Guild Wars 2

PsychoDM.5279:

What’s wrong with healing my allies?

Nothing wrong with it at all Psycho, as long as you are doing everything else too. We’ve all been in a Wvw mixup where water fields make a big difference. With a staff for example, I think as long as an ele doesn’t stay in water and goes into earth, air, and fire also, and lays down chills, stuns, cripples, immobilizes, and aoe, they are doing alright. It certainly helps however if the aoe does some real damage, which is why I won’t ever see this trait.

I am going to take a shot in the dark and assume that by, Healing, the OP means that there are trait points in water in the builds he has seen.

fyi, that does not make the build a “healing build”. Well, it sort of does, but not really. Ele’s in PvP have to have good condition removal from all the damage they are taking. Their gear likely has little vitality and may very well be largely Beserker gear. The idea is to skimp on the vitality in the armor and make it up in the Water trait because that is where we have to go anyway to get the condition removal we need.

A Healing Build, as most of us understand the term, means high Healing Power to heal party members. Two entirely different things. I have hardly ever, like maybe a handful of times in a year and a half, seen this type of build in these forums. So that cant be what you are seeing everywhere.

I was in a dungeon group some time ago. In the boss fight I saw 25 stacks of vulnerability which stunned me. I was told much of that came from the thief. I forget how she did it and I don’t know because I am still leveling mine, but it was very impressive. That boost to the parties dps was fantastic.

It’s always good to remember the source when the conversation deals with a classes’ or builds’ worth. Often enough it is someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about and/or they like to sound like they do. I will know for sure in this instance if and when I can reproduce that

Whit.2385:

Vash Past.4385:

If conditions/burning were really that useful, why is Berserker build massively prevalent in meta?

Umm, except that berserker is only the “meta” in pve. In pvp its condi-tank all the way….

Yes, and eles don’t get to play.

Mbelch.9028:

That thread is garbage, full of misinformation. Eles, we can disregard.

/signed

OP, you state that conditions do not overlap. That is false. When a mob has 25 stacks of bleed for example, GW2 prioritizes the ones that do the most damage and applies those. The system constantly reanalyzes the conditions and was once believed to be a reason for system lag in large boss fights because of the computing overhead.

Your linked post, which you created, uses as an example a thief and a necro, arguably the two best condition dealers because of the number of different conditions that can be applied. Eles have two and those skills are very useful for entirely different reasons. Your thief and necro have 1200 and 1400 condition damage respectively. Put that on an ele and you have seriously damaged the power and/or precision which affects the majority of our skills’ damage. That’s not to say condition damage is useless on an ele, although most I think would say it is useless lol.

I didn’t get much further in your post, sorry.

As a new thief, that is an extremely helpful list. Ty for taking the time to put that together.

Personally I don’t mind running into a thief who runs away. It’s ok. Other threads have mentioned all the classes have something like that. I didn’t build my elementalist to run, so I die more than most lol. Players who don’t have great skillz should have an option to avoid combat. Why should they be fair game for anyone who walks by?

Not knowing the class as well as I should yet, it has been my experience coming up against them in an elementalist that the ones who stealth alot do alot less damage, and run. The dangerous ones are those you see. I’m just saying, those are a lot of skills, utilities, and traits to pop, many for no damage.

BlackBeard.2873:

………

Edit: Also, I forgot to mention this: ele’s aren’t allowed to have nice things.

That makes me so sad, but it’s so true! Why can’t we have that one thing that other classes can point to as OP and complain about? Something that even the worst of us could get some satisfaction out of.

So, OP, I would guess by now you know the best way to land it. In 1v1 the damage is not the best because it doesn’t land all the time, especially against good players.

Fiery Greatsword will give very good dps. I’m surprised an advocate of that hasn’t already stuck his head in here and dismissed the damage of CE in comparison to it. They often do when someone brings up CE.

I am assuming you are DD. If so, there are a lot of other skills you can put into your rotation other than CE. CE can be good when there are a fair number of players on a point, just because some just are not going to see it when they are concentrating on players other than you, unless of course they all together targeted you first which often happens to eles. It can be interrupted too, more so with a long cast time, and that is disheartening after spending several seconds to get nothing out of it at all. The player who interrupted it then generally starts beating the tar out of us and we start blowing our dodges and heals just to get away alive. Sure you can use Arcane Shield or Armor of Earth to cast it, Lightning Flash to land it sometimes, but that is 2 or 3 utilities and for what? All of which you didn’t ask about

A lot of players are not good enough to counter it when used correctly, but if you run into someone who is, there are consequences.

Arcturus.8109:

Rottaran Owain.6789:

It’s also:

-One of the highest damaging skills in the game (in the top 5 as I recall)
-Causes 8 stacks of fair duration bleeds
-Has a wide AoE
-Is a Blast finisher

Should it really be a surprise that this is the most difficult to land skill in the game?

