Guild Wars 2

This is pretty unfortunate, as I really enjoyed taking full advantage of that “feature”.

However I can see why it was done, as you could get to ledges that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to get to, or be able to jump gaps that you would otherwise not be able to get to or have to go around the long way.

Other similar skills, like Warrior’s GS Rush, were not able to do midair movement like RTL, which was quite imbalanced so it had to be looked at eventually, and tbh while I would have liked Rush to be changed to work like RTL, I’m not surprised it didn’t work out that way either.

As far as scepter goes, Stone Shards is really the only good one. The Lightning one is semi-good for tagging mobs. The fire one used to be good for being able to attack while not facing the mob, but they nerfed that. Water is absolute crap.

Nothing should be balanced around having to put 30 points into any trait line. Period.

Every Elementalist is already essentially forced to put at least 20 points into Arcane and this would only make things worse.

Elementalist dependance on the Arcane trait line needs to be reduced not increased.

@antartis and zietlogik, If they start stomping you right when you go down and start stomping you again right after they get up from getting knocked by hammer, then no Throw Hammer does not give you enough time to vengeance, however not everyone starts stomping right away and sometimes there are other things around that preventing them stomping right away or stomping the second time. Regardless it would be overpowered if Hammer was 100% chance to enter vengeance every time because with my spec I can down and kill anything not named Mesmer after getting up from a vengeance (traited for 100% rally). If Hammer meant I could get into vengeance every time I wouldn’t be getting killed at all.

It’s good how it is.

BishopX.6453:

because when you summon an elemental, the earth one is the weakest the fire one is CLEARLY the best so it all balances out in the end perhaps to make the stances equal?

I wouldn’t call any of the Elemental Summons clearly better or weaker than any of the other Elemental Summons. They just have different roles/niches. Fire is best when you need to put out heavy damage and don’t need to worry about it getting killed by attacks and aoes. Earth is best when your main focus is keeping mobs off of you or team mates. Air I’ve found to best in sPvP/Roaming WvW being fully ranged and providing swiftness and stuns, as well as some dungeon boss fights that are heavily anti melee. The water one chills and heals but I pretty much never use it, however I am sure others find it useful in some situations.

The above describes why I just don’t care enough. Yes, we can switch weapons (and traits) on the go, but it’s so obnoxious right now. An out of combat weapon swap will not break game balance, it will just make our lives simpler.

I’ll agree with Corian about Longbow/Rifle. The 2 weapons don’t have much synergy together, but work great in different types of content. Rifle being more single target oriented works great for sPvP, soloing, dungeon bosses, and WvW roaming. Longbow on the other hand is more AoE focused and works better for things like the dynamic events (the burst skill will tag everything) and WvW seiging.

I always run around with a Greatsword in 1 weapon slot but my other weapon regularily changes between Longbow, Rifle, and Axe/Warhorn depending on what I am doing.

Clearly you’ve never seen Elementalist’s downed state.

Warrior downed state is actually one of the best, mostly because of Vengeance, which is one of the best downed abilities there is. Most importantly Throw Hammer can give you the time you need to get into Vengeance. Yes, Hammer only works on 1 target, but honestly that’s fine, not everything is meant to be auto win.

Nah. We have 2 Elemental Summons and that is enough imo. Pets aren’t a focus of the Elementalist Class.

I wouldn’t say no to being able to directly control our pets, but we don’t need more of them.

Taikanaru.5746:

Mindshard.3572:

Hey noobdestroyer, know that 20% damage to knocked down super cool and strong trait you were using as an example to say eles are fine?

Yeah. Doesn’t work with updraft (blowback not KD, test and see), and you have nothing in earth that can do a big hit to take advantage of a 2 second KD. Your big hit is a 5 second cast.

Tip: Use Earthquake, immediately swap to fire/air then burn CDs. Swapping doesn’t cancel channeling.

This. Doing it this way will also trigger your Arcane Fury (which everyone should have traited) to add to your burst damage. Then you switch to Air if you have at least 15 points in Air so you can double Lightning Strike them, or Fire and pop them with Fire Grab or Phoenix. That’s how the trait is meant to be used, although I still don’t think it’s that great, at least it’s not worth putting 30 points into Air to get and Air already has alot of other good traits to pick up like Bolt to the Heart, Inscription, Quick Glyphs, Tempest Defense, and Zephyr’s Boon depending on your spec.

