Guild Wars 2

…As much as I do?

Sure it was overtuned before the RoF nerf but it was still more exciting to play. I’m no longer feeling the tempest auramancer. It is lacking the sass d/d eles flaunted. The bunker build is a complete snoozefest bore.

We used to apply 9+ burn stacks, 6900 burning speed aoe crits on 25 might stacks and to top it off, blinding our opponents every 5 sec.

What’s up with the major downgrade?

I thought expac would get me more firepower???

Instead we get DS even thought it’s been there for the longest time. We just ignored it in the past coz it was pretty lame.

DS ?
no meaning of this acronym that I know fits here

Diamond skin, been there forever but now if you try to play without it reaper will make your life impossible. That is, unless you drop powerful auras for cleansing water, but then you aren’t really an auramancer and instead are just a selfish tank.

Yeah of course I miss it a lot. It was the most complete pvp build and also the most fun for me. Having said that it was darn op before the fire nerf. I hope anet would look into our traits so we can have that active style again. Right now water and earth feels mandatory and it sure isn’t the most exciting.

i miss the pre specialisation patch d/d ele that was about on par with cele rifle engi and shoutbow warrior. fire line ele after that was just imbalance..

I loved this game so much more when it allowed us to put points in all 5 trait lines.
If that were still possible, I don’t think we’d be stuck in this bunker meta. I’d only trait for Elemental Shielding on earth, Zephyr’s Boon on Air and Burning Fire.

I played D/D ele back when it was very weak in 2013, and I played it when it was overpowered in 2015. Its always been a classic gameplay style that designed the class. Sure it became too dependent on a rotation, sure it became braindead when it was too strong, but its always been iconic in a way.

I kind of wish tempest could feel a little bit more fluid to play. While D/D ele was all about juggling your skills and attunements to manage cooldowns, sustain for days, not get locked out of swap procs to stay alive, tempest is a more slow and oppressive teamfighter, similar to how many necro builds have been, but more of a bunkery pointholder.

I wish the warhorn was stronger, and I wish there was a viable attunement-dancing build with warhorn. I love the idea of overloads, but they just don’t synergize well with the classic conceptions of the class, since they’d be strong to the point of overpowered if their payoffs felt more worth the cost. Right now they only feel good for AoE spam and auras, which is fine, but its not as thoughtful as I originally thought, especially earth overload which is borderline stupid in how much protection it spams. I do love the clutch feeling of positoning and timing water overload right.

I might try arcane tempest builds to try and blend the classic D/D play with warhorn for fun. I know its not popular but warhorn works well enough compared to D/F or staff if you take diamond skin and kitten like those builds do.

Anyways I haven’t played ele too much the past few weeks, since necro has felt more satisfying in nearly every way, especially in terms of build diversity. I hope that I can come back to it fresh provided it gets rebalanced for the better in january (DS rework, warhorn buffs plz)

Aeryn.9813:

…As much as I do?

Sure it was overtuned before the RoF nerf but it was still more exciting to play. I’m no longer feeling the tempest auramancer. It is lacking the sass d/d eles flaunted. The bunker build is a complete snoozefest bore.

We used to apply 9+ burn stacks, 6900 burning speed aoe crits on 25 might stacks and to top it off, blinding our opponents every 5 sec.

What’s up with the major downgrade?

I thought expac would get me more firepower???

Instead we get DS even thought it’s been there for the longest time. We just ignored it in the past coz it was pretty lame.

Everybody was expecting more firepower…because we have been forced in a bunker role since launch, but we can’t have more firepower for as long as 90% of our defenses comes from trait, that will lead us always to water+another defensive line, cutting our build diversity which is the worst in the game.
D/D…Tempest..doesn’t matter it’s still a tank forced at mele range, it’s like asking to replace a vegetable soup..with a chicken soup…it’s still a bloody soup

I currently run d/d tempest and I’m having a blast, I still provide support, still pretty tanky, but I can deal some solid damage and normally win most if not all 1v1 and generally lose all 1v2. But still brings the same Classic d/d fun to tempest. Not fully the same, but it works for that active feel.

