Guild Wars 2

Encountered this exact problem, but mine wasn’t fixed until I logged onto a character already in the Mists.
Note: I tried entering from the Vigil Keep portal and met with no results. Just stay patient folks! It’s all still there, just might take some waiting to show up.

I definitely agree that fire is currently the most lackluster trait line, and a lot of your suggestions are pretty good, especially regarding the selfishness of the line. However, building off of your proposed changes I would alter the following:

Sun Poisoning (Adept minor): Same as boiling blood, but adds poison instead of bleeding. Mostly because we have zero access to poison as a class which severely limits condition builds.

Flame On!: I actually like that over the current Fire aura on signet use, but I foresee this being OP in combination with other aura traits.

Conjurer: Maybe it could add an active effect after cast (similar to Ranger spirits)? But this is a topic for another day.

Shining, Burning Fingers: We already have a similar trait in the Earth line, and the buff to a whole team would just be too much.

Persisting Flames: Keep this as a grandmaster trait, change the duration increase to 20%, and have it affect all combo fields. I think this (or a similar change) would promote new staff builds.

Whether or not any of these changes would shift the current Ele meta is unlikely, but if some changes to our offensive lines (Air + Fire) were made I think it would entice a few people away from Water + Arcane, without actually nerfing anything.

D/F is much better in sPvP where the capture points force close quartered combat. That being said, I’ve been a fan of focus over offhand dagger since launch and I’m glad to see someone else trying it!

Focus tends to be overlooked because it’s not as flashy as offhand dagger, but it’s skills are just as useful in their own right (except Fire #4, that one’s some sort of cruel joke). I’d say the biggest challenge to overcome is understanding that a lot of your skills work best if you allow your opponent to score “free” hits on you (Fire #5 to build might, Air #3 for stuns, Earth #4 & 5).

Also, remember that regardless of your current attunement, Earth #5 can be accessed while stunned, and it works better than Mist Form for stomps. Keep at it and focus on using your new skills to their fullest!

Sometime around early January I just lost motivation to play GW2, I had completed what PvE content I wanted to, but was really looking for the PvP to hold my attention (which it didn’t at the time). I noticed the new patch and the 1 round tournament system that had been implemented (nice job devs), and thought I’d come back for a bit to check things out. After a day or two of casual Hot Join just to refresh, I hopped back into Free Tournies. Played in two, didn’t seem like much had changed, but whatever, the combat’s still fun.

Then. Just joined my third Free Tourny and got placed on a team of 4, against a 5-man premade. 500-0. No fun was had.

The PvP in this game is currently extremely offputting for the casual player. I do not want to spend time finding/arranging a team. I’d like to be able to quickly sign up for for, and play a meaningful PvP match (Hot Join is still a mess). I’d like to be guaranteed that I will be placed on a full roster (I find the fact that 4-mans still exist a laughable matter) and not get my face stomped in by an organized, coordinated group. Ranked Solo queue has been something I wanted back in November, please add this. Perhaps I’ll be back in another month.

TL;DR Add a ranked solo queue.

If you’re at all worried about playing dungeons as an Ele, don’t be! I’ve been playing with a pretty offensive 20/25/0/15/0 build for the past week (still in pow/cond/vit gear though) and I never really feel like I’m too squishy.
That being said, I’d recommend building on the defensive side and playing with a Staff to start. This will give you ample survivability, and you still bring a lot to the table with all of Staff’s combo fields.
As far as forgiving traits, try taking 30 in Earth for Written in Stone, and play with Signet of Restoration. Really, how you play your Ele is up to you, and my suggestions are aimed at allowing you to play high level content with a low skill requirement. Try different weapons/skills to see what suits you best!

I can’t do videos…. but I’ve been playing around with the build again today and having a blast. Switched to Flame Axe because it’s much… smoother. As far as speccing into arcane it was just something I wanted to try, and turns out it helps conjure builds a bunch (in my opinion of course). The reasoning behind this is that you still have access to attunement swapping while wielding a conjure and Evasive arcana still triggers.

Was playing around with conjures for a bit in sPvP, and actually stumbled across a build that I can stomach! However, as I was smashing faces with my Lightning Hammer I came across two small issues that made the weapon feel playable, but clunky.

