Guild Wars 2

I do other things while in queue, I don’t get impatient and/or irritated by long queues.

If anybody out there is looking to increase their rating and decrease the feeling of lottery, here’s some insight to help you reduce those potential feelings or shed some light from a different perspective than is commonly around.

Having an odd work schedule has allowed me to enjoy the pros (but mostly cons) of PvPing in multiple time zones. Focusing on certain TZs has revealed a few things to help debunk the RNG/Luck/gambling aspect of PvP. (to a minor degree)

When focusing on EU TZ, elo climbing was a thing. Allies were able to hold their own weight, reliably getting the same players at times, there was a degree of consistency. Even with the existence of going on that randomly unlucky 10 game losing streak with the Bronze5 League of Legends drop outs, overall win rate is definitely over 50% and steadily climbing up. (as confirmed by games played/games won)

Now enter OCX TZ with the 1600 rating from EU climbing. You wait 5+minutes for a game, get into it and consistently have the allies that go mid and die instantly. This isn’t the “allies are noobs rant.” This is consistently just flat out just instantly dead people constantly. The enemy team is usually consistently not instantly dead while yours is. Run in first and tank the entire enemy team? One enemy breaks off and your team’s ranger/thief/guardian is dead. After a 15 game losing streak filled with lovely events like…….

-Naked players. Yep, no armor+berserker stats/ect. Literally worse than AFKers.
-Whisper harassed for hours because you Shadowstep stomped a Guardian that your ally had “dibs” on (because they got knocked back by the 2)
-Whisper harassed for running variant builds that perform well in solo/duo queues rather than tournament meta builds, based around coordinated team play.
-Allies just die on engagement. Win a point? Thief goes far immediately… sure fair enough, sees an enemy, attacks them and dies instantly. I’ve literally gotten to the point where sometimes I’ll just say “Hey guys, if you don’t die immediately at the mid fight, then I’ll be happy.” and it just still doesn’t happen. Or I’ll say “Alright, they have a Necro and an Ele, please go for the Necro instead of the Ele.” Ele gets targeted and people die in 2 seconds. I can’t tell if this is foresight, self-fulfilling prophecy or just being trolled.

Regardless of TZ, I notice that if the actual queue wait is ~2:30-3:00 or higher, the MM tends to greatly increase the chances of a terribly dispersed team. With a lower pop density of OCX/SEA times compared to EU/NA times, this means the team disparities will have a higher occurrence.

The MM appears to match with highs+lows vs middles, rather than lows+med+highs vs low+med+highs, this may be the most cognitively biased observation though. If true, the higher rated players ARE expected to carry these players. (With more even matchups being actual RNG….)

In the end, TZ disparity results are too consistent to be an RNG lottery. Maybe it’s the population/rating disparity and the MM is overcompensating the rating disparities in relation to the enemies. Due to the population density, I have to PvP on EU TZ to be able to get rating so I can just lose almost every game in OCX. Comparing OCX/SEA TZ to a lottery, I feel more like a babysitter than a gambler. On the days off I get to PvP during NA TZ, it feels a lot like EU TZ as far as results go.

Where do I need extra healing? It wasn’t anywhere in current HoT content and fractals. Neither of us have raided so that’s not applicable either.

@Zealots
Am I supposed to be dropping even more damage to carry Staff so I can be in CA more to heal or am I supposed to sit on less damage for the rare extra healing with slow access to CA?
- I’ve described the playstyle of the build and Zealot puts it in a direction that currently doesn’t fit. Like I said in OP, this is a variation of the core Ranger where the Druid spec is one of three specs that improves it. This is not an alienating build where I’m requiring myself to deviate in odd directions for the sake of it. This is a high damage build with high support. It focuses on its strength instead of weakening them for the gimick: “Slotting Druid? Better require +Healing!” No.
— Even CA is generally used only for extra CC and group damage. The access to CA isn’t really high with 2 DPS weapons if you don’t run TU. The thing that lets me get into CA often to keep CCing and buffing damage is that I don’t overstay in CA. Partially because I’m dropping CA and CA4 ticks it back up faster so I can get back into it.

There’s a lot of scenarios that not DPSing things down in a timely manner puts healing stress on. This is not only a Gw2 phenomenon, any progression raid leader/healer knows that if things don’t die on time then pressure can add up and become overwhelming. -Dropping a healer for a DPS to meet DPS thresholds has been a very real scenario that can be the difference between healers pulling their hair out and getting your first kill on that boss. Example: raids running Smite Priests just because they bump DPS enough while spot healing to beat Berserk timers / DPS thresholds has been a very big thing in a large amount of instances.
I’m very familiar with the dynamic of sliding the bar between healing+damage.

I’ve shared my experience with it and you’ve shared yours. The only place that you’ve mentioned actual viability was that your friend needs a healer for mapping.

That’s the end of that. If you want to talk about Zealot Raid Theorycrafting, I’ve already made a thread about that too.

The option of gaining the ability to sometimes emergency heal is also the option of always stripping away damage. There wasn’t a point in HoT mapping or story that I wished I had significantly more healing, particularly at the cost of damage.

