Guild Wars 2

It still does give you a significant decrease in recharge, you lose ~2.7 seconds per switch which imo is still a great benefit however having it at ~5.7 seconds is just too strong thus making it almost needed.

mjharrison.3209:

Whoever said to try a full conjure build doesn’t really play an ele – conjures are a death sentence, mainly because they lock out 75% of our weapon skills.

Wrong. I play Ele and only Ele since BWE2. Conjured Weapons are in fine shape by themselves. The only problem with a Conjure build is swapping more fluidly. You can swap out of them at will, any time you feel you need to swap out. Not sure where you are getting the idea that once you summon one you are forever locked out of any other attunement. That is flat out wrong. They synergize very well with combo fields and the dps they put out is actually superior in many ways. They bring an added dimension to this class that is not obtainable just by using our standard skills. WTH would you play a class and NOT use some of your skills just because you have some imaginary bias against them that is not based in fact in any way?

mjharrison.3209:

I am yet to find an ele build that doesn’t use arcane that isn’t significantly weaker than those that do.

Wow. Wrong again! I am starting to suspect its you who does not play an Ele based on your own statements, which again are entirely based in opinion and not fact. There have been A LOT of people who have flatly stated, myself included, that you DO NOT NEED Arcana to be effective at playing this class. Nobody is saying that speccing into Arcana does not make a strong and a viable build, because it does for Boon stacking builds, but you DO NOT need to spec even one single point into it to still be just as, if not more, effective at playing this class. As with all classes, its the player behind the toon that makes a truly effective showing in PvP. While I truly hate it when some of these posts on here yell at people to LTP, it really does apply in this case. But you keep on, keepin on with that closed minded attitude and ignore the fact that this class is multi-dimensional and should not ever be played based on one or two builds.

I personally switch between the train points a lot now. Fire is always 30, water and wind are at 5, earth and arcane I play with depending the role I want to play (support or attack/front lines). With the tuning crystal, condition food, and 30 earth, conditional damage is huge. Thus I play fire the majority of the time and I do not need to worry about element switching. I have found conditional damage is my bread and butter. Using the other elements to control movement to keep a person in the condition zone (if your using lava front for instance) for as long as you can, you can take down people very quick. The main thing I like about arcane is the staff aoe range increase but the cool down times dose not bother me.

boozer.7815:

Yes you can swap faster. Wont help you much when it does not decrease recharge on skill cool downs. Swapping back to water, for example, is nice for the regen and such, but when all your heal skills are still on CD it will be of little use. Individual attunement bonuses remain on swap (precision, crit damage, etc.) so that is independant of that and other than that, the traits you spec for make much more of a difference than the ability to rapid fire swap. The Auramancer/Sigil setup in particular has little need for Arcana or low cd on attunement swaps. I think if you build for Sigil or Glyph or Cantrips then your need to a 6s swap while nice, is really minimal in truth. I get by just find and dandy with a 15s CD and my skill CD’s seem to synergize with it a bit better anyway.

Not saying in any way that Arcana builds are not really nice, because indeed they are (I have tried and tested BOTH quite extensively), but there are many other builds where attunement swapping is really not that big of a deal, and the bonuses from speccing high in Arcana are really not necessary nor even needed to achieve better performance overall.

When you are removing two conditions, applying regeneration, and healing for almost 4k on water attunement+dodge with a signet as your heal skill, arcana shines more than any other traitline but the water itself. Extending your boon duration by 30% with a minor trait that gives +2% damage per boon? Stacking might and various other boons just on attunement swap? You are vastly underestimating the staying power/dot that an arcana specced ele is capable of. The unfortunate thing is that there are very few other builds that are viable in high-level pvp, but arcana is easily our best and most versatile traitline right now.

You can probably get away with a low/no arcana spec against mediocre players, but the healing rotation generated from a signet passive with high arcana/water is invaluable to an ele that wants to be able to be as multifaceted as possible; ie damage, support, mobility and control. I can take on 2-3 people without even activating my healing signet because the passive is so strong with the number of skills i’m activating per minute/high water magic.

