(edited by Pinkerton.5643)
hey i see your guides and i have some newbie Q.
i just start to play i lvl 25 and want to know what is the best element to fucus and upgrade that help me kill best in pve until lvl 80.
and also what will be best to learn to play whit staff\dagger\scpter+ hamer.
my goal is to pve and dungen and stuff like dis but not pvp and wvw only pve.
i try to read the guide you make but i just cunfuis me even more =\
Hey, I’ve been maining Elementalist since beta. I even made them useful at the beginning when the forums were full of people complaining about how they were worthless.
This guide is pretty good, but the guy ignores the best Elementalist build.
In the game up till now, dungeons have pretty much been dominated by staff elementalists running fire based builds. I always thought that was boring, though it’s great for sustained AoE damage. How you play depends on what you want to play like. Conditions are definitely worth your time now, but that wasn’t always the case. Dagger builds have potential for extremely high damage from bleeds and burns. And earth-based bleed build is probably the best for getting used to attunements as a new player, in my opinion. It’s forgiving because it can be very survivable (you build lots of condi damage and toughness) while also pumping out a good amount of damage. And if you build in some healing power, then you can take the Written In Stone master trait in earth, which is huge for survivability when paired with Signet of Life. I always thought it was fun to just stack up the bleeds and watch the condi numbers just fly off. It used to be a lot more fun, though, when huge bleed numbers just spewed out of the enemy’s head at like 10-20 ticks of damage per second when you had high stacks on the enemy lol. Plus, daggers force you to get good at attunement dancing since you gain SO much mobility and utility from swapping fast. Also, remember that alternate builds (condition damage and support) will be necessary for groups to have in raids, so they’re not bad to keep in mind.
If you want to do the most damage against champions and bosses (or even instagib groups of mobs) the best thing to do is run a Fresh Air build. That’s scepter/focus going into air, fire, and arcane specializations. Build as much ferocity as humanly possible, which will come at the expense of precision, but that’s ok because when you’re done with the build, you’ll have at least 75% crit chance anyway. Even higher with food.
The idea behind this build is to keep rolling scepter air skill 1 repeatedly for as long as possible without any interruption. Most of your hits will crit and your crits will burn, apply vulnerability, and cause a lightning strike (extra high base damage hit). As often as possible, you swap to another attunement as soon as you start channeling air 1. Since the skill channels for a few seconds and hits like 10 times, you’re basically guaranteed to crit several times during it. As soon as you crit, the Fresh Air trait recharges your air attunement and you swap back to air, causing another lightning strike, but you need to swap back before the skill finishes so the next one starts without interruption. Also, you use the instant cast arcane abilities give you constant extra ferocity with an arcane specialization trait. If you swap to another attunement late in the channel, you can always use an instant arcane skill, which always crit, and then you don’t have to worry about the last couple hits of your channel critting.
Now, one thing I don’t like about the above guide is he says that scepter has “weak auto attacks”. That’s a lie. Scepter air 1 is the most powerful auto attack in the game. That’s because it keeps stacking damage the longer it goes without interruption. Even at lvl 80 in good gear, the first hit will do under 300 damage, but by the 3rd or 4th cast, you’ll be doing easily over 10k per tick and you’re ticking 3 times a second. When I’m in a group with lots of might and such, I regularly see my ticks going over 30k each and I can keep that up for a long while. That’s 100k damage per second from your auto attack. Weak auto attacks…PAH! Best thing about the focus is when you swap to earth to wait for a crit, you can use focus earth 5, which is instant so it doesn’t interrupt your channel and it gives you invulnerability for 4 seconds, adding some good survivability for taking burst hits.
Sometimes you will have to be interrupted because you need to use your heal skill or you need to dodge or you get knocked down or something. Then you’ll have to start building up the damage on your auto attack all over again. It’s ok, though. When that happens, you take the opportunity to do your insane fire burst damage. You use focus air 5 to knock down (if the enemy can be knocked down), then swap to fire, use scepter 3 just behind the target so they get hit 3 times (on the way out, at the blast location, and on the way back) and then scepter 2 (it’s delayed, which is why the knockdown is helpful, but it’s ground targeted now, so you can anticipate the target moving if you need to). Scepter 3 will almost definitely have crit at least once, which means air attunement is back up, so you swap back and keep going.
You would be amazed at how fast you can take down veteran Mordrem if you start off with the fire burst.
The only problem is after playing that build for so long, I’ve gotten kind of tired of air attunement haha. I can’t wait for HoT so I can go back to a cool condi build with dagger/dagger tempest.