1. Lightning Hammer and Earth Shield cast times are 3/4s, whereas Flame Axe and Frost Bow are 1/4s. Is this intended?
2. The 4 and 5 skills on Lightning Hammer require the caster to stand still. This is mildly obnoxious as I don’t enjoy standing still in the fray. Could be acceptable for the 5th skill, but I think the 4th skill at least needs to be castable while moving.

Other than that, here’s the build and a short description of how I play it if you’re interested.

I haven’t seen many threads addressing this issue, but I’ve been surprised by the number of 4-man teams showing up in the past week or so. This had been a problem for awhile and I really don’t understand why.
If this is on Anet’s agenda, then great, we’ll see it when it’s ready. Otherwise I’d really like to see a quick implementation of a better groupmaking system that kicks players who are inactive and replaces them so that entire matches aren’t played out 4v5. Basically a match shouldn’t start until there are 5 players on both sides, in the match. There are many ways to go about this, so I won’t start pitching suggestions but please make some changes because it’s no fun to play on or against a 4-man team.

Just a quick example of why a rating system needs to be the first thing on the agenda.

Today I joined several free tournies as a self-declared casual PvPer (solo que of course), and these were my results.

1. Despite a 4v5 disadvantage, my team made it all the way to Khylo, where we lost. I attribute this to playing mediocre to poor teams in rounds 1 & 2.
2. Another 4v5 disadvantage. Lost this one.
3. Finally got 5 people, two of them were new to tPvP and things didn’t end well.
4. Had a decent group, but the opposition was better. Nothing wrong here.
5. Was placed with a 4-man premade. We ran into a better 5-man premade.
6. Got placed with another solid group. Ran into another 5-man premade.
7. More noobs on my team (ranks 3 & 5). Not a bad match, but we still didn’t win.

So, long story short, I qued for 7 tournaments and the teams were balanced once. From this, I leave feeling like I wasted my time playing in poorly balanced matches where the outcome was decided beforehand. The actual PvP of GW2 is fun, but playing against teams that are much better/worse is not.

@omgwtflolbbl
That all sounds amazing! I’d love to see the numbers when you get your other computer running.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

I’m confused about this bit… if the whole test was simply determining which auto attacks kill faster the first point seems to fit if you swap any weapon for the word ‘scepter’. Comparing auto attacks is an incomplete test so of course air on scepter will not achieve maximum DPS.

And Why are the conjured weapons placed as they are? Conjured weapons perform 5 skills whereas scepter/dagger/staff perform 20 skills. If you want to compare how conjures are DPS wise you should compare all their DPS ability to all of the DPS ability of any other weapon. Summizing that conjures perform better or worse than any of the other weapons when you don’t have any of the flexibility those others offer seems like your plan to to beat the game using only the #1 skill.

You know why there are posts with combo chains that can maximize your DPS? Because maximizing your DPS can only be achieved when NOT relying on the auto-attack for DPS. It’s nice to know the base damage that auto-attacks can do but spending any time drawing conclusions based on Auto-attacks isn’t going to win you any battles, learn your other skills.

What I was pointing out with Scepter’s Air auto-attack is that it gave a sub-par performance (considering I was using power/crit) but when the #2 skill is integrated, the damage was more in line with what I expected.

As I was only comparing auto-attack, I limited my conclusions to auto-attack damage; I wanted to expand my data, but comparing DPS rotations just had way too many variables for my taste. And yes, Conjures are limiting in a sense, which is why many people (myself included) find them unattractive despite their high damage output.

There seems to be a fair bit of discussion about how condition damage effects these skills, so I’ll try to get baseline data for a condition build. Until then, it’s really inappropriate to compare condition-based skills with direct damage skills in a rigid sense (as much as I want to).

So I did some tests with the conjured weapons to compare their DPS, and decided to carry my testing over to all Ele weapons. Thought I’d share my results.
What these numbers represent is the length of time that was required for me to kill a PvP Heavy Golem by just letting my character spam auto-attack. I used Heavy Golems exclusively to make the differences more apparent. I’ve bolded attacks that have no condition component and noted if any given auto-attack has the potential to strike multiple targets. I’ve also noted range next to each attack.

