Guild Wars 2

I can confirm. Seems that anything that “transforms” your char. causes you to lose your traits until it ends. Same thing was happening with Mist Form, hence the bug with the reduced CD on Cantrips trait.

The blast finishers on EA weren’t entirely OP. You had to use your dodges to get them. Risk vs. reward. Many times I have included a double dodge through RoF for the 6 stacks only to get a solid beatdown for wasting my dodges. It was always a decision to make.

Lots of pain for my Ele. Boon duration nerf, no more blast finishers on Evasive Arcana. Lose out on 6 might stacks per cycle, and those stacks are the only decent way to get damage as an Ele without going straight glass with % damage traits. Probably the hardest nerf for my build.

I can understand it, though. Dueled 7 people in a row, draw vs. an Ele, and the only two people who downed me at all were a Thief and a Necro. Went 2/3 vs. Thief (backstab) and 4/6 against the Necro (condition). Everyone else I went 3/3 against. Eles will likely still be just as strong – or even stronger – as they were before with the bug fixes. Testing will need to be done.

Shame at the boon duration nerfs. Still think it’s one of the better options, though. Won’t know until testing.

Tornado nerf was utterly unnecessary, however. The only reason I ever swapped to it was for the Stability vs. Engis and Guardians. Completely, absolutely, utterly garbage skill now. Which is saying a lot, because it was horrendous before.

Tracker.6483:

I imagine that it’s hard for a free to play game to have more than 2 developers.

The lack of money coming into them is probaly the reason they worked on payed tournaments first and new PvE content that provide them with a small amount of income.

If they don’t make money, they can’t hire more people.

Well, this assumption is absolutely false. There’s a reason even free to play (GW is buy to play) games survive, and indeed thrive (Maplestory? Vindictus?) and that’s because cash shops actually bring in plenty of money. This is on top of the multiple millions they make from box sales alone for buy to play games. Fact is, if money were ACTUALLY an issue with buy to play or free to play, every game ever would go for subscriptions. Don’t be naive, businesses are out there to make money. I can’t imagine your thought process here. ANet’s publisher (owner?) is NCSoft. That alone should speak volumes.

Don’t they normally release them at night on the date? Pretty sure the Oct patch came late at night, but on the date announced.

Keep downed state, replace all 4 skills with a single suicide button.

Boom, all the strategic elements the pro-downed state guys want with reviving and stomping, without making stomping totally mandatory in certain situations. Prevents griefing through the slow bleeding out process. No balancing necessary. Don’t think you’ll get revived before the next respawn cycle? Just suicide. Think your team can get you up before the next cycle? Wait it out, suicide if they can’t.

Will allow 2v1s to happen without leaving you completely vulnerable for a few seconds, effectively negating any skill advantage you have over your opponents. It allows the second person to still revive the first if the single player has no interrupt available, or gets CC’d just before the stomp.

The more people there are, the less pressure each individual has to play top-notch. 8v8 isn’t meant for competitiveness, it’s meant for players to get their feet wet in PvP without being raged at for screwing up.

They obviously don’t like it as they’ve attempted to fix it a couple of times now in previous patches…

WASD to move, mouse wheel for healing, mouse 5 for dodging (MX518), 12345 for weapon skills, QERZ for utilities + elite, XCV button 6 for attunements. Not optimal by a long shot, but I’m fast enough that it doesn’t hold me back in the least, and I don’t want to learn new binds.

109 views, no replies. I’m assuming this is for PvE, and as I don’t PvE, I can only tell you my general feelings on the subject.

The minor stat boosts are underwhelming compared to some of the secondary effects. For sPvP I focus on boon uptime. It helps with pretty much both survivability and offense through might stacking/fury uptime and regen/prot uptime.

So, I suggest runing for secondary effects primarily, and take the stat boosts secondarily.

As Navzar said, RTL is your best gap-making ability. Other than that, work on your LOS and CCing. I enjoy distracting 2-3 members of bad teams by kiting them around on my Ele. Lightning Flash to break CC and gain distance, RTL away, round a corner and wait. When they come around, pop Updraft. If someone manages to get close, Shocking Aura or Earthquake, and RTL on CD. You really shouldn’t ever be caught on an Ele, even by a good Thief. Too much CC and RTL has a 15 second CD. Only time is when multiple people are chasing, and get off a few CCs in a row. But this of course goes only for D/D. Staff and Scepter have less mobility.

