The D Fence! In PvE Ele play?
1. I’m really low in health and I’m engaged in a mob. My heal skill is on cooldown (and even when it isn’t it heals for very low amounts).
There are a few things about this situation:
turn off auto-acquire target. If you have no target and use ride the lightning (known as RTL or A4), you can escape quite easily from tough situations. A5 also knocks down your enemy and gives you swiftness, which can help escape other tricky situations.
Also, you should not be in this situation to begin with! the things that make ele’s strong are damage mitigation/avoidance (through protection and vigor) and constant small heals (through signet of restoration and regen). boon duration is important for keeping protection/vigor up, so i recommend maxing the arcane trait line. for heals, signet of restoration procs every time you do basically any action, including swapping attunement, dodging, and even activating traits like evasive arcana (arcane 13 iirc)
2. Engaged against a mix of ranged and melee mobs that are hitting me from 2 different angles, meaning I can only take one out and have to tank the damage from the other side.
As a melee, i’m sure you already realize that the best way to handle this is to clump them together for your cleave-type abilities to have maximum effect. So stand near the ranged and bring the melee around. When you over-aggro, you want to use your control abilities as best you can. E4 is an aoe stun, A5 is an aoe stun, A2 is aoe weakness, and W3 is aoe chill. W4 gives 10% damage reduction and applies chill as well. If you bite off more than you can chew, i recommend trying to kite in tiny circles and swapping attunements something like this:
Fire for F2(fire breath adds a LOT of burning). use your F3F5F4 skills if they are up(in that order it matters for the next point), they add good aoe damage.
After you finish F4, go to earth and hit E4,E5. both of those are blasts so you get 6 stacks of might. Swap to Air attunement afterwards, your A1 dps is more than E1 since it can cleave.
Use A4 to get yourself close to the ranged enemies at this point if you had to run around. use A5 once everyone is close to you again, and follow up with A2 for the weakness. Keep hitting A1 until fire attunement is ready.
Get to fire attune to reapply bleed with F2. If you need heals, go straight to water attune and use W4W5W2 (W4 is instant and can be cast while casting other abilities). If you do NOT need heals, do F3F4 if they are ready.
You should be able to last in water for a while, and W1 has enough range such that you do not need to facetank your melee enemies. Just wait for fire to come back up and repeat the whole process.
3. Just general “oh crap!” situation management.
lightning flash. seriously, this spell is amazing. armor of earth is also good, but lightning flash can save you from things like being knocked off a cliff, incoming boss fireballs, being knocked down in a giant fire aoe, the list goes on… basically it is my favorite “oh crap” button in any mmo, even though it doesnt have “take half damage” or “full heal” type effects.
Also with all of the water attunement and arcana traits that follow the formula of: “when swapping to water attunement, do X” my level 80 can heal something like 8k, remove 2 conditions, and have regen. I try to never use my heal signet active, which i kinda described earlier in point 1.
edit: tidying up a bit.
(edited by Force.5861)
You want to get at least 15 in water (for the master-level minor trait – a burst heal on swapping to water), and 30 in arcane ASAP (for Evasive arcana). You survive via 3 methods: (1) mitigate damage with frequent dodge-rolls and attacks that give us displacement (you should always be moving and turning at least), (2) swapping to water for a burst heal (Water master level minor trait) and condition cleanse (Water trait V), evasive arcana roll in water (another burst heal), and water 5 heal, and (3) cantrips to reduce hits and damage (mistform, armor of earth, and lightning flash are awesome).
I rarely use my healing spell (ether renewal is awesome, especially when you reach higher levels and EVERYTHING likes to immobilize you, which is death for us) in PvE, which is more useful for condition cleansing, but also has a great hp-gain on it.
You will also learn your fire-field combos with time. Some of the best are:
1. Fire 2 (to get burning)—>Fire 5 for a big smack
2. Fire 4 while backing up/going forward—>dodge roll and swap to earth during dodge for blast finisher in fire ring (+3 might)—>earth 4 in fire ring (knockdown enemies + 3 might)—>earth 5 in fire ring (large damage + blast finisher for +3 might). You can pop armor of earth to tank some damage while churning earth loads, or lightning flash for better positioning (offensively and defensively).
3. Fire 4—>Earth 3 (for leap) to get your fire aura. (useful when earth 4 is on cooldown or using your knockdown is not appropriate).
Also, your “random armor spells” (I am guess shocking aura and frost armor) are popped when you know are going to take a few hits, as these will slow down the rate of attack a bit and reduce some damage on you. Likewise, Air 2 is used to soften-up heavy-hitting enemies a bit.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
@Force, this answers a LOT of my questions, even ones that I didn’t think of asking but am defn struggling with! Thank you!