If you try staff tempest after dd ele you will go insane because of slow animations and low movement. I know I went nuts and had to go back

I’m still looking for a way to fit in Arcane trait line to Tempest. Tempest traitline and Shouts are heavily dependent on both Earth and Water lines and they’re pretty much very situational when untraited. How I wish Anet consolidated all Aura related traits to a single trait line.

This might sound broken to others but what if Anet combined Invigorating Torrents to Powerful Aura? Then combine and move Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding to Tempest Master Line (might need a few nerfs or something). That way, Tempests won’t be locked to Water and Earth and we’ll have more build diversity because people can now go for Air and Fire.

I also been using arcane and tempest lines in my build. My latest is with water for condition clear with regen/vigor. Going for a mix build of Condition damage with some direct damage. Trying to find a happy medium between the two, leaning more on condition damage though.

Using a mix dire/rabid/carrion gear. I tried using a high condition burn, but a lot people I run into seem to have condition clear on them. So I just couldn’t keep that burn on them like I wanted too.

Other build is no condition damage and more on direct/crit damage. Both builds I like using auras a lot. Use air/arcane/tempest of corse. How I wish I could use a 4th trait line…lol.

I do see how tempest line can slow everything down when going into overload. Just dosn’t synergies well with quick attunment swap.

Of course I miss d/d ele.
<bias> It’s the greatest build in all of GW2</bias>
Matter of fact, it was still great even after RoF nerf but expac brutally murdered it.

I don’t. I miss when fresh air S/F could be considered a strong pick. D/D was faceroll with some practice, and the only reason it’s not competitive now is because of the massive powercreep that came with elite specs. The build itself barely got nerfed.

I’d rather be able to build a high risk high reward DPS ele again.

Shadowflare.2759:

I don’t. I miss when fresh air S/F could be considered a strong pick. D/D was faceroll with some practice, and the only reason it’s not competitive now is because of the massive powercreep that came with elite specs. The build itself barely got nerfed.

I’d rather be able to build a high risk high reward DPS ele again.

D/D was faceroll soon after the burning change which saw the biggest influx of fotm players for this profession, all running fire/water/arcana..before that d/d was strong but surely not faceroll

And…s/f has never been considered a strong pick in pvp it barely got used for a month during the beginning of 2013, where people were used to tanky d/d valk and not some poker face burst ele.

Nobody was going for the ele, so the s/f had easy life..soon after people got accustomed to it and that’s it.

S/F remained as a simple yolo build for low MMR games and after the removal of bolt to the heart..not even that

I missed the active play style of D/D, all the other professions in this game is boring for me.

All of them you use big CDs and use Auto Attacks then after, until they come off CD.

With D/D there was always something to do, now with Tempest, I feel like a headless chicken running around in circles in next 5s.

Funny thing, any other class locked to the animations gets evades (I am looking to you sword 3 rev or 4 from sword/pistol thief) but Tempest must be punch bag for that 5 s.

I do not like that build (actually I don’t like ele daggers at all), so no, I do not miss those times when it ruled pvp. It’s nice to see eles running something different and not just d/d everywhere.

What’s the problem of using a tempest as D/D? surely aura/overloads are not limited for bunkers.

Edit: Check this idea of vigorous D/D .. for those that like an active gameplay… roll, roll, roll ..lol

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYn0XC9XilNAGOA8RgFBAzd1GbvtBBgCQRs4N0ETDA-TJBFABF8AAOvMQ87PAwJAAA

Imo the fault is in powerful aura, the shout auras are already AoE so arenanet recognised that no one would go aura without AoE but still wanted us to go water for sharing weapon ones? I’ll even settle for trait procing ones like overload auras are AoE.
If all auras were AoE by default then we could choose to drop water for air or fire or keep water for invigorating torrents and perhaps be able to drop earth finally, a lot of options open up, hope it works out.

Supreme.3164:

Shadowflare.2759:

I don’t. I miss when fresh air S/F could be considered a strong pick. D/D was faceroll with some practice, and the only reason it’s not competitive now is because of the massive powercreep that came with elite specs. The build itself barely got nerfed.

I’d rather be able to build a high risk high reward DPS ele again.

