Guild Wars 2

Check the official Guild Wars 2 reddit and you will see the prominent showcase and discussion on the recent leaks

I have been playing GW2 on and off for the last 4 years and in all this time a friend and I have had an issue with crackling sounds. I honestly thought at first that it was just the way GW2 client was made but recently talking to a new friend it seems he cannot really say it happens to him.

I don’t know how to make the problem start reliably but sometimes my audio crackles for no apparent reason and the only way I seen to be able to fix it is to “move the camera” to a different position. Happens often when I die and I’m waiting for my team to get out of combat.

I can sometimes tell that the crackling can be happening at much lower volume levels when I alt tab out of the game to watch a youtube video and I can hear the crackling a little in the video.

NOTHING ELSE has this problem. Only gw2 on both 32 and 64 bit client. My friend with a completely different setup also has this problem, we always thought it was just gw2 being bad but I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t think I have ever listened to a full song of this game without some crackle at some point.

TL/DR
Only gw2 presents with on and off crackling audio that seems to alleviate when I change my camera’s position, happens most often or loudly when I’m dead waiting for teammates and regardless of audio quality settings or 32 or 64 bit client.

Just came back to the game after a long while and I have been trying the new action camera mode. I kinda like it but I can’t figure out how to do a forward burning retreat with it on.

Funny enough changing “about face” with “look behind” allows me to do a forward fase retreat with the mesmer but still doesn’t work for the elementalist.

Anybody have any input on playing elementalist with action camera on? Is it even worth it?

I have a question, it seems you say the best rotation for staff is staying in fire and doing 1,2 and 5 but then you recommend sigil of battle on the staff. Wouldn’t that be counter productive?

Kodiak.3281

For example lets say you want to save your Dodge to do a Blast Finisher in Earth but while in Air you’re forced to dodge to counter a mechanic or attack in PvP which blows EA into AOE Blind (whoopity doo). You’re now forced to wait 10s before you can pull off that blast finisher from Earth now. I literally cringe when I see an AOE Fire/AOE Blind go off when I have EA slotted.

This is incorrect. The internal CD EA has is per attunement. I can dodge roll in air and cause AoE blind switch to earth and get a blast finisher then go into water and get the heal.

You tried to use Ride the Lightning to move forward while you had a random mob behind you targeted.

Had to fumble in your inventory for the stupid off hand dagger after you switched out of staff.

Switched to air in the middle of pvp and pressed Ride the Lighting only to realize it was on cooldown.

Adastra.9821:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elementalist-Live-Stream/first

I knew it was too weird nobody noticed… i got thrown off by the date of the youtube upload.

Ignore please.

Looking around in youtube I realized the official GW2 channel uploaded a PvE Video Guide for Elementalist. Talking about traits, what they think elementalist is about, and some of their though process regarding the recent changes and the overall objective of the class.

The video is 6 days old but I can’t seem to find any thread or discussion about it. If there is/was then my bad.

What do you guys think about what the devs have to say about elementalists?

TERA has a system against undercutting that pleased me. People were able to see automaticaly if the lister of the item was online, and press a button to automaticaly contact the player and make a reduced offer for the item. Most would do this because people who got undercutted would gladly sell the item at a reduced price so he wouldn’t have to relist it, and the incentive to the buyer was paying no tax for the purchase.

This wouldnt work here because of the way our BLC works. It doesnt display individual listings with the name of the seller and the buyer doesnt have to pay taxes to purchase the item (both listing fee and selling fee are paid by the seller).

Zantetsuken.9051:

Wryog.5073:

Has anyone done the Subject 7 achievement on an ele? I always kill an ooze or don’t burst fast enough.

Yeah, I did it earlier using full Berserker gear, with S/F using a fresh air build (30 in air and 30 in water) and swapping attunements rapidly to abuse the Lightning Strike on a swap and the one on the Sceptre.

Stay far enough away and the oozes spawn under you, but wont heal the boss. Use the Focus skills to mitigate damage, and use the healing signet to regenerate health each time you cast. With fast attunement swaps and lots of instant casts, as well as the blinds on the Sceptre, you mitigate a lot of damage and get a lot of heals.

