Guild Wars 2

I’m having the same issue, please reply here if you get it resolved!

Also, my experience is that elementalists use fields more than other classes you’ve played, so you might not have much experience with those. Learning how to pop all of your fields and when to use the right finisher is a big deal. Spend some time playing as a staff to learn the combos (E2->W4 is aoe frost armor, for example), I think support staff is better for group pve play than any other build.

Also I disagree with blackbeard: I do not think you need 3 cantrips for survivability while leveling. Flash is enough to deal with normal enemies, and I prefer signet of air for a mix of mobility and defense (the passive is 25% movespeed, and the active is an aoe blind that can be used while casting other abilities such as d/d E5) and arcane blast for another blast finisher. At low levels, you can even use arcane blast and arcane wave for lots of burst to move through trash enemies quickly.

edit: checked the actual names of the arcane skills. wave is the projectile and blast is the blast. i think i also used the wrong name earlier in this thread… shrug.

A few finer points to answer your questions:
You do, in general, need to wait for the cast time to end before doing the next ability — otherwise the first one will not finish.
This game uses an attack ‘queue’, so for example pressing 5 while you are still stomping the ground for E4 will cast 5 as soon as possible after the 4 is done.
If you are in a field while casting E5, the blast finisher happens at the START of the ability. So your F4 fire field should still be on the ground when you start, but it will probably fade before you finish casting E5. DONT PANIC! its fine that way, plus the 3 might stacks actually improve the damage on that ability.
You can also reduce your ‘downtime’ between abilities by swapping attunements early. To see this in action: start E5. swap attunement to anything else. Notice that you still finish casting the E5. If you do this with S/D, you can start E5 and cast A2A3 and then lightning flash next to your target before you even finish with the blast… i dont know why you would do that (well, the lightning flash part is obvious), but you can.

As for leveling… I think D/D should not be fighting more than 2 enemies at a time while leveling. In my opinion, S/D is better for leveling. Open with F2 before you aggro and you’re more likely to land it. Plus, you still have the F4 field for might stacks. In fact, you can get an insane amount of might stacks with S/D with this sequence: F4F2F3E4E5 (12 stacks) and toss an arcane wave in there for 3 more.

1. I’m really low in health and I’m engaged in a mob. My heal skill is on cooldown (and even when it isn’t it heals for very low amounts).
There are a few things about this situation:
turn off auto-acquire target. If you have no target and use ride the lightning (known as RTL or A4), you can escape quite easily from tough situations. A5 also knocks down your enemy and gives you swiftness, which can help escape other tricky situations.
Also, you should not be in this situation to begin with! the things that make ele’s strong are damage mitigation/avoidance (through protection and vigor) and constant small heals (through signet of restoration and regen). boon duration is important for keeping protection/vigor up, so i recommend maxing the arcane trait line. for heals, signet of restoration procs every time you do basically any action, including swapping attunement, dodging, and even activating traits like evasive arcana (arcane 13 iirc)

2. Engaged against a mix of ranged and melee mobs that are hitting me from 2 different angles, meaning I can only take one out and have to tank the damage from the other side.
As a melee, i’m sure you already realize that the best way to handle this is to clump them together for your cleave-type abilities to have maximum effect. So stand near the ranged and bring the melee around. When you over-aggro, you want to use your control abilities as best you can. E4 is an aoe stun, A5 is an aoe stun, A2 is aoe weakness, and W3 is aoe chill. W4 gives 10% damage reduction and applies chill as well. If you bite off more than you can chew, i recommend trying to kite in tiny circles and swapping attunements something like this:
Fire for F2(fire breath adds a LOT of burning). use your F3F5F4 skills if they are up(in that order it matters for the next point), they add good aoe damage.
After you finish F4, go to earth and hit E4,E5. both of those are blasts so you get 6 stacks of might. Swap to Air attunement afterwards, your A1 dps is more than E1 since it can cleave.
Use A4 to get yourself close to the ranged enemies at this point if you had to run around. use A5 once everyone is close to you again, and follow up with A2 for the weakness. Keep hitting A1 until fire attunement is ready.
Get to fire attune to reapply bleed with F2. If you need heals, go straight to water attune and use W4W5W2 (W4 is instant and can be cast while casting other abilities). If you do NOT need heals, do F3F4 if they are ready.
You should be able to last in water for a while, and W1 has enough range such that you do not need to facetank your melee enemies. Just wait for fire to come back up and repeat the whole process.

