Guild Wars 2

sorrychief.2563:

So much whine, you’ve obviously never played an auramancer because there is a really good trait there for fire…

Whoa, careful there, I just found out in another post that this concept is subject to trolling. Prepare to be flamed!

j/k Seriously though, auramancer is underrated. And they have boosted the effects of signets and auras so the sig/aura build was one of the few ele setups that got a boost with this last patch.

But yes, they should definitely review the Fire trait tree … +1

I must apologize to the 2 jokers here who apparently can’t read and embarrassed themselves making fun of something I already admitted was a mistake on my part. I have this other thing called a job that keeps me very busy during the week and when I get free time I like to play the game rather than hawk the forums for people to troll.

I was trying to be helpful, if you wanted to make fun of me for posting a build that you apparently already knew about, you are too late, I already realized this and admitted my mistake several posts before you came through to rag on me for it. It’s inevitable someone else would have come up with it besides myself, and not really frequenting the forums much or AT ALL prior to this patch (check my posting history…) so I’m not really shocked either. It was an honest mistake and I freely admit that I was wrong.

By the way, it’s people like Chaosky and Pyriall that I was trying to avoid by not sharing this build months ago when I first discovered it (even if that was weeks after one of you trolls copy/pasted it from some site). Hence the “under protest” bit which was nothing but the truth, as not everyone who plays the game spends all their free time in the forums.

Seriously, show a little respect and consideration for people who do other things with their free time for once. Or you can troll me some more…I don’t care, I doubt I will return and even find out about it. This has been a thorough waste of time anyway, no offense to the normal people here, but there is too much complaining and not enough doing here for my taste.

Happy Hunting Eles…see you in the pit.

Well I can’t argue with the Dragon’s Tooth issue, as that has sent me into a mini rage at times when it would have been a win for me but I got interrupted or kd/kb’d and it lands, boom animation….no damage…wtf?

It’s not like that huge flaming rock we just summoned in mid air dissappears or becomes intangible and we can cast other skills while it’s hanging there…so why the no dmg deal? My guess is this is a bug that the devs AND testers missed. I assume it’s due to the interrupt effect on a skill that hasn’t caused it’s damage/burn yet. This makes dragon’s tooth (an already crappy move) even more useless.

This is a serious problem. The phoenix one I am unaware of though. Perhaps it’s cuz I don’t use EA?

Regardless, something has to be done about dragon’s tooth. Either lower the hang time (which might mess up blast combo setups) or just fix the skill like you should developers…and go yell at whichever tester missed this issue as it’s pretty obvious.

BlackBeard.2873:

Chaos, just curious if you have tried ember’s might and if it was effective at all. It says “+5% damage to burning foes,” and I can’t figure out if it counts condition damage or not. If so, that might be even more beneficial than using the Fire II trait just for burning on fire signet. It’s a shame there aren’t any great Fire Adept traits.

I just realized, not many people take into account that condition damage is affected by might. I’ve seen my condition damage over 2k with might, and it does some lovely damage – not sure how high it maxes out with 25 stacks though. Hence me using Sigil of Battle in pve and due to higher precision due to the mix of rabid gear in pve, I also use the chance on crit burning trait (forget the name) instead of the SoF trait (which also works with FGS which I use occasionally instead of the summon elmental glyph elite. I just prefer the water elemental, because it heals for a very nice amount if you are in range.

Sorry for the long/repeat posts. I’m at work and waiting for database operations to complete so I can finish something so I had the time. lol

I think I remember reading somewhere that this trait only applies to direct damage skills. If that was wrong please let me know! Because yes, this would be much better if it applied to burning/bleeding/etc. That and it would be nice to see how that stacks up with the 9 stacks of vulnerability you can apply from using 3 signets on a target (and how that’s calculated, cumulative or concurrent?).

However from the tests I’ve conducted, this is not the case. And since my build doesn’t really stack much power or precision, you’re better off with extending or reapplying burning repeatedly to counter cleansing attempts. You have enough power (and precision in pve) to do decent damage to an enemy in water and lightning, not to mention that gets boosted by vuln and burning. The idea here is to stack a bunch of bleeds/burning/etc and then swap between attunements and blow cooldowns while they tick. If your target is not dead by the end of that, switch back to earth/fire and repeat. Mind you, with the pvp version of this build, each attunement swap will give you a 5 second poison on your first attack and you still have access to burning through SoF.