Cantrips are good skills to take as you can trait for Regen and Vigor on each use. Dont take the elemental elite though, as there is a chance it will get within healing range of the boss and spawn an ooze underneath it.

I tried this before but it didn’t seem to work. Even though I was at max range a couple slimes will still spawn close to subject 7. Where you running in circles around him or did you stay still at max range and endured it? More details on this would be appreciated I was about to give up on this one, we do too much aoe

This is odd. Didn’t think this guy was a challenge at all, beat him with a crappy d/d 0/10/0/30/30 bunker spec because “reasons”. Focus the dog first, and updraft/earthquake if he’ll beat you to the meat. Make sure to keep up cripple with earth 2. Lightning Flash should help as well. I was able to kill the dog after the third meat i picked up, he already ate 1 because i failed to stop it.

The norn owner is super weak after his dog dies.

spalt.6938:

NdranC.5107:

I would like to know everybody’s opinion on this as well, both for pve and pvp. Seems like dropping boon duration would cause fury uptime to drop significantly and in longer fights I wouldn’t be able to keep up 20+ stacks on might on everybody around me. That’s one of the problems I have with my elementalist’s builds, since I always roll with friends, it feels like dropping aura share and/or boon duration is too big of a dps loss for my whole team while I gain a decent but probably not comparable amount of damage.

By the way, I don’t know if I interpreted that part of your statement correctly, but do know that boon duration on allies are determined by their +boon duration even if you applied the boon to them (i.e. if you have 60% boon duration and you apply a 10 second buff, it will last 16 seconds on you but still only 10 seconds on an ally that has +0% boon duration).

Therefore, dropping your boon duration runes will affect the boons on you but will have no effect on boons you apply to allies (in this case, “your whole team”).

I’m pretty sure this is incorrect. You made me doubt myself so I went in game and tried. My friend with 60% boon duration started buffing me (while i had 0% boon duration) and all of the boons he gave me had 60% extra duration on me as well as himself.

My points is, I’m not sure that by changing to Runes of the Scholar I would gain enough personal damage to offset 20+ stacks of permanent and reliable might/fury for my whole team. I know we can stack a lot of might without boon duration, but (without thoroughly testing it) in real boss battles they don’t seem to stack as high at all, specially when you have to dodge or avoid boss mechanics while at the same time staying in air or lightning hammer to maximize dps.

It seems that the jump from 20 secs to 36 secs of might is enough to go from 10-15 to 20-25 stacks of might no problem. Taking into account that for most people, 25 stacks of might represent 35% damage increase for the whole team without even taking into account condition damage.

I would have to test it more in different scenarios and with different builds, I really want to change out of them but man I feel like the math doesn’t let me.

PS: I also feel we seem to forget that Superior Sigil of Battle is a big source of self might, and perhaps it’s misleading us to think that our team at any give time is enjoying as much might as we are, this is not true most of the time.

I would like to know everybody’s opinion on this as well, both for pve and pvp. Seems like dropping boon duration would cause fury uptime to drop significantly and in longer fights I wouldn’t be able to keep up 20+ stacks on might on everybody around me. That’s one of the problems I have with my elementalist’s builds, since I always roll with friends, it feels like dropping aura share and/or boon duration is too big of a dps loss for my whole team while I gain a decent but probably not comparable amount of damage.

Lavadiel.6231:

high crit damage and low crit chance actualy = low dps and dpm.
I wonder why many of you go 35% chance and 75% damage…
It gives you damage multipler 1.43 while 75% chance and 35% damage gives multipler of 1.63
Check the chance/damage ratio table here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit

After nerf perm fury is no longer an option and arcane power util/trait is not enought for 35% chance and 75% damage to make any sense. You will just see bigger red numbers from time to time but overall your damage will be not as good as with many smaller red numbers ^^
Going crit damage makes sense after your crit chance is 50% + . There is no magic just simple math.
ps.
I am in a process of creating simillar table as the one on wiki but in 3D where on the Z axis there will be power and you can see the optimal power/crit chance/crit damage ratios

I don’t know what nerf to fury you’re talking about because i still have perma fury after the reduction to shock aura. Looking forward to your table.

