Guild Wars 2

Seriously, put aside all the crying about the nerfs and all.

1) They are melee range weapons,
2) without the ability to swap to another weapon with a different range,
3) on the squishiest class in game (lowest hp and armor in the game),
4) on one of the lowest dps classes in game as well.
EDIT: by lower dps I mean we’re not meant to get into a fight and quickly finish off targets, which would balance 1-3 (as TheGuy.3568 puts it):

With the exception of ranger every other class has a spec that out dps ele specs. Plain and simple in terms of true DPS damage per second DD ele lags behind the pack.

I thought the mobility and healing was an essential part of the play style: be always on the run, dodge constantly, try to outheal your enemy dps while eroding slowly our enemy with our subpar dps.

So if it’s not intended that D/Ds can jump in and out the fight and run around all the time to avoid damage, get a break and heal some… but we’re meant to sit there and take it “like a man”, like all the complains I hear from non-ele players… That’s exactly what you learn not to do at level 1, because even a PvE Moa can best you if you stay put.

My honest question is: how are we supposed to play this weapon setup on this class?

Wowowow i agree that the changes for next month are horrible, and i also agree on most of what u said, but…. “One of the lowest dps classes in the game”? completely wrong, i mean, realllyyyyyy.

As a d/d ele who plays seens btw1, i can assure u that d/d ele, if build properly, and played properly has one of the HIGHEST dps in the game.

My ele right now is full zerker (except weapons, knights) and im doing 10k+ with fire grab, earth 5 10-12k, 6k with fire 3, 4k with fire 4, and most the time i reach 2k with air 1 (2×2k=4k in fact) and im not getting those numbers with high stacks of vulnerability. If u do your combos properly, and u equip the proper seals on your daggers, u can keep 20 might stacks all the fight without any problem, and ofc u can get 3 auras wich means infinite fury. Even just building some might and spaming air 1 u ll get more dps (read damage per second) than many other classes with zerker gear and dps builds.

So you are probably talking about bunker d/d eles, or builds close to that.

I also hv a full zerker warrior, dps guardian, zerker mesmer, and zerker engi, and if i could hv a dps meter… im almost sure that my ele can be close on the top, and also giving a lot of might, heals, and bring some really useful control abilitys, etc.

Just wanted to clarify that.

I don’t want to turn this into a dps discussion. OK dps may be mediocre in PvE, but for all time you are in water (pbly you spend 10-20s when you switch) your dps is non existent. On a zerker ele you dodge and heal a lot more often in dungeons and fractals compared to other classes that don’t even need to dodge even in zerker (dodge is loss of damage) – and by the time earth 5 hits (it has 3.25s cast) warriors have already finished off any target.

OK maybe it’s not lowest, but it’s definitively not top dps or close.

Still, my question is genuine, because I thought it was intended that as a D/D I can run around and avoid damage to stay alive. Everytime ANet says D/D eles have too much mobility – they basically go against something I think is core to this weapon setup.

So what’s the big picture? What’s ANet expectancy of how D/D should play? What should we get to? Because I don’t see it.

HellKrasher.1074:

Wowowow i agree that the changes for next month are horrible, and i also agree on most of what u said, but…. “One of the lowest dps classes in the game”? completely wrong, i mean, realllyyyyyy.

As a d/d ele who plays seens btw1, i can assure u that d/d ele, if build properly, and played properly has one of the HIGHEST dps in the game.

My ele right now is full zerker (except weapons, knights) and im doing 10k+ with fire grab, earth 5 10-12k, 6k with fire 3, 4k with fire 4, and most the time i reach 2k with air 1 (2×2k=4k in fact) and im not getting those numbers with high stacks of vulnerability. If u do your combos properly, and u equip the proper seals on your daggers, u can keep 20 might stacks all the fight without any problem, and ofc u can get 3 auras wich means infinite fury. Even just building some might and spaming air 1 u ll get more dps (read damage per second) than many other classes with zerker gear and dps builds.

So you are probably talking about bunker d/d eles, or builds close to that.

