Guild Wars 2

Gaudrath.6725:

So what I am saying is that while there are situations where you might want to cycle faster or more slowly through attunements, there are NO real situations where you don’t want to cycle at all. Ignoring the main class mechanic leads only to gimping yourself and there is nothing anyone can argue about that.

This I know, but by the way you describe swapping attunements in your previous post (“rapidly cycling attunements” and “There is no good reason to stick in one attunement at any time”) you make it sound like there is no useful effect in the attunement itself but rather the boons you get for swapping and the on-crit effects outweight them.

I think a funny example was in the Ascalon fractal I was just in, while the glass warriors were picking themselves back up, I just sat in water, granting my regen to the NPCs, using my healing skills and spamming the auto-attack heal (staff) so that someone, besides myself or the warriors were getting the last boss’s attention.

I’ve often sat in earth, using the cripple + immobilize combo when it was up and spammed the auto-attack to keep Weakness on the boss as well as blasting combos off of a mesmer’s fields. I could imagine cycling through all the attunements to get fury or to put up fields for combos, but much of it is superfluous. I’ll keep vigor up when I’m actually using lots of dodges, I can bring fury when I’m aiming for the highest damage output, but the majority of the times, I’m in a supportive role (yeah with my berserker/valkyrie mixed gear) using the attunements to bend the situation in a more favorable direction for our group. Even on Scepter/Dagger, I wouldn’t really need to chase fury as that is only for myself and doesn’t actually help my side as much. I’d rather chase might (via blasting fields) as that does help the team.

If Brickforlife was new to the Ele world, would he have listened to that guy? Maybe, I don’t know. If he would have, he probably would have had a crap time.

I don’t see what’s so ‘elitist’ about anything that I’ve said. My tone isn’t condescending at all. Your scathing tone, however, makes you sound like a jerk.

Edit: How come you can’t give people advice without getting hate for it? Seriously? Did you even read the whole first post?

“… , and he seemed like he was trying to convince me to pick one or two attunements to use indefinitely.

…If you want to be effective, it is best that you use all of your attunements. Sure, you may favor one or two attunement(s) more than the rest, but you should still use the others when needed. It’s not difficult to learn, and you don’t want to get into the habit of only using 1-3 attunements, as it will drastically hinder you."

I just don’t understand what’s so horrible about that.

Maybe it was just my bad phrasing, but I was trying to give an anecdote. I told him that I use all 4 because it was more effective but he suggested that specific attunements fit specific roles and I shouldn’t be using anything but.

i stance dance constantly with D/D (superior sigil of battle means a load of might, zephyrs boon and fury on autnement means a lot of fury too), running with 0/20/0/30/20 atm; i find it hard to justify not switching

i play very differently with staff though… with which i stay in fire 80% of the time… occasionally switching to earth/water>water/earth (for blast heal… although which one i switch to first depends on how long ago i used healing rain… i switch to earth first if its still likely on cooldown so i can pop geyser over the blast)>lightning (lightning strike on lightning switch; then mess around in lightning till fire is off CD)>fire
i occasionally switch purely for static field, magnetic aura (i keep powerful auras even when i switch to staff), the earth cripple wall/immob or water for chill… it rarely justifies ‘taking my foot off the pedal’ and swapping from fire
- is that wrong? i noticed after one TA run (three of us had to kill leurent/nightmare tree by ourselves because one kept dying whilst running; the other went back for them and couldnt get to us again) i was told ‘blaze why dont you do anything but auto attack?’ whilst on leurent (i normally siwth to DD for leurent but was still in combat from the knights) despite me using lava font/meteor/fire3 off cooldowns and with neither of them needing a heal or leurent CCing) and the same person -after the run- stated -something along the lines of- ‘you are the worst players ive ever met; you should all just quit’, which… since i didnt suck (i like to think im good ele/player) i can only assume he was referring to me staying in fire most of the time with staff

Kodiak.3281:

Finally the “lack of damage” argument is faulty on two fronts. First, you just can’t compare melee of any kind in this game to ranged. They simply won’t be on par, the game is overtuned for melee.

This is so true! I have been playing GW2 since beta. I love the combat. As a casual player, I find that soloing is much more engaging than in WoW or other MMOs. There is much more to do. However, my chief complaint with the game relates to the lack of balance with respect to professions’ damage capabilities. Melee professions, and in particular warriors and thieves, are superior to all others when it comes to damage.

