Guild Wars 2

To the people saying that staff is the highest damage weapon, perhaps, but that’s in a PvE setting. I think a lot of people here are discussing things that would increase the utility in some of the skills in PvP. Not saying it’s not viable in PvP, I generally exclusively use staff, but I can more than agree that some of the skills are terrible, especially in a PvP setting. Specifically, as mentioned above, Ice Spike, Lightning Surge, and Gust.

Someone suggested making Ice Spike a blast finisher, but that would allow elementalists to have access to up to five blast finishers and a water field in one build. Which… sounds like it could push healing past that of an engineers. (cast water 2, drop water 5, swap into earth, use earth 2, dodge, use arcane blast and arcane brilliance).

All Ice Spike really needs is a speed increase. It already applies 5 stacks of vulnerability. If it didn’t take like… 3 to 4 seconds to actually land, it would be a great way to maintain some damage when you swap into water to heal back up.

As for lightning surge, it’s really the same issue. If it were instant instead of a skill that takes a while to charge up, it would be great. They could even nerf the damage at that point and I’d be happy.

And gust just needs to be more reliable with connecting to it’s target Maybe if it were homing, idk… It just feels very limiting to have swapped into either of these attunements, have all of your other attunements on cooldown, and have every skill except these three semi-useless ones used up. At that point it’s sometimes better to autoattack and wait your cooldowns out.

Edit: to elaborate on what I said above, to those who don’t know, if you are in water and drop your Water 5, and then immediately swap to earth and drop earth 2, the blast finish will go off before the field disappears, thus giving another area heal).

This sounds like it would make things harder. In PvP I have a lot of fun playing a celestial staff elementalist, but unless I can CC my target so that they actually stay in my ground-targeted skills, it’s very hard to get any semblance of a “burst chain” off. This sounds like it would just increase that problem 10-fold. I personally think staff is in a great place in PvP as it is.

Power is so low in this build. I don’t see how taking even more power away from the build by choosing a settler’s amulet allows you to forego might stacking. I can’t deny it’s tankier, but as a DD cele ele you already have a fair amount of tank, great heals, and dish out plenty of damage even after the nerf, assuming you can stack might which isn’t very hard- it almost happens passively when you fight.

I guess if you wanted to use this to bunker points you could. But at that point you’d be better off playing staff, or hell, just swapping a class all together. The damage output is just too low with this. That’s not me talking out of my kitten based on assumptions, by the way, I’m commenting on this after playtesting it because I was curious. Personally, I enjoy builds that try to contest the meta and remain semi-viable.

Anyway, the damage over time isn’t substantial. I wasn’t ever getting outplayed, per-se, but I kept running from a lot of fights simply because I couldn’t kill the other person. I made it a point to try and not stack might with this build, to test your “throws out the idea of focusing on might stacks” comment. It won’t work. Even after I stacked might, the damage was just too low for me to feel useful.

As a DD ele, focusing on condition-based damage just isn’t very viable compared to the Cele alternative. Ignoring the fact that your sigils of Doom and Geomancy are inflicting conditions, a DD ele only has access to a few condis (also omitting utility skills).

Fire 2, 3, and 4 – burning
Water 1 – vulnerability
Water 3 and 4 – Chill
Air 2 – Weakness
Earth 1 2 and 5 – Bleeding
Earth 2 & 5 – Cripple
Earth 3 – immobilize

If you omit the conditions that do no damage, your access to condition damage comes from:

Fire 2 3 & 4
Earth 1 2 & 5 (also the dodge in earth attunement).

So you’ve got some bleeding, some burning, and some poison. That’s three conditions, and the speed at which you’re keeping them up can be negligible at best. Also, the runes in this build are only focusing on your burning damage & duration, which against some players can be avoided (especially since two of your burn skills are very visible, very large fields). Even by swapping the rune out to something that focuses solely on condition damage as opposed to power & burning could help boost it a lot.

Another note, you can only apply conditions in earth and fire attunements, but some of the best utility for a DD ele comes from the water and air attunements. Sure, your sigils MAY proc, depending on their cooldowns, but that in itself is a gamble. And like I mentioned earlier, DD just isn’t great for condis. I personally don’t play Scepter/? enough to verify, but I do seem to recall reading that Scepter/? is a particularly great weapon for condition builds on ele. Of course, by then, you might as well just run a fresh air burst build.

Anyway, just thought you might like some opinions from someone who took the time to playtest what you’re suggesting. I didn’t want to sound like I was coming across as rude, just wanted to share some things I came across with the build that fell flat.