As an interesting side note, I noticed that the synergy in the traits here was already discovered and was called Auramancer (sorry I don’t copy/paste builds from sites or share my builds often so I was unaware until someone mentioned it). So I feel kinda silly for not realizing this was probably already discovered by someone else and shared. However, it seems not many people give eles the credit they deserve for their conditions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in WvW or PvP and someone drops all their CDs on me expecting me to be GC and crumple, only to find out that i still have 50%+ of my hp left and they are getting condition stacked. Usually they try to run/heal/cleanse and die in the process because by then it’s too late.

PierPiero.9142:

i tried signet build. 20 in fire, 10 air, 30 earth , 10 water , ether renew and 3 signet. Signet had a great improvement and i found it very viable for pve . I use D/D but when i know i have to defend myself too much i switch to scepter focus ( for example in ac for spider queen) . Today i made already 4 dung and it seems to me a very good build

I’m glad you are enjoying it so far, just remember you’re probably not even playing it optimally yet. Wait until you get used to it and master the build.

This build works with pretty much any weapon set, I just prefer the scepter/dagger combo since it has access to better condition damage out of the 3 sets. For group events, i switch to D/D because the damage is best out of all the weapons and it allows you to easily tag multiple targets repeatedly. I also tend to keep a staff on me, as it’s irreplaceable in many PvE situations and perfect for tower/keep defense in WvW.

However, for sPvP, it’s probably best to stick with S/D or S/F for the range and condition stacking. It also allows you to make full use of the earth and water signets chill and immobilize. Works well in PvE when soloing champions and group events (I soloed the Fire Elemental event in Iron Marches using this build…didn’t even realize it was a group/world event until the big chest and daily chests popped up at the end).

Overall, my strongest suggestion here is to go for condition damage and stack it as high as possible. I think my ele has just under 1600 condition damage and for most mobs Signet of Fire + 2 or 3 auto attacks in earth is pretty much a death sentence. And that is only increased by the (entirely underrated) vulnerability condition, which helps anyone attacking your target do more damage without having to lean on might (not to mention you can drop fire field and pop DT/Phoenix/EQ/CE and stack 12 might on anyone in range while doing crazy damage).

Also, don’t count out Resto Sig just because they nerfed it’s passive healing! It’s still viable and this build keeps the passive healing when you activate it (also procs prot/fury/swift). Though ether renewal is great if you feel you need the extra boost in condition removal and has a low recharge.

+1 rsq.

I like the idea of modifying the focus to make it more useful. I have considered switching to it many times, and in fact, I do use it quite often situationally. However, I find the skills on it in water and in fire sub-par, so I always wind up switching back to my dagger as soon as whatever fight I needed focus for is over. In fire, the skills are nearly useless, fire shield doesn’t last long enough and trying to do anything other than combo projectile finishers through flame wall is almost impossible (though you can still stack might if you time it VERY well). In water, you get 2 mediocre offensive spells and sacrifice healing to do so, which imho, even considering the added defense you get from air and earth, is not worth it.

At the very least, the skills in fire attunement need to be fixed or boosted a little, and it makes no sense that in water, our healing spec, we LOSE healing skills on what is meant to be a defensive weapon. I would be happy if fire shield had a longer duration and flame wall had a slightly larger area of effect (wider wall/longer line so you can actually use it for area denial?). And the water issue could be fixed by giving comet an aoe heal to allies near the target (so if you or your teammate were in range it would apply regen or heal for a small amount, kind of like water trident on scepter).

Earth and Air attune are acceptable in my opinion (not ‘good’ … just ‘acceptable’ lol).

I suppose this means I should finally install some sort of video capture software on my new PC so I can provide you guys with a video to back this up. I had one on the old PC but haven’t bothered installing any on this one. I’m at work currently, but when I get home, I will install and make a few vids. Once they are uploaded, I will post the links here. The build is far from ‘OP,’ but it definitely holds its own 1v1 and depending on the players, can do well in 2v1 situation.