Since speed boosts don’t stack either and only the biggest effect takes priority, I think it would be naive to think anet would do anything different for damage reduction.

The way the current PvE content in this game is designed eliminates the usefulness of bunker stats. While you’re stacking 500 healing power so you can do 1000 extra heal every 20 secs, you could have done so much more damage and STILL bring healing. Watch strife beat the entire pve content with 3/4 warriors a guardian and a mesmer all of them in full berserker gear (for the most part) while doing it faster, more efficiently and with no deaths.

PvE is about damage prevention by careful dodging and positioning, either you get hit once and die/almost die or you don’t. Specially true for the hard fractals/arah.

As an elementalist I’m still running 0/10/0/30/30, but I have 80% Crit Dmg, 50% Crit Chance (with perma fury on), 1900 power, 2400-2500 armor, around 14-15k HP (wvwvw hp bonus on) while I bring perma swiftness and fury for everybody in my party while at the same time keeping 25 stacks of might on me at all times during boss fights and 16 stacks of might on my teammates if no one else is blasting my fields or mesmer not copying my boons.

Support currently in PvE is so much more than splashing water from time to time while you auto-attack for 600 damage. I still switch to water to heal, i just barely heal slightly less during my “rotation” while still landing 10k churning earths+bleeds, 7k fire grabs, and 2k (per hit) lightning whip auto attack.

Regarding the 17k HP. I used to play daphoenix build in PvE when i started my elementalist, and I though that anything less than that was suicide. Then after doing some math i decided to give it a try and i went down to 15k and then 13k and you would be surprised on how survivable you are. I noticed that while using a bunker build I was being lazy, not really paying attention to the animations and not learning to dodge properly. If you don’t give it a fair chance and try to roll with less health/toughness you won’t really learn how much more effective you can be.

17000 HP for dungeons? I don’t know about that, I do high level fractals with 13850 and 2500 armor perfectly fine as DD. I only go down maybe 3-4 times during a full run and never die, unless something horribly wrong happens.

I find toughness much more valuable for defense than vitality or healing power (pve).

I don’t know what the fuss is about with Renewing Stamina, just tried it and i have more than 20 seconds stacked already.

The problem that I have with ether renewal in pve is that is less offensive, need to expend 3 seconds to heal, while with signet i never stop dps’ing and i never have to press the heal button. Although you could argue that having to switch to water and dodge roll in it could be considered a 3 sec cast heal so it might end up being the same. They both sound good.

Since in pve my condition removal comes from V in water it might be worth it to switch to ether renewal for condi removal and replace V with a more offensive trait, like 20% dmg in water when the mob has invulnerability. I guess it comes down to individual fights and taste.

Raif.9507:

NdranC.5107:

It all depends on what you want to do with your build. Toughness gives you more bang for your buck compared to vitality. Since I have perma fury, i run a mix of valkery/zerk armor sacrificing a little precision for vitality so i can reach the 15k health mark, then i run full cavalier ascended which puts me at 2400ish armor with 72% crit damage 1800 power and 49% crit chance without even counting the average 20 stacks of might that i can keep indefinitely on myself at all times in pve. This is likely to change to something else soon though. Don’t know yet.

That sounds like a good build right there. Mind sending me your gear breakdown?

I managed to get to 1870 power, 27% crit chance, 58% crit damage and 2400 armor with 16k health with 60% boon duration and I know I can get more damage out of it. Now I’m curious.

BTW I used this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1|8.1n.h1h.8.1n.h4|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.71g.1p.71g.1c.71h.1c.71h.1c.71j.1c.71j|2s.0.2s.d1e.3s.d1e.1i.67.1i.67.2v.d1e|0.a0.0.u35b.u56b|0.0|e

To plan it out.

*edit – Also is that 49% crit chance with or without fury?