Not having lag spikes, but a constant unresponsiveness. My ping to everything else is fine, and no packet loss. Nothing downloading, no changes from my normal routine, but everything is taking a half second or longer to activate after pressing a key. Really makes playing an Ele hard-mode.

Macros are great for the unskilled, terrible for people who know what they are doing. You can macro the Steal and CnD together effectively, certainly, and not be hindered, but who cares? It’s one button instead of two.

Try doing that with CE + Lightning Flash. You have to target the LF, so your macro isn’t exactly going to be accurate here. It has to be done manually. Try macroing backstab to your Steal + CnD, you’ll likely miss or get front-shots some of the time. Being totally in control prevents these sorts of hiccups, and there are extremely few circumstances where macroing a long chain together is more effective than doing it manually.

They could make Steal ground-targetted in an AoE, and just take the item from the player closest to where you land to prevent macroing the combo. But as I said before, it really isn’t that big of a deal, and it doesn’t take any sort of special skill to do it manually. Latency can royally screw over a macro, too. One small lag spike for half a second can cause half your macro to not execute.

I used to play UO, where EVERYONE macro’d EVERYTHING. There are some things you can macro, and be marginally effective (mostly against bad players), but to be the best, you have to take control.

Great video. I run D/D Auramancer with Valk’s and boon duration runes. Very effective, and with a similar might-stacking style. Getting to 10+ makes those Fire Grab crits (with 100% Fury uptime) hurt pretty bad against non-bunkers. Mobility and the excellent healing abilities with good use of CC can keep me alive for extremely long durations even in 8v8.

I agree that a lot of new and old Eles alike simply miss the mark with their builds and playstyles. Spec for a bit more survivability and use your excellent boon maintenance abilities to make up the difference. I swapped from a Ranger/Thief main to Ele main and haven’t looked back. Truly outstanding class even with the bugs and problems.

Intended combat mechanic. I can’t image the Devs playing the game and not realizing that this was feasible. In fact, I recall a pre-beta post explicitly stating the way they were coding animations was to allow for quick skill uses mid-animation. Getting locked into any sort of cast without being able to do anything is silly in an action-oriented game, and would really ruin the flow of PvP. Things like Churning Earth already do that enough as it it, and it would never land on anyone who was awake without Lightning Flash. Good players still dodge it even with the combo. All you need to do is count off the seconds manually, once you hit 3 you dodge. Boom, 30 second CD, 4 second cast-time skill wasted, as well as a stun-break.

The free 4k~ crits on Steal are stupid, IMO. Requires no setup, and little thought. It’s free damage since Thieves are going to open with Steal pretty regularly anyway. That said, the combo in and of itself is fine. It’s a good headgame to play causing a chunk of damage, closing the gap, and causing the Thief to vanish all at once for 5 initiative – a hefty cost. Nothing wrong with this other than Mug, IMO.

All in all it raises the skill-cap for classes that can do this. LF + CE is great and all, but sometimes I find it significantly more useful to LF + EQ or Updraft to interrupt a stomp, open on the target, or interrupt a revive. EQ has a short cast-time, and it requires some pretty fast fingers to do it. Comboing skills together like this should be encouraged and rewarded, not stopped.

Well, isn’t that the benefit of hotjoin? Leave the server, find another within a few seconds, continue playing? I play 5 separate half hour sessions of 8v8 every day, on separate servers due to my work schedule. I rarely see over-representation to this extent. Sure, these four classes tend to show up more often than others, but not to the extent this screen shot is trying to convey.

Aether, continue posting that sort of crap without any justification. I assume you consider yourself a good player, or know a good player, so feel free to add me. I’ll gladly show you what an Ele is capable of. You seem to think in that in a vacuum Ele is totally sub-part vs. good players, and you’re wrong. Your skill, and playstyle, also has an influence. If you just RTL in and have Updraft queued, sure, they’ll dodge it. But timing is important, and so is using other skills. Can’t dodge a Lightning Flash > Updraft very easily.