I also hv a full zerker warrior, dps guardian, zerker mesmer, and zerker engi, and if i could hv a dps meter… im almost sure that my ele can be close on the top, and also giving a lot of might, heals, and bring some really useful control abilitys, etc.

Just wanted to clarify that.

I can do a lot more damage on my thief compared to my ele. I decided to make a thief 1 day to check their traits and weapon abilities and noticed how incredibly high I was hitting.
And if you think a 10k fire grab is a lot… I’m too lazy to find it but there was a warrior with a screenshot of a 30k+ kill shot. Add that to the DPS of 100b on their greatsword and I’m pretty sure the warrior can outdps us in PvE. You can get dps near the warrior’s with fiery gratsword/lightning hammer but those reduce your survivability, have cooldowns and aren’t very effective in PvP.
Also a big part of the problems of the ele DPS builds come from the low survivability you have to have to do burst similar to other classes.

That warrior killshot was using a long since fixed bug (piercing shot was multiplying damage) it was also against an uplevel.

@Wyorg

You’re missing his point…He’s saying Ele can do tons of DPS if built to, and that’s correct. No, it can’t do equal damage to warriors who are the main DPS class in the game, challenged only by thief, but if you wanna do that, lets compare warrior sustain and healing to Ele too?

@Delius

I must disagree, an ele like any other class, when built specifically for damage, will deal tons of it, and with an AoE aspect to boot.

To answer your question, I think ANet wants D/D’s to be rooted brawlers who lock themselves into a fight and fight to the death. To them that means running is not an option. You either out-heal your opponents damage, or you die.

To all the people who say that ele’s have high DPS, take away sigil of battle on your daggers, and tell me how good your DPS is. I remember when I finally got battle it was NIGHT AND DAY. Be reminded that the DPS is also being NERFED indirectly by reducing sigil of battle, and the alternative survival sigil (energy) is getting hit as well. If you take that into your calculations, it stings.

EDIT: By the way, I have long thought that sigil of battle was the real problem with the classic bunker build. You take it away and the damage really is very sub-par (as it should be if you want to trade-off damage for survival).

No ones arguing for Bunker build damage…do you even read? How can any of you say when you build an ele for damage, it doesn’t do any? On a purely statistical platform, any class traiting+building for damage will do it.

Go to Spvp, put on a berserker amulet, put together a creative build based around burst. Use it on a target dummy, and notice how all the numbers are the same as any other class going glass.

The damage may get up to par (just par, not the same as the other classes like thief or warr who are top) for a glass cannon, but the survivability in glass (i.e. escape ability) is being hit very hard. Thieves and mesmers have stealth and misdirection to mitigate their squishiness (I am not complaining about these abilities, just saying they synergize well with that build). Warriors have very good straight-line speed. Elementalists are given healing as their way to survive, but healing only helps when you can reasonably sustain a few hits while it procs. Straight-line speed use to be their method of survival as well. Clearly this didn’t work out very well as everyone who tried glass-cannon ele concluded that is stank. How could it stink if your DPS was anywhere near the glass builds, in addition to the other mitigation factors.

No other classes really get up to par with Thief or warrior in burst damage because that’s their design philosophy. Notice I mean burst, as damage over time can very fairly be replicated on any class. Ele can come kitten close though, that is something I have to stress.

The last thing to give as an example is warrior. I agree, theives and mesmers have tricky and handy tools to mitigate damage (mesmers in particular). Warriors have no tools lol, honestly, high health and armor isn’t all you think it is. I know many warriors would trade those any day to have sustained healing because the other is finite.

Wear a warrior down long enough he dies, for a class with sustain such as say Guardian, they can keep fighting for as long as they manage their CD because they have a self sustaining mechanic.

What I will say is, high health and higher armor (The values for armor differences are actually pretty slight, oddly enough.) does help against an unexpected burst where a instagib thief for example might catch you off guard due to more hp mostly. Like if they do 13k in one gib altogether, you have 7k to be like OH CRAP QUICK DO SOMETHING. But that’s all its useful for really.

