Showing Posts For Affably.7102:
I was still having trouble connecting to the TP and tried the reinstall to fix the certificates several times, ending processes in the Activity Monitor, nothing helped. I found I also was having trouble connecting to the App Store, iTunes Store, etc. Turns out the culprit was Google’s DNS servers, which I had switched to a few months back when Sonic.net had erroneously blocked GW2.
Switching to Open DNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) let me download the non-launcher build update and fixed my access issues with the Trading Post. Hopefully this solution will help out anyone who’s still having problems.
You’ve never played an elementalist, huh.
One thing to keep in mind if you do start with an ele: ele at very very low levels is extremely fragile, so the learning curve is much steeper compared to more durable professions such as warrior or guardian. If you find yourself struggling but you like the ideas around the gameplay style, keep pushing on! Starting out as an ele raw myself definitely helped me in mastering the game.
Also, while leveling I highly recommend that you stay on top of your gear and at very low levels go for stats that give you vitality and toughness to help give yourself some survival. If you find yourself getting frustrated, go ahead and roll another class: GW2 leveling is very quick and getting another character to max level (or catching up to your partner’s character) is fairly easy.
My friend and I did thief raw and ele raw respectively from the first beta, and while we struggled a bit both being squishy we had a whole lot of fun zipping around and killing things.
Thieves-Warriors-Mesmers-Ele can pick Zerker Amulets and jump in teamfights, you have no idea what a priviledge this is..
You’re kidding, right?
Two of my sylvari characters have had their eyes changed from an orange amber color to a red color. In the character creation screen the sylvari eye color choices seem to’ve been reshuffled, and some colors, like black and charcoal, are largely indistinguishable from each other.
Not to mention trying to cycle past all the turrets after a supply drop.
I’d definitely second the motion to not use staff while soloing and trying to learn the class. Staff is absolutely great for synergizing with other players while leveling, but it can be very difficult to manage mobs with while solo — particularly if you’re coming from something like guardian.
While learning the class, a lot of us went with Power Toughness Vitality armor and kept our health up with small heals. I personally found that dagger/dagger worked a lot better for soloing and managing groups, particularly when I got used to the combo rotations (burning speed → ring of fire → arcane blast → earthquake → churning earth → swap to water midcast → frost aura for when the churning earth finishes up is a popular one both for might stacking and massive damage.) That said, playing dagger/dagger is more risky/ballsy, but you can definitely kill things much faster than on staff. The only auto-attacks on d/d I usually bother with are lightning whip and sometimes dragon’s claw — in general, autoattacks do such pitiful damage for eles that they’re only worth bothering with when everything else is on cooldown or when you just need to finish up a mob.
There aren’t really any power builds on elementalist for leveling; make sure to keep your weapons up to date. You’ve got a lot of good condition removal here, but it might be worth it to go 10 in earth to get either Earth’s Embrace (which will also give you regen, vigor and stunbreak if you have cantrip traits) or Elemental Shielding, which gives you protection any time you put on your frost aura, shocking aura, or use your magnetic grasp through a fire field.
The glyph of lesser and later glyph of elementals can be very helpful just to have an off-tank. I recommend sticking only to earth or ice elementals though, since their toughness scales inversely to their damage — i.e., air is the squishiest but outputs aoe, fire elemental does burning and good damage, ice elemental drops ice fields (that if you arcane blast, earthquake, or churning earth in will grant you a frost aura) and the earth elemental just lives forever.
I would not recommend using a leveling build for dungeons and fractals though.
I opened 130 chests and wasn’t able to get a single ticket. Please, Anet, keep the tickets available from the chests — having them be from the Black Lion Chests only AND at such a low drop-rate AND account-bound only (unlike the Halloween skins which are still accessible now through the TP) made this situation even more demoralizing.
Or at least tell us whether the ticket is gone forever or if it can still spawn.
How about this: engineer weapons and kits get scaled up in power to be more comparable with other classes, but dropping a kit puts it on a 15 second cooldown, like ele attunements.
What you’re basically asking for is another available weapon set, on a class that can have access to the greatest number of skills of any profession. That’s not going to happen.
When I play my D/D ele every single time I’m trapped in melee in an unexpected encounter I kick myself and wish I’d brought my engineer that (traited) can fight at a comfortable 1050 range for everything except Blowtorch, not to mention being able to equip an elixir gun or grenades. The ranged utility weaponset you can equip for an ele is 900 range, has charges and a time limit, and cannot be traited to have better range. No, you do not have weapon swap, but unlike ele attunements you can customize which additional “weapon” skills you bring via kits as a class mechanic AND there’s no cooldown for them.