I think it’s sad that this guide totally ignores FA builds. FA is the absolute best way to pump out damage as an Ele and has been since the introduction of that master trait.
I actually kinda hate that I can’t get my spirits to follow me anymore. I really hope they give spirits more functionality with the druid. I mean, I’m glad that the elite for them gives them increased range, but I like to do sPvP with them and the nice thing about the follow is that you don’t feel like you’ve wasted the CD when you cast them and then have to rush off somewhere else. It’s especially helpful with the spirit elite. I’ve always run a spirit build on my ranger. I love those little guys.
IT WORKED!!!!!
I’M IN!~
for what it’s worth, all you new people, this type of thing doesnt normally happen :/. i play this game daily and never have any connectivity issues…
I’m on to you… Mr. ArenaNet PR guy
He’s right. I don’t think I’ve ever had a connectivity issue since the first week of the game’s launch until now.
Yup, just character creator for me, as well
alright. Well, care to chime in here, Anet?
Well, we did all delete a character. Are you trying to fill up the last character slot you have? I’m worried that there might be some issue where there’s a delay for a recently cleared character slot to become usable
yes, the character I’m trying to make does not have the same name.
What’s funny is I deleted a character, remade one with different profession and same name, did the opening sequence, logged out to create another character, and that’s when I hit the problem…I’m really confused.
I was playing just a minute ago, now I’m trying to make a new character and I can’t contact the login servers for some reason…but I’m not in Europe…I’m in the US
EDIT: I was merged into this thread, but this is not my error. Mine is:
42:0:0:0:101
If I try to create the character twice within like 20 seconds, the second message gives me error code 1010:6:6:419:101
(edited by Pinkerton.5643)
You’re not the only one. I’m having the same issue right now. What’s going on, Anet?
This is the Karka event all over again. I’m in Gendarran fields doing the event. The whole thing is going fine until the very end when Scarlet Briar spawns and everyone goes to fight her. I’m fighting her, she’s got a sliver of health left and I get DC’d. REALLY?!?!?!? So , I don’t get to finish even one defense of a zone. I understand that it’s a cool idea to have all of these people doing this stuff at the same time, but my god! At some point, you have to realize that your servers can’t handle it!
Bird people are called Tengu. They would be the best thing ever. All I want is a tengu warrior. It would make my life.
They probably won’t do new professions because they want each profession to be distinct. At one point in development, they had, I think, 12 professions and they whiddled it down to 8 because some of them were seeming a bit samey. Also, more professions means more difficulty in balancing. Even if they did introduce a new profession, it definitely would NOT be the monk because the Guardian is already intended to be the spiritual successor of the monk and paragon from GW. They could do an assassin, but the thief kinda covers that. The Ritualist is covered by the Engineer (Anet devs said that at one point, and it makes sense). The only thing left is the Dervish, which could be interesting. They’re kind of like holy men/women who use earth (defense) and wind (speed boosts and cold damage) ‘prayers’ (magic). They also used Scythes and had the ability to transform basically into avatars of the gods. That could be interesting, but Anet is all about lore stuff and the Dervishes are unique to Elona and probably always will be. I doubt we’ll ever see any until we go to Elona. And even then, it’d be difficult to find a rationale for allowing non-humans to be Ritualists. Also, they will never add a healer class. There’s no such thing as a dedicated healer in GW2 and they’re going to keep it that way.
Like everyone else is saying, more weapons and skills would be sweet, but again, that means a lot of the same issues as with new professions. They might do it because it’s on a smaller scale, but I think that new races are still more likely. And, in my opinion, preferred…especially if it’s Tengu…
(edited by Pinkerton.5643)
I haven’t played the game much since the Karka event and haven’t even looked at the forums much since then either. After the Karka event in particular, I was worried about the living story in GW2. Very worried. The game, as a whole, would suffer immensely if the living story suffered. So many people were unable to participate in the event to a satisfactory extent for various reasons, the time constraint primary among them. Anyway, I’m sure you all remember the details and issues of that maddening hellscape at the time of the ancient karka encounter.
What I would like to say here is that I am pleased, impressed, satisfied, happy, and all manner of other positive adjectives about the way that the living story is being handled at this time (and hopefully going forward). You’ve changed the formula of it so that it can be more easily accessed by all people without serious issues. It also feels more ‘alive’ and interesting. I could go deeper into why it’s better, but I’m sure everyone understands and probably agrees. So, I’ll just sum it up:
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!
