Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played much since the November update, but I think my old strategies would work pretty well.

1. Use S/D as your main PvE weapon set (dungeons perhaps aside).

2. Focus on Power and survivability stats (Toughness, Healing, and/or Vitality). Let crit chance/crit damage/condition stats/magic find go.

3. Buy new green armor whenever you hit a level where the more useful stats are available. Buy new weapons at least as often.

4. Focus on might stacking and blasts for your preferred rotation. This requires being in melee range, as you need to set of blasts within your Ring of Fire. RtL when it’s available; Ring of Fire, then Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix in some order. Switching to Earth after that is optional.

5. I often ran 20 Fire for the general fire DPS buff and Pyromancer’s Alacrity. That’s probably the most controversial part of my approach.

6. Glyphs and more glyphs — healing, both elementals, and Storms. So Quick Glyphs is very appealing as a trait.

7. I used Arcane Wave to add to the blasting fun. Yes, that means that I had little in the way of defense in my utility slots, past Glyph of Storms.

All that said, while S/D was my main weapon set, against particularly annoying ranged damage I did switch at times to S/F. Staff could also be OK if you need to blow up a lot of stationary objects, but after soloing too much with staff at lower levels I used it mainly for dynamic events (and even started downplaying it in those at the end).

Utility skills can matter a lot.

Arcane Blast — DPS and an unimportant combo finisher

Arcane Wave — AoE DPS and an important blast finisher

Glyph of Elemental Power — multiple strong uses

Glyph of Elementals — hugely beneficial, mainly but not only for DPS and tanking

Glyph of Storms, used in Earth — great defense and some DPS. Particularly good with scepter/dagger, since if you follow the (air)/fire/earth sequence and find yourself with a distressing number of remaining live enemies, Glyph of Storms can protect you for quite a while.

And you might want to mix up your weapon choices a bit. E.g., focus is strong if you’re facing a lot of archers, riflemen, or cannon, but not so great otherwise; staff has a bit of projectile defense as well.

Nerf to Elemental Attunement. It’s too popular.

Plus of course the changes that the devs practically pre-announced.

In many MMOs, the single best reason for a team leader to say “I believe that’s an effective choice; I forbid it anyway” is when pets are involved.

That’s because of their tendency to draw aggro or otherwise affect NPC behavior.

I think the devs haven’t grasped, or were slow to grasp, just how important they made combos to the profession.

A single blast finisher on a 10 sec cooldown, used for Might stacking, can change TOTAL damage output by 10-15%.

I get that figure by looking at tooltips and deciding one stack of Might adds about 2% to direct and condition damage alike, and from there by waving my hands about boon duration and so on.

Arc Lightning is trash. The combat log is bugged, so people incorrectly think it hits hard. The skill itself is bugged, so it drags you into combat when you don’t want to be.

Scepter/Dagger worked well pre-11/15 in PvE if you were willing to view it as primarily a point-blank-range weapon set, with the key skills being RtL, the fire field, and a lot of blast finishers. I would guess that it’s pretty much the same thing after the Dragon’s Tooth bug fix. Play style was to have a scripted attunement dance for the ideal burst, and a more scrambling/ad hoc attunement dance the rest of time. The big difference vs. D/D was that with all the PBAoE it made sense to play standstill.

Scepter/Focus makes sense vs. shooter/archer enemies and/or for single-target condition damage. I actually leveled with it for a while, before switching to scepter/dagger.

Karl McLain.5604:

our general policy of not having a blast finisher in the same weapon set you have a combo field.

What general policy is this?

Most elementalist solo options are pathetically weak without self-finishing, specifically scepter/dagger and staff.

It’s also true of trident.

So Dragon’s Tooth is now a blast finisher, but only when the tooth actually drops?

That’s how I read the post above.

