Guild Wars 2

So what’s everyone using instead of Frost Bow (if you switched since it was nerfed that is?)

I’ve been using Lesser Elementals a lot personally.

Arcane Wave or lightning hammer to boost the mesmer/ranger/guardian.

Element of storms mostly stand storm for wvw its realy good zone control. You can also run AoE and just go a bit more glass.

Either lightning hammer for the DPS or Arcane Wave for the blast finisher.

In PVE, Conjure Frost Bow should still be a permanent part of your utilities. It’s still too good to be replaced by anything else, so long as you stay in Water Attunement.

Unfortunately this ^, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for using lesser earth elemental, wave, hammer, or earth/fire signet in its place. Even with it on my bar I find myself using it less because it’s just not what it used to be.

It’s still a 5 sec stun.

For PvE, still frostbow. Water traitline op.

I didn’t PvE since the frost bow nerf. I think the only enjoyment I had playing PvE was using frostbow 4 and giving frost bows to people, knowing I was helping make those boss battles a few seconds shorter for everyone…

I can’t imagine how tedious PvE must be, waiting for your Meteor Shower to recharge over and over.

Frost bow against big targets has still 30k DPS and lightning strom (glyphe) deals up to 80k aswell with line cast and only 1 1/4 sec cast time, so basicly even better than frost bow 4 ever was.

I hardly ever used frostbow, was overrated in my opinion. Most of time using armor of earth, wich perfectly fit in my cantrip build.

I’ve never liked Frostbow. It dealt a ridiculous amount of damage, but it’s just so unsatisfying to conjure a weapon, use it once or twice, and then drop it.

I prefer Glyph of Storms. Earth is probably the most useful since it really helps deal with trickier trash mobs in Fractals: you basically get 10 seconds of damage immunity for the entire party. The other storms are very strong as well depending on what you’re looking for.

Xillllix.3485:

I didn’t PvE since the frost bow nerf. I think the only enjoyment I had playing PvE was using frostbow 4 and giving frost bows to people, knowing I was helping make those boss battles a few seconds shorter for everyone…

I can’t imagine how tedious PvE must be, waiting for your Meteor Shower to recharge over and over.

Honestly not sure if sarcastic or serious.

I used it as a condition weapon. Frost volley’s projectile finisher x5 100% is pretty good on a fire field. But with the massive nerf on the Ice Storm, I can’t cleave down properly on sPvP so it has lost one main use.

Also, Frost Fan shoot 7 chilling arrow each doing 1 second of chill. But, the limit of chill stack if 5. You can’t chill for 7 seconds anymore, so it’s thrashed and put on the side at the moment. That’s coming from someone who was actually casting 2,3,4 and 5 and repicking up the conjured weapon; maybe that speaks some truth.

I still use it like normal. I find deep freeze awesome in the usual fights.

I still use frostbow sometimes. But now, I run arcane wave + arcane shield + glyph of elemental storms.

Ele has been my main my whole time playing gw2… when I saw tempest and the warhorn I began to drift to my warrior. However I’d still get on my ele because the classic staff nuker was so much fun for me in the silverwastes and such. But… after the nerf I’m not running anything in that slot because the elementalist has been turned into a storage character.

Ele has the lowest base stats and right now my warrior is outdpsing her. I can’t justify using ele because she no longer excels at anything. I don’t get anything out of going glass cannon on her(which is all people do in pve) because the payoff isn’t worth it anymore.

The whole problem in my opinion was that the elementalist was handing off its most powerful aoe to other party members. Have enough eles in your group and suddenly every party member gets handed an icebow and eles become too crucial. Why not revert the nerf and remove the pick-upable icebow?

well.. give anet a cookie for killing most or all of the conjure weapons?

I like arc wave cause it’s useful in all game types.

For those running with Staff meta (or DEKeyz change from water → arcana) with Glyph of storms, what are you guys using to keep DPS up while stuck in air attune? FGS? Ice Bow?

Arcane wave on staff. In addition to signet of fire and glyph of storms.