Agreed with OP. I don’t care about the amount of effort. The effort pays off with the amount of AoE damage, boons, and healing/condition removal we can bring on a given build.

I burst down any toughness no HP build pretty fast, unless it’s a straight up bunker. Fire Grab is hitting more often, so I’ve been taking Arcane Wave over Signet of Earth lately, and it’s just made the burst that much more potent. RTL > Updraft > Shocking Aura > Burning Speed > Ring of Fire > Arcane Wave > Fire Grab can nearly kill Thieves, Warriors, and Rangers with no problem. They will be dead once I hit Earth. Often end 1v1s, and some 2v1s, with full HP.

I still firmly believe that, aside from the bugs, the complaints come from people either not seeing the big picture (everything we can bring to a team), or build/L2P issues.

I run 0/10/0/30/30 D/D Heal Auramancer. 14k HP, 2500 armor, 600-700 healing power. I do absolutely fine in any scenario. People can only dodge two of your CCs, and using stuff like Lightning Flash or Magnetic Grasp/RTL first can stop a lot of that. Delaying your CC against a skilled opponent who dodges as soon as you RTL, or breaks your Mag Grasp, can still net you the CC. It’s about playing intelligently. Shocking Aura auto-procs in melee range, and I’ve never, ever, been kited effectively.

If I run into an Engi packing tons of knockback, I swap to Tornado before engaging and cancel it immediately. Not a problem. Rangers? I can remove 5 conditions instantly, or blink out of Entangle, or just AoE the roots. Again, they aren’t a problem.

No, I can’t kill any good bunker without backup, but not many classes can.

Forget Fire. Mostly useless trait line, and not worth the points.

10 Air – Zephyr’s Boon
30 Water – The 2 condition removal traits and cantrips grant regen
30 Arcana – Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana, and probably Final Shielding

Grab Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, Cleansing Fire, Valk’s amulet, Sigil of Battle/Fire, Zerk’s jewel in amulet. 2x Monk, Water, Earth runes each.

You have tons of healing – so it’s a very active defense. 2500~ armor, but only around 14k HP. You have to have good reflexes, and decent APM to make it all work out.

RTL > Updraft > Shocking Aura > Burning Speed > Ring of Fire > Arcane Wave > Fire Grab. Should be able to knock 6k~ HP no crits if everything lands (except against bunkers). The trick is keeping Frost or Shocking Aura up as often as possible, and using your mobility and CC to stay on top of someone throwing everything at them. Swap attunements all the time. You can have 100% uptime on Fury/Swiftness, 10+ stacks of Might, 80% uptime on Protection (Use glyph of Elemental Harmony with Earth Attunement), 2x condition removal just by swapping to water (in an AoE no less), and another 3 from Cleansing Fire, and Arcane Wave is a blast finisher for Might stacks and burst.

Don’t forget Churning Earth + Lightning Flash. You can blink right on top of someone as CE is going off to make sure it lands.

Elites should be changed as needed. If you’re about to jump into a team fight, take Tornado. Pop is and cancel immediately. You just want the 24 seconds of Stability to ensure you can stay in the fight, and on the point without getting locked down. Otherwise, Glyph of Elementals. Use it with Fire or Water attunement. Fire for damage, Water for some extra healing.

Love my Elementalist. There are problems, the class isn’t “fine” with all the bugs, that’s for sure. But we ARE powerful. It requires pretty high APM, and more specific builds due to broken, and lackluster traits, but the power is there. I get compliments daily on my build. I 1v1 any Thief and come out on top. Mesmers are more iffy, and bunkers are a stalemate. Then there’s the boatload of AoE buffs and condition removal you bring to team fights. Nothing like seeing kill spam from you when you AoE the crowd on a point.

Yes, conjure’s should be the answer here. Not every weapon set is good in every format – that goes for all classes. Staff can be used anywhere from 0-1200 range. You are NOT STUCK at 1200 range. Stop spewing this garbage.

If the enemy is about to break through the doors and you want D/D, get out of combat and swap to D/D. Not too bloody hard. D/D may only be effective up close, but you have plenty of CC and gap closers. If you get kited in D/D, you’re doing it wrong.