D/D was faceroll soon after the burning change which saw the biggest influx of fotm players for this profession, all running fire/water/arcana..before that d/d was strong but surely not faceroll

And…s/f has never been considered a strong pick in pvp it barely got used for a month during the beginning of 2013, where people were used to tanky d/d valk and not some poker face burst ele.

Nobody was going for the ele, so the s/f had easy life..soon after people got accustomed to it and that’s it.

S/F remained as a simple yolo build for low MMR games and after the removal of bolt to the heart..not even that

Yea. No. I mained D/D for a long time after launch. At first it started out as a buggy/broken build but as time went on it got better and better. Even before the burning changes, D/D were already a strong contender because of how survivable it was. Bad players who just spams spells were getting carried by the arcane/water/x builds and it was disgusting. It just got worse after spec patch.

As for S/F, perhaps I should rephrase. There was a time when playing S/F would actually be a semi-viable alternative to the over-represented D/D. It was something worth talking about, even if it still didn’t measure up in competitive tournaments. Then the specialization patch came and air got its damage modifiers removed, and S/F lost much of its burst, the only thing that made it unique compared to D/D.

And then HoT came and made even D/D obsolete, putting S/F even further down.

But it was still the most fun build out of all that eles had. It was risky, and you worked even harder than D/D to survive, but it had the potential for 1 v 1 outplays if you play the blinds right.

The thing I miss most about D/D is probably the comboing skills. You don’t really chain skills from different attunements anymore with Tempest because of how the overload cooldowns work.

Hehe the memories!

I main a guardian and I remember the old days when D/D ele was a thing. My meditation guardian was countered by them badly.

Then all the sudden the meta shifted and I had really hard matchups with DiamondSkin eles while my main was a Burn Guardian.

With the HoT I respecced for DragonHunter which is hard-countered by the Tempests… Oh, the sweet irony

All my time spent playing Guardian I was hard countered by elementalists

(This is not a cry-post honestly)

I did not like the “bring 3-4 D/D’s and call it a premade” days in sPvP but this “bring a tempest to hard-counter every DH” isn’t good either…

I do not blame the Elementalists. This profession needs skill and positioning. You must be rewarded if played right.
I blame ANET!

Aggrostemma.1703:

I do not blame the Elementalists. This profession needs skill and positioning. You must be rewarded if played right.
I blame ANET!

Yeah it was to be expected as soon as they presented the rushed Tempest spec. It does nothing new, only has recycled might/auras and stacks more protection and more healing.

Since they destroyed zerk staff ele, then marauder staff ele (with nerfs intended for d/d and crazy interrupts buffs to other classes which makes the staff too slow to be reliable), both the air line for s/f and fire lines for d/d burning and staff/cantrips there is nothing left than go bunker.

I told them the day they came up with this new trait system and removed stat points from the trait lines: “Do you realize you’re removing built variety”
And they responded: “It’s too soon to see”.
Well kitten me I was right and they were wrong again. Even them recently had to admit it’s not the meta they wanted. Well kittening fail it’s not like we didn’t tell them.

Xillllix.3485:

Aggrostemma.1703:

I do not blame the Elementalists. This profession needs skill and positioning. You must be rewarded if played right.
I blame ANET!

Yeah it was to be expected as soon as they presented the rushed Tempest spec. It does nothing new, only has recycled might/auras and stacks more protection and more healing.

Since they destroyed zerk staff ele, then marauder staff ele (with nerfs intended for d/d and crazy interrupts buffs to other classes which makes the staff too slow to be reliable), both the air line for s/f and fire lines for d/d burning and staff/cantrips there is nothing left than go bunker.

I told them the day they came up with this new trait system and removed stat points from the trait lines: “Do you realize you’re removing built variety”
And they responded: “It’s too soon to see”.
Well kitten me I was right and they were wrong again. Even them recently had to admit it’s not the meta they wanted. Well kittening fail it’s not like we didn’t tell them.

I believe removing the stat from traits is the right thing to do and is the first step to creating build diversity. The second step would be consolidating related traits (Auras) and distributing boon access.