It is so hard to land (without LF exploit) that spell itself became completely useless. I’d be happy to see it nerfed in damage, radius or whatever, but usable.
Or add immobilize instead of cripple on every tick to prevent dodge – that would be fun.
Or make ele invunerable (like earth shield’s skill) – that will make it nice defensive/area denial skill.
But currently its a joke usable only with LF or in tunnels.

LF is not an exploit. It’s a tool the devs have given the class to make sure that #5 skill is not useless. #5 skills are the strongest skills any class has and have long cooldowns. Designing the game so that ours would be useless in any WvW or SPvP environment would be a huge nerf.

If you use Lightning Flash to teleport to the target area, it does damage with a 120 radius. That will use up the blind which only affects the next outgoing attack.

Pretty much to land CE you have to use LF anyway, so just be sure to teleport close to your target. More players will use a dodge or have swiftness to move out of range than be quick enough to use blind. :Either way LF will take care of that.

Celestial gear is favored for its critical damage because all the other stats are only average by design. As this chart shows http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit , critical damage without high precision only gives a marginal increase in damage, and Celestial is low on precision. For dps dealers, except beserker, it gimps itself with stats in condition and healing power, for condition damage it gimps with stats in power and precision, for beserkers it gimps with stats in vitality and toughness. Generally speaking.

In my experience, players who are effective with Celestial provide a little bit of everything. They like to do some healing, condition damage, and dps but are not great at any of it. With the critical damage decrease of 10%, that stat will no longer offset the lack of precision and power like it partially did, leaving beserkers, (always highest in power and precision) far above at the top of the burst dps role and over all dps too.

Its simple math. Power affects base critical damage. The change of a critical occurring, precision, is calculated and applied. The critical damage is then added to 150 and multiplied. Healing power, vitality, toughness, and condition play no part in these calculations. Missing any one part misses.

If you want to balance a build, then Celestial is not a bad way to go, but not the only way. Just the most expensive.

Hard to say because we don’t know what you don’t know. We don’t know if you know how to dodge or if you do, if you know how to generate vigor. We don’t know if your dps is low because or your skill usage, because you have penalized yourself with low power, or have a bad synergy between precision and critical damage. Not knowing whether you are having issues with sPvP, WvW, or Pve makes a difference. Builds for sPvP are much more critical for example. Survivability can be handled many different ways and your build affects what the best techniques you will have

Guides are great for premade characters and great synergies applicable no matter what build you use. The wiki is fantastic for looking at all the nuts and bolts. Reading through this forum is a great tool, once you get by the qq, there is a lot to learn here.

One of the best tools we have is the sPvP area where, for free, you can equip your character with any gear and weapons, try out your dps on the test dummys, and even try out your luck on live npcs.

I just started a thief. The class is loads of fun to play. Btw, every class is afraid of nerfs in this game every patch.

Signet of Malice looks like a great skill. I see now it heals for each hit, and there are a lot of hits. This seems to be the skill that should take 25 skill points to unlock.

Thank you for all for pointing out great techniques and their synergies. This is a great forum. You guys all talk solid and effective ways to get the most out of the class.

Note: “guys” denotes both the male and female gender

I certainly overlooked the skills of the short bow. I’ll get ranged single target for pulls and also the aoe in close and at distance. That’ll give me the other weapon set for dagger and single target dps . Thank you. I totally missed that.

I have leveled to 42 in Harathi Hinterlands and found myself soloing in the Centaur camps lol using Sword for the Aoe and PD to pull and ranged damage (lower areas are kind of deserted.) Sword gives less than great single target dps but the three skill is great for the aoe if something goes wrong, especially with Pain Inverter, and Spider and Devourer Venoms.

My difficulty is with the champs and beefed up vets where I want the single target dps in close melee combat to prevent pulling patrols and respawns. I can see the contests getting worse as I move into higher levels. Am I missing something?

Travlane.5948:

wouldnt use this to call something OP. many of these “pros” are not as good as you think. you seem them being talked about and on this platform bc they use twitch etc. i have won 1v1 tournements and you havent heard my name. points is ur not a nub. ur above average ….. cant use that to test a build.

i did an experiment the other day…. i loggedon warrior for the first time ever. had a build i borrowed from online…high armor high hp high toughness high attack dps (full zerk) high mobility high condi cleans and super high healing (uncomparable).

i took 2ndin points, only 20 behind 1st (then again i didnt even cap a node once…if i had i wouldhave crushed the competition)….. i took highest kills….best objective defender…best objective assaulter. basically the best in offense and defense categories with highest number of kills.

