Guild Wars 2

Jemmi.6058:

…

Anyway, on to my main question. Is Zerk gear still king? The 2nd thing that really bugged me in GW2 was the lack of viable build options. If you didn’t run Zerk then you were hurting your party more than helping. Has this been changed at all? How are the utility and support roles and have the dungeon mechanics changed at all to require these roles?

I know the feeling. I’ve recently come back as well, and severely disliked the Go Zerk or Go Home nature of the game. I was disappointed to find that not much has really changed, as far as mechanics.

What has changed is the player base. If you PUG, and you know the dungeons, nobody will really care what armor you’re wearing. It’s more important that you know how to do the fights, but even then I’ve forgotten a ton of stuff and nobody has said a word about it. People seem much nicer than they were. I think it’s because most of the impatient jerks quit playing.

Even WvW is nicer than it used to be, with much less trolling and rage in map chat.

Taisia.2813:

…and crafting double incinerators, my beautiful ele, Xirn is complete! Just thought I’d share It’s a shame anet will take away flame kissed armor though

Looks awesome!

Leamas.5803:

coolmanx.5726:

I only get to play about 3-4 hours each day (more on weekends) so for a casual player I have to say I feel like I accomplished a lot in such a short amount of time.

Is this what’s considered casual? No wonder it takes me forever to do anything. LOL

Yeah, that’s casual. “Hardcore” involves quitting your job, living on Hot Pockets & Ensure, and keeping a bucket next to the computer.

They don’t make many Hardcore MMOs any more.

Swagg.9236:

Because staff elementalist is the most thought-provoking play-style in this game. It’s an attrition class with wind-up spike DPS capabilities. It’s amazing for team-play and almost every weapon skill outside of auto-attacks requires premeditation, timing and aim. It has a lot of options for controlling opponents as well as supporting allies.

Staff elementalist is by far the best designed weapon skill set in this game.

Completely agree here.

Though staff feels like it was designed for a completely different game. Most other weapon sets feel very one dimensional, but are far stronger. I enjoy the class’s ability to switch gears on the fly, but dislike that that versatility is completely unnecessary in most areas of the game.

How do you play this without Blasting Staff?

I’ll try it out, but I don’t know that I can get used to the teeny tiny Lava Fonts again.

benzegol.5829:

When the ele is easy to play post some videos with pvping with staff (!) and show us how easy it is to play it.

Kite, kite, burning retreat.

Kite, kite, healing-dodge.

Kite, kite, unsteady ground + eruption + whatever combo field.

Kite, kite, chilling field.

Kite, kite, static field.

….

Win through persistence and agile fingers.

Not me playing, but it’s still a pretty fun fight to watch. Nothing that player does is particularly difficulty, and I would say is a good example of staff playstyle. He lucked out in that his opponent didn’t have enough DPS to outright burst him to death.

Mek.2947:

I would love to see these self-proclaimed “I find eles easy” put out some videos of their amazing skill – especially the ones poo pooing daphoenix.

Anyone who said they copy pasted the D/D rotation and face rolled people with it, are either lying, were against someone who was AFK, fighting someone who was distracted by another player, or someone who just picked up the game less than a month ago.

You make it out like enemy players are just NPCs that just stand there and let you execute an entire rotation on them. It’s not that hard to hear/see the big ball of light going BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSHT towards you to figure out, “hmm now might be a good time to dodge”.

Nice troll thread though.

Considering it’s 7 months old, it’s probably the best troll thread in history.

(Well, maybe not )

As for posting a video of easy gameplay….why?

daphoenix is good at this game. I’d imagine emulating his playstyle on any class would be very difficult. That isn’t because Ele is hard to play. It’s because doing something really well is hard. Just the reaction time required to notice most skill-tells, recognize what they are, decide if they need to be dodged or not, and then react appropriately is incredibly high and takes lots of practice. Heck, I still can’t do it against most skill sets.

Remembering what buttons do which skills on an Ele is really very easy. PvPing against people who are very good at it is hard, regardless of class.

I PvP only rarely, and it’s usually just to test out weird builds without spending gold on them.

I generally avoid sPvP for a few reasons. They are as follows:

-I feel like I missed the boat. I queue for a match and get people far more skilled than I am. I end up feeling like I’m a burden to my team because I die constantly.