This class is plenty powerful, and comparing it to things like Thieves which ONLY bring damage and mobility, with very little CC is stupid. Any Ele build can bring AoE healing, condition removal, damage, CC, etc., etc. You can’t say our burst is less than Thief burst and expect buffs unless you also want to lose your essentially built-in support and survivability.

Weapon-swapping would only serve to get every single one of our weapon skills nerfed because having 40 of them to choose from would be stupidly powerful.

And before anyone says, “lol wut survivability?!” feel free to roll a backstab Thief and try to kill my D/D Ele. Then try to do it before I kill you.

Assuming it was changed because on Kyhlo Eles could use it to reach the enemy treb from, I think, the clocktower. I never tried it as I assumed it would be fixed eventually.

The Cone of Cold buff is lovely on top of the reliability buffs to other skills for D/D Eles. Been playing a Heal/Power Auramancer for a while now, and glad to see it getting a little attention to the problem areas. The thing that still boggles my mind, though… why is RTL still broken? STILL? So annoying.

The fixed down state is great, too. Can’t wait to try it out tomorrow with the guildies in some 5v5. Definitely one of the strongest now, if not the strongest.

Glad to see D/D getting love, and not buffs in damage numbers. I think the damage is almost perfectly balanced, and other classes need to be brought down to the same level generally speaking.

Don’t think the Assassin’s Signet nerf really hit all that hard. 15% damage reduction over the entire combo or so? At least the 10k Backstabs might stop, I suppose. It’ll probably work really well with HS or PW now, though, where it was useless before.

Rangers need love, still. My first class, and they are getting pretty well ignored. Sword and SB are still good weapons, but their utility skills still suck, and are unreliable a lot of the time.

More patches like this would be great, though. The half-page worth of random bug fixes no one cared about got old. Fixing overall functionality of the classes should be priority one.

Valk’s Ammy/zerks jewel, Lightning Flash, Signet of Earth, Cleansing Fire. 2x runes of the monk, water, and earth. 0/10/0/30/30 taking Evasive Arcana and Zephyr’s Boon.

You should have no problems in 1v1s. You do fine sustained DPS with spike potential through Churning Earth and Fire Grab. Signet of Earth was used prior to this latest patch to land Fire Grabs, so you might be better of with Arcane Wave now.

I manhandle most Thieves, and only rarely die to them anymore. Usually in teamfights when CDs are down, and I’m focused on other things.

Any PvPer who takes a trait to improve their downed state is already accepting defeat. Stupid waste of a trait.

Why are you bringing up beta? Yeah, they got one, Ele didn’t, now we have one, but you’re complaining about it.

Yes, Water traits are the best, along with Arcana. It happens. Maybe some day it will be fixed. Until then we get decent survivability through healing, and DPS Eles indeed completely possible and viable – with Water traits.

Ele was OP during BWE1. Instagibbing people like Thieves have been. We probably got overnerfed, but we’re still viable.

If you’re dealing craptastic damage, try changing your build.

Downed state lacked an interrupt at all, incisorr. That was the problem. Now we have one. This is a good change.

Cripple on Ring of Earth shall be sweet. Time to go test the new angles on Fire Grab and LT.

Not to mention Assassin’s Signet nerf is a big hit to the Backstab build. It can still put out some great damage, but it shouldn’t be knocking 10k+ on Backstab anymore. Overall a 15% nerf to the combo.

You want them to fix every single build/weapon set in a single swoop? Lol.

Realistically, the game has been out, and the Ele has had broken skills, for well over a month. I expected some of these changes two weeks ago, but better late than never, I guess.

Best skills are cantrips, signet of earth, signet of restoration, glyph of lesser eles, glyph of eles, arcane shield and arcane wave. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and uses beyond the apparent in both PvE and PvP. Lightning Flashing during Churning Earth can guarantee hits in PvP, while Arcane Shield during it can land it in PvE without dying.

Glyph of Eles/lesser eles can give you some meat shields in PvE, while Glyph of Eles is the only elite worth using (outside of Tornado ONLY for stability – cancel it immediately after casting), and Glyph of Eles can provide extra damage, healing or CC in both areas.