PistolWhip.2697:

No other classes really get up to par with Thief or warrior in burst damage because that’s their design philosophy. Notice I mean burst, as damage over time can very fairly be replicated on any class. Ele can come kitten close though, that is something I have to stress.

The last thing to give as an example is warrior. I agree, theives and mesmers have tricky and handy tools to mitigate damage (mesmers in particular). Warriors have no tools lol, honestly, high health and armor isn’t all you think it is. I know many warriors would trade those any day to have sustained healing because the other is finite.

Wear a warrior down long enough he dies, for a class with sustain such as say Guardian, they can keep fighting for as long as they manage their CD because they have a self sustaining mechanic.

What I will say is, high health and higher armor (The values for armor differences are actually pretty slight, oddly enough.) does help against an unexpected burst where a instagib thief for example might catch you off guard due to more hp mostly. Like if they do 13k in one gib altogether, you have 7k to be like OH CRAP QUICK DO SOMETHING. But that’s all its useful for really.

I actually wasn’t bringing up the health/armor as a survival trait (although like you said it helps). I was simply saying, if specced for it, warriors have one of the best straight-line displacement ability in the game. If you run soon enough to avoid CC, you should be able to get away from the zerg using GS+Sword/Horn. Obviously you give-up something for that (locked into melee), but that isn’t the point I am making. Just talking about glass needs an escape mechanism.

EDIT: While I fear bringing this up b/c I am sure it will be nerfed too, I guess eles coule be specced as great glass-cannons in water-battles! They have the best underwater movement ability (water 5, flip camera water 3, signet of air) + a stealth (earth 5 + arcane blast) + a good amount of CC. I guess this will be nerfed in the future (if water combat becomes popular ever) as eles aren’t meant to be best at anything however.

@blackbeard

I dunno, usually I find warriors to be terrible at escape. I mean, they have high mobility otherwise, when exploring but, their lack of condi removal usually means immob ruins them xD. But I’ll take your word for it, I guess it could swing both ways.

The intended playstyle of D/D ele is to log into the forums and cry that the most OP spec in the game is getting nerfed.

Ele built for damage (30/30/0/0/0 with 10 bonus points) has almost no sustain as well. Most of sustain comes from water traits plus cantrips and somewhat from elemental attunement plus evasive arcane. The closest thing to glass cannon you can build as ele is standard 0/10/0/30/30 or 0/20/0/20/30 with zerker+valk(zerk) but that’s only 10 or 20 trait points spent in offensive trait lines.

PistolWhip.2697:

@blackbeard

I dunno, usually I find warriors to be terrible at escape. I mean, they have high mobility otherwise, when exploring but, their lack of condi removal usually means immob ruins them xD. But I’ll take your word for it, I guess it could swing both ways.

Get a set of soldier runes, run 3 shouts, balanced stance and defy pain trait, remove immobilize on movement skill trait, mending heal and warbanner, soldier’s/cleric’s gears. There’s your super-mobile condition clearing self-healing powerhouse warrior.

What? It’s got no damage traits or gear? Well, neither does the "run-away-forever-troll D/D ele build. The reason most warriors don’t use this setup? Because they have other viable builds, and running away is actually “losing” the fight to anyone not just trying to troll. (Eles have viable damage based builds too, but it seems that a certain segment of players believe “viable” means “immortal” so maybe what’s viable to me isn’t to everyone)

In an attempt to nerf the annoying never-die D/D build they are kicking my hybrid damage S/D&D/D builds in the junk, and I don’t have as much junk protection as a bunker, so um, ouch, bro, my junk!

( I also play warrior, so really, who cares, I can dust him and my thief off and see if they somehow got more fun. Too bad for my baby engineer though, looks like they are getting the junk-kick treatment too, ah well, that’s another set of exotic gear I can avoid buying for a while longer, lol.)

stale.9785:

The intended playstyle of D/D ele is to log into the forums and cry that the most OP spec in the game is getting nerfed.