I’m happy to be a GW2 player and I will likely be playing much more in the future.
Keep the great content coming!
P.S. Stop making excuses and pretty pretty please get a Cantha expansion underway. You know that every single player would like nothing better!
I will have to disagree with the OP. lately I’m trying to see how weird of a build I have to come up with to finally be useless….its surprising.
I think everyone went through the stage where they felt underpowered and overwhelmed by the class. You sit there pew pewing with your little stick pecking away at something’s health while other classes mow things down and you just wonder what is wrong with your damage. Then you put it all together and it’s like :
<NSFW> mild profanity/violence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H91rPIq2mN4
It’s true.
/signed
I agree with this. Because of the nature of my job, I have to work all day on weekends, which means that I will never be able to participate in any of these events ever. I was excited when I got home last night to learn that things were still happening until it all got broken and, when it wasn’t broken and I was finally able to do it, they patched the game in the middle of the kitten fight!
Because of the rewards, I felt compelled to do the event and I was legitimately angry when I was cheated out of it. I was even madder when I realized that the fact that I even got half of an opportunity to do the event was a fluke in the first place.
I actually like the idea of one-time events. I think it’s a really cool idea for the game, but you have to have some limits. Don’t put any good loot in there. That’s just mean and disadvantages players who, by no fault of their own, cannot attend. I mean, the 18 slot bags? That’s one thing. A small thing. Not such a huge deal. But dramatically increased drop rate for legendary precursors?!?!? Do you have any idea how much that screwed up the economy in favor of the people who were allowed to do the event? Yeah, legendary precursors went down in price, but they’ll go right back up and all that’s changed is that the people who didn’t get to do the event are stuck competing in the marketplace with other people who suddenly are like 5 times as wealthy.
So, no fat loot on these one-time events just make it have the same loot table as a standard champion or offer some town clothing item like you did in the halloween event or provide a standard loot table chest or something like that.
And if you really feel the need to provide awesome drops, that’s great! But you had BETTER make it so that EVERYONE can participate. And that means repeating events many times.
(edited by Pinkerton.5643)
Yeah, there are tons. First, just because they nerfed that trait doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Nerfing it would be one thing. Maybe they increase the cooldown or make it global, whatever. They didn’t do something like that. They removed functionality. It isn’t just that EA can’t do what it used to do quite as well, it can’t do what we were using it for at all. It would be like if they made the Aura skills not count as Auras anymore.
They removed one of its several bits of functionality. So what if you can’t use it for a blast finisher anymore? It does other things! The blast made it op, so they took it away. I mean, so what? For christ’s sake, you still get to throw out a churning earth on a dodge roll…what are you complaining about? It can still be useful in builds, I guarantee it.
Yeah, there are tons. First, just because they nerfed that trait doesn’t mean it’s useless. And second, I’ve never used the Arcane tree in any of my builds and I’ve been very happy with all of them and done very well. Be creative! Stop doing only the builds that you see other people posting. The game gets so much more fun when you design your own based on your own unique playstyle. It might take a bit of experimentation, but you’ll find one that works well. Trust me.
They can only do that once every 45 seconds, but it is a bit high. Still, they’re squishy as hell and they can’t do much outside of that ability to destroy someone once every 45 seconds. I don’t see it as horribly unbalanced because you can completely demolish them in about half a second if you catch them at the right time.
As for surviving the hit, toughness…
If you’re still mad, remember the old adage: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em.
Take a page out of Wooden Potato’s book.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgREXEk2kD0&feature=g-all-u
You’re welcome
Staff ele is definitely viable. It’s just not viable for a burst-damage 1v1 build, which is what everybody wanted it to be for some reason.
It has its uses in every part of the game (dungeons, sPvP, and WvW)
Its just another thing thats wrong with the combat in this game. Burning should stack just like bleeds do. There should actually be less was to remove dots, that would actually balance out the burst of thieves and warriors.
I dont really understand how this game allows only two real classes to actually make a real glass cannon build. People wouldnt complain about thieves so much if other people could 3 shot them back.
So far the way the pvp in this game works its seriously lacking since all you have are two classes with extremely high burst and a bunch of classes with bunker builds playing the supporting cast.
There’s an Ele spike build that’s AS powerful as backstab thieves but with a shorter CD.
It’s not just thieves and warriors. they’re just the most obvious.
And glass cannon builds aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Pure condition builds are awesome in their own right.
That’s about as fast as you’re gonna get. Leveling crafting professions is another option.