@ 0 healing power

Healing Signet – 5000 hp over 25 seconds
Mending – 5560 hp every 25 seconds + 2 conditions removed

Healing Signet with use @ 25 seconds over 50 second period – 9320 (10120 traited)
Mending over 50 seconds – 11120 hp and 4 conditions removed

Healing Signet over 30 seconds – 6000 hp
Stage 1 Healing Surge – 5880
Stage 2 Healing Surge – 6840
Stage 3 Healing Surge – 8440

The only way the Healing active would put the signet over the healing of the other 2 heals warriors get is if the fight actually calls for it’s use and it ends before the other heal in comparison would have recharged, and that’s not even taking into account their secondary effects. However that situation is far too specific and most times it just won’t play out that way for one reason or another and is usually just a last ditch effort to get a little bit of extra hp to give you the edge on a fight that is already going south. Also if fights are shorter than the listed durations the other heals will come out even further ahead.

Healing Signet is also greatly affected by poison, as you cannot really avoid having the poison affect it’s healing potential whereas with Mending or Healing Surge you can use ‘shake it off’ first before you pop your heal or wait for the poison to wear off and have your heal be entirely unaffected.

Now, I do use Healing Signet when grinding normal mobs in PvE, cause really nothing beats being able to completely ignore your hp as well as the precision bonus (I use the standard glass cannon gs spec for pve grinding), however whenever I am doing something where it matters (pvp or dungeons or whatever) I always switch out to a better heal.

I like the ideas the OP listed, though I wouldn’t really want to give it too much condition removal because that’s Mending’s thing, and each heal should be kept unique.

I think most of the issue with Healing Signet is that it’s active effect is being weighted too heavily when in reality it doesn’t help as much as they probably thought it would when it was designed.

Really what I would like to see would be making the active effect increase the amount of hp/sec you get from the passive effect (like double) without gutting it while it is on cooldown. Or make it only increase the passive by 50%ish but then have it immediately revert back to it’s normal passive healing when the active wears off instead of having a cooldown (but this might make it lose it’s signet status)

For longbow you really want to focus on the Burning and using your Burst skill as often as possible because other than FoF, Arcing Arrow, and your burst skill, Longbow is pretty lackluster damage for warriors. Burning benefits from 25% of your condition damage (which is high, every other condition gets less benefit) so you really want to maximize that. Assuming you are using Fan of Fire at point blank so all 3 shots hit and your Burst skill as often as possible you will have no problem keeping up your burning stack without investing in condition duration (although it certainly wouldn’t hurt). Keep in mind using Fan of Fire at point blank and keeping enemies in your combustive shot is very easy in PvE, but it’s not something I’d reccomend relying on in PvP.

I would use something like this Build.

-Shouts will keep your hp and adrenaline high thanks to inspiring and vigorous shouts.
-Perma Swiftness with Signet of Rage and Furious Speed. (to aid with kiting)
-Perma Fury with Signet of Rage and For Great Justice.
-5 stacks of might @ 90% duration with Signet of Rage, 3 stacks @ 100% duration, and another 3 stacks @ 80% duration with ‘for great justice’ averaging out to an extra 346.5 power and condition damage. (with potentially another 3 stacks if you time your Arcing Arrow properly on top of your Combustive Shot for a combo)
-+20% damage to burning and bleeding foes (easily maintained)
-16 seconds of aoe vigor/swiftness from warhorn, again to aid with kiting as well as group support.
-While not central to the design of the build, you will also have 27812 hp, which is a massive pool to work with so that you will have an easier time getting through bad situations and step back and kite them while you heal it off.

-You will have about 1819.5 condition damage to fuel your burning (assuming 25 stacks on your sigil, averaged might stacks, and carrion gear as shown in build (or up to 1963 with maximum might stacks from self)). Burning base damage is 328, with your condition damage that will be bumped up to 782.875 (818.75 at max personal might stacks)damage per tick, more than double. Furthermore your bleeds will be ticking at 133.475 per stack (precise strikes and sword)

Masternewbz is just a troll, he keeps posting the same threads and saying the same stuff over and over and you can sum up pretty much everything he says as “no u”.

I have a lvl 80 ele. I also have a lvl 80 warrior for comparison. I have 181 hours on my Ele and 323 hours across all characters. I have 100% world completion, have done sPvP, WvW, and Dungeons on my Ele. In all sense of the word ELEMENTALISTS ARE FINE, in everything except sPvP. I prefer my elementalist over my warrior for everything except sPvP, where my warrior is entirely head over shoulders better than my elementalist. However I would attribute alot of Elementalist’s difficulties in sPvP to their lack of quickness, which I’ve said before.

