Guild Wars 2

TBH I’m surprised JQ is still in t1. Most of the time I see commanders who don’t even talk. It’s kinda depressing.

I am extremely happy that the precursors dropped like they did. No, I didn’t get one. I am 100% okay with them doing this to help balance out the prices of the top end items. What’s the best way to stop bots from owning the market? Destroy the market so it becomes impossible to own. I’m okay with that again. They have always stated they want the market to be a buyer’s market, not a sellers market. This is probably the smartest, most awesome idea they could have come up with.

Sure, maybe you didn’t get one. But honestly, it’s better for all of us now that many of the people did. I think it’s creative problem solving. Do you have the right to be angry, possibly. Look at the greater good. Did it help fix the market—absolutely.

So all in all, I am pleased with how things turned out.

PS—Please do not make this into a complain fest. We have enough of those. How about some positive stuff this time around?

Stop crying and over stating your case. I’m glad anet does things slowly. I would really hate to think of a company that instantly caved into the demands of it’s customers. They make some small changes here and there and see how it plays out for awhile. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you can’t handle the small changes that are coming and going, then perhaps you should play a game that isn’t this new.

New game. Lots of changes. Sure change is hard, but I’m glad they are doing it with a sense of intelligence rather than knee jerk reactions.

Thanks

Daph, will you be working on another build, or has this broken your spirit? I would be really interested to see what you do! Thanks so far and in advance of your work.

I think it’s still amazing. I will still trait for it and use it. It’s versatile and will still condition the enemy for cripples, heal us, and do aoe fire damage. We’ll still have kitten near infinite vigor, so it’s not like we’re not going to be dodging often.

I think the removal of the “blast” is good. I think that the skill, in general, was too good and almost was required to be a complete build.

Guys, it’s just the blast. It still does damage, just not as much as it used to (or heal as much). If they didn’t get rid of the blast then I believe that they would have nerfed too many OTHER things to make it balanced…which would have nerfed those elementalists that don’t run 30 points arcana.

It’s a legit change that, in my opinion, was mostly warranted. Sure, I loved it—but it’s logical.

Shift=Dodge
Z,X,C,V= attunement
F= Use
Q, E, R, T Utilities
Extra Mouse button = Heal
1-5 Skills as usual
WASD= movement as usual

There are 2 large downfalls—
1. Cleansing them off in PvP (Biggest down side for pvp)
2. PvE conditions stack to a max duration or intensity. Once those stacks have been reached you get a very small fraction of your total condition length.

Conditions—As an ele—are still fantastic in most situations. I use them in PvP to make people blow cleanses early and THEN lay into them. It’s a rock paper scissors game even if they know how to play. Conditions can also be favorable if you are one who likes to hit and run (kiting around whilst they slowly die). This, most of the time, won’t kill them all that quickly, but when used properly and if you know your enemy it works out pretty well.

WvW—Using conditions in WvW is strange. In big fights it doesn’t work well because so many others get rid of conditions. They can be powerful, but rarely get full duration on targets.

PvE—Condition dmg is amazing—until you hit the 25 bleed cap and the 29sec burn cap. At that point your timers are getting pushed off by the next guy putting the same condition on. I think the condition balances need to be fixed a bit on PvE situations (Mass farming, champion fighting, and some dungeons).

Overall, however, I think the pros DO outweigh the cons. Mathmatically speaking, condition dmg builds should shine well—but the reasons above cause people to go with garaunteed damage builds (even though mitigated by armor). I love my condition build. Though it doesn’t have the bling like crit damage, its really fun to watch 15-18 stacks of bleed come of a target when they’re all yours! (2001 Condtion Damage with Corruption stacks).

Anet is between a rock and a hard place.

The comparison can be made between America and China with the imbalances of how China purposely manipulates it’s currency.

If Anet just increases the Gem to Gold exchange, then inflation would be through the roof and the markets would come screeching to a halt (Esspecially for those who are the most poor and unwilling to put real money into an exchange). As it is, the exchange rate for “chinese” currency gets you more bang for your buck.

