Guild Wars 2

So, the D/D Elementalist.
They have average offence, insane defence and unparralleled mobility.

How exactly is this balanced? Where is the drawback in all this?

An elementalist at a given skill level is unkillable. They can withdraw from any fight short of a zerg V 1 scenario at will. Notice how I said “kill” not “beat” in the title: beating one is not the same as killing them. Beating them they just run off, regenerate in seconds, recharge their skills and come back for another go. They don’t die unless they make a serious mistake.

You certainly can disrupt the spell rotation – at which point they can run off and come back for another go at leisure. No other class besides a specialised thief has this luxury, and said thief build sacrifices a hell of a lot of offensive power to do it.

So can someone explain to me, picking whatever class you like, how do you reliably kill a D/D elementalist without them making a monumental kittenup?

I assume you’re talking about bunker D/D eles. 0/10/0/30/30 with soldiers+cleric gear.

CC and conditions. Immobilize and poison especially – quite deadly to us. Also, right when we start using our water attunement heals, chill us. It’s a lot more helpful if you have a reliable way to consistently reapply it, as our condition removal is quite good.

Most D/D eles all use a very similar, pretty predictable rotation (or numerous rotations). Learn them, learn when to dodge, and destroy them.

For more information, there’s already a thread about this. Use the search function.

They are heal tankers, you go backstab burst thief and end it before the battle even starts. If you miss your burst you lose because you can’t out run them, if you are a sustained dps you lose because thats the exact build they counter, if you are a bunker you can “beat” an ele but you have nothing to secure the kill before they run.

Captain Epicfail.8730:

So, the D/D Elementalist.
They have average offence, insane defence and unparralleled mobility.

…

You certainly can disrupt the spell rotation – at which point they can run off and come back for another go at leisure. No other class besides a specialised thief has this luxury, and said thief build sacrifices a hell of a lot of offensive power to do it.

A d/d ele with average offense does not have insane defense. You can build a d/d bunker ele with insane defense that pretty much cannot be killed 1 v. 1, but all they’re really going to be doing is tickling you. For some reason, you acknowledge that a thief needs to sacrifice a hell of a lot of offensive power to be like this, but you seem unaware that elementalists do as well.

The unkillable d/d ele wears PVT armor with clerics jewelry, meaning they have virtually no crit damage (or condition damage, although this is a secondary issue for eles). The unkillable d/d ele has all 3 utilities used up with cantrips, so they have relatively insignificant burst as well. Point is, they’re not hurting you very much. It’s true, all you can do is chase them off… but that’s no different from a thief that doesn’t want to die either.

“CC and conditions. Immobilize and poison especially – quite deadly to us. Also, right when we start using our water attunement heals, chill us. It’s a lot more helpful if you have a reliable way to consistently reapply it, as our condition removal is quite good.”

Advice appreciated, but you just massively contradicted yourself. “Use conditions” and “Our condition removal is quite good” (massive understatement, by the way).

“Most D/D eles all use a very similar, pretty predictable rotation (or numerous rotations). Learn them, learn when to dodge, and destroy them.”

I think you mean learn to dodge, and watch as they run off and regen to full to attack again.

“They are heal tankers, you go backstab burst thief and end it before the battle even starts. If you miss your burst you lose because you can’t out run them, if you are a sustained dps you lose because thats the exact build they counter, if you are a bunker you can “beat” an ele but you have nothing to secure the kill before they run.”

Translation: You need to oneshot them with some absurdly one-dimensional class/build, or they just won’t die.

“you can build a d/d bunker ele with insane defense that pretty much cannot be killed 1 v. 1”

This is an argument for a nerf by itself.

“For some reason, you acknowledge that a thief needs to sacrifice a hell of a lot of offensive power to be like this, but you seem unaware that elementalists do as well.”

Elementalists sacrifice nowhere near as much offence to be utterly unkillable.