Arcane Wave can be used as burst, and for combo finishers. Using it with staff and water fields offers an extra AoE heal, while using it with Ring of Fire in daggers gives you 3 extra AoE Might stacks for more damage.

Hadn’t played my Thief in nearly a month, and when I did I went DB unicorn. Played it during a few matches last night using a high stealth BS build. Stupidly easy to gib people. Backstab not using ini, and using a few stealth skills, basically ensured that I had 2-5 attempts for it at any given moment. Yes, it can be countered. Yes, I’ve killed BS Thieves many times on my Ele. Yes, it’s a gimmick spec, and very glass cannon. Yes, it’s also stupidly easy to use, and does far too much damage for too little of a sacrifice.

Evis, if you play a “crit build” and only nail 2.5k backstabs, you’re obviously not built or geared correctly. I was hitting 2.5k on bunkers, 4-6k on everyone else.

Yeah, turned on melee assist long ago. Much better without it.

RTL > Updraft > BS is the common use, yes. Dodging backwards once or twice or running to the opposite side they dodge to and turning can put you at the appropriate range for it as well.

Use terrain. If there is a wall near your enemy, you can BS into it and the blast will hit them still.

Silly idea. Every other game uses out of combat stealth, and their stealth classes are still QQ’d about. The reason ANet even did it this way was to avoid that. It obviously backfired, but people would still QQ about stealth, and Thieves would be screwed with only 3-4 seconds of it at a time. Totally screwed.

No, fix the rendering issue so the revealed debuff has a purpose, lower the coefficients, and Thieves will be fine.

A good condition build can maintain tons of stacks. Thief D/D or P/D, Ranger SB, and Necros all have excellent condition builds with plenty of condition uptime, and damage. There is no need to make them crit, and would only throw these builds out of line. Other class’ condition builds need to be brought up to par, though.

Some trait locations don’t make much sense – don’t think anyone can argue this, and some are just bad. The problem is not specific to Necro.

You know, if they just fixed conjures, all of the people who hate attunement swapping would be able to play it more like any other class, and you could have your swap between melee/range. Your change, OP, would completely ruin the class for those of us who enjoy the fast-paced attunment swapping gameplay.

Also, our abilities aren’t necessarily divided up based on their use and attunment. D/D, for instance, has no defensive skills in Earth, but 2 CCs, and a gap closer. Air has another gap closer, 2 CCs, Fire is straight damage, and practically every skill is an AoE or cone. As far as I can see, only Water has a specific purpose – chill and heal. Same, really, applies to Scepter, too. Only one defensive skill in Earth, then a blind in Earth and in Air, etc.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Amityel.5324:

ofc it happens in spvp but you are the pro here huh?

Prvoide proof, oops you can’t. Bads always cry with no proof. This is an issue in WvW not sPvP, learn other professions mechanics before calling bug.

lol @ haters, I am pro Thief, Warrior and Necromancer Not good as Mesmer but don’t need to since my phantasms give me free kills. Not that good at bunker Elementalist either, recently started playing one.

Stay jealous.

I know the Thief’s mechanics… Stealth, you can’t restealth for 3 seconds after it drops, so I should be able to see them for 3 seconds, right? Doesn’t always work like that. You’re also the one who sat in the Guardian block-bug thread denying its existence until ANet popped in and said otherwise. I’ll just go ahead and call you a troll. Or perhaps you want the bug to stick around so you can continue abusing it? Do you really think ANet hasn’t looked into it, found it, and is going to just say “Oh Blazer said it doesn’t exist. Case closed”? Also consider the vast amount of reports for this. In any case, you’re boring.

@Diogo

Mesmer rarely, if ever, use all of their shatters. They use 2 if they are any good. No reason to waste illusions on daze when the 4-5k damage from a quadruple shatter is better. The only other one is the Distortion one. Feel free to apply your own rules to the Mesmer. Sword AA is not why it’s used, and if you’ve ever fought a Mesmer using a Sword, you’ll know they stun, and go for a Blurred Frenzy. Ignore Sword AA, too. Scepter AA is garbage and has been since they removed the confusion on it. Ignore that one.