Character Stats

Power: 1760
Precision: 1660
Crit Damage: 10%
Condition Damage: 0

Conjured Weapons

Flame Axe: 19.9s (R. 900)
Ice Bow: N/A (R. 900)
Lightning Hammer: 12.1s (R. 150)
Earth Shield: 22.44s (R. 130)
Fiery Greatsword: 17.7s (R. 600)

Mainhand Dagger

Fire: 15.2s (needs to be used at melee range)
Water: 24.4s (R. 600; multiple targets)
Air: 14.3s (R. 300; multiple targets)
Earth: 20.3 (R. 300)

Scepter

Fire: 30.3s (R. 900)
Water: 32.6s (R. 900)
Air: 36.4s (becomes 23.0s when #2 is spammed as well; R. 900)
Earth: 24.4s (R. 900)

Staff

Fire: 26.0s (R. 1200; multiple targets)
Water: 1 min 12 s (R. 1200)
Air: 34.8 (R. 1200; multiple targets)
Earth: 43.6s (R. 1200)

Things to note

• Attacks with a shorter range do more damage, which makes sense as these numbers came from 100% uptime, and longer ranges should give you better uptime.
• Scepter’s Air auto-attack is actually incomplete, the #2 skill must be used in conjunction with auto-attack to achieve maximum DPS
• For having no condition damage, Scepter’s Earth auto-attack performed surprisingly well. So, don’t be afraid to use this if you have a power/crit build
• Staff’s Water auto-attack does essentially no damage, I guess the heal’s supposed to make up for that
• Conjured Weapons’ auto-attacks perform much better than Scepter or Staff, but they’re a tad worse than Dagger.
• Fiery Greatsword auto-attack shows no significant leaps over Flame Axe, despite having a CD three times as long.

Great thread!
Elementalist – Burn baby Burn

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAodhMmYbvR5gjDAEFmoy4BIhQSRBOzA;ToAgyCuoAzAmAMLYOwkgNEZuA

Now this build isn’t anything groundbreaking, it still relies on popular Earth, Water, and Arcane traits, but what makes it fun (at least for me) is the integration of condition damage. Basically, you’ll be a hybrid damage dealer that excels in 1v1 fights and makes for a solid side-point holder.
The trick with this build is to keep a burn on your target, and supplement that with direct damage and control. Thanks to Rune of the Forge you have enough protection, and the focus skills are add amazing survivability if used correctly. Unfortunately this is still an Ele build so it requires a lot of play time with the class before you start to really figure it all out.

So I don’t main a thief, but when I do play mine I always equip P/P, shoot some stuff, then switch to a different weapon set. I want it to work, but it just doesn’t feel
complete. Mostly I find the lack of a slow annoying (makes it mighty difficult to kite) and I never use black powder (it feels like a kickkitten melee ability, but P/P is ranged).

If I were in charge, I’d add an offhand sword to the class (I honestly don’t know why this option isn’t available already) and give black powder to sword #5. Then make pistol #5 a 2-3s immobilize (still costs 6 initiative).
Perhaps some tweaks to Vital and Body shots, but those aren’t the issue for me.

So pretty simple question, why is there no title (or other reward) for finishing every jumping puzzle?

If I can have a title for reviving 1000 NPCs, then can I please also have a title for completing all of the Jumping Puzzles? Maybe like “Wallaby Wannabe” or something.

(more Jumping Puzzles would be cool too!)

They definitely toned it down after Clocktower, and whether that’s good or bad is a matter of opinion.

However, I feel that for these holiday puzzles they seriously need to reconsider the waiting pens. I have no problem with timed puzzles, but it does become seriously irritating to spend more time standing around than participating in the puzzle.

(also, this puzzle is not friendly to slow internet connections and I’ve been booted multiple times while standing on a snowflake or mid jump, but that’s more of a personal issue)

This thread is just a reiteration of what happened back when Anet announced that players would not be able to overhaul their trait trees during a match.
Everyone started crying about how Anet was killing build diversity by not allowing players to counter specific builds mid-game.

Guess what? If you’re being hard-countered, then you are probably a hard-counter to someone else. If you want to be able to adapt to every situation, then create a balanced build.

Minor buffs/nerfs to all classes. (Engis and Rangers gonna be pleased)

But the big thing I’m hoping for across the board is increased build variety. Right now most classes have 2-3 build variants that are viable; I’d like to see this amount increased.

I’ve tried to use Conjures several times (PvP) since release, but they just never deliver. The 5 skills that each weapon brings aren’t necessarily better than our normal skills, they’re often just different (save a few reused skills).
The problem is we don’t need more skills, so conjures tend to be a waste of a utility slot. In concept they’re cool, but I think that they’re way too complicated to balance.