Well, it’s easier than fighting all the fotm necros, mesmers, guardians and engineers running around high tier WvW these days. Since they are basically hard counter to D/D elementalist, and there is no hard counter to forum whining (but do I ever wish there was…..).

I imagine that the intended role for D/D on ele was “DPS supported by mobility”, but the majority of D/D builds have turned that into “Bunker supported by mobility”.

If you look at the skills it’s fairly obvious that S/F was supposed to be our bunker weapon set (every single Focus skill has defensive usages; Scepter has less but still 2 blinds and Rock Barrier, area denial and ranged attacks); unfortunately avoidance/healing trumps damage reduction and as a result players are using D/D for bunker.

ANet are trying to push us towards using the weapons how they intended them to be used, which seems to just be revealing that D/D isn’t good at its intended purpose and is in fact better at S/F’s purpose than S/F is; whether the changes will make S/F actually the better bunker option I can’t say.

Dingle.2743:

I imagine that the intended role for D/D on ele was “DPS supported by mobility”, but the majority of D/D builds have turned that into “Bunker supported by mobility”.

If you look at the skills it’s fairly obvious that S/F was supposed to be our bunker weapon set (every single Focus skill has defensive usages; Scepter has less but still 2 blinds and Rock Barrier, area denial and ranged attacks); unfortunately avoidance/healing trumps damage reduction and as a result players are using D/D for bunker.

ANet are trying to push us towards using the weapons how they intended them to be used, which seems to just be revealing that D/D isn’t good at its intended purpose and is in fact better at S/F’s purpose than S/F is; whether the changes will make S/F actually the better bunker option I can’t say.

So then why are they nerfing the D/D mobility rather than the healing. If they want D/D to be inferior bunkers, then they should cut down on the bunker-ability (primarily the healing). Instead they are forcing D/D into being slow bunkers as you don’t have mobility to trade-off healing for.

BlackBeard.2873:

Dingle.2743:

I imagine that the intended role for D/D on ele was “DPS supported by mobility”, but the majority of D/D builds have turned that into “Bunker supported by mobility”.

If you look at the skills it’s fairly obvious that S/F was supposed to be our bunker weapon set (every single Focus skill has defensive usages; Scepter has less but still 2 blinds and Rock Barrier, area denial and ranged attacks); unfortunately avoidance/healing trumps damage reduction and as a result players are using D/D for bunker.

ANet are trying to push us towards using the weapons how they intended them to be used, which seems to just be revealing that D/D isn’t good at its intended purpose and is in fact better at S/F’s purpose than S/F is; whether the changes will make S/F actually the better bunker option I can’t say.

So then why are they nerfing the D/D mobility rather than the healing. If they want D/D to be inferior bunkers, then they should cut down on the bunker-ability (primarily the healing). Instead they are forcing D/D into being slow bunkers as you don’t have mobility to trade-off healing for.

This, a million freaking times. Kill dagger heals, and leave cantrips alone. But, we’re going to get stomped. My ele can join the ranger on the shelf (staff and s/d are going to suffer more than D/D from the nerf.) – warrior goes from being my main alt to my main. Always wanted to win by faceroll.

BlackBeard.2873:

Dingle.2743:

I imagine that the intended role for D/D on ele was “DPS supported by mobility”, but the majority of D/D builds have turned that into “Bunker supported by mobility”.

If you look at the skills it’s fairly obvious that S/F was supposed to be our bunker weapon set (every single Focus skill has defensive usages; Scepter has less but still 2 blinds and Rock Barrier, area denial and ranged attacks); unfortunately avoidance/healing trumps damage reduction and as a result players are using D/D for bunker.

ANet are trying to push us towards using the weapons how they intended them to be used, which seems to just be revealing that D/D isn’t good at its intended purpose and is in fact better at S/F’s purpose than S/F is; whether the changes will make S/F actually the better bunker option I can’t say.