-I feel like I’m not in the PvP “clique.” I hit hotjoin, get in a match, and quickly see it’s being dominated by 3 people on one side that are in the same guild and basically roaming the map and focusing down everyone in their path.

-I feel like I’m in the wrong place. I found out only recently that most sPvP regulars consider hotjoin to be a terrible waste of time, and recommend that I try solo queue tourneys for a more organized and less zergy experience. There is nothing to indicate this difference to a new player. I avoided tourneys because the description of the game mode seemed like it was for pre-built teams.

So, there you have it. This one game mode makes me feel totally behind the curve in every single way, and there’s not really any easy to find resources for me to consult to see if I’m “doing it wrong.” It’d be one thing if ANet put some flavor text on an NPC that explained what a bunker or roamer was, or told me what far-point or home-point meant. Even if they labelled hotjoins as a “Glory Farming” mode, just so new players know that it’s only there to farm points and otherwise doesn’t mean anything, would be great.

People play video games to have fun. They don’t play games to be farmed by more experienced players, feel ignorant, and get nothing out of it.

The mode could easily be improved with a little work, and this wouldn’t require that much coding. Just communicating basic information, and having sensible instructions readily available, would do wonders for participation. Otherwise it just looks like this game mode is something ANet has completely forgotten about.

I used to laugh when people referred to Ele as “The most mobile class in the game.” They weren’t really talking about Ele. They were talking about RTL. RTL was so good that it became silly to run anything other than /D, especially in PvP.

When one skill on one weaponset defines the core playstyle of the entire class, and everything else is terrible in comparison, then that skill needs adjusting. My problem isn’t that RTL was nerfed. My problem is that adjusting everything else has taken so long.

Kodiak.3281:

The biggest problem with Staff isn’t it’s damage or how it even deals it’s damage. The real issue is it has virtually zero reactionary defenses. When you look at /Dagger or even /Focus both have attunements/abilities with active defense moves they can be of use when being pressured. Staff on the other hand largely lacks this in favor of AOE CC which isn’t nearly as effective in a smaller combat scenario but great in larger combat scenarios. That, more than anything, keeps the staff from being a viable alternative. The damage is actually halfway decent.

I agree with this. I see the little backward hop that Rangers and Thieves get on their bows

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Disabling_Shot_

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quick_Shot

Note the short CD of the Ranger version, and the manageable Initiative cost on the Thief version.

Then I look at our version

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Retreat

9 Second CD vs. 20 Second CD

It makes me a bit envious, honestly.

The Game Slayer.7632:

The problem with condimentalist is that it is only 1v1’ing. It has such little AoE to it that if you brought it to a group fight you might as well (insert suicide action here.)

I’ve found Condi builds to be fairly useful in group fights. That’s building for Condi Duration more than Condi Damage, though. Long duration bleeds, burns, chills, cripples, and immobilize combined with our usual buffs, healing, and damage is pretty effective if thrown on top of 1 or 2 decent bursters on your team.

This was with Staff, however. I found Condi Scepter to be very 1-dimensional and clunky to use.

Increase the range of the “Electric Discharge” minor trait to 1200.

Change “Gust” to both knockback and make us retreat, similar to the Engineer speargun.

Increase the projectile speed of “Shockwave.”

Increase the damage of “Chain Lightning” on the first hit, decrease the damage on the 2nd and 3rd hits. (I hate this change, because I like the multi-hit effect. That said, there’s no better place I can think of to shoehorn single target damage in the weaponset.)

I don’t think we need another weapon, but I do think Staff could still be tweaked to allow for a higher damage 1v1 build without totally exploding full groups with the AoE.

Also, in terms of dev costs and time constraints, the chances of us getting a new weapon with 20 new skills implemented is effectively zero until they add new weapons to the game as a whole.

Leo G.4501:

PinCushion.7390:

Leo G.4501:

Am I mistaken, or wasn’t Glyph or Renewal 3.something cast once before but they nerfed it to 4.something and now they’re changing it back to 3.something?

Don’t remember, but….

TIL You don’t have to actually rez anyone with GoR (Fire) to get the self-rez buff. How did I never know this?!

Well, it is 2min+ utility skill and the self-rally lasts for 15sec or until you’ve rallied once. It has a use, I suppose, but I’d expect better use from a utility like Armor of Earth, Arcane Shield or Mist Form in preventing your death vs rezing yourself. Still usable to get an ally on their feet if they don’t get stomped in the process…a better supportive skill in PvE though, if you ask me.