So crazy idea: Scrap Conjured weapons entirely and gives us weapon Enchantments as new utility skills. Enchantments could work just like the Thief’s poisons, but with an Ele flair.

Examples.
Enchantment of Vaporization
Your next 2 attacks remove a boon from your opponent.

Enchantment of Cacophony
Your next attack Dazes (1s) your opponent.

Enchantment of Turmoil
Your next 3 attacks cast Unsteady Ground (staff #4) at your location.

Enchantment of Fluidity
Your next 4 attacks will have an evade component.

These are just a few ideas, and I’d say a 30-45s CD would be fair.

Perfect.

This Q&A was much more informative than I had hoped. I thought that Jonathan Sharp did an excellent job of presenting the Developer’s view on the current state of the game. February and March are still a long ways off, but I honestly feel better with a rough timetable in mind as opposed to the previous veil of “When it’s ready.”

As far as community interaction goes this was great! I’m not asking that Mr. Sharp sit down for a 50min discussion with players every week, but as I said in another post, brief biweekly updates (nothing has to be written in stone) about what is going on at Anet would go a long way to making us players feel that our opinions are being heard.

Thanks to everyone involved in setting up this discussion!
“… soon = 82 years …” -Jonathan Sharp

While I do wholeheartedly agree with Anet’s theory of “when it’s ready”, because no one wants to make a promise that they can’t keep, I personally think they’re taking it a bit too far. Rather than creating an enigmatic sort of anticipation (which is what I believe Anet’s striving for) I get the feeling that the PvP Devs are either seriously understaffed, incompetent, or both, and they hiding behind this “when it’s ready” shroud.

Suggestion

Give us a biweekly, informal update. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but just give us an idea that you are in fact working on this game.

Example:

Hey nerds, it’s (insert expendable intern here) again with a PvP update. Here’s a list of a few things we’ve accomplished recently.

11/15: Big Patch! Hope Everyone Enjoys it!

11/17: Logged some hours in game to see the balance changes firsthand. Looks like we’re moving in the right direction, but we’re not there yet!

11/19: Worked on squashing those pesky bugs (maybe an example or two?)

11/20: Prank called Jon Peters, had most of the office in on it by the end of the day. (Comments like this help readers to take everything with a grain of salt)

11/23: After a week of building ladders, it looks like our programming team is getting ready to run some initial tests. Cross your fingers!

11/25: Nothing accomplished on this particular Sunday. It felt great.

11/28: Wrote these update notes, and, after a bit of controversy I got the green light to hint at a new PvP mode (Obscure reference to CTF goes here)

Honestly, this is all I want. Something lighthearted and lightweight, but that makes us players feel like we’re in the loop, and not like we’re being driven around town, blindfolded, in the back of our friend’s musty station wagon, all the while being reassured that the surprise will be “totally worth it”.

P.s. Cynicism aside, I’m still having a blast playing this game.

I assume you’re asking for a defensive counter to stealth, but be aware of how much health the thief had before they stealthed: are they attacking or retreating?

If you think the thief is gunning for you, defensive CDs work wonders. I personally use static aura on my Ele, but any sort of block skill is good, especially if you know you’re fighting a backstab thief.
If these aren’t options for you, then as others have said, lay down AoE on yourself (remember, the thief needs to get close to hit you) and putting your back against a wall isn’t a bad idea.
Lastly, and this is really a crapshot, dodge. Then dodge some more.

Really there are a plethora of ways to counter stealth, so you just need to find a few for your build and apply them as the situation necessitates.

So, did this Puzzle get changed? I didn’t see anything in the patch notes, but …
I was trying it right before the patch and having a ball (despite 1.5 hours of failure) and came back to find a completely different puzzle.

If the intention was to make it easier, that didn’t happen. If anything, increasing the length of these jumps makes them significantly harder, considering the size of the landings, and I’m not even sure that all of the jumps are possible, I can now only do the first two with limited success at that.

If this puzzle did in fact get changed, please change it back. I really loved the way it was before.

Great job so far! It looks good and still in the early stages!
Just a few notes I think might help you out.

Anylon’s Elementalist Guide

Different forum, but I found this to be extremely helpful when I stumbled upon it just before launch. I would recommend taking a look if you’re here for the guide, and for daphoenix, I’m hoping that it will help you as far as formatting and organization goes.