You’d be surprised how often that can create the need for the healing in the first place. I just had a fractal today with a pug Druid familiar with this thread that was running Axe/Warhorn+Staff and his lack of damage (he definitely wasnt outhealing the pressure) was causing problems in a pug. The moment we put some damage on him everything went back to dying under my CC in a timely manner without being overwhelmed. (54 Fractal, Aetherblade, Golems were doing AoE explosions+knockbacks on death)

Just as much as you gained the ability to sometimes heal in a pinch, you always took away the ability to do more damage under CCs. This is the support the entire thread is about: CC locking under high damage. It’s not “CC locking then having to heal because you lack damage to kill things.”

Considering the person asked me the question, you should probably be less territorial about me giving a response.

Poke Bird.5847:

Would u consider zealot as a viable choice for Druid pve?

For Story modes and fractals, no. Any HoT stuff less than Dragon’s Stand, no. Even Dragon’s Stand is a maybe at best.

In a 5man you won’t be spending much time healing or in Staff. This is largely about dealing damage and instant breaks instead of healing and doing little/no damage. The Druid version was actually an variation/improvement to the “Break Ranger” DPS variant I was working on.

A variant of a variant and bringing some Druid synergies to the rest of Ranger is what this post is about. This isn’t a completely alien build just because of the Elite spec.

I disagree. Gw1 and WoW has had hard to get / challenging pet tames. Before HoT, pets were mindlessly easy to get to the point that I wasn’t even interested in collecting them.

Challenging to get pets is only a new thing as far as Gw2 goes, not MMOs. It makes pet collections interesting.

HoT in general introduced harder pets, 2 are just real hard to get. Even Smokescale is moderate.

I was running Zerk with Ranger runes. I do swap between GS, LB, S/A but I’ve been specifically toying with GS MoC breaks.

I don’t think I’d be toying with PvE healer stuff until raiding. We’re leaning toward the idea of Nomad since the Druid can dedicate to healing and high toughness lets the druid also do tank/positioning stuff at the same time. Sustained Staff still gets into CA fairly quickly.

Been playing a Ranger constantly since HoT released and my guild has noticed something about it: It breaks Defiance like crazy.

I’m not saying other profs can’t tear up Defiance but we definitely do it well.

I’ve made a few changes to my build to adapt to HoT:
Black Moa: The Daze functions really well with BM Taunt for CC’ing groups and breaking Defiance on single things. This pet has been super handy. I did keep a DPS pet like Jag or Bristleback on swap.
Moment of Clarity: Between Moa, Quick Swap and GS, there’s a lot of play here. It also helps you shred defiance bars.

Speaking of Moment of Clarity. After obtaining the 400 needed for Druid I’ve been toying around a lot with MoC + Glyph of Equality. This Glyph is so useful! 24/30sec CD no animation 4 sec Daze with good range + some dmg is awesome!
Disclaimer: Considering every(?) profession has really strong stuff right now, I don’t feel that GoE is enough to be considered OP.

MoC+GoE has been the reason why I’ve been running Marksman, Skirmish, Druid for PvE lately. I have dropped the Moa after obtaining Druid though.

I wanted to try it out in some fractals and when I mentioned to my guildies “I want to test some Druid supporty stuff” They asked about the healing and I told them I just want to CC everything so there’s no healing needed! Everyone was surprised at the idea but it really helped smooth out the run. It’s really nice support for lesser experienced players.
In addition: Going into CA, casting 4 once, then leaving CA immediately does pump the group with Grace of the Land stacks. It’s definitely worth taking advantage of when you finally get the bar filled and now that it doesn’t drain OOC, can be used prepull to help burst: super nice trick.

Combined with support things like Vuln burst, Spotter, Frost Spirit and MoC+GoE+GS, GotL we definitely have the ability to bring a lot of offensive and defensive support.

Between PvP and PvE, I’m continuing to enjoy Druid. Now we just need to get that beta healer style back for raids! nudge

Editted to clarify topics.

OP

the cool thing about WHaO is that you will be able to instantaneously transfer 25 stacks of might to your other pet after swapping.

It’s 3 stacks.
If you’re planning on keeping Jungle Stalker just to transfer 25might, to Bristleback, then the build is already over.

Kitty.1502:

OMGimAnoobLOLOL.4730:

Kitty.1502:

OMGimAnoobLOLOL.4730:

Since people are suggesting things like Magi and Celestial: Why not Nomad’s? If it’s dedicated raid Healer and you want toughness for Aggro, then Nomad has more reliable aggro. Vita+Tough gives you good +Heal scaling from consumables to make up for the +Heal secondary stat.

You basically function as the group’s tank and healer, leaving the raid with 9 people for zerk team and condi team.

You can basically be the raid’s tank AND the healer. Add in a zerk group and a condi(sinister) team and you’re good to go.

Interesting idea, but can you actually effectively heal your group while tanking? I don’t think you could mainly due to small radius of heals and need to move a lot as a tank.

Why wouldn’t you? Druid healing is mobile and with how much complaining there is about healing people that move, the Druid knows where they’re going to go before anyone does. That means they can reliably land the heals.

Why not?

Raid will most likely need to be disjointed from the tank, such as being behind the boss while the tank it not within melee range of the boss kiting him. The radius on Astral Form 4 would hit, which is their biggest/best heal and 1/3 would hit but if healing is really needed more healing than that one skill would be needed. Furthermore there might be points where the tank might be fully out of all heal range. Not saying its impossible, just that I can see situations that can be common enough for it to not be useful.

This can go both ways. Raid progression also shows that an extra DPS can surpass mechanics that extra healing would require. If a Rabid Engi can count as a raid main tank, then you can still pull that from the Condi team to offtank.