Sure why not

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1|8.1g.h1h.8.1g.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.71g.1p.71g.1n.71h.1p.71h.1n.77.1p.77|2v.d13.2v.d13.3v.d19.1j.61.1n.61.2v.d13|0.a1.0.u56c.u56b|39.1|e

WARNING! This is my old setup and only made for PvE and High Fractals. I made this specifically to maximize good defensive stats (toughtness) with good offensive ones (Crit Dmg and Power), Crit Damage on any ascended piece so far is too good to pass, the stat trade off is minimal compared to the dps gain. This was also tailored for my specific dungeon group, which revolves around offensive supporting, I give might stacks that last 36 seconds and 80% uptime of fury/swiftness (or i used to). I can keep 20+ stacks of might on me at all times pretty easily.

Going from cookie cutter daphoenix build to this my churning earth went from 4k-5k rare crits to 9k-10k very often crits. Lightning Whip hits for 2k per hit, so around 4k per second (this is with might stacks). I still feel pretty much invulnerable in fractals 20+ and you can swap focus for more defense at bosses while keeping you damage and might stacking.

Point of my previous post is that, in MY opinion, healing power sucks, and vit only helps to put you at a comfortable level (mine is 15k, i think i might be ok with even less now) then go toughness, its just too effective per invested point. Damage wise it’s all about knowing what pieces should have crit dmg and which ones can skip it to maximize offense and defense.

PS: I do Healing Signet, Arcane Wave, Mist Form/Ice Bow, Lightning Flash (I’m a teleport junkie) and Fiery GS.

It all depends on what you want to do with your build. Toughness gives you more bang for your buck compared to vitality. Since I have perma fury, i run a mix of valkery/zerk armor sacrificing a little precision for vitality so i can reach the 15k health mark, then i run full cavalier ascended which puts me at 2400ish armor with 72% crit damage 1800 power and 49% crit chance without even counting the average 20 stacks of might that i can keep indefinitely on myself at all times in pve. This is likely to change to something else soon though. Don’t know yet.

Puandro.3245:

All the changes are fine but RTL nerf, really ANET? Lets keep pushing Eles more into a bunker spec than before. I wonder if they finally even fixed the air cooldowns reducing RTL because before it would always stay at 15 secs.

Air CD Reduction was affecting RtL 2 weeks ago when i tried.

I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree with Anet strategy when it comes to class balancing. Healing Power sucks, the EA nerf barely reduces the healing, but they increased RtL CD? This is more of a nerf for Glass DD.

Over all they change stuff too slowly, by now i was expecting more skills/weapons/traits, or at the very least more true viable builds… Anet patch notes are so boring.

I have no comments for or against this build, but looking at your thread name it seems you might be interested in this video.

If you don’t have Berserker or Cavalier Ascended Items you’re missing out big time. People need to stop overcoming lack of dodging with loads of pvt gear. Your lack of efficient stat distribution and poor damage is hurting your party.

Razor.6392:

another pvt newbie.

this is how the elitism begins tbh, from now on I’m gonna ask any eles that join my groups what stats they have and kick accordingly.

At least he’s not using full clerics, I find those to be the worst ones.

LordByron.8369:

Intigo.1653:

LordByron.8369:

i suggest you to use
10/10/0/30/20 cantrip buld
You can use mix of knight set with some vit and some crit dmg

get your damage from boons and combos rather than from raw power

The “Cantrips grant Might” trait is utterly horrible. Using it over Evasive Arcana (which you can also use to stack Might with the Earth roll in your Fire fields) is a very bad idea.

a full combo with evasice arcana stacks much less might.

The good thing of evasive arcana is cond removal and some heling while in water….not for sure those maximum 3 might you get from earth EA VS 9 with cantrips

Pair that with the fact that cantrip build is easier to connect with more time margin while EA max might stack combo requires you to perform skills with NO time margin at all (means no time for positioning etc that makes the difference).

p.S. Cantrip grant might was also the standard build after ea nerf used by daphoenix and Others (me included)

I wouldn t say its horrible……(they used a different build btw) it was just left because cond removals and healing are more useful in PvP www than damage.