FIRST….TIME….PLAYING. i literawlly have had 0 games on warrior….no lvled up warrior. theres basically no way i played warrior. as i proved and did super well. now thats called NUB doing well.

thief isnt op…. used to beback in 2012.

omg I like what you did there. So I have to ask if you enjoyed the warrior and will you play him again? I have to ask. I’ve been playing an ele since beta1 and just started a thief, level 28 now. I am having such a fun time playing this class I can’t believe it.

Sorry for the ninja of the thread guys. Nothing else to see here. Move along.

Suggested Proposal Format
Proposal Overview

Tear down the gates.

Goal of Proposal

Equality against uneven numbers. Allows good player against player combat, what we all came for.

Proposal Functionality

Very Well. Currently the idea behind gates and walls is to allow defense against a superior force, but there is no scaling of unequal numbers. Battles become protracted affairs that either the superior force always wins anyway, face rolling anyone inside as soon as the gates are down, or leaving to go somewhere else while the defenders sit and wonder what to do next.

The best way to achieve equality is allow player vs. player, scale a tower or keep event with NPCs, and open the gates. We get the player vs. player we all came to enjoy and underpowered defenders get strong NPCs to even out the sides. The Lord should be a real Lord, something that is just under par with World champs that take time and effort to defeat. This would allow players to regroup, run back to the fight and/or be rezzed. NPCs would not attack downed players. NPCs could even heal downed players. Whatever, maybe neither of those two. See how it balances out. Siege still plays a huge part. Doorways become choke points. The best battles ever have always been inside a keep player vs. player with even numbers or with walls down player vs. player and even numbers.

Open field warfare will still remain and reward stronger servers with fulltime coverage in the PPT scoring, but off hours coverage will not be as strong an advantage as undermanned defenders will actually have a fighting chance. Open field warfare will give an advantage to supply as always. Effective use of siege will still give an advantage and undersupplied defenders with little siege will still be at a disadvantage, but not as much which, again, results in more player vs. player. I don’t mind dying against a superior force, eh, just never having any fun doing it.

And, if the sides are equal, everyone wins. We get player vs player and npcs are not a factor.

If the defenders are larger in number, they still win as they would anyway. At least the attackers can get in the front door and get some shots off at players instead of gates.

Ambushes against attackers unsuspectingly strolling into a tower could be a real fun thing, but I digress.

Associated Risks

I offered this early after launch and met a less than positive response. Players were in love with hitting gates and tearing down walls. Zerg balls were swapping objectives so quickly for the rewards they couldn’t, maybe can’t, think of doing otherwise. There will be an outcry that WvW has turned into a Pve affair, but that will only be true in lopsided conflicts. The rewards will scale up due to the nature of the prolonged battles to compensate and give players a reason to engage. Towers in some cases could be redesigned.

The scaling GW2 has achieved is key and possibly complex. Simply strong NPCs would allow smaller forces to hold back superior forces forever or make capture an impossible affair for small groups.

I can see this getting as complex for the programmers as one could wish it was not.

One character can level all the crafting professions btw. Switching back and forth just costs some coin. So if you level one to 400 or 500 and then another and another etc you can have them all, then choose which ones you will use to build your ascended and stuff. Or, just use the 5? characters the game gives you to divide up the crafting among them and level all the professions up.

All the crafting professions have something to offer all classes of characters. But, tailoring is by far one to have since you will be able to make your own bigger bags and eventually ascended armor.

Balance in our pursuits is a good thing. Since I didn’t get sucked into the PPT mode of thinking, I go out and have fun without a care as to what tier we are in or how we are doing that week. When I do go out I enjoy the various activities, everything from soloing supply camps, running yaks, zerg balls, taking an objective, informal groups, guild groups etc. I am in a casual guild of good players. But, that’s me.

Of course the PPT hardcore players have their right to enjoy the game as they like. No one would deny that. I have no doubt they would find a way to maximize the stress of any game mechanic to the maximum degree. It’s just that some games recognize this and put a lid on it so those guys don’t hurt themselves too badly lol. For better or worse they will learn a lot about themselves. A person has to know their limitations in the world. This game will chew you up and spit you out if you don’t or can’t find balance.

Vol.7601:

SoR died before EotM, stop blaming things for the sake of blaming.

Are we going to blame LA rescue for SoR dying as well?

Point taken. Still, look at the SoR commanders post just above. Nothing but stress. “sustain the coverage to remain competitive” “split mainly between the hardcore players and the non-hardcore players. It has since been resolved mainly by the guilds leaving” “population’s recruiting pool has became very poor” “very large amount of numbers, time, and energy required to maintain hardcore competitiveness” “unsustainable” an on and on.