Of course every other class’ weapon skills can do twice as much – they have half of our weapon skills. This can be a gift, if you choose to see it that way. A Mesmer could blow Blurred Frenzy to stop a spike, but now their offensive skill is on CD. Us having them divided, we have skills to stop or heal over burst, and don’t use up offensive power by utilizing them.

Ele elites sucks. We know. Again, I’ll give you this one.

I CC phantasms/clones and kill them. Bam, no threat from shatters, and now the real Mesmer is easy to spot, oh and no Phantasm damage for a few seconds.

I don’t use Dwayna’s, but I do use Valk’s amulet. It packs plenty of power, and with Zephyr’s Boon you get permafury for crit. I don’t see a problem here. I have plenty of staying power, support, and killing power (minus bunkers, which btw a good bunker doesn’t die to a Mesmer either). Can crit Fire Grabs and Churning Earths for 5k average, which is plenty. The rest is sustained AoE damage.

Elementalists require higher skill caps, but we can easily go toe-to-toe with a Mesmer. Aky, on the Guru forums, has a very nice duel video with Tsunkir – a shatter Mesmer. Just because our classes our different doesn’t mean one is better than the other.

@Razarei

Any of the top teams still left have dropped Thieves from their roster, and many are in fact running Eles and have been for a while. Plenty of streams still showing this.

Eles aren’t fine. We need bug fixes, animation tweaks, and possibly CD tweaks, new elites, reworks on conjures and glyphs, and some traits need to be reworked (like the entire fire line). But, we can still hold our own with a good build and a good player.

Either he’s got the weapons wrong, or he’s mistaking Shocking Aura for daze. The stuns last only a half second each, and apply as soon as he hits the Ele, so it can feel like being dazed – especially to an Aussie.

Probably an auramancer, and maybe running healing power/power/toughness. I play a similar build in sPvP, and it can heal for a lot, and repeatedly, and I love that Shocking Aura. As above, attack from range, or stop attacking him until it wears off. The icon is a pink spiral in their boon bar. Or just pop stability.

It is a powerful build, with a lot of staying power in 1v1, and plenty of damage/CC. A good condition build can counter it; the low HP makes them susceptible to it. Poison is a hard-counter. Any build that can keep poison up will win out, or stalemate it when the Ele disengages.

The other way is to instagib him. Try to force dodges/stun breaks and use 100B, Backstab or whatever. Just trying to nail him right off the bat with that stuff will likely waste it, so time it accordingly, and watch for utility skill use.

u – s k i l l u s e right next to each other is censor-worthy.

They die in 3-5 hits, and only attack every like 7 seconds or something. Jump off, kill the phantasm. I agree, though, they are a pain. And nothing like running into an army of them. Had 3 Mesmers on the enemy team once – God, so much pain.

Attunements are meant to be diverse. Staff Water is all about the heals and chill, not damage. The heal skills heal for plenty. Are you packing any healing power? Healing for 5k in an area is huge, and you can combo with Evasive Arcana twice for AoE healing, and ANet has specifically stated they don’t want a support class. Boosting this is overkill, and we become the support class everyone wants.

Meteor Shower is unreliable, and should be more like GW1’s. AoE DoT, but with a meteor shower animation. Boom, suddenly it’s worth using.

I think it would be exceedingly difficult to balance attunments in such a way that we can either swap or not. If you have suggestions here, then feel free to post them. The best you can do is divide up traits in each line – some giving bonuses for sitting in a single attunment, others that promote fast-swapping. The biggest flaw with the entire idea is that if you don’t attunment swap regardless, you’re losing out on 3/4 of your class. Attunements make us versatile, and allows us to continue putting out damage, or CC, or healing continuously – without any pauses. We don’t have downtime like other classes where our CDs are down. That’s a big benefit.

Eles have 20 weapon skills, we trump Mesmer weapon swap. Sorry.

They can pack a lot of utility, but if you kill the phantasms most of their damage is gone for some seconds, allowing you to lay on the pain. With all of the Ele AoE, that’s an easy task. Don’t focus the Mesmer, dodge the phantasm attacks and kill them, THEN focus the Mesmer. If it’s a shatter Mesmer, dodge the shatter, or pop Mist Form. Phantams are unreliable vs. a player with a brain.