I was thinking more of how often I start casting a rez on someone, and they get stealth-stomped before it lands while I get dog-piled because I’m casting a rez. The self-rez will make it take just a little longer to lose a point, even if I miss rezzing the bunker. I was previously under the impression that I had to successfully rez someone to get the buff, but that was wrong. Now with the faster cast time it’s much more useful, though the cooldown is quite punishing.

Sunflowers.1729:

Aether McLoud.1975:

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Honestly I’m kind of tired of people saying this, whether it be true or not, and using it to justify all kinds of things.

Maybe it’s true that most players suck (which means you really have to define what ‘suck’ is, because then almost everyone sucks, which doesn’t make sense) but don’t forget that it’s a game too.

Maybe Arenanet could make an exceedingly difficult dungeon, that only elite players could complete. As a Dungeon Master (with the stupid pre-nerf Simin), it probably wouldn’t be too hard for me to complete it, but the majority of the player base would complain. Now that in itself wouldn’t even be so bad, but what if you put it in as time-gated, and part of the living story? This is basically the Aetherblade dungeon.

Alternatively, take Thieves (#1 example because everyone complains about them). I decided to play D/P and started destroying everyone with 3 buttons. Now at the very highest level of play, they might be balanced, but for everyone else it’s simply not fun to deal with someone who stabs you for half your health and keeps going invisible, with massive regen+condition removal. At most players’ skill levels (according to Thief community, 90% of people suck. Their words, not mine) the class is stupidly OP even though neither player is ‘better’.

Basically, what I’m saying is that for this game to be popular, you can’t just balance around the highest levels of play and tell everyone else to “deal with it”.

I’m not gonna “deal with it”, I’m going to play LoL where they actually balance around all levels of play so that it is actually fun instead of thinking “wow maybe if I practice for two months this game might become fun”.

End of rant….(if it sounded offensive then I apologize because it wasn’t directed at you).

Edit: It doesn’t mean that hard content shouldn’t exist. It just means that there should be easy content too, for the less hardcore players, and that PvP shouldn’t be balanced only around the best players.

I don’t really get this at all.

I’m not a hardcore player in the slightest. I get a couple of hours a day (maybe) of casual play in. I do a variety of activities, depending on what I feel like in all parts of the game (besides dungeons, because I hate them).

The classes in this game are not hard at all to play. Even Ele/Engi is not hard. They are harder than the others, but that’s not saying much. The most difficult content in the game for me is sPvP because I’m just not all that good at dueling. It doesn’t upset me in the least, though. I pick my role, do my job, and die a lot. It’s not like I lose anything from dying. So, where’s the difficulty?

And on your point about Thieves. Thieves usually build for dueling. They practice dueling. They form their build around winning 1v1, and splitting groups into chain-1v1 encounters. Most people are bad at dueling, don’t practice dueling, and don’t build to win duels. I know I certainly don’t. So why is it a surprise that Thieves are so great at ganking people 1v1? That’s the entire focus of their build and playstyle! It isn’t difficult. It’s just common sense.

Just for fun, I tried a S/F build and a S/D build designed purely for 1v1 duels. With no practice at all, and an admittedly non-optimal build, I did ok against Thieves. I gave up a huge amount of utility, AoE, and support to get there, but the build did roughly what I wanted it to. With practice I’m sure I could have gotten quite good at the 1v1 game, but I found it of very limited use and ditched it.

Aether McLoud.1975:

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Hey, people like what they like. If they want a toon with a zillion bells and whistles to fiddle with just to get the simplest things done, then there’s Ele and Engi. If they want a toon that can go on autopilot and do really well, then there’s Warrior and Guard (and Ranger, I hear….don’t play them though).

Leo G.4501:

Am I mistaken, or wasn’t Glyph or Renewal 3.something cast once before but they nerfed it to 4.something and now they’re changing it back to 3.something?

Don’t remember, but….

TIL You don’t have to actually rez anyone with GoR (Fire) to get the self-rez buff. How did I never know this?!

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

I find Guardian and Warrior to be about the same difficult level as riding in a stick-shift car.

Necromancer is like driving a luxury sedan with a really complicated stereo system. Certain things are a pain, but who cares because everything else is automatic.

Peter Buch.8071:

Rule of your average mmorpg forum poster: “My profession is underpowered and all other professions are overpowered”.