Outstanding. You’re 10-for-10 in my opinion. I’d add:

*11. Bugs and lack of communication about bugs are demoralizing. *

Personally, they’re why I stopped playing the game altogether. Will the Dragon’s Tooth bug be fixed in a near-term patch? In that case, I should have kept my rotation and just made do with 6 fewer stacks of Might for a while. Or would it persist indefinitely? In that case, I needed to learn D/D. For me, that was the final straw in deciding I didn’t care enough to keep building my skill at the game.

For most people posting here, that extreme reaction would not be shared; still, I think broad consensus holds that bugs — together with the appalling lack of communication about bugs — are pretty bad.

Until the 11/15 debacle I used scepter/dagger in PvE as a PBAoE set, and it worked well.

Scepter air DPS is lousy. It’s hard to imagine an opponent against whom scepter earth DPS wouldn’t be better.

Blast finishers were nerfed badly on 11/15, in ways that were both intended and, one would guess, unintended. Anet doesn’t care enough to spend the 5 minutes it would take to clarify which were which.

I kept trying for about a week, then entirely stopped playing the game.

Heal — Quick Glyphs when you don’t need condition clears, Ether Renewal when you do.

Traits — most of the following (can’t get ’em all):

Cleansing Wave in Water
Quick Glyphs in Air
Internal Fire and Pyromancer’s Alacrity in Fire
Elemental Attunement and Blasting Staff in Arcane

Elite — Elementals

Utility:

Elementals
Glyph of Storms
Arcane Wave

I picked dual-purpose utilities, because both damage and defense in Staff are questionable.

Power and defensive stats on your gear.

I thought the fire leap finisher wasn’t triggering aura traits any more after the 11/15 fiasco?

There’s one buff I want, and it’s a massive one:

I want the bugs fixed.

I’m now farming and so on much less than I did before the Dragon’s Tooth bug was introduced.

If it’s too hard to fix the Dragon’s Tooth bug, then please revert to the old functionality, as nobody seemed to be calling that overpowered.

Much less important, Final Shielding would be a good trait if it actually worked as stated. But at 10% health or wherever it usually kicks in, it’s much less useful.

I tend to rely on tooltips, despite their bugginess, because I don’t see a lot of data from steady weapons in the Mists, and I’m too lazy to create that data myself.

Scepter/focus might stacking is badly nerfed due to the new Dragon’s Tooth bug.

I mistyped. Scepter/DAGGER has the worst defense. Scepter/focus’ defense is very good; it’s the damage side of the weapon set that’s problematic.

Scepter/focus.

With dagger mainhand, you have to move and aim. That used to not be as true of staff, but now that it’s been weakened so much, you have to do that with staff too. (Different kind of aiming).

Scepter/focus has the worst defense, so you have to make up for that either by getting your burst right, including the attunement swapping, or making the right use of your utility skills.

But in scepter/focus, you can just sit in Earth, where your only offense skill is #1, and do pretty good single-target condition damage with pretty good defense. Then you can improve from there.

All that said — elementalist is not an easy class, and it’s gotten harder because of a bad nerf on 11/15 (part intended, part bug).

Mainly, I think all four conjures should be replaced by a Glyph of Conjuration, which produces any of the four non-elite conjures depending on which attunement you’re in.

Scepter works best when the enemy is within the radius of your Ring of Fire. That will be even more true if Dragon’s Tooth is ever debugged, but it’s already pretty true because of Phoenix, RoF itself, the short range of Fire Grab, and the PBAoE nature of Earthquake, Churning Earth, and Arcane Wave.

Utilities I’d use early includ:

Glyph of Lesser Elementals, which both does damage and tanks
Arcane Wave, which both does damage and also finishes combo fields (giving Might in any weapon set, or healing instead if you use staff)
Glyph of Storms, which in Earth prevents damage for many seconds and does some damage as well

Glyph of Elemental Power is strong against a single target for defense, but not so useful against a group.

How about a trait that, if you take it, fixes the bugs in your fire skills?