Now before you jump on me for saying Elementalists are fine, that does not mean there are certain things that I would not adjust, other than bug fixes, which have nothing to do with class balance. There are actually alot of things that I would tweak on the Elementalist (there are alot of things I would change about other classes as well), but that does not mean they are unplayable, which alot of people, especially Masternewbz, seem to think.

Since it was asked for

(traited forceful greatsword, anyone running a gs spec with half a brain will have this traited)

Hundred Blades = 6.4 secs.
Whirling attack = 8 secs.
Blade trail (the ranged weapon throw)= 12 secs.
Rush = 16 secs.
Bolas = 20 secs (16 secs w/ physical training)
Bull charge = 40 secs (32 secs w/ physical training)
Frenzy = 60 secs.

We already have out of combat weapon swapping. All we need is an out of combat weapon slot and hotkey. It’s entirely a QoL issue.

In combat weapon swapping on the other hand will not and should not happen.

I’d call bringing down the damage of Whirlpool a fix more than a nerf. By fixing it’s damage it opens up opportunities to buff our normal underwater damage (or lack thereof).

Progressively losing more and more faith about Anet being able to prioritize.

Party members? Sure.

Caliga Meshima.4768:

Just wanted to toss this out, but the crit value of the signet stacking can be achieved by one shout, For Great Justice.

You forgot to mention that the crit bonus from signet stacking STACKS with for great justice or any other source of fury.

Westley.4716:

Its an AoE/Support weapon because it was poorly designed and pigeonholed into that role. -.- Necros run staves and do plenty of damage. They also win 1v1s. They can also weapon swap.

Bow and Rifle warrior can weapon swap to close range weapons. Your analogy is invalid.

Elementalists do not have the luxury of weapon swap therefore our 4 attunements need to properly encompass the same potential advantages of swapping weapons to fill a variety of roles as the situation changes. The staff currently does not allow that. This needs addressed.

I didn’t say Staff doesn’t have it’s flaws, I personally don’t like the weapon at all, but that’s a personal preference and I choose to look at things objectively. But staff also has alot of utility advantages that other weapons and classes could only dream of, even factoring in weapon swap.

And really there is nothing wrong with my analogy, if you’re about to do a zerg type dynamic event or you’re sieging in WvW you have plenty of time to pull out your staff. Likewise if you’re just running around soloing or need better ST dmg for a boss fight you can swap weapons out of combat. It is never stated anywhere that you’re forced to only use the weapon you have equipped for everything.

Masternewbz.4953:

oh yeah, and where is my swaP?

broken class is broken

My response is in the first line of my previous post adressed to you.

MiniAchilles.4617:

No one running D/D for Dungeons? I plan too, is this a bad idea?

Alot of mechanics in dungeons are not melee friendly. As well as, just in general, mobs hitting hard as trucks limit the effectiveness of being pure melee.

Korgath.6581:

Westley.4716:

Korgath.6581:

[Not sure why you would want me to 1v1 someone with a staff. It’s obviously not built around 1v1 engagements, square peg in a round hole much?]

This is a problem. Having a really tough time right now thinking of any weapon combination on any other class that isn’t viable 1v1 if used skillfully enough. Even a guardian and necro can use staff to better results 1v1 than an Ele can. Sure, an Ele can keep itself alive 1v1 for as long as he needs to, usually, but that hardly wins fights if your opponents can just tank your abysmally pathetic damage…

Why is terrible 1v1 damage a problem when you a pick a weapon that’s all duration based aoe damage? The only thing terrible about it is people trying to use it for something it’s not intended for.

Yep. This.

Staff is an aoe/support weapon. Trying to 1v1 with a staff as well as a S/D or D/D is like saying a bow or rifle warrior should be able to melee as well as a GS warrior. All weapons have purposes, staff is not a ST dmg weapon.

I use scepter/dagger for everything. I love the pace/attack speed, the close/mid range nature, the utility (Knocks, blinds, healing), great offensive group support, and probably my favorite skill in the game, ride the lightning (despite it’s technical issues).

Sounds like you’re just bad and you’re jelly.

The only place I see elementalists truly lacking is sPvP, but with that said, the issue is less about us and more about some of the insane “gimmick” builds other classes can abuse. We are also only 1 of 2 classes (or 3 if you count Guardian which usually doesn’t carry tome of wrath) that lacks Quickness, the other being Necro (which isn’t too hot either surprise surprise). Quickness breaks alot of game balance, and while it might not be on the schedule right now, I do expect it to be adjusted in the future at some point in some way.