3. Just general “oh crap!” situation management.
lightning flash. seriously, this spell is amazing. armor of earth is also good, but lightning flash can save you from things like being knocked off a cliff, incoming boss fireballs, being knocked down in a giant fire aoe, the list goes on… basically it is my favorite “oh crap” button in any mmo, even though it doesnt have “take half damage” or “full heal” type effects.
Also with all of the water attunement and arcana traits that follow the formula of: “when swapping to water attunement, do X” my level 80 can heal something like 8k, remove 2 conditions, and have regen. I try to never use my heal signet active, which i kinda described earlier in point 1.

edit: tidying up a bit.

Alkron.1345:

Azure Prower.8701:

It’s before the frog boss checkpoint. Across the crocodile and turtle in the swamp. There’s a little shop hidden around a large tree stump.

I have not seen that one so I’ll have to check it out, thanks!

that is the slingshot, IIRC. the wallet is to your right, at the checkpoint BEFORE that one. it is fairly high up on the front-right corner of the area, and you need to jump across a flytrap to get there

dailies: ~30 per month in Feb and March = 60
monthlies: 10 per month in Feb March and April (if youre trying that hard for the cat tonic, you definitely did april’s already) = 30
total: 90.

HOWEVER!!!
When they added the ability to do “either” pvp or pve for your monthly 10, there was a bug. If you did the PvE monthly before march 26, then did the PvP one between march 26 and april 1 (and not earlier in the month), you could get credit a second time for the month. People who managed to do that could have 100 today, and others have a little more than a week to go.

Still having horrible lag spikes (latency, not video) during large events. I just got disconnected during a dragon event (specifically tequatl, but it happens at all of the major ones) and reconnected into the overflow. I was able to send chat to my party and guild without lag, but my skills were lagging – i was there for more than a minute without casting anything before I was kicked.

I imagine this is related to the server not properly handling the huge zerg of people at one event… but it certainly seems to happen more to me than to anyone else in my group of friends. Is there any guide or help offered so that i can avoid this lag?

Before i even start I need to say that I have had lag in large events since BEFORE the feb 26th patch re-kindled the farming of dragon bosses.

Whenever many players are nearby (i say many because i cannot quantify it. it is some time after culling sets in but before the need for an overflow or wvw queue), I am hit with tremendous amounts of lag. I believe it is server side: i can press an instant ability (such as attunement swap or arcane wave) and it will not activate for several minutes, often not going off until the event is over or i am dead. I do not drop so heavily in fps – numbers drop to the teens in a crowded event or keep fight, but never so low that the game is unplayable. Everything still moves on my screen and i can move my character around like normal, but none of my abilities do anything.

I also do not think it is related to my ISP because I do not experience these slowdowns in other applications. In one such instance, I was in skype with a friend while doing WvW. We were able to talk normally as my game began to lag up.

Because of how long it takes for my abilities to go through, i often miss getting credit for events. With the increased participation of the meta events and dragon events, it is very frustrating to watch a zone’s worth of people all get loot around me while i sit there waiting to cast my opening spell.

If anyone has a fix for this issue, or is having similar trouble, please respond. If this is a real ANet problem then we need to get their attention and fix this asap.

Pyrial.2917:

(snipped)
Two players of equal skill, you are at a disadvantage as per the items I’ve already discussed…so the “what” was justified.

I think his point is that he is not the best player out there, but he could survive the damage output of a similarly skilled D/D ele, to the point where it would be a draw.

I’ve had some VERY fun duels that last 4+minutes and are ultimately decided by one person missing a dodge and taking an extra hit or two, only to be ultimately worn down. I think my favorite such long duel was against a rifle+hammer warrior when i was support staff. Got him with an earth signet+lava font while my greater fire ele was up and his condition removal was down.

edit: just wanted to point out that i am also in the ‘definitely not the best’ category and neither is my warrior friend.

somsom.5201:

Force.5861:

far as i know, D/D use evasive arcana to proc an extra might aoe in ring of fire after going to earth for 4->5. they also want 30 arcane for faster attune swapping and boon duration.

D/D definitely does more damage than staff, but without aurashare it does not bring as much utility to the group. When pugging (for dungeons and large DEs) i find that my teammates often need my help removing conditions and healing… giving them vigor (and fury) with aurashare will not help if they are not using their dodges to begin with. With cleansing water (regen removes conditions) i can cleanse an absurd amount of conditions with staff water – something like 8 removals over 6 seconds with 30 water and 10 arcane. It is also possible to bodyblock some projectiles with the staff earth aura up to protect teammates, but that is a bit more situational than the condition removal.

