Guild Wars 2

Where arcana and water are the must have for any PvP build. And if you dont run atleast 1 dagger you stand no chance at all.

With the entire notion that anet wanted to remove elemental attunement, easily the only reason why an ele even has a role in PvP. Effectively showing the ele community anet really doesnt understand what an ele is about at all.

Lets put this in perspective if a dev would ever read this.

Why does an elementalist require water and arcana?
Survivability/sustain. Without any form of healing, the lowest health spellcaster with the least options to sustain at baseline and a light armor wearer. It is a requirment.

What happens when you dont run either water or arcana?
Your build instantly becomes a 1 trick pony with no reall options to sustain. Even if you go full in defensive runes, sigils and amulets. You do not have any tricks up your sleave and you cannot easily disengage combat. So effectively forcing you to making yourself a glass cannon wich dies to anything if it misses its big spikes.

Build diversity for an elementalist is at an all time low. Scepter has no role in the game anymore. Why?

Because of several issues, but the biggest is sustain, Wich has always been the case, wich is why if you’d run a scepter, you’d be forced to run a focus, because of earth 5. Also the lack of condition damage compared to mainhand dagger. And no way to effectively spike someone down on a relative low cooldown. Plus mobility issues and a ton more.

What about staff?
Staff is a dedicated team support. But any game mode where your required to rotate, teamsupport falls flat if it doesnt have any other tricks up its sleeve let alone no reall mobility (no High hp + light armor and almost no damage comes to mind here wich effectively means if you get 2v1’d or attacked before you even reach your teammates your effectively useless especially in a zerk meta, because you cannot sustain a team if they die in a few sec because of extreme spikes. Let alone if you get focussed and die because of extreme spikes.)

This is my opinion currently about the state of the elementalist in PvP. Please discuss in an insightfull argumentative manner. Thank you.

You forgot the tinfoil hat tag.

More seriously, since the 06/23 Patch & the Vigor nerf, Arcana became more than optional in sPvP. Water however is still a must.

The real problem for sustain is that people keep using Celestial (which got nerfed) over Soldier and do not take Burning Fire to counter the condi builds.

The problem for D/D damage can be fixed by using Fresh Air.

Give it a try :

http://intothemists.com/guides/5552-dd_truely_fresh_air

I think you’re being a bit too critical of staff builds in pvp. I run D/D, D/F, and Staff Cele builds and they all work very well in many different scenarios. I do agree that dagger builds are a bit more flexible to a variety of sitautions, since you can both carry team fights and overwhelm the enemy with might stacks in a 1v1.

Sraff isn’t as bad of a 1v1 build as you say it is. You shouldn’t be assaulting an occupied point alone as a staff ele, but if you get on it, you have enough sustain and tabkiness to keep it from being decapped until a teammate arrives. If you chain your CC and damage skills together you can win 1v1s with enought time against squishy enemies that lack boon hate. Overall the only build I’m really scared of 1v1 as a staff ele is shatter mesmer, just due to their boom removal and spike damage, nothing else is really as problematic to deal with when defending a point. Power necros have boon removal too which makes them only troublesome if their life force level is high, but that’s how they imbalance 1v1s. Power Rangers are slightly problematic but the magnetic aura kills them. Any thief that has to go on point to take me down gets wrecked by AoEs, so only ranged burst builds are a huge problem.

Meanwhile the things staff Ele can do in team fights is really really fun to play with. So while dagger builds are a bit more intuitive and straightforward to succeed with staff shouldn’t be counted out. I mean radioactive and apex have all been succesful in major tournaments using staff eles on their teams.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

You forgot the tinfoil hat tag.

More seriously, since the 06/23 Patch & the Vigor nerf, Arcana became more than optional in sPvP. Water however is still a must.

The real problem for sustain is that people keep using Celestial (which got nerfed) over Soldier and do not take Burning Fire to counter the condi builds.

The problem for D/D damage can be fixed by using Fresh Air.

Give it a try :

http://intothemists.com/guides/5552-dd_truely_fresh_air

Lets face it, that build is just gimping yourself to play same old same old d/d. And really gives no reall extra utility then what we already know.