So then why are they nerfing the D/D mobility rather than the healing. If they want D/D to be inferior bunkers, then they should cut down on the bunker-ability (primarily the healing). Instead they are forcing D/D into being slow bunkers as you don’t have mobility to trade-off healing for.

The only D/D healing they can nerf without touching any other weapon set is Cone of Cold, which isn’t even a major part of D/D’s bunkerage; even with that they already nerfed Cleansing Wave to half heal in sPvP (and this also affected evasive arcana and thus other weapon sets). They can nerf the signet as well, which they… also are, if I recall correctly during the SOTG stream they mentioned fixing all of the non-skills healing with signet (i.e. dodge, attunement swaps shouldn’t be triggering it)

That leaves nerfing the mobility. It’s the only real option they have to make D/D a worse bunker than S/F.

Remember that most of the healing D/D gets comes from traits, and changing those will also affect every other weapon set; if their aim is D/D = DPS, S/F = Bunker, they can’t touch traits so heavily.

Dingle.2743:

That leaves nerfing the mobility. It’s the only real option they have to make D/D a worse bunker than S/F.

Remember that most of the healing D/D gets comes from traits, and changing those will also affect every other weapon set; if their aim is D/D = DPS, S/F = Bunker, they can’t touch traits so heavily.

If that’s really their aim, then they should just add a heal somewhere to focus. Make comet drop a water field for 3 seconds and self-blast it at cast or something.

Off-hand dagger is already less than ideal bunker weapon (in any situation other than open field WvW roaming anyway, which I don’t think of as “bunker” so much as, I don’t know, weasel or something like that, a bunker is a fortified underground structure, not some imitation of roadrunner…..).

The issue there is what happens if they get rid of D/D bunkers by making a better bunker still… when other professions already complain so much about D/D.

What they could do is move some heals from traits to weapon skills on S/F and staff. Change the water effect of Evasive Arcana to a different skill, then give Staff or S/F a new 1:1 heal on a skill or buff a heal they already have. Something like that. A sidegrade for Staff or S/F healing, but a downgrade for D/D (and making Evasive Arcana less useful would also push us towards builds without 30 in Arcana!)

The problem with what they’re doing now is quite often their bigger changes affect all weapon types. That water XI trait that gives condition removal on applying regen? That’ll nerf the condition removal of Staff Water 5 from 8 conditions removed to 6, because the removal on that is once per 3 seconds. Evasive Arcana’s nerf hit the weapons that weren’t overpowered as bunkers due to the extra healing.

RTL’s nerf is actually ANet forcing us to use the skill as intended (a gap closer for a melee range weapon set). Updraft is supposed to be the avoidance on offhand Dagger Air. I’d suppose the kind of skills D/D should get for mobility would be things like thief S/D flanking strike (avoiding damage while staying within range), but ANet don’t want Ele to feel like Thief.

Edit: Also, a water field on focus could be good, but I think Comet’s already a blast finisher; ANet have stated they don’t want a single weapon to have both a field and a finisher in one attunement. Maybe shatterstone could be replaced with a water field of some sort though, as it’s pretty useless.

PistolWhip.2697:

No ones arguing for Bunker build damage…do you even read? How can any of you say when you build an ele for damage, it doesn’t do any? On a purely statistical platform, any class traiting+building for damage will do it.

Go to Spvp, put on a berserker amulet, put together a creative build based around burst. Use it on a target dummy, and notice how all the numbers are the same as any other class going glass.

Perhaps because anyone who builds a bunker Ele for point camping or WvWvW roaming is obviously not building for damage, but survivability and sustain?

An Ele who wants to survive builds to survive, nearly all D/D bunkers start out on PVT and eventually move to Knight’s as they get more comfortable with the lower health pool and access to healing. A D/D Ele built with Berserker’s is about as effective in PvP and WvWvW as a houseplant.

The arguments on these forums from pro-nerfers is always that Eles are capable of doing massive damage and bunker like no one else. What they fail to note in their rants is that it is not an AND operation, but an OR. An Ele can build for DPS or survivability, but not both.

