hey – thought. make earth 2 (Eruption – going to edit that now, my bad. not playing atm.) work like so: 1¾cast 6 second recharge; Shake the ground until it erupts and damages foes. —-> press 2 again for instant finish.
This allows you to use it as your combo set-up, and me to use it as a burst of damage.
Good idea, but I’ll have switched attunements before needing to detonate. Not sure how it would work. Solid idea though.
Stale, okay… yeah, it was a bit condescending. My bad. It seems you are aware that Earth 2 is essential to set up blast finishers on your combos. Surely you can understand how I would think otherwise based on your suggestion? You may not agree that Area Healing / Area Frost Armor / Area Might / Area Swiftness is far superior than a bit of extra base damage/animation speed would be… But I would disagree. With Eruption, Arcane Blast and Evasive Arcana I can get 10+ stacks of might on myself in about 2 seconds, effectively increasing my damage output on ALL skills. So I would definitely NOT change Earth 2 because it is perfect as-is.
Carry on…
“Earthquake – Far, far too slow. The animation should be no more than one second, max.”…
Do you even play staff?
Nevermind that it’s called Eruption and not Earthquake, but you do realize that shortening the animation/execution time on this ability would literally decrease a Staff Elementalist’s effectiveness by no less than 1/3rd, right?
I’m not even going to say why. Think about it. If you can’t figure it out than I’m happy to tell you that you’ve been playing Staff Ele wrong this whole time and that once you unlock this mystery, you will instantly become a way better Elementalist.
Have a great day!
(Edit: Scrambles gets it)
I’ve been running staff since beta. I play around with D/D and S/D for a change of pace every once in a while, but I always come back to staff. If you want to burst down other professions with your leet deeps, don’t go staff… But if you want to have the best healing, control, and overall situation versatility of any profession in the game, I say L2Staff. Not only do I feel more than powerful enough solo… I am ESSENTIAL in group play. Yep, I get my kitten kicked by bursters… but my opinion is that shining in 90% of the game beats the tunnel vision of 1v1 scenarios that do nobody any good.
Trait: Evasive Arcana
Utility: Arcane Blast
Staff Skill: Eruption
Your topic is too confusing to elicit a yes or no answer. Rewrite it. Again. It still comes off as “Do you want more game modes?” and not “Should conquest be the only competitive game mode?”
I want more game modes. More variety is better. This game is never ever going e-sport, so we might as well err on the side of what will be the most fun overall.
Boon + Detriment =/= Boon
Boon Hate idea is not good because it makes boons a negative now. So I can imagine the crap storm a guardian will get for giving people boons etc.
Also if boons are too powerful then fix that don’t add another stupid mechanic to balance. Blizzard learned this lesson after years. It creates a circular bbalancing cycle. Want to nerf add X, Now X is too powerful we need to add Y to fix X. Y made Z too powerful add Q to mix etc.
This.
Professions that are currently counted on for group boon application will become hated on for boon application. It’s the stupidest puppy idea I’ve heard the devs throw out yet. It creates a stigma with one of the core mechanics of the game.
The topic title is self-explanatory.
As it stands now, the Staff Ele isn’t bad in WvW and PvE. I dare say it is the least played Ele weapon in sPvP however.
For the most part, D/D and S/D rule the game… I see so few Staff Eles and I often hear them referred to as “free kills”. While I don’t necessarily agree with the latter, it would be nice to see a bit more dynamicism added to the profession/weapon combo so that a Staff Ele can be seen as viable in any facet of the game. After watching yesterday’s SOTG, it would appear that Anet is trying to make more builds/combos viable, especially in regards to PvP.
The argument can be made that you can switch out to a different weapon depending on what you are doing, but most times that also requires a respec of traits/gear to be most effective. Also, it should be noted that Elementalists are unable to swap weapons, so by the very nature of their design it would seem that whatever weapon the Ele prefers SHOULD have viability in all facets of the game.
So let’s hear some thoughts!
My first idea would be something similar to what the devs are considering with scepter’s lightning arc in that certain auto-attacks with staff could hit multiple enemies.
Another would be the addition of more combo finishers integrated into our abilities, something similar (though not as OP) as when Evasive Arcana would proc a blast finish regardless of attunement.
To the OP…
This game isn’t for you.
Can you link the build you kicked my kitten with? :-P
Topic self-explanatory.
Build link and details please.
Just trying to catch up, haven’t D/D’ed in a while.
There are 3 threads on this issue right now (on first page).
I worry that the focus is divided.
