Guild Wars 2

1) Basic attack. Also causes vulnerability so subsequent basic attacks do more and more damage, allowing you to rally faster.

2) Immobilization skill. REALLY useful. In PvE, it’ll keep melee enemies at bay, and in sPvP, it’ll keep foes in place so they can’t run up to you and use a finisher before someone else knocks ‘em out. I’d cry if we lost this one.

3) MIST FORM. In PvE and WvW it can get you out of a huge mob. The biggest perk about this skill that not enough people realize is that, when you’re downed and low on health, it’ll restore your health once you go back to being downed. So if I use it right as I’m about to be defeated, not only do I have a chance to escape while invulnerable, but I also get the health bar restored back to half to have a fighting chance. My only qualm about this one is that they should reduce the cooldown on it by one or two seconds. The thief can pop that pesky teleport before a finisher can go off, but we can’t pop Mist Form in that span of time.

4) Heal, everyone has it.

tl;dr our downed skills are great, learn to use them properly.

This thread: “Everything I don’t like should be optional, but things I do like should be mandatory!”

Alternatively, “I wish I could complete something without actually completing it.”

Map completion on its own is optional, so leave it the way it is.

SammyIAm.1726:

Mister Stranger.3986:

Paah.6758:

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?

I agree, unless you’re planning on using blasting staff (which does seem pretty useful), I don’t know that the cooldowns alone justify points in Arcane.

Personally I think I’m going to leave 10 in Arcane to get the boon when switching between attunements, and the rest is going in Earth and Water. I’m trying for a more condition-damage / survivability build though. It works pretty well except that without the power-buff from Fire my straight-damage is pretty weak, which is especially an issue underwater.

Hmm, take 10 out of water and put those into fire. That extra damage (and condition duration!) will help you out much more than the extra 1000 health if you’re using your crowd control properly and can position yourself well.

Elementalists are GREAT underwater. It’s not all about dat deeps; the Elementalist’s underwater skills have insanely intricate crowd control. You can warp yourself or send yourself to the surface; you can send foes backwards, up, or down; you can pull yourself to foes; you can create stun fields and cripple foes…the list goes on and on.

Scepter/Dagger in sPvP, staff in PvE and WvW. I used to use Scepter/Focus a lot in PvE but it’s really hard to get gold in zerg DEs without the staff’s AoE.

Paah.6758:

I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.

The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?

It’s pretty fast paced; I’ve seen items which have 30c profit margins lose those margins instantly.

I’ve been finding 20 fire and earth and 10 in everything else to be adequate for my needs; it’s tanky enough to take a hit while still dishing out great damage. The specific traits themselves should vary wildly based on your chosen weapons/utilities.

To be most effective, you’re gonna want to switch between all of the elements frequently. I rarely go an entire fight without using all 4 elements just once; they all offer unique options for crowd control and damage (ESPECIALLY condition damage;) going pure DPS in this game just seems to be highly inefficient.