“You learn to play”

And the twelve year old who likes being overpowered shows his face. Disregarded as idiocy.

The overriding point here is: the pinacle of skill for an elementalist is “unkillable”, wheras the pinacle of skill for other classes is “temporarily inconvenience the elementalist”. This is a problem that needs addressing.

Captain Epicfail.8730:

And the twelve year old who likes being overpowered shows his face. Disregarded as idiocy.

No, the one without the ability to actually look at the front page of the elementalist forums, or being able to catch up on any quotes from developers etc have shown his face here.

Elementalist has been subject for many forumthreads over the last weeks where people cry for nerfs without actually looking on how to defeat an elementalist.

Since DaPhoenix launched his guide on how to master the D/D Elementalist it became the FOTM build that old backstab thieves and 100b warriors flew to. These are players who thinks a guide is how they learn to play. These players would then run AC until they finished their kittenty PVT outfit or you will see them in Orr karma gear. These players can not harm you! If you die to one you got no one to blame but yourself! A full PVT ele does low damage, but can withstand lots of damage. Now I will tell you how to kill them.

1. Lock them down: If you can lock down the elementalist he will use his cleanses on your CC instead your conditions. He will not do much damage on you so you really dont need CC to escape etc.

2. Learn how to read their attunements: This is the “weapon switch” for any elementalist. Just as you know whats coming when a warrior brings out his greatsword you know what the D/D elementalist will do when switching to any of his 4 attunements.

Say you get him down in HP. He will either go water to heal. This is where you interupt, KB, stun etc. Or he will go air and try to escape. This is where you immobilize, roots, chills etc. Ride the Lightning do not work if immobilized, but will go on a CD!

Fire. The D/D ele burst damage. This is where you DONT immobilize him close to you. He will start with his fire charge attack. It does high damage, but he needs to hit you in the end of a short charge animation. Very easy to see, very easy to dodge. Ring of Fire. If he catches you inside it do not worry. Just dodge out of it and take no damage at all. He catches you outside of it, just go away. Cross the lines and you will apply burning to yourself and he will use Fire Grab on you!

Fire Grab. kittenty hit detection makes this easy to dodge just with movement. Stay close to the elementalist and just stay to the left or right of him. He will use right mouse button to aim his attack and it will miss cause it is so buggy! Oh. And guess what will miss aswell if you are close. Burning Speed!

Earth. Major damage can be done by Churning Earth. It is a 4 second cast time. No need to go outside of red circle since the elementalist will just Lightning Flash to your location anyway. Just stay and DPS him down while he is casting it. Use a invul, block or dodge after 4s. 10k damage avoided right there!

3. Dont fight near keeps etc. These rerollers will try to drag the fight to a keep, spawn etc so they just can Vapor Form from downstate into safety. This is stupid and needs to be nerfed and removed. I agree with everyone on that! The ability should stay, but should not be possible to move in it!

4. Let the runners run. Many classes have abilities to escape fights. Take pride in knowing that you have beaten them and done so badly. They cant even recognize your win since they think they are this super op class that can beat anything blindfolded, but they are just another NPC with loads of HP!

Then you have elementalists that have played the class and learned it, like Intigo, DaPhoenix that have all evolved into a way more offensive way of playing the D/D elementalist. We are sacrificing survivability to be the ones who down faster and we use the mobility of the D/D ele to bounce in and out of combat. In to unleash some damage, out to avoid it. This is when D/D is at it most fun. But hey, this build and gear will take alot more damage aswell. But the people who are using it actually know how to play a elementalist since we was on this train way before the influx of PVT!