Well, EA blast finisher can be done every 10 secs while part of a dps rotation and AoE for your party (my might stacks last 36 secs). Cantrips all have around 60+ seconds CD and are mostly defensive. Not everybody likes the idea of popping all your stunbreaks/defensive CD just for a couple might stacks every minute or so.

ChaosDoom.8459:

S/D still better in stacking Might compared to D/D. Since dungeon mobs are predictable, S/D would be a better choice.

I always stack 25 stacks of Might by the 2nd cycle, meaning Fire -> Earth -> Air -> Water.

S/D has 2 more blast finishers so its definately a better might stacker, but with D/D i can stack 25 for the second rotation too while doing more damage and having better aoe. I guess its a matter of taste.

Great, someone else finally found out and made a thread telling the world. I guess we can all expect a rtl fix soon…

Razor.6392:

In case you didn’t notice, OP already mentioned that he pulled off full berserker mesmer, so he actually has experience on being glass with a light armor class.

I believe ele’s have equal survivability compared to a mesmer, so it’s pointless to go PVT.

Here’s a damage chart I made just for you, I was using the highest damage buffs (with my current setup, I didn’t respec to 30/30/0/0/10 or anything), and was killing solo at orr (so no 25 vuln stacks).

I’m not bragging, but the way you typed back then you made it seem like those numbers are actually impossible to achieve and well you’re wrong. Now tell me how much damage do you do on your pvt whatever gear? I rarely get downed or die in dungeons, so don’t even go there.

Numbers are quite good, but what buffs are you running? I use a mixture of berserker/knights with only 52% crit dmg and my churning earth does around 8-9k in fractals 30+ with 20+ stacks of might, so i guess that specific number is without might?

Serp.3264:

Chancer.3716:

Lingering attunements – You will see where this +6 second attunement bonus will come in handy once I explain the major traits. To be brief +6 seconds of boon duration (Especially considering Regeneration and protection) is godly for a minor trait.

This is incorrect. Lingering attunements has nothing to do with your boons. This is purely your attunement. If you look at your character’s attunement buff, trying swapping between elements. Notice how the previous element remains for a few seconds. This is Lingering Attunements. It allows things like “10% more damage in Air” traits to be effective 6 seconds longer, even though you switched to fire.

This is also incorrect. Lingering Attunements only works with the 5 point minor traits of every element (except that its bugged with earth one). Doesn’t work with any of the other traits like “More damage while attuned to fire” or “20% more damage to vulnerable enemies when attuned to water”.

Not only its easier but more fun. Great work from anet.

covenn.7165:

Yeah there is a reason, but people tend to ignore that when complaining about classes being having things that theirs do not.

For example, eles have the lowest base defense in the game. They are both in the lowest health pool and can only wear light armor. Thus they were given more mobility (when dagger) and more range/control (when staff) to balance it out. Basically while a warrior may be able to face tank something, an elementalist has to use mobility to compensate.

… and I’m sure that mobility/CC would come really handy next time my warrior friend is face tanking a boss/trash in an instance while doing tons of damage, I’ll start running in circles reallyyyy fast or start spamming 1 sec CC skills instead of damage ones.

Not everything should be balanced around pvp or pve alone.

Leo G.4501:

Those 2 attunements you say that do almost no damage. They tend to have utility or CC and it’s built into every weapon and you don’t have to take traits to get said utility/CC. By comparison, GS and rifle have minimal CC and utility and can only garner some with traits (leg specialist gives 1sec of immobilize from their cripples).

Why instead of “buffing elementalist damage skills” don’t we get damage BUILDS. If I’m an elementalist and i want to do damage, why can’t i just build full berserker/fire/air and be as effective as berserker warrior? I said it a couple times and I’ll say it again, right now if i wanted to solve a problem through damage, I wouldn’t switch my build, I would just switch my class.

The first time I pressed Air Number 4 on off-hand dagger.

haviz.1340:

NdranC.5107:

Conditions from fields are negligible, specially because burning only stacks in duration and we already can keep permanent burning by ourselves. Bleeds from Churning Earth are nothing, if i crit with 25 stacks of might and churning earth for 4-5k direct damage I’m really lucky most of the time is a non-crit for 2k, plus my bleeds do around 4k thats around 6k-8k damage (over time) with our biggest hitting skill. My mesmer can do the same damage instantly and also in aoe while being invulnerable and on a 6 sec cd without any might stacks.