Naah … that would be completely overpowered …

Recently I only played staff and — more often — a Might-stacking Scepter/Dagger build. The Evasive Arcana loss makes me unwilling to play Staff. That’s OK; I don’t mind focusing on Scepter/Dagger.

HOWEVER, the Dragon’s Tooth bug makes me significantly less effective, making the game less fun accordingly. For a little while, I took that as a challenge. But since Anet can’t even be bothered to put out a Known Issues list, I have no idea when, if ever, that will be fixed.

Bottom line: I’ve started playing a lot less, and that seems likely to continue.

Staff could also work, because Eruption hits hard, but you have to be good at landing a very slow skill.

You shouldn’t focus entirely on one element. The simplest reason why is that you should run to Water for heals, and then go to your second-favorite offensive element when you’re through healing.

That said, it makes loads of sense to play scepter/dagger as:

1. Run around between fights in Air, and start fights in it.
2. Switch to Fire for a few quick blasts that will stack Might.
3. Switch to Earth to finish the fight.

Glyphs that work well with an Earth bias include:

Glyph of Storms — awesome multi-target defense that does some damage

Glyph of Elemental Power — almost permanent single-target cripple

And the Earth Elementals are among the best tanks in the game

I’d be pretty interested.

That said, alts should be welcome, as long as they’re played by elementalist-knowledgeable players. E.g., I’d love to have AoE heals and regens going on my minions as I play necro. I’d also like to figure out a way (which I haven’t yet) of ensuring that my Bone Minions actually blast finish inside combo fields.

Scepter/Dagger — almost any farming scenario

Air 4, followed by 2,3 in some order

Fire 4, followed by 2,3 and Arcane Wave in some order, except that the blast finisher on 2 has been bugged out!

Earth 4 & 5 as needed. Also 2 & 3 as makes sense, or Glyph of Storms (in Earth).

A key point is that you’re at point-blank range, so there are 5 blast finishers for Ring of Fire, or 4 for as long as this horrible bug lasts. The Fire ones land in the Ring as long as the enemy is close (which RtL made happen); the others are centered on you no matter what (and hit whichever enemies are sufficiently nearby).

I like the GW1 hordes of minions concept a lot. I somewhat like its remnants in GW2.

I like lifegains outside the #6 slots (Mark of Blood).

I like having 3 skillbars rather than 2. A lame third skillbar is better than none at all.

I don’t use DS effectively for big-hit absorption or interrupt, but those are cool options to go with an otherwise already full skillbar.

I like the idea of bone minions as blast finishers, but the lack of control & intelligence in where they go is a drawback in practice. (Hence my suggestion in another thread for an “All minions attack my target” button.)

Wait until Whirlpool’s cooldown comes around?

Has anybody ever died to Air autoattack? It just tickles. They should renamed it Violet Wand.

Having given one point above, let me echo another:

Buff Staff #1.

Damage is not viable for the length of time it takes to build up Life Force. Either give it respectable damage or make it a crazy-fast Life Force builder at the cost of doing lousy damage for a while.

I can’t read builds on that site without a lot of trouble — but wow, that is a really glassy build.

I tend to favor

Power first
Condition damage and the defensive stats in some order next
Precision low
Crit damage lowest

I’m also suspicious of condition duration, because of rounding to whole numbers of seconds, if that’s still how it works.

If you’re a little conservative on your stats, then you can have a strong offensive bias on utilities. Glyph of Lesser Elementals and Arcane Wave have rarely left my skillbar; when I was at your stage, I ran Arcane Blast as well. (Now it’s more Glyph of Storms, and I die less.)

Minion AI

All the reasons stated above, but I’ll suggest a (fairly) quick fix. At the cost of complicating the description of the necro’s profession mechanic, borrow some basic pet management from the ranger. Two buttons for “Attack my target” and “Don’t attack anything” would suffice. If those were available, unreliable pathing AI wouldn’t be that big a deal.