Sometimes when coming out of downed state mist form, you are instantly defeated.
This is because coming out of using Vapor Form counts as a “new” downed state pigbacking on your “real” one, so if you had been previously downed (or however many downs it takes) you’ll be instantly defeated.
I’ve gotta have the attunement cooldown, so yes, but EA for the dodge in water isn’t worth slotting. I may try to wean myself down to 20 arcane and put those ten points elsewhere, but as it stands now the only grandmaster traits really worth going deep into a line for now are water’s.
Another D/D ele here that loved it and is sad that that kind of strategic/positional gameplay element with self-comboing and teamwork is now gone. Yes, the double heals in water fields were definitely bugged and overpowered, but like everyone else I expected that to be put on an internal 10s cooldown this patch, but having them removed entirely is a surprise. Using the blasts in EA was one of the most fun parts of my playstyle. I’m really baffled and saddened by this change.
Magnetic Grasp through RoF still gives Fire Aura. Just logged in and tested it after reading this post. Don’t say kitten that isn’t accurate.
As far as I’ve tested it, you get the Fire Aura visual but none of traited effects from Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, etc.
I’ve been playing an Engineer, and the self-comboing possibilities with Magnetic Shield/Magnetic Inversion is a lot of fun: it serves as a ranged reflect, knockback, and blast finisher. So you can throw down a flame turret, overcharge with blinding smoke, and then use Magnetic Shield to AOE stealth. Similarly, you can do other self-combos with the water fields or light fields or poison fields that the Engineer has available.
Equipping kits feels like choosing what attunements to equip, except there are zero cooldowns for flipping between kits or your main weapon set. As an elementalist, you’ll be used to flipping through F1-F4, so that won’t be a problem utilizing those additional skills.
It does play differently, but has enough complexity in common with the elementalist that I find myself very engaged by its style.
@DesertRose, Magnetic Grasp is a leap finisher, and if you go through a fire field with it it will proc Fire Aura, or Chaos Armor and so forth. With regards to pet comboing, I’m only aware of the ice elemental’s ice field, which you can proc Frost Aura with either doing a blast inside the field (AOE frost aura) or with Magnetic Grasp.
I still need to test this, but I was noticing while doing some Orr events the other day that the water and air dodge spells — along with the well-known earth and fire ones — with Evasive Arcana seemed to be working as blast finishers, or at least notably water seemed to be proccing combo effects. The blind on air is something I’ve found difficult to land, but if it did act as a blast finisher then it’d be worth dodging through fields no matter your attunement. Can anyone confirm this working for them?
I’d say Condition Damage gear is better for Scepter/Dagger builds for the burns and ranged bleed stacking in earth. That said, your mileage may vary; I personally find that power and +healing power benefits staff better, though I only use staff for group content.
Tested it in WvW. At 15,825 health Earth’s Embrace should have been activating at 7912 health, and instead was activating closer to 5000 health. It was not a visual/timing bug, because the mob was able to attack for two or three more hits before it activated. Similarly, Final Shielding was supposed to activate at 3956 health, but was instead activating much later than that.
Tested it in the Mists on the Engineer. 18945 health, Earth’s Embrace should have activated at 9472 health, instead activated at 7284 health. Final Shielding should have gone off at 4736 health, instead went off at 3387 health.
(edited by Affably.7102)
I would suggest instead of Churning Earth having a faster wind-up time that you could determine an activation time (a la “press and hold” or alternatively “press to activate, press to release”) and deal more cumulative damage the longer you wind it up, the way skills in some other professions or bundles work.
12345: weapon skills
WER: strafe left/forward/strafe right
Mouse 4: heal
Mouse 5: push-to-talk
QAZ: utilities (789 respectively)
FVCD: fire, water, air, earth
T: interact
(Mouse 6 or X: Elite, though X may be a good alternative place for heal)
I’m playing on an Apple keyboard, and the function keys are a) half-sized b) too kitten far away, so with the attunements more localized to where my fingertips are I feel a lot more comfortable (and I started swapping attunements much more fluidly once I changed them.)
I still have move backwards on S, but I only use that these days for precision/orientation in jumping puzzles.