Dejay, Valkyriez, and Deimos Tel Arin should get together and better pool their efforts.
The problem as “TheGuy” Pointed out is there are no gold sinks in pvp, if they add a gold creation machine they’d also have to add gold sinks and I’m not sure I like that idea at all.
I think the only way they could add gold incentives would be to create a system much lie the tournament ticket system, where no new tickets are created you just take the loser’s tickets i.e Bets on matches.
It’s easy enough to set the gold return rate much lower than that of PvE thus eliminating the need for a sink. Nobody wants to get rich in sPvP, we just want it to be worth SOMETHING outside of sPvP isolation.
Money and XP from sPvP.
Even at half the rate of PvE/WvW endeavors.
I’m now dedicated to keeping this thread alive.
This is important Anet… Pay attention.
I SECOND THIS!!!
Please please PLEASE make this happen Anet!
I have one character at level 80. I cannot bring myself to level up a second toon via PvE/WvW. It’s so flipping BORING.
From the beginning Anet has said we should be able to level up doing what we ENJOY… Well I enjoy sPvP, but I feel like I’m wasting my time there because I get no XP!!!
I would LOVE to level up my toons via sPvP and eventually be able to use them in WvW at max level.
Consider this Anet. It’s an easy thing to implement I’m sure. I’m baffled why this hasn’t already happened.
The fun thing with ele is that it’s such a complex class (mesmers as well) that every day I find something new I want to try or change. I’ve been playing ele since launch and mesmer shortly after. If you were immediately bored with ranger then I think warrior and guardian will not hold your attention. Thief is a boat load of fun once you hit lvl 80, especially in WvW (12k backstabs?!? yes please), but I just don’t find that it captures my attention because, at least for me it’s very “rinse and repeat” and I want a class that allows you to react to a situation… thief is more about molding a situation to fit your playstyle, Ele and Mesmer are about molding your playstyle to fit the situation.
Ele and Mesmer keep you coming back wondering if you could do this differently, or trait this slightly different, or put these two or three things together in a different way to change it up. “Just Smash A” builds and classes just aren’t for me, if they’re not for you either, then stick with ele till at least lvl 50 or 60, it starts getting oh so much better.
Having played every class pretty extensively in sPvP (thus playing around with several builds of each with all skills/traits/runes/etc. unlocked. I completely agree with Slim.
Elementalist is, to me, the most rewarding and fun class to play. Mesmer is 2nd. There’s just so much dynamic to the professions that all others fall short in comparison. This is my opinion, and I’m sure if you asked this question in each profession’s sub-forum, you’ll get a different answer… but I almost guarantee that if you master your Ele, you will find most if not all other professions to be somewhat boring in comparison.
I don’t really understand why they nerfed RTL. I never considered it even slightly OP. Okay, it’s a tad OP in the new Spirit Watch PvP map… but that’s it.
New map is great with the exception of a few professions’ fast-travel exploits I’m not very fond of. Other than that however, it’s one of my favorite maps to date. Keep up the good work Anet!
Cheers mate! I’m loving the new quick tPvP entry as well (though there are still a few kinks to be worked out).
Invul skills should drop it.
Overall though, I think fast-travel skills are just fine with the Orb.
The new map was the key to this patch. It’s opened up more viable builds. It’s things like new maps with new mechanics that’ll change the landscape, coupled with incremental updates to existing mechanics (like Warrior banners).
I’ve been running Hammer in tPvP and absolutely love it on the new map for point/orb denial, teamfights, and running the orb. Up until now, Hammer has been difficult to be useful in tPvP.
I don’t see more viable builds. I see the old kitten abused builds still and the ones with super mobility are dominating without a doubt. Rtl should either drop the orb or, for the sake of lyssa, be affect by movement speed skills. Such a broken skill to be invulnerable and dash away to safety.
Same with invulnerable skills with dropping the orb(which also should not be allowed to down people but thats another discussion)
/agree
@Michael he is somewhat wrong cause while rtl is not that unique in distance covered its still pretty fast and really unique in sence of not being affected by slows.
BUT other classes can ensure a long time of invuln aswell were you just wait for it to wear of before you start nuking them again.
You dont have to..run at the speed of lightning to lock an orb cap :P
Indeed you don’t! I actually prefer running this map with a staff build because it gives me better healing/protection and more control over the people trailing me when I have the orb. I can cap like a pro without RTL as can every other class if played smart… That’s somewhat beside the point of this post though. 1200 yards/units in 2 seconds WITH the orb in hand just doesn’t seem to fall in line intuitively with a mechanic that otherwise slows you to 40%. I really enjoy that it works this way and that swiftness is negated, but the entire handicap seems to get lost when certain travel abilities ignore what is otherwise a staple mechanic for the map. Again, this may be intended… but it certainly SEEMS to go against the rules of holding the orb.