Here’s the reason real why Eles are forced into certain traits like Earth and Water:
• Eles belong to the lowest base Armor and HP Tier group
• To make up for that, Eles have good access to boons and high Up time
• Those boons that we rely on for survivability (Vigor, Protection, Regeneration) to make up for our low armor and HP are exclusive to certain traits
• Not going for either or both defensive trait lines is suicide

Here are the defensive traits as of now:

Fire
Burning Fire – Condi cleanse
Blinding Ashes – Blind 1 foe every 8s (As good as 1 blind everytime you swap to fire)

Air
Tempest Defense – Shocking Aura

Earth
Earth’s Embrace – Stability and Protection
Elemental Shielding – Protection
Rock Solid – Stability
Geomancer’s Training – Reduced soft CC duration
Stone Flesh – Bonus Toughness
Geomancer’s Defense – Fixed damage reduction
Diamond Skin – Condi Invulnerability
Stone Heart – Critical Direct Damage mitigation

Water
Soothing Mist – HP Regeneration
Soothing Ice – Frost Aura and Regeneration
Stop, drop, and roll – Burn and chill cleanse
Healing Ripple – Healing
Soothing Disruption – Cantrip CD reduction, regeneration and vigor
Cleansing Wave – Condition Cleanse
Cleansing Water – Condition Cleanse
Soothing Power – HP Regeneration

Arcane
Renewing Stamina – Vigor
Elemental Attunement – Protection and Regeneration
Elemental Contingency – Vigor and Protection
Final Shielding – Blocks
Evasive Arcana – Blind and Healing

Tempest
Every single Tempest trait is defensive

As you can see, Fire and Air are seriously lacking in defensive mechanisms. They both give Auras but those Auras are highly dependent on traits that we get from Earth.

TL;DR
The core mechanic of an Elementalist is to rely on boons and defensive traits to survive but those boons and defensive mechanisms are not accessible in all trait lines, hence Elementalists prioritize defensive trait lines. We need these boons to survive. Giving Eles higher HP/Armor would imbalance the class as cheesy people would still take full Defensive traits. The real solution is to spread defensive boon access and add more defensive traits across all Traits lines.

No brainer quick-fix?
Consolidate Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding to Powerful Auras. Replace Elemental Shielding slot with a Protection trait. This removes the reliance on Earth for Protection as we will now have access to Protection through Arcane, Water, and Earth trait lines. For the rest, we can figure it out

and we thought D/D ele’s were bad…

Stat removal from trait line was no way for build diversity, it was exactly the opposite.

ANet accepted the fact they can never balance several builds, that was their hopeless try to reduce class 1 or 2 viable builds and balance those.

Before there were more diversity, you want to proof look to the bunker Guardian, before the stats removal it would get to a nice 15K HP with trait stats and it was viable with cleric gear, now with the removal of ministrel, how many bunker guards do you see.

12K HP for a bunker, with todays burst/condi spam you will die in 1s, how many bunker guardian do you see in sPVP, it is either DH or burn Guardian, 2 viable builds

It is same stuff with Ele, with full bunker D/F Tempest or Fresh Air D/F Tempest, what else do we have, D/D gone, S/F gone, Staff gone….

It is most boring META of the GW2 I know, men pre specialization I was playing Signet D/D ele while it was different, now every Ele is the mirror copy of the other.

D/D is still a very strong weapon-set, IMHO the best in most situations in the current meta.

I’ve been playing D/D almost exclusively and made it into diamond with soloQ only. I’ve been using mostly very defensive runes (durability), but if you want a bit more punch, you can easily go for strength/hoelbrak runes or sth. like that.

Also, I think Ele does a ton of DMG with the new overloads, just add a lot more teamsupport to that and that’s the new D/D-tempest.

I win basically every 1v1 with D/D, except druids, have tons of mobility, teamsupport etc. It’s simply an amazing build.

Also, Diamond skin wasn’t used as much because ppl ran powerspike comps, so you needed to run stone-heart on eles to not get instakilled. Or you used D/D-Ele as a 1v1-roamer with fire. The new D/D-Ele does both teamfights and 1v1’s extremely well.

PowerBottom,

So which lines and utility skills u exactly run? Mind sharing?

Katrina.8702:

PowerBottom,

So which lines and utility skills u exactly run? Mind sharing?

