Guild Wars 2

he’s caught in a lie of ignorance. He’ll walk away. Full glass cannon thieves have 14k except Daecollo’s guildies which unequip their amulets to taunt their prey.

Can you provide us some clarity on these builds? If they are going to survive it will make it easier for us to just move on.

Ever seen Top Gun when Maverick and Viper are going back and forth in a 2 minute dogfight? Then Jester shows up for the one-shot?

I really don’t care that Backstab thieves are not dominating tPVP, any game designers that endorse 2 sec kills should be fired.

Once again please let us know if this will be fixed. I enjoy the chess match of every class in the game including ranged thieves. But man I’m sick of seeing death windows with 3 abilities, C&d, backstab, and steal. Sometimes in Kylo I think it was the kitten trebuchet because of how instant it is.

Staff dominates in pvp if you know what you’re doing and know how to employ combo fields and blast finishers. The only thief I lose too is the C&D, steal while it’s channeling, backstab guy that does 15k in 1 second, but then so does everbody if he’s able to get the combo off.

Angry flying squirrel, he can’t post the build or screenshot becasue it doens’t exist. The best you could hope for is a shaman’s amulet, which with a 10 30 30 build gives you about 1900 toughness. That build gives you 13,800 hp’s without runes. Now are you going to rune toughness to get it to around 2100 and have 13,800 hp or rune vitality which gets you up to about 15,500. There is no build for an elementalist with 2.2k toughness and 20k hp’s in spvp as you have pointed out. The reason he doens’t know this is that he’s a thief defending the idiocy of the steal backstab build being fine.

Bombul please explain to us what gear in spvp you’re using to get 2.2k toughness, 20k hp’s. You can only get that much toughness with the shaman’s amulet, which has zero +hp’s. If you’re getting 20k hp then you’re not going to have any healing on you’re gear. What the heck is the point of 10 30 30 without healing? Hey look the guy that doens’t die but is worthless to his team. I’m talking about viable builds not Unicorn ranches.

Just got hit by a 5200 steal with 2100 toughness …3k armor …that shaman amulet with toughness runes. That’s max toughness. Is this intended? Would really like a response from Dev’s. All other class are fun challenges and even chess games to play against. Thieves that know how to spec are just plain stupid.

I have the distinct feeling these guys are going to “look at things” for months until everyone’s had enough. The solution is easy tone down som more durable builds and double hp’s. Good thief’s are downing people to fast even with max toughness.

Running around with 14k hp’s as an elementalist with decent toughness 1700 etc. Why does a steal backstab combo take 70 percent of my hp’s. People blowing up in 2 seconds is bad design. You boys have had 6 weeks now to gauge what’s happening. I know you feel like you have to earn your paycheck s by adjusting some random pve bosses telegraphed attack but come on, You’re out of time, wake-up.

My setup is earth 3 as well, water 1, 3, and 5, and arcana 4, 5, 11. I’m suspect of valkyries because I really don’t need 15 percent crit multipler since my crit will be crap anyway, and frankly, I don’t have alot of time for direct damage as opposed to conditions. One of my main concerns is that 598 toughness may not be enough. Even with cleric’s amulet, I can still feel squishy. It might be that it takes longer to kill people without the condition builds. If one eruption hits with 10+ might stacks and my setup it does about 8k in bleeds. Like you i’m tempted to tone down the healing as it doesn’t seem to lose too much and stick with the shaman’s amulet.

You’re going to be in for a very pleasant surprise when you realise you’re only employing half the potential of a staff healer. Grab evasive arcana at 30 points in arcane go smack a target dummy so you get into combat and lay down a healing rain and then dodge roll and see what happens (since you’ll be at full hp, you may not noitice but it causes an AOE heal on top of the cleansing wave AOE heal. Evasive arcanas are blast finishers). Another go look up eruption (earth 2) cast it, switch to water, cast healing rain. Notice the AOE heal heart when eruption explodes inside healing rain. Works for geyser as well. Go get Arcane wave, same effect. Get rid of 20 percent reduction in cantrip duration and pick up regen and vigor effect when using cantrips. Get rid of the share auras and grab the condition removal on attuning to water.

So i’m rank 16 and have been dabbling in about 4 professions but have spent the majority of the time as an elementalist. And yes Elementalist sucks! Well kinda.

Before I learned to spec for defense, before I learned to attunement switch, I couldn’t understand why my soldier amulet all fire and air and some arcana spec kept getting blown up. Oh wait, you mean there are other amulets besides soldiers? That took about 4 days to realise. Berzerker’s, omg I can finally kill people. But wait I’m still dieing in seconds.

Rewind to a few weeks ago, running interesting dagger focus builds for a nice combination of damage and defense, I thought I’d try out staff. Yep still sucks.

What’s this blast finisher stuff all about. Looks like staff has alot of these fields as well. Anyway back to daggers and scepter. I’l try some water, earth and arcana builds with a shaman amulet to spec support and nice heals. Hey look, I can live through heartseeker! Wow this build really has some nice survivability and heals, but those heals still don’t seem quite adequate.

Attunment dancing mastered, check. Knowing how to spec, check. Understand how to heal (without fields and finishers), check. What are these finishers and fields and how to they really work (always felt like people could randomly make things happen by shooting through them only). Read a few forum posts and spent an hour on the golems testing out staff with combo fields and finishers.