Frankly, balance is currently very bad. Warrior and Mesmer wreck up PvE, therefor Warrior sucks at PvP (maybe better with new patch.) Elementalist is bad in PvE, all he actually has is AoE, his dmg is rather low, cc is not needed and guardians are better in protecting and healing (allthough healing isn’t needed either). Engineers are bad in PvE and currently op in PvP, same for Nekromancer. PvP und PvE balancing definitly have to be seperated.

Elementalists are currently definitly up for PvE and are getting nerfed extremly hard for PvP, while other classes are getting buffed. So what is the reason to play him anymore if he has no use?

In other mmos, jack of all trades classes excels vs pugs/pubbies while sux at tournies tat requires specialization. Shall we draw a comparison then? In GW2, D/D ele excels at spvp or havoc fights (tournies like environment) while staff ele excels at zergfest PVE or zergfest WvW (pugs/pubbies like environment). So whats tat crap for eveything stuff?

The game isn’t all about zergs. D/D got nerfed a lot, other classes got buffed, it doesn’t “excels” anymore. What’s about the rest of the game? Ofc you completly forget about focus and scepter. In WvW every class with AoE is strong, not to mention the portal of Mesmers and the protection abilities of guardians. Additionally the AoE cap nerfed the elementalist extremly hard, for WvW it was necessary, but for PvE and Spvp it’s just kitten. Sometimes you can’t even hit a necromancer with his pets anymore, as you can only hit 5 targets.
Elementalist doesn’t excels at anything, no matter how he is using his points or how he speccs up. He can’t decide to go to full support, he can’t decide to become a strong DD, he can’t decide to go for condition dmg or to have very high group usage like a mesmer with his time warp. The elementalist isn’t supposed to be best at something, as he is able to do a lot of things, but he must be able to specialize. Currently he can’t, he just remains a bad DD, a bad supporter and a bad roamer.

You’re equating “Not the best” with “Bad.”

Those are not the same thing.

Compare everything an Ele can do at any moment in time with a class that is the worst at that thing. That is what the class was designed for. To be less weak than everyone at their weak spot.

Whether that makes for compelling gameplay is an opinion based purely on what you like.

If you require the character you play to be “the best” at something, then you should probably reroll. The ele was designed (and subsequently altered) to never be the best at anything, and to compensate for the hinderance by never being the worst at anything.

This isn’t an Ele problem. It’s a GW2 problem. When you see a warrior with a greatsword you can probably guess what his build is just from whether he has a signet on his bar, and know exactly how he’s going to play. The same goes for most classes. See a necro with a scepter and get ready for lots of condi stacking. See a necro with a dagger and get ready for lots of sustained melee damage auto attacks. The classes are very predictable, because most unconventional builds don’t tend to work very well.

People constantly gripe about how bad Condi Ele is, but it is a (barely) functional build that nobody really expects when they see an Ele with a scepter. This is an example of what I mean. Condi Ele shouldn’t be bad, but it is. It works, but not well.

In a game with as big a variety of traits, weapons, and utilities you shouldn’t be able to look at what weapon someone has equipped and tell them what their trait setup and gearing looks like with any degree of certainty. But you can. Because most builds are pretty bad when compared to the few optimal, meta-approved builds.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Fresh Air staff… hmmmm… That’s an interesting idea but is fresh air good enough for that? I mean, you get your burst with air trait #15 and two arcane skills, and you only get to repeat the trait’s damage 5 seconds after.

Oh, I didn’t use it for burst. I used it for consistent extra damage output. The staff weapon skills just weren’t enough to phase anyone, so I tried a Valk FA build. The 30 Air and constant Fury from swapping attunements was enough to get the trait to proc almost all the time with no Precision on my gear.

It isn’t what I’d call a serious build, but it was fun to mess around with in a few hotjoins.

I had fun with a Fresh Air staff build for a while. The build relies on 2 quirks about the weaponset.

1) Nobody really expects to take a lot of damage from a Staff Ele.

2) When you’re putting out lots of AoE you don’t need all that high a crit chance to reliably proc Fresh Air.

Those 2 things together make for an amusing set of sPvP matches.

Malcastus.6240:

I had hoped they might at least fix Signet of Restoration working with Signet Mastery.