I started the game with an elementalist, toyed briefly with a necromancer, switched to an engineer and took him quite a ways until the massive grenade nerf, and finally settled on a thief. I enjoy playing the thief. The weapons complement one another, and I feel that I am more capable of outputting competitive damage. However, I would prefer to be playing a ranged (caster) profession. I never play rogue archetypes in other games and feel that GW2 has forced me to do so in order to obtain the experience to which I am accustomed.

One can argue that the status quo exists because warriors and thieves cannot provide the utility of elementalists, engineers, and others. However, I did not sign up to play a predominantly support role. In fact, it was my understanding that the holy trinity was to be abolished and that each profession would be capable of filling each role. Clearly, they are not equal in their ability to do so.

On a positive note, I would point out that a LH elementalist can come close to approximating the experience with the thief. However, conjured weapons have numerous problems (not usable under water, 20-point fire investment, poor trait synergy/support) that make the build little more than a gimmick.

Kodiak, when you are ready to learn how to play your class, shoot me a PM. I will gladly show you why my way is far superior to yours across the board in all situations.

Shimond.2478:

Razor.6392:

Kodiak successful troll?

Yea I’m thinking so at this point – I mean look at his first post in this thread he talks about how powerful sitting in fire attune auto attacking is…

This would be my guess as well, but just in case, I offered to show him how to play.

Leo G.4501:

Gaudrath.6725:

So what I am saying is that while there are situations where you might want to cycle faster or more slowly through attunements, there are NO real situations where you don’t want to cycle at all. Ignoring the main class mechanic leads only to gimping yourself and there is nothing anyone can argue about that.

This I know, but by the way you describe swapping attunements in your previous post (“rapidly cycling attunements” and “There is no good reason to stick in one attunement at any time”) you make it sound like there is no useful effect in the attunement itself but rather the boons you get for swapping and the on-crit effects outweight them.

I think a funny example was in the Ascalon fractal I was just in, while the glass warriors were picking themselves back up, I just sat in water, granting my regen to the NPCs, using my healing skills and spamming the auto-attack heal (staff) so that someone, besides myself or the warriors were getting the last boss’s attention.

I’ve often sat in earth, using the cripple + immobilize combo when it was up and spammed the auto-attack to keep Weakness on the boss as well as blasting combos off of a mesmer’s fields. I could imagine cycling through all the attunements to get fury or to put up fields for combos, but much of it is superfluous. I’ll keep vigor up when I’m actually using lots of dodges, I can bring fury when I’m aiming for the highest damage output, but the majority of the times, I’m in a supportive role (yeah with my berserker/valkyrie mixed gear) using the attunements to bend the situation in a more favorable direction for our group. Even on Scepter/Dagger, I wouldn’t really need to chase fury as that is only for myself and doesn’t actually help my side as much. I’d rather chase might (via blasting fields) as that does help the team.

The thing is, I can do pretty much everything you described + land chills, bleeds, CC, weakness, interrupts, burning, associated combo fields and extra damage on top of that by NOT sitting in just one attunement and all in the same amount of time.

In other words, there is no need to focus only on one aspect of what you can do when you can focus on them all at the same time. Skilled elementalists are always in a controlled frenzy when they are dishing out their best.

Think of it this way – your most effective and impactful skills in each element have a cooldown. By cycling through attunements not only do you grant yourself and your group boons and landing conditions and damage on enemies, you are also using much more powerful spells from other elements while others are cooling off. By the time you swing around through your rotation, your most powerful spells are again ready for use.

Or you can just sit in one element and use autoattack while waiting for other skills to come out of cooldown.

Elementalist is designed for attunement cycling. There is no argument about that. Class traits are geared towards that, individual skills are designed with that in mind, everything about the class revolves around the idea that you will switch attunements often.

Honestly, the problem is the way the trait trees are set up.

Even if you go full Arcane, you’re still going to have at least 3 traits that only apply to one attunement. Once you combine that with how attractive a lot of the specialized traits are (like +10% damage when attuned to fire, 30% chance of burning on crit, 20% faster CDs, etc.).