The WvW meta has one 15 minute break once a week. The rest of the time the game and scoring are on. I’ve never seen anything like it. Granted I do have only played a handful of games, but hardcore raiding was never like this. This simply burns people out. I’ve never seen so much rage quitting. Players quitting guilds. Guilds splitting or collapsing. Guilds quitting servers. Just for the sake of the score. We have to get the score. We have to be top scorer. Never mind that fights and the fun don’t change regardless of the score. It’s simply crazy how people buy into all this.

I don’t know why they ever developed the whole PPT system. It was never a good idea to begin with. I guess I was ahead of my time when I got fed up with it months after launch when I saw what it did to people, guilds, and servers. Who the heck cares what the score is at the end of a week anyway. A week of Scoring is not fun.

Two hour fights are perfect. At the end, give the participants individual rewards based on their side’s results, not Wvw supply. That’s just stupid. IMO it’s too late to do that now though. Too many guilds and servers have bought into the “my server is #1” game and invested too much in money, organization, and time to see it evaporate. So, those of us who don’t PPT quietly vanish into the Mists. And lol, PPT players wonder where everyone went. Seriously, they really don’t know lol. They just don’t get it. Too many supervised and coordinated events around today. Give me a pickup game any day. This is my free time. This is a time to relax and have fun after a hard day at work.

ThiBash.5634:

Apart from dodging well and using protection boon/heals…

….the Earth Elemental elite summon. It tanks like a pro, gathers aggro like it offended their mothers and can take more hits than current day music charts.

/agreed

Did a search for “blind” in this thread and got no hits. There are two in scepter dagger.

Water ele will give a full heal.

Yes Earth ele is good at agro, very sturdy, and will take on one if not two npcs and allow the use of single target on whatever npcs are left. Then aoe them all at the same time. We are talking Pve after all.

Pick one target and keep that targeted. Place aoe so all are hit. The first target should be the weakest first. Take ranged first though. When first is down, tab target the next npc weakest or lowest health bar, but save the veterans and champs for last regardless. Rinse and repeat.

Some mobs are just difficult. Hyleks for example have a nasty knockdown and an immobilize too. Our primary defense is our speed and mobility. If we are stuck, that makes it tough. But, condition removal will solve lots of the types of attacks different mobs have. One minute you think you are fine and the next dead and you wonder what happened. Chances are good it was conditions.

Rotate thru all the attunements and use the skills. Direct Dps is the not the be all, end all. It’s sexy lol, but basics count and add up.

ThiBash.5634:

The Gauntlet was designed to be beatable by any profession. It was not designed to be beatable by any build. In the end, I beat it by using the passives of Signet of Air and Water so I could keep running the circle without dodges. All the while side-stepping so I could keep attacking with my auto-attack.

So there’s a place where Evasive Arcana isn’t the ultimate answer. You should be happy! No, I mean it…you should be happy.

lol, I hope to be. Hopefully Evansive Arcana is something that I will not miss once I have gotton used to not using it cause I am not now.

It was not so much the difficulty of the bosses as the side by side comparison of our class verses another against the same mob under the same cirucmstances in a timed event.

I realize the Gauntlett was designed to require new builds for many of us and the use of skills that seemed more like tricks. But, also what I clearly saw was that other classes DPS was much much higher, too much. Having the ablity to see other classes’ performance in timed static events, all under the same circumstances, clearly demonstated that to me.

Other players were no doubt tweaking their builds too. And, no, I don’t expect the elementalist to have the highest single target dps. I do want to start seeing all my damage numbers in the 1000+s with an “S” on the end.

The idea that to be sturdy we have to run 20-30 in water and 30 in arcane puts a big damper on any idea to generate competitive dps. I am not getting any return from Evasive Arcana other than sturdiness which should be covered by earth and water. The heals are for me and the party is never anywhere close and they don’t need them anyway. The other stuff is marginal. The attunement cooldown keeps me out of weak autoattacks but gives me nothing but weak other attacks instead, because I have 30 trait points that are not in fire or air!

I’ve been running high crit builds since my first exotic set of armor and have never gone back.

Forgeting sPvP for this, high crit has a strategic use in WvW with aoe staff damage and crowd control. Crit aoe stings and many opposing players are afraid to get caught in it. They move out or stay out. The aoe crowd control is significant. Of course it actually does do some real damage lol.

In Pve I use everything. Staff can work wonders in alot of dungeon content. As I do not run an aura-mancer build, my support is limited to might stacks, blinds, cripples, chills, knockbacks and the occasional heal and condition removal with s/d and d/d. That is pretty much all we have with those weapons and it’s not much in the support department.