Solo farming is slower with staff than dagger, particularly if you keep a support focused build, but i choose to save the respec cost and just stay staff 24/7 now.

i typically run a 10/0/10/30/20 build, taking armor of earth, cleansing water, and blasting staff. the fire is 10% fire attune damage to help damage contribution for solo/small group play.

No, and your build is the reason why. Staff can drop CRAZY numbers, especially when you synergize with firery greatsword. You are running a support staff build, which obviously will do less numbers than any kind of D/D setup. Try a serker setup with glyphs/arcane utilities and the synergy/dmg you will get from it is quite crazy.

Can you elaborate a little on that please? I dont see how FGS gets better for a staff than it would be for a D/D. I have tried a might-stack build with S/D and 30 fire (the might stacking one, not the field duration), and FGS in fire attune still gives might stacks. Just comparing the damage on the skills, i see D/D can get 100% burning uptime and staff cannot. dagger fire 1 and earth 1 both out-dps staff equivalents. Air and water in both specs do not have substantial sustained damage, or are at least outperformed by fire.

far as i know, D/D use evasive arcana to proc an extra might aoe in ring of fire after going to earth for 4→5. they also want 30 arcane for faster attune swapping and boon duration.

D/D definitely does more damage than staff, but without aurashare it does not bring as much utility to the group. When pugging (for dungeons and large DEs) i find that my teammates often need my help removing conditions and healing… giving them vigor (and fury) with aurashare will not help if they are not using their dodges to begin with. With cleansing water (regen removes conditions) i can cleanse an absurd amount of conditions with staff water – something like 8 removals over 6 seconds with 30 water and 10 arcane. It is also possible to bodyblock some projectiles with the staff earth aura up to protect teammates, but that is a bit more situational than the condition removal.

Solo farming is slower with staff than dagger, particularly if you keep a support focused build, but i choose to save the respec cost and just stay staff 24/7 now.

i typically run a 10/0/10/30/20 build, taking armor of earth, cleansing water, and blasting staff. the fire is 10% fire attune damage to help damage contribution for solo/small group play.

Ele was fun while leveling. I enjoyed being able to cycle through a bunch of abilities to kill an enemy. I felt clever when i figured out all of the might-stack build combos (with cantrips and sigil of battle, S/D can hit 25 stacks without help). But then I made some other classes and looked at their stats and capabilities.

I do not think my build is optimized, but if I unleash the full combo of my 25might build (using glass cannon gear) on an opponent in pvp it will not be enough to finish them. Then I have to strafe around trying to hit autoattacks for the next 30 seconds for my long cooldowns to line up again, 50 if i want the cantrips back for stability/might/teleport.

I compared this to my ranger. In pve, I send my pet out and aggro 2 or 3 mobs and use mainhand axe (bouncing attack on 1 and cone bleed on 2). I just stand still and wait while my autoattacks kill the enemy, then move on. In pvp i use shortbow and spam 1k crits from crossfire, with a swiftness and cripple to help kite. It is not as much fun, but in my experience it is a lot more effective.

I think this can all be summed up by saying that the ele skills 2-5 are the source of his damage, and 1 is filler. But other classes (ranger in particular, i also felt this way with guardian and warrior) have damage on #1, with 2-5 as utility to make sure that damage lands. This setup makes ele more fun, in my opinion, but less effective. Once we drop our long-cd 2-5 spells we have to sit and wait. (this part really only applies to scepter and dagger ele, since staff has pretty short cd’s for the primary damage sources)

wow this post got out of hand…. tldr; i think elementalist #1 skills are not a big enough part of their damage, but that is part of what makes them fun.

NerfedWar.8749:

Force.5861:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

this video demonstrates the moves my elementalist has and the voiceover helps explain my tenacity and my desire to not give up on my opponents.

...

you’ve linked to a Rick Astley music video...

Thanks for ruining it. You may also note the tone and contents of my video description.

@op: thanks for doing whatever fixed the shaky video. I dont upload to youtube, so i did not even realize that was ’a thing’. Like I said before, I am jealous of you getting the chance to have small fights in wvw. seems like the only action I ever find is with a zerg.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

this video demonstrates the moves my elementalist has and the voiceover helps explain my tenacity and my desire to not give up on my opponents.