If I were you, though, I wouldn’t worry about it yet. You’ll probably level up a crap load while you’re farming for gold/mats for the rest of the stuff you need for your legendary.
This is how it works:
once 25 stacks have been applied, each new application of bleed replaces the oldest existing stack. Think about it this way. You have 25 stacks placed in the order in which they were applied (stacks #1-25). When an additional stack is applied, stack #1 is removed and the new stack becomes the new stack #25, with all other stacks being shifted up a spot. So, if you apply bleeds fast and continuously, you can hog the stacks.
I agree with Klawlyt.
The Dredge are easily one of the most entertaining parts of this game.
Like him, I couldn’t stop laughing when I first heard them cry “For the Moletariat!”
And I love the military checkpoints in their mines.
I would LOVE to see a Dredge’s Republic of Cantha. That would make the game for me.
The answer to your question depends heavily on your build, playstyle, and weaponset.
No matter what those guys said, nobody can give you a decent answer to your question without that information.
I use Zephyr’s Speed and Signet of Air. They don’t stack, but I don’t have much of a choice other than to have Zephyr’s Speed. Nice thing about Signet of Air is that it’s not limited to one attunement.
If she’s using staff, she can’t do anything about it.
Staff is NOT a roaming weapon and it is NOT a 1v1 weapon.
In sPvP, any ele using a staff should ALWAYS be accompanied by at least one teammate.
This is not to say that they are useless in sPvP. On the contrary, they can be a HUGE boon to a team if they know how to play. But they MUST be with other teammates.
What’s wrong with conditions? Nothing. Not as long as you use them properly. If you’re focusing on conditions, you won’t be a top damage dealer in events where you have to focus on one mob for a long period of time alongside 30 other people, but so what?
In an explorable dungeon, you’ll kick butt. In WvW, you’ll kick butt. Farming, Condi Eles kick butt because our condis are pretty much all AoE. sPvP, you’ll also kick butt.
Some people talk about how good players cleanse their conditions in tourneys and stuff. This is true, but that’s why we have several attunements with different conditions and different strategies. Personally, I start off in air, blow stuff, swap to earth fast, lay down boatloads of bleeds, and then swap to fire the second I see them cleansed. From then on, they’re getting burned and slammed with damage. Or you can start in fire and swap to earth. The nice thing there is that you get extra toughness in earth for later in the fight but you have the option to stay in fire if you really want since burns are easier to keep applied after a cleanse.
As for how an ele does damage best, it depends on your playstyle AND your weapon. With staff, power precision builds can be better for damage than condi damage builds.
I have to totally disagree with Lifelike, though. D/D earth attunement has TONS of bleeds. Also, burning is only about as powerful as approximately 3 to 4 stacks of bleed. With the sigil of the geomancer, you can get that many stacks on someone instantly and start building from there. And by myself, I can maintain 12 stacks of bleed on someone in an ideal situation. And that doesn’t even count Churning Earth.
I haven’t really played much with Scepter, so I can’t speak to that, but I’ll link my build for anyone interested.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#3|3|1119|2817|48|100|1342|20|1665|1653|0|10|1887|0|0|30|1645|1646|1891|10|1684|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|3|28043|61745|49988|49988|49988|49988|49988|26064|48790|0|0|0|0|
I’ve been toying with using water signet in place of cleansing fire and I’ve thought about swapping the purity sigil for something else, but that’s it for now.
In PvE, I use an identical trait build aside from the reduction in glyph CD from the air tree and I use glyph of storms and glyph of elementals in place of lightning flash and tornado. I also use half carrion gear and half knight gear.
Yeah, in PvP, any minor lag issues are magnified and you have the other player’s connection to factor in as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the issue.
Hate to break it to you, but it is a L2P issue.
The activation on it is not instant, even though some people think that it is. And that means that the hit is not instant. You need to be tracking your enemy and you need to use it at the right moment. I only miss maybe 1 in 20 attempts. When I do miss, it’s because of a mistake that I made and that I know that I made. And most of the time, I get several hits (on several mobs) because it’s a cone…
You have to get good at tracking the target. If you have any lag issues at all, it’s going to screw you over.
Nice video and nice fights. I noticed there were a couple things that you never did, though. So, not to sound like a kitten, but I have a couple suggestions for you.
First, I don’t think there was a single time in that video where the enemy was burning when you used fire grab. I’d highly suggest changing your strategy up a bit. What I saw you doing most of the time was burning speed up almost to the enemy and then immediately popping fire grab. As a d/d player myself, I know that this won’t get them burning. That one simple condition on them gives fire grab a 60% buff to its base damage. It’s huge.