As far as your questions are concerned, usually I don’t have too many issues with conditions, as the water signet passively cleanses, and I can always switch to water attune for an emergency cleanse + heal if need be. Also, mind you I don’t currently run this build in tpvp, especially post patch, because every match I did last night was vs a full thief team (with the exception of the occasional mesmer mixed in). Apparently you can lose a match due to kills even if your team holds 2+ points for the entire match, but that’s another post for another time in another thread.

However, this build works well everywhere else, I run WvW, sPvP, and PvE with this and do better than most of my teammates in many cases (and I am up to lvl 26 fractals). I have at least half the survival ability of a bunker without having to throw away my damage, more if I use focus and sacrifice some mobility.

+1 I think many ele’s and guardians would be complaining much less if we didn’t have a laughably low hp pool. 11k base i think on both classes.

I prefer condition damage(obviously) as the build I linked has a very nice supply and variety of them which makes condition removal difficult (burn, bleed, vuln, immob, chill, blind, and poison on attunement swap if you run the pvp version). Elementalists are underrated in their ability to stack conditions quickly and often no matter what weapon set you choose. Also frees up your character to stack more defensive stats and the like since your main source of damage is condition based. In PvE I use Carrion helm/gloves/shoulders/boots and rabid everything else(think my scepter is carrion too?). I have more armor than a heavy class (3200 in earth with rock barrier up) albeit MUCH less hp, but what good is hp when you take 30-50% of your max hp in damage in one hit?

I also prefer the 10 points in Water as it gives some much needed HP and healing, which goes well with the toughness, as any damage taken can be quickly healed, and the water trait inflicts extra vulnerability for every signet you use on a target (3 stacks per signet not sure the duration). And the 2 seconds on attunement swap isn’t such a big deal once you get used to it, not to mention the boons gained from EA only last a few seconds (3 or 4 sec I think).

I’m just happy to hear that the qq fest, however warranted, is dying down a little and ele’s are talking about new builds. Besides, bunker ele was overrated, this build was slaughtering them hands down (yes I saw a bunker ele and thought “free kill!”).

As a final note, I might add that this also will mitigate the advantage given to thieves and warriors on boon stealing/hate (assuming you’re not using GoEH or Elemental Attunement). That gives only protection/fury/swiftness which isn’t much to steal and only reduces protection’s effect by 6% with boon hate factored in.

Perhaps you did not read the post in that link good sir. I have tested this build extensively (been using it since I created it after hitting 80 a month or so after pre-launch). What I meant in the above post was that I have yet to test this build seriously in a pvp or wvw situation since today’s debacle – I mean ‘patch.’

This build involves actually using the signets. Not just having them on your bar for kicks. There is synergy built around not only having them, but you are crippling this build if you aren’t using them on your target(s).

I’m not going to explain this here or now, as I shared this build under protest because I see too many people doing cookie cutter builds because they are the flavor of the month. If anyone actually tries it out, let me know what you think or if you have questions, PM me in-game (as I don’t usually get on the forums due to lack of free time and what little I have I prefer to waste in game).

That’s the build I posted in the other thread dealing with condition damage and signets. Works very well imho, tho i haven’t tested extensively post patch. Though it seems like its the only ele build that might have gotten a boost.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Signet-Condition-Build/first#post1931684

Minion of Vey.4398:

Last Warrior Lord.7248:

Only reason I recently made a elementalist was for the Ride the lighting skill and mist from. Now the you fix RTL (understand that… don’t understand the 20 to 40 sec increase). Now you can’t heal in mist from when you are getting hammered. Currently at lvl 24 and that’s my stopping point cause of this nerf. Ele just not fun now. Guess I’ll just delete it. Good job on the other bug fixes.

Be glad it happened to you at level 24 and not at 80 after you got legendaries, full ascended, maxxed out bag space, exploration star, spvp profession title, soulbound cash shop mining pick…

::Points to self:: You must be spying on me good sir…::sighs::

Next patch:

RTL now crashes GW 2 and wipes your bios on your PC. Your computer will now only play twangy country music when you attempt to boot it up.