I know this would be unpleasant for Anet in terms of neat profession description, but it would revive one of the most popular build concepts across GW1 and GW2 alike, WITHOUT requiring the huge burden and delay of solving tough AI problems.

You also can get power/vitality/toughness via karma. On my server the easiest p/v/t pieces to get that way are at Arah, where you can get hat and shoes.

Perhaps you should try Scepter/Dagger, because the differences in what the attunements do is really strong in that weapon set, and you want to use all 4.

Air — great to open fights with

Fire — strong AoE DPS, and you stack Might (even with the Dragon’s Tooth bug you stack some, with Phoenix and hopefully Arcane Wave)

Earth — also some AoE DPS and blast finishers for Might, but most notable for its defense. Also the best spammable #1 skill in the set.

Water — heal and condition clear, especially if you have the Cleansing Wave trait.

Using Glyphs underscores that Water is for healing (especially Elemental Harmony, Elementals) and Earth is for defense (those 2 and also Storms, Lesser Elementals).

The one thing you don’t learn about the attunements in that skillbar is crowd control — it’s the most immobile playstyle we have, RtL gap closing aside — but otherwise most stuff is covered.

And of course if you have people to help, NPC or otherwise, 6 stacks of AoE Might may matter MORE than a full tier of gear.

Losing 6 stacks of Might is a lot — comparable, by the numbers, to the difference between many pieces of Masterwork and Rare gear, or Rare and Exotic.

And that’s about what it costs me — I’m geared for 145% boon duration, I have Pyromancer’s Alacrity, and I try to stack Might a LOT.

For somebody who really wants to play scepter as a ranged weapon, the as-intended fix is a nerf. But since I play Scepter/Dagger at melee range, thanks to Ride the Lightning, it’s not a nerf — except of course for the bug.

I’m finding my fights a lot harder than I did before the change.

And by the way — reverting the change temporarily wouldn’t hurt much; nobody was complaining that Dragon Tooth’s previous functionality led to overpowered builds.

Bottom line: If it doesn’t happen to be practical to debug Dragon’s Tooth VERY QUICKLY, the change should please be reverted until the bug gets around to being fixed.

The quality of your gear also matters. You can get good gear from the trading post for coppers over vendor price. If it’s damaged, don’t repair it; just buy more and sell the damaged stuff back to the vendor.

D/D intimidates me because to play it effectively you have to be good at mobility. The same is not as true of scepter mainhand or staff.

At low levels, the stat points from what you do with your traits matter.

If you’re still using Glyph of Elemental Harmony, heal when you’re in Water or maybe Earth. Those are the best healing/defensive buffs.

A lot of utilities can help with defense. Glyph of Lesser Elementals both tanks and does good DPS. Glyph of Storms used in Earth can be great defense as well some damage. Glyph of Elemental Power is awesome defense in single-enemy fights. And that’s even without mention cantrips or Arcane Shield.

That said, Arcane Wave is one offensive utility to take, because of the blast finisher and associated Might stacking, as well as its pure damage.

GW2 necro minions are a bit disappointing compared to GW1, except that Flesh Golem is strong — if too independent — and Bone Minions can still be blown up. The big thing that’s carried over are Wells, which seem to be strong. But necros have decent AoE between staff skills, wells, Epidemic, and the #4 Deathshroud skill.

Elementalists give you 20 weapon skills at a time, plus moving into an attunement in some cases has meaningful effects on its own. Necros effectively have 14 weapon skills at a time, counting the Death Shroud ones, plus pet skills for whichever minions you do use.

1. Unlock all your skills in all your weapon sets and attunements. “Good play” is beside the point until then.

2. Keep your heal at the default Glyph of Elemental Healing. Many people use that forever; those who switch only have good reason to do so at mid-high levels.