Last tidbit: I’m currently playing a D/F build Here in sPvP that I love. It definitely has enough survivability even without the extra healing from Evasive Arcana, and the condition damage is really nice; you’d be surprised at how many people won’t remove burning if it’s the only condition you put up But I can see how D/F would be undesirable for WvW (staff all the way!)

Edit: If you get a Bad Link for the build, copy and paste this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEIQJAodhMmYbvR5gjDAEFmoy4RIgQSRxM4A;ToAgyCuoAzAmAMLYOwkgNWYKC

Playing a game for fun you say? I can get behind that.

1) Yes the combat is amazing. I’ve found that the PvE side of this game to be AMAZING simply because the fast-paced, high-action combat translates so well across game modes. But I have to disagree with you for wanting enemy health bars, as I believe it promotes build diversity (imagine if everyone could see that you only had 12k HP? or 27k?)

2) This for me is a huge deal, as an unbalanced game can become tedious due to everyone flocking to a handful of builds. Currently, I believe that the game is in a good place balance-wise, and with a few tweaks it could be fantastic.
Quick aside: if anything is unbalanced in this game currently, it’s Thieves. Not their damage, because most professions can build glass to get similar results, but how stealth and de-targeting gives the profession too much escape potential. In a teamfight it’s a lot to ask players to keep track of where a specific player is at all times when your target is constantly being dropped. As a result, Thieves tend to be ignored in teamfights.
That’s just a quick thought on balance, and I’m not trying to turn this into a hate on Thieves thread.

3) The most important part of a game to me. Variety is the spice of life, and the more variety there is the more likely each individual will be able to find a build to suit their playstyle. I think that we could see a huge boost in this area if the Devs improve many of the underwhelming traits that each class has.

4) Always important in an MMO, and the implementation of rentable servers should hopefully improve this area of the game significantly. At the moment, I can see where both sides are coming from and it’s just an unfortunate set of circumstances for some people (although tPvP really isn’t that bad, just enjoy the fight and don’t let losses discourage you).

6) The long-awaited ranking system should hopefully give players something to work towards (I know I’ll be enjoying the game much more once this feature gets added) as well as allow players to play against similarly skilled opponents, which in turn will reduce the intimidating nature of tPvP to new players.

One last thing: at least 6v6 hotjoin. I understand players leaving/entering could be a problem with 5v5 in the current system, but 8v8 is not balanced (#2) and if I wanted to zerg I’d go play WvW.

boozer.7815:

Yes, they are plenty viable atm. […] 2 specialty builds I have found them extremely viable in

Could you perhaps give a link to one of these builds? I’ve been searching for a way to effectively integrate these skills into a build since launch, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything that doesn’t have serious flaws. But if I’ve overlooked something it wouldn’t be the first time … (Quick note: I’m a PvPer)

And perhaps, if these conjure builds don’t rely on the Arcane tree, it’d help others to see that Arcane is by no means “necessary”.

The arcane trait line promotes varying effects that occur across attunements, and faster attunement swapping to access different skill sets with a different variation of a certain effect.
Attunement specific trait lines promote increased efficacy of a specific attunement, and thus reduce the need to frequently swap attunements.

In theory in sounds ok (I wanna be a fire mage!) and this isn’t where I have issues with the Ele’s trait system. If you feel the need to swap attunements after every 2nd cast, then you’ll feel the need to take 20-30 points in arcane. That’s just how it is.
However, our trait system currently exhibits a large disparity between the usefulness of different traits (not that other classes don’t have this problem as well) thus creating a sense of being pigeonholed into a select few builds.

I’d like to point out what I feel are examples of useful (and potentially “necessary”) and not so useful traits that we have. I like to believe that Anet’s end goal is to have all traits provide a similar amount of utility, thereby creating a large number of viable builds. For brevity’s sake I’ll pick 5 traits for both categories, but in no particular order.

The Good

Evasive Arcana (Creates an attunement-based spell at the end of your dodge. Also a blast finisher)

For Staff users, this is the quintessential trait. Why? Because it allows you to finish your combo fields at will, and in an AoE fashion. The attunement-based effect from this trait is alone quite useful, but combine it with a blast finisher and you’ve got one helluva trait.