Granted, we’re comparing a support/bunker build to a damage build, but what we do as support is not good damage, despite what some people would make you think. If you try to build and gear an elementalist for damage, you lose all the benefits from support and barely get anything in exchange, you do more damage but still less than any decent war/mes/thief, and you lose a gigantic amount of defense and utility.

At any rate, the biggest issue i have with all of this is not just about elementalists, but with all clases. Traits, utilities and Weapon skills are not different or interesting enough to create “builds” they are all shades of the same roll, which makes it easy to identify what is the “better” build.

Where do you get those numbers from? AC, CM? At lvl 80 my churning earth does about 10-12k direct damage when critted (chance at ~65%) with some might stacks (10-15) without proccing bolt to the heart and vital striking (which would increase that by 30%). Air autoattacks in d/d deals 2.5-3k and they strike twice.

If you try to build ele for damage you lose healing power which is bad anyway and defense. What utility do you lose exactly?

I was comparing a bunker build ele with shatter berserker mesmer, I said so on my post. The whole point is that I am tired of the 0/10/0/30/30 ele coming to the forums and saying they can do it all PLUS good or amazing damage. No… your damage is not amazing. Btw those numbers come from fractals. My mesmer can shatter every 9s for more damage your churning earth can do every 30 secs.

Conditions from fields are negligible, specially because burning only stacks in duration and we already can keep permanent burning by ourselves. Bleeds from Churning Earth are nothing, if i crit with 25 stacks of might and churning earth for 4-5k direct damage I’m really lucky most of the time is a non-crit for 2k, plus my bleeds do around 4k thats around 6k-8k damage (over time) with our biggest hitting skill. My mesmer can do the same damage instantly and also in aoe while being invulnerable and on a 6 sec cd without any might stacks.

Granted, we’re comparing a support/bunker build to a damage build, but what we do as support is not good damage, despite what some people would make you think. If you try to build and gear an elementalist for damage, you lose all the benefits from support and barely get anything in exchange, you do more damage but still less than any decent war/mes/thief, and you lose a gigantic amount of defense and utility.

At any rate, the biggest issue i have with all of this is not just about elementalists, but with all clases. Traits, utilities and Weapon skills are not different or interesting enough to create “builds” they are all shades of the same roll, which makes it easy to identify what is the “better” build.

Serp.3264:

I honestly feel like I may be playing a different game than the rest of you. The Ele has several viable builds. Between weapons (Staff, D/D, Scepter/Dagger) and then utilities (Cantrip heavy build, Aura sharing build, Glyph build, or even Signet Aura builds) you can get a ton of unique viable combinations.

The Elementalist can also provide practically everything to a group. Need good support, Ele provides decent group healing. Need good damage, Ele can provide a consistent flow of damage. Need good boons, Ele can provide consistent boons.

What more do you people want?

When it comes to support no build brings more to the group than d/d aurashare.

When it comes to damage no build comes close to a warrior, thief or mesmer.

People that talk about elementalist doing good damage have never played warriors, thiefs or mesmers. Specialy when playing d/d 0/10/0/30/30. Elementalist (and other classes too) lacks real builds, if you play elementalist you’re always playing a support build, when you attempt to build for another roll you end up sucking at both.

We make amazing supports, but thats it, all builds in this game are one dimensional and simplistic, so instead of having 2 builds that do 2 different things in different ways and stay competitive, we have 2 builds that do the same thing in the same way and 1 will always do it better than the other one.

Maybe this game was never intended to have amazing build variaty, but coming from gw1… that sounds like a real shame. Like i said feels like one of the many asian mmos I’ve played.

Straight damage buff to the skills would be OP. Working on the talent trees so theres more than 1 or 2 viable builds would be ideal. So far this game is very similar to asian MMOs, only 1 or 2 viable rolls per class. If you have an elementalist and want to do good damage, you don’t swap builds, you swap to an alt.