Otherwise, you basically just acknowledged that Astral 1,3,4 can hit a stack. If a healer needs to heal the raid instead of themselves, then they heal the raid instead of themselves. It’s not required to heal itself, it just has the benefit of “Cant heal people that move” problem completely negated when it comes to tank healing. Also, the tank can sustain by raid healing.

Kitty.1502:

OMGimAnoobLOLOL.4730:

Since people are suggesting things like Magi and Celestial: Why not Nomad’s? If it’s dedicated raid Healer and you want toughness for Aggro, then Nomad has more reliable aggro. Vita+Tough gives you good +Heal scaling from consumables to make up for the +Heal secondary stat.

You basically function as the group’s tank and healer, leaving the raid with 9 people for zerk team and condi team.

You can basically be the raid’s tank AND the healer. Add in a zerk group and a condi(sinister) team and you’re good to go.

Interesting idea, but can you actually effectively heal your group while tanking? I don’t think you could mainly due to small radius of heals and need to move a lot as a tank.

Why wouldn’t you? Druid healing is mobile and with how much complaining there is about healing people that move, the Druid knows where they’re going to go before anyone does. That means they can reliably land the heals.

Why not?

Since people are suggesting things like Magi and Celestial: Why not Nomad’s? If it’s dedicated raid Healer and you want toughness for Aggro, then Nomad has more reliable aggro. Vita+Tough gives you good +Heal scaling from consumables to make up for the +Heal secondary stat.

You basically function as the group’s tank and healer, leaving the raid with 9 people for zerk team and condi team.

You can basically be the raid’s tank AND the healer. Add in a zerk group and a condi(sinister) team and you’re good to go.

Misconception:
“Druid still has no synergy with Ranger and will require staff anyway.”

Zealot/Zerk Druid DPS support
Marksman323
Skirmish111
Druidxx1
• Double Longbow for Quick Swap
• (Ab)using Frost Spirit, Grace of the Land, Spotter and possible Glyph of Empowerment for group damage boosts.
• Flashes CF for Rejuvenating Tides (5 pulses = +3% damage/condi for 8 seconds every ~12.75 seconds = ~62.75% uptime/stack = ~1.88%/stack x 5 = ~9.4% overall group power and condi damage!
+ Druid doesn’t stay in CF so benefits from this personal damage boost.

Retained 50% CFB. Assuming CF requires 100% along with it’s 10sec CD:

Rotation:
Enter CF form
CF4 Rejuvenating Tides (Assuming 4 of 5 pulses hit out of CF and 5 players hit) = +30%
Weapon Swap
Rapid Fire (Assuming 9 of 10 hits) = +6.75%
Barrage (Assuming 10 hit for single target) = +7.5% CFB or Troll Ungent (assuming 7 hits before CF cooldown) = +10.5%
Rapid Fire (Assuming 9 of 10 hit) = 6.75%
Auto until CF.
Rinse and Repeat.

51% or 54% total CFB gains. (before autos)

Conclusions:
Possible to flash CF often without staff for Grace of the Land uptime and overall damage. There is a little lagging but this will require a few minutes to lose time on.
4 Sinister Engi+Ranger hang together and provide large damage. Spreadsheets shown that CF4 is a lot of healing with and without +Healing before; it should still be in a good spot regardless to help this group sustain.

As far as DPS per body goes, the Ranger will provide roughly 37.6% (with deviations of course) of a Sinister Engi’s DPS at the cost of personal DPS 2.75sec for CF4 every 10 seconds.

Anyway, this is just an idea I had. Feel free to run with it or not.

+25% more healing from CF1 looks solid for a CF focused build.

Troll+CF Unity can raise the bar fast enough in a group to instantly power the bar for some juicy Superspeed+Condi clear.

Lifesteal or Retal.
I went through my Druid zerg footage from a few hours ago and Signet of Stone was definitely working.

Go for the Eyes still interrupts F2. However, Go for the Eyes now appears to have a 15second ICD so a 2nd activation of F2 is required to activate pet skill.

Valiant Resolution [VR] is primarily looking for active and social members.
Game type: Very active PvX, a lot of guild events.
Primetime: 8:00pm-midnight Eastern. Growing in outside time zones.
Website: http://valiantresolution.enjin.com/home
Contacts:
Keiz Darkheart (OMGimAnoobLOLOL.4730)
Lillie Darkheart (Lillie.1279)

VR is a PvX guild that strives for equality and a fun experience for everyone. Our leaders put a lot of effort into individual members. You are not invisible and you’re not a faceless influence fountain. We accept new and veteran players. This is an adult guild or at least anyone that can handle adult conversations.

Our events include: Achievements, Dungeons, Fractals, Yak’s Bend WvW (with a growing Gates of Madness community), Organized Silverwastes, casual SPvP, RAFFLES. We also have a teamspeak and event calendar on the website.

We have leadership that are experienced progression raid leaders and we’re excited to get into raid content. Our leaders are ex-military and our rank structure is very military, we have promotion criteria all outlined.

There’s been a few issues with Thief that I’ve felt were needed for a long time(particularly PvE):
1) Hard hitting AoE initiative attack for AoE trash, so we aren’t strictly blind spammers.
2) A block.

The staff 2 and 4 seem to be effective AoE trash attacks with a respectable init cost with good support and the auto stacks vuln too. The tooltips look like low-power (1200 instead of 2000 pulm impact) so I’m hoping to see the damage go up a lot in a power build.

