Guild Wars 2

I look for a sense of accomplishment because my job gives me no measurable sense of progress. I get pretty bent out of shape if I spend an entire night losing and never win a match because I get Courtyard multiple times in a row or I go up against premades. It makes me want to quit the game.

However, I come back mostly because the sPvP feels so amazing. The animations, dodging, build diversity (in some professions), and depth of play are appealing to me. I also stick with it because I have a cool guild—even though I almost never do anything with them because they’re mostly east coast and I’m west.

I also feel like the community is strong and I like guys like Phantaram, Rom, Nos, FiveGuage, and Caed. Honestly, it’s usually those guys in the tournaments that reignite my interest. But I do put the game down quite often. Tonight, in fact, I think I may do just that.

Please use the map voting system to vote Courtyard completely out of the game. It is the most infuriating map I’ve ever experienced in any game. It’s grossly skewed toward specific classes and builds and doesn’t fit even somewhat closely with the other formats. Every time I’ve played it, it’s reduced to spawn camping. There is no strategy or tug-of-war, it is always somewhere near 0 – 475. Please remove it.

All those classes have access to stealth and you probably have autotargeting enabled. If your opponent goes into stealth, it drops target. Then, with autotarget enabled, you instantly switch targets and begin targeting turret, pet, or another player.

Chaith.8256:

This is for people who claim Solo Queue unranked is not an option:

From my perspective, it depends on mindset. Are you a gapfiller or are you the guy that’s going to be rocking it solo and pulling your team ahead? Don’t be a victim.

Unranked queue is easily dominated by experienced solo queuers. All I can offer as an insight is my personal experiences. I’ve played 152 unranked games, 90% of those being solo, and I’ve won 124 of those games for an 81.5% winrate. Playing a combination of my Engineer main and Warrior alt using this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJARSjEdUFaZIehQKaAggyYDEAHD8MQ9Zc7bPA-TZBFwAFuAAOOEAl2foaZAAPBAA

I’ve only encountered a handful (<5) of games where I faced a 5 man premade on Teamspeak who my team was permanently in the downed state against. It took the wind out of my sails pretty fast but it’s almost never that I can’t make a difference as an experienced solo player.

The rest of the games it was often:

• 5 Solo players vs. 5 Solo players, kind of uncommon though.
• A duo queue vs. trio queue. Very common.
• 5 solo players vs. a quad queue. This matchup happened a fair bit, but on a team of all solo queue players, I’ve stomped more than a fair share of quad queue enemies.

Use strong builds as starting points, master a profession, do all in your power to push your team ahead before you become a victim of perceived matchmaking and declare solo queuing as unplayable.

My problem is ranked. I do great in unranked as a solo player, but in ranked, I’ve lost four games in a row in complete blow-outs and I’m afraid to queue again. I’ve never lost so hard and I usually feel like I can influence a match. In those matches, it was laughable. This is a pretty slim sampling, but it was enough that I was discouraged at the outset from solo queuing again.

And I hate Courtyard in all formats. It’s stupid chaos.

In general, I think there should be a certain amount of grace period time between DCs, as well as a max number of times a DC can occur in a single match, before negative consequences result.

Cele amulet needs some tweaking, just because it enables other professions (engi specifically) to avoid the need to specialize. It enables a player to reach a new stat base, across the board, that can be built on in multiple directions (healing, condi, power, crit) rather than just one or two.

I, like others, realized a long time ago that Elementalist needed those cele stats to become competitive (especially at the lower levels). The profession suffers form some combination of low health, low toughness, or low damage without this one amulet. It makes the skill ‘floor’ very high. The cele amulet lowers that skill floor, but it enables pro players to reach an even higher skill ceiling, which outperforms others.

I believe that, like the 30 in Arcana, the celestial amulet is a requirement for ele to function properly because the base stats are too low to begin with. To compensate, ele has been given almost ridiculous traits, which end up feeling “OP” in combination with the cele amulet.

Answering my own question here. Yes, it does work on turrets.

Signet of the Locust can hit up to five targets and the player receives healing for each target. My question is, does this also draw health from turrets if you’re using it on, say, a turret engineer?

I’m not somewhere that I can access the game at the moment or I’d test it myself, but I figure that one of you on the forums might either know the answer, or be willing to put it to the test. Appreciate your responses.