Healing Ripple (Heal nearby allies when attuning to water)

This is the 15 point minor trait in water, and it rocks. Use this often (with the bonus from arcane) to give yourself some nice survivability in extended fights.

Weak Spot (Crits have a 60% chance to cause vulnerability)

Another minor trait, and this time it’ll cost you 25 points in air. Very straightforward: the air trait line boosts your crit chance, so here’s a trait to help boost your direct damage. It probably has an internal CD, but either way combine this with the analogous weapon sigil to seriously pump out that debuff.

Written in Stone (Maintain passive effects of signets after you activate them)

A solid trait, worth the extra points in earth in you want it, but be no means required. This trait alone will make signets viable for a build, and gives a nice boost to survivability when coupled with Signet of Renewal. Traits like this go a long way to promoting build diversity.

Elemental Attunement (Provides an attunement-based boon to nearby allies when attuning to an Element)

Take it. The cost to benefit for this trait is absurdly good. Each boon synergizes extremely well with its associated attunement, and you shouldn’t need to change your build or playstyle very much to reap the rewards from this trait.

The Bad

Persisting Flames (Fire fields last 30% longer)

This would be acceptable as an Adept trait, but in the Grandmaster tier!!! We have four fire fields, and the damage from two of them (Burning Speed and Flamewall) is mediocre at best. I just don’t see how anyone could justify an extra second or two of duration on a maximum of 2 skills.

Stone Splinters (Increases damage by 5% when within melee range)

This trait is useful for mainhand dagger only, making it crummy to begin with. Additionally, MH dagger benefits from attacking just outside melee range where you can’t be hit by melee attacks. Could be useful against range attackers that can’t kite you, but that’s about it.

One With Air (Increases movement speed by 5% every 10s that you are attuned to air. Maximum 25% increase)

First off, it takes 50s of time to ramp up. Secondly, you already have a 10% speed bonus while in air (5 point minor). Thirdly, just use swiftness of equip Signet of Air if you’re going for a long jog. This trait has zero combat utility from my perspective, but maybe I’m wrong?

Conjurer (Conjured weapons have 10 additional charges)

Part of the problem with this trait is that conjured weapons are not viable at the moment. Fun, yes, but not viable. Either way, this trait actually compounds one of the issues with conjured weapons, the feeling of being “trapped” in a certain skillset.

Icy Mist (Inflict damage, chill, and vulnerability to nearby foes while in mist or vapor form)

So this trait takes a 75s defensive CD, and let’s you add 3s worth of offense? Even with the 20% cantrip CD reduction trait, this uptime on this trait is horrendous. Additionally, when I personally use Mist Form it’s to get away, so the chill effect could be useful, but vulnerability and damage? I’ll pass, thanks.

Wrapping Up
So that’s my 2 cents on some of the Ele’s traits. And I’m out of space… But please stay on topic

I just started playing Engineer, and after a bit of tinkering came up with a build that suits me. Unfortunately. . . I ran into this problem with Grenade Kit’s auto-attack.
As someone who does not own a mouse with more than 2 buttons, I don’t really have a way to prevent my grenades from flying in 10,000 different directions while I’m on the move (and I mostly PvP so I’m on the move often).

Would it be blasphemy to ask that Grenade Kit’s auto-attack fly to my target, and that it not require me to spam?
I’m just curious to see if others have the same opinion as me.

Lots of great stuff in this thread, I can hardly believe the overall rationality of most suggestions here.

Anyways:

Flamewall I’d love to see a CD reduction, and have it strip boons. That’s just my personal preference, but this skill seriously needs some help.

Fire shield Perhaps add might or retaliation to this. It’s extremely lackluster in its current state.

Lightning touch Vulnerability? 2-3stacks? I think that’d be an acceptable addition.

Ring of Earth I completely agree with splitting this into 2 stacks of 6s each. It’s not a terrible skill currently, but I do wish it brought a little more punch.

As far as the debate over blast finishers, namely Ice Spike goes, I don’t think that it should be a blast finisher right now. Evasive Arcana builds already put out an insane amount of burst healing (and will probably be nerfed because of it) and adding a blast finisher to staff’s water skills will only compound the issue.