Aurum.9534:

Why three stacks of might on weapon swap? You can’t swap weapons as ele. Then i thought maybe its on switiching attunements, but thats not it either, what could it be?

Sigh…

It only works when you’re in combat.

Fury, Swiftness, Regen and Vigor are already on 100% of the time without that 10% Boon Duration so they dont count. Protection and Stability already lasts too little for an extra 10% to matter at all. Might is the only other boon that we stack constantly and has a significantly large base duration for the extra boon duration to matter. The weakness of this build is its lack of damage (mostly in pve, although plenty of stalemates in pvp) so imho more power and more condition damage goes a long way. Healing Power is meh, having 1200 of it only increases your heals by 500 so personaly I dont miss the 25 from the rune.

I do 2x Monk, 2x Water and 2x Hoelbrak. I lose 20 Healing and 10% Boon Duration for 25 Power and 20% Might Duration. I think that 10% is wasted in most other boons, I already have perma fury and swiftness and this build can stack a lot of aoe might really fast.

MarzAttakz.9608:

Compared to a shatter or iSwordsman mesmer, most thieves and simple things like warrior autoattacks our “cannon” part of the equation doesn’t compare, even when we’re traited full GC. Just my opinion.

Agreed

@daphoenix

About ascended rings/back items. I was surprised you wan’t to get soldier type ascended gear. Specially because i remember you mentioning we benefit really well out of Divinity type trinkets (like Triforge or the Karka Earing) what are your thoughs on this? Specially regarding Lunaria and Solaria http://www.gw2db.com/items/trinkets/rings?filter-item-rarity=8

Berengar.6951:

ride the lightning is more likely to save you from a zerg than any focus skill

Quoted for truth.

Khenzy.9348:

Woah, I didn’t know about that new rune. If water2 and water5 count as a ‘heal skill’ it makes extremely good sinergy with this Ele build.

It doesn’t, when runes talk about heal skills they mean slot number 6 and nothing else.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Everybody seems to be so excited about the change to the 30 point might trait in fire, the thing is you can already maintain 25 stacks of might as Scepter Dagger after two rotations, while using the sigil of Superior Battle, I do it all the time, I don’t know how it would work out since I do it with the extra blast finisher from Evasive Arcana in earth, but I might do some testing to see how many ways there are to maintain 25 stacks of might.

Exactly… I already keep 20+ stacks of might while switching attunements and attacking with ALL my skills. I might try fire again but I don’t see this buff being that relevant at all.

Healix.5819:

D/D, power/precision/magic find crafted gear (aka the regular kind).

For solo farming:

10 air, 10 earth, 30 water and 20 arcana
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImKbyR3gjEAkHm0SKjCiIK8QRxM5A

30 earth, 30 water and 10 arcana
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmKbyR3gjDAkHm0SKjHi4BJlCzA

Both are played the same, the second one is slightly safer.

Basically, all you do is ring of fire, earthquake, signet of air and churning earth.

More specifically, you collect a group of mobs by running around, then burning speed to other groups while the first mobs are chasing. Optionally drake’s breath and fire grab while they’re running towards you. Once ready, ring of fire, earthquake, signet of air and begin casting churning earth. Half way through the cast, switch to water attunement then frost aura and arcane wave. At this point, in terms of damage, you have +10% from boons, +6% from vulnerability, +20% from water attunement and 9 stacks of might. When churning earth goes off, frozen burst, dodge roll out then cone of cold. If they’re still alive, ride the lightning back into the group, an optional updraft then lightning whip spam. You then go back to fire attunement and start from the top.

I have done groups of 20-30 in Orr before (they were all risen pirates/nobles, aka melee only), but there’s really no point. AoE is capped to 5 targets.

Note that GW2 rewards zerging however, so farming in a group within a zerg will be faster, assuming your group can keep up.

