Guild Wars 2

Water is always useful, whether it is as useful as the other options for you is only somehting you can really answer. It does give healing/vitality, which might not be mass amounts but over a while it does add up, other options might work out better (earth toughness might mitigate more damage over a given period of time than the equivilent health from vitality/healing). I would use “I have low healing power therefore I won’t take water” as a reason not to take it though, if anythitng, that’s more a reason to take water.

The minor traits are all pretty good in my opinion, healing while in water (soothing mist); healing when attuning to water and 2% damage bonus per boon (usually have 5 boons up). I don’t know if that adds to condition based damage but I see no reason why it shouldn’t (still somethings are funny like that). you get both survivability and damage.

There are plenty of major traits that wouldcould be used too.

Play which ever spec you wish to try, if you end up being unsuccessful then you have your answer. Every build I’ve done uses water because it’s generally a good choice but trying something new/different is always fun which is a point towards not having water.

Duel swords definately looks great, I liked having two of the biggest swords I could find on a small, weak looking character (petite human female).

As for pvp/wvw I just find off hand sword is just not as effective as offhand pistol. Both have a clone, sword is a slow heavy hitter that needs to be reasonably close to work (risking aoe/cleave damage). Pistol hits much faster allowing you to stack bleeds on people (sharper images trait) significantly better while also being at range.

It’s then a block/daze versus a stun/daze/blind ranged attack (pistol 5) which wins hands down in my opinion.

Play what you enjoy of course, I find sword/pistol to be more usefull than sword/sword and still looks pretty cool.

It’s really not that difficult to leave combat and switch weapons. In places where you can’t is usually pve in which case you just use a bit of forward thinking and choose the correct weapon beforehand. I don’t really know how this works in spvp now though, can you not switch weapons at all anymore or something? I do like the idea of being able to define two weapon sets and using the wep switch key out of combat though. I wouldn’t be against in combat wep switch with a larger than usual cooldown and which throws all your attunments on a high cooldown too (20 seconds say).

What weapons are you using? I used D/D from the word go and personally found ele a joy to level once I had unlocked all the weapon skills (which takes longer than most classes). I don’t recall having any more problems with an ele initially than any other class I have tried. Just keep going untill you have some more talents to throw around, I would personally put them all into arcane initially. I found it more effective to build defensively rather than offensivly (items with defensive stats too). Ele certainly has one of the “steeper” learning curves, only way around that is to just keep at it.

Why not switch weapons during phase 2 when you leave combat. It’s been a while since I’ve done Arah but I would usually focus more on staying alive/reviving during phase 2. I don’t know who does the damage but it certainly isn’t me! I tended to feel pretty kitten useless during that phase. Phase 1 is no problem, I got S/P, 3 duelists out and stick to sword killing grubs/locusts the whole time.

Why is this being comapared to mesmer portal? Portal in no way allows you to cross gaps unless you have already crossed them, rtl in that sense is superior.

Am I missing something? I can still cross gaps with this, I don’t get stuck on pebbles and I don’t even need to jump to go off edges.

It is mentioned on the wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Battle
It’s at the bottom.

My vote would be the bunker. I’m sure a burst ele could win but they’de have to do an aweful lot of burst awfully fast. While a bunker ele doesn’t have massive damage it does still have quite respectable damage and could kill a burst ele no problems I’m sure.

100% several times (with a good guild group). At some points we killed the stuff so quick we were stood around twiddling our thumbs for ages waiting for more to spawn.

What Haviz said. That doesn’t mean you can’t be very supportive to your team but don’t make it your “role”. You can do some great amounts of healing by using combo finishers too. Putting fields on bosses/people lets them get healing from leaps/projectiles, you can blast your own fields (with the eearth blast finisher you have to cast in BEFORE you can the heal field in most cases). Arcane wave, dodge roll with evasive arcana (in earth).

When I do dungeons I just stick with D/D, you’re doing good damage, dishing out buffs, cleansing conditions and healing effortlessly. Though I do carry a staff too.

I have 9% crit chance. I wouldn’t worry too much about crit unless your class/build depends on it (on crit effects) and/or you have +crit damage to back it up.

I have “only” 20 points in arcane at the moment and I still feel like attunment swapping is just a tad too slow. Wish they’d remove it all together, set the cooldown to 9 seconds and be done with it.

If you were near water then he could well have cast Murky Cloud on you before he left the water. It doens’t matter if you were on land it will still work.

I haven’t really seen anyone that I culd think was hacking but that’s not to say it’s not possible.

Lavadiel.6231:

I know what I saw, and what was possible to do and what was not – going invisible was not possible back then.

You say “back then” in which case this might have been when you could use items in pvp/wvw (liek revive orbs). There is some item you can buy that lets you stealth (from Charr area). Could well have been that, depends on how long ago this “back then” was. If it’s recent then I have no idea beyond what I’ve already said.