Signet of the Locust
Passive: You run 25% faster.
Active: Steal health from nearby foes.
Damage: 160
Healing: 932 (0.24)
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 480

The guide is a bit old, but check it out: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-7-15-13/first

This was one of the best D/D eles I’d seen.

keenlam.4753:

Magusaero.5740:

I didn’t realize that Arcane Power didn’t trigger additional vulnerability—that seems odd. It does trigger on each hit for the Elemental Surge trait (Based on your current attunement, arcane skills cause a condition to foes that they hit). I wonder if it’s a bug.

Fixed in this latest patch (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-21-2014)

Elementalist
Arcane Power: Fixed a bug that caused attacks enhanced by this skill to only inflict one stack of vulnerability with Shard of Ice.

Awesome! I wonder if they read our posts here.

Elementalist Elements: Element of Fire, Element of Water, Element of Air, Element of Earth, and Element of Surprise.

keenlam.4753:

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback.
I just have some questions
Would a staff build be still viable without going 4pts into Arcana and grabbing Elemental Attunement trait?

If the answer is yes, then can you guys comment on what I came up with below:

1) This is based on Magusaero’s approach to conjured weapons: Link to build
With 25 might stacks (which u can easily achieve in this build), Flame Axe AA hits for around ~1k, and FGS AA hits for ~1.5kx4 = ~6k.

2) Keeping the Meteor-Nado 1-trick pony from my original build but supercharging it further (because it’s fun and it wreck faces xD): Link to build

Also, I noticed that Arcane Power only gets 1 stack of vulnerability per attack (using Shard of Ice trait in Water line), so thats 5 stacks in total (instead of 3×5 = 15 stacks). Is this a bug or intended?

PS: Sorry if I might have derailed this beautiful thread, if its the case, please PM me if u guys have any comment on the builds I just showed. Thank you so much.

I think your ideas are good. The only issue I see with jumping out of the arcana line is the loss of the shorter cooldown on attunement switching.

I didn’t realize that Arcane Power didn’t trigger additional vulnerability—that seems odd. It does trigger on each hit for the Elemental Surge trait (Based on your current attunement, arcane skills cause a condition to foes that they hit). I wonder if it’s a bug.

Keep the fun build ideas coming!

keenlam.4753:

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

keenlam.4753:

Hi Azilyi
Thanks for this great guide. Truly inspired me to try out staff ele and I’ve been constantly practicing the combos to improve my skills.

Awesome! And now with Sigil of Earth, there opens up a whole slough of new ones too

Very exciting indeed. I’ve been experimenting a lot based on your build since the patch, playing around with the new signet of earth and tornado.
Yes Meteornado combo got nerfed but its not the end of the world.

I’m trying to make full water (instead of full fire) ele that can actually kill people in pvp and I’d like your opinion on this build I’ve come up with. Other pro staff eles, feel free to comment as well.

Link to build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISdD23AuMArEGwCQI/6ULRBKfbXQA-TJxHwADeAAAuAAi2foYZAA

Now in your video, you said the defensive combo (earth + water) doesn’t deal much dmg but with this build I’ve been consistently getting total dmg of 4k+ (not counting the bleeds) from Eruption and Ice Spike. I use both Shockwave and Signet of Earth in the combo to trap the enemy more reliably.

It usually goes like this: Eruption + Unsteady Ground + Shockwave, switch to water, Frozen Ground + Ice Spike + Sig of Earth.
The signet will apply Vulnerability which in turn grants u the 20% dmg boost for both Eruption and Ice Spike as you are now Water attunement. If the enemy on low health, BTTH kicks in and thats another 20% dmg boost.

Another nice thing about this build is that with the new Tornado whirling out brutal bolts that inflict Vulnerability, Meteornado combo in this build is very devastating as well.
Meteor, switch to water, then Tornado for 20% dmg boost for both skills.

Please let me know what u think about this build and the effectiveness of these combos.
Thanks and cheers.

Your build might be interesting with FGS, since you can drop vulnerability on a target and then enjoy the increased damage associated with Piercing Shards (+20% dmg to vulnerable foes while in water attunement) with many more attacks. FSG also has much higher up-time than Tornado.

The problem is that the elite has a high CD and, with water attunement in staff there aren’t enough damaging abilities to pump out the damage and down a foe. If you used FGS and Axe, you might have enough outgoing damage while in water that you could be more effective.

I might also drop the signets in favor of other skills—in particular, Arcane Power (utility slot arcane ability that causes your next five attacks to deal critical damage), since it procs 3 stacks of vulnerability for every one of the next five attacks. That would end up being a stack of 15 vulnerability (15% increased damage), on top of every attack dealing critical damage, as well as enable the 20% added damage while in water. Taking this approach reduces your dependence on needing that immobilize on the signet—which is probably better considering the number of immobilization-breaking abilities out there.

