Showing Posts For SammyIAm.1726:
Hmm, thanks. I didn’t notice before that Arcane shield could be cast during channeling (e.g. while casting Churning Earth); I wish those were labeled more clearly. I might look into that.
I’ve been building a condition-damage elementalist so far, which means I spend my time about evenly split between fire and earth, and only occasionally jump into air or water for healing or some speed/condition stuff. What’s your strategy for prolonging encounters enough for bleeding to be effective?
Something else to keep in mind is that bleeding damage ticks once per second (as far as I know). So a 20% increase in bleeding duration doesn’t add damage to any bleeds shorter than 5 seconds, and adds the same amount of damage (one more tick) to any bleed between 5 and 9 seconds. That’s left me sort of on the fence about increased bleed duration buffs, since it feels like it would be more effective to increase the amount of damage being done instead; especially in boss fights where the enemy is quickly capped at 25 stacks of bleeding.
I haven’t played a ton of WvW yet, but it sounds like I fall into the category you’re looking for (i.e. I tend to use a staff for any of the big battles, but equip S/D when I’m running around). I was originally going to try to make a very tanky build, but settled on something slightly more offensive. I’m only lvl 70, but my plan for traits is:
-10 Fire. The little bit of extra power makes a significant difference in the base damage for skills, which is especially helpful underwater where there’s not as many condition-skills.
-0 Air.
-30 Earth. Written in Stone lets me keep all my signet passives while I use them, which is pretty handy. The toughness helps a little bit, but I’m still a scholar class, so I can’t take too much fire.
-20 Water. The vitality and healing is nice (especially when I’m trying to do more support healing). Also I haven’t got it yet, but Stop Drop and Roll sounds pretty handy.
-10 Arcana. This is primarily for the boons when switching attunements.
I might pull 5 out of Fire into Water, but I’m not sure yet…
I don’t do well in 1 on 1 situations — that is to say, they’ve always ended with me being dead--, but we got into a little rolling 3ish v 3ish skirmish one time and I felt pretty effective.
Recently I’ve been trying to make more use of the blinding skills available (E3, A3, and the Signet of Air), along with the knockdown from Earthquake to keep some of the damage off of me, and stay alive long enough for all the condition damage to be effective. If I time things just right in PvE I can get off a Churning Earth on a mob without taking any hits (though usually they all get one shot in). Probably less effective in WvW since PCs are more likely to dodge out of the circle though, and Earthquake doesn’t keep them down long enough.
Hopefully that helps you out a little bit. I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s any other strategies mentioned here.
For the love of all that is good in the land, plz shut up vendors!
in Crafting
Posted by: SammyIAm.1726
I actually really enjoy nearly all the NPC vocalizations. And the market places and crafting areas having a lot of banter really adds to the feel of a busy town and adds life to the setting. I like that I can hear the NPCs talking to other players characters as well because makes the world feel that much more real.
That said, I’m really tired of the woman in Hoelbrak that keeps shouting “I haven’t taken leave my of my senses!” every 30 seconds. I swear if there was combat available in towns, I’d have relieved her of her senses long ago…
It’s definitely tougher with a Norn, but I actually like the disparity. I mean, it sorta makes sense that their hugeness would have trouble fitting into tight spaces. If you want an easy race to complete jumping puzzles with, just create an Asura.
A couple parts of Troll’s End might have actually be easier because my girth forced the camera inside myself —and when I wasn’t distracted by looking at the inside of my eyeballs-- the nearly-first-person view made it easier to do some of the jumps.
I too received a pair of pants that looked like gloves, twice actually. I tried my best to file an in-game bug report, but it was rather hard to take a screenshot of the mouse-over using the in-game bug reporting screenshot tool.
Due to the amount of people we see queued for maps while spaces are open in other maps, we have started talking about possible ways we can change the current setup to help get people into the other maps if they have space available, but that stuff is all still in the discussion phase so it’s not likely we’ll be able to change things anytime soon.
As DooJoon said, it seems like some sort of way to see how big the queue was would be helpful. Even without showing the the number of slots available in the map/server, just knowing that I’m #7 in line versus #320 in line would make a big difference in choosing where to head with my guildmates.
Recently my guild got the storage upgrade, but the Guild Bank NPC is saying that we do not have the upgrade. This sounds like other people have had this issue, but I didn’t see any resolutions or fixes listed here. Is this a known bug?
I agree with the sentiments above, it hardly makes sense for a catapult to bleed, but it should burn just fine. Then again, it seems like every other kind of mob is capable of bleeding (including earth elementals). This is great, I guess, because I do a majority of my damage through bleeds, but doesn’t make a ton of sense.
I think whether you go toward Power or CD is probably more dependent on play-style and which skills you use a lot.
I’ve been pretty much entirely ignoring power and pumping traits and item stats into Condition damage and here’s what I’ve learned (using Scepter/Dagger):
- I don’t have too much trouble killing mobs in PvE; I can usually lay down enough bleeding that if I’m taking damage I can run back and heal a bit while they continue to bleed.
- I’m super weak underwater. There’s not much in the way of condition damage skills underwater, and since my power is so weak, I’m pretty much useless.
- Someone else in the forums tipped me off to this, but it does seem to be the case: the first few points you put into a stat make a bigger difference percentage-wise. So in my case, with so few points in power, adding just 5 or 10 Fire trait points will significantly increase my damage output. I haven’t got around to trying it yet, but an 80/20ish split might yield better results than putting 100% into one stat.