Bandit’s Defense being a block on utility is an incredibly smart move. There’s various weapon blocks with low cooldown that are good for PvE, however because of the init system blocks will either be restrictive and lock you out of attacks or be able to be spammed. The utility choice is great work-around for the init AND gives the flexibility for use of any weapon.

Warrior Physicals are all CC-moves and it’s nice to see the Thief incorporating more control aspects of Physicals rather than deviating like the Reaper Shouts.

PvP wise, I don’t know if D/P is going to be dropping SA. I could easily see S/D running this with Bandit’s Defense/Agility/SR. Distracting Daggers being similar to Mantra of Distraction pre-nerf/fix/whatever with a Thief version of Halting Strike means that a Soldier interrupt build would be possible.

I have a strong feeling this will open up build diversity between DA/SA/Tr D/P and the synergies of DD and other weapons. I doubt we’ll see the diversity of Guardians but hey!

Loboling.5293:

snip

A thing to keep in mind is that “easier skill floor” isn’t the basis of whats “overpowered” or not.
“Overpowered” is more based around it’s ability to be metagameable and even often overlooks “infinite skill ceiling” scenarios.

Losing a bunch of games then playing a new prof and winning against the cabbage patch because you had a bunch of Cele Eles doesn’t make it OP – just a win vs the cabbage patch.

D/D has cheaper+faster stealth with decent damage making it solid for high damage against NPCs. In a PvP environment it has a lot of problems however.

It’s stealth is melee, doesn’t have stealth-on-demand (has to run HiS/BP/SR) so it’s rather footsloggy in combat. The CnD blind blanket is a real threat too. It doesn’t have the pressure that D/P3 has either.

All in all: D/D has significantly more counterplay than D/P and is one of the easier Thief sets to beat (or at least stalemate) in a 1v1.

However, it is much easier to play than D/P and weak enemies might not know how to beat it. So in a low skill environment D/D works a lot better than a higher skill one.

Kodama.6453:

Range shouldn’t be an argument here, rangers got long bow range 1500 too and it is outdamaging mortar kit a lot, and it has a high burst skill like rapid fire on it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the same damage for mortar kit like the rangers with their long bows. I just want 1 viable long range AA, is that really too much to ask for?

Ranger longbow is in the 2250-2300 ballpark. Zerk Mortar also was stronger and I’m pretty sure faster.

Why not use it? If all 25 charges get consumed then its over 7000 damage and if none of the healing is overhealed then its 14000+.

Either way, it’s a lot of damage-per-cast-time AND a heal slot…

With how much confusion there is on the purpose of a signet, why not try… using it…?

Rym.1469:

SoV currently has 1s ICD not per target, but in general. That’s why even if it’s somehow okay in 1v1, it totally drops the ball in anything else.

And since our Siphons are balanced for and meant to be played in fights bigger than 1v1, it makes little sense.

It’s per player. Used it on a world boss this is what happened:
“I see the buff come up, 8 charges left. Poof.”
“I see the buff come up, 6 charges left. Poof.”
I didn’t even get to see the charges shred down like I do in a group.

Also, SoV isn’t “per target”, it’s “per player.” If you’ve been trying to use Minions as players then that’s probably the source of your misinformation.

PvE PS DPS
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AggBpAT8Baw~
Strength/Tactics/Disc.
The same might stacking we love with some huge damage modifiers added on it.

Cele Shoutbow,
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AggDqASoBaw~
Defense/Tactics/Disc
Yo dawg, I heard you like stats, so we put more stats on stats so you can have more stats on your most stats.

This will be great for Mai Trin, Archdiviner, Land Mossman, ect. Even though you can already park a group behind a double bear tank for easy lightning stacking, this will make them extremely hard for her to kill and the swapping a lot more fluid.

The other 2 are already bosses that prefer targets in their tunnel vision, now you can just stack behind them and lolol to the bank. (Except Mossman’s double axe attack, that is random target)

RaO, Remoseless, GS is going to be aoe vuln city for Rangers, might not even need Quick Swap double GS shenanigans.

If it’s the bow you want to drop… For quite a while I’ve been on a rampage replacing the bow with GS in a zerk hambow build with Rampage.
Sigils: GS=Energy+Battle. Hammer=Intel+Fire.
Burst is great and zerk Rampage is BEAST.

Right off the bat Necro, Thief, Engi should be removed off this list.

Necro: Lich vs Rampage is definitely largely in favor of Lich 1v1, in team fights Rampage’s CCs let them get tunneled pretty easily though. This isn’t a Rampage-specific issue, it’s a general Necro issue. Busted ez.

Thief can just perma stealth it, there’s no reason why this “Thief can’t counter it” garbage needs to depend on the Thief boxing it.

Engi can easily deal with it if you don’t get every single big ability popped right before. Rampage is the only thing that actually allows that Cele Warrior to actually kill an Engi. A Cele Warrior+Rampage beating an Engi, especially 1v1 is called ‘getting outplayed.’ There’s too many answers to even bother listing. You have to make some serious mistakes to consistently lose this fight so quickly.

If you’re having so many problems with everything vs it means 1 of 2 things:
1) You’re immediately on tilt when you see it and you throw like crazy.
2) L2P.

Set up Archive videos so we can check you out off hours. Also, if you WvW raid and GvG, let us know what guild you’re in.

