Guild Wars 2

I want a hammer and/or greatsword, and I want to actually hit things with it/them.

Conjured weapons don’t count.

Tei.1704:

No defensive option will always be available every single time you need it. I don’t use protection against every backstab or shatter spike. I dodge most of those, but protection is still an option to mitigate something when it’s off cooldown. This is what I meant when I emphasized how damage mitigation from earth it is just one defensive option you have. I don’t save earth attunement just to mitigate specific attacks. Usually, the protection is just a helpful side-effect of attuning to earth, which I would do regardless of any boons it gives.

Stop saying “how the class is played.” I’m literally telling you I already attune to earth just to mitigate specific attacks on occasion, and you’re saying the class isn’t played like that. It doesn’t mesh with how you play, but stone heart will work with how I play. Don’t like the trait all you want, but it’s a fact that stone heart meshes with a playstyle some eles have developed.

…But my build loses too much to take Stone Heart if it’s just another layer of defense. I never said that there’s no use for the trait.

I did say that I think the design is terrible, though, by which I mean: If the Elementalist is so dependent upon active defenses, why is its ability to access those defenses so poor – or at least clunky?

Compared to other classes, an ele’s skills are generally weaker and/or have longer cooldowns in an attempt to balance the greater number of them. They’re spread across four groups rather than two, meaning more swapping to use the skill you want, meaning more potential for being locked out of the skills you want due to attunement cooldowns. The class is highly reliant on healing for survival. Throw on the traits – including Stone Heart – that are tied to attunements.

When I look at all this, I see a class that professes to be designed for reactive play, but is, in fact, rather limited in this regard. Note that I am not saying that it does not work, but that it is extremely poor design for a class that is intended to be able to adapt to any situation.

Tei.1704:

There is some truth to this, but it’s also true that elemental attunement is a very common ele trait. Protection makes attuning to earth a logical and effective response to power damage. The difference is that stone heart will never carry into another attunement. Whether that is an issue depends on what’s going on, but the basic concept mixes well with how ele can be played. Staying in earth a few seconds longer when needed shouldn’t sound like the crazy suicidal idea some other people are making it out to be.

What I’m getting at is that if I want Protection and CC, I’m going to be switching to Earth, which means that there are going to be plenty of times when the attunement simply isn’t available to mitigate critical burst damage. Therefore, if I want to be sure to have access to it when I need it, I’ll have to restrict myself to Air and Fire, which is rather less than optimal.

I don’t take Elemental Attunement so I can switch to Earth to gain Protection in order to avoid incoming burst damage, because I can’t rely on having access to the attunement (although it’s nice when it does work out, and I’d much prefer it if I could activate the trait as I would a utility skill) – rather, I take it because the Protection and Regeneration act as general damage mitigation. This is why I take issue with the concept of Stone Heart, and why I say that it simply doesn’t mesh with how the class is played.

oZii.2864:

If you have any points in water you are more bunker then earth. There is more reliable modifiers for damage in earth then there is in water. Stone splinters>vital striking any day of the week.

I tend to use 0/20/0/20/30 d/d – Zephyr’s Boon offers plenty of Fury with 2-3 auras, Bolt to the Heart helps a lot when an enemy’s weak and my burst is on cooldown, and the other bonuses don’t hurt. Also, I don’t really do WvW anymore (I’ll spare you the details), so this is regarding SPvP, in which the extra Health from the Water line is much more important due to the limited gearing options (Valkyrie’s Amulet + Berserker’s Jewel, in my case).

Aside from that, the problem with the Stone Heart trait itself, for this type of build, is that warriors and thieves and such can pound a lot of damage into me pretty much constantly, meaning that I’d really only benefit by staying in Earth for extended periods of time, and if I’m not applying CC, healing, or dealing damage, I’m losing.

Furthermore, the trait is pretty much designed with the idea that the player would treat the Earth attunement itself as a defensive skill, which clashes horribly with how the class is actually played. As it is, on-swap bonuses encourage cycling through attunements quickly, and you’ll often find yourself wanting certain skills that are locked away in Earth, so avoiding the attunement is no easy task. (Water for d/d is a well designed attunement, in my opinion, because it provides everything you need to use its skills effectively and has a distinct, unique role. Thus, it is relatively easy to “save” for later use.)

Mitigating burst with Stone Heart every now and then doesn’t help when autoattacks still destroy me.