Second, and this one is less of a big deal, but when you’re running away from people, there’s a way to make use of updraft that I didn’t see you use. What you do is RTL and then, while you’re in the middle of riding that lightning, RMB turn 180 degrees. As soon as you come out of RTL, use updraft. This launches you backwards (in the direction you’re running) AND gives you swiftness. While you’re rolling backwards for updraft, RMB turn 180 again and you’re running forward when you stop rolling. Like I said, not as big, but I find it to be super useful when I’m trying to get somewhere fast.
Good job, though. We’ll get through to those Ele doubters and haters eventually.
You need an Eldritch scroll and some mystic coins as well
@Curring
I’m not a big fan of the build, but I do feel the need to defend his choice of the purity sigil.
As one of the squishier professions, an elementalist needs to know how to keep themselves alive. With D/D in melee range, that means stopping damage and keeping mobility high. Conditions mean death to a dagger ele. You really need as many ways as you can get to cleanse yourself.
This build has five cleanses available (including the sigil). Mine has four, but one more is never a bad idea. Cleansing fire is great, but two of those cleanses require swapping to water attunement. That’s not always an option within the scope of your tactics. It might not even be possible when you need it (attunement CD). It’s amazing how often you’ll use cleansing fire to wipe out as many conditions as you can and you either still have one or two or someone comes by and slaps a poison on you immediately after. A lot of the time, something like that can be the entire reason that you die. One more cleanse, especially a more passive, non-ability based cleanse like the sigil, is almost necessary for a dagger ele as far as I’m concerned.
This guy has a little more room than I do since he has a vit heavy build. Mine is relatively low on vit but high tough. In my situation, DoTs are my worst enemy because toughness doesn’t help me against them. The cleanses (including the sigil) are absolutely vital.
Yeah, Kreit has the right idea. The attunement is not designed to be a long-term attunement for D/D unless you’re in a group and want to keep your weakness up on the target. Lightning whip is a pretty high damage move. Especially if you’re stacking power or have a lot of crit chance/damage. Other than that, Shocking Aura is easily my favorite aura and a good defensive ability so it’s always handy to swap to air for that.
But the thing is, like Kreit said, even if you put 30 points in air, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll always want to stay in air attunement most of the time. (though it’s great for starting fights and for escapes). Again, unless you’re in a group fight or a dungeon or fighting a champion or something. In a situation like that, you might be willing to give up a little damage output in order to keep your weakness up on the target in order to help the group. Not that you do, but I hate when people forget this, so I’m going to say it just to be safe: doing max damage is not always the most important thing.
I am not complaining of having to aim skills im complaining about skills missing when i have aimed them as best possible.
If they’re missing, you haven’t aimed them well enough. I almost never miss anything and it’s because I’m always CCing or following or taking advantages of their changes in direction. It’s a dynamic combat system and you have to use it that way. You can’t just run in circles casting abilities like you can in WoW.
And other classes have it just as bad. Anyone who uses ranged weapons will tell you the same thing. That’s part of what makes melee weapons advantageous at close range. But you mentioned heartseeker…part of the whole idea of heartseeker is that you don’t have to aim it. It was designed to be an ability that was special in that way.
There are plenty of good builds that do damage. You’re going to have to take some defensive utilities and know how to use them and know how to use your dodge, but that’s just part of the game. And by the way, everyone (not just us) is super easy to blow up when they build glass cannon.
Also, this is Guild Wars, not WoW. The Elementalist is not a Mage. That’s probably part of the reason that they chose specifically NOT to call it a mage. If you expect it to be a WoW fire mage (like most people seem to expect for some reason that I don’t understand), you’re going to be disappointed. Guild Wars is its own game. It’s allowed to do its own thing with its own archetypes. That’s part of what makes it an interesting and refreshing game. Don’t project your ideas onto it. Use it as it’s given to you.
Um, I’m pretty sure the sigil says it has a 9second internal cooldown right on the tooltip…
L2Read I suppose?You’re right. They must have ninja nerfed it with the latest patch.
I’m pretty sure it’s been 9 seconds since launch day.
This is right. Pretty much all of the proc sigils have internal cooldowns and have since day one.
Its not D/D that needs buffing. Actually its one of the few weaponsets that do ok in sPvP
Staff in other hand, does crap ST damage, and the AoE is not better then otehr classes AoE, not nearly as bursty in either ST or AoE as other classes.
And no, it doesnt have more support then other classes.