It’s entirely the attument swapping cooldown that “forces” me into arcane. I would probably always take 10 points for the buffs on swapping. The cooldown reduction needs to be removed and just left at 9 seconds. I don’t know what would replace it thoguh as everything else I can think of would be OP.

RTL – without effect showing
Lighting Flash – without effect showing
Mist Form – without effect showing
Magnetic Grap through smoke field (leap finisher)
Norn Snow Leopard – spam 5 while casting and you’ll probably stealth before anyone sees the snow leopard
Granted stealth from someone else.

As for finishing people while stealthed as an ele, I would strongly think that would be mist form with the mist not showing, very common thing to do when finishing someone. I’ve had both RTL and mist form happen without the effect a fair few times.

I can fight underwater but barely, sometimes I win but usually my tactic is survive long enough to get to the shore. My water weapon sis just as good as my land weapon. I find it’s just lack of practice that makes it hard (not being used to chains and combos). With my mesmer killing people is so easy – just dodge roll a few times.. they usually die from confusion (trident clones).

Vitality only helps initially, you need a large enough health pool not to get exploded before you can react. Beyond that, mitigation is your friend and that means toughness/healing power. The numbers aren’t huge but over a long fight they add up far more than vitality would.

Norn, just because I wanted a human looking thing but wanted a different story/area to play. Made her as short as can be and she looks ok. Also the Snow Leopard elite is brilliant in wvw.

D/D ele is fantastic, incredible mobility and very strong against multiple foes. I went a norn so I also have Snow Leopard as my elite (stealth+dash) which has saved me so so so many times against the masses. I also play a mesmer which can roam very well but I feel it requires centaur runes to do so (pretty much permanent swiftness). I would sueggest the ele though as it is very fun too.

Akumetsu.8591:

heart seeker is not our best ability. backstab is in my build. hs is jus ta gap closer for me and a way to gain stealth through my smoke field from my 5 from my pistol offhand.

You’d be ok then as none of the suggested “fixes” would affect you. What you’re doing is reasonably skillful.

It is harder than most classes (engineer being similar I guess), in that you just have to remember so many skills. By the time you hit 80 you will easily know your chosen weapon skills and combos (both skill sequence and fields). Some weapons will take longer to master if you don’t use them often.

The worst part about ele is underwater. You rarely get to use the skills so when you do have to use them you can’t use them as easily since there’s so many. It’s just practice liek anything else but it takes more practice than most classes.

I prefer cleansing flame over this, cripples/chills/imob get me killed, stability is of no use then (the protection helps but not enough). Plus it does damage and has a shorter cooldown.

Did it first try with total randoms: We build stuff randomly, ran around like headless chickens and shot stuff. I didn’t realise this required tactics!

You can certainly get geared up form just doing wvw (gold to guy stuff of the trade post, karma to buy stuff from karma vendors, tokens to buy stuff from the wvw token vendors). That said, it’s alot less effort to just do a few dungeons to get geared up. If you post what stats your interested in it will help people make suggestions better. There is a useful website that shows stats and where you can get armour and so on but I don’t seem to have it. Perhaps someone else can post it.

You can get “pvp armour” (power/tough/vit) from spending wvw tokens in bg, buying it from karma vendors in cursed shore (plenty of karma to be earned in wvw), or by doing any of the following dugneins Ascelonian Catacombes, Sorrow’s Embrace, Honour of the Waves. All 3 paths of AC are fast and easy so getting gear there will be quick, same for SE path 1 (20-30 mins). Can’t recall HotW, but path 1 used to bve fast there too. Get some from dungeons, soem from karma, some from wvw vendros and spend your gold buying runes/sigils and you should be sorted relatively easily. The dugneons aren’t so bad and they don’t take much time.

Search soldier’s spineguard on the TP and you’ll probably get a rare one for <15s (only asceneded is better which isn’t worht the effort).

I use power/tough/heal trinkets. High vit is good but I find I have enough to avoid burst (16k) and healing provides extra mitigation where as higher health pool does not. Healing drastically becomes much more worth while the longer a fight goes on. After a minute of fighting I would say that any extra vit pales into total insignificance compared to healing. You simply need enough vitaility to not get burst down before you can react, the rest is either heal/tough to mitigate(eliminate in many cases) the damage you do take.

1. buffs/heals/aoe damage
2. You pick up a staff and sit there doing stuff (cast spells, combo fields, some healing)
3. Same as attack. Dagger is pretty useless in both situations.
4. Group speed boosts (Zephir’s Boon, shared auras), ability to catch pretty much anything (including thieves) and slow them down for your zerg. Or charging through to enemy back lines and generally pushing the enemy back. General boons/healing/condition removal as part of your normal damage cycles (ok you have to do slightly more to dish out maximum healing but even an attunment change, dodge roll and 1 fast cast is a good chunk of healing).
5. Good aoe damage, survivability and escape.