The extra blast finisher is useful for blasting water/fire.

To be honest, I just play ele a lot less.

Ice bow isn’t worth it in most encounters now honestly, and arcane wave is only chosen because there’s hardly anything else worth taking.

Ele really needs some improvements right now, it’s had too much taken away from it in the past year without being actually given anything good.

Not saying that the nerfs weren’t justified, I’m saying that the fact that D/F and scepter+LH builds in PvE are both completely trash and obsolete and staff’s playstyle is really lousy when conjures aren’t added to the situation. It’s just not very fun in PvE anymore for me, nor does it seem worth playing. :x

I think ele was in a great spot before the june specializations update. It had the most trait diversity, it didn’t deal a broken amount of damage, and required a decent amount of micromanagement (arcane lightning and the lack of burning precision meant you had to care about when using flame burst on staff to make sure you had the 10% damage modifier up before a meteor shower/ice storm).

Amurond.4590:

For those running with Staff meta (or DEKeyz change from water -> arcana) with Glyph of storms, what are you guys using to keep DPS up while stuck in air attune? FGS? Ice Bow?

Don’t get stuck in air with staff.

It’s an understatement to say that the Elementalist is more than just bad.
Same goes for Tempest. It’s not a number thing.
We will gain absolutely nothing by simply doing loads and loads of damage if the entire mechanic is broken.

You don’t create a decent class by buffing some aspects and nerfing them again in your next breath. Don’t buff them in the first place OR think about changing certain aspects that won’t interfere with the game – in the long run.
That much off-topic.

Not playing Elementalist in PvE that’s how I play it now.

Frostbow was a gap closer and dealt considerably high damage while channeling Ice Storm in Water, favorably at 25 Stacks Vuln.
Now it doesn’t justify taking it – switching to water, casting it – since it is – per definition – a damage loss.

Purple Miku.7032:

To be honest, I just play ele a lot less.

Ice bow isn’t worth it in most encounters now honestly, and arcane wave is only chosen because there’s hardly anything else worth taking.

Ele really needs some improvements right now, it’s had too much taken away from it in the past year without being actually given anything good.

Not saying that the nerfs weren’t justified, I’m saying that the fact that D/F and scepter+LH builds in PvE are both completely trash and obsolete and staff’s playstyle is really lousy when conjures aren’t added to the situation. It’s just not very fun in PvE anymore for me, nor does it seem worth playing. :x

I think ele was in a great spot before the june specializations update. It had the most trait diversity, it didn’t deal a broken amount of damage, and required a decent amount of micromanagement (arcane lightning and the lack of burning precision meant you had to care about when using flame burst on staff to make sure you had the 10% damage modifier up before a meteor shower/ice storm).

This is spot on, to much options/playstyle/fun factors of what used to make ele fun have been taken away with nothing in return, all for balancing purposes. Leaving useless skills ( FGS/Most glyphs) and traits behind and overall making ele alot less fun to play.

For content where we do need stuns and if a thief is on my team I will still use frostbow. Otherwise LH/Arcane shield/Arcane Wave/glyph of power

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Amurond.4590:

For those running with Staff meta (or DEKeyz change from water -> arcana) with Glyph of storms, what are you guys using to keep DPS up while stuck in air attune? FGS? Ice Bow?

Don’t get stuck in air with staff.

So do you not use Glyph of Storms at all or do you use it at the start/end of a fight?

DutchRiders.2871:

Leaving useless skills ( FGS/Most glyphs) and traits behind and overall making ele alot less fun to play.

Eh… just gonna throw it out there, FGS is not useless. I don’t really use it for mobility in casual runs, I use it for its insanely high burst. Not only is fiery rush actually worth using now, but fiery whirl can theoretically be one of the highest burst skills in the game if you’re fully buffed and can land all 8 hits on a boss if you’re casting it in water attunement. I’ve hit upwards of about 64k with a single fiery whirl, so yeah. It’s a force to be reckoned.