As far as my build, I am in-between. I am giving fresh air a second try and being selfish about it. I find most players can take care of their own conditions and heals. If they are inexperienced, then a guardian has a much larger impact than an elementalist. The Gauntlet and new Clockwork? champions mobs have made me impatient with my damage output. They can’t be defended against for any period of time thru healing and dodging or the use of utilites. The only defense is offense, damage per second, not over time. Sure it is one time content, but I did not like at the way we measured up against the other classes with our classic builds. I did not like people saying, “No, I didn’t do that on my ele, I used my thief, or guardian.” or whoever. I believe we should be competitive on our elementalists.

I realize this doesn’t answer your question, but perhaps you get why I object to “support” for the sake of support. It does not pull a party members weight imo if that is all they do. I am not alone there. Pve content can be done with alot less than 5. I don’t like to feel like I am a character the party can do without. When I step into they fray in WvW, I want to see something happen. Players dying comes to mind.

Jarek.2430:

Kodiak.3281:

There, there. It’ll be okay.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImKbxR4wjDIEFmgLIeYBOAHWUMD5AA-jEyAYLhQCCAJKhZvioxW1KiGruGTdSEV75JiqlCIilRA-w

Fixed for you:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmKbkR4wjEIkCmwQRHMCiHWgDwhlCzAA-jkyAYLhQCCAJKhZvioxWGDS1Nsl3oprxUnER1eeioapAYSZE-w

There’s some very good points in those builds. Tyvm.

There has to be a way to free ourselves of investing 30 in Arcane. Old topic yes, but new convert.

I used to like attunement dancing, but honestly I primarily have needed it to survive with Evasive Arcana. I also thought I was getting some decent dps by staying out of auto attack. Then came the Gauntlett. What became immeditely obvious was how inferior my dps was and how vulnerable my character was compared to other classes. The Gauntlet brought home the absolute necessity to significantly increase my dps so I could be on par with what other classes could accomplish.

What became obvious was that 1) staying out of auto attack gives us crap for damage (I could now see what other classes could do against a clock.) 2) we can’t dodge roll, heal, and stay alive against real champs today in the Gauntlet and the Clockwork champs too. 3) The whole arcane trait line is only giving us these inferior benefits at the moment. It is useless in todays content and, compared to other classes, is inferior.

I am trying out a 20-30-0-10-10 fresh air build. My dps is better. My healing is terrible as is my condition removal. I am seeing damage numbers I have never seen before which is good. I get stuck in auto attack. Lost my dodges. Lost alot. Too much. Feel like a paper tiger. Used to be made out of cardboard.

We dont have one trait line needed to stay alive, we have three, Water, Earth, and Arcane. We don’t have one or two trait lines needed to get some decent dps, we have three, Fire, Air, and Arcane. We don’t have the points to both stay alive at a basic level and do comparable dps. That just seems wrong.

GoatCheese.2704:

You shouldn’t be auto attacking very much with staff. You should be constantly swapping attunements and using the various skills when they come off cooldown.

Well, that’s not always possible, especially if we take 20 points out of the Arcane trait line (leave 10), go Fresh Air (30 in air), and invest in the Fire traits to get some respectable damage. What I find is that I end up in Air so often, the other attunements are often all on cooldown. So, I have to auto attack. It doesn’t really matter what weapon. There has to be a payback from freeing ourselves of spending 30 in Arcane. I am a heck of alot more vulnerable. So, give me some real dps in return.

LH is simply not all it is cracked up to be. To use in a rotation, fine, but other skills have better burst. And the mob can’t be anything but paper because if he starts hitting you, there is one defensive skill with an 18 second cooldown.

No doubt someone is going to quote me a co-efficient from a character with stats no one runs with because they are absurd. How about linking me to a video with perfectly controlled circumstances and a elementalist with no agro?

But, in the real world lol, ( as if there is one in GW2), the LH is marginal. It doesn’t make the ele anymore viable in Pve and certainly not WvW or PvP. In Pve the ele is fine already. In Wvw and PvP it is terrible for 1v1 already and LH makes it worse imo.

So, for any new eles out there, try it out and see if there is a way to work it in. Just don’t think there is something wrong with your computer when you don’t see the results you might expect given all the hype.

Neko.9021:

I love the D/D Bunker spec, but it is indeed a low damage spec. You should try Fresh Air DPS or Lightning Hammer if you want a high damaging Ele.

yeap. Definately going to have to surrender to this. After a year of resisting conjured weapons, just had my birthday , I give up. You win Anet. I am not playing the mage of old, of lore, or of ancient days. I can’t make him one no matter how hard I try. I will no longer control the elements with my thoughts and manipulate them to my will. I am going to pick up hammer and go whack something while wearing flowing gossamer robes and having no health lol. Boy oh boy. I hope this is fun cause I didn’t want to play a melee class in this game.

Solkard.5136:

Considering every Ele build, save maybe Fresh Air, is a very minor variation of that build? That one exception covers pretty much all current Ele builds.