Lol @Rookni
Are you trying to teach people how to play against an ele? Give it up , don’t even try dude, you won’t change their minds, “ELE IS OP” it’s all they know..can’t you see the way he talks to you? He calls you 12 years old for trying to help him…

Here’s the number one tip to beating a x/x/x/30/30 ele:

Watch for when they leave water attunement (so you know it’s on a 10+ second cooldown) and then load them with conditions and/or burst them with an immobilize. The only condition removal eles have aside from the water attunement and water skills is from cantrips (which have long cooldowns). So either you force them to waste cantrips to remove conditions or they die to them or die in an immobilize. Confusion is especially devastating on an ele because attunement swaps and dodges count as spells which makes the condition do a lot more damage to an ele than most other classes. Interrupt their cone of cold heal if you can. 95% of eles will use cone of cold with 2 seconds after swapping into water, so get ready to stop it. If you don’t have an interrupt, try to poison them as soon as they swap into water (this is a good tactic even if you can interrupt their water 2 heal).

As soon as you see an ele swap to air attunement with low health (or when they’re in trouble) try to cc them with a stun/knockback/immob to prevent them from escaping with RTL. If they are in air attunement when they engage you, get ready to dodge the RTL and the following knockback. If you do this, the ele will have no way to land burst on you.

Whenever you see them swap to fire attunement get ready to dodge the burst damage. D/D eles have the most predicable damage in the game with very obvious animations. Interrupt the drake’s breath (the channeled skill), expect them to burning speed whenever they’re in fire attunement and ~600 range away from you, Fire Grab is extremely buggy to land so as long as you keep moving through them and around them they probably won’t land this on you. 95% of eles will use burning speed into ring of fire into fire grab, just dodge when you see the burning speed animation coming at you and negate nearly all of their damage.

When they swap to earth, don’t waste any of your burst cooldowns until after the 3/4 second protection fades. They will most likely try for an AoE stun, best thing to do is to just kite them if you have a ranged weapon swap when they’re in earth to force them to use earth 3 (the root and leap) to get to you to land the stun. That will give you some free DPS time because of how long the earth 3 animation is. You can also just use a blind/block/stability whenever they’re right on top of you because 95% of the time that means the earth 4 stun is coming (you can also dodge it). Don’t get hit by churning earth (the 3.25 second channel skill that is extremely obvious). This is pretty much a d/d ele’s only real burst. Expect them to use Lightning Flash (the teleport) to land this skill on you so ALWAYS dodge 3-3.25 seconds after you see the animation start (even if you’re at range) or interupt him with cc after 3 seconds. This gives you a lot of free dps time so go for some burst during this channel, but don’t get hit by it. You can force them to waste lightning flash if you run out of the AoE’s range and dodge right as it’s going to land, this is a good tactic too.

Notice the common theme? Watch for their VERY obvious attunement swaps and react accordingly.

Captain Epicfail.8730:

“you can build a d/d bunker ele with insane defense that pretty much cannot be killed 1 v. 1”

This is an argument for a nerf by itself.

I await your post calling for Fortified Walls/Gates to be downed based on the same argument.

Captain Epicfail.8730:

“For some reason, you acknowledge that a thief needs to sacrifice a hell of a lot of offensive power to be like this, but you seem unaware that elementalists do as well.”_

Elementalists sacrifice nowhere near as much offence to be utterly unkillable.

You’re comparing (I assume) a GC thief build to a condition build as the amount of trade-off a thief makes for being unkillable. So you actually don’t mean offence at all, but rather you mean BURST damage. Thieves switch to a completely different type of offence when they go for a survival build; elementalists don’t switch to another source of offense when they go for a bunker build, they completely kill their ability to crit.

You’re one of those people who has played against both bunker (PVT 0/10/0/30/30) builds AND more offensively minded d/d eles and are crying because in your biased mind they have the best of both worlds. Which just simply isn’t true. That or you’re a “wahhh I should be able to kill everything” player who is crying because there’s a class who you can’t actually finish off, even if it requires them to be built in such a way that they can never actually beat you.