Genlog.4983:

i think its bulkitten that players force you to play what they want and not what you want

i always play bear/LB style more focus on support

and thx to me i can get my party save to the orther side
brown bear is mostly my choice with gray wolf

just a few good things we can do for the party

1 bear can tank and brown bear can remove con
2 pet can help get up downed players up fast
3 can KB mob back that are attacking a downed player
4 have a good AOE healing skill
5 and much more

am getting sick and tired off those zerk gear players
i hope Anet will Nerf those gear so hard that players are forced to build something else

Here’s some insight.

So you’re standing back 1000+, not receiving 600 range buffs from party, not giving buffs and not running zerk? How exactly are you supporting the group again? If you’re going to be proud of your rezzing skills, then you won’t be rezzing when you’re 1000+ away from the party and having your utility be the only rez is unacceptable.

LB IS useful in PvE. Vuln bursting (+Cripple for PO), some bosses have very nasty pressures. Esp when theres so many particle effects you can’t see which direction their facing for fast hard hits (Archdiviner). Most players understand this and won’t kick you for it, even in “Melee” groups.

Bear, unless it’s Mai Trin, don’t bother. If you want a tank pet then the Drakes are actually your support ones. AoE blast lets you double blast (Water for instance) and apply weakness and are quite durable on anything less than Mai Trin. Vs Mai Trin, the bears can tank her for the most part and your party sits behind her and soaks lightning ez. That’s it.

Zerk gear helps support the party’s defenses. The less uptime on a boss the better uptime your group’s defense mechanics are. Running around with Condi Shortbow and laughing bc you draw the fight out and your warriors are dying while you run around like a chicken isn’t supporting a party – it’s killing them. Zerk isn’t all about “Awesome Games Done Quick” charity mode.

Selfish defenses are selfish, supporting the party is supporting. Without a sustain-based PvE model, everyone should be helping with damage. By the way, nerfing Zerk doesn’t change the PvE model.

Offtopic: If Anet wants Zerk dominance to go away in PvE then they have to start by changing the NPCs, but that’s an entirely different discussion. (Example: cut damage by 75%, x4 hp, x4 toughness = condi, healers, tanks are viable)

Malediktus.3740:

kokiman.2364:

It’s a legit tactic and people will come up with countertactics.

Will they? I have been waiting for a decent anti commander sniping tactic for months now. The only thing I see happening is that people contact the enemy commander and make a “contract” to not snipe each others commander.

The moment groups start running a backup driver tag is the moment your months-long problem becomes solved. Welcome to metagaming.

Thanks for coming out to OS for the GvG support. The number of spectators were insane, I even had a queue to get in and play! I’m not the voice of the GvG community but it seemed to mean a lot to us to see some Anet representation there.

Simply standing there swapping servers was blowing people’s minds. Good times!

What build are you planning on running it on? Water Ele healing is done really well with ground hits and healing allies in areas you choose. Sigil of Water doesn’t activate on ground hits, only targeted hits so it doesn’t function well with Water Ele.

Staff Guard? Staff is used a lot to cleave/proc crit sigils and not so much to stand behind the bomb, you usually bomb in too.

I don’t know a build/playstyle it’s suited for.

BlackBeard.2873:

I would like to see how well the new specs do vs. what is usually the base class’s weakest matchup to see if it truly opens new doors.

From what we have seen so far:

1. Chronomancer vs. thief (d/p or s/d)
2. Dragon-hunter vs. ele (d/d or s/f)
3. Reaper vs. thief?? (Necros aren’t as much countered by anyone 1v1, as much as easily focused in teamfights)

I’m a big fan of this.

As much as I’d personally love seeing how Power Ranger performs with the spec changes and the increase in projectile hate, they might be stale against these 3. Power Ranger vs Reaper is probably going to be just about as easy(read: unfun+cheesey) as dueling most Necs and I think Shatter Chrono will have a landslide advantage = too many threats to dodge. I honestly don’t want the DH vs Ranger to end up being similar to Medguard vs Ranger ie: If the Ranger makes a mistake, they die, if they outplay almost every move then zzz gg.

I want to see some big dog duels!

Shatter Chrono(DA/Duel mb Illusion, player’s choice) vs DA/Trick/SA Thief. http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgcBrAXYA9g~ (Although if the interaction between Mug+Blinding Powder steal is better than the current stealth-on-steal interaction then take that)

If you could showcase the siphons working in Reaper’s shroud that’d be hype. I’d probably shotgun suggest Cele Blood/Soul Reap Dhuumfire sustain vs Cele Shoutbow War http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AggDuASoBbg~ to put those burning stacks to work!

Engi is already pretty slick in 1v1, maybe this would be a good candidate to place vs the DH. I feel like the new trait lines are currently hurting D/D Cele Ele too much for me to care to see it vs the Guard spec. At least the F2 leap and F3 projectile hate can create some good plays in this matchup!

TL;DR:
Shatter Chrono vs D/P Thief
Blood/Dhuumfire/Reaper vs Cele Shoutbow War
Engi vs Dragonhunter (any build)

Mine:
Attunements on f1-f4
` Weapon Swap/drop
1-5 Skills
Shift heal, Q,E,R utilities, T elite.

Push to talk and Dodge on mouse thumb buttons.
Ctrl+T to target, X stow, C for called target, F interact, Z view behind.