If you are speaking of builds with 30 in water, that is pretty much what many eles like to run with to stay alive, but not for the Auramancer. It’s for the grandmaster trait Cleansing Water’s heal and condition removal primarily, because they need that for themselves. That sPvP nerf to a 5 second cooldown for Cleansing Water destroyed the sPvP build. Not because the ele was not supporting the party, but because he was d e a d.

So to say that two builds with 30 in water and different traits is a minor variation? The one grandmaster trait entirely changes the build’s use and purpose. The few condition removals it grants to party members certainly can’t be construed as a build whose purpose is support.

Which brings me again to my statement. The ele gets his support from his skills. Show me a build that substantially alters that to the significant benefit of the party.

Solkard.5136:

Actually support builds like the Auramancer build are based entirely around the bonus from traits that allow for the application and spread of boons to nearby allies. The weapon skills themselves offer very little in the way of sustainable support, due to their protracted cooldowns. In that sense, you do need to spec/build your traits to a specific allocation for that role.

Yes, I allowed for that one exception in the first paragraph of my first post in this thread. There are btw, no other “support builds like the Auramancer”. You share auras in daggger/dagger, that’s it. If that floats your boat and you think you have replaced a guardian or significantly supported your party with those 4 auras, go for it.

Lol TG, that is a great story! Particularly the part about two elementalists on the team.

Zoij.3498:

Interesting what you’re saying, but I’d have to disagree with you on defensive or support build being useless. My main is a tank/heal based guardian, and that works really well. I focus on AoE healing with high healing power, so I can stay alive, take a lot of the damage and keep my party alive too.
The people I usually play with are a berserker warrior, a turret support engi, a boons/damage mesmer and a condition based necro and we always chat through teamspeak. I get where you’re coming from in that a bunker build won’t help me with freeroam PvE, but I play a lot of coordinated dungeon runs, so I think a more defensive build will suit me better

I get your point, but we are talking about two different classes. We are talking elementalist. And, I never said a support build was useless, I said, “the idea of a “support” build is nonsense. Our support comes from our skills and they don’t require a build to use them”

Now, if you pick a weapon set and do the math on just what skills your “support build” enhanced that are significantly better than what you started with in another build, I’d sign on to your idea. I think you will find the “support” skills that can be significantly affected by a “build” are few, the cooldowns longer than you would like, and the benefit to your party no where near as significant as you would like.

I think it is one of the fewest actively played classes. The class is simply not what people expect and want to continue to play.

This is, however, not learned by people until after they create their character. Then the player recognizes the charactger is nothing near to being what they imagined the Elementalist to be. It is not remotely similar to the original D&D powerhouse all magic casters are compared to, whether people consciously know they are doing that or not.

Azunai.5974:

silvermember.8941:

Azunai.5974:

I’m sick of people like LightningBlaze cluttering up this forum.

There is nothing neccessarily wrong with players like him, they provide another prospective, I just wish that they realize that their prospective is extremely flawed. Beating players in WvW doesn’t really say anything about the class, because they are a lot of things that make WvW combat different from pvp. Not including the difference in the way certain skills operate, you got server bonuses, foods, rune combination, the fact that most t1/t2 players are simply headless chickens without a crew behind them.

I will say that the worst are the PvE heroes coming in here and acting like being good at mindless braindead predictable PvE mobs is something to be proud. OMG I can provide mediocre support and do mediocre damage = elementalist being good.

I totally understand where you’re coming from. Really! I love an optimist much as the next guy (my email and account names always includes “optimistic”, lol)

But all I’ve seen from LightningBlaze isn’t positive posts on how he’s playing and building his elementalist differently as a case for argument. No, all he does for almost every post is to start with “I have a level 80 ele” then “I don’t understand why you people aren’t like me” and “Lol, ele’s are fine, you guys just need to learn to play” and the succintly ends with a “I also won a 1v+3, nobigdeal”

I realize I’m wasting my time talking about guys like him but I just want the ele forums to be a muh better place for rational discussion and constructive feedback.

/signed

I ran into a Ele player in Wvw the other night. I was running around soloing camps and he saw me and tagged along. At one point he asked me if I changed attunements. He said he stayed in fire for the dps. Not feeling like spending the rest of the night clueing in this very nice but clueless person, I gave a short answer and told him I changed attunements so I could access skills that were not on cool down. He thought that was a pretty amazing idea. I think he had an epiphany. So, I showed him how to use a combo field and finisher, how to build some might, and signed off and went to bed.

There was a time I would have suggested to this guy that he go onto the forums to pick up some pointers. I didn’t. When I have, I have been told that the forums have very little or nothing to offer because it is too hard to wade through all the qq. I’ve been told it is a waste of time.