3. Make your first two utility skills Arcane Wave and Glyph of Lesser Elementals.

4. Use scepter/dagger as your first post-unlock weapon set. Your ideal rotation is:

A. Start in air. Use Ride the Lightning (#4) to gap-close with an enemy. Use #2 for quick damage and #3 for a blind. The order of these skills doesn’t matter.

B. Switch to Fire. Lay down #4 (Ring of Fire). Use #2 (Dragon’s Tooth), #3 (Phoenix), and Arcane Wave in any order. Set off #2 and #3 within the Ring of Fire as blast finishers (#2 is currently bugged, however, and doesn’t work) to stack Might, which adds a lot to your damage. Arcane Wave is a blast finisher too.

C. Switch to Earth. Set off #4 and #5 as further blast finishers (but actually your enemy will be dead already).

Refresh your #2 armor skill at some point while you’re in Earth.

D. After everything is dead, switch to Water so that your other attunements go on cooldown.

5. You can’t always have the ideal rotation, of course. Important variation include:

A. Switch to Water when you need to heal. This gives you regeneration from GoEH, as well as access to some weapon skills that heal and cure conditions.

B. Earth #3 is a blind.

C. Earth #1 is probably better at killing things than other #1 skills are.

Just the above is enough to get you up to Level 20, except that I haven’t talked about stats or traits. I’ll leave those to somebody else.

Air #1 numbers have never impressed me much.
And the bug is very annoying.

Fire #1 also burns.
Earth #1 also bleeds.
Water skills often have lame damage. It’s part of the concept.
Air #1 is just really, really stupid, especially as it’s bugged.

Drops are cheaper than crafted gear, usually, and the come with upgrade items. Just buy green gear or better for a few coppers over vendor price whenever you can, then sell it when you’re through with it.

You can even avoid repair bills that way; just sell the gear. I’ve been Level 80 for a quite a while, but one of my armor pieces is green …

Plenty of favorable posts about scepter/dagger in PvE. Just realize it can do a lot more DPS point-blank than ranged, both because of the skill mix and because of might stacking.

When you’re playing against live people, however, the slow-hitting nature of the big Fire skills can be problematic.

I think the best compromise is that she have two attunements she’s happy to be in, and switch beyond that only for healing or defense. My first thought is to go staff, planning to rely on mainly:

Fire #2, #3, #1 (unfortunately), #5 (for the fun of it)
Earth #2, #1, #5
Both Elemental Glyphs
Arcane Wave & Arcane Blast
The heal (let’s say Glyph of Lesser Elementals)

I leveled with that for a while, and it went pretty well.

Defensive/emergency skills available include Fire #4, Earth #3, Water #5, Water #3 with an Arcane Blast set off inside it.

Traits could include:

Water — condition clear (Cleansing Wave)
Arcane — arcane skill cooldown (Arcane Mastery)
Air — glyph cooldown (Quick Glyphs)
Earth — bleeding duration (Serrated Stones)
Fire — cooldown (Pyromancer’s Alacrity)
Earth — cooldown (Geomancer’s Alacrity)

The above list requires 80 trait points, so she could get any 5 of the 6.

I go 20/10/0/10/30.

My preferred PvE solo weapon set is S/D, which I play very much as melee/PBAoE. (And once Dragon’s Tooth is debugged with the intended fix, that will make the build just a little more point-blank yet than it was before.)

Why PBAoE? Because some of the skills and traits already are that by definition, and because Might stacking works better when everything goes off inside the Ring of Fire.

How PBAoE? Attunement switching to get back to Air for RtL, or just wait for mobs to run up to me (or otherwise gap close). If I have to walk over to them, I usually don’t bother, settling for what I can accomplish at range.

The skills I use in ordinary fights are the weapon skills, the heal, Arcane Wave, and sometimes Glyph of Lesser Elementals. The skills I hold back for tougher fights are my other utility (currently Glyph of Storms, to be used in Earth), Glyph of Elementals, and sometimes GoLE.