Now I’m stretching, but here’s a balancing idea… When you get the orb, take away access to all skills/utilities except dodge. Make it fall on your teammates to protect you while you run it. Shrug.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to stop it (very improbable though), but there are few other instances in the entirety of GW2 where if you don’t do exactly the right thing at exactly the right time (which is what this would demand), that a cap is guaranteed. There’s no elbow room. Completely unforgiving. Maybe this is intentional… if so, fine. But I see what appears to big a gaping hole in scoring logic and have thus started a thread bringing attention to the issue.
If we ever let the enemy ele get the orb in a place where he can rtl to the node we have failed somewhere else. Those stairs force one route. Grenade engie’s, trap ranger’s, well necro’s do well on those stairs. Bait AoE early or corrupt it and knock/pull them off the stairs. Imobing before the rtl is a last minute save. My team’s 14-3 on the new map. Never lost to a team with a ele. Lost to three teams without a ele. We need a lot more time on this map to see if rtl is imba. My first impression was yes but it changed at about the 10th match.
This argument is logical and I agree. However, once the top of the steps are reached it’s gg with RTL. Waiting for above poster to cite every other class’s to do this.
Every class can do it, well maybe not necros but they can facetank 3 people easily.
RTL is 600 units per second for 2 seconds. Please enlighten me to each class’s ability to do this. I’m not disputing it, but am curious.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to stop it (very improbable though), but there are few other instances in the entirety of GW2 where if you don’t do exactly the right thing at exactly the right time (which is what this would demand), that a cap is guaranteed. There’s no elbow room. Completely unforgiving. Maybe this is intentional… if so, fine. But I see what appears to big a gaping hole in scoring logic and have thus started a thread bringing attention to the issue.
And if you somehow manage to snag me half-way to the cap (hasn’t happened yet, just theorizing) I’ll just mistform the remaining distance. Just too IMBA IMO.
And let’s be clear. I’m an Elementalist. I can and have used RTL to cap. I’m not making this argument because I feel I am underpowered on this map. I’m making this argument because I feel I am overpowered on this map, which in my opinion really kind of takes some of the joy away from winning a match… When I have the orb and can make it to line of sight of my cap… Cap is mine. Period. It’s not even a contest.
There are a handful of skills across all professions that cover the speed/distance as RTL. I reference RTL cuz I’m an Ele and I’m not as familiar with the others. The original sentiment stands though, these MASSIVE distance-jump abilities should be adjusted for this map. When someone with these abilities has the orb and is within sight of the capture point, there is next to nothing that can be done to stop them.
It’s my opinion that this breaks the map. Swiftness gets negated while holding orb, Mesmer port gets negated, there are probably a couple more that are negated as well that I don’t know about… so my point is: What good reason is there not to restrict any and all enhanced movement abilities while holding the orb? It seems very half-kittened to me.
^Even with UNLIMITED endurance/dodging you can still be burned down/aoe’ed/stunned/feared/condition damaged/etc. Dodging really isn’t an issue, never has been.
That being said, even with UNLIMITED dodging you would be moving at a fraction of the speed as RTL, etc. The issue here and the point of this post is that being able to cover half of your distance from orb to capture with the press of a button is ludicrous.
Swiftness doesn’t work while holding orb.
Vigor/Dodging can be debated but is nowhere near as cheap as RTL, etc.
The orb should negate all forms of fast-travel and invulnerability except dodge. Heck, I’d even be okay with seeing dodge negated (Though the speed benefits of dodging are negligible). My guess is that if you are defending skills like RTL while holding the orb, you either haven’t seen it (and thus don’t understand how map-breaking it is) or you don’t want Anet to take away your little cheat.
I LOVE the new map.
Was having a blast until I saw it so utterly exploited.
We still won. But broken is broken and stuff like that will ruin the map.
I can only speak from Ele perspective because I know/understand all the skills.
I’m sure other professions have similar exploits on this map. Those too should be addressed.
And to homeboy that said to save my QQ for problems that are making people quit… Anet has different teams devoted to different areas of the game. They have a team dedicated to sPvP. This seems to me to be one of the bigger problems to make it through with last patch regarding sPvP. So my QQ is warranted. Thanks. have a great day.