BlackBeard.2873:

majortato.7125:

Want to make RTL more about offensive focused and gap closer? Up the dmg, reduce the range, reduce the CD. It should be a 900 range skill on 15s CD. That way, it doesn’t get you out of trouble as easily. It’s still great gap closer. It’s still useful for travel.

Great minds!! You probably didn’t read it, but I just said the same thing a few posts up. Its sad that 2 random people not paid to balance could have done a better job fixing the skill! Maybe they will do that next patch. Personally, I would love to actually have an offensive skill in air (other than autoattack) that could be available every once in a while.

+1 to both of you then. This change would have actually FIXED something instead of breaking a skill that was already useless as an offensive option. Increased damage or AoE, and reduce the range and it’s a viable gap closer rather than an escape skill. Or add weapon swaps – but that might be OP.

Honestly, this wouldn’t be such a huge deal if we ele’s weren’t already so squishy and weren’t forced to use cheap tactics like RTL escape or mist-form heal just to be on par with other classes. Seriously…our health pool is a laughable 11k unless you spec into vit and u can’t get it above 18k without sacrificing all damage or defense.

Here is a build I’ve been using pretty much since I hit 80. I got bored playing glass cannon and getting one shotted and didn’t want to play the 0/10/0/30/30 bunker cookie cutter build.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVsMz9Mz0oaGLMoaGLoGaxa0MszMVbM8khG7khi7070z7khs707kuW70V7ow38ofZ

I was avoiding sharing this build, as I feared it would become one of those cookie cutter FotM builds. However, with the recent changes/nerfs to staff ele’s and bunker builds, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

The only change I’ve made to this build since launch is the 10 points from arcane to water, as water has passive heals, gives more vit (allowing me to go for more dmg/toughness in pve/wvw), and boosts the effects of using signets even further. That is the one variation I’ve made to this build, and I can’t say the loss of attunement recharge has hurt anything.

However, I may wind up switching out my dagger for a focus, as they’ve always been under-appreciated as offhand weapons and OH dagger is becoming less and less useful as patch nerfs roll in.

This is the build I use for everything…works well in pve and wvw and wins against most classes/builds 1v1 in pvp (I thought of myself as the bunker bane because this build stomps most bunker builds with relative ease).

Edit: In pve/wvw I mix rabid/carrion gear for the extra toughness (15k hp instead of 17k but about 400 more condition dmg) and use undead runes/sigil of battle (since other classes do poison better in pve). The build I linked was what I use in spvp/tpvp. I also switch out burning fire for burning precision as rabid gear gives you more crit chance which means more burns without leaning on the signet.

+1

I couldn’t agree more. I think it should be 40 second cooldown only if you don’t have a target (+ in range) when you start the skill. I think the point of the RTL nerf was to keep ele’s from running all over the place/being uncatchable in pvp. Honestly, this should be a pvp-only change. Ele’s are too squishy to have both their escape mechanic and that cheesey mist-form exploit nerfed (imho this was a good move) without being given some other option of survival.

As a side note…anyone verify whether u can still mist-form stomp in pvp? I don’t like it much either, but thief can invis-stomp you, mes can distortion-stomp, war/guard can stability stomp, etc. So removing that would be lame…even though i don’t personally ever use mist form.

Honestly i would be fine if they just kept the 20 second cooldown and made it so you can’t use it without having a target. This was to keep us from using it to escape battles I think.

Either way, this 40 second cooldown on block/evade/immune needs to be fixed. Even if we use it purely as a gap closer, it’s now useless unless it does damage.

Contemplating throwing my mystic dagger into the toilet and NOT going for incinerator now…

Seems a tad over the top imho. The healing and utilities of elementalists was the only thing that evened the playing field considering our laughable HP pool (+/- 18k in full vit gear, sacrificing damage or defense).

We got hit with the nerf hammer pretty hard this patch, while thieves (already OP, I have one) got boosted pretty nicely. I could already slaughter any class/build combo 1v1 with my thief build in spvp/tpvp and now I’ll just be playing him instead of my ele when I do tournaments and dailies.