It makes staying in that attunement as much as possible very, very attractive. Which has the simultaneous effect of making attunement dancing seem underpowered. The first trait of four of our trees only apply when you are IN that attunement (so, with even dancing, 25% of the time), the second only apply when you switch to that attunement, the third are all heavily biased in favor of that attunement.

And you really can’t blame people for that. The practice of the class flat-out doesn’t line-up to the reality of play, or GW2’s avowed goal of building trait trees to be something you tailor to your play style.

With other professions, that’s completely different—their attunements may better suit one weapon or another, but short of range issues the gap between them usually isn’t huge.

Is this a huge issue when you understand how to maximize their influence and minimize their damage? No, it isn’t. But the class is already extremely complicated, and I don’t think hurdles on the way to understanding how to play are beneficial.

I’d actually like to see a more obvious re-balance of the trees to move them away from being element-“specific”.

The entire elementalist class hangs by a thread based on the 10 point arcane trait elemental attunement (boons on attunement switch).

If someone doesn’t take that, and switch attunements often to take advantage of it, honestly everything else they do is moot and they’d be better served playing another profession to do better whatever it is they’re doing.

Wasn’t trolling at all. I was trying to show there are reasons why people do what they do and generally aren’t just completely random.

kostbabis.8791:

To be honest i dont know with what i d laugh at more..An elementalist staying in 1 attunement doing pitiful damage and dying over and over again ?..
Or an ele in a dungeon spazzing through attunements putting water in cd when nobody needs it,cutting his dps in fire at half,capping the bleed stacks with his pitiful 0 condition damage or using air cc in a boss with infinite defiant stacks ? :P

So. Freaking. This.

I see this all the time out of other Elementalists when I run dungeons who generally spout the same garbage advice about swapping around as the original poster. You see them drop just random things or swap to random attunements and you have to wonder if they really think randomly swapping around doing a bunch of weak crap they aren’t spec’d/geared for is going to help anyone. I do crazy fast COF runs on my Mesmer with Warriors and no one ever cares about support or condition removal. Just more damage. We’ll never be able to come close because you have this self perpetuating sterotype of what the Ele is and should be without ever being able to look at what it could be.

Kodiak.3281:

I see this all the time out of other Elementalists when I run dungeons who generally spout the same garbage advice about swapping around as the original poster.

If you’ve EVER switched into water attunement to heal, cure a condition, or the like… then you’ve already followed my “garbage” advice.

Kodiak.3281:

Wasn’t trolling at all. I was trying to show there are reasons why people do what they do and generally aren’t just completely random.

kostbabis.8791:

To be honest i dont know with what i d laugh at more..An elementalist staying in 1 attunement doing pitiful damage and dying over and over again ?..
Or an ele in a dungeon spazzing through attunements putting water in cd when nobody needs it,cutting his dps in fire at half,capping the bleed stacks with his pitiful 0 condition damage or using air cc in a boss with infinite defiant stacks ? :P

So. Freaking. This.

I see this all the time out of other Elementalists when I run dungeons who generally spout the same garbage advice about swapping around as the original poster. You see them drop just random things or swap to random attunements and you have to wonder if they really think randomly swapping around doing a bunch of weak crap they aren’t spec’d/geared for is going to help anyone. I do crazy fast COF runs on my Mesmer with Warriors and no one ever cares about support or condition removal. Just more damage. We’ll never be able to come close because you have this self perpetuating sterotype of what the Ele is and should be without ever being able to look at what it could be.

Well if you are looking for brainless skill spammage then I suppose there are better classes to take than elementalists. What has that got to do with playing an elementalist properly?

I also suppose your “more damage” doesn’t include Might and Vulnerability stacking, right? Or if it does, the ele has to cycle through 3 out of 4 attunements. Or he can stay in Fire spamming #1 and #2 and be generally useless.

Look, it is simple. There is no way an ele who stays in one attunement can top the damage output of an ele who uses all four. Not to mention that you might as well take another warrior then if you are looking for that sort of thing. If you want a force multiplier for your party, then take an ele who knows what they are doing and is using all the tools at their disposal.

Why are the people defending the whole “sit in one attunement” argument, implying that stance dancing necessarily means wasting every single cooldown even when it’s not needed?

That’s something I would expect from the kind of players that sit in one attunement, if anything (if they ever feel like adapting, they would start like that).