I don’t recommend developing a habit of taking your hand off the mouse to play the piano for utilities or clicking. There’s a risk of mispressing, a loss of control and/or a loss of effective reaction times.

Habits become hard to break. Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes habit. Perfect practice makes perfect. Garbage practice makes garbage.

Keep in mind games like MMOs reward players with good UIs and keybinds to help the players because we’re humans, we’re not anime characters, we don’t just win and become the best because we deem to be determined for 2 minutes. As far as giving easily accessible information to the player, Gw2’s UI isn’t super amazing but it is light years better than WoW’s by comparison. Non-costumized UIs are a normalization, however, we can fix some of the atrocious default settings+keybinds and I’d highly recommend taking advantage of that feature.

Whatever you do with your keybinds, it’s best to centralize combat around your keyboard hand (usually gravitated toward WASD keys, Minandreas being a good example of the exception)

Things that have a lot of multi hits get beat up by it = Meteor, Lightning Storm, Icebow, Grenade, Flamethrower, Pistol Whip/Blurred/Flurry and probably Well bombs. The AoE caps on most stuff (like Guard Staff1 spam) prevents Retal from blowing everyone up.

I’ve also recently been coming across this concern since a certain guild that transfered to NA server runs an 60+ retal blob. Once I almost got 100->0’d from simply throwing out a Static with Lightning Rod trait >_>.

I tried being more careful about the Meteors, when I disrupt the stacks I often had to rotate quickly to water and use Water1 on my feet to sustain the retal. I definitely recommend running 00266 against it for the hp padding and sustain advantages. No Lightning Rod means you don’t get punished for doing your job (controlling) and you can rotate Meteor disruptions into Water3->Water1 spam filler/dodge ->Water5->Earth2+dodge and still having 3,4,5 open to continue doing your job (controlling zergs) without dying.

This is how I’ve had to react to this situation. Good luck out there.

You can’t switch to the Staff in combat.
Regeneration is a weak amount of healing, you don’t want to be dumping a trait slot for it without some kind of synergy. The only burst in your entire build is Phoenix→Air+AB, then you’re completely out of gas.

The Fresh Air build mentioned above is actually a very similar build to this except it bursts more often and has more clean defensive traiting.

There’s a few variations to the build but here’s a basic core:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhcM6cW3wnBf0AOAGxaQMQ8EIA0BLeFWCA-TJBFwACOBAl2foaZAAPAAA
Common Variations: Bolt to the Heart instead of One with Air, 06206, replacing Signet of Air (usually with Arcane Blast or Wave)

Here’s Phantaram’s version
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F_Fresh_Air
I watched him in a stream say he goes 6 Arcane instead of 4Water4Arcane because he’s used to the shorter cooldown on attunements.

- Another variant is D/F instead of S/F.
- Someone recently posted a variant that runs Lightning Rod instead of Fresh Air.
https://youtu.be/9oMbJEe9vrs?t=3m14s (skipping the roleplaying)

WvW roaming doesn’t have objectives like SPvP does so there’s little commitment value. The only way I’ve learned to make roamers commit to a fight is to not outplay them immediately… let them beat you up a bit and make them think they can actually win – sometimes they stick around then.

Some servers the roamers will immediately call in friends/zergs to help the 1v1 and
other servers the roaming groups are 15man. (They go around flipping camps, sentries, fighting 1-3v15) Be aware of your enemy’s psychology if you intend to fight roamers.

If they nike too early, you have to let them go. They’ll probably reset and try to fight you again and other times avoid you (SR, teleport, invis immediately when u start attacking) be careful when you try to chase someone down, those could be the resources you need to run away if they end up running you into a 1v4.

WvW roaming is kinda like diet PvP.

Staff might stacking = Earth2, Fire2, Arcane Wave, Arcane Brilliance. Feel free to stack it at the beginning of the fight.

Otherwise, this sounds like a level of WTF? on par with me joining an (AC none-the-less) “all path, exp, zerk only, ping gear” and getting kicked for having ascended instead of exotic. >_>

So, what do Elementalists lack?

Dedicated condition-damage weapons.

http://youtu.be/7fISdtOtREM

As hard as it can be, try to be aware of what’s actually killing you.

Here’s some examples:
-Are you on melee bosses and just taking big hits? Utilize range.
-Are you dying to projectile pressure? D/F Air4 and Earth4 should relieve a lot or Staff Earth3.
-Are you dying while melee stacked? Try D/F for invuln. Use Sandstorm if it’s non-boss (Defiance wrecks Blinds)
-Are you dying to telegraphed attacks and/or red circles? Gonna need to learn the dodge timings.
-Are you forced to stack and the only zerker in a non-zerker group and things aren’t dying fast enough to cover yourself with invulns/dodges/evades/blocks/reflects/ect? This is a prime situation where increasing selfish defensive stats = lowers group survivability. Just relax and accept you’ll have a bad day.

Shekos.4503:

I know ranger are bad in wvw zergs but i love to play my ranger + wvw zerg fights!

Try Ranger in a periph squad rather than trying to frontline/backline it. You might be surprised how good it is when gank squads have Water regroups (Thief SB+Healing Spring) combined with the highest range pressure in the game.