@TGSlasher

I’m glad that you and your friend enjoy your builds, I’m all about playing with builds that have their own unique flavor. As far as your buddy’s glyph build goes, does he have a problem only using Lesser/Greater Elementals in water and Storms in earth? I’ve thought about using these skills for exactly those reasons, but I feel like I’m forced to be in a certain attunement before I use them… I wish they were more useful for builds that aren’t tank/support.

And in general, I didn’t touch on bugs because they are obvious flaws that need to be fixed, and in time I trust that they will.

Utility Skills

Herein lies what I consider to be the most overlooked issue with the Elementalist, and the main contributor to the feeling the PvP Eles are pigeonholed into a support/tank role. At first glance everything seems ok, but after playing around with different skills a noticeable trend arises: there is a vast difference in the utility that our utility skills bring.

We, like everyone else, have 5 different types of utility skills: Signet, Glyph, Cantrip, Arcane, and Conjure. Each type offers 4 different skills, for a total of 20 utility skills. I consider Glyphs and Conjures to be entirely useless, and Arcane skills to be viable but not as helpful as either Signets or Cantrips. Also, before traits Cantrips are easily the best skills (for PvP).
This issue stems from the low base survivability of the Elementalist, which requires us to pick up defensive abilities to avoid being blown out of the water. Thus, many players gravitate towards the most defensive utility skills, Cantrips. In addition, all four of our stun breaks exist as Cantrips, more or less requiring all but the most coordinated Eles to have at least 1 Cantrips.

Conjure skills in their current format do nothing more than take up space on our toolbar, for maybe 3-5 different skill casts every 60s. We already have 20 weapon skills, so unless those 5 new conjured skills are offer something overwhelming, I’ll just stick with Mist Form.

Glyphs, ah glyphs. Aside from Glyph of Renewal, which is a laughable skill after its recent change, most glyphs look like fun, powerful skills from their descriptions. Then you try using them. It’s not that they’re terrible skills, especially when traited, we just have better options. Glyph of Storms does mediocre damage that is easily surpassed by wielding a staff; I’d much rather use a crit-proc weapon sigil over Glyph of Elemental Power; and Glyph of Lesser Elementals only gives us a squishy boost to damage for a short while. I don’t think that Glyphs need a redesign, they just need to pack a bigger punch before I start using them.

When I first looked at Arcane skills I immediately began salivating over the potential of these as guaranteed crits to proc added affects in addition to their great burst damage. Well, that’s not the way the world works. I believe (could be wrong) that currently the most used arcane skill in Arcane Wave, just for it’s use as a blast finisher. These skills offer pathetic damage for their CDs, and crit-procs in GW2 just aren’t powerful enough to justify them for that reason. I personally wish that they just offered more damage.

I don’t have much to say about Signets and Cantrips, except that it’d be nice if we could get a stun breaker moved from Cleansing Fire to something else.

Traits

Overall, I think that our traits are in a good-but-not-great place. This again connects back to our poor base health/armor, “forcing” many Elementalist players into the Earth, Water, and Arcane trait lines. There are plenty of good traits in these lines, with excellent effects and synergy. However, these lines promote a similar playstyle and that leads to the pigeonholing into tank/support builds.

Additionally, the fire trait line kinda stinks and it promotes sitting in fire attunement, which blatantly contradicts many other Elementalist mechanics. If the Elementalist had better innate survivability, and a damage-based trait line that was up to snuff I think we’d see many more damage-based Eles around, and it might even lead to new and exciting builds.
As a psuedoside-note, I’d like to put in that I’d like to see many of Fire’s traits replaced with new (and useful….) Conjured Weapon based abilities.

Well, I could probably go on but I think I’ve said enough for now. Hopefully this post offered some new insight to help solve the Elementalist riddle.

If you’re curious about my background as an Ele, click here.

Disclaimer I do not believe that the Elementalist is severely underpowered at the moment, I just wish to highlight what I believe are the shortcomings/difficulties of this profession and provide suggestions for areas I think could be improved.

What is an Elementalist and how do I play one?

Most of this post will be PvP oriented but for anyone looking for an overview of the profession, here’s a few notes.

Serious Problems.

Downed state. We are currently the only free kill. Everyone knows this is an issue, and there are many ways to fix it.

Elite Skills. I’d honestly rather have another utility slot, and I don’t even like most of our utilities.