Using the full extents of your combos, boons on attunement and other bonuses doesn’t equal being a complete dummy and blowing all the cooldowns… so yeah, stop assuming that, dear 1-attunement-wonders.

Glass cannon staff eles can dish out major damage. Same with s/d. If you learn how to use your skill and time dodges they can be super fun. I die less then most in pve. And dont get me started on how dangerous they can be on a wall during a siege.

Gaudrath.6725:

Look, it is simple. There is no way an ele who stays in one attunement can top the damage output of an ele who uses all four. Not to mention that you might as well take another warrior then if you are looking for that sort of thing. If you want a force multiplier for your party, then take an ele who knows what they are doing and is using all the tools at their disposal.

The only simple part of this whole conversation is none of you seem to want to provide the context of what you’re doing, what you’re playing or any actual details about what it is you’re talking about. That makes largely what you’re talking about to be completely irrelevant because it all applies to a specific scenario that you won’t state. If you really think your advice applies in all scenarios you’re wrong.

For example, I can tell everything you’ve posted in this thread you’re a D/D Ele. Virtually nothing of what you’ve said applies to a staff ele or S/D Ele. Trying to apply your advice to a Staff just creates useless and largely shoddy game play that people have come to expect out of Elementalists. In fact I’d easily argue that while playing staff I do far better when sticking to Fire both defensively (burning retreat counts as a 3rd dodge) and offensively (Puissance’s might stacks are tough to beat).

Kodiak.3281:

Gaudrath.6725:

Look, it is simple. There is no way an ele who stays in one attunement can top the damage output of an ele who uses all four. Not to mention that you might as well take another warrior then if you are looking for that sort of thing. If you want a force multiplier for your party, then take an ele who knows what they are doing and is using all the tools at their disposal.

The only simple part of this whole conversation is none of you seem to want to provide the context of what you’re doing, what you’re playing or any actual details about what it is you’re talking about. That makes largely what you’re talking about to be completely irrelevant because it all applies to a specific scenario that you won’t state. If you really think your advice applies in all scenarios you’re wrong.

For example, I can tell everything you’ve posted in this thread you’re a D/D Ele. Virtually nothing of what you’ve said applies to a staff ele or S/D Ele. Trying to apply your advice to a Staff just creates useless and largely shoddy game play that people have come to expect out of Elementalists. In fact I’d easily argue that while playing staff I do far better when sticking to Fire both defensively (burning retreat counts as a 3rd dodge) and offensively (Puissance’s might stacks are tough to beat).

So a Staff Elementalist shouldn’t ever switch to water to heal?

Okay.

zTales.4392:

So a Staff Elementalist shouldn’t ever switch to water to heal?

Okay.

Say it with me now: It. Depends. On. What. You. Are. Doing.

If you got 0 points in the Water Line, swapping to Water to heal is a poor choice. Why? Let me elaborate. For one, any regen you do give to others or yourself is going to be substantially weaker than the regen any other class would give. Regen stacks duration, in the sense that it will tick for your (say) 10s of super weak regeneration before getting to say a Guardian’s regeneration who may have a decent chunk of +healing gear on. Wasting time to go to Earth, Eruption, then to Water, then Geyser isn’t going to help anyone if it blast finishers for 500 healing when people got 15,000 hit points.

Again, it all comes down to context of what you’re doing, who you’re with, what weapon you have equipped, what gear you have equipped, what traits you are, etc. Simply telling people to use all their attunements when they scenario may dictate otherwise is simply bad advice.

Kodiak.3281:

zTales.4392:

So a Staff Elementalist shouldn’t ever switch to water to heal?

Okay.

Say it with me now: It. Depends. On. What. You. Are. Doing.

If you got 0 points in the Water Line, swapping to Water to heal is a poor choice. Why? Let me elaborate. For one, any regen you do give to others or yourself is going to be substantially weaker than the regen any other class would give. Regen stacks duration, in the sense that it will tick for your (say) 10s of super weak regeneration before getting to say a Guardian’s regeneration who may have a decent chunk of +healing gear on. Wasting time to go to Earth, Eruption, then to Water, then Geyser isn’t going to help anyone if it blast finishers for 500 healing when people got 15,000 hit points.

Again, it all comes down to context of what you’re doing, who you’re with, what weapon you have equipped, what gear you have equipped, what traits you are, etc. Simply telling people to use all their attunements when they scenario may dictate otherwise is simply bad advice.