Honestly, I can see it being pretty good for Ether Renewal bunkers, but it still doesn’t help bring more balanced builds into play, because one has to give up too much damage/health+healing for such builds to take it.

Wyrden.4713:

Wintel.4873:

Phi Is Sly.1857:

Sin pretty much Eva

wat

evade

A new level of game slang.

And I still get upset about people using “sustain” as an adjective rather than a verb.

Hammer, because I like hammers.

Lightning hammer doesn’t count as long as it can’t be used indefinitely like an actual weapon.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bull. I stated it before, but eles have great condition cleansing even without traiting for it.

In the form of Ether Renewal, which is extremely easy to interrupt if you don’t take 20 points in Earth for Rock Solid. You can try CCing your opponent before healing, but stun-breakers aren’t exactly a rare sight.

But yes, what I just said up there explains why Water isn’t madatory for condition removal.

You can certainly win 1v1s with zerker staff, but once your enemies realize that your attacks actually hurt, they start playing more cautiously and you die horribly.
For example, to avoid the Static Field-Eruption-Shockwave combo, you pretty much just have to cleanse the immobilize from Shockwave before you dodge, or eat the stun, cleanse, and dodge. For Eruption-Unsteady Ground, just stop moving when they cast Eruption.
A lot of opponents will also have get-out-of-jail-free cards in the form of teleports, blocks, etc.

To be fair, though, slowing your opponent’s attack is still a good result in SPvP.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Anet just officially confirmed that those changes aren’t real.

So, what, no fix for Dust Devil and Gust?

Kitten.

It’s a bit of a shame in that it makes it a lot easier for enemies to figure out where to stand to avoid it, but I don’t think losing a few kills on confused zerglings is that big a deal.

Sometimes I’ll take 2-3 times my max health in damage from stuff I couldn’t possibly hope to see in the clusterkitten that is stacked zerg warfare, but then I get revived about as instantly.

The general game mechanics are what are at fault here, really.

Forestgreen.7981:

Did they forget the god-ele bunker best dps/bunker/escape d/d builds? You know the one where 2 d/d eles can RUN AWAY FROM 30 players in WvW. Someone should link the video to remind what eles were before they were nerfed.

Fixed that for you.

The only reason that ever worked is that a lot of zerglings are stupid and/or silly and like to chase squirrels.

Seems like these are probably real.

Cleansing Water revert is, of course, the big thing. Soothing Wave, here I come!

Kinda wish they’d just slap 10% damage reduction on all auras instead of going for these different secondary effects.

If we got balance updates every month, these changes would be great – they’re cautious, yet enough to potentially cause significant changes, and they should be left to sit for a while. However, we don’t, so…

Iris Ng.9845:

Conjured weapons have insane damage and passive buffs, which deserve to have a cool down.

How ‘bout they’re changed so you can swap to them at any time, but the second weapon is on a cooldown. Remove the stat bonuses, charges, and time limit, and make the Conjurer trait provide the stat bonuses and reduce the cooldown for the second weapon.

Select Conjure Lightning Hammer to switch to it, select it again to drop a second and put that function on an internal cooldown, use the weapon swap key to switch back to your normal weapons.

The insane damage you’re talking about is really only due to wall-stacking with a fiery greatsword – the skills provided by conjured weapons still have cooldowns.

I believe this is known as “preaching to the choir”.

I’m actually really glad I’m not the focus. In fact, I’d rather I barely knew the main characters and were just treated like a mercenary – because, quite frankly, that’s what we all are.

We may be extraordinary when compared to most of Tyria, but we’re really just seasoned, highly skilled adventurers, and there are still a lot of us.

inb4 go play that fantasy sandbox RPG that doesn’t exist yet

I remember that their reason for nerfing Cleansing Water in the first place was that eles could use all their cantrips at once to remove 3 conditions with Soothing Disruption. Because that’s not a terrible use of defensive utilities or anything.

Nerfs like removing the ability to heal in Mist Form were good, but we’re still waiting for the devs to dig us out of the hole they put us in with stuff like this. I wouldn’t be so quick to thank them.

People have been asking for conjures to function like kits for a long time now, myself included. It’s pretty much the only way eles will ever be able to alter their effective range in combat.

The devs seem to like gimping the class for no particular reason, though, so I doubt it’ll happen.

Poor writing and characters abound.

No way to replay missed content. (If this were a sandbox game that’d be fine, but it’s not, so…)

Not a fan.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Chaosky.5276:

The game was designed with stacking in mind. That said, it is a stupid design.

That’s a bit of a stretch.