And anyone who says otherwise is just propagating lies and fiction. I guarantee that any top tier PvP or WvWvW Ele player is not running full zerk while in D/D, anyone who says otherwise just wants free Ele kills.

I do and I can guarantee that berserker is more than viable. For pvp I run zerk+valk because average gamer is much better than in zvz.

haviz.1340:

I do and I can guarantee that berserker is more than viable. For pvp I run zerk+valk because average gamer is much better than in zvz.

If you’re using berserker, then newsflash, you’re not building bunker. Tough concept, but there it is.

With the exception of ranger every other class has a spec that out dps ele specs. The term, “ton of damage” is very relative. Even when you pull it off the length and complexity of the chain and the fact that the DPS even with perfect pay still lags behind others classes similarly speced has to be accounted. Plain and simple in terms of true DPS damage per second DD ele lags behind the pack. *Like I have said before players get obsessed with big pretty number not actual D P S. *

Kaleban.9834:

PistolWhip.2697:

No ones arguing for Bunker build damage…do you even read? How can any of you say when you build an ele for damage, it doesn’t do any? On a purely statistical platform, any class traiting+building for damage will do it.

Go to Spvp, put on a berserker amulet, put together a creative build based around burst. Use it on a target dummy, and notice how all the numbers are the same as any other class going glass.

Perhaps because anyone who builds a bunker Ele for point camping or WvWvW roaming is obviously not building for damage, but survivability and sustain?

An Ele who wants to survive builds to survive, nearly all D/D bunkers start out on PVT and eventually move to Knight’s as they get more comfortable with the lower health pool and access to healing. A D/D Ele built with Berserker’s is about as effective in PvP and WvWvW as a houseplant.

The arguments on these forums from pro-nerfers is always that Eles are capable of doing massive damage and bunker like no one else. What they fail to note in their rants is that it is not an AND operation, but an OR. An Ele can build for DPS or survivability, but not both.

And anyone who says otherwise is just propagating lies and fiction. I guarantee that any top tier PvP or WvWvW Ele player is not running full zerk while in D/D, anyone who says otherwise just wants free Ele kills.

Oddly enough, that doesn’t address what I’m saying. OP seems to think that even if you build for damage with say zerker, you can’t do DPS, and when the 2nd poster corrected him he was criticized for saying he builds for damage and thus can achieve it. I was merely criticizing those who criticized him is all. My point about bunker is that you can’t say a bunkers damage is subpar compared to other classes because a bunker has sub par damage off the initial step.

Its like saying my bunker guardian does no damage, of course it doesn’t its not meant to. That’s all im addressing, not how viable zerker or dps specs are on ele, just that if you spec for damage you can have it, there’s no physical limitation stopping you.

TheGuy.3568:

With the exception of ranger every other class has a spec that out dps ele specs. The term, “ton of damage” is very relative. Even when you pull it off the length and complexity of the chain and the fact that the DPS even with perfect pay still lags behind others classes similarly speced has to be accounted. Plain and simple in terms of true DPS damage per second DD ele lags behind the pack. *Like I have said before players get obsessed with big pretty number not actual D P S. *

It’s always nice when fire grab misses because either you or the target shuffled their feet too.

Delius.1968:

Seriously, put aside all the crying about the nerfs and all.

1) They are melee range weapons,
2) without the ability to swap to another weapon with a different range,
3) on the squishiest class in game (lowest hp and armor in the game),
4) on one of the lowest dps classes in game as well.

I thought the mobility and healing was an essential part of the play style: be always on the run, dodge constantly, try to outheal your enemy dps while eroding slowly our enemy with our subpar dps.

So if it’s not intended that D/Ds can jump in and out the fight and run around all the time to avoid damage, get a break and heal some… but we’re meant to sit there and take it “like a man”, like all the complains I hear from non-ele players… That’s exactly what you learn not to do at level 1, because even a PvE Moa can best you if you stay put.

My honest question is: how are we supposed to play this weapon setup on this class?