Wouldn’t you benefit more (for the 30 earth build) from using the power+cond.dmg+MF gear that you can buy from the Trading Post? Precision seems to be wasted without Crit.Dmg, and since most of our skills do both direct and Condition Damage…

The problem with ele damage builds is not the damage part. It’s how badly we deliver that damage consistently. Too many things have to align, they have too big of a cooldown, and we lack the basic survivability to deliver the damage consistently. Mesmers and Thiefs are no bunkers, but they have a good shot at surviving in full berserker and still do a lot of reliable damage without too many skill usages/key presses. Just with shatters, mesmers can potentially do more damage than firegrab/churning earth every 10 seconds.

So yeah, when people say fire trait line is bad, its because it doesn’t solve any of the above issues, but you lose a lot of the very good water/arcana trait lines.

What kind of build, weapon or magic find gear do you use to farm?

Do you farm solo/small groups or you follow the zerg?

Or, You don’t use elementalist to farm you use another class? if so which one?

Thanks.

Note: Reading about MF gear to try it out, but I am not familiar with damage builds as an elementalist.

Terra Dactyl.2047:

NdranC.5107:

I don’t know who else feels this way but elementalist traits can’t make their mind. Most people get the feeling arcane trait line is all about attunement switching and getting a different spell out of a skill depending on the attunement we are on, while the other trait lines are about specializing in a specific element, making you being the most effective the longer you stay on it.

As it works now though, we have glyphs (which are our goto attunement based spell) not event touched by the arcana trait line (and now this falling damage one) or we have the master minor traits the reward us for switching INTO the attunement we specialize, but then it forces me to leave it so i can actually benefit from it. I’m constantly getting confusing signals from traits that want me to stay in one attunement but then they don’t.

I feel all this traits are too spread out, there’s no consistency. It would be better if they make all the first 10 point element specific minor and adept traits attunement dancing friendly, then make the 20 minor and master traits more inline with their over all theme (but still attunement dancing friendly) and finally the 30 traits should reward you handsomely for staying in one element. To be honest even then i wouldn’t take the 30 point traits but arcana because with 15 sec attunement swap and elementalist clearly being balanced around swapping it would still be mediocre.

Not to be rude, but if you’re not swapping attunements regularly, you’re hobbling yourself. There isn’t (and shouldn’t be) a build you could make where you would be “most effective” by never swapping attunements. The autoattack skills are almost always worse than some other attunement’s 2-5 skills at doing whatever you’re trying to do, so when that’s the only thing not on cooldown, it’s time to swap attunements.

Not swapping attunements on a regular basis is along the same lines as a warrior not using their adrenaline skill or a necromancer not using death shroud. It’s there, it makes you more effective, use it. Please.

Every time an elementalist sits in one attunement through an entire dungeon/night of WvW/sPvP match, Rytlock Brimstone kills a quaggan. Think of the quaggans!

I’m switching attunement constantly, it would be silly not to. My problem is the lack of definition with trait lines in general. Traits that only work while attuned to a specific element send the wrong signal.

TL;DR: If we’re supposed to switch attunements constantly, then reduce attunement cooldowns and remove traits that only work in a specific element. The whole trait system sends mixed signals.

I don’t know who else feels this way but elementalist traits can’t make their mind. Most people get the feeling arcane trait line is all about attunement switching and getting a different spell out of a skill depending on the attunement we are on, while the other trait lines are about specializing in a specific element, making you being the most effective the longer you stay on it.

As it works now though, we have glyphs (which are our goto attunement based spell) not event touched by the arcana trait line (and now this falling damage one) or we have the master minor traits the reward us for switching INTO the attunement we specialize, but then it forces me to leave it so i can actually benefit from it. I’m constantly getting confusing signals from traits that want me to stay in one attunement but then they don’t.

I feel all this traits are too spread out, there’s no consistency. It would be better if they make all the first 10 point element specific minor and adept traits attunement dancing friendly, then make the 20 minor and master traits more inline with their over all theme (but still attunement dancing friendly) and finally the 30 traits should reward you handsomely for staying in one element. To be honest even then i wouldn’t take the 30 point traits but arcana because with 15 sec attunement swap and elementalist clearly being balanced around swapping it would still be mediocre.