Ride The Lightning can traverse literally half the distance from Orb to Capture. How is that not broken? The moment an Ele can SEE their capture point, they can push a button and BE there. It’s broken.
This isn’t even a debate. It’s a fact.
Mesmer portal drops the orb when used.
So should Ride The Lightning, Teleport, Mist Form, etc.
And this is coming from someone who only play one profession… an Elementalist.
Please fix this. It is absolutely map-breaking.
i was
what you expect me to run everywhere?
screw that
Applauded for sincerity.
Regarding Conditions, I don’t necessarily mean condition DAMAGE… my spec has about zero condition damage to it. Rather I mean the conditions themselves making enemies weaker for all of your other attacks.
Ice Spike (Water 2) causes vulnerability, which increases all of your damage.
Frozen ground (Water 4) causes chill, which slows and causes longer casting recharge for enemies (slow is important for staff kiting multiple enemies)
Lightning Surge (Air 2) causes blindness. Nuff said.
Static field stuns, Stoning = weakness, Eruption = bleeding, etc. etc.
By cycling through your attunements and applying necessary conditions from all 4, you are significantly weakening your enemy while making your own attacks stronger.
But most importantly, it’s WAY less boring than sitting in 1 or 2 attunements.
Here is a copy/paste on the topic that I wrote up for a guildie… there might be a few things in here that don’t apply to your question, but the rest should cover it:
Attunement dancing is pivotal to playing Elementalist well.
Here is an exercise that I think will help you really get the feel for it. It utilizes the Staff (for the exercise… you’ll see why in a minute) but will help you immensely with your D/D game. Once you feel you’ve mastered this exercise, I think attunement dancing will be a lot more natural for you and will be applicable regardless of your weapon choice.
1. Go to the Heart of The Mists, grab a staff from the PvP Vendor, Grab the Energy sigil for your staff (The one that replenishes endurance on weapon swap).
2. Head over to the target/training dummies.
3. Trait for Evasive Arcana. (Do NOT grab the trait that increases your staff AOE field size… You want to keep the fields small for practice, it will force you to be more accurate).
4. Grab the Arcane Wave Utility Skill.
The whole point of this exercise is to set up your own combo fields and finish them. With a staff Ele, you have combo fields in 3 out of 4 of your attunements and the 4th attunement (Earth) is the one that is used to finish them. In order to successfully set up and finish your fields, you will be REQUIRED to dance between attunements, and the smaller AOE field (from not taking the trait to increase the size) means you will have to be accurate with both your field placement and positioning yourself to finish them.
Here are your combo FIELDS for each staff attunement and what a BLAST finisher will do to them (will be focusing on BLAST finishers due to importance of positioning and to keep a steady pace):
FIRE:
Lava Font (Area Might)
Burning Retreat (Area Might)
WATER:
Geyser (Area Healing)
Frozen Ground (Area Frost Armor)
Healing Rain (Area Healing)
AIR:
Static Field (Area Swiftness)
Here are you FINISHERS…
EARTH:
Stoning (Projectile Finisher… don’t worry about this one for now)
ERUPTION (THIS is what you’ll focus on most)
—Evasive Arcana: While attuned to Earth only, at the end of your dodge roll you will trigger a blast finisher!!!
And of course, Arcane Wave (Utility Skill). This is your “filler” blast finisher so you can keep things going even when your Earth attunement is on cooldown.
Ok, so in a nutshell you just want to blast finish as many fields across as many attunements as you can in as rapid succession as you can. There are a couple of ways to set this up…
1. Lay down ERUPTION first and then immediately switch to another attunement and lay down your combo field on top of eruption. If successful, your eruption will blast after you’ve put a field over top of it and you’ll get the effect. If you don’t nail it right away, keep at it… it gets easier. I can telegraph them now while running/strafing in the heat of battle and lay out an Eruption/Geyser heal ahead of a retreating ally so that it’s timed to blast as he/she hits it… it is an intensely gratifying feeling. Do this pre-Eruption combo with all of your fields so you get a sense for the timing involved, which attunements net which benefits, etc.
2. Lay down a FIELD first and then immediately switch to EARTH attunement and dodge-roll into your field, thus causing Evasive Arcana to trigger your blast finisher.
3. Lay down a FIELD first and then use Arcane Wave to finish it… this way you can save your Earth-switch for the next blast or if Earth is on CD.