Most of these botters and websites that sell gold, even worse, are over seas and cannot be touched because of extradition problems. How can ANET put a dent into illegal accounts like that when they have no real teeth to bite with?

In the end, only software upgrades can keep anet from floudering in this crazy inflation we have now. $1000 for a precursor weapon…that’s batkitten nuts.

Are we playing the same profession? I think ele underwater is amazing. We have blind, stun, teleport, and much more.

Our skill set is amazing underwater compared to every other class.

The only issue is the elites underwater. Everything else, imo, is pretty amazing.

There are those people out there that are dense. Either he’s a pretty new player or he’s covering his kitten so that he can bring in someone else (maybe that he knows).

But, even so, rangers would laugh at this comment. They complain almost as much as ele’s do about their damage!

Btw, you should probably edit your picture. Poor language is purposely blocked here. Names may cause an issue too.

Perhaps the whole situation isn’t working as intended. I’m sure changes like that would be announced. I’ll give anet some credit to their notes and, for the time being, believe that it’s a bug. Hopefully we can get some information from them one way or the other.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Elementalists having bad fire/ air traits and good water/ arcane traits has nothing to do with anet breaking stereotypes. The means to create power elementalists were designed and programmed by anet, but they need another balancing pass to be viable.

I was speaking generically with what ANET has been trying to do with breaking the “trinity”. I’m thinking more on a holistic game design sense.

NdranC.5107:

I personally think even though elementalist has a lot of versatility in their skills, they lack versatility in their builds. Every single build right now gets pigeon hole’d into water/earth bunker traits. When it comes to damage dealing we are a lot more glass and a lot less cannon compared to many of the other classes. I personally love the elementalist, but the side of me that is used to play cloth characters with big nukes doesn’t find a home with this class.

I don’t want to start comparing any class here to a generic term. Anet has worked hard to break the stereotypes. It’s just unfortunate that they are just creating new ones, instead of letting classes be fluid.

I agree the class has a learning curve that can put people off. I really do enjoy my elementalist. After readying about complaints some of it is a lack of hours played by the class, which shouldn’t make me look like an elitist. There’s alot of skills that take time to feel out—so naturally it’ll take longer to master. So far I agree.

My issue, as many see it, there are only a couple of truly successful builds. The word successful is pretty ambiguous, yes. You’ve stated the main reasons why ele is good and rough sometimes.

Why are there some classes you can literally just drop points in any trait/tree with many different options for gear and be successful, but we ele’s (for the most part) can’t?

I don’t want this to be another gripe. I love my ele and he’s a blast to play—I won’t be quitting him. I’m just curious as to why we can have the flexibility with skills, but not the traits/gear?

Hey, I love the game. I can have an opinion that doesn’t like the gambling atmostphere of the keys. You guys are asking people to stop having a voice, which is slightly hypocritical.

People are entitled to their opinions and voices. I can give criticism of a game I like, so hopefully it will be better for everyone.

And some don’t understand how the US government is has become so partisan. Sigh!

Ele has a few “roles” but can’t be played as cookie cutter as other professions.

Staff ele has great supporting skills. If you don’t want to support, pvp ele can be…challenging. I’ve played staff as to where I don’t necessarily heal, not do dmg, but I do annoy the hell out of people with slows, stuns, pushes, chills. Kiting like a boss is important. Staff has damage, but it requires to target to not be moving, or for you to place some amazing zones while kiting (my preference).

As it sounds, you like staff. It can be fun. The issue is a lack of up front damage sources that are direct target skills. That’s something your utility skills can make up for, to a certain degree.

Good luck to your play style, but know that staff won’t be blasting smarter players away quickly.

Most AoE skills, including boons, affect 5 targets.

Here’s the annoying thing, these auras that you give off don’t count with other traits that suggest “When giving a boon” or “When giving an aura”. It may just be a bug that I haven’t been proactive enough to look for on the bugs list.

Sadly the boon range can be an issue and I’m not sure how the priority of targets is listed. It’s likely that it’s targets closest to you, which I’ve noticed from my own experiences. (This can also include NPC’s).