Higher base HP, sure, but an ele with 30 Water and Valk’s has 13k worth of healing potential in one CD rotation. It’s situational. In a situation you’re locked down, higher base HP is preferable. Bring stun/immoblize removals and grant yourself higher effective HP. I find I survive better than most Mesmers.

Mass stealth is meh. Ele elites sucks, though, so I’ll give you that one.

They get confusion, blah blah, we get 4 CCs on D/D. Shocking Aura, EQ, Updraft, Magnetic Grasp. D/D can be played for conditions or power, either way with a proper build it can do plenty of damage. It’s less bursty, and more about sustained damage, but it still has spike potential through Churning Earth and Fire Grasp.

We’re still more mobile generally. The only exception is portal. One a minute they can traverse half the map instantly, but it does require setup. We can get permaswiftness, and RTL has a short enough CD that you can use it to travel quickly enough.

I disagree. I rarely lose against Thieves. Try a healing auramancer build. Valk’s Ammy with just about any jewel from zerk’s to knight’s depending on what you need, D/D with Sigil of Battle/Accuracy, Lightning Flash, Signet of Earth, Cleansing Fire. 10 Air for Zephyr’s Boon, 30 Arcana with Elemental Attunment and Evasive Arcana, with 30 Water for the 2 condition removal traits.

The offense, and defense of the build is very active, but playing it properly you can easily handle Thieves and Warriors if you see them coming. Sure, Backstab without you noticing will probably still down you, but that’s any non-bunker. Signet of Earth is for setting up your Fire Grabs. You get AoE condition removal, regen, swiftness, with easy 10+ might stacks and significant prot uptime. Glyph of Ele Harmony with Earth Attunement should be prioritized.

It’s very, very active. If you find the effort you put in as an Ele tedious, then that’s just a matter of taste. I mained Ranger and Thief all through BWEs and only rolled my Ele a few weeks after release, and haven’t looked back. I love the very active playstyle.

ColinJohanson.2394:

You misunderstood me, there is an entire group of people working on balancing the game as I write this…

You miss the point. How you change stuff is up in the air, we recognize that. But just saying, “yeah backstab is hitting really hard and we’re looking into it” or “bunker builds might be lasting too long for our liking” would go a long way. You don’t have to state specifically what about the skill, trait, build, or class is the problem in most cases, or even how to fix it, just acknowledge that there may be an issue publicly.

Win bonus is 20 points, focus on getting personal points. Even if you lose, you’ll probably get more glory than the majority of the winners. Neutralize/cap points, zerg around trying to tag every enemy so you get points for the kills, etc. 8v8 isn’t the place to look for competitive PvP, and if you hate autobalance, and want to win, try 5v5.

But, in regards to your actual question: autobalance happens. It only looks at time-left and total points. Once it reaches 80%, I think, it stops autobalancing, but if the game is 200-50 it doesn’t matter, it’ll autobalance.

I feel Eles are in a better place than Thieves are for tPvP, and we do fine in pubs. Know your role, and your class, and you’ll be an asset to your team. Yes, it requires a lot of work, no you won’t be critting for 10k, or doing 14k damage Churning Earths (might as well be our equivalent to 100B). But you still bring a lot to any team fight, but finding a role in the current meta that suits a more offensive playstyle is difficult.

A healing D/D Auramancer build packs plenty of potential punch (5k average Fire Grab crits), tons of AoE damage, AoE regen, condition removal, protection, and has some staying power with high uptime on protection, the passive condition removal on Water attune, and your healing skills. You also have 100% fury and swiftness uptime if you so choose, and plenty of map mobility with RTL + Swiftness.

