Guild Wars 2

just wondering, i have 30 skill points to spend on one or the other; but i honestly have no idea which is better for say…PvE which i mostly do to be honest.
just wondering if anybody knows which would be a better choice to go with for a while because at the moment im just using the skill slot for the big element which i use from time to time to draw aggro on tougher fights, or back up extra damage on group events.

Thanks for posting, I’m wondering on this myself.

I find the summon greatsword lots of fun as of late. It is the closest thing I can use to kill mass monsters like I’m used to. A pity that it takes way too long of a cooldown to be of real good use.

Dagraan.2854:

just wondering, i have 30 skill points to spend on one or the other; but i honestly have no idea which is better for say…PvE which i mostly do to be honest.
just wondering if anybody knows which would be a better choice to go with for a while because at the moment im just using the skill slot for the big element which i use from time to time to draw aggro on tougher fights, or back up extra damage on group events.

To be honest I’ve not found tornado to be very useful in PvE, but its underwater version is the only underwater elite elementalists have access to. I can’t speak about the hounds, but the greater elemental so far has been far more handy than my asura’s golems and I’d imagine the same would be true of the hounds.

So yea, tornado but keep the elementals on land but slot tornado(whirlpool) on your underwater skill-bar. That’s my suggestion anyway.

thanks for the input i still wanna know about the hounds though, in case they may or may not be more useful than the bigger elementals.

Hounds of Balthazar must be your choice. They take aggro from you, and it can safe your life, while in tornado you can be grounded by ranged mobs. They stronger than fire elem in attack and earth elem in defense, also they have combo-finisher “Jump”.
And only one minus: cooldown.

oh thats awesome, only reason i actually summon something is to take agro so i can stack AoEs more easily on harder fights, and i don’t have to worry about circle jerking a monster so i can keep my health up.

Honestly, in my opinion, the Glyph of Elementals is the greatest choice. If you have the chance to summon the water pet, he is great for soloing. Not only does he heal, but he occasionally grants frost armor, and even knocks down! The earth elemental is a great tank if you need something to take damage, and you can keep him alive with your water skills. The air pet is kinda useless, and the fire pet has decent damage but dies waaaay too fast. So if I had to choose for you, I wouldn’t take the hounds or the tornado. But don’t worry, you can eventually unlock them all anyway! (You continue to unlock skill points for filling your exp bar, even after hitting 80)

EDIT: Sorry, I see now that you already have the big elementals, in that case, I would take the tornado since you already have a good pet. But ultimately, the choice is up to you. I don’t play human, so I’m not sure exactly what the hounds can do, but I still love my water elemental and he has saved me countless times!

Tornado is bad.
Glyph of Elementals is better than Hounds.

Take Tornado just to have the only Elite to use underwater

Elemental>Tornado

The elemental has a cooldown of 120, lasts for 60 seconds and the earth one does have pretty nice survivability.

Tornado has a midrange cooldown (180), but it doesn’t paticularlly prove very useful (on land). It can be hard to see while being a tornado in a small space, and I have my serious doubts that it even grants the 15 seconds of stability that it is supposed to. I have had mobs instantly knock me down after turning into the tornado which the tooltip suggests should not be possible. All and all, I found it to be pretty useless, given that.

You will want to have it for the (currantly extremely buggy!) underwater form, however. Do you do a lot of water combat? Then you want this.. for water alone, pretty much. However, it rarely ever functions properly. I spend most of my time in it completely invisable, unable to do anything at all, not damaging mobs. The only thing you can do when that happens is cancel the ability.

Edit: Edited for misread.