I disagree with this glass cannon build. Here’s why.
1. A glass cannon ele can still be done “better” by other classes. Even if ele is your favorite flavor of the month, it starts to lose it’s luster if you compare the burst with other classes.

2. This build really only works 1v1. If, for any reason, someone happens to poke you—or comes right after killing someone—you’re mostly screwed. You don’t have the time to wait for CD’s to come back to rinse and repeat a cycle. Ele works best when you have time to play on the fly without any set “rotation”. The big burst skills just have long cooldowns that make chain fighting very difficult.

3. Defending in sPvP. Even skilled players make mistakes. Making a mistake with this build may mean you didn’t defend a point and you died before any support happens. Surviving, even if you kill slowly, is the difference between saving/winning a circle. Sure, you make instantly kill your enemies, but what if you fumble what you needed to do, or worse, my reason 2 comes into play and you don’t have the CD’s. You can’t sit there and survive for support, you fall over.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Is that generally how people land this?
rtl/updraft/BS

Any other tricks on this?

No, it’s not generally how it’s done, but it works great in pvp as a combo. In PvE it just takes some practice and “feeling” it. If you can’t feel your ele, you need to become more one with your computer. Do that and you’ll be balanced and happy.

I’ve seen so many of these threads it’s almost depressing. I’ve not posted much because I don’t want to be one of “those guys”. I’ve had tons of play time on my Elementalist and other classes. I’m pushing over 300 hours played on my ele.

In order to be “in your face” and do really amazing dps you have to be point blank. Simple as that. D/D is, in my opinion, the greatest of the weapon types if you’re looking for action and high stakes dps. It’s probably one of the best weapon skills sets of any class too in terms of fun. I love it. I do very well. But does that mean it’s perfect?

No, Elementalists are not perfect. They are not so broken they can’t be played. There are some quirks to their mechanics that won’t ever change and I’m thankful for (distance of weapons, 20 skills, no weapon swap). If every bug was fixed in our skills/traits I bet we’d feel a bit better about ourselves.

Our biggest issue, I believe, could be 1 or 2 reasons.
1: Not alot of active defensive skills. Staff has a couple, but would require a lame-duck enemy for most of them. D/D has a couple of knockdowns/push. Scepter has a blind. Focus has a couple of real defensive ideas. We have no blocks, few active defenses to save us. Even if we do defense stack (I do). Most classes have a nice defensive cooldowns without spending any points for utilities.
2. Alot of elementalist want to play glass cannon. That’s your play style and it’s legit glassy. Unfortunetly if players decide to go glass they don’t get cannon. I’m not saying we can’t push out dps, but other classes (maybe all classes?) get more cannon and less glass. If we had a higher base HP or Toughness I bet we’d be feeling a bit happier. It doesn’t make alot of sense that the lowest armor profession also has the lowest HP. I’m not sure what Anet was intending, however, so this is still just my opinion.

Elementalist—
You have to know fights ahead of time. I carry multiple sets of gear (armor and weapons) depending on the situation and play style the team will require. In order to really do well players need to know when to switch traits/skills/weapons more so than any other class. While I may play D/D as a main spec, I am more than willing to roll staff if the group requires. For a dungeon, if we have no melee I’ll roll D/D tank it up and switch up my traits so I get earthen armor at 50% and arcane shield at 25%. My utility skills are constantly changing (Exception is always having mist form) depending on the pve/pvp situation.

All in all, to be “good” at elementalist you really do need to be on top of your game, understand the finer points of combos/defenses. What I don’t understand is why ANET decided it had to be more difficult to be as good. I’d like to say I’m a god of elementalist, but it took alot work to understand my rolls.

You can always jump onto the wiki to see what you actually get from Condition damage, regens, rejuves, and the formulas assosiated with each if you’re looking for some harder number crunching. That might be the best bet there as I’m not sure people have posted much about the “NUMBERS OF ELE” and such. For dungeons I’ve noticed a huge increase in survivability with having both toughness and vitality. I usually go into earth for the toughness and vitality on the gear. Works out pretty well.

Combos—You can always do your own combos. Get a feel down for what you like to do in a rotation. As for your dungeon friends—they just need to pay attention to your fields, which isn’t something I’m sure everyone is doing yet.