1) 300 range is 2.3x the range of a truly melee spec. Imagine if you’d have to get in 130 range to hit your auto attack? Yea, you’d be kitten . So, the point is: it’s not a melee spec, at all…
2) Yeah that sucks, but it’s the elementalist mechanic to use only one weapon set.
3) Nop.
4) Nop, either.

“My honest question is: how are we supposed to play this weapon setup on this class?”

Honestly, I think D/D works around dishing damage with fast skills. And it works wonderfully with the valk’s set.

“So if it’s not intended that D/Ds can jump in and out the fight and run around all the time to avoid damage, get a break and heal some…”

It’s intended to do that, problem is: is too good on what it does. Mind you, mobility is not the culprit on that matter, healing is. The fact that they can heal from 10% to 70% just rolling on water attunement(+plenty of CC’s) makes all the effort from Burst/DPS specs pointless, since they take as much damage as the elementalist, but can’t heal all their way back…

Many of you should have realized by now that melee range is rather wide. You should have noticed by playing around with classes and weapon but reading should suffice.

130 vs 300 is relatively irrelevant.

Delius.1968:

I don’t want to turn this into a dps discussion. OK dps may be mediocre in PvE, but for all time you are in water (pbly you spend 10-20s when you switch) your dps is non existent. On a zerker ele you dodge and heal a lot more often in dungeons and fractals compared to other classes that don’t even need to dodge even in zerker (dodge is loss of damage) – and by the time earth 5 hits (it has 3.25s cast) warriors have already finished off any target.

OK maybe it’s not lowest, but it’s definitively not top dps or close.

I dont want to change the propouse of the topic either but i hv to disagree. First of all, u dodge when u NEED to dodge. In dungeons and fractales, 90% of the boss attacks needs to be dodges for any class with zerker gear thats not using some special hability (like endure pain, aegis, etc), so un dont really DODGE much more than what a zerker warrior do.
Also u are picking things out of context, earth 5 can be casted for a starter, o for some situations, its not a mandatory thing, also u can cast it, and break it just to get the stacks.

And 20s on watter? theres no reason for that. In fact, i dont stay more than 3-4s in any attunement. U change to water, (active 4 instantly) dodge (for EA if u hv it), and change thats at most 2s (in tough situations, pbly u ll need 1 more second to cast skill 5). Also ikittennow how to play d/d, u heal attacking, thats the idea, so been ofensive its the way to stay alive, switch attument all the time to maximize your potencial, and dont w8 till u hv 20% hp to change to water, do it periodically for to receive the heal and dodge, and change (u ll also support your group doing this and get 3 stacks of might from the sigil). Im doing 30+ fractals with d/d ele with zerker gear and arcanas (i only keep mist form for the “oh kitten” situations). I didnt tryed in 40+ cos i dont care that lvl, i only looking for the rifle for my engi :P.

So i hv to disagree with what u said.

Kaleban.9834:

If you’re using berserker, then newsflash, you’re not building bunker. Tough concept, but there it is.

Has anyone said anything about bunker with zerker? You claim no one runs zerker because he’s free kill. Or I completely misunderstood you.

PistolWhip.2697:

Oddly enough, that doesn’t address what I’m saying. OP seems to think that even if you build for damage with say zerker, you can’t do DPS

I am saying nothing of sorts.

Related to dps I am saying that a valid tactic for ele D/D, given it’s the squishiest in game + close range, could be that we get in and burst out so much dps so that target doesn’t survive. The kamikaze style, if we fail to take the target down – we die for sure given we’re squishy and closed ranged.

However ele D/D dps is obviously not able to do that. So what play style is intended? We’re seemingly asked to outlive enemy dps on the lowest base hp and armor on the closest range without the ability to swap or enough damage to quickly dispatch the enemy.

But we had mobility and heals (and I think healing came second) as the only two ways to balance all these counters. And now they say our mobility is too much too… so only healing is left.

So we have to focus even more on healing now as we won’t be able to run if we spec for more dps, and that is the most boring, brain dead game play eles have. Not just for all the whiners complaining about bunker eles, but for the eles themselves even more so.