There is merit in possibly considering Arcane Retribution in the arcane tree as well, since, at 75% health, it will proc another Arcane Power all over again, serving to increase pressure on your opponent.

Just my general thoughts after a few moments of looking at your build and trying to understand what your goal is.

I’d suggest something like this as a starting point: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISpDWzAuMAfEGwCQI/6ULRBKfbYQA-TJxHwADeAAAuAAi2foYZAA

Yes, please post more videos! I checked your YouTube every day for like three months hoping you’d post more. Glad to see you’ve jumped back into it!

Would love to have a sub forum here where we can see sPvP specific posts about our classes. It’s challenging, when you want to see posts about your class dealing with sPvP, but it’s lost in the mix with all the WvW and PvE posts.

Someone might already have suggested this, but I didn’t look too hard. And, I’m not ashamed to admit that I might be posting this in the wrong place.

Thanks!

You’re not alone. An app that allows for interaction with the game via an API, accessing traits, character profiles, achievements, (like an armory…) and guild chat would be awesome. Even more awesome would be access to the Trading Post via a mobile device. These elements, of course, are icing on the cake…and in-game content is likely Arena Net’s focus. I don’t blame them for taking that approach.

Eventually, as the game grows in popularity and makes more money, I’d speculate that resources will get allocated back to Arena Net to implement additional features, like an app. It would elevate this game in the eyes of MMO players significantly to have an additional means of access like that.

Let’s keep fingers crossed, and hope that this sort of thing is just around the corner.

While S/D has high end damage opportunity, it generally fails to deliver against experienced players (I will admit it hurts mesmers due to the high amount of AoE on clones). I find more success with D/D. Here’s a build I recommend trying to see how well D/D can function:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmKbwx5gjFAkCnEPowogIyDPUUMTOA-TsAA0CnICSFkLITQSds6M44UwkEA

This build utilizes the auras available, Water 4 Frost Aura, Air 3 Shocking Aura, Combo With Fire 4 Ring of Fire and Earth 3 Magnetic Grasp to create a Fire Aura, in conjuction with Zephir’s Boon and Elemental Shielding to consistently gain Fury, Swiftness, and Protection.

With Arcane Wave, you have instant access to Vigor with the Renewing Stamina trait.

15 points in Fire and 15 points in Air gives you passive damage on attunement swap from Sunspot and Electric Discharge while also giving you some increased damage output on Power Precision and Crit Damage.

The build still utilizes cantrips because I believe they’re an incredibly useful utility to overcome CC and keep you up. Luckily, the Spell Slinger trait in Fire gives you 3 stacks of Might for using a cantrip. Your runes give you a chance to add additional stacks of might every time you’re hit, and your runes benefit you with a 40% increase to Might duration, thereby keeping you stacked with lots of Might all the time.

Weapon swap gives you 100% crit chance and you have a 60% chance to strip a boon off your target on a critical. With antunement swap crits, Arcane Wave crit, and crits off your Fury, you should be able to strip a boon every ten seconds—cutting off a player from regeneration at critical moments.

You maintain the mobility of D/D, with some decent survivability provided by auras and cantrips, which makes you a serious threat.

As for a Scepter Dagger build, I’d say shoot for a build that utilizes Elemental Surge in the Arcana traits.

Based on attunement, arcane skills cause:
Fire: burning for 5 seconds
Water: chilled for 3 seconds
Air: blindness for 5 seconds
Earth: immobilized for 1 second

You get more for your money when using Arcane skills. Your Arcane skills become on-demand utilities to get the job done instead of just being a damage increase.

I haven’t tested this, but I’ve been told that using Arcane Power will cause your next five spells to trigger the Elemental Surge effects. Makes me think of using runes that prolong something like chill and then using Arcane Power to chill and defeat a player. I may try this out next time I jump online…

Nuithari.3728:

Magusaero.5740

Great build suggestion Nuithari. You probably already know this, but one of the great utilities to this build is the Elemental Surge bonus in earth attunement. It immobilizes for 1 second, which is usually the moment at which a skilled player will choose to dodge roll out of a channeled Churning Earth. If you time it right, you can immobilize at the end of your channel and either force a cooldown to break the immobilize or land the ability. I tried out a build very similar to this recently and experienced a lot of success with it. I liked it, but ultimately not as much as the cantrip build.