I play an ele and have only a low level thief myself so my opinion is biased but the way I see it is, I see very few reasons to bother playing my thief as ele is just superior in general.

If you want to play “Mage like” I’d be tempted reccomend a mesmer. If you’re happy to go D/D elementalist though I would pick the ele.

Depends on spec/weapon choice. I see the phrase “steep learning curve” thrown around alot but Ididn’t particulally find it so. I geared defensivly leveling up and didn’t really have a problem (you have tank pets that help alot if you use them).

As a D/D ele I can absolutely reccoment playing your ele through tot he end. It is great fun.

I play both a Mesmer and a D/D Ele. As a Mesmer I don’t have any problem fighting D/D eles. As an Ele, I die to burst from mesmers and nothing else. If I can avoid the burst I generally win. This usually means alot of mobility and playing it safe. Flying all over the place limits burst from shatters, if you suddenylu lose a chunk I would get the hell out of there and keep running circles around as you heal up then straight back in. As an ele your strength shines over the long term. I wouldn’t be afraid to switch and attack phantasms if the mesmer is using them, particulally bersekers as that cripple is annoying (even thoguth you can cleanse it) and phantasms die reasonably easy.

I gear both to be tanky.

Gear for survivability (healing/tough/vit) where possible. Arcane/water are good choices but 10 air for Zephr Boon is nice. Use the elemental elite, earth seem to grab more agro but the frost one is a great tank. I would use the elemental utility too.

I dislike shatters. I used to use pretty much just phantasms and it worked fine (pve/wvw) but, even before this patch, I haven’t really used anything other than shatter spams which is a shame. I would like it if phantasms weren’t tied to shatters or if shatters destroyed clones the first time and then phantasms if no clones were availible. That would mean shatter builds using phantasms less though as it would stop them doing 3x shatter if they have a phantasm out).

Shatters and phantasms just go against each other now.

If you’re into pve then any race is fine. If your into spvp then again any race is fine. Go for asthetics. If you’re into wvw then it just has to be norn in my eyes. Snow Leopard is just fantastic. Stealth + Usaine Bolt style sprinting is incredible.

Cantrips are insta cast stun breakers and as such don’t stop channeled skills. This works the same with other class abilities too. Mesmer blink for example can be cast while casting other spells. You can blurred frenzy and blink to people, or you can be casting mass invis and blink at the same time. I don’t see why there should be an exception for Flash/Churning Earth – you are using alot to make one spell actually hit which can easily be avoided with a dodge roll.

With regards to teleporting onto hills/walls and so on – in general you can’t with any teleport ability (thief bow 5, blink, flash) but there are a number of places where you can do it and do it regardless of which class you are using (as long as it’s a teleport skill). In general, it’s places where there is some kind of building/model on top of the terrain (with a 90 degree at its top).

I have both an 80 mesmer and an 80 ele, both fully geared. I have done most things with both. In wvw I feel both are incredible, there are few things I can’t kill, few things that can escape me and few times I can’t escape. Over all the ele is better, I can kill multiple opponents easier, I can escape easier, nothing escapes unless there is a tower or something near by. The ele is very repetative in it’s tactics/skill use but it is quite active. The mesmer is more flexable and has alot of trade offs to choose from. It also has very active defence.

In pve I now almost always play my ele, it just feels all round superior. That said, I haven’t had any issues with the mesmer and people love time warp.

There is alot more I can say but others have said much of it. Over all I would reccomend an ele. It feels slightly more fun and alot more powerful (D/D).

UnknownFreak.2805:

Wasn’t aware of the bug before I had completed map 100%, gameplay in WvW, is not that bad, but when you get downed things start to change, die almost instantly due to they can attack the real player at once, only enemies that are new (new players), will get tricked when downed

The star doesn’t get you finished when downed, it’s the big red arrow/triangle “finish them” symbol above the real you that is the give away. The clone doesn’t get it.

you can get egar with wvw stats (power/vit/tough) from doing any of these dungones: Ascelonian Catacombes, Sorrow’s Embrace, Honour of the Waves. AC probably being the easiest. Jewelery can be crafted your choice of stats (this will take a fair few ectos)It’s not hard to “gear up” for wvw.

Get yourself a rare back item from the TP (spineguard of..) for a mere 15s or so.

LordByron.8369:

Precision helps you doing lot of crits, being often in fury, all those crits recharge evasion (see arcana trait bonus).

Even with my measely 17% crit (37% with perma fury) I’m critting often enough to keep vigour on permanently.