Yes, it does depend on what you are doing.

If you’re in fire, your heal/cantrips/evades/whatever are on cooldown, and you can’t do s*it, are you going to just stay in fire and die? Why would you? Switch to water and heal. Give yourself a chance to survive.

P.S. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to go earth > water, just go straight to water.

I seriously can’t believe that you don’t get this.

Kodiak.3281:

Gaudrath.6725:

Look, it is simple. There is no way an ele who stays in one attunement can top the damage output of an ele who uses all four. Not to mention that you might as well take another warrior then if you are looking for that sort of thing. If you want a force multiplier for your party, then take an ele who knows what they are doing and is using all the tools at their disposal.

The only simple part of this whole conversation is none of you seem to want to provide the context of what you’re doing, what you’re playing or any actual details about what it is you’re talking about. That makes largely what you’re talking about to be completely irrelevant because it all applies to a specific scenario that you won’t state. If you really think your advice applies in all scenarios you’re wrong.

For example, I can tell everything you’ve posted in this thread you’re a D/D Ele. Virtually nothing of what you’ve said applies to a staff ele or S/D Ele. Trying to apply your advice to a Staff just creates useless and largely shoddy game play that people have come to expect out of Elementalists. In fact I’d easily argue that while playing staff I do far better when sticking to Fire both defensively (burning retreat counts as a 3rd dodge) and offensively (Puissance’s might stacks are tough to beat).

Actually I use all weapon sets equally since I don’t believe pigeonholing oneself is what playing an elementalist is all about.
The advice I provided can be applied to staff even more so than D/D. As I mentioned earlier, I routinely melt wall defenders with staff by piling AoE on them through rapid attunement rotation. You sitting in Fire just makes for a good laugh.
When was the last time you downed/killed a non-afk wall defender just with fire?

I beat your Puissance Might stacks with Sigils of Battle and Might self-combos, we have plenty of those. Your “3rd dodge” in Fire, well, I got perma vigor and Evasive Arcana, beat that with one extra dodge on a 20 second cooldown.
And hey, I got Burning Retreat just like you do, on top of everything else.

Look, it is not a matter of being innovative with the class. Ignoring the main class mechanic is not innovative, it is nonsense. What would you say to the Thief who refuses to use Stealth or to the warrior who refuses to use Adrenaline?

The first time I ran a dungeon with a very good friend of mine, I noticed that she only used Fire attunement. When I asked her about it, she replied “but I am a fire ele and all my points are in Fire”. She can be excused though, this is literally her first MMO ever. In fact, she only played Diablo3 before GW2, so she had to learn how to walk when she first played the game.

So I created my own ele and showed her the versatility of the class. Imagine my pride when I caught her using Earth on our latest dungeon run <3.

I think it’s a shame if you ignore everything the ele has to offer. Every other class gets 2 weapon sets of 5 skills each, and 5 utility skills. The ele has 4 attunements with 5 skills each, and 5 utilities. Might as well use all 25 skills in combat.

Except air as a staff ele. Haven’t figured out a good use for air yet.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Except air as a staff ele. Haven’t figured out a good use for air yet.

Vulnerability stacking via #5 combo field, personal defense via #3, and #1 is nice when targeting several opponents, especially when there are only two near each other since no.1 will get hit twice.

Windborne speed is also a CC breaker in addition to giving a speed buff, so that can be useful.

I’ve also seen people use Earth #2 + Air #5 for AoE speed buffing in WvW.

@Tosha Daydreamer:
Air skills on staff can have their purpose.
1. The auto-attack can be nice against multiple opponents, but has multiple drawbacks. It draws aggro from additional enemies that happen to be in range, and its damage per enemy is rather low. I tend to not use it.
2. A blinding attack with a long cast time. Still not impressive, but borderline useful against a hard-hitting single opponent that you are fighting as a party (champion, or in dungeons or fractals).
3. A knockdown attack with a long cooldown. This one is useful against non-champion monsters, because it interrupts. Good skill, but waiting for the cooldown is just not worth it.
4. PBAoE swiftness. Mostly utility value (i.e. catching up if you are behind the party, running from monsters, preparation for a difficult jump). No real combat value.