If we’re talking about open field ZvZ then I often see servers with giant blobby numbers advantage running Ranger pugs just bc its easy to hide behind a massive 1push army. This puts smaller groups on the defensive and you don’t get pressured, although Rangers don’t tag as good as other builds so there is that…

EnderzShadow.2506:

Would a D/D build be an easier beginner build?
Would I be tougher? Harder to kill? So far, the hardest thing I am finding is that I am so so soft. Ridiculously soft. A npc hits me for 1/5th of my health just running by.

I leveled crafting just so I could craft ascended celestial gear. And you don’t use it.

I want to take camps solo. When you solo, do you do that?

Yes. Yes. Yes. D/D Cele is a strong sustain+pressure build. When I solo camps as D/D Cele I switch Renewing Stamina to Blasting Staff and just Staff instead.

I tried this build last night and it was pretty fun. I did get mistaken for an “OP Cele” too.

As far as Condi/Diamond Skin/Stone Heart builds go, this felt much more overall flexible and capable than something like 62600 S/F Signet Earth Camper.

Thanks for posting this build! (Me likely the match-up analysis too!)

Kodiak.3281:

Kinda sad you can’t even have a discussion without it being “a crusade.”

It was very clearly personal the way you opened your first reply with a paragraph antagonizing him about your previous conversation. Ever since then you’ve been very graphically insulting zerk players or anyone that hints toward suggesting it for solo play and what little evidence was requested of you – you mockingly backed out of.

Feel free to post videos, theorycraft, numbers or things that would help lesser experienced players. However, also respect that things have also been tested, tried and a multitude of evidence to back that up.

Stay classy, thanks!

Kodiak.3281:

@Ark: You literally gave the OP exactly what the OP said they weren’t looking for. I mean section by section, every build the exact opposite what they said they were looking for.

Auren.9142:

What should I focus on? It doesn’t seem like a max dps build is the right solution. What types of gear help for this type of play? What sort of trait alignment and weapon focus?

I must’ve missed where he specifically said “No max dps / meta builds” I fail to see how any of Ark’s suggestions were the opposite of what he said. OP simply said he wasn’t sure if zerk was the way to go and Ark showed some really good builds that were. The only thing I seen otherwise was a low single target weapon with half tank stats.

I’m sorry you feel offended by what Ark said and are on a rampage. Go out for a jog, get your head back into the game and stop making this thread an emotional crusade.

Here’s some videos for OP:
49 Mai Trin vs D/F Ele https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuwaTr6E4Os
Lupi vs Staff Meta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr7sV6W54vg
Arah P3 Solo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEdcYxFY6fE
Me scrubbing it up in Silverwastes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYwvg2QpKvI

Feel free to hit me up as well. My profession tends to revolve around my personal flavor at the time but I don’t mind switching for group comp.

If I’m in WvW then I’m not available. :P

MadRabbit.3179:

Mesmers arent even listed in the dungeon meta and most of the time when they are wanted, its for portal to do skips.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Team:Team_-_Standard_Dungeon_Meta

the entire functionality of a Guardian/Mesmer

Variations
General

Mesmer running Empowering Mantras DPS can replace Guardian in similar functionality.

Mesmers have the most reflects in the game and share the reflector role with the Guardian.

IfIFear.7210:

snip

This build looks like a good SPvP build (Staff instead of Scepter) if you learn a few tricks. Scepter looks incredibly weak in this build.

Once you switch to Staff the dynamics of the build will change. A water healer is okay if your dungeon group is very inexperienced. Know that this is a crutch and you (and your friends) should not rely on this in the long term or else your gameplay will become crippled. We want to develop a strong gameplay instead of a crippled one.

Most people posting here will be giving you high-level of play advice and generally this build doesn’t provide much in the hardest content and the usual way people efficiently tackle said content.

Offtopic: Keep this gear for WvW (Use your AC dungeon tokens for Monk Runes) and take off autotarget. Take target off while in water attunement and spam 1 on your feet to pump out a lot of AoE healing.

Now that we got that out of the way… On to the good advice!:
I’m going to apologize now because this is going to be a really long read… Sorry :/

Gw2’s PvE is a non-sustain model. Compared to WoW for example, tank(s)+healer(s) provide the mechanical and statistical sustain to survive encounters, then damage dealers kill things. Gw2 doesn’t have tanks(generally), it doesn’t have healers, aggro can be easily lost depending on the NPC.

Knowing this: How should we approach group dynamics? GOOD THING YOU ASKED FELLOW ELEMENTALIST!!!

Group survivability generally comes from Blinds,Protections,Weakness,Aegis, Stuns, Reflects, Dodges and Dead Stuffs ™ (Dead Stuffs ™ do no damage to your group) Also, since there’s no dedicated healers/tanks/damage dealers, it means everybody needs to be bringing damage to create Dead Stuffs ™.

Now that we know everyone is a damage-dealer… here’s 3 major aspects that group members want to fill: Defensives (the above mentioned survivability mechanics), Offense buffs (Banners, Vulnerability, Might, Fury) and Reflectors(and other anti-projectile).

Eles in particular can bring a very good amount of these: Lets start by looking at this build as an example: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQFAWnMISLD20AWPAdEGgAQCHIyAxlyMq0bA-TxRBABXp8jm9HwTHQeXAAAeAAUq+jZKBBA-e (If you need to understand damage dealing maths, I posted about modifiers recently, check my past posts)

The major things this build brings:
Lots of high area damage, including Ice Bow, which the 4 is an incredible amount of burst damage! (Drop the Ice Bow if you aren’t 1 shotting things) Once this build does its openers, it wants to stay in Fire as much as possible for it’s damage.