Lol, came looking for answers, but I knew I’d find “learn to play” somewhere in here…

Lyndis.2584:

Lol, came looking for answers, but I knew I’d find “learn to play” somewhere in here…

there are already 2 large posts on how to win, and other smaller posts helping

its people like you those comments are directed at

youve ignored a lot of constructive info here to help you

Fellnine.6905:

Lyndis.2584:

Lol, came looking for answers, but I knew I’d find “learn to play” somewhere in here…

there are already 2 large posts on how to win, and other smaller posts helping

its people like you those comments are directed at

youve ignored a lot of constructive info here to help you

No, I don’t really care because I’m leveling an ele right now anyway because there’s no real point leveling anything else right now. Just wanted to see what the answers would be.

Thanks for the tips guys, I really appreciate them. I think I just have trouble fighting ele’s because I treat them like every other profession and just dodge the big moves, you really have to time your own attacks against them which is different.

In full PVT/cleric gear I definitely don’t have “average damage”. My damage is awful. If I kill someone it’s because they have no way to sustain a fight or they’re full Glass. Sadly, you have to build for damage just to do “average damage” as an ele. And if you’re fighting someone built like that, you should be able to kill them unless they’ve decided to run away 2 seconds into the fight or something.

I don’t know what WoW is like now, but it’s kinda like being an old Discipline priest in WoW. You could stand up to just about anyone in 1 v 1 but if you killed someone then it was a 5 minute fight and they were a class/build that had no real self healing so you slowly wore them down.

Funny enough you can build many professions in the game this way. Full bunker guardians don’t die 1 on 1 either. It won’t even be like a bunker ele where you maybe get them in a bad spot and they get out of there with RTL. They just walk away from you at normal speed and laugh at you with you never feeling like you even “almost had them”. It’s the most soul crushing experience ever. Eventually you’ll just give up and walk in the other direction, like a walk of shame.

Ever fight a full bunker thief? I know that’s not popular (not sure why either, bunker thieves actually do a little more damage than bunker eles) but it’s another completely fruitless endeavor trying to kill them. They don’t even need to run away with stealth.

Full cleric gear shout healing warrior? Not killing them alone either. And they can run away from you too. sPVPers that have moved up into higher tiers can vouch for Bunker rangers and necros as also being really obnoxious. Believe it or not, the word is getting out on bunker rangers and people are starting to complain about them. That’s right, COMPLAINING ABOUT RANGERS WHAT KIND OF WORLD IS THIS!? hehe.

I think the main reason people don’t like bunker eles is because that’s the bunker they run into the most. The reason for that isn’t that it’s a better bunker than other professions, it’s that other ele builds are such crap so eles you run into are likely to be one..

to be fair elementalist isn’t the only class who can easily just duck out of a fight whenever they want to. Thieves can just turn invisible when they are losing and casually jog away for example.

There are lots of classes that have an amazing build that seems unkillable. Guardians, Warriors, Theives all have one too. Fortunately, in sPvP its not about killing the other person (which is also why its not balanced around that).

It’s also pretty rude to say “No, you’re wrong” to people trying to give you advice. It works for them – that’s why they are saying it works. Refuting genuine advice in this way really makes your thread come across as just another flame thread. You didn’t really come here for advice, you are just trying to say “WTF ELE’s ARE OP!!!” and disguise it as a question.

I can only speak from the perspective of a Mesmer here, so remember that in my post.

An offensive shatter Mesmer or a phantasm Mesmer can take out a bunker d/d ele in about 15 seconds. Unfortunately, this is due to instantaneous massive burst damage combined with prior instantaneous vuln stacking combined with daze and massive boon stripping. No other classes or builds can replicate that trick unfortunately.

From the perspective of my tank Mesmer, it’s a little more interesting. I do most of my damage with retaliation, and then finish them off with confusion. What I generally try to do is get them low enough to swap to water for the heals. Sometimes I can interrupt some channels, but not always.
After water, they usually go fire then earth in a full burst combo. I will face tank that entire thing, while bursting 12 stacks of confusion the instant they come in with burning speed. The retaliation damage from face-tanking their full combo will bring them at least to 50%. The 12 stacks of confusion hit for around 2000 per action. If they don’t notice that confusion and stop mid-combo, they die instantly. If they do notice it, you go back to square 1, and repeat the entire thing over again ad infinitum until they make that 1 fatal error.