Demigod status enabled. Holy god, staff in incredible. Eruption switch to water, geyser, arcane wave, healing rain, evasive arcana roll, switch to fire evasive arcana roll, the whole team is now healed up conditions removed all over the place, regen for 20 seconds stacked (or however long it is). I no longer ever fear a 1 on 1, ever. 2 on1’s? If their both pretty hardcore melee’s, I have to be on my toes but I can usually waste at least 30 seconds of their time, if their ranged I can last a minute or longer. 3 on 1’s are a breaking point but I can usually drag them for a few thousand yards away from their node if their stupid enough to follow.

Anyway, after understanding staff, I can never go back to daggers or scepter. In the beginning without knowing how to spec expecting to lob fireballs from 1200 yards, without healing and understanding fields and combos, staff sucks hard. Obviously I have travelled the long road towards enlightenment. Quick question to other hardcore staff enthusiasts, what do you prefer amulet wise? Shaman’s or cleric’s. I find shaman’s with a carrion jewel, while running undead runes and a superior battle rune on my staff provides a nice mix of healing, defense and condition damage output through eruption, evasive arcana, flame burst etc. Do you find the lower healing is an issue? I’m not running Tpvp right now so keep in mind this is solo queues in spvp.

I haven’t relly done alot of WvW. It mainly feels like a zerg so I would just hang with the staff but in spvp, it really shines. I run a 10 arcane, 30 water, 30 air build with zerker amulet I have about 17k hp. I have nice power and my crits hit hard. I use the 20 percent damage to vulnerable foes and 20 reduction in water skills talents. When I have to kite a melee in water stance, my little vapor blades hit hard. it’s funny watching cone of cold hit for 5 to 6k over the channel with 15 stacks of vulnerability. The 25 point water talent is also a nice bonus when in a group.

In my experience, I can kill any class one on one.

Like most here I was having major survivability problems when I picked up the elementalist. The off-hand dagger is very flashy and fun but the focus really is a game changer.

Knockdowns, ranged single target slow, invulnerability, 2 invulnerability to arrows; one a reflect, the other an AOE that protects your whole team. We can still do nice damage with a zerker amulet and a good chunk of points in water stance. Glass cannon specs with focus can work very well in my experience.

Also throw on a 6 set of the mesmer rune for an increase in duration on daze of 33 percent. The water daze AoE really becomes interesting.

You need 80 to earn all your traits. Do you suggest I run around with no traits or gear?

So I spent the first 3 weeks in game solely pvping. I experimented with 4 different professions and made it to rank 14. All my guys were level 2. After settling on the elementalist, I thought I would start pveing once I realised I needed to get to 80 to WvsW.

Anyway I’m seeing all these random components drop and wonderering should I even attempt to craft or should I sell everything and wait till 80. I’m assuming like almost every mmo I can run around at 80 making tons of gold randomly running dungeons and xping? I have enjoyed crafting in other games but I tend to enjoy power levelling them and getting maxed out in a day or two.

Would the community suggest selling all ingredients on the trading post or at this relatively low level ( 23 ), crafting some things that are a pain at 80? And as some of the posts suggested is the money in crafting selling ingredients to other crafters as opposed to being a crafter yourself.

Use the focus off-hand. Yes I realise you lose ride the lightning and fire grab but the survivability gains are insane. If the mobility loss is too much switch to the dagger main hand which has 2 built-in gap closers.

I’m loving dagger main-hand focus off-hand.

The answer is, do not pick the traits that cause you to do 10 percent more damage in any one trait. Those are tease traits designed to incentivize you to spec poorly. There are plenty of traits in all the lines that provide utility to an overrall build. One can put on the berserker amulet and nothing in the fire line and still do very nice damage.

Now that I have learned to spec correctly, unfortunately the amount of choices on how to spec are limited. For instance any build that does not have the arcane skill that grants vigor 33 percent of the time on crits is insane. This talent alone allows you to almost chain dodge.

Another hint is that if you want to begin to enjoy your elementalist start learning how to use the focus off-hand. The utility and defense provided by this one weapon is amazing. I can beat anyone using the focus off-hand. Yes you lose ride the lightning and fire grab, but the immunities are unsurpassable. Two immunities to projectiles and a blanket invulnerable, rangers, ranged warriors, and ranged thieves just became trivial.

I’m talking about how your in downed state in this game out of nowhere if you’re not palying a guardian. Burst is insane right now.

My post was about the state before being downed. Your fighting boom ….hundred bldes, hip shot pistol whip ..whatever …dead. Toons explode in this game in seconds to one guy.
Oh yeah where can I get a Homer simpson toy bird to peck at my 2 key, thinking of rolling a thief.

My highest level guy is 2. (PVE is meaingless to me) I have been pvping in the game since the 3rd week of august. Please eliminate the one shot abilities or double the hp pools of characters.

If either of these is not in the cards give both necromancer and elementalists 10k ranged abilities on a 1 sec cast. The overwhelming chorus of thieves and warriors in these forums will be ok with it because they have “dodge”, and apparently that will negate anything that’s overpowered.