Neither do i use staff to be support, and nowhere does it say staff is support.
Most of the skills in staff are easily avoided by dodging over or running around.
Most of the ST skills have no homing so the enemy just moves to the side to avoid it.
Most of the ST staff skills travel so slow you can go watch the LOTR triology while waiting for the skill to landStaff needs a big overhaul to be more viable while roaming in WvW, the skills need to activate faster, the skills need to follow the target more, and a damage increase is needed on almost all skills to be on other classes level.
Staff isn’t meant to do single target damage. It’s meant to control, support, or do group damage. If you’re trying to use staff in PvP as a roamer or you’re expecting to be able to win a 1v1 with a staff equipped, you’re doing it wrong. It will (almost) never happen and the game is designed that way.
Also, no homing is an intentional part of this game. It makes dodging actually mean something. There are very very few abilities in this game that actually track the target.
I don’t normally like playing popular classes, so I was worried initially when Elementalist was the most popular profession pre-launch. But when I learned about the profession’s mechanics, I knew what would happen.
There would be tons of Elementalists, yeah, but most of them would be terrible because it’s tough to figure out the class. The few of us left over would be fine and all those who couldn’t figure it out would either leave the game or swap professions, making my profession a relatively unpopular one.
And what do you know? It’s happening. There are some of us who have figured it out and are doing great but the rest of you guys are just whining and ragequitting.
I can predict the future
O.o
@Rainshine An interrupt while downed will only get you about 2 or 3 extra seconds of life. And even so, you’re still totally screwed unless you have allies really close by. And not only that, but allies who know what they’re doing. That goes for every profession. If you’re downed in a 1v1, your interrupt will not save you no matter what. If you’re downed in a 2v4, your ally isn’t gonna be able to save you unless he’s jesus. So you get an extra 2-3 seconds alive while downed if you’re not an Ele…so what? It’s really not that much of an advantage. And I know Vapor Form doesn’t heal, technically, but you can use it as a heal. If you’re being damaged down to 0 instead of finished (which happens fairly often. Especially in WvW and big group fights.), you use Vapor Form at the last second, you’re invincible and mobile for a few seconds, and then your health is higher than it was when you come out. Yeah, it’s technically a reset of the downed state, but it acts almost like a heal. That’s what I meant.
@boozer Several things:
- simplicity is not always a good thing. If every profession in this game could button-mash their way to victory and it was a maximally viable thing for any player to do, I guarantee you that the game would lose at least half of its players within the month. 1-button builds are only effective against people who don’t know how to play and that’s exactly how it should be. Ele’s don’t have any 1-button builds…so what? We have to press a few extra buttons to beat people who just heard about the game last week. You can disagree that versatility is useful, but if you don’t think it’s useful, then you shouldn’t be playing a profession based on versatility. It keeps the opponent guessing and they will have a hard time countering and beating you if you remain flexible and versatile.
- You said it yourself. The problems that you reference with our abilities are bugs. That people report in bug reports. Those will get fixed if they’re real. If an ability or trait doesn’t do what it says that it does in the tooltip, that doesn’t mean that the it’s useless. It means that it’s not working properly. And GoR is fine. It was meant to only revive downed players in the first place. It still has bugs (like not working like the tooltip says that it does) but those are bugs and bugs will be fixed. Sure, it’s not an ability that’s useful in every situation, but there are very few abilities for any profession that are useful in every situation. It has its uses and it will be used for those uses.
- I’m not just spewing opinions. Versatility is an advantage. It’s not the only possible advantage. Other professions have advantages that Eles don’t. Like Warriors with their huge base health pool. But versatility is the main advantage that the Ele has. That’s a fact and the game was designed that way. Now, it may be my opinion that 1-button builds are bad for a game, but I’m certainly not the only one who thinks that. I’m pretty sure most people would agree with me.
- Didn’t post any personal attacks. Didn’t name a single person. Just said that people who want 1-button builds are lazy.
@FuriousGeorge Tornado in a group is a death sentence if they have lots of ranged far away from you or if you are alone. Why? Anyone trying to melee you is on their backs taking damage. Movement speed is not affected by the ability. It just seems like it because the camera zooms out and the animation is way bigger than the normal character model. If you’re in a group fight with allies and you use tornado at the right time in the right place, the other team is crippled and your allies will absolutely clean house. I’ve done it tons of times.