Whenever I try it and then I usually get into this 1:1 fights that I can’t kill but can’t be killed either and they go on and on for over 2 mins… I get tired and bored and I used to just disengage and go do something else. Cap something, pick another target, just break the boring stalemate.

Sometimes I get so bored with it that I choose not heal and just die so I can go do something else except just sit there and outheal one’s dps.

So for me, less mobility sounds like ANet is pushing us towards even more healing and the boring game play described above.

And I am asking: is this what ANet wants eles to do? I want to know because that doesn’t fit what I want to play. And if that’s the direction they’re going for with ele, I need to know now so I can switch and save myself months of frustration with the play style they push us to which I know I won’t enjoy. I don’t want to play bunker, plain and simple.

TheGuy.3568:

With the exception of ranger every other class has a spec that out dps ele specs. The term, “ton of damage” is very relative. Even when you pull it off the length and complexity of the chain and the fact that the DPS even with perfect pay still lags behind others classes similarly speced has to be accounted. Plain and simple in terms of true DPS damage per second DD ele lags behind the pack. *Like I have said before players get obsessed with big pretty number not actual D P S. *

This is exactly what I am saying re dps.

To me it this feels like a huge dps s/d nerf , staff goes from almost viable to lol (spvp):(
Face rolling bunker dd will still be perfectly fine? nerfs working as intended…..

I felt problem was more bunker builds dealt too much damage while being hard to kill. 0.o but what do i know……….

I think everyone has mentioned already that damage isn’t the problem of the ele DPS builds(the burst is actually pretty good if you count in that it’s AoE) but the problem is that the survivability of those builds is TERRIBLE. The recent changes are just pushing eles more and more into pure bunker specs because the active survivability and mobility keep getting nerfed(mist form, ride the lightning…).
I just don’t get what weapon set is supposed to be for DPS if all of them are supposed to have terrible mobility. Maybe it’s time for a new weapon. Something WITHOUT heals so there’s no problems with bunkers using it.

PistolWhip.2697:

My point about bunker is that you can’t say a bunkers damage is subpar compared to other classes because a bunker has sub par damage off the initial step.

Its like saying my bunker guardian does no damage, of course it doesn’t its not meant to. That’s all im addressing, not how viable zerker or dps specs are on ele, just that if you spec for damage you can have it, there’s no physical limitation stopping you.

True, and we agree. However, the vast majority of people arguing for nerfs of Eles ignore the above simple facts. Their contention, especially in PvP, is that Eles built for bunker are also insta-gibbing people all over the map. If you point out this inconsistency, they throw tantrums until you give up. And it seems ANet listens to these children.

As of now, its possible to build a full zerker Ele, usually Staff and gib people from a keep. If you take a step away from high walls or the zerg, you keel over in a stiff breeze. Its also possible to build full bunker Ele, usually D/D or a S/D in some cases, and bunker all day. To actually land a kill however requires either an upleveled WvWvW noob (or several) as the target(s) or extremely coordinated play on behalf of a skilled player.

My problem with all the cries for OP Ele nerfing is that the majority argue the idea that full bunker eles are somehow also doing zerker damage. What it really boils down to is these children got beat by a bunker D/D Ele because they’re terrible players, and rather than improve, they’d rather ANet bring the Ele’s abilities so low that even in the hands of a player like daphoenix, the Ele can’t help but be a free kill.

Kaleban.9834:

True, and we agree. However, the vast majority of people arguing for nerfs of Eles ignore the above simple facts. Their contention, especially in PvP, is that Eles built for bunker
My problem with all the cries for OP Ele nerfing is that the majority argue the idea that full bunker eles are somehow also doing zerker damage. What it really boils down to is these children got beat by a bunker D/D Ele because they’re terrible players, and rather than improve, they’d rather ANet bring the Ele’s abilities so low that even in the hands of a player like daphoenix, the Ele can’t help but be a free kill.

This.