My preferred heal is GoEH, but I haven’t tested Ether Renewal.

My preferred fire traits are Internal Flame and Pyromancer’s Alacrity.

The 10 Air are strictly for Quick Glyphs.

The 10 Water is for the condition clear.

Arcane traits past Elemental Attunement are a mess right now, but I want the cooldown reduction, and boon extension is great too.

For gear I DON’T want to waste resources on precision, crit damage, or healing. Power is essential. I don’t have strong opinions on the tradeoffs between toughness, vitality, and condition damage.

The ideal rotation is RtL and the #2 and #3 Air skills in any order (I neglect Updraft and hate the #1) …

Followed by Fire/Ring of Fire, and in some order Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, and Arcane Wave …

… optionally followed by Fire Grab after the Might is stacked …

… followed by Earthquake and Churning Earth for more Might stack in the unlikely case anything is still alive …

… followed by refreshing the #2 skill in Earth for armor …

… followed by switching to Water for the passive heals, for any needed condition clear, and to keep cycling my attunements for Sigil of Battle. It’s also a fine place to be in case I didn’t see a ranged enemy and am still taking a beatdown, as I’d want to heal more seriously in that case.

In other fights I RtL with Fire still on cooldown, and go to Earth first, at the cost of some Might stacking. But it’s easier to refresh the armor that way, as Hurl might be needed as a prologue. Those times I’m more careful to use the #3 Earth blind while I’m there. Or, as these aren’t such ideal fights, they might be good times to pull out Glyph of Storms for the repeated blind and also some DPS.

I tend not to use #1 and #2 Water much, or — and this is an oversight — #4 Water either. I also forget to use Updraft as an escape when needed.

The elementals are ideal for DPS in Fire, not least because they help stack Might via blasts. Air is fine for single-target fights or, at the other extreme, when target switching will be so fast that being ranged changes some running around time. I also tend to get the smaller Air pet out when running in the hope of some extra Swiftness.

The big Water guy is the ultimate emergency summons, for his heal.

If I want tanks, I go with the Earth guys.

Since I play a fairly immobile style, I don’t care much about the little water guy’s chill.

You also can get PVT gear for karma — 42K each! — after some of the big event chains. I got two pieces of PVT armor after Arah, none after Melandru, making those the only two pieces I have.

But I think we probably all should be running AC explorable, for the Monk’s runes as well as for the armor.

For PvE, not much as changed in Scepter/Dagger, except that Dragon’s Tooth is outright bugged as a Blast Finisher now, reducing Might stacking, and will be a little harder to use for that purpose even when fixed.

That said, in PvE, I don’t see the need for Signet of Earth. I also use alternatives to Arcane Power, since when the full burst is off cooldown things die quickly anyway. And the idea of not having Arcane Wave in that build is … strange.

Scepter/Dagger is, more than ever, a PBAoE configuration. Almost all your big hitters either are PBAoE, or should be used at point-blank range in your Ring of Fire for Might stacking. And the exception, Fire Grab, has short range itself.

Whoops; good point! Sorry!

You seem to be assuming Lingering Elements isn’t bugged.

Anyhow, the importance of attunement cooldown relates in part to the planned playstyle. For example, I’m a very “standstill” player, so I don’t have the patience to bleed an enemy out with Stone Shards, so I need rapid cycling of attunements when I play Scepter/Dagger.

But Arcane aside, it’s probably better to trait for the actual traits than for the stat points. Many builds are light enough on condition removal that Cleansing is a really good idea. Quick Glyphs, Elemental Attunement, and the GoEH choice for Heal give a lot of Regeneration and/or Swiftness. Other combinations can also boost condition clears, regeneration, and speed.

For play-styles with a lot of dodging, vigor traits may be crucial.

And then there are traits that buff particular skill groups — Quick Glyphs (again), Blasting Staff, the aura traits, and so on.