5. Static Field. This is what you do it for.
A monster that tries to enter or leave the AoE will be dazed. In addition, it’s a lightning field, meaning that any projectile finishers will inflict vulnerability. In parties with many auto-attack projectile finishers (thieves, rangers), one application of this skill can give a difficult enemy a large stack of the vulnerability condition. Although it’s only worth it in group play (or large-scale events).

Of course, given this rundown, you will not want to stay in air for long, and switch out to different attunements soon. I usually start a combat out in air for the static field, and switch back to it at the end, for the area swiftness.

Kodiak.3281:

zTales.4392:

So a Staff Elementalist shouldn’t ever switch to water to heal?

Okay.

Say it with me now: It. Depends. On. What. You. Are. Doing.

If you got 0 points in the Water Line, swapping to Water to heal is a poor choice. Why? Let me elaborate. For one, any regen you do give to others or yourself is going to be substantially weaker than the regen any other class would give. Regen stacks duration, in the sense that it will tick for your (say) 10s of super weak regeneration before getting to say a Guardian’s regeneration who may have a decent chunk of +healing gear on. Wasting time to go to Earth, Eruption, then to Water, then Geyser isn’t going to help anyone if it blast finishers for 500 healing when people got 15,000 hit points.

Again, it all comes down to context of what you’re doing, who you’re with, what weapon you have equipped, what gear you have equipped, what traits you are, etc. Simply telling people to use all their attunements when they scenario may dictate otherwise is simply bad advice.

Actually, it always procs a blast finisher for 1300 minimum, and an extra 1300 with arcane wave, I guess you have NEVER proc’d a single water field blast finisher in your life for you to say something so ignorant. Let’s also not forget the invaluable frozen field for massive kiting (leading to more aoe’s) or team auras in the water attunement.

Anyway, all of this shows how clueless you are about this class. I feel sorry for the people that end up in dungeons / pvp with you.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Except air as a staff ele. Haven’t figured out a good use for air yet.

Air is all about control and mobility on the battlefield.

Aoe blind and aoe 2 seconds stun is pretty useful.
For D/D, shocking aura is amazing, same can be said about ride the lightning and updraft.

With focus you get a single target knockdown and a projectile cancelling aoe that surrounds you.

hover on the elemental icons just above your weapon skills, they describe quite accurately what each element does.

Even running staff, you will do far more damage time swapping attunements. You really need to stop clinging to this Kodiak because you are wrong. Regardless of my weapon choice, not only do I do more damage myself swapping attunements correctly, but I allow my group to do more damage as well. In addition, I also provide more healing and group support via swapping attunements correctly. Might/Pro/Regen/Condition Removal/Higher DPS/Fury/Auras are all relevant to attunement switching compared to sitting in something like fire and spamming buttons… and this is without considering conditions you may be applying.

Gaudrath.6725:

You sitting in Fire just makes for a good laugh.
When was the last time you downed/killed a non-afk wall defender just with fire?

I beat your Puissance Might stacks with Sigils of Battle and Might self-combos, we have plenty of those. Your “3rd dodge” in Fire, well, I got perma vigor and Evasive Arcana, beat that with one extra dodge on a 20 second cooldown.
And hey, I got Burning Retreat just like you do, on top of everything else.

Look, it is not a matter of being innovative with the class. Ignoring the main class mechanic is not innovative, it is nonsense. What would you say to the Thief who refuses to use Stealth or to the warrior who refuses to use Adrenaline?

On a daily basis. With 12-13 stacks of might and my gear/setup I hit hard.

Staff has two possible might combos: Eruption → Lava Font and Lava Font → Arcane Wave. Of course you could just combo it all together. You could do a third if you want to try to setup a Lava Font → Earth → Evasive Arcana but then you can’t Eruption → Lava Font so it all comes out being the same. All in all you’re looking at around 6 stacks of might 2/3rds of the time without any kind of +Boon duration (Arcane Wave is a 30s recast, Area Might is 20s). Sigil of Battle has a 9-10 second internal cool down which means at most you will also get 6 stacks of Might out of that.