I hope some of you take the time to watch and that it helps you enjoy the ele class.

@op: the shaky video detracts from the quality in my opinion. I also LOVE it when i get those small skirmishes in wvw, but too often it feels like 20v20 aoe spamfests.

delmarqo.5038:

Air

1. Air4: Ride the Lightning
2. Air5: Updraft

Switch to Fire- Elemental Attunement grants 3 Might

1. Utility: Armor of Earth (Spell Singer grants 3 Might)
2. Fire4: Ring of Fire
3. Utility: Arcane Wave
4. Fire2: Dragon’s Tooth
5. Fire3: Phoenix
6. Utility: Cleansing Fire (Spell Singer grants 3 Might, plus I’ve probably gotten hit with effects by now)

Switch to Earth- Elemental Attunement grants Protection

1. Earth4: Earthquake
2. Earth5: Churning Earth?

A few notes:
-Elemental attunement only gives 1 (you said 3 at one point by mistake)
-While in air and doing RTL at your target, you might as well slap your 2 and 3 in there because they can be cast while doing RTL.
-There are 2 chains to use in S/D fire – 432 or 234. They have different uses, so i’ll explain:
In pvp your target will move and avoid some hits. This is where you use ‘234’. lets assume they are good and they will avoid as much as possible. Once you updraft, you only have a small window to hit your damage before they get up, so you want to get that DT out as fast as possible. Then phoenix is harder to avoid, and ring is near-instant so missing that is your own fault. It will not give all the might stacks, but it is better to actually hit those abilities than miss and get 6 might stacks.

‘432’ is for pve. you have the ring out right away so you get all the might stacks. phoenix is still fairly easy to land, and DT hits while the enemy is stunned from earth 4 – this chain still locks them down for the DT hit, gives you the full might stacks, but is not a 100% guaranteed DT.

As someone mentioned, search the TP for a sigil of battle.

oh and you can only have 1 sigil that works on weapon swap (attunement swap for us). so dont bother buying 2 of those.

Re: churning earth and combo fields

Your blast finisher can only ever be inside one field. If the spell had 0 cast time and had the same animation time as it does now, it would still be possible to fit one combo field after youre done casting to combo it.

You can change attunement mid-cast and finish casting the previous spell. As an example, equip a scepter and start arc lightning. Then change to water, and notice that arc lightning is still going off but you have soothing mist/cleansing waves etc. This can be useful if someone blinds or weakens you during churning earth.

So if you have no delay from when you finish casting eruption, then it removes the ability to self combo. BUT if you only remove the cast time but leave the delay, then it is essentially the same as it is now, only with less time to press the buttons. At even a medium level of skill I think that removing the cast time and maintaining the same animation time would not prevent self-combo’ing. Removing the cast time and keeping the same total time would not reduce the dps of this single skill, but it would free up more time for casting other skills and will leave just as much time to combo with. Either of those changes would be helpful.

Actually, here is a scenario for how staff earth could work better:
i do not know the exact value, but for now ill assume that eruption takes 1sec to cast and 1sec to animate.
Change the skill to be instant cast (can even be done while other spells are being cast) with a 2sec animation.
Throw down an eruption and a unstable ground (or shockwave) on an enemy to cripple or root them.
then you can put your combo field down after the slow/root is applied in order to get your might or heal from the blast.
If the spells worked like this, a skilled player could use his abilities to self combo while still keeping an enemy controlled in the eruption damage.

some more tips on this:
1. there are 3 different rune sets that give +20% might duration for having 2 runes. Instead of taking 6 of one type, consider using 2 each of those 3 and speccing 30 points in arcane for extra duration on your might stack.
2. use a sigil of battle to get 3 more stacks (18 now) when you swap attunements *in combat* (so make sure you start the fight outside of fire for greatest effect. i like lightning for skills 2+3)
3. use the arcane trait that gives a buff on attunement - you get 1 stack (19 total) from going to fire at the start of the fight (as suggested above)
4. grab 2 cantrips and the fire trait which gives 3 stacks of might (25 total). i suggest armor of earth for stability (use it immediately when you get to fire) and lightning flash to reposition while you are casting churning earth (as long as you start casting inside the fire field, you will get the might when the cast ends)

Some extra notes:
the churning earth might stacks are applied when churning earth explodes. I have not tested if these stacks affect the spell or not.
I suggest doing phoenix *before* DT because the earth4 will stun them in place for the DT to land.
With my suggestions, only 1 of the extra 10 might stacks is aoe. If you want more aoe might to help your group, take evasive arcana and add a dodge between earth4 and 5. This takes time and i often miss the last stacks of might on earth5, so i do not think it is worthwhile.

editted to remove formatting

I believe that is how it used to work back in beta – churning earth was a channeled spell with tiers that after 1,2,3 sec it got stronger.

