Guild Wars 2

Use the Staff for large battles.

If your only concern is in acquiring the chest and badge rewards from guards and supervisors, make sure you’re in a 5 man group.

You can always swap to air for an instant single target skill. That way you can at least tag the lord before it goes down..

ThiBash.5634:

You can always swap to air for an instant single target skill. That way you can at least tag the lord before it goes down..

Well, one hit from the #2 air doesn’t guarantee tagging of the mob, that’s the problem m8

Use an arcane skill like arcane blast with that scepter #2, that should get you a tag if you are in a group.

Raif.9507:

Use an arcane skill like arcane blast with that scepter #2, that should get you a tag if you are in a group.

Well, that means one less utility for survival, which is kinda badly acceptable if you look at the state in which Eles are now. And still, many times even #2 + arcane blast + full channel of AA doesn’t tag the mob, I don’t really know what exactly determines tagging, maybe a Dev could clarify this, just to be sure

In medium to large zergs, the only safe way to tag lords are to equip Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave, and Lightning Flash. Just click on all of those 3 as fast as possible, and the combined damage should be enough.

Fireball (gw2 version of the flare), and Lava Font do simply do not enough damage if your crits are unlucky. Flame Burst often do 0 damage, and Meteor Shower is random and often too slow to even get a single hit in most captures.

Conjure Frost Bow can be also be used most of the times, but is unreliable.

Switch to fire, cast fire ring and arcane wave utility. You will still get your reward even in a large zerg. This come from a burst non-glass build s/d ele from Blackgate. One of the tier 1 servers that what know best is zerg in massive amounts each tower and keeps.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Switch to fire, cast fire ring and arcane wave utility. You will still get your reward even in a large zerg. This come from a burst non-glass build s/d ele from Blackgate. One of the tier 1 servers that what know best is zerg in massive amounts each tower and keeps.

Well, if you manage to get that close to the enemy/NPC. Unfortunately, our mobility is not nearly that good that it was in the past….

LightningBlaze.4913:

Switch to fire, cast fire ring and arcane wave utility. You will still get your reward even in a large zerg. This come from a burst non-glass build s/d ele from Blackgate. One of the tier 1 servers that what know best is zerg in massive amounts each tower and keeps.

Same, I’m on SoR, running a similar build to LightningBlaze here and all I need is a Air #2 and an Arcane Blast.

The way tagging works is damage % of a mobs health. The more people in your group, the less damage you need to do as that % is then shared by your group. The threshold for credit becomes lower. Even still one Air AA + Air#2 + Arcane Blast should normally be enough to get credit.

As for running one less survivability utility… I roam around in WvW using S/D with Arcane Blast/Lightning Flash/Arcane Shield or Mist Form depending on what I’m doing. And I do fine, unless I run into LightningBlaze. We duel, and it’s a close fight (the amount of times I’ve had you lower than 20% -_-)

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmIbzxzwjDIEFmAKIeYBNAHWUMD5AA-jUzAY/gg/BJRJkIAk8UWzeCiVNwqb0KvBpNgqtxUuCyq4kKFguKjA-w

I always build stacks first so attack is higher, don’t have Guard Killer or Defense Against Guards yet so Lightning has that on me :p

I’ll switch around rings for a cavalier ring or 2 if I feel I’m playing badly that night or something. Sometimes I’ll even go 10 in Arcana and go full 30 in water (something after this patch I might do more).

You don’t need to run 3 cantrips to be viable. Or all clerics either.

We need more faster skills like insta ticking Lava Font

rhodoc.2381:

We need more faster skills like insta ticking Lava Font

I’m afraid that this nerf wouldn’t be reverted m8, however it would be really nice, considering that a lot of other AOE abilities still work that way (and every lava font not casted by elementalist also.).

If you are karma training, just make sure you have arcane wave on your bar. Use that in the lords room to get your tag.

i’m afraid he the poster does have a point there.
it’s not about tagging mobs for loot, it’s about elly skills taking so long to trigger.

i play support staff elly and i play WvW only for the last 2-3 months. i can tag champions/lords most of the time with no issues. however i do have “issues” with reliability of some elly skills.

first, auto attacks are kitten slow, animations + projectile speed seem to take forever (a bit less seen in air atunement, or maybe i’m just imagining things).

second, fire/water/earth nr 2 skill… on my necro i’m AoE mass destruction with all marks and wells, but elly damage aoe are too unreliable when enemy can almost stroll out of range without any difficulties.

i don’t even think we need more dmg, but at least a possibility to be more precise.

for instance, lava font should at least have wider range for it’s slow activation time. water no 2 basically became just a filler. if water2 would be blast finisher, then at least it would have some sense.

air 3 and earth 5 miss a moving ambient creature kitten …

at the same time for example all AoE’s of my necro are instant and have more effects, etc… i do love to play my elly though, but i’d love to see some loving regarding “responsivness” and/or speed of our attacks.

1. Don’t be in the back of the zerg (no profession will get tags if you are in the back).

2. Cast lava font before the zerg gets to the NPCs

You won’t get 100% tags in 100% of the fights — nobody does. However I find I get tags pretty easy on my ele compared to my other toons like mesmer. Guardian has it pretty easy with staff, but only if you are within 600 range AND you get a couple hits off.

OP is saying that ele scepter is slow.

Well every class struggle a little with the Whac-A-Mole-sentry-rush my solution with ele is to slot lighting flash and arcane blast, tail the comander then flash in the middle of the sentrys =>arcane blast and voilà enjoy your Wxp.

Tips:Change your utilitys when the situation demands if you see the enemy zerg nearby slot back your main utilitys,yes this method demands a little micromanagement but you can get solid wxp with this.

Second option…stay ahead the comander and tag the sentrys first.

On zerg battles well…i really recomend staff if Badges is your focus.

Thank you all for your kind advice.