I was gonna post the build, but the page of the editor is currently down. :P

I run cele amu, durability runes, and leeching + blood sigils. The traits are:
- Water (1/3/1)
- Earth (3/3/1)
- Tempest (3/2/3)

I use the heal shout, teleport, fire aura shout, ice aura shout and elite shout.

It’s just an amazing build in the current meta and a true allrounder: excellent mobility, 1v1’s, teamfight, support, sustain etc.

PowerBottom.5796:

Katrina.8702:

PowerBottom,

So which lines and utility skills u exactly run? Mind sharing?

I was gonna post the build, but the page of the editor is currently down. :P

I run cele amu, durability runes, and leeching + blood sigils. The traits are:
- Water (1/3/1)
- Earth (3/3/1)
- Tempest (3/2/3)

I use the heal shout, teleport, fire aura shout, ice aura shout and elite shout.

It’s just an amazing build in the current meta and a true allrounder: excellent mobility, 1v1’s, teamfight, support, sustain etc.

Hmm yeah, I used to run exact same traits but with scrapper runes and diff sigils and had a decent success till I switched to focus while back. Think I’m gonna give durability a shot. Thanks-

Dagger off hand is bad. It’s so very bad in this meta.

Would have liked to go from bruiser to burster not bruiser to bunk((

cakeonroof.7385:

Dagger off hand is bad. It’s so very bad in this meta.

Would have liked to go from bruiser to burster not bruiser to bunk((

what meta are you playing in? The one from a month or longer ago?

Dagger Offhand gives more mobility, burst and self-sustain than Focus. It also has slightly better decapping cuz of Air5 (this actually matters in the current meta).

Focus is anti-powerspikes, which aren’t popular in this meta and anti-projectiles which aren’t popular either. I used to switch to Focus offhand against many engi’s/DH’s and rev’s I suspected going for power, but atm. I just stay on D/D – I heavily prefer it in almost any situation.

Warhorn is just absolutely unusable in PvP.

Staff has more support, but is easier to kill, has much less dmg and more problems with certain 1v1’s. It’s a decent choice, but you need the right teamcomp. Even with a very nice comp, I still prefer D/D though.

PowerBottom.5796:

cakeonroof.7385:

Dagger off hand is bad. It’s so very bad in this meta.

Would have liked to go from bruiser to burster not bruiser to bunk((

what meta are you playing in? The one from a month or longer ago?

Dagger Offhand gives more mobility, burst and self-sustain than Focus. It also has slightly better decapping cuz of Air5 (this actually matters in the current meta).

Focus is anti-powerspikes, which aren’t popular in this meta and anti-projectiles which aren’t popular either. I used to switch to Focus offhand against many engi’s/DH’s and rev’s I suspected going for power, but atm. I just stay on D/D – I heavily prefer it in almost any situation.

Warhorn is just absolutely unusable in PvP.

Staff has more support, but is easier to kill, has much less dmg and more problems with certain 1v1’s. It’s a decent choice, but you need the right teamcomp. Even with a very nice comp, I still prefer D/D though.

100% this.^

Also even though it never works I’d like to bring up the case for FGS again:
It has a stupid cooldown so you only get to use it two-three times in a match (Imo would be balanced okay with a 1:30 cooldown) but:
1. The speed with which you travel is amazing, especially foefire, once every 3 minutes decap far, often very unexpected.
2. The 2 skill and 5 skill are very useful on downed bodies, securing stomp for your allies.
3. The 3 skill breaks traps (how I wish air dagger 4 worked the same way) FGS3 ignores the daze and evades all damage and escapes dragons maw, if your allies know this it massively helps against DH(you need something of you aren’t using Earth focus invuln)
4. You can keep charging overloads in FGS while having access to more dodges through FGS3 and swap out into whatever overload you want.
5. Rebound is just such a pathetic skill, 2k heal no condi removal in this meta is stupid and just aura is underwhelming especially since it is not instant cast to reflect trueshots.

So Basically I still play DD except cleansing waters changed to trooper rune which is a bit punishing, how I wish powerful auras was baseline on all aura abilities so we could have our clense back.

I do, played d/d for nearly 3 years, but enjoying having a break for a while and playing staff. It’ll come back I imagine ;-)