I don’t use Staff on my Elementalist, so I certainly have never felt forced into using it. My warrior certainly will drop normal trash mobs faster than my elementalist, but that isn’t everything, my warrior also finds itself significantly less useful to groups than my Elementalist and alot more squishy unable to do certain things that my Ele can do.

Masternewbz.4953:

they are underpowered. They suck in dungeons , they have to use staff as only viable build.

They underperform in PVE, they are fun in WvW …

WvW is the only thing they are good at, cuz of massive AOE dmg and healing, good escaping habilities … and they can hide in the crowd

No. Bad troll.

quote button not working again /eyeroll

@Zeus, my Elementalist has 100% world completion. Fall damage is not bad in this game, especially because of how fast you heal up out of combat. The only time fall damage is an issue is when it would 1 shot you, which is incredibly rare in this game as the majority of cliffs have a logical way down them, and I don’t consider being put out of my way doing it right. It’s a waste of a trait.

Mamousha.8549:

Hi guys, I have been playing as mesmer since the game came out and I want to start a new character. How are elementalists in pve and dungeons?

Elementalists have some of the best group support available for dungeons. Staff offers alot of aoe damage, aoe healing, and a multitude of combo fields which can set up more healing or other effects. Scepter/Dagger is more offense oriented and can give large might stacks to your group.

For PvE leveling, it’s all mostly the same really. Ele’s with perma swiftness and ride the lightning are the most mobile characters in the game which is very nice for leveling. D/D and S/D can kill at a respectable rate, I wouldn’t use staff for solo leveling though. If pushing more buttons than a class like a 2 button warrior concerns you though, then that might be an issue, but they will still be able to level just as fast. Ele’s are not for lazy people.

Galdethriel.7524:

I’m not sure what you mean; what have I never tried?

I just don’t really see the point of adding a weapon swap like this, at least not at the minute. It just seems like a shortcut to an already easy task. Just my opinion though.

1) Inventory space

2) detracts from immersion

3) simplifying a clunky system via shortcut key.

<— came from coh too, nice to see a fellow player that doesn’t rage all over this game.

Runspeed caps at 33% (swiftness speed). Runspeed buffs take the highest applied to your character.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

Arcana
Renewing Stamina - Personally I feel that this trait could do with a boost from 33% to 50% to allow Elementalists to stay in close combat more reliably because of dodges but once again it’s not needed

What is your crit chance? Renewing Stamina does not have an internal cooldown, so if you have a high crit chance it can stack up it’s duration very quickly. There have been sometimes when I will end a fight and mouse over my vigor boon and it will still have 40 seconds left on it.

Technically speaking, you just need to crit 3 times every 5 seconds to keep the buff up. (It also happens to work great with multi hit moves). It is essentially perma vigor in combat if you have sufficient crit.

Eicherjw.3926:

Remember, Zerg mob events + AOE damage = faster leveling.

Ring of Fire is exceptionally good at tagging mobs in events. As is Arcane Wave when it is up. Obviously everything in Staff as well, but it’s not necessary.

I’ve been taking a break from actively playing my elementalist after hitting 100% world completion. It has nothing to do with the elementalist as a class though. I’ve just been putting my time into leveling my thief and engineer, and I do sPvP on my warrior mainly. Ele will probably always be my main WvW character though (almost entirely because it’s the most mobile class in the game).

PvE wise, leveling Elementalist has been a much smoother ride than leveling my thief has been. Elementalists have alot of ways to get permaswiftness, and tbh the faster you can get around in a game like this, the faster you will level. I also noticed it being much easier to kill multiple mobs with my ele compared to my thief. Eles also have some of the best group support available for dungeons if that’s your kind of thing.

Level up with scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger (both are good, mostly it’s a preference thing). Get swiftness (I use quick glyphs+inscription with the glyph heal but there are other ways).

PvP is completely different though, and there I wouldn’t hesitate to say roll thief over ele for pvp, but the OP did not mention PvP, and Ele does just fine in PvE.

IMO, more than anything Fire Grab just needs it’s cd shortened, though I don’t see anything wrong with your suggestion either. It can be rather annoying when you pop your 45 second cd and you miss, even though it visually looks like it should have hit.

I wasn’t aware anyone actually used the reduce falling damage traits in other classes lol. The majority of falls in this game are manageable in 1 way or another, at least there aren’t enough to actually spend a trait on.

I kept the attunements as F1-F4, as I’m already used to having to reach for those keys having played aion. 1-5 weapon skills were kept the same as well. I chose to ignore shift/alt/crtl keybinds all together as they just aren’t necessary for this game and it’s nice not having to push multiple buttons at the same time (as horrible as that sounds).