So to recap (and anyone feel free to jump in and throw in your two cents):
Fire 2 (get them to burn) F5 (more damage if burning) F4 (fire field) —> Earth —> E4, E5 (blast finishers on fire for the might stacks) —> Air —> manage until fire cools down basically, or swap to water if I need quick heals. If no heals needed than stay at fire and rinse/repeat.
Question regarding this: Can I just hit F3, 5, 4 earth, E 4,5 in quick succession or do I have to wait for one animation to finish before hitting the other one? I’ve seen youtube videos where all this is quickly spammed, when I try it half the skills don’t trigger. This is either because I didn’t hit the keys like I thought I did or certain animations need to finish before I can hit the next skill.
Also I’m in low levels currently (I’m talking in the 20s) and don’t have access to those crazy good sounding traits yet. I can theoretically power level through crafting I do have the mats and some gold to do this but that feels… icky… and honestly my favorite thing in the world is learning a hard sequence until I master it, so I’m getting my practice in early!
On the other hand if gameplay at level 80 is totally different from level 20 maybe I shouldn’t waste my time and power level…
@ Blackbeard, I’m literally taking notes! (Ok mental notes).
A lot of dodging seems to be required to play ele (which is like a habit for me from my thieving days so I very much approve), I’m a little worried about having my dodges run out, which sounds like death for eles. If I get boon duration gear and keep vigor up, will I generally have all the dodges I need or should I be using the dodges sparingly?
This E5 thing I was wondering about, since this is a channel and takes some time to trigger. Lightning flash sounds great as I can jump on enemies and use offensively. And earth armor also to mitigate damage. Can I mistform while it is channeling? Or attunement swap while it is channeling?
First, I just noticed the question above. You cannot mistform while churning earth loads, but you can lightning flash during the channel. This will allow you to start channeling in safety and then drop yourself right into the fray before it pops, stacking lots of bleeds and heavy damage. Lightning flash also has use defensively – if you start to channel and they are on top you in a group, just flash a bit behind the horde so you still smack them, but they pause their attack as they reposition. You can also attunement swap while its channelling, but its a good idea to stay on earth at lower levels so that you can pop earth 2 right afterwards. This will apply some extra bleeding, and give a cover condition (cripple) on top. Cover condition means that if they cleanse one condition, it gets rid of the last one applied. Doing this will help your stacks of bleeds stay applied longer.
Also, at lower levels (before you get vigorous renewal, in the arcane tree), you won’t be able to spam dodges, so use them slightly more sparingly. Its important to dodge the large attacks as you will take lots of damage from them.
Silver, enjoy the levelling process, although the class does play very differently once you get 30 arcana and at least 15 water. If you are having trouble surviving, get to 15 water first (it will give you a burst heal when you swap to water).
At lower levels, you can still do a good deal of combo-ing, but this is how it went for me: At first I was too slow at popping skills out (ok…use this skill….now, wait…use that skill…now uh…). Then, when I got comfortable with all my skills, I got too fast using all you skills and start spamming things left and right. However, you don’t want to do this. Fire 2 and Water 2 should be channeled for at least 90% of the time, and not interrupted unless you have to. When I realized this, I started getting more deliberate about when I would use a skill, and start getting the timing right so I know when to go to the next skill. This requires you to understand both cooldowns in the back of your mind, as well as timing of skills. Then when you are that point, you can start mixing it up with which combos to apply when.
So advice is, to struggle through the lower levels so that you learn each of your skills and get comfortable with them. When you get your traits, the combos will come quickly. The play isn’t completely different, you just get much more powerful and effective, assuming you have learned everything at the lower level.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
A few finer points to answer your questions:
You do, in general, need to wait for the cast time to end before doing the next ability — otherwise the first one will not finish.
This game uses an attack ‘queue’, so for example pressing 5 while you are still stomping the ground for E4 will cast 5 as soon as possible after the 4 is done.
If you are in a field while casting E5, the blast finisher happens at the START of the ability. So your F4 fire field should still be on the ground when you start, but it will probably fade before you finish casting E5. DONT PANIC! its fine that way, plus the 3 might stacks actually improve the damage on that ability.
You can also reduce your ‘downtime’ between abilities by swapping attunements early. To see this in action: start E5. swap attunement to anything else. Notice that you still finish casting the E5. If you do this with S/D, you can start E5 and cast A2A3 and then lightning flash next to your target before you even finish with the blast… i dont know why you would do that (well, the lightning flash part is obvious), but you can.
As for leveling… I think D/D should not be fighting more than 2 enemies at a time while leveling. In my opinion, S/D is better for leveling. Open with F2 before you aggro and you’re more likely to land it. Plus, you still have the F4 field for might stacks. In fact, you can get an insane amount of might stacks with S/D with this sequence: F4F2F3E4E5 (12 stacks) and toss an arcane wave in there for 3 more.
Thanks for the advice and support guys! Now I have more motivation for finishing all my work asap so I can get my butt home and kill some things in gw2!