I would like it to be the way I thought it was all along. The effect changed depending on what attunement we were in when a skill procd the effect. I click the glyph and when in fire cause burning, when change to water cause chilling etc.

I have a theory that somewhere out there is a build and means of playing the elementalist that is viable, but those guys aren’t talking.

I believe this is why we have had the nerfs we have had so far. The nerfs affected eles who can’t die ( we were at one time as good or better than guardians), eles who can escape at will, eles who can cleanse any and all conditions at will (made other classes condition builds un-useable, there was a time you would never see a necro in sPvP.) The list goes on.

All those nerfs were made against ways of playing the class that had become commonplace. I can certainly understand other classes frustrations and objections which no doubt prompted the nerfs. Kind of like the objections everyone has today towards theives, except those who can stay stealthed according to general wisdom really have no good way to kill anybody, so they are more an irritant than an actual threat. Eles back in the day could kill everybody.

So, my theory is that either 1) there is a way to play the ele so it is competitive and we don’t know it 2) they are waiting for the upcoming tourneys to end before changing our class so there is a radical difference, so as not it interrupt the flow of sPvP.

If that is not it, well, then they need to totally separate sPvP skills from the rest if they can’t find a way to balance sPvP, Pve, and WvW. That was always a tall order to begin with.

Fishbait.6723:

………….
Just fought some guardian, ranger & staff ele. I completely ignored the ele as they aren`t a threat in any form……………..

Lol. Not a very good staff ele then. If he was you would have been chilled, stunned, crippled, immobilized, knocked down, weakened, blinded, burned, and bleed. If the guardian and ranger couldn’t take advantage of that, you must have been up against some upleveled newcomers to the game.

Personally, running with staff in groups, I find the 1200 range and the duration of just the one skill effect Immobilized, from Shockwave, gives just about any group of players enough time to down almost anyone.

First, the idea of a “support” build is nonsense. Our support comes from our skills and they don’t require a build to use them, with the exception of sharing auras. In that case you are dagger/dagger to get the full benefit. I don’t like the limitaton of a build to be best just for one weapon set. I like to use all weapon sets in pve. And to share the aura, there is a pretty small radius as I recall, but I could be wrong about that.

Other players can combo blast our water fields and that uses their Healing Power, not ours. The actual heal from the field is secondary. Healing power’s primarily effect is to buff our own healing. If we can survive without it, we don’t need it or much at all. If you hadn’t noticed, in dungeons and fractals the party is spread all over the place. There is a very small benefit to buffing our healing power to use a healing skill for a small area for the benefit of one or two players. The biggest benefit is the combo blast and you can’t be spending your time running around combo blasting your own fields.

Second, damage output is necessary to be a contributing member of the party. 30 in water and 30 in arcane gives you no damage. That is commonly refered to as a bunker build. You don’t need a bunker build in Pve to survive. That doesn’t mean you have to min/max and go beserker. That doesn’t mean ignore your own water and arcane trait lines entirely. It does mean you have to get your power, precision, crit damage, crit percentage up to some decent levels. Knowing “what is going on” as you say will give you some idea of the relative values of damage.

Many elementalists like to enhance their endurance and vigor for dodges and there are two traits that affect that. Stacking might during battle is the single most useful thing an elementalist can do to enhance their own damage and the damage of the party. Learning and using all the skills at the proper time is the second most useful. After all, speaking of support, you do have weakness, vulnerability, stuns, cripples, chills, invulnerability, knockdowns, knockbacks, blinds, and so forth. But, you don’ t build to use them.

Colin Johanson discussed here

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Upcoming changes will allow people to get a precursor, non-RNG.

I am not proficient at my engineer, so can’t help you there. Suggest you search YouTube for some specifics there. The key to the battle I found was getting 3 stacks of food for myself. At that point, any condition damage that is procing on the mobs scales up to a few hundred a tic per stack and direct damage becomes huge. They both melt. Of couse like you said you have to stay alive, but if you are kiting while you are waiting for the boss to throw the food, you will not take much damage. Keep the dog crowd controlled and/or be ready to do so when you see the master about to throw the food.

Moving, kiting, avoiding damage, healing etc. and using the correct skills at the correct time, all the while keeping my eyes on the screen to see the move when he throws the meat was really hard for me lol. Proficient hot key use is really helpful. Using the mouse to click the skills on the screen, and taking the eyes off of the screen to do that, would cause me to miss the meat throws.

Katz.5143:

You get a chest? I thought you only got one chest per tower ever? I’ve never gotten a chest at a tower more than once.

lol, it is only one chest per tower, ever. There was one tower that bugged for me.