From a mechanics perspective, it’s just superior. Can you kill 2-3 people with high self-healing, mass condition removal and a more than respectable critical damage rate without a good spec into arcana/water? I’d like to see this.

Anyone else think evasive arcana triggering cleansing wave, a 40 second cooldown, about every 12 seconds is overpowered? I think the heal should at the very least be made non scalable to tone down bunker builds without affecting low healing power builds.

I also think the amount of blast finishers should be toned down to only when the spells trigger or even when only fire/earth spells trigger. I thought it was originally intended this way as you would only get the visual combo cue when triggering a fire or earth spell. Although now you get the visual cue on all dodges in fields.

Even with these “nerfs” I would still consider evasive arcana mandatory. It would just seem more balanced to me.

Also I only play ele. I care more about game balance than exploiting broken builds/mechanics.

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

Anyone else think evasive arcana triggering cleansing wave, a 40 second cooldown, about every 12 seconds is overpowered? I think the heal should at the very least be made non scalable to tone down bunker builds without affecting low healing power builds.

I also think the amount of blast finishers should be toned down to only when the spells trigger or even when only fire/earth spells trigger. I thought it was originally intended this way as you would only get the visual combo cue when triggering a fire or earth spell. Although now you get the visual cue on all dodges in fields.

Even with these “nerfs” I would still consider evasive arcana mandatory. It would just seem more balanced to me.

Also I only play ele. I care more about game balance than exploiting broken builds/mechanics.

I agree, it should at the very least be fixed to 10 seconds per blast finisher as it was intended, getting 3 powerful AoE heals off in a matter of seconds is a bit ludicrous, that is why I don’t use it atm because it is OP, on staff at least.

my suggestion for build, good DPS kills fast & can attune to water to heal others if in group, so i can be support, S/D earth water build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhMmebzxzgjDAkHnYCLjHhwxHlCzA

i gonna use this build, a little bit arcane is good, then i can switch between earth & water faster

I’m not sure if this has been mentioned or not yet as I’m not about to read every post in the 2 pages but:

Necro’s Soul Reaping tree does NOT increase life force pool. It is supposed to give an extra 30% at 30 points but it is currently BROKEN and gives a whopping zero percent at 30 points. This is the by far the largest bug I’ve seen in the game to date.

boozer.7815:

mjharrison.3209:

Whoever said to try a full conjure build doesn’t really play an ele – conjures are a death sentence, mainly because they lock out 75% of our weapon skills.

Wrong. I play Ele and only Ele since BWE2. Conjured Weapons are in fine shape by themselves. The only problem with a Conjure build is swapping more fluidly. You can swap out of them at will, any time you feel you need to swap out. Not sure where you are getting the idea that once you summon one you are forever locked out of any other attunement. That is flat out wrong. They synergize very well with combo fields and the dps they put out is actually superior in many ways. They bring an added dimension to this class that is not obtainable just by using our standard skills. WTH would you play a class and NOT use some of your skills just because you have some imaginary bias against them that is not based in fact in any way?

I started playing Ele in GW2 in BWE1. All I do each play session is roaming 1vX in t1 WVW as D/D, and in that context, conjures are worse than useless because they lock out other attunement skills unless you drop the weapon. They’re a total waste of a utility slot, which is why you simply don’t see anyone using them in PVP – they’re bad.

I’ll grant you though that suicidal charges with fiery greatsword, and pulling people from walls with earth shield #4 can be a fun as a laugh.

mjharrison.3209:

I am yet to find an ele build that doesn’t use arcane that isn’t significantly weaker than those that do.

Wow. Wrong again! I am starting to suspect its you who does not play an Ele based on your own statements, which again are entirely based in opinion and not fact. There have been A LOT of people who have flatly stated, myself included, that you DO NOT NEED Arcana to be effective at playing this class. Nobody is saying that speccing into Arcana does not make a strong and a viable build, because it does for Boon stacking builds, but you DO NOT need to spec even one single point into it to still be just as, if not more, effective at playing this class. As with all classes, its the player behind the toon that makes a truly effective showing in PvP. While I truly hate it when some of these posts on here yell at people to LTP, it really does apply in this case. But you keep on, keepin on with that closed minded attitude and ignore the fact that this class is multi-dimensional and should not ever be played based on one or two builds.