The massive preference for PBAoE buffs is what makes me think that, particularly combo fields.

The game was designed with stacking in mind. That said, it is a stupid design.

Let’s say you’ve got a group of five fighting a massive, fire-breathing drake – two warriors, a guardian, an elementalist, and a thief. What do you think is the best course of action? (Skills are restricted by lore rather than what’s shown in-game for this example, because in-game skills are designed for stacking.)

A: Group up so that the spellcasters only have to erect one barrier at close range to protect the party as you all beat on the thing.

B: Have the elementalist cast buff and damage spells from range, have the guardian focus on healing the party and drawing the drake’s attention, have the thief climb on its back and stab it in the spine (a lot), and let the warriors hack away.

Now, stacking would certainly be the better choice if your opponent can attack from all angles, or there’s no room to maneuver or something like that, but otherwise it’s just silly.

TL;DR: Stacking is stupid from a roleplaying perspective.

ITT: People apparently don’t know that Polymorph Moa can be used while stealthed.

Ryld.1340:

Yeah, I was first replier to that.

I feel quite silly now.

But it’s still a relevant link so I don’t feel as silly as I could.

Ryld.1340:

Attunement Swap Cooldown removed. All swap effects are given a 8 second cooldown.

You want us to be able to “adapt to any situation”? Then let us use our skills when we need them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-Cooldowns/first

I kind of expected more discussion on it back then, but the forums can be fickle.

No one’s saying to change base health and just leave it at that.

The idea is that balancing class skills around wildly different base attributes is needlessly complex, and thus we should balance those passive attributes, leaving class skills to be balanced around each other. (I’d much prefer equalizing health and imposing a tradeoff between offense and defense in respect to armor, as I believe that would allow base stats to be ignored entirely.)

It is not a simple change by any means, and it’s absolutely true that such changes would negatively impact the uniqueness of the classes, but I do think it is effectively necessary for better class balance.

The major problems I have with immersion are:

> You’re limited to a single class, which in addition to restricting your selection of weapons and armor, also imposes rather arbitrary playstyle limitations that cannot be altered through player customization (mobility restrictions, dependence on pets, etc.).

> Your skills are defined by your active weapon, which is really awkward for spellcasting classes.

> Events repeat themselves, many frequently and without explanation. Not much that could be done about this, realistically, as a large number of options for randomly generated events/enemies/etc. for each area would be necessary for an immersive experience, but there it is.

> Overabundant and randomly placed waypoints. I just pretend that they’re asura gates that are easier to set up but way more expensive to run, and are only used by particularly wealthy people/organizations (because they don’t make much sense otherwise). I try to ignore the ones that don’t make sense and write them off as concessions for player convenience (in a fortified military outpost = sensible, in the ocean = WTF), but it’s still distracting.

I would love for all classes to possess the same base health. However, this would require reducing the effectiveness of class-specific mechanics, which a lot of people will likely be against – for example, thieves would have to be less slippery, unless they sacrificed offense for more evasion (which I’m totally fine with, but that’s me).

Also, I would be equally pleased if every class could wear every armor type. Balance light vs. heavy with longer cooldowns, reduction in base offense, I don’t really care, I just want to wear heavy armor as an elementalist.

“In the context of biology, poisons are substances that cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism.”

A poison can exist in any state of matter, and in other forms as well – radiation poisoning is the result of damage done to your cells by radiation.

People, please do not argue about a topic you are not well versed in. It’s not even that hard, just search “poison” and you’ll probably find solid info on the first page that comes up.

However useful it might be, it’ll be yet another passive mechanic, which I’m pretty sure no player in their right mind wants.

This is the most versatile build I’ve found. Just swap to a staff when zerging.

Krayiss.4926:

Next you’ll ask for them to remove fear stacking. After that you’ll ask for burning duration to not stack, when does it all stop? They either rework all the stacking because its not fair to make only 1 skill not stack and leave all the others.

Bring more condi cleanse or reroll imboa kings like the rest of us

No one was complaining about how Immobilized didn’t stack before the October 15th patch.

Revert RtL to a flat 15 second cooldown and remove its immunity to movement impairing conditions.

You can do PvE with stockpiled environmental weapons. Although there is something to be said for that, because frankly, I’d probably have more fun spamming Mini Golem Bomb than I do with the effective builds eles have for PvP settings.