I second what Lord Byron said. As for gear, I would go for toughness/vitality/healing (which all has power anyway). Easiest way to get all that I found was crafted jewelery (sapphire, power/tough/heal), armour with power/vit/toughness from any of: Sorrow’s Embrace/Ascelonian catacombes/Honour of the Waves. I went for power/precision/condition daggers.

For runes, most people suggest 2x superior water, 2x major water, 2x monks (from AC, already on your armour if you get armour there too) for the +40% boon duration (boons are your friend!)

Sigils, I think the main one would be superior sigil of battle (3x might on weapon swap – which includes attunment swapping). The other is more personal preference, I went for sigil of corruption but any of the stacking sigils would be good. Finally get a Third dagger and put somehting like +5% power on it (I think this works out better than +5% crit). The third dagger is for when you hit 25 stacks on the stacking one, you then equip the third dagger.

This may not sound too powerful with all the defensive stats but it is vbery powerful thanks to all the boons and the aoe nature. When I do dungeons I rarely see less than 25 stacks of might (though there are warrios there giving it too), fury is permanent. Plus of course all the healing that you can dish out along with plenty of survivability.

What ever you do, tell your friend NOT to go glass cannon, eles are incredibly squishy. I’m sure some people pull itoff but it’s not worth it in my opinion. On a plus note, this also works very well in wvw, where a glass cannon would die very easily.

There was oneposted but I don’t recall much fighting in it so good job on that. What I was wondering is if blink is altered, I guess not? I think this would definately be my legendary of choice (over twilight). Does it to anyhting off hand? like change block/swordsman/

What’s better than 1 ele? 2 eles of course! I usually pair with thieves/wariros/guardians and I would say it totally depends on the player as all have massivly fought against the odds and won. I didn’t start wvwing with my ele untill I came across 2 dagger/dagger ellies who were nigh on unstoppable (untill I brought my ele too – fight fire with fire). After that I haven’t played my main (mesmer) since.

Centaur rune s are the only option, I just can’t play without them now. With near perma swiftess, blink, pistol stun, sword 3 cripple/immob/teleport (when it works), berserker cripple (when it works..) catching chasers is very easy. But it is very reliant on those runes. You could use focus of course but it’s no where nar as good as those runes.

PvE there’s plenty of choice of builds/weapos. WvW where is very little build flexibility or weapon choice. Dagger/Dagger is where it’s at. That said, there are 20 skills from that alone that you have to juggle. Some of your abilities have long cooldowns and you won’t get to see if they are up unless you attune to that element. There’s alot of rotations you can use and self combos. The mobility is fantastic and really fun, it is a very active class.

My main (if Ic an call it that any longer) is also a mesmer but after taking my ele into wvw I’ve barely played my mesmer since. I love my mesmer but dagger/dagger ele out classes it imo (in terms of fun, abilities, chasing, escaping, etc). I also think ele is superiour in pve too.

Although it does’t meet your buld/weapon flexibility requirments I would strongly suggest making an ele it really is out right fun (I’m talking dagger/dagger of course but the other weapon sets do have their place too).

I’ll only pick symetrical greatswords skins because of how the number 1 skill rotates about the swords axis.

Once getting 3 pistol phantasms out, I use mass invise to make them have their colour.

I personally find ele easier than a mesmer :P so if that’s your criteria I wouldn’t pick an ele! Dagger/dagger is an absolute blast though, it’s very active and very strong, I guess it requires a fair bit of skill but once you have the basic cycles down its as easy as any class. Except when you go under water.. trying to use 20 skills that you rarely get to use can be tricky and will really take some getitng used to to combine and remember each time.

in the second camp you showed, there is a spot where you can go to pull all the guards into melee range BUT leave the guild claimer unagroed. The big rock you run past just before entering, on the right of that right next to the building, just stand there and pull one oof the guards. They all come and stand in a nice big AOE friendly group. Once they are all dead you can kill the claimer.

I also play a mesmer and thought I can’t say why they are similar I feel they are in way (strength wise). Possibly because they are up close and personal and rely on alot of active input to stay alive. They are also particulally powerful (though I feel my ele is more powerful than my mesmer now).

At level 18 you’re just not going to stand a chance. Though I think staff is the weakest choice for wvw it is probably going to be your best choice, run with the zerg. When you are 80, nothing beats dagger/dagger, I’ve even stopped playing my mesmer (which feels undefeatable) because dagger/dagger ele is just so kitten good. I can often jump 2-3 people and win (sometimes they are low levels though). I fought 2 other d/d eles which was absolutely crazy! real good fun.

Don’t give up as eventually you will be awesome (I guess player skill factors in though) but you just can’t expect to be of much use at level 18, even a fresh level 80 will easily fall to someone with alot of experience and full exotics. Staff is unfortunately quite poor in wvw, save it for attack/defence of towers (or zerging, but even then I would take d/d).

Awesome!

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