Edit: A really good bunker ele won’t make that mistake, of course, especially if they are experienced with fighting mesmers, leading to sever 10+ minute long duels I’ve had with eles.

Trap ranger → condition spec (0 30 30 5 5)
Trap ranger → glass cannon spec (30 30 0 5 5)
Mesmer → not sure the build
Insti kill you thieves of justice powers, may not get the kill but god I’m leaving or dead
Thieves with the bunker p/p build

Now onto actual skill use. You have a 9 second window on the standard 0 10 0 30 30 d/d. A much larger window on my build 0 15 0 25 30 with zerkers or knights.

Once you see water effect (change spec effect) you will see all of his heals go off. The moment he changes out (usually within seconds of entering) unload your biggest hitters counting to 9. Once you hit about 8 immobilize, burst and GG (hold a nice interrupt for the cleansing wave animation, if he used that last water spec then use you interrupt of the water breath asap).

While elementalists have large condition removal not many take cleansing fire? (aoe damage + burning + remove 3 conditions) Most take mist form instead. Layering your conditions will put pressure on. Mask you chill and poison with bleeds and whatever else you have no matter how little. While elementalists have a lot of condition removal, conditions are what bring us down. Not just 25 stacks of bleed, but many and learning how to mask more critical ones will allow you to have a better chance at killing the ele.

Remember, traps activate while they are in mist form and RTL. So when they use vapor form you can chuck traps at their moving to location and the will activate and continue to do damage when they are down. Also they will activate when they go into RTL, so a chill trap will chill them as they ride off.

RTL is a 3 second stun if you can immobilize them during it. They can only use their cantrips which don’t get them out of this stun (not including mist form). If you also cover your immobilize with another condition then mist-form wont remove it and they will be immortal but wont go anywhere.

Elementalists that are really buff don’t do much damage. Against my random really bad died to everything else Trap build (30 30 0 5 5, rabid) the d/ds I fought couldn’t even hurt me and they died to mediocre bleed dots (88 bleed). On my Trap build more appropriate (0 30 30 5 5 carrion) they had no chance (119 bleedish)

When I fight with my D/D I usually don’t run unless its a serious match (tourny) or I’m out numbered. I also run a semi bunker / burst build. Better damage, much less defense.

Hoped that help

I appreciate the tips in here as well.

D/D eles are easily the only class that troubles me, but I find the challenge fun.

I play a thief when I run P/D condi spec D/D eles are much easier for me to handle since I can keep conditions on the constantly basically filling the condi removal que. Now that I am running d/p and s/d if the ele is full bunker I tap them a few times to confirm bunker and then leave since its not worth it. If you really want to stay around for 15-20 minutes to try and kill a bunker ele just to have someone roll up to get in the mix friend or foe then by all means go ahead.

Clarification I have no problem with ele’s in their current state honestly. If I can’t kill them I can’t kill them I know they can’t kill me unless I want to stay and fight. Not every class has the luxury of mobility I know that much but if its not full bunker then you can kill them. You should be able to tell if your fighting a bunker or not when you hit them without protection up. From there people just need to decide to either fight or just leave.

Captain Epicfail.8730:

So, the D/D Elementalist.
They have average offence, insane defence and unparralleled mobility.

How exactly is this balanced? Where is the drawback in all this?

You know, all of this is wrong already. Do your research next time.

Eles can have both, average offence and insane defence. Just not at the same time. When you spec for insane defence your damage output is pretty much nonexistent. Peroid. Speccing heavily or even only decently in offence will remove a lot of ‘built in’ survivability and you need to heavily rely on knowledge, experience, mechanical skills and timing (= player skill) to survive.