I’m only level 47, but I’ve been focusing on survivability and condition damage, so I’d probably go beryl.
I would love to have switchable weapon sets for my elementalist. Even with a much, much longer cool-down than the other professions. I understand why they weren’t implemented in the first place (elementalists already have 20 weapon skills to switch between), but I’m still carrying around two sets of weapons with me (scepter/dagger and a staff) and having to switch manually.
This is especially tough in WvW because I can’t be anywhere near combat if I want to switch, and keep having to run far away to make the change.
I haven’t played thief, so I can’t comment there specifically, but I also don’t think I’d call the elementalist overly easy either. I mean, it’s not the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, but I definitely have to keep an eye on my health and make sure I’m dodging big attacks. Also, I can generally only take on mobs at most a couple levels above my effective level on my own.
I just recently rolled a guardian, and I haven’t played very far (lvl 6 I think), but so far it seems WAY more low-maintenance than an elementalist. With the heavy-armor, I don’t really need to be as careful and I can mostly just plow forward indefinitely.
Elementalists also have a lot (20) of weapon skills to deal with, so there’s the potential for a lot more finesse and combinations there.
Another option for naming your charr is to add something that they’re good at or a characteristic they’re known for. For example:
- Sicaea the Shrouded
- Rhendak the Crazed
- Kaladrian the Greedy
Along these lines: the last time I tried to create a character with a “the” in it, the “the” was automatically capitalized. Would it be possible to allow non-capitalized middle-words (mostly “of” or “the”) in character names? “Rhendak The Crazed” just seems like it’s overdoing it.
Each pulse for each condition is once per second at the end of the first second since getting applied. What this means is that condition duration increases will generally want to look for breakpoints as long as you’re not stacking together duration stacking conditions such as burns, which will always benefit from extra time.
That’s a good point about duration-stacking conditions always benefiting, but it only works if you’re always going to be staking the condition (which nearly always is the case, I suppose).
One per second is a little disappointing though because it means that with a scepter/dagger build, I’d need a 13% increase to notice a difference in Churning Earth, and I’d need to go all the way to 17% before Stone Shards sees a change. I suppose if I’m going with items and traits to reach that, it’s less of a big deal, but it means I can’t put 10 points into Fire and see any difference. I don’t know if this the proper forum for a suggestion, but calculating bleeding damage more than once per second would be a nice plus.
(To be fair, I suppose adding points into Fire and expecting Earth skills to be better seems a little silly…)
Like Rayner said, Water and Staff is a good way to go for support. If you’re looking for a more permanent-support build, there are plenty of trait options that will help with providing boons, auras, and regeneration to your allies.
So it’s clear that condition damage (specifically bleeding and burning) have their damage-over-time applied in discrete amounts. That is, rather than a slow continuous drain on the enemies’ HP, their HP drops in small jumps.
My understanding is that this damage occurs once per “pulse”. Does anyone know how long a “pulse” is? And is it the same for all condition damage effects?
Related to this question, is how increased condition duration affects the total damage done by a condition. If a pulse happens twice per second, and I have a 10% duration bonus on a 3-second condition, the condition will only last for 3.3 seconds, which isn’t enough to get a whole extra pulse of damage in. If that’s the case, for a 3-second condition damage skill, any duration bonus less than about 17% wouldn’t actually increase the damage output (though non-damaging conditions like crippled would still be increased a little, I guess).
Hmm, take 10 out of water and put those into fire. That extra damage (and condition duration!) will help you out much more than the extra 1000 health if you’re using your crowd control properly and can position yourself well.
Hmm, the only reason I was going to go all the way with Water was for the little extra condition removal from Cleansing Water, but 10 points in Fire does seem to have a lot of bonuses… might have to try that. Thanks for the tip!
Ride the lighting will also go toward whatever enemy you have targeted, or if auto-target is on, will randomly pick an enemy in the area to head toward.
I have had some issues with it randomly stopping, but then the other day I also was unable to get my character to step over a rabbit. Just stopped him dead in his tracks and I had to walk around the little bunny.
I recommend 30 arcane, the attunement cooldowns are unbearable otherwise. It’s even better if you are rolling a staff, all your aoe will grow much larger with the Blasting Staff trait.
The reduced recharge rates aren’t worth losing out on the damage, armor, and health boosts the other trait lines offer, especially given the cool downs that the skills themselves have. What’re you gonna do with 30 Arcane, swap after every autoattack?
I agree, unless you’re planning on using blasting staff (which does seem pretty useful), I don’t know that the cooldowns alone justify points in Arcane.
Personally I think I’m going to leave 10 in Arcane to get the boon when switching between attunements, and the rest is going in Earth and Water. I’m trying for a more condition-damage / survivability build though. It works pretty well except that without the power-buff from Fire my straight-damage is pretty weak, which is especially an issue underwater.
I do my best to avoid being underwater at all, or lure the enemies near the shore and blast them from there. I’ve been focusing more on condition-damage for my damage-dealing skills, but underwater there doesn’t seem to be a lot of options along that line. Consequently, my power is a bit low, so my skills seem pretty useless. I’m actually stuck on a part of the personal story that involve a long underwater journey and so far it’s proving very difficult.
As far as an elite, I thought I read somewhere that tornado works underwater as “whirlpool” or something, but I don’t have it yet, so I could be wrong.
Edit: Wait, the whirlpool skill only works for Engineers? Lame.