While you bring a lot to the table, it suffers in the current bunker-heavy meta. You can’t kill a good bunker. Even if you land Churning Earth and a burning, 14 Might stack Fire Grab. So, your job is more about roaming to assist your other teammates, grab bosses on Nifl, kill the treb on Khylo (more easily done with a staff), and you can sway teamfights with your AoE damage and support capabilities, not to mention backcapping, and helping your roamer deal with bunkers. It also has a very similar trait and u-skill setup to the staff and S/D tank/heal builds, and all it takes is a weapon swap and an amulet swap to be effective (assuming you’re not just stacking Ogre runes, which you shouldn’t). Find a team comp you fit well in is the trick, and learning to be flexible. If you need a bunker, go bunker – you can do it on the fly. Need to kill the treb? Go do that. Stealing a boss? The Churning Earth + Lightning Flash combo is good at this if you time it well. Otherwise, just jumping in with RTL and your Fire skills should do the trick.

Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth or Cleansing Fire, and Signet of Earth will give you what you need to land your bursts, and survive. Lightning Flash + Churning Earth into a teamfight, or Signeting that slippery Thief to ensure a Fire Grab, or let your team have an easy time manhandling someone, etc. It’s all in how you play, and how you fit with your team.

Two proccing sigils like fire and air share ICDs, and same crit sigils like 2x Air will stack their chances multiplicatively, not additively.

2x on-swap sigils also share CDs. So, Hydromancer + Battle won’t work together.

Stacking on kill will not stack either. Using both the condition and power stacking sigils will only get a single stack of power or condition damage, even if on two different weapon sets. But if you want to stack Bloodlust on every kill, you need it on both sets.

Passive sigils don’t stack on the same weapon set, but if you want 5% damage (Force) for both, you’ll need a sigil of Force on each set.

All of this info. is on the Wiki.

I have a harder time with that Axe/Mace + Hammer build. Lots of a CC and they still crit 5k eviscerates, and are significantly more tanky than the glass cannon HB build since they actually stack some toughness.

100B Warriors are a joke. You can Cleansing Fire + Dodge, or use Shocking Aura to completely counter their 100B since it’s usable while stunned, or Lightning Flash the CC which also gets you away from 100B. Dodge to the front or back of the Warrior or you still get hit by a few strikes of 100B. You can also just dodge the Bull’s and save yourself a stun break and continue rocking his face.

Evasive Arcana is huge in my build, and the 2 condition removals attuning to water, and I need the Fury uptime from Zephyr’s Boon. So, yeah, someone with a good build is going to be trait reliant. Never mind the Healing Power boost from Water line needed for survivability.

Zarrik, copy/paste the link. ANet forums dislike semi-colons in links.

If you want to swap ranges, change weapons out of combat. Weapon swap would be OP, and would cause nerfs to every single one of our weapon skills to make up for getting another 20 skills. Enough of this crap. 20 skills isn’t enough? While each weapon apparently has a range, they are not necessarily confined to a single role. Every weapon set is versatile at its own range.

Thief/Mesmer 2v1 is heavily lopsided. The only way to do it is kill the phantasms as they come up, then switch to the Thief. Focus the Thief as even with stealth he’ll likely die fastest, particularly if you’re fast with any AoE CC when they pop Shadow Refuge. Most times the thief will stay in it hoping for an easy backstab re-open, or to stack stealth.

Rank 24, no slivers to speak of yet. Maybe I’ll use some of that 50k glory to try to farm some.

Kat.5982:

Another ‘the game is balanced around tournament pvp, so if you don’t play that, sucks for you’ post. People like you, and I’ve seen this justification in every online game I’ve played, will never learn that a miniscule, absolutely miniscule, portion of the population plays pvp at the highest level, so trying to use that type of play as a basis for balance does not work. You don’t alienate 99% of players for the sake of the top 1%.

While I tend to agree that alienating the largest portions of your playerbase (that is, the casuals – both PvE and PvP) is a bad idea, you do need a focusing point for balance. I agree that ANet should work on getting Thieves balanced in both areas, but priority should be balance in 5v5. 8v8 will never be balanced within a reasonable margin. Ever. Get it out of your head, it’s impossible. But, toning down the damage/stealth and upping base survivability and utility could work well for both parties.

Aside from that, I run a 14k HP 2500 toughness Ele in both 8v8 and 5v5, and I still rarely die to Thieves unless it’s a straight zerg and they jump me, or I don’t see them coming. They are a joke if you avoid the opening. And the only time they instagib me is when they crit on on Backstab. In 1v1, 2v1, and even teamfight scenarios, if I can’t kill them, I can escape.