I’ve taken an “I’ll take what I can get” stance when it comes to ANet changes. Ele isn’t currently on their “Fix or lose lots of money” list. Ranger, Warrior, and Necro were. I didn’t expect us be tweaked much after the balance patch.

And, on the whole, the class works pretty well. Given the nature of the most recent changes, I’m glad there aren’t more of them. Fresh Air is a great trait, but it isn’t a whole lot of fun beyond the novelty of outputting more burst dps. I feel the same way about most of the Necro changes. They function better, and do more damage, but the class is kinda less fun to play than before.

I suppose this is just because I find the “Damage Role” very dull, and dislike that it’s the cornerstone of most GW2 gameplay. But that’s a different conversation.

So, they finally got around to making Glyph of Renewal a faster cast. It’s my favorite rez, so I’m definitely a happy camper. There’s a lot of functionality in that one skill, and I’m happy they finally buffed it. I guess it’s back to squeezing Quick Glyphs into my build somehow.

anzenketh.3759:

Question for everyone just to get a feel for things.
Just a question to get the feel for things. Would time-gating be ok if it was once per day per character as apposed to once per-day per account?
I personally think a lot of alt aholics would be ok with this. It allows them to progress the character as a character not as a account.

No. The point is to gate how long it takes an individual character to get a full set of these items. With 5 characters I could fuse 5 pieces a day and be done with one toon in like a week and a half.

That would completely invalidate the point of time-gating the content in the first place, because then it wouldn’t be time-gated. It’d be character slot gated.

Galen Grey.4709:

In real life we value stuff based on the value of raw materials & labour required to build them + a little profit on top. In a game there is no raw material involved in creating items so what you’re left is giving them value based on the time you want players to invest in getting said item.

I agree with your point in general, but this isn’t correct.

In real life pricing things is very complex, but can be summarized as a set of boundaries.

The lower bound is how much it costs the most efficient producer to make.

The upper bound is how much the seller thinks the wealthiest potential customer is willing to pay.

Where the actual “price” happens to be at any particular moment depends on how many willing customers with enough money there are and how much of the desired product there is.

Bear in mind, however, that all sellers desire for their prices to be as high as possible all the time. The only things that prevent this are competition and consumer willingness to pay. Costs don’t enter into the conversation until you start talking about efficiency. Also, keep in mind that prices are almost never set by consumers. Sales are determined by consumers, generally as a Yes/No decision, but that doesn’t really reflect on prices much. There are loads of products out there that will never sell (or will sell too quickly) because their prices don’t make any sense.

And, in case someone should think this is completely off-topic, this is the precise reason I don’t mind time-gating. Imagine if we could all make as much Celestial Armor for all of our alts all on 1 day. What do you think would happen to the price of Quartz? And what would happen to the price of Quartz after supply gets reduced when the event ends? I think the time-gated nature of Charged Quartz is an excellent method of ensuring price stability and eliminating waste. Most people aren’t going to make a bunch of Celestial armor “Just because.” They’re going to log in once a day to make each Charged Quartz, so they can get their one piece of Celestial a week. Why? Because they care. And in this instance ANet decided not to make them grind gold for a year because they care about getting a particular stat distribution.

And if this is a model to how Ascended is going to be implemented, then I’m all for it. I hate how half of the process of crafting a Legendary Weapon is grinding gold until you hate logging in. I’d rather it be artificially time gated than gated by market forces.

cheshirefox.7026:

Sisyphus
cuz constantly maxing out new builds and getting mediocre results is starting to feel like this

+1

Totally know how you feel.

I named mine Jack Squattery, ‘cause that’s all this class is good for!

Staff is pretty great in group play, once you swallow the 20 Arcane Required pill.

You don’t need any special gear, or special build beyond that. Your job is very simple.

If you want people to move away from something you drop Meteor/Ice Spike (and Eruption) on it.

If you want them to stop moving toward something you drop Ice/Air/Fire fields on it (and Eruption).

If you want to buff/heal your allies drop the relevant field near them (and Eruption).

If you want to do aoe damage just dump your damage skills in a large melee, where people can’t really see what’s going on (and Eruption).

Most important rule of Staff Ele. NEVER NOT ERUPTION!

@Kodiak

I like your build, but I think you could tweak it a bit so it gels a bit more. Some of the traits don’t seem to work with one another.

I’d probably swap your traits around to:

Fire:
Puissance become Fire’s Embrace.