In dungeons, I run staff elementalist, full zerker armor with runes of the scholar. I also run a trait setup that is a constant 6,2,0,0,2, with four extra free points which I move around to different spots in my build (sometimes 6,4,2,0,2, sometimes 6,6,0,0,2, and a couple others). Anyway, my point is that I run one of the squishiest builds in the game, and since I generally only play with one other person and my guild is very WvW based, the other three members in our party tend to be PUG’d. Since my friend plays a thief, most of the support I get from my party relies on the PUG members being supportive classes, and knowing what they are doing. And roughly 75% of the time, they don’t.

That being said, when I first got my Ele to 80, instead of easing my way into Zerker, I just dove in immediately, head first. For maybe the first three or four days I had a rough time with it, but you quickly learn how to survive and how to make your gameplay fun. Dodges, protection, damage mitigation, and some excellent heals with a combination of your water fields and three blast finishers (if using the arcane heal and blast utility) give you more wiggle room than you’d think. Plus, the damage output is very rewarding. That isn’t to say I still don’t die, I mean c’mon, if you’re playing an Ele you might as well expect to drop regularly, but I’m alive well more than I’m dead, and I can comfortably say I’m a competent player with the class, and never really feel like my downtime is a detriment to the team.

It helps if there is a guardian, the aegis they give to their teammates helps significantly, not to mention the other passive bonuses, but even without one it isn’t impossible to survive. Especially if you’re familiar with the dungeon you’re running, and are comfortable swapping utility skills and traits around between encounters based on what is optimal.

tl;dr – you’ll get better, just keep playing zerker. trail and error is an amazing tutor.

Just as a disclaimer before I begin, I’m hardly an expert on Guild Wars lore, so if I say anything that is outright incorrect please feel free to set me straight.

A while back I was reading up on Guild Wars & Guild Wars 2 lore, and I stumbled into a period where I became obsessed with learning about the Elder Dragons. Generally in video games, dragons tend to bore me immensely, but I feel like the way that they are protrayed in Guild Wars is especially intriguing. Not to mention, ArenaNet have done fantastic job at clearly displaying to the player just how powerful and destructive these guys can be. (Kralkatorrik created a scar in the map just by flying over it, ffs!)

As I read more, I found a bit about the Elder Dragons that really interested me. Apparently, the natural role of the Elder Dragons is to keep the magic of the world balanced. They go through these hibernation cycles, and awake periodically throughout history when the ley lines produce enough magic to entice them. Once they awake, they roam and destroy and wreak havoc, consuming that magic as they go about doing whatever they please. Then, once the world has been reduced to a low level of magic, they return to their slumber, for the cycle to begin anew. In a way, it almost seems like the universe created the Elder Dragons as a necessity so that magic could exist without running rampant, and swelling to the point of destroying the world by itself. (Note: The Elder Dragons consume magic and keep it in balance passively, almost by accident, and not intentionally.)

So, with that in mind, it brings me to my next point. We know that in the world there are six Elder Dragons. Primordus, Jormag, Zhaitan, Kralkatorrik, Mordremoth, and a currently unnamed, unknown sixth dragon that awoke in the Unending Ocean. In the personal story (sorry, spoilers) Zhaitan is killed. I also think it is safe to assume that by the end of the Heart of Thorns expansion, Mordremoth will most likely be killed as well. What sort of effects do you believe killing these Elder Dragons will have on the amount of magical energy that currently flows through the ley lines? If all of the dragons are killed, could it have any disastrous effects on the world, since the force that keeps magic in check will no longer exist?

It will be really interesting to me, because in future expansions, if ArenaNet keep this mechanic in mind, we could see bits where we have to find ways to deal with the Elder Dragon’s paths of destruction without killing them, as killing them could have even more adverse effects.

I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on this. Like I said, I’m not a huge lore-junkie (though I’m working on it), so perhaps this has already been addressed and I’ve simply missed it? If so, fill me in! The curiosity is overwhelming.

Hello all,

I’m currently looking for a small-sized guild (small being somewhere between five and twenty players) to devote my time to while I’m in-game. To give a bit about myself, I’ve played since early launch, consider myself relatively experienced, and tend to play on my Mesmer or my Ranger if I’m online. Most of my time is spent in WvW roaming on my own, and also in dungeons. I’m polite, generally quiet, and have played solo for a majority of my time with this game.

As for the guild, I’m not particularly picky. Like I mentioned above, I would like for it to be a smaller group that holds the intention of remaining small and tight-knit. The activities the guild participates in doesn’t really matter to me, as long as the group is active and constantly interacts with one another. A teamspeak (or similar program) server would also be very helpful. The only thing I’d request is the guild be LGBTQ friendly. I am of the homosexual persuasion which apparently matters to some people, and is directly related to why I left my previous guild.

I am more than willing to transfer servers, but I’m currently apart of Sorrow’s Furnace. If your guild is in another home server, just let me know and I’ll pop right over. Thanks so much for the help, hope to hear from you guys soon.