). I thought he said he was running a common 0/0/30/30/10, but Kalips says 10/30/30. Anyhow it was pretty unreal, but the more I think about it, there maybe be things to explain it such as abnormal lag (my burst wasn’t acutally hitting), bugged (graphically maybe something wasn’t displaying such as a invul he had on), pugs were just doing auto attack, but still when I see something glare out like that I like to find out more. I don’t think he was hacking, but who knows maybe he was I can’t prove either way.

That might be part of your answer: 2 pugs. If you’re using ranged quickness it’s possible for an ele to eat a face full of arrows with protection up while evading around others. I don’t know of any way of healing much without 30 in arcane for the roll heal either so if he’s using 0/0/30/30/10 I wanna know wut he does.
Still need to know wut mainland he used. It’s pretty easy to distinguish between dagger or scepter main hand.

Biomanz.9302:

I’ve never seen any ele surviving 2-3 min of straight up tanking 2-3 guys in spvp at least. It doesn’t seem possible (i main an ele). But we’ll need to know what main weapon he was using. Only ele that I’ve seen that are impossible to kill are the d/d who use Ride the Lightning to escape.

It’s still quite possible with a Shaman staff build. I get raged at all the time for killing the enemy guild lord with 2-3+ people trying to kill me in the process while the npc just bleeds/burns to death over time.

If he is running as an ele bunker then more than likely he has a setup like or similar to that in this guide. This build gives the ele 2400 toughness and the ability to heal back from almost anything :/

Guide – Mastering the Scepter/Dagger in PVP

ThiBash.5634:

Maybe he combined the signet with a massive amount of healing power, and maybe a dolyak signet added to that.

With the proper setup, he could basically get 4 types of ‘permanent regeneration’. They would be normal regeneration, the passive from the signet, the passive from water attunement (which can be made permanent with the arcana major trait) and the passive regeneration from the dolyak’s rune.

Combine that with toughness…

What Arcana trait makes the regen from water passive trait permanent? Im missing
something.

Thunderbrew.7034:

ThiBash.5634:

Maybe he combined the signet with a massive amount of healing power, and maybe a dolyak signet added to that.

With the proper setup, he could basically get 4 types of ‘permanent regeneration’. They would be normal regeneration, the passive from the signet, the passive from water attunement (which can be made permanent with the arcana major trait) and the passive regeneration from the dolyak’s rune.

Combine that with toughness…

What Arcana trait makes the regen from water passive trait permanent? Im missing
something.

Lingering Elements (15 in Arcana) – Soothing mists reprocs up to 10 seconds every three seconds you are in water. With this trait it will continue to reproc to 10 seconds of healing up to 5 seconds after you leave water attunement. Usually by the time water attunement is available again soothing mists will be about to run out so you can switch back to water for 10 seconds again. Thus….perma soothing mists if you constantly switch to water when available.