MF won’t “feel” better. But you will get a few more items here and there. Even with pretty high MF you won’t see a difference and be jumping for joy. The MF bonuses are meant for long haul changes. If the drop chance is 1% and you have 100% magic find—you double the drop chance to 2%. Over the course of a week you could see real number changes that would be meaningful.

b)As for gathering/salvaging, I’m not sure. I’m curious too!

Just pretend that Erebus doesn’t say anything and continue. Try not to let his attempts to derail the conversation into “Ele is bad vs ele isn’t bad” again. Stick to the topic and people will be pleasant

On topic—I’m glad I can use some abilities while in mist form. If I couldn’t —it would be a bit awkward. Other classes have invulnerabilites that they can do things at the same time. I suspect it’s intended.

I’m with you. Most professions can just push in stats and do well. Elementalists have to know exactly what they need to do(stats and skills) to do well. Defense. Without it we feel a bit …dead.

The issue isn’t that the class is underpowered. The class is broken. Go look at all the broken skills. Fix the broken and I’m sure we’d be fine.

Earth is just the english translation of dirt/earth. Don’t need to be so literal with it.

I remapped most of my fuction skills to z,x,c,v respectively. Seems to have to worked out well so far.

Superior Sigil of Hydromancy does not work on Elementalist (Though it works with other classes). It normally wouldn’t be a class issue, but seeing as the bug only doesn’t work with Elementalists, I figured I’d put it here! It worked last Tuesday, but after the changes that happened mid last week things haven’t worked.

The conjured weapons are lack luster because they don’t have an “auto attack” between skills. They didn’t put enough utility to make up for the lack of dmg of those melee/ranged attacks that are missing.

My d/d set up is all about carrion. Some people suggest condition dmg is crap, but I love it. It’s mostly up to your preference.

But, just know, that all these gear answers will change with what skills you enjoy to use. Carrion is awesome if you almost always have a burn/bleed on the target. Knight is nice. It’s almost required to have some sort of defensive stat so you don’t feel all squishy. If you like being squishy, then go all out Zerker. TBH, there is no “wrong” answer with your gearing. Just be smart and work within your skill sets and play style. You’ll do lots of damage with all of them.

The point of all this is to get a good rotation with self combos. Do it right and these “harder to do” skill combinations are pretty powerful.

It depends on the mob I’m fighting. Orr creatures tend to take a little more work and veterans are fly by the seat of your pants type. Here’s a typical rotation I have. D/D with Hydromancy and Might sigils.

1. Drake’s breath
2. Fire Grab
3. Auto Attack (or Burning Speed through the target)
4. Ring of Fire
5. Attune to earth—Churning Earth (Area of Might)
6. Ring of Earth
7. Earthquake (or auto attack)
For longer Veterans—continue
8. Attune Water—Cone of Cold
9. Frozen Burst
10. Frost Aura
11. Cleansing wave perhaps…May as well!
12. Attune Wind—Lightning touch
13. Shocking Aura
14. Ride the Lightning
15. Updraft
16. Attune Fire—Burning speed and then repeat steps 1-16

After talking to some people in the guild I have a feeling my compy is running a bit behind. It’s a new build (not top of the line, but pretty economically saavy).

I can run everything at max…with 2 exceptions. FXAA and Supersampling. Without those 2 I’m running ~40-60 fps . Is there anyway I can run supersampling (cuz it’s pretty) with my current compy?

Board/Processor both intel—i7 3820 3.6 (3.8 factory oc) sandy bridge (ivy was expensive)
8g 2133 ram
560ti evga
And yes…an ancient 1t mechanical. SSD’s are still pricey.
Run the game at native typical wide screen 1920×1080

Yes, I know the 560ti isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s performance is still good. I have guild members suggesting their 440 is running it at more fps than I am…

I’m not clueless either, no virus, running backround programs, or heating problems. I could just OC the bugger, but I’m not sure that’d be in my best interest!

Your conclusion—can I even supersample/fxaa? I was looking some stuff up and the fxaa may work best with the 600 series. shrug What you guys think?