And the versatility comes from attunement swaps. What I mean is that I can be using one strategy (for me, it’s usually an earth-based bleed strat) and they might figure it out. If they know what I’m doing, they’ll probably move away, cleanse my many bleed stacks, and come back in. As soon as they do that, I can swap to a totally different strategy that doesn’t require me to build those bleeds back up (which would take too long). So, I might swap to, say, fire attunement. Suddenly, they’re burning and my hard-hitting fire abilities are making them pay. Or say they’re moving fast and hitting fast and hard. I might swap to water and chill the crap out of them before using earth or fire to blow them up. Or if I’m outnumbered and have to get away, I can swap to air and then RTL-180 turn-updraft-180 turn-lightning flash and I’m suddenly so far away they have no choice but to stop chasing me. And this is just my build. Other builds have different strategies to choose from.
- Any weapon can be good anywhere. You just have to get used to playing it. The only exception is in certain dungeon fights where fighting in melee is pretty much a death sentence for anybody
- The only way to keep the effects up is to keep applying them. It’s tough to keep bleed up with staff, though. You’d need lots of condition duration to make it easier.
- Condi damage affects every condition that deals damage.
- Mist form resets downed state. it’s temporary invincible mobility AND a heal. With friends around who aren’t stupid, you’ll be fine. it doesn’t matter who you are, though, if you’re caught downed by yourself, you’re dead unless your opponent is literally brain dead.
- My auto attacks in fire and air hit for about 700. I have no problem with that. and in earth, it applies a bleed, so it’s fine.
- Tornado is not meant to be a 1v1 ability. In a group, the only time you’re screwed is if you use it when you’re far away from them and they all have ranged weapons, in which case you’re an idiot. Used in the right place at the right time, it’s a nightmare for enemy groups.
- The nerfs are things like making sure our abilities don’t have an infinite range…I think that’s fair…And what about the buffs? Like to lightning whip? or giving fire signet its full range? Yeah, they nerfed whirlpool damage, but so what? We can’t kill entire groups of players in 5 seconds underwater anymore…that sounds fair to me. If you actually LOOK at the patch notes, they’re mostly not really so much nerfs as they are bug fixes, anyway.
- I can think of at least 4 viable builds off the top of my head and I know that there are more than that.
- More work? Yeah. It is harder to get used to the professions. Less payout? HELL NO! At least equal payout. And who cares if it’s a little bit harder to play? As far as I’m concerned, the less single-button builds there are in a game like this, the better. Besides, easy to play professions and builds are easy to counter. If they’re only using one or two abilities, it’s a pretty simple matter to figure it out and do something that will get through those abilities without trouble. Me, on the other hand, I can swap combat tactics on the fly with my build. Versatility is a huge advantage and we Eles have a crap load of it.
- There are no worthless traits. There are certainly traits that are useless with certain builds, but that’s because there are other builds that use those traits to great effect. That’s perfectly true of every profession.
It is ENTIRELY a learn to play issue. Other players laugh at Eles because most Eles are whiners who expect to play a 1-button profession without realizing that that’s impossible with an elementalist. There are way too many stupid lazy gamers who want every profession to be heartseeker spamming thief with different skins. All of those people are fooling themselves and doing themselves a disservice. The elementalists out there who understand what’s going on are doing fine and kicking the crap out of those people who think that Eles suck.
The thing about elementalist underwater is that you pretty much have to be in melee range to be most effective…even though you are using a trident. And Nageth, tornado is not bad at all…you just have to be the right kind of build for it and use it at the right time.
So, here’s some thoughts on underwater abilities by attunement:
Fire: You want to keep them from moving a lot. You can achieve this by using the lava chains ability (4) and kiting in small circles. This is because most of the damage from the 1 ability comes from when the magma balls explode a couple seconds after they hit. If the enemy is moving too much, those explosions miss. Also, the 2 ability is a great AoE damage ability. You just need to keep them inside of it. Close range kiting in a squishy attunement like fire can be tough, but that’s why you have 3 (AoE blind) and 5 (3-prong damage and burn PLUS vigor for you and allies). With those, you can keep them from hitting you and you can dodge more. Just remember to keep the enemy in roughly the same area if you can.
Air: Decent damage on the 1 ability if you’re in melee. That’s the only way that all three prongs will hit. 2 ability is a pretty powerful AoE. 3 skill is great for getting away when you need to. It teleports and damages foes at detonation location. Good mobility tool. 4 ability is a float. Floats and sinks are basically your underwater stuns. You have 3 as an elementalist. Use them. 5 is awesome. Keeps them in place and stuns them if they try to leave.