Scarlet is not the Joker, not even close. The Joker is actually threatening – even when he seems helpless, it could turn out that he’s got the place rigged to blow, and you know he’s willing to go through with it. He sows as much chaos as possible and loves to mess with (and corrupt) people’s minds.

He’s very intelligent, but we know this because we SEE that his plans are very well thought through, not simply because we’re told so. He can get people to work to his own ends because he knows how to manipulate them, we’re not just told that he’s really charismatic.

Scarlet’s accomplishments and abilities are inconsistent with those of the rest of the world. She’s able to surpass top experts in multiple professions and fields of study, and we’re given no explanation for this other than that she’s really intelligent. She forms all these unlikely alliances, and we’re given poor explanations, if any, as to how she accomplished this.

Also, that divination device from “What Scarlet Saw” SHOULD BE CONSULTED REGULARLY, WHY HAVE WE NOT HEARD ANYTHING MORE ABOUT IT?!
I’d say the ability to view past, present, and future events is a pretty big deal. Of course, magical barriers could be erected to prevent remote viewing of that sort, but apparently no one has ever been able to see as much as this device allows, so it’s something that should at least be mentioned.

Ram Banson.4081:

DONT DO IT IF YOURE ASURA!!! and dont like the auothit changes form the legendary
Its ridiculously small on asura, and … “see picture” THIS!!!! W ! T ! F ! it totally ruins the autoatack from fire and water TOTALLY…

that’s a pretty spooky chat

The only part that got me was when I saw Petra in a cage, because she’s actually a character I care about and it would be entirely possible for her to be there.

The rest of it made about as much dramatic sense as Scarlet telling me not to look behind myself from time to time. (Priory here, but I never really cared about Sieran, and her death was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, so yeah.)

I imagine the toxins could still get through wounds and such.

Frankly, I hate the existence of vertical progression altogether – the main reason I was interested in this game in the first place was because I was under the impression that there would be none, or at least very little. I wouldn’t even care if WvW used SPvP gear and stuff, but it doesn’t because apparently people like having an advantage over other players just because they’ve played longer.

What’s wrong with costumes and minis? And WXP ranks could just have been ways to give players access to stuff their professions couldn’t get otherwise (portable portal devices, anyone?), but no, it had to be boring stuff like siege masteries and stat buffs that also create an entry barrier for new players.

Some of you should be glad this guy isn’t hunting for forum members, because you took the bait pretty readily.

No.

Not for SPvP, anyway. WvW is better due to Perplexity runes, food buffs, etc.

CountzuCrytus.7256:

For the people having trouble landing Dragon’s Tooth remember you always have useful skills like Updraft and Earthquake to set them up before you light them up. Honestly in spvp Updraft>Dragons Tooth > Phoenix is Lethal

Updraft/Earthquake/Gale do not disable a target long enough for Dragon’s Tooth to hit, as an opponent can still roll away.

The only thing that might make a difference is the new Diamond Skin – IF you’re playing a bunker.

It’s great in PvE, but I don’t think people are complaining about PvE.

These people saying having extra skills is an advantage. They’re generally weaker than the skills of other classes, and generally serve the same purposes.

Swapping to Earth doesn’t really give you access to defensive skills, it just gives you Protection if you take Elemental Attunement. Water gives us healing skills that take a while to use, reducing our damage output and making us more susceptible to burst damage than a class with less healing and higher base health and/or armor.

Scepter/dagger has plenty of burst damage without Fresh Air, but its sustained damage is pretty much nonexistent.

If you have teammates to cc your enemies for you it should work, but it’s a pretty bad idea otherwise.

Am I the only person that finds d/d far superior to s/d for duels? I hate being restricted to close range, so I almost never use a mainhand dagger, but my performance improves dramatically whenever I do.
I think a lot of it is because d/d offers better options for kiting and dealing with stealth and AI, but due to its superior sustained damage and better access to Fury with Zephyr’s Boon, I can also afford to build much more defensively.

Basically, do you agree that dagger/x generally fares better than scepter/x in duels? If not, please explain, because I’ve been playing for almost a year and I’ve never seen much evidence against my thoughts.

make it ground targeted

please

why is this so hard

PTV

Most of the time you’re just there for water fields and crowd control, so survivability is paramount.
The only time people are really going to want you for damage is for using Meteor Shower on siege weapons that are otherwise out of reach, in which case Power is all that matters.

Ele scepter autoattacks are very weak (unless you’re spamming Stone Shards with a condition build), and should pretty much never be used with the sole intent of dealing damage unless you’re locked out of every other damage skill.