Those are the 3 ways to finish a combo field with a staff Ele. With practice you will be able to pop a blast finisher on your own fields every few seconds. MOST IMPORTANTLY THOUGH you will have to dance between attunements to make this happen, which really is the whole point of this exercise… and if by chance you haven’t already become intimately acquainted with combo fields and finishers, this will go a long way in helping develop that awareness as well (keep in mind you can set up fields for others to finish and likewise can finish other people’s fields). You’ll also get very good at positioning and more accurately dodging.
Remember: You will have to be “in combat” with a training dummy for Evasive Arcana to proc. Also, don’t forget that Burning Retreat is a field! (Despite not being a circle).
The arsenal of combo fields are pretty much a staff Ele thing, but the fundamentals that you will hone in this exercise are important for any Ele to master. You won’t be worrying quite so much about fields/finishers as a D/D Ele, but even D/D can make use of them occasionally… mostly you will be an attunement dancing pro with great positioning and more tactical dodging skills.
Cheers mate!
-Moxie
I love staff. It’s not the most optimal single-target damage choice, but that’s why you round up 5-6 mobs at once to make up for it :-P
You really should never just sit in a single attunement. The other 3 may not be as damage focused, but they put conditions on your targets which add to your overall DPS.
As a staff Elementalist, I strongly suggest picking up Arcana Wave for utility, picking up the 30 point Evasive Arcana trait in Arcane, and using Eruption (Earth 3) to set up blast finishers.
Staff Eles are the absolute masters of setting up their own combo fields and self-finishing them, it’s my opinion that a staff Ele not constantly doing this is wasting a lot of their potential.
From what I read, the nerfs are minor and the buffs are great, so I’m with you, don’t know what all the complaining is about, except that it’s a change and no matter what the change is, someone will complain about it.
QFT.
Frost Aura buff alone = Gold
I was expecting D/D Eles to get eviscerated this patch based on all the cries of OP-ness (read that a couple of times and giggle). All in all I think the profession as a whole got buffed. I could see if the travel range of RTL got nerfed, but the C/D? Really? Was anyone actually spamming this every time it came off of cooldown? I sincerely doubt it.
personally i think with all the nerfs the other classes have received (to include yesterdays) elementalists are even stronger than they were 2 days ago despite the cooldowns and durations that were changed.
gotta say… could be worse…
Not to say there isnt a long way to go before this is “balanced” per se but its not completely broken like it was when they buried mesmers
I’m with ya. That change to Frost Armor… so good.
I’m sorry, but really? Increased C/D on RTL is really THAT much of a deal-breaker? Other than closing a gap or running away, why would you even NEED RTL? Change seem fine to me… we really ought to save our Ele whining for ACTUAL nerfs and not changes which barely affect gameplay at all.
“I just want to play as an exclusively air attuned, dual wielding elementalist…”
This is not and was never possible to begin with. The bare essential requirement for playing an Elementalist is to switch between all attunements, not doing so is like rolling a ranger and expecting your pet to do 100% of the work… it simply wasn’t designed that way.
“If you want to buff your team you can try some auramancer (30 water for giving auras to team, 20 in fire so you can use signets to give additional auras) and go for protect (10 earth) fury+swiftness (10 air)”.
I’ve played with this a bit with staff and it’s just not worth the Evasive Arcana tradeoff. For staff Ele I’d say 30 Arcane is almost necessary.
You may already know all this, but:
Blasting Staff trait to increase AOE circle size.
Auto-attacking in water attunement will lend some heals to your Guardian from distance while allowing you to reserve AOEs for ranged.
Save Arcane Wave for emergencies or quick double-blasts, start off laying down Eruption (Earth 2) and quick-switching attunements to lay your combo field on top of it. Eruption will blast finish it.
You can also blast-finish with Evasive Arcana trait while in Earth attunement.
Ideally, you can auto-attack and eruption/geyser to keep your Guardian up an save Healing Rain from your ranged teammates, Using Arcane Wave or Evasive Arcana to pump up the heals.
Just checking back in with a personal opinion update…
After testing out numerous popular D/D builds in sPvP yesterday, I came away with mixed results.
Glass cannon builds proved nice in 1v1 encounters (as was so painfully pointed out to me by Razor :-P) but I found that in group battles I had to be very careful about choosing my fights and avoid focus else I would go down pretty quickly. For scoring purposes, it proved useful really only in instances where there was a single defender on a control point… as long as that defender wasn’t a bunker build, my success was almost guaranteed in taking the point.
Likewise, running the D/D bunker build… I found that I could HOLD a point pretty kitten well, but wasn’t very good at talking control of one from a defender. I also found the bunker build to be lacking in both 1v1 encounters and group fights. I didn’t die, but I didn’t kill. I helped stack some might and had some healing power… but nowhere near that of my staff build.