I know what you’re going for. You’re wanting your Fire skills to serve as a make-shift Burst, and the might stacks increase your burning damage a bit. It doesn’t seem to do enough to warrant how much you’re losing in defense, though. Which leads me to…

Alacrity becomes Elemental Shielding

Now, I know this makes it take a bit longer for your Churning Earth to refresh, but from the video I saw you almost never used Churning more than once a fight. I’m gonna say that you probably don’t need the 20% CD reduction. Honestly, you probably don’t need either CD reduction but it’s not a big deal. However, taking Shielding means that every time you use a signet you now get Fire Shield (which gives you Might stacks if you get hit so it kinda fills in for Puissance) and you get Protection. This makes your build a bit tankier against burst without costing you that much in damage output.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty cool build no matter what you do with it. I’d want to build a little more mobility into it, since the big strength of long duration conditions is that you can load someone up with Bleeds/Burns and then kite them around while they die or waste cooldowns. More mobility would require a lot of changes, though. So all I think it needs is a touch more defense against getting burst, and Elemental Shielding does that quite well.

Just my 2 cents, and thanks for posting.

iriyabran.6218:

To me this weapon feels like something people won’t even notice if it gets deleted. :/

That is all ANet really needs to know. Some developer spent time and money (their money) creating a weapon set that is so lackluster that most wouldn’t notice if it was removed from the game. They can either spend more time and money turning it into something notable, or they can chalk the original time and money as wasted and just continue not caring.

My request to ANet. Make Focus not awful.

What bugs me is that blob warfare is so dull.

There currently aren’t any mechanics to encourage large forces to spilt into smaller chunks, and their aren’t any mechanics to discourage overly large armies from getting together in the first place.

I quite like that it has 2 completely different uses, and I have to choose whether I want to use it offensively or save it for a stun-break. I wish more skills were like that.

TGSlasher.1458:

PinCushion.7390:

I run Staff most of the time, and the only thing I want is Burning Retreat to be a Leap Finisher. That gives me all 4 auras. I think our access to auras is already pretty good, and have been trying to work out a build that really leverages it to the max.

Currently, the 10-point Earth trait (Elemental Shielding?) is so cheap that I can’t pass it up. Blast finish an Ice field and give everyone Frost aura AND protection. I might add Zephyr’s Boon to the mix as well, but I’m not sure I want that much aura spamming. They’re nice when you need them, but if I position well then I don’t really need them that much. Still, it might be nice for buff-stacking allies.

Staff … all auras if burning retreat was a leap finisher, where do you get Air aura? FYI leap through static field is a daze. :s who would have though.

The build I’ve been toying with lately incorporates Tempest Defense. It somewhat compensates for the otherwise terrible melee defense on staff, and the extra crit helps make up for staff’s fairly bad damage.

Unfortunately there aren’t enough trait points to get the build I really want, which would include Powerful Auras. Can’t run Staff without 20 Arcane. Almost can’t play an Ele without 20 Arcane.

I run Staff most of the time, and the only thing I want is Burning Retreat to be a Leap Finisher. That gives me all 4 auras. I think our access to auras is already pretty good, and have been trying to work out a build that really leverages it to the max.

Currently, the 10-point Earth trait (Elemental Shielding?) is so cheap that I can’t pass it up. Blast finish an Ice field and give everyone Frost aura AND protection. I might add Zephyr’s Boon to the mix as well, but I’m not sure I want that much aura spamming. They’re nice when you need them, but if I position well then I don’t really need them that much. Still, it might be nice for buff-stacking allies.

The “Fire’s Embrace” trait gives you a Fire Aura every time you use a signet.

Also, Dagger – Water 4 is a Frost Aura

Devildoc.6721:

low power, barely passable hp, only a moderate crit rate…

yeah that’s pretty terrible.

That’s sort of the point of Celestial. It’s “barely passable” at everything.

theonewhoknocks.8641:

Jarek.2430:

I play only WvW.

All my characters have Melandru + Lemongrass soup = -65% condition duration. Now add in condition removals. I see no problems so agree with Kodiak "I disapprove of this thread’.

I only suggested to buff Elementalist condition removal from allies (not self). Sure, an Elementalist doesn’t see a problem in WvW, specced to deal with conditions. But that’s not where I’m coming from.