Did it again without the elemental and got the achieveement. No way of knowing if that was it or not I was not downed either time. see my post above

I also did not get the achievement. Was never downed. My elemental died. I’ll try it without him and see what happens.

silvermember.8941:

Baladir.2736:

silvermember.8941:

Solkard.5136:

style.6173:

Ele is perfectly fine right now. The issue is that a lot of players came to Ele when it was completely OP. Now that it is more balanced, those people are complaining because it is no longer OP.

I got this game after the patch and the class feels lacking in potency, compared to other classes. All the abilities feel like they are either pointless filler or ineffective due to CD restraints.

The abilities do have a lot of variety in terms of utility effects, but are ineffective due to an inability to sustain any of those effects. At the same time, since each weapon’s skill set are designed around a specific playstyle, not being able to swap weapons effectively locks the class to one playstyle during combat, making it feel more restrictive than other classes that can swap weapon/playstyle on the fly.

Looking at the D/D loadout, I would argue there are only 6 or 7 unique skill types out of the whole set of 20 skills. Everything else is just filler/mirror of the same effect, with a different animation. Add to that their CDs are so long, that the class is “encouraged” to constantly swap attunements to just sustain DPS output, and the result is a pointlessly manic class.

The elementalist is a class for people that enjoy pushing a spherical boulder up a hill. It also seems to favor mindless button mashing with nearly no thinking involve. Essentially, just make a macro and win except for staff.

Lol, so is your class and it doesn’t matter which one it is. That’s all any of them are. omg.

what?(not trying to be rude or anything).

(me either) The “mindless button mashing with nearly no thinking involve(d). Essentially, just make a macro and win.” If 4 attunements and 20 skills is that, certainly 2 weapon sets and 10 skills is not different. Engi is the exception to that number but not the ease of play. I don’t think the other classes are any less or more difficult btw. After a year and hundreds of hundreds of hours playing, it all is becoming so much easier. tPvP will always be the exception because the small differences in reflexs and reaction times of the player helps to determine the winner. But, for us hackers in Wvw and Pve? It is sheeer fun.

Full discussion of damage formulas is here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Helpful table for Crit damage vs Crit Chance is here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

Perhaps help to explain tradeoffs between power/precision/crit damage

silvermember.8941:

Solkard.5136:

style.6173:

Ele is perfectly fine right now. The issue is that a lot of players came to Ele when it was completely OP. Now that it is more balanced, those people are complaining because it is no longer OP.

I got this game after the patch and the class feels lacking in potency, compared to other classes. All the abilities feel like they are either pointless filler or ineffective due to CD restraints.

The abilities do have a lot of variety in terms of utility effects, but are ineffective due to an inability to sustain any of those effects. At the same time, since each weapon’s skill set are designed around a specific playstyle, not being able to swap weapons effectively locks the class to one playstyle during combat, making it feel more restrictive than other classes that can swap weapon/playstyle on the fly.

Looking at the D/D loadout, I would argue there are only 6 or 7 unique skill types out of the whole set of 20 skills. Everything else is just filler/mirror of the same effect, with a different animation. Add to that their CDs are so long, that the class is “encouraged” to constantly swap attunements to just sustain DPS output, and the result is a pointlessly manic class.

The elementalist is a class for people that enjoy pushing a spherical boulder up a hill. It also seems to favor mindless button mashing with nearly no thinking involve. Essentially, just make a macro and win except for staff.

Lol, so is your class and it doesn’t matter which one it is. That’s all any of them are. omg.

Nikkinella.8254:

How the hell should I know? This is before my sigil is even stacked to 25. At 25 it’s about 19k give or take a bit. People are always stating these formulas on here trying to prove me wrong, but they are the ones who are always wrong. I don’t give a flying crap about your math. I go by what I see with my own eyes in game.

lmao. so what is your condition stat?

silvermember.8941:

Milennos.9810:

@Nikkinella.8254 nice post.

I play exclusively elementalist and I seriously thinking to delete this toon and stop playing the game.

I

That seems extremely passive aggressive.

You can always simply stop playing, but to erase your character is a waste of time. Hopefully, it will change but to delete it is not the solution.

Except for the PvEers and the WvWers, we can agree that elementalist has a lot of issues and hopefully it will be change at some point.

That it will change is certain. The “meta” is what the sPvP and tPvP players like to call it. All the qq has to do with the current meta in 1v1 tPvP, holding a very small point in tPvP, bunkering on a small point in tPvP, or escaping from 1v1 1v2 in tPvP. I think we all get the idea. For people who spend 100s of hours in s&t PvP doing those things only, they roll new characters, make new builds, and spend 100s of more hours practicing.

So, those players shelve their Elementalist for sPvp or tPvPuntil the next meta. This has already happened many times to many classes. Delete? Are you kiddding lol. Lose all the soulbound equipment? That would be a waste. In Wvw and Pve we rock. We will rock again in tPvP.