So I went back to staff for a few rounds…
Good god I dominated! Granted… 1v1 encounters were a no-go in terms of expecting to win, BUT jumping into a 1v1 I was easily able to survive and apply pressure long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And once reinforcements arrived it was pretty much GG… especially with the new change to Frost Armor (10% damage reduction). My heals are unrivaled, I can stack might like a champ, slow/stun/weaken/push with little reserve, and with Energy Sigil on the staff my endurance is nigh inexhaustible. I’d say my bunker ability is just shy of that of a dedicated build so holding a point was no problem. It was, in a word, glorious.
In conclusion, my ego was bit inflated going into this post assuming that I could go toe-to-toe with a D/D Elementalist… I can’t, no way, no how… But the fact is that 1v1 is pretty much non-existent in this game and in almost all other regards I prefer staff and feel it to be more of a game-changer than D/D… even in sPvP. What I lose in mobility (just RTL btw, otherwise I have perma-swiftness) and damage output, I more than make up for in utility… and in PvE, sPvP, and WvW… Utility will almost always bring more “win” to the table than being able to gank stragglers and solos. It is my opinion that staff is a better ALL-AROUND weapon choice than D/D.
But make no mistake… If a D/D comes at me and I’m all alone. I’m pretty much toast (until I can further improve my build survivability that is).
Cheers!
Moxie
If you caught me by myself yes… I’ll no longer even pretend to argue that.
The whole game changes with a teammate by my side though… a 2v2 (even better with 3v3 and higher tbh) of pretty much any class combo (okay maybe not 2 staff Eles) will probably have the team with the staff Ele at an advantage just due to the heals/regen/might/frost armor I can keep up on us. I’ve got a good deal of CC too… but without that extra labor by my side, yeah… I’m either going down or getting the kitty cat out of Dodge.
I lol’d at the new thread title
A title change felt appropriate :-P
You guys should give the staff a chance, it does great in 1vs1 situations, sure a couple of skills need balancing( unsteady ground and gust) but other than that, the staff offer more support and damage than d/d..as long as you land the hits.
It’s better to train yourself in using different weapon sets and make them in different situations, don’t try to play staff ele as a necro would given its fast activation wells..but rather play a staff ele as you would with a trapper profession, with timing you can literally hit people with a 100% accuracy regardless of their build, mobile or not
I’m pretty kitten good at landing my staff shots. But the fact is that a competent D/D Ele is just TOO mobile and there’s just not enough burst in staff… I could probably get some more out of it if I build offensively, but again… my survivability would have to take a helluva hit to do so.
I don’t think staff Ele offers anywhere near as much single-target damage as D/D can dish out… the only scenario in which I can see that happening is if your opponent literally stood still for you, which doesn’t happen.
Staff Ele can rock in certain 1v1 scenarios… just not against a D/D who knows how to play. I’m sure of it now. If you think you can challenge that with something more than theory and non-isolated experience (which is the basis on which I started this thread), I would love to see it/hear about it… I’m also game to duel you in-game (after work 5pm EST) and I’ll run my D/D build against your staff build and vice versa. Yesterday’s fight got me to thinking about starting a group of Ele duels so people could test out builds etc. in comparison to other Eles and fine-tune their play a bit. My head is swimming with new build tweaks now that I’ve had my cute little kitten handed to me.
Yeah, the dual-dagger assassin mage is definitely an awesome concept. Well played Anet.
I would only say that a staff Ele who hangs from the action back isn’t being as effective as they should be. To me, the biggest asset a staff Ele brings to the table is the ability to set up multiple fields and blast finish them without assistance… however, in order to do so with maximum effect, you’ll be utilizing Arcane Wave and Evasive Arcana (Earth) which both require you to get into your field to finish it. So in reality, I’m staying back to drop my damage… but in order to best assist the group I am constantly dodging INTO the battle to blast finish combo fields.
So even the Staff Elementalist plays much different than the traditional MMO mage class in my opinion. Throw in attunement dancing and you have the reasons why I just can’t plat other professions in this game… they all seem so slow and boring in comparison to properly played Elementalist.
My new goal with Staff Ele is to even further increase my healing power and survivability. My duels with Razor taught me that if I truly get focused on, I’m not as hearty as I thought I was… I think I have some room to improve my tankiness and still increase my healing power… Sure, I won’t be killing anything by myself, but the team I’m rolling with will be nigh unstoppable.