Guild Wars 2

Mists: which practice NPC gives you the most challenge with the ele.

for me it generally is the thief.

That is the only one that consistently gives me trouble. I can generally beat it but often it get me to a down state and ill just let it kill me as its faster than beating it.

When i do everything right i can beat it with almost full health.

the warrior is likely the easiest.

I bet i could take out the guardian and the warrior at the same time.

No offence, but if the NPC’s are giving you trouble, you are doing something wrong…

yeah i likely am. so the thief gives you no trouble?
interesting… as its burst damage is high enough to rack up 15k damage in a few seconds.

If its no trouble for you than you should be able to take on the thief and the necro at once.

maybe you cant answer the question because you have not done it?

Ummm, that group of 4-5 with the Blue Lord or something next to Swanir! The rest aren’t too bad for me personally.

From my experience so far, what you can take on as an elementalist is based on what you can efficiently survive over time. This seems to be why the defensive builds are the most viable at the moment, and why offensive builds seem to not work as well as defensive ones. We are so squishy and our DPS when specced for DPS is a little lacking. My point is efficient survival is the only way to go at the moment to be totally effective.

I mention the above because its important to realize that when trying to play to your peak. If the thief is giving you trouble, fight it a lot, use different weapons. Personally, I open up with some damage, dodge when it goes invisible, stun it when it comes, then dps again and if its still alive a bit of kiting. Once you can do that, then move on taking two of the NPCs on at a time in different combinations, then on the lord setup. Doing this you can learn how to deal with many situations, and find out where your skill levels sets you in terms of how much survivability you need to work into your builds.

Once you know how to counter certain abilities other classes use, you can turn your attention to managing your cooldowns so you always have the ability up you need when you need it. If you want to give yourself a trial by fire, make a very offensive spec, and try to do nothing but survive. It forces you use your basic defensive abilities to there max, just don’t get frustrated with it.

All that said hopefully we get a bit of a DPS boost when specced for DPS along with the bug fixes. Good luck!

Where is this lord in the mists?

I get your point about playing defensively and i do work on my defensive skills.
I want to see an ele take on both the thief and the necro NPC’s at the same time using dagger off hand.

The lord is to the east of the mists island. I find the thief hardest because all it ever does to me is drop smoke field then offload. Unlimited blindness hell yea, the smoke field leaves, and there’s another one. Its unload has 100% projectile finisher, instead of 20% annoying. Other then that I can fight 3 of them at a time, not the thief though she can go to hell. The warrior is so fun to fight, I can get it down 75% hp before it even hits me, then it proceeds to face roll me into defensive mode.

Wait, there is practive classes in the mists? – i only knew about the bots that just stand there.

/goes to mists.

Some of the NPC’s are kind of overpowered compared to it’s player counter-part. Look at the dmg the Necromancer does compared to the actual profession lol.

yes there are practice classes in the mists over by the glory vendors near the underwater practice area.
They are not terribly useful but its a good place to practice my finger dex as long as i dont fight to the npc.
I mean expecting the npc to do something, which it will, and then preemptively countering it.

I wish that the mesmer npc used illusions though so i could practice the mesmer shell game. that ruined me in pvp for a long time.

Fighting Svanir, The Chieftan, and the Blue Lord + adds all at the same time.

so i figured out what i was doing wrong with my ele against the thief…
In the word of the PCGamer folks “slow down”

I was switching atunments too fast and trying to use too much of the close range abilities.

If i slow down and stay at more range the thief is not a problem.

I used to play scepter focus and that setup makes the thief easy. but i noticed that i really wasnt using the focus all that much. the difference was i stayed in attunments longer and stay at range longer.

does that work against players though….