Glyph of Storms (Air’s Lightning Storm can allow you to stack 25 Vuln alone with high damage)(Earth’s Sandstorm allows a big area, good duration blinder AND IT ISNT A SMOKE FIELD) In very long fights where you sit in Fire attunement all day Firestorm is better than a Fireball, so it’s still worth using… but Signet of Fire’s crit% may be preferable.
- Quick Glyphs trait helps bring this cooldown down. ’MORE’+’BETTER’ = ‘MORE BETTER’! I crack myself up sometimes!
- – Glyph of Elementals gives us a good tank (Earth, high toughness and hp) to sit bosses in 1 spot your group blows them up. Fire Ele is also solid damage. Quick Glyphs helps here a little too.

Persisting Flames: This makes Eles a really good Fire Field blaster since not only does it provide Area Might it also provides a lot of Fury. Lightning Hammer builds depend on this trait a lot to give huge amounts of Fury and Might to parties. However, it’s also boosts our Lava Font so it’s really strong for Staff too! More fire fields, more fury, more damage.

Other minor things that start adding up :
Arcane Wave is a good instant blast+damager, Arcane Lightning boosts our short term damage and makes this utility a good for a lot of frontloading damage. (Area Might+ Fury, Ferocity, Damage)
66002 unlike similar builds, this contributes to vulnerability stacking. More Storms.
64xx2 64022 or 64202. When storm isnt needed often (use Signet of Fire as a placeholder to save the cooldown) and vuln doesn’t need to be brought you get +10% dmg.
62222 When vuln is capped this is the highest sustained damage with double +10% modifiers.

I hope this read helps you understand the advice everyone will give to you and how to contribute to a group!

Juken.5391:

Discuss?

My problem is I do no dmg. Stance warriors seem incredibly annoying to me.

Wvw and Pvp just wanna see if it’s something I need to do or I just got shrekt by gear (which I doubt)

There’s a few layers to the fight: 1) The fight, 2) React to their stances. This is generally hard for your build to do since you’re half zerk while using a sustain build and instead you’re at the mercy of when they decide to pressure you. You are also lacking a few tools to help you out-survive the stance pressure.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYlcMozhNOwyB8rNQHQRO/ngPYUAUOHahZA-T1SHABpt/QdKBXUlA+UDwQVI+QVlCOBANp8DMtAwpDAgHAAA-w

this is what I am running atm. probably gonna replace my boots/gloves with cav and my shoulders with celestial. I’m not gonna run food/utility if I’m just guarding my borderland. Rune wise is gonna have to stay too since it’s just too convenient for me.

Your build could use a little clean up. Cleansing Wave (condi cleanse on Water swap) has always kinda disappointed me and this is why: When you switch into Water, that’s your 1 condi cleanse (2 cleansed) and after 5 THATS IT – you’re absolutely done! If someone condi’s you after you switch into water you’re pretty screwed which basically locks your Cleansing Fire into anti-bombing your water.

Instead, (ab)use Cleansing Water: Soothing Disruption gives your Cantrips the flexibility to give you condi cleanse whenever! Cleansing Water = Mo Regens = Mo Better, also, Vigor uptime is pretty sweet with (ab)using Evasive Arcana and general survivability!!!!

Cantrip Mastery! As you become more familiar with the BLs you won’t need fall damage traits as much.

Since you’re sticking with Trav runes, you’ll have to accept that you won’t have as much Might to boost the power scaling and condi pressure. (Fire2 is an incredible amount of medium-range pressure!)
!!! Also, there’s a trick I have that you might be interested in as a D/D Ele: Open inventory, switch to Staff, 4, lay down Static, switch to 1 dagger, water attune, hit 3 as you run over (it won’t stop you from moving) to blast it, equip 2nd dagger, go back to Air asap. 30ish seconds of Swiftness Since you fight D/D you don’t need your Static for combat xD Very high swiftness uptime outside of combat!!

The focus here is how to fight em btw :P

hammers, axes, sword warriors.

- Run stats to help you put pressure and force stances, then play around the stances. They have long cooldowns so you can survive them then they’re left with very little.
-Armor of Earth for hammer play and axe/shield play.
-Soothing Disruption for Evasive Arcana and on-demand anti-condi pressure.
-I would honestly drop Mist Form for Armor of Earth. I generally roam with Lightning Flash, AoE, Cleansing Fire.
-Learn your Earth attunement lock-ups. This tremendously increased the effectiveness of my fighting with D/D and I suggest every D/D Ele PvPing to know how to do this!
-Learning how to flow your attunements and how to (ab)use Evasive Arcana are the differences between bad Eles and godly Eles. Without seeing a video of your play this point is hard to give too much advice on.

Kinda offtopic: Zerky Roaming Warriors can run a bunch of different stuff but they tend to have 1 big thing in common: They have more “stuff you have to dodge than dodges or Zerks just die” and you tend to not have an incredible amount of stuff to survive Zerky War roamers.

02066/00266 Cele easily out sustains Stance Warrior builds. Play to your strengths.

Here’s my current roaming set up:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYhcM6cW4wxBf0AdAB5xqvRBlzbnB-TFSHABcs/QdKBXU1H+UDogHAQTK/gQPAAnAAA-w

Hope this helps a bit! If you need someone to practice 1v1 with contact me in game.