Also, my experience is that elementalists use fields more than other classes you’ve played, so you might not have much experience with those. Learning how to pop all of your fields and when to use the right finisher is a big deal. Spend some time playing as a staff to learn the combos (E2->W4 is aoe frost armor, for example), I think support staff is better for group pve play than any other build.
Also I disagree with blackbeard: I do not think you need 3 cantrips for survivability while leveling. Flash is enough to deal with normal enemies, and I prefer signet of air for a mix of mobility and defense (the passive is 25% movespeed, and the active is an aoe blind that can be used while casting other abilities such as d/d E5) and arcane blast for another blast finisher. At low levels, you can even use arcane blast and arcane wave for lots of burst to move through trash enemies quickly.
edit: checked the actual names of the arcane skills. wave is the projectile and blast is the blast. i think i also used the wrong name earlier in this thread… shrug.
(edited by Force.5861)
In general I roll with 1 stun break/defensive skill (which I hotkey as Z), one offensive utility that I use often (hotkey Q) and one situational (E) so they are within easy access of my wasd. Which is not related to this post whatsoever, BUT!
Point I was making is I roll with arcane wave as my Q, cleansing fire as my stun break (Z) and Lightning flash when I can get it (haven’t unlocked that yet). I’ve seen more aggressive people have both arcane wave and blast with just one stun break, relying on the water attunement for condi cleansing and such. Said people, I think, have balls of titanium. I don’t have the confidence yet to pull that off, as I’m always worried about priority one: dont die.
This reminds me, the signet of restoration doesn’t really scale well at low levels. How is it at higher levels?
Signet of Restoration is pretty good at high levels with a bit of healing power…still not as good as Ether Renewal but good.
Also, might I suggest trying a Focus off-hand? It’s a pretty nifty weapon, mainly defensive, laughs at most projectiles and an overall melee edge. It’s fire field is kind of lame though, but you can also run with 3 offensive utilities without a sweat. Arcane wave, Glyph of Storms and your choice of alternative utility. A good way to play around with alternative utilities besides cantrips.
Force is correct that you don’t need to run 3 cantrips to survive in PvE, but that does give you max survivability if you are struggling. Other good options for your utility bar is the signet of air (esp. for map completion), glyph of storms (the earth storm applies blind every 1 s for 6 s, which is like 6s invulnerable in PvE), glyph of elemental power, cleansing fire, and the arcane skills are all good uses depending on how offensively/defensive you want to be. Lightning hammer can also be great for just killing enemies quickly and has some great damage output (useful for leveling). Also, in PvE only, the glyph of lesser elementals is useful at low-levels (the earth can tank weak mobs for you pretty well).
As for heals, try out ether renewal. The general rule of thumb is this: signet of restoration is like a win-more option. It helps you keep your health high when it would already be pretty high, and doesn’t turn a losing situation around. Ether Renewal can turn the tide of a fight, completely cleansing all your conditions (including immobilizes and cripples) and giving you a lot of health, on a short cooldown. Glyph of Elemental Harmony is also pretty good, but that is more for the offensively-minded, and doesn’t have the condition cleansing. It may work well with cleansing fire however.
I will say, while leveling, once you reach a point that you can survive pretty well, try out your different weapons and different traits that interest you. Its a great chance to learn why some things are generally used, and why some things are garbage, and will help you tune your play-style later on. If you are only doing PvE, most build options (signets, glyphs, deep-fire specialty, even conjured weapons) can work well enough depending on your skill and play-style, so don’t think you have to take the cookie-cutter 0/10/0/30/30 (and slight variations) that you see so often.
(edited by BlackBeard.2873)
I’ll PvE for now, get my gear and learn the strengths and weaknesses of my play. Then I can go WvW and go make people cry and rage quit as I see my other thief and ele counterparts do and be part of the reason why random things get nerfed.
Until then, I will continue to figure out why the hell did anet randomly nerf things that did absolutely nothing to PvP or WvW but wreck people’s faces for PvE. I’m talking to you, 4s reveal nerf for thief and now this random anti heat seeking trick shot nerf…
Well lets not talk about the moans and groans of nerfs, I’m sure there are 50 other threads talking about that. For now, thanks for all the advice guys this is much more than I expected, and quite helpful!
I try to never use my heal signet active
This. I consider using my heal signet a failure in my play performance. If it’s at all possible, I won’t use it even at low health. Only after everything else is on cooldown (already attuned to water, dodged in water, used both heal skills in water) and I’m still (or again) low, I’ll use my signet. It really should be the very last way out.
I don’t really like the healing signet at my current level and tbh I think the other 2 heals, esp the one which heals for more and removes a condi, is just better through and through. Maybe it scales better at level 80 with some attributes in healing. But, I very much prefer the burst heal in an emergency over “staying topped off” when you aren’t taking many hits in the first place, but screwed when you take a big hit.