It’s sad, spvp/tpvp was already thief/mesmer wars, and my ele was just that much more fun to play. Now I will be playing my necro/mesmer/thief more and probably let my ele collect dust until they fix RTL or give ele’s another viable build outside of bunker.

Personally i was ok with most of the changes, even this mist-form change would have been ok if we didn’t have like 60% of the hp of most classes

My problem here is the fact that they’ve nerfed ele’s AGAIN, without providing us a reasonable alternative for playstyle. It seems every ele I run into plays bunker in pvp (which wasn’t that OP to begin with, I have 3 chars I play as main and they all slaughter bunkers…including my non-bunker ele).

The bugs in RTL will hopefully get hotfixed later as I hear it goes on full cooldown on evade or block which is NOT what they promised. I’m ok with them removing it as an escape skill, but it shouldn’t go on full cooldown if you have a target selected when you begin. This mistform nerf would be more reasonable if they applied the changes to ALL OTHER invulnerable states in the game (as far as I know distortion, endure pain, etc don’t stop you from healing).

Guess I will stick to my tanky condition build, as that seems to have at least gotten a small boost from this patch (though it looks like I will be dropping my offhand dagger in favor focus more often now).

I would like to start by saying that I think the idea behind removing the re-rushing mechanic was a good one. That being said, I can also agree with the few non-nerd-rage posts here where it has already been pointed out that this is the type of thing that should have been implemented in one phase, not two. I can totally understand why players are frustrated with this update but I think many of us are forgetting why this post exists: constructive criticism, not QQ rants and players threatening to quit (and the poor people with what appears to be a ‘kitten’-themed version of tourettes).

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I have a few suggestions that the devs might find useful:

1. As another player suggested, changing the resurrection skills to apply to dead players instead of just downed seems your obvious choice. Most players never use these skills because the window they can be applied within is simply too small (dead before in range or finish casting).
2. Re-scaling your loot tables within dungeons (or at least in dungeon chests) would give the incentive and motivation for players to learn to adapt to the new difficulty level. This way players would find an 11 silver repair bill less irritating if they are getting better drops or more loot/tier 6 materials.
3. Perhaps allow players to slot non-elite skills in the elite slot – I know in guild wars 1 you could opt to take a build that did not include an elite skill (though this was uncommon) and certain events would greatly benefit from not having a wasted slot on our skill bars. I find many classes don’t even use their elites due partially to many classes not having a viable elite (many tend to bring racial elites instead of their class elites e.g. norn wolf form or sylvari takeroot).
4. Adding a short-duration (stability?) buff that applies while a player is ressing another player during boss fights (could be tricky to apply this one to pve only as it would ruin pvp). This way a player still has to stay out of danger while ressing but can’t get yanked across the floor or knocked around while trying to get another teammate back into the fight. This could have a debuff applied after it expires, keeping you from abusing it in a fight.

I ran path 2 CoF 3 times since the patch; first time we got through the new Magg event in one shot (geared players, I was the only pug), second time with guild mates we died once/twice but we had little trouble (also geared players, core dungeon group new to this version), third time we had a few newer members and tried about 8-10 times before people got frustrated and left. Mind you, we run this dungeon and clear path 1 and 2 in under an hour and we’re all at Fractals 10+ so we’re not exactly pro but we’re not casuals or newbies either. The re-vamped version of the dungeon is fun, there is more protecting of Magg as far as the event goes which is way better than the 1-2-2 method everyone seemed to think was necessary before, but the knockdown is a tad excessive and puts the event just outside the realm of fairness to the average casual player. I don’t think the developers intended for this to be a “you need this EXACT party composition to complete” event.

I would like to close by noting that I am a programmer myself by trade, and I respect the amount of work and testing that goes into a project like this. I want to encourage the developers to keep creating great content and not to let your day get soured by people who have no idea the amount of collaboration and effort that goes into generating the content required to make a game as great as Guild Wars 2 has been so far. Our guild enjoys the game thoroughly, and I would like to point out that people don’t come to the forums to compliment you on your hard work, they only come to whine and complain when they can’t faceroll a boss encounter or kitten kitten kitten kitten…um…kitten…(sorry that really annoys me – some people need to pick up a thesaurus).