Thanks! I noticed I didn’t list the advantages of Elemental Surge ^^

• In Fire: The burning adds up to your burst. It’s really a big difference. I usually don’t stay around to clean the fight up when it’s on a side node. But the burning ticks on and makes the cleaning up easier for my team mates.
• In Air: Blind. I mostly use this for stomping so they miss their CC
• In Water you can chill. It’s great for chasing foes. Or keeping them away from the fight/node longer.
• Earth gives immobilize. indeed, the combination with Churning Earth is awesome. This also works on stealthed enemies!

I’m really enjoying this!

Using an arcane skill right before Fire Grab lands also guarantees burning on your target for maximum damage. This build, though not incredibly unique at first glance, is actually fairly nuanced and has many beneficial perks. It is definitely different from the usual play style, even if it’s not very different with respect to point distribution into traits.

Nuithari.3728:

Tbh, I think it’s more important to find a build that suits both your role in the team and your playstyle.
I still play D/D as I don’t really like S/D. I find the burst too dodgeable.

0/20/0/20/30 is not the normal D/D build. It’s very common for S/D. D/D mostly centers around 0/10/0/30/30, with some tweaks here and there.

I started with the normal Boon Duration Bunker build (daphoenix):
http://www.intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vl33;2B2-V015wM-Z0;9;59-TT;10;324A45A6o0;3sVYCqRnC4gFd
With this, you’ll hold your own, you can swap to Water XII for aura sharing if you want. Just don’t expect to kill a person fast.

Next, I added the arcanes to kill people a bit faster, while still keeping some survivability.
Also swapped to Divinity runes.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;0J0B2-U0c47N-Z0;9;59-TT;10;354B04ASR;4sV2DsV2D4BE

From there, I added 5 more in air from Water for Electric Discharge. This gives a bit more sustained damage as air with D/D is more of a stalling attunement :P
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;0J0B2-U0c47N-Z0;9;5E-OT;10;354-04ASR;4sV2DsV2D4BS

Right now, I’m playing around with this:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;0J0B2-U0c47N-Z0;9;59-TT;10;354B04BSR;4sV2DsV2D4BD
and it’s just awesome to play. While you have the 30 points in water back, without the cantrips, or the traits supporting it, the divinity runes, and the lack of EA, you are squishy. I’d even go as far as saying you’re glass, even with a 0/10/0/30/30 trait setup.
So the way of playing is very different from the original build I’ve starting with, I feel like I’m worth more for my team.

I hope you can see an evolution in these builds, and that would be my advice. Start with a build you know works, and tweek it to your (or your team’s) preferences.

Great build suggestion Nuithari. You probably already know this, but one of the great utilities to this build is the Elemental Surge bonus in earth attunement. It immobilizes for 1 second, which is usually the moment at which a skilled player will choose to dodge roll out of a channeled Churning Earth. If you time it right, you can immobilize at the end of your channel and either force a cooldown to break the immobilize or land the ability. I tried out a build very similar to this recently and experienced a lot of success with it. I liked it, but ultimately not as much as the cantrip build.

WoW simply made it so pets took around 75% less damage from AOE. This is because pets are too stupid to get out of AOE, and they don’t dodge…

As for the players that are too stupid to get out of AOE, I say, natural selection.

I hope Anet just nerfs damage to pets—that would remedy many of the reported issues.

Thrash above made some very good points. Consider going with a base of 10/10/10/10/10 and then building onto it as you see fit. Take Zephir’s Boon, take Elemental Atunement, and I recommend going further into arcane to get Lingering Elements. In Water, make sure you select to have catrips grant Fury and Vigor. Mess around with it and see how it works. I started with Runes of Earth for the increase to protection and the additional aura at 25% HP.

This was originally posted up by Woodenpotatoes on his YouTube channel. He was discussing a PvE build and it was picked up by a few of us in sPvP.

This build relies on getting in and getting out. You move quickly, with constant speed buffs. If you trait for it, you can dodge more with increased Vigor off crits. Get in, hit hard, get out, reset your HP and go back before they’ve had a chance to recover.

It’s a skill-based style, but once you master it, you can be pretty offensive.

Focus your efforts on positioning and landing those skills. Ele is the hardest class to play. High learning curve, but extremely powerful when played well. Learn to predict your opponent, work to engage and get out a the right times.

I’ll be trying this build and adapting it for sPvP to see how it works.