Weapon Skills

Anyone who’s so much as glanced at the Ele’s weapon skills has most likely noticed that theme for mainhand weapons is range and survival vs. damage for offhand weapons. I’ve played around with each weapon set and have found that it’s easy to become greedy and always want to swap/tweak one or two skills to better fit your build.
The fact of the matter is that we have 20 weapon skills and each set should bring plenty to fit just about any play style.
One issue: Focus Fire attunement #4. This is the only skill I consider useless, mainly due to it’s CD being too long and it not fitting in to the survival theme of focus.

Still happening, not too pleased, but glad to see it’s being worked on.

Would anyone else like to see a trait specific to each weapon in its respective trait line?

I love the idea behind conjured weapons but in their current state they just don’t offer enough (in PvP at least) to justify a place on my utility bar. The problem I’ve run into when trying to use a conjured weapon is that they offer more skills, but not necessarily anything that different (exception being frost bow’s 5th skill). Also, they completely work against the Elementalist’s attunement mechanic by locking you into 5 skills, unless you want to only use a few charges then dump…..

I really think conjured weapons would become more viable if we had traits to improve them. Ex. “Conjure Earth Shield grants 4 seconds of stability and retaliation”

As Veldan said I think tournaments need to reward the team and not the player.

Also, in Hot Join the amount of glory that is awarded for “winning” is ludicrously low, and detracts from the sense of accomplishment that the victorious side ought to have.

Example: Let’s say Ed Engineer is specced to bunker down and hold nodes. He could potentially cap a point like Henge and hold it for his team all game, thereby contributing to their ultimate victory, and only receive 25 glory (10 for cap, 15 for win. and I know that this is an extreme and unlikely case).
Meanwhile, Tom Thief has been roaming the byways picking off single targets all game and comes out of the match with 150 glory (not even that much) despite being on the losing side.
So who’s the winner here, because if both players were after glory to increase their rank I’d say Tom Thief got the better deal.

Anways, aside from other glory balances, I’d like to see the per win number bumped to around 75-100.

YAY! Another D/F Ele!

The build I’ve been playing since release looks very similar to yours, with most of the changes coming from items. I enjoy this weapon set the most because I can find a use for almost every skill (I never use Focus’ fire skills…) and the survivability is extraordinary. D/F is a great way to lock down an unorganized team at a useless point and give your team the advantage where it matters.

I’ve also noticed that you dislike Comet (Water “5” skill), have you tried using it to save teammates from a stomp (the AoE is amazing in this regard)?

Build here:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.18.0.2.0.31.0.3.12.15.9.24.9.6.8.0.0.0.0.0.0.32.33.42.50.55.0.64.65.0.0.0.30.20.20

I too have had similar thoughts! It’s not that conjured weapons are terrible skills, and can in fact be quite useful when coordinating with a teammate, but without traits to give them a little more oomph I feel that they fall short of other options.
It’s about what you give versus what you get: you give up a utility slot, to get, what? more skills? for the profession with the most skills already? I just don’t see the point when I could be using that slot for an extra cantrip or signet.

After a little brainstorming I think that each trait line should have a trait for its respective weapon. Here are some ideas I’ve come up with.

Fire Trait (replaces the +10 charges):
Every fifth charge with a Lava axe/Fiery Greatsword, you summon a lava font at your target’s location.

Air Trait:
Gain shocking aura and swiftness (8-10s ?) whenever you equip a lightning hammer.

Earth Trait:
Gain retaliation and stability (4-5s) whenever you equip an earth shield.

Water Trait:
Every third charge of your Frost Bow removes one condition from you and nearby allies.

Arcane Trait:
All conjured weapon skills now act as arcane skills.

Obviously there’s a fair amount of sway to these, but they’re just meant to be examples for what I think conjured weapons need before I consider using them on my toolbar (in PvP at least, I use them all in PvE just for the novelty of it!).

Just gonna pitch in my two cents.

The difficulty issues I’ve run into come not from challenging individual enemies, but from unavoidable gankfests. There are some missions (I remember a Nightmare Court one in particular) where ~5 or more enemies spawn, set their sights on you, and attack with a vicious narrow-mindedness, downing you within seconds. Even dodging and defensive utilities only delay the inevitable as it’s the onslaught of basic attacks, not big, telegraphed strikes that are doing the damage.

Really I just think that the NUMBER of enemies in particular missions needs to be reduced or otherwise mitigated. I haven’t run into anything impossible yet, and overall I’m absolutely loving the personal story for what it is.