And about staff, The problem with celestial is and will always be with staff, that your damage output takes extreme hits, meaning you are forcing yourself to not do any damage, wich in turn solidifies my point about general 1v1’s, sure you can sustain and run(dependant on what class your faceing), but effectively you arent able to carry or kill any decent player who doesnt run into your aoe’s.

If your entire team is focussed around the staff support, sure it might work. But requiring a full team to play a different style for you is not only a niche in itself, it diminished actually DPS. And truth be told, if you play a staff in soloQ, your an absolute liability and relly more on your teammates to know there stuff then you actually being good.

What my main complaint is, if you really want to be able to actually create your own builds, your still gutted in the same old same old, wich effectively means you cannot make your own builds, because you are forced to always take into consideration that you require a hell of a lot of defensive traits/runes to even be remotely effective.

Most traits are no brainers because some are horrible UP compared to the choices you have. Wich in turn makes allot of creative builds pretty much useless. (think playing arcanist spiking/auramancing/glass cannons with survivability)

Before the patch i played my own S/F ele build, wich is impossible now, ive been tinkering about s/d ele aswell, but it simply feels there is just not enough support, The only way to play it now is literally going glass cannon yolo zerk mode. And that just doesnt work.

eles have just as many useful meta builds as other classes; 1-2. Ele’s are in a great spot atm. no reason to change

Staff isnt that bad in solo queue. It pulls it’s weight more than most builds in the game in a teamfight and it can generally hold a point 1v1. To be honest we don’t have a proper solo queue in the game anymore so you can’t say that it’s a bad solo queue build, just because if a pug group goes up against a full premade with voice comms, they’ll be disadvantaged no matter what builds are involved.

I’d much rather have a staff Ele on a solo queu team than any cheese condi stealth roamer wvw build, power ranger, MM necro, or even most warrior builds since the shoutbow nerf.

You lost me in the first two paragraphs.

Let me explain: Just because we had x builds before and they got modified, doesn’t mean we won’t get new ones, or find ways to adapt. Give it some time, thought, and effort, and in the meant time please refrain from posting these over-generalizations based on two weeks experience from you.

Please and thank you.

Scepter isn’t unviable, it is just tied so strongly to taking fresh air. Before you say that scepter is terrible, please try the following build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArYhcMoxh9MwzB0RM0AY0RoI8DkKQA4DWZhb4UA-TJBFwALOBAt2fAaZAAPAAA

Why this works: You have MORE team healing and same cleanse as a D/D ele, while dealing great burst damage (phoenix, lightning flash, earthquake, air swaps), and decent sustained damage from range (so you don’t need to disengage and can utilize superior positioning), has superior map mobility (due to low-CD RtL), stacks might BETTER than d/d ele for the team, and can 1v1 as well as anyone.

People just haven’t figure out that s/d is better than d/d right now. It really comes down to the heals, and s/d does it better.

That being said, ele is pretty much pigeon-holed into water/arcana, but this is because the heals and cleanse are SO strong, nothing can compete power-level rise.

If meta is the game within the game then what is the strongest at that moment will dictate what else is viable.

What’s the alternative is the question I would consider. If ele’s aren’t running arcana or water then they are running Fire/Air which = burst damage build then all the eles would run Fire/Air and the last trait line would be earth, arcana, or water, because it wouldn’t matter much because they are of least importance is that really that much better than what you state the meta is?

I’d assume you would see “I’m forced to run Fire/Air” it would be a stop gap maybe it would be fire/air meta eles for a year and then people would be tired of it and say buff earth/water/arcana which ever one is perceived to be the weakest.

One of the things a tier list can give you is a picture of what the meta is. S-Tier dictates to every other class based on how well they can compete with S or A tier then you have the meta. You could run a C-Tier build, but you can’t really be mad if people want you to run the A-Tier build, because your team wants to win.

I’m saying that I think it’s more important that the class is viable to be played more so than what build is ran. If the meta changes and their is nothing the class can do to be played at all, which forces people to hop on a alt then you have a problem.