Q = dodge
E = heal
TFG = utilities
Y = elite

Gaming keyboard/mouse isn’t even remotely necessary for this game.

Ryld.1340:

I honestly feel as if people are undervaluing how useful Evasive Arcana is.

Evasive Arcana is great, but it’s also something that you really need to build around (weapon choice, traits, and gear included) and as well as potentially adapt your playstyle (if you’re someone who naturally dodge rolls away from enemies instead of towards). There is a big difference between slapping Evasive Arcana onto your spec and maximizing it’s potential.

XodoK.8734:

As a catrip staff elementalist I decided to skip the Evasive arcana and pick up automatic Earth Armor at 50% hp for WvW instead. It has saved my butt so many times I could not even count. Plus it works well with my cantrip build.

Sort of off topic,

Does the Armor of Earth @ 50% hp trigger cantrip traits? Too lazy to test it.

@DesertRose, you missed the joke. Lazarast was saying everyone should have the same hp, which would make guardians incredibly OP, as right now they’re the most durable class while still in the lowest tier of hp. HP isn’t the only thing that constitutes survivability rating.

Now if only they would fix the the quote button not appearing.

@Lazarast, Sure everyone should have the same base hp.

Brb rerolling guardian.

I’d almost be more ok with them not balancing elementalists and telling us that they aren’t going to balance them, than them telling us nothing while we have to keep making blind shots in the dark as to what the actual state of the elementalist is in the minds of the developers.

It’s already pretty well known (I bring it up myself quite often on these forums). Actually, really everyone using S/D should know this, as it is the core of our dps when given the opportunity to use the chain. Also Arcane Wave should be used immediately after Ring of Fire so that it buffs the damage of DT and/or Phoenix.

edit: It should also be noted that the might it gives is AOE might, and is really nice for buffing the damage of your group’s melee dps (or even your elemental summons), it’s not just a self buff.

Water 5 needs to work like Warrior’s Spear 5. Which is essentially the same thing, except the Warrior charge is target based and will latch on to an enemy so it doesn’t require a wall/seafloor, it’s hilariously better.

Maybe I’ve just always been up against bad rangers, but I’ve never actually had one threaten me 1v1. They die really fast and don’t seem to put out a lot of damage and their downed state isn’t a whole lot better than our own.

@Elchulo: No. I’m not sure you realize how big of a change that would be.

Elementalist can be fixed just by doing some minor tweaks in key areas.
-Improving relevancy of certain traits that discourage attunement swapping.
-Reducing delay on high delay skills.
-Slightly reducing overly long cds.
-etc

I earned far more money on my ele than I ever did on my warrior. Although I did get 100% map completion on my ele (only really did map completion specific activities and events that coincided with hearts) and only ~50% map completion on my warrior (leveled up more via events and some crafting), so the money can be explained.

However if I leveled up my Ele and Warrior both in the exact same way (let’s say both going for 100% map completion) I don’t think I would have seen a big difference in available gold to spend.

Regardless I am still of the opinion that Waypoint fees should be greatly reduced. This isn’t an elementalist specific issue. At lower levels you can do a heart quest that will fund about 8-10 waypoint travel fees. At higher levels it’s nearly 1:1 heart quest gold:waypoint fees. This is a big issue.

Repair penalties should be kept the same, there should be a death penalty significant enough to discourage dieing (also condsider we don’t lose any xp for dieing). The only thing I might say in regards to an adjustment of repair fees would be a reduced fee in dungeons, but that could also be fixed by making dungeons revolve less around 1 shot mechanics.

Provided you have enough crit, Renewing Stamina (33% chance for vigor on crit) will give you more endurance than arcane energy. RS’s vigor buff lasts for 5 seconds and has no ICD so it stacks its duration very fast, it’s not uncommon for me to end a fight with 40 seconds of vigor running. The vigor will let you dodge twice as often fueling your Evasive Arcana.

GS cleaves like a boss. GS also really pulls ahead when you get to 40+ for forceful greatsword and slashing power. The traits available to GS users are just nuts.

MH axe is good too, but I could never get into the feel of it, just felt awkward at times.

Offhand warhorn is also really nice for the swiftness and vigor buffs, both of which are very valuable not even factoring that they buff allies as well.

Carrying a bow/rifle is important too, even if you don’t use it all the time. There are some occassions when you need to be ranged.

Halberd
Spear
Staff
Polearm
Javelin

Something along those lines.