I’ll repeat my previous comment – so far, I’ve tried a bunch of different builds, and like many other Ele’s, I’ve come to the conclusion that at least 10 arcane for arcane V is basically mandatory for PVP when you’re not herpa-derping with the zerg.

Oh and staff and D/D are both highly vulnerable to conditions, so you’ll need 10+ in water as well. There’s a reason why most Eles are running high water/earth/arcane/cantrips builds in PVP – glass cannonish builds are all glass and not much cannon.

Well, I spent my weekend (tues and wednesday) playing with what I guess would be some “glass connon” builds. With 30 points in Fire 30 in Air and 10 in Earth, I felt emensly squishy and my damage wasn’t increased by a whole lot when compared to my normal build. I tried other combinations while totaly disregarding water/arcane, I think one build had 10 water..The final conclusion I came to is that I will have to invest in different gear stat builds with these different specs. With a glass cannon trait build I will need all vit/prot with power/crit or w/e else, but the main is vit and prot. To be honest, I just can’t afford to get at least 3 sets of exotic gear right now, maybe some day heh.

All in all I think my normal build of 30 arcane 20 water and 20 earth with my gear (a balance of stats with exotics) feels best for now. Although once I am able to get my hands on a set of gear that has the stats I need to use with a glass cannon builds (vit and prot) I will give it another go.

In the end I really think it is all preferance as I don’t see the damage being a kitten ton more with glass cannon builds and I am just taking another way of providing myself with HP and Defense. 2 ways to skin a cat is what it feels like.

Not only should the baseline attunement cooldown be faster, but the 10 point arcane trait Elemental Attunement (The one that gives you regen on water switch, might on fire switch etc) should be baseline too.

Grandmaster Wong Shun Leung said: “Don’t be a slave to the art/style, make it work for you, be it’s master.”

Find ways to enjoy your Elementalist my friends.

Minion of Vey.4398:

Not only should the baseline attunement cooldown be faster, but the 10 point arcane trait Elemental Attunement (The one that gives you regen on water switch, might on fire switch etc) should be baseline too.

Agree. I think there’s a strong case for reducing the base attunement CD and then reducing the arcana attunement recharge bonus. It was lower in beta and it didn’t feel overpowered. The present base/recharge curve favours arcana builds too much IMO.

Efaicia.3672:

Well, I spent my weekend (tues and wednesday) playing with what I guess would be some “glass connon” builds. With 30 points in Fire 30 in Air and 10 in Earth, I felt emensly squishy and my damage wasn’t increased by a whole lot when compared to my normal build. I tried other combinations while totaly disregarding water/arcane, I think one build had 10 water..The final conclusion I came to is that I will have to invest in different gear stat builds with these different specs. With a glass cannon trait build I will need all vit/prot with power/crit or w/e else, but the main is vit and prot. To be honest, I just can’t afford to get at least 3 sets of exotic gear right now, maybe some day heh.

All in all I think my normal build of 30 arcane 20 water and 20 earth with my gear (a balance of stats with exotics) feels best for now. Although once I am able to get my hands on a set of gear that has the stats I need to use with a glass cannon builds (vit and prot) I will give it another go.

In the end I really think it is all preferance as I don’t see the damage being a kitten ton more with glass cannon builds and I am just taking another way of providing myself with HP and Defense. 2 ways to skin a cat is what it feels like.

That post is spot on Efacia, and your right that with a new build you really should invest the time/gold to get the correct gear to go with it. There is a massive difference between a bunker gear set with a cannon build and a cannon gear set with a cannon build. One of the many massive shortfalls of GW2 is that most people buy or farm for their first gear set and it is a massive investment of time and money, especially for the casual player. You are then “locked” into that build for a very long time after that unless you really want to do the whole farming thing all over again to get another set that works with a different build. So yea, stick with what works for now and continue to build up for your next set with an eye to a completely different build.