Unparralleled mobility: Yea. Warriors and Thieves are just as mobile, if not even better.

So, although this just seems to be another Ele-OP-rant thread, I’ll still help you out. Go and check this video:

An Engineer (WORST PROFESSION IN THE GAME LOL) going toe to toe with a D/D Ele (MOST OP kitten IN THE GAME OMGWTFBBQ) and being able to keep up? What is this madness?!?!?!

Now just pay attention to the commentary of the Ele (vid is his PoV) and how the engineer reacts to him, and voila: You now know how to kill an elementalist.

You’re welcome.

Dante.3754:

They are heal tankers, you go backstab burst thief and end it before the battle even starts. If you miss your burst you lose because you can’t out run them, if you are a sustained dps you lose because thats the exact build they counter, if you are a bunker you can “beat” an ele but you have nothing to secure the kill before they run.

Hi burst theives wont kill an ele if ele knows hes there. If you get suprise and can manage to kill in 3 seconds then yes but once you pop out of invis and dont instant kill your finished.

If you want to kill D/D ele play ranger or engineer. Classes with snares and roots with range will kill a D/D ele or kitten him off.

I am a d/d and is an easy kill:)
Weapon set and armour can only do soo much.. But ele is about awareness and using the right element/skill to counter or preassure your opponent action:)
And going from one-trick-pony thief to bunker guardian and now to ele I am beginning to see a patter…

All professions are OP.. Well that means balance? Only profession I see that annoys every profession is Mesmers.. But they usually flees:D

As a d/d. By being better than them. Obviously. Isn’t that how the game works?

Watch their movements and their rotations and dodge them and counter. cc and immo/chill/cripple works wonders.

makku.2508:

Captain Epicfail.8730:

So, the D/D Elementalist.
They have average offence, insane defence and unparralleled mobility.

How exactly is this balanced? Where is the drawback in all this?

You know, all of this is wrong already. Do your research next time.

Eles can have both, average offence and insane defence. Just not at the same time. When you spec for insane defence your damage output is pretty much nonexistent. Peroid. Speccing heavily or even only decently in offence will remove a lot of ‘built in’ survivability and you need to heavily rely on knowledge, experience, mechanical skills and timing (= player skill) to survive.

Unparralleled mobility: Yea. Warriors and Thieves are just as mobile, if not even better.

So, although this just seems to be another Ele-OP-rant thread, I’ll still help you out. Go and check this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKBfE5VL9ug

An Engineer (WORST PROFESSION IN THE GAME LOL) going toe to toe with a D/D Ele (MOST OP kitten IN THE GAME OMGWTFBBQ) and being able to keep up? What is this madness?!?!?!

Now just pay attention to the commentary of the Ele (vid is his PoV) and how the engineer reacts to him, and voila: You now know how to kill an elementalist.

You’re welcome.

engineer got a buff during the January patch.

Weapon stats are added to kits now

Had a 1v1 vs a D/D Ele earlier, he wasn’t that good honestly.
Yet he healed up to full 3 times from 10% and ultimately managed to kill me.
I basically “killed” him thrice, the OP healing just gave him 2 more lives.

And Anet nerfs RTL? RTL isn’t filling a lifebar that I know.
EA wasn’t the main culprit either.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Had a 1v1 vs a D/D Ele earlier, he wasn’t that good honestly.
Yet he healed up to full 3 times from 10% and ultimately managed to kill me.
I basically “killed” him thrice, the OP healing just gave him 2 more lives.

And Anet nerfs RTL? RTL isn’t filling a lifebar that I know.
EA wasn’t the main culprit either.

Aside from RTL increased in CD, halving EA on water heals is not enough for you? Halving the Regen and Vigor granted via Soothing Disruption Trait not enough for you? Halving the fury and swiftness granted by Zephyrs Boon not enough for you? LOL. Just LOL

Dear god, what more do want to be gutted from eles?