Best case scenario, you pull equal stacks of might (since Puissance will net you around 10 stacks constantly and Arcane Wave combo is available to anyone). Unfortunately this is where Spec does you in as 30 points in fire for Puissance will put you much further ahead (and I certainly never heard of any 30/0/0/0/30 builds!). As for Vigor, because I don’t care about swapping, I can easily take “Renewing Stamina” which with sufficient crit rating (even gear is enough) will give you permanent vigor and put me on par. Evasive Arcana is just crap after the blast finisher nerf, not really holding much over my head by not having it.

There are actual warrior builds that don’t use their Adrenaline skill and instead rely on that bar being full to increase their damage as well as super power their heal. One is actually quite popular. That’s not to say all Warrior builds are like that, nor is it to say that all Elementalist builds should stay in one attunement. When I play D/D spec I am regularly swapping around like a madman because that is the play style for that build. When I am doing pure staff DPS I don’t swap at all.

Different builds, different purposes, different play styles. Sometimes you need the all the tools in the box. Sometimes you just need a hammer.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Except air as a staff ele. Haven’t figured out a good use for air yet.

So a lot of Fire’s AOE is all designed around tightly packed groups. Sometimes mobs come at you spread out. This is where Air’s Chain Lightning attack comes in since it has a pretty decent chain distance. Also remember the Chain will bounce back. So for example in AC dungeon when/if Troll is attacking Kohler, I will attack the troll with Chain which will bounce to Kohler then back to Troll for double helping of damage. Also Blinding Flash hits pretty kitten hard when you’re all spec’d for damage. Gale is pretty “meh” because it’s a super slow projectile that can be easily dodged.

Add on the fact you can chain Static Field → Arcane Wave for Area Swiftness on top of Windborne Speed on top of Glyph of Elemental Harmony and you actually end up with permanent Swiftness (2/3rds of it AOE).

Air isn’t bad, but typically it’s a fall back if you’re find yourself out of Fire for whatever reason and want to keep doing DPS (since the DPS in Water and Earth is beyond terrible).

If im on staff in Dungeons i rarely switch out of Fire, because its just nonsense when there no healing to do or support. Fire does the most dmg and without 20-30 Points in Arcana switching to much gets you stuck so its also an option to not switch Attunments, all depends on the situation you and your grp are in.
Air AA is only good for 2 close targets, Water AA when the melee are low or in trouble, earth also when big hits from bosses are troubling melee, else they just suck compared to fire.
In orr for example its best with dagger to just stay in Air because you get most tags and so more loot, why should i switch.
On Bosses with Daggers i also stay most of the time in Air because Fire AA hits really hard. I only switch for healing or condition removal when its needed, or for might stacking when earthquake and cunning earth is off cd.
If you are playing PvP or wvw you have to switch very often and you need 20 Points in Arcana to make it usefull, but in Pve you dont have to dance to be effectiv.

Gaudrath.6725:

The thing is, I can do pretty much everything you described + land chills, bleeds, CC, weakness, interrupts, burning, associated combo fields and extra damage on top of that by NOT sitting in just one attunement and all in the same amount of time.

Well, you’d think. But condition durations are short. By the time you’re changing to land your bleeds, the chill is gone. By the time you apply your burns, the cripple has expired. Etc etc.

In other words, there is no need to focus only on one aspect of what you can do when you can focus on them all at the same time. Skilled elementalists are always in a controlled frenzy when they are dishing out their best.

Perhaps ‘skill’ is based on expectations then. IMO, skill is forward thinking, being a step ahead of your opponent and having a plan to fall back on when you’re the one who was predictable. It’s exactly how mesmers are so kittening tough to fight against, usually.

Think of it this way – your most effective and impactful skills in each element have a cooldown. By cycling through attunements not only do you grant yourself and your group boons and landing conditions and damage on enemies, you are also using much more powerful spells from other elements while others are cooling off. By the time you swing around through your rotation, your most powerful spells are again ready for use.

But if you blow your cooldowns, how are you going to use them when you actually can put them to use? I guess, hope that one is just off cooldown when you need it, or just jackhammer cooldowns until you outlast the foe I suppose.

Or you can just sit in one element and use autoattack while waiting for other skills to come out of cooldown.

Elementalist is designed for attunement cycling. There is no argument about that. Class traits are geared towards that, individual skills are designed with that in mind, everything about the class revolves around the idea that you will switch attunements often.