Note that some blast finishers can use combo fields in strange ways. Dragon tooth can be cast from inside ring of fire to a location outside, and you get the stacks. Churning earth can be started in a ring of fire and even if the ring ends .1 seconds later, you will still get the might when churning earth goes off.

I am currently playing with a might-stacking build using S/D, a might on swap sigil (forgot the name), 30 in arcane and 2 each of the 3 might rune sets (total +90% might duration). combo goes L2L3F4F3F2E4E5 with an arcane wave and 2 cantrips in there since all of them are instant. 15 might from blast finishers in the fire field, 1 from attuning to fire (trait), 6 from cantrips-give-might trait, 3 from sigil. boom 25 stacks. Anything left alive gets quickly killed by bleeds since i remain in earth with all those stacks helping condition damage.

My point in posting all of this here is that speeding up these times would make that whole combo flow much faster. I do not have trouble dieing in that short time – i do use armor of earth and gain protection when i swap to earth – but that is only for PvE. If i try this same combo in PvP the enemy does not stand still long enough for me to hit them with DT or phoenix, and i need lightning flash to land my churning earth. As it stands right now, my combo is excellent in pve and horrible in pvp simply because of how different the movement of your opponent is. My opinion is that we would be appropriately strong in pvp if we could land whole combos like this in less time than we do now, but I do not know exactly how much less it should be. I strongly agree with OP that changing dragon’s tooth will be a good start.

tl,dr;
ele can easily get 25 might stacks, dragons tooth is too slow, pve and pvp balance is not equal.

I guess the question is whether you play to earn glory and ranks, or you play to win matches. Holding a point by yourself all game (occasionally dieing when 3+ come to take it) means your team has a significant advantage in score towards winning the match.

My point in bringing this up is that the glory you earn does not reflect how much you contributed to winning a match.

Here are some more examples:
If an opponent and i sit in a corner and trade capping one point (collusion to farm glory) to get 350 glory and my team wins, i would get an extra 350 glory according to this proposed idea. That is an extreme case of abusing, but it highlights one way that the current scoring is flawed (once you capture a point, it is more valuable to give it away than to defend it).

Another example is that as an elementalist I can easily kite 2 players and drag them around the map (assuming their tunnelvision allows me to). If i can bring a match from 8v8 to 6v7, I am undoubtedly helping my team. It is possible for me to get 0 points in a match despite having been an important part in our victory.

edit:
After re-reading the first part i wrote, i realize one very important point. “whether you play to earn glory and ranks, or you play to win matches”. These should not EVER be differing goals. You should earn glory by doing the things that help you win a match, then be rewarded something extra for succeeding.

tyhanon.6587:

the bottom line is if you performed well, you get rewarded. if you don’t perform well, your not rewarded, regardless of the outcome.

I strongly disagree with you there. the glory points you get are not indicative of playing well. If 7 people on my team zerg back and forth across the map killing all the enemies they see and I guard one point the whole game, guess who gets more glory. Yep. I get 10 for capping the point and 0 for kills because they realize my tankykitten wont die before help arrives, so they run. It takes 2 kills for that zerg to get my score, and they will no doubt get more points for attacking and capping points once everyone is dead, even if those points get re-capped 15 seconds later. doubling the glory earned will provide me (and everyone else) with incentive to play mindlessly with the zerg mentality.

When using magnetic grasp and burning retreat, the character’s movespeed is effected by cripple and swiftness. This can make for some annoyingly slow grasps but is mostly an issue for burning retreat. The tooltip wording and the fact that you evade made me think the skill is supposed to be a normal dodge which leaves burn.

Also, the Ride the Lightning and Arc Lightning bugs – not always moving to your target, and sticking on your target’s dead corpse – are frustrating enough to warrant being repeated. They have pretty major implications in pvp.

With S/D combo if i cast fire ring then dragon’s tooth, i get the 3might when i finish the cast of dragons tooth NOT when the tooth lands. Also the combo happens if I am in the field, not the tooth. This may be intended.