Zention.1849:

It’s an understatement to say that the Elementalist is more than just bad.

Massive overexaggeration. I don’t enjoy playing ele that much anymore and think it needs some improvements, but to go as far as saying the whole class is bad? Eh, no.

Staff ele can still out-DPS many other classes without even using meteor shower— just spamming lava font and fireball. If you take into consideration the fact that you have meteor shower and glyph which both deal a ton of damage themselves, elementalist is capable of achieving higher burst than nearly every other class still and ultimately that’s all that matters in dungeons and fractals because sustained DPS is irrelevant when fights last between 10-30 seconds.

In addition, you can min-max your burst even more by squeezing in as many weapon skills as possible before engaging in combat. Elementalist has a lot of good weapon skills that have high damage coefficients.

Example: https://youtu.be/ds6-tlmZ0eo?t=4s

Amurond.4590:

So do you not use Glyph of Storms at all or do you use it at the start/end of a fight?

It really depends on the situation but most of the time you should be opening an encounter with it because it not only deals damage but it instanly spikes a boss to 25 vuln, making everyone’s opening burst much more potent.

My wish list would be to put water and earth attunement autoattacks in line with fire/air, there’s really no reason for them to be such a DPS loss, especially with the mechanic of overloads. Right now you jump in earth/water to press a skill or two and then want to swap out of it asap.

Make Churning Earth work like Dragon Tooth, fire and forget so offhand dagger would be usable in PvE.

Reduce the cooldown of fire grab to 15-20 seconds. It’s absurd that a skill that does around the damage of a backstab has four to five times the cooldown, especially when things like 100b exists.

I find dagger play a lot more fun than staff so at some point I hope they stop holding the class back for cele d/d ele PvP balancing only and start making all ele weapons and attunements desirable and competitive.

I also hope they revamp the arcane utilities. Their value is highly undermined in high crit builds, and PVT/cele/tank builds don’t even benefit from the guaranteed crit much due to the necessity of high ferocity for power damage to be competitive.

The glyphs all need help still, and signet of water could go with clearing 1-2 conditions off yourself and allies every 10 seconds.

Reduce the CD on signet of air and add an aoe daze on it.

Purple Miku.7032:

Amurond.4590:

So do you not use Glyph of Storms at all or do you use it at the start/end of a fight?

It really depends on the situation but most of the time you should be opening an encounter with it because it not only deals damage but it instanly spikes a boss to 25 vuln, making everyone’s opening burst much more potent.

Thanks

Amurond.4590:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Amurond.4590:

For those running with Staff meta (or DEKeyz change from water -> arcana) with Glyph of storms, what are you guys using to keep DPS up while stuck in air attune? FGS? Ice Bow?

Don’t get stuck in air with staff.

So do you not use Glyph of Storms at all or do you use it at the start/end of a fight?

Use it at start, usually earth 2, air, storm, fire 2. Then cast fire storm during a fight but if you need to leave fire for some reason, feel free to use storm in air. If ele leaves fire, the dmg goes down a lot so preferably you should stay in fire during a fight.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Use it at start, usually earth 2, air, storm, fire 2. Then cast fire storm during a fight but if you need to leave fire for some reason, feel free to use storm in air. If ele leaves fire, the dmg goes down a lot so preferably you should stay in fire during a fight.

It’s not worth casting glyph in fire, if you’re gonna cast it at all it should only be in air for damage, water if you need to chill something for some reason or earth for sandstorm. I’ve tested it before and firestorm on glyph doesn’t deal the same kind of damage as the one on fgs and it’s nothing even remotely close to the output of lightning storm.

In addition to that, you can basically maintain the burning rage damage modifier all of the time due to the burning precision trait along with flame burst on staff so there’s literally no use for it in fire. You’d be better off just autoattacking or lava fonting instead.

Zenith.7301:

Arcane Wave or lightning hammer to boost the mesmer/ranger/guardian.

I like the lightening hammer.

>Ranger – support for all who want to be revived.