Well can’t hurt to keep a positive mindset and I think that is where one should be. I would like to actually see people post videos when they say Ele is good so the average joe like me can get better insight into playing better.
If we get buffed then so be it, but until then we have to play with the cards we’ve been dealt.
So I think what would be most helpful is someone doing a Youtube video of them playing “normally” and showing how the rewards scale down.
I was in Sparkfly Fen the other day when one person was complaining about only receiving a minimal amount of copper and xp for doing events. He asked everyone if they were experiencing the same problem but no one was. I played there for about 50 minutes and I didn’t experience this scaling issue.
The Devs might be thinking the same thing so I think it would be helpful to your cause if you youtube everything and show what “normal” playing is for you. You probably want to start with a fresh max XP event then show how it has been scaling down.
Churning Earth – While I love this skill, it’s practically a joke. It has a five second cast, and catching anyone in it is either pure luck or simple ignorance. It’s easy to interrupt, and dodging to avoid it is even easier (Especially considering you can regenerate a third of the endurance needed for a dodge during the cast time). You may think pairing it with lightning touch would be affective, but even with weakness on your target, they can just run out of the circle before you finish casting. I pair it with earthquake and arcane shield and hope that the person I’m fighting will both stay in range and fail to get three attacks off before he attempts to interrupt me. But even if the stars align and all of that happens, I still need it to crit for it to do a decent amount of damage. Oh, and it also recharges for its full 30 second cooldown when interrupted rather than the normal 4 seconds other skills receive.
I love churning earth as well and I pair it with lightning flash. So I’ll start to cast then Lightning Flash into the target or if they are coming to attack me I’ll Flash behind them.
D/D
Lighting – 4/2/3
Earth – 4/5 (lightning flash while channeling 5, behind target if they are attacking me, lightning flash to target if they are running away. Flash does not inturrupt 5 and it will go off around you) P.S. I use hydromancer sigil so between that and the stun from my lightning shield I land 5 very frequently.
Depends on the weapons you are using but across all weapons fire has the most dps spells.
I think if you made your gear Power/Condition then you’d be going between Fire/Earth. You would be using Staff or D/D because those two weapons sets have a large portion of their damage abilities being Condition based.
But if you went straight Power/Crit then Scepter/Dagger would be the way to go and Fire/Air will be your main DPS attunements.
Traits != damage. Going up into 30 fire is the most inefficient way to do more damage, you will do more damage if your Traits work together and generate combos via arcane wave.
Last night our server got hammered from both sides and we were totally out gunned, economy and firepower-wise. We defended the middle keep for as long as we could and when my friends rolled up, the scene was totally chaotic. Both opposing sides had gone from fighting us to fighting each other. It was a huge free for all melee and for the first time in a video game, I felt like I was in a battle you might read in scifi novels. Felt like the battle for Troy.
Compared to other classes Elementalist do a lot less direct damage, especially if you made a direct comparison to the ranger.
But they excel at AoE damage and AoE effects and this is what I think you need to play to as a staff elementalist. You also need to have a good balance of power and condition damage as well as survivability if you want to be offensive.
D/D is popular because it is the highest direct damage spec. But compared to other melee classes the damage is very very low. I’m not 100% sure on how to play D/D but the strength is in the mobility and not damage. So you probably should try to play toward that.
I play staff mostly and find ELE’s to be best at sPvP play when trying to keep people out of the capture zone. In fact ELE’s are pretty intimidating inside houses or small area’s because you have to eat their AoE. For WvW I go heavy condition and I find the ELE is pretty good at harassing keep defenders. Probably the best because of how much AoE damage we can throw onto the walls.
I don’t feel that ELE’s are meant to be played like a direct damage class like a ranger/thief because the damage is too low even if you stack everything into power. It is just too underwhelming compared to other damage classes. You need to play to it’s strengths.