Earth: 1 ability does very very low damage but it makes up for it by inflicting 3 bleed stacks per hit when you’re in melee range. You can basically hold 3 to 6 bleed stacks on the target permanently by just repeating the 1 ability. Great if you’re rolling a condition build. 2 ability does very nice cone damage PLUS 3 stacks of bleed that last longer. Very useful ability for damage. 3 is a gap closer (useful). 4 is a sink (stun). 5 is an AoE blind field. Use it. Again, this attunement works even better if you can keep them in roughly the same area just because it’s easier to keep all of your bleeds hitting. If you’re good at aiming your attacks, that will help a lot, too. But the more you can kite them through the murky water, the better.
Water: This attunement is surprisingly powerful underwater. 1 does moderate damage and isn’t worth too much mention, but 2 does pretty good AoE damage on detonation. 3 is not only an underwater line of warding, but its detonation does awesome AoE damage just like 2. 4 has two great uses. Regen for self and allies AND AoE sink. Super good ability. Now, the 5 ability in this attunement is one of the best underwater abilities in the game, in my opinion. It is a linear charge, but it does high damage to all foes in the path AND heals all allies. It’s incredible for group fights once you figure out when to use it.
The problem with elementalists is that their underwater abilities are so much different from their land abilities that it’s hard to get used to them. On top of that, some of the attunements have major abilities that are hard to get the hang of using well (like the fire 1 ability). Eles can be really good underwater, though. Just stick with it.
It may not have much of a use with your build. Not all utility skills are useful with every build. Personally, I don’t see much of a use for earth shield if you’re using a staff. If you’re using daggers, though, or maybe even scepter, it can have loads of uses…but again, depending on the rest of your build.
This game is all about builds. If you want to use that ability so bad, then design a build around it or featuring it. It might take a little bit of thought to get the build all togther, but I guarantee you that it’s possible.
There are three problems with condition duration over damage.
Keep in mind, I’m a d/d ele who favors earth, so when I do bleeds, I hold the stacks high indefinitely.
First, high condi duration only matter if the entire bleed is going to occur before the enemy dies. This is fine for champions, but for normal mobs and veterans, it’s iffy. Often times, I kill mobs before I can even get my bleeds up to my full stack potential. If your bleeds don’t go through their full duration, then their damage is cut short and the high condi build will probably do more damage faster.
Second, if there are other people inflicting bleed on your target and the total stack capacity of all of you is over 25, your bleed stacks will be limited. You might be stuck with 6 or 8 when you’re capable of 12 or more. Then, your duration doesn’t really matter because you’re stuck at a lower number of stacks anyway. Condi damage helps there.
Finally, in PvP, people will cleanse. The longer they’re bleeding, the more likely they are to cleanse and cut your damage short. It’s better in PvP to do more damage in a short amount of time.
Now, that’s not to say that condi duration is bad. I do both. I have 30 in earth (300 condi damage) and 20 in fire (20% condi duration) plus the serrated stones trait (20% bleed duration). I stack condi damage, though, and use the Superior Rune of the Undead. I can hold 12 stacks of bleed on a target. I can max out at 20 when I use churning earth. And they do lots of damage. Best part about this build is that it helps my burns, too! (Yay for combat options!)
No…just no…
Lightning is meant to be an attunement with comparable damage capability. RTL has a decent sized AoE hit, but Lightning Touch does a relatively small amount of damage (as intended). The attunement’s main source of damage is Lightning Whip. Fire, on the other hand, has Drake’s Breath, Burning Speed (AoE blast at the end), Ring of fire (small AoE hit), and Fire Grab, one of the hardest hitting abilities available to the Ele (and a cone, at that). Basically, Fire has 5 damage abilities while Air has 3. And then you have to consider that fire also inflicts burning. Fire does PLENTY of damage as is. Anet wanted air to have more comparable damage output and they’ve done just that. Leave it.
Simple solution. Turn off autotarget. It makes the game a lot easier to play.
Daggers are not single target weapons. They are made for AoE and they shine when you play like it. Fire Grab hits plenty hard but you have to make sure they’re burning. What I always do is use drake’s breath to get several people burning, line them up, and hit all of them with huge damage bombs. And the cone is plenty big enough to make that pretty easy once you get good at battlefield maneuvering. Even on one person, it’s a big freakin hit. And the cooldown is fine. If you’re expecting to use fire grab and then stay in fire attunement long enough to use it a second time, you’re playing the class wrong.
But seriously, make kitten sure they’re burning when you use Fire Grab. It boosts its base damage by 60%.