I’m not arguing that changing attunements is bad. I’m arguing spamming cooldowns and flip-flopping between attunements non-stop isn’t always optimal. If you build for it, perhaps, but I work just fine without ‘dancing’ through attunements and changing to the ones I need when I need them and then changing back to fire when I don’t.

I’m hoping they fix sigil of intelligence soon. That’s ideal for my style as I use my attunements timely…although I could just build for as near 100% crit chance instead.

Kodiak.3281:

Gaudrath.6725:

Look, it is simple. There is no way an ele who stays in one attunement can top the damage output of an ele who uses all four. Not to mention that you might as well take another warrior then if you are looking for that sort of thing. If you want a force multiplier for your party, then take an ele who knows what they are doing and is using all the tools at their disposal.

The only simple part of this whole conversation is none of you seem to want to provide the context of what you’re doing, what you’re playing or any actual details about what it is you’re talking about. That makes largely what you’re talking about to be completely irrelevant because it all applies to a specific scenario that you won’t state. If you really think your advice applies in all scenarios you’re wrong.

For example, I can tell everything you’ve posted in this thread you’re a D/D Ele. Virtually nothing of what you’ve said applies to a staff ele or S/D Ele. Trying to apply your advice to a Staff just creates useless and largely shoddy game play that people have come to expect out of Elementalists. In fact I’d easily argue that while playing staff I do far better when sticking to Fire both defensively (burning retreat counts as a 3rd dodge) and offensively (Puissance’s might stacks are tough to beat).

I’m glad someone bothers to acknowledge that Elementalists have other weapons besides daggers.

I mean, it’d be positively stupid to be swapping around attunements if you’re using a focus. What happens if some projectiles come your way and you have air on cooldown? You have to swap to earth and use magnetic wave instead, wasting the potential of condition removal and now when you swap out, it’ll be on cooldown so you have to wait 9+ seconds just in case you need obsidian flesh.

hans.7265:

If im on staff in Dungeons i rarely switch out of Fire, because its just nonsense when there no healing to do or support. Fire does the most dmg and without 20-30 Points in Arcana switching to much gets you stuck so its also an option to not switch Attunments, all depends on the situation you and your grp are in.
Air AA is only good for 2 close targets, Water AA when the melee are low or in trouble, earth also when big hits from bosses are troubling melee, else they just suck compared to fire.
In orr for example its best with dagger to just stay in Air because you get most tags and so more loot, why should i switch.
On Bosses with Daggers i also stay most of the time in Fire because Fire AA hits really hard. I only switch for healing or condition removal when its needed, or for might stacking when earthquake and cunning earth is off cd.
If you are playing PvP or wvw you have to switch very often and you need 20 Points in Arcana to make it usefull, but in Pve you dont have to dance to be effectiv.

Lightning auto attack is higher damage for dual daggers.

D/D and S/D ele player here (mainly D/D).
As a D/D ele I change attunements a lot, I also play mainly PvP where changing attunements keeps you alive. In PvE I change attunements to mix things up, auto attacking in air just gets boring when the rest of air is on cd.

Changing attunements is up to the player, if they spec for damage in the fire and air trees then they should be in the fire or air tree. When they need a heal then they can swap out for that heal.

Also if you don’t have any points in Arcane (people say this is a must, I disagree) then changing attunements isn’t going to be as effective and its going to put you on a long CD, burning those skills would be a waist.

Shimond.2478:

hans.7265:

If im on staff in Dungeons i rarely switch out of Fire, because its just nonsense when there no healing to do or support. Fire does the most dmg and without 20-30 Points in Arcana switching to much gets you stuck so its also an option to not switch Attunments, all depends on the situation you and your grp are in.
Air AA is only good for 2 close targets, Water AA when the melee are low or in trouble, earth also when big hits from bosses are troubling melee, else they just suck compared to fire.
In orr for example its best with dagger to just stay in Air because you get most tags and so more loot, why should i switch.
On Bosses with Daggers i also stay most of the time in Fire because Fire AA hits really hard. I only switch for healing or condition removal when its needed, or for might stacking when earthquake and cunning earth is off cd.
If you are playing PvP or wvw you have to switch very often and you need 20 Points in Arcana to make it usefull, but in Pve you dont have to dance to be effectiv.

Lightning auto attack is higher damage for dual daggers.

oh yeah mixed that up

Thanks for all the tips on staff Air Will definately try air again if I’m ingame.