I’m coming from playing sPvP, against comps that include 2 Necros and an Engineer. Maybe a Ranger. Even Mesmers apply condis like it ain’t no thing. In team fights this is very condition heavy. And yes, I can pop Healing Rain to remove 2 conditions from everyone over 6 seconds, dodge in water to remove a third one and even save myself with Cleansing Fire, but that is useless if the rest of my team still goes down. I’d like to help out a little more, but frankly when such a condition heavy team fight happens I may as well just start walking to the next point and leave my team to get stomped.

I’m not saying that other professions don’t have the tools to deal with conditions. I’m saying many simply don’t take these options in order to be more competent at other areas. And is it such a bad thing if a teammate could compensate for that then? Or is it supposed to be every man for himself?

Do what most people do. Make a Necro/Engi/Mesmer.

Because ANet doesn’t do whack-a-mole balancing…

I had always assumed that Sustain was a way of talking about damage to differentiate it from Burst.

Cool fight.

Nice editing.

The intro was cool as well.

Yup. It does.

You learn to adapt. And die a lot.

Ehecatl.9172:

PinCushion.7390:

covenn.7165:

PinCushion …I havent tried out that fire trait, but are you saying when you blast a fire field you are giving fury to other people?

Yeah. It gives Fury to your whole party (or nearest 5 people) every time you blast-finish a fire field.

I usually have around 20-30 seconds of Fury at all times, as does everyone around me.

Are you sure it works on every fire field? I’ve been using the same grandmaster trait as a central part of my current build but I only seem to get the Fury when I blast my own fire field. It’s hard to tell with all the fields flying around though.

Either way I usually combine Burning Retreat and Arcane Wave whenever both are off cooldown anyway to keep perma fury on me and my team. This is a very nice trait.

Edit: Tested it with an ele friend and it did indeed grant fury when I blasted her fire fields. Most likely my problem is other people throwing their field down a fraction of a second before my fire field goes down.

Burning Retreat → Eruption → Dodge

Eruption → Lava Font

Arcane Wave on cooldown

It’s always nice when you’re ramming a door in WvW, get interrupted, and half your team already has 10-20 stacks of Might and Fury on them.

I think the important bit is to realize that when your bar fills up with red icons it’s a sign that you should start playing defensively and running away. I’ve had so many people continue to try to chase me when they could have just used their gap closers to build some range, heal up, and come kill me.

Once Doom, Spectral Wall, and Fear Mark are down I’m basically just spamming auto attack and hoping nobody noticed that I’m out of CC. It’s not like I’ve got a bunch of Vigor or Stability or anything. 2 dodges and I’m a punching bag for an uncomfortably long time.

Axe 1 is fine. It gives me some free stacks of Vuln on stuff while I’m waiting for Axe 2 to come off cooldown or for DS to come off cooldown. And it hits so fast it’s the only weapon I’d ever think of putting a Sigil of Frailty on (I know, L2P).

Overkillengine.6084:

Nice to see someone actually get it. Though, depending on build, Necros could be very strong in melee even before the recent changes; all it took was Wells and someone dumb enough to try to stand in them to beat on you fruitlessly (usually the garden variety heartseeker spammer) while they melted.

Heartseeker Spam + Spectral Wall = Warm Happy Feelings

Straegen.2938:

PinCushion.7390:

I will say that 99% of players are complaining because the Thief profession needs to be rebuilt from the ground up (which won’t ever happen). Not because it’s OP, but because it’s only fun for the guy playing it.

The forum is a minor (but vocal) subset of the WvW population. Most experienced players avoid the forum tarpit like the plague. What is mostly left is a handful of forum warriors, people with a constant sense of outrage and players who cannot play the game for some reason rambling in. Of that handful, some gripe about how a solo build beat them solo. A lot of the complaints are tied these fantastical numbers that few thieves have ever seen outside of a perfect storm. Are thieves dangerous solo/skirmish, yes but no more so than any other well played class in their role.

I’d be the “Can’t play the game for some reason but rambling in” variety. I’m not really outraged at Thieves, but I would like to know ANet’s intentions. My stance on the Thief class has changed very little over the last few months, since I made one to get a better idea of what their skills looked like.

I’m not outraged that they can be built to dominate in skirmishes, because almost any class can do that.

I’m not outraged that they routinely use (abuse?) stealth mechanics to troll groups of disorganized players, since Thief players can only play the hand that ANet has dealt them.

I’m not even outraged that they can put out an incredible amount of burst damage. Those same Thieves, while escaping death in a 1v1, generally die to something silly like getting hit by an unfortunate treb/cannon/AC barrage. Burst builds just don’t soak siege fire very well.

What I’m irritated by, not outraged but irritated, is that the structure of the Thief class promotes gameplay that isn’t a lot of fun for whoever is on the receiving end. Specifically, I’m talking about Stealth. Evade builds are kind of fun to tangle with, since you can try to mentally keep track of their cooldowns and use Weakness or CC to counter some of the dodging. You can’t do any of that against a Stealth build. I think the industry jargon for this is “Counterplay.”

This could be band-aid fixed pretty easily by just creating a counter to Stealth. ANet could pick any random condition and say “This counters Stealth.” Burning would be an obvious choice, since it’d be difficult to sneak around while on fire. That might not work from a balance standpoint, since Burning is pretty easy to put on people. But it could be anything, really. As long as it’s something!

Renxian.6982:

PinCushion.7390:

If I’m solo, as in not running with a party, then I’m probably dead. But why would I be soloing with a Staff?

This right here makes you smarter than 99% of the thief whiners.

“I was running my zergling whatever build and soloing for no sensible reason and died to a roamer with a duelist build OP NERF!!!111” is like the most common thing I see from most of them.

I won’t paint with that broad a brush and say that 99% of players are complaining because they’re stupid.

I will say that 99% of players are complaining because the Thief profession needs to be rebuilt from the ground up (which won’t ever happen). Not because it’s OP, but because it’s only fun for the guy playing it.

I have fun in small fights, even running my zergling build where I will usually not win. Trying to guess when the other guy’s going to burn his long cooldowns, or trying to knock him out of a heal at the right moment is fun! Except when fighting a Thief. Most of my skills miss. I can’t see the guy for most of the fight. None of my Conditions stick for longer than a second or two. If I do a few things right and get him at a disadvantage he ports away and resets.

That’s not OP. It’s just not fun. I hate fighting Thieves, so I usually just don’t. I can troll just as well as they can. I run staff for a reason. It’s hard to have fun ganking people when you spend your time dodging out of the red circles, chilled/crippled/burning. I’ll never kill them, so I just irritate them until they go somewhere else while buffing/healing my party members. If they focus on me I waste a bunch of their time running away.

The class isn’t OP. It’s corrosive to everyone else’s experience because it’s infuriating to fight. This isn’t the fault of Thief players. This is the fault of ANet for making poor design decisions.

Straegen.2938:

DeWolfe.2174:

Like my Staff Ele, good luck taking on a thief with a Staff Ele. If a thief stealth’s in behind you and initiates with a backstab, which is easy to do by the camps, you are done for.

This… right here… this. Do not take a zerg group build (as in lots of big AoE) into a solo/skirmish fight against a solo/skirmish build (as in a high single target DPS) and expect to win. Switch to a bunker/roamer D/D build and suddenly thieves are going to be mostly a non-issue.

Not every build on every class is supposed to do everything.

I play primarily Staff Ele. I don’t have a lot of problems with Thieves. I hate fighting them, but I do ok.

That said, I don’t actually kill them. I just drop loads of CC while running/dodging away. I can usually make it to a nearby group of melee or a keep before the Thief drops me. If I can’t there’s always Mist Form downed state.

If I’m solo, as in not running with a party, then I’m probably dead. But why would I be soloing with a Staff?

Dalo.3941:

They removed the stunbreak on Cleansing fire and Lightning Flash because I assume they wanted it both to be used in a offensive way. If anything they should make it give fury and might to the ele and surrounding allies.

Cleansing Fire should either give Retaliation or give a 100% Flame Barrier, regardless of attunement, for a few seconds.

Lightning Flash got a decent damage increase and is actually functional in some burst builds.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Yes. A 900 range charge on a 10 seconds cooldown is way better than perma-swiftness.

It’s debatable.

Perma-Swiftness is amazing, until you get charged and burst into paste.

cheshirefox.7026:

Kodiak.3281:

As a person who plays a Conditimentalist I disapprove of this thread.

when elems can apply 5 conditions in .2 seconds like other classes.. then you can disapprove of this thread ^^

They can.

Most of them aren’t damaging conditions, so people don’t notice them and often don’t bother cleansing them.