Guild Wars 2

If you are happy with this build stick with it but personally I think when it comes to high damage you may as well go with Scepter because it can stack up to 24 Area Might and 55 seconds of Fury (trait dependent).

Also I think you should move 30 from Air Magic into 30 Arcana for Elemental Surge. Simply put, you can pop Arcane Power, Lava Font a target, switch to earth and it will apply 1 second of Immobilize every time Lava Font pulses. With full berserker gear this is going to hit hard.

jaif.3518:

So if I run an aura build, I can stack protection, fury, swiftness, and an aura for the duration of the tornado?

Not the duration of the tornado (unfortunately). It will follow its default duration.

Navzar.2938:

BTW, is this going to be compiled into a master list or something?

Perhaps we can get it stickied.

Btw Tornado retains boons and other buffs so a strategy is to activate Magnetic Wave before Tornado to get projectile reflect. You may also stack other boons such as swiftness to get a swift tornado or one with protection. My guildmate once stealthed me and I walked into a WvW zerg before using Tornado for some fun havoc.

Not to mention One With Air somewhat renders the minor trait Zephyr’s Speed useless because they don’t stack.

It’s the same with One With Fire and other attunement specific traits. I’ll be glad to be done away with them if the devs want us to be switch attunements constantly.

I noticed that the 6th bonus is not working. I have a a full set but there doesn’t appear to be any changes to the duration of my burns e.g. flamestrike is a 5 second burn but with the full set it still stays at 5 seconds while increasing my trait in fire for 20% condition duration increases the burn to 6 seconds. The same goes for the chill durations.

Hi everyone,
Do you guys have any neat tricks that you have discovered on the ele? Here are a 2 that I found. Feel free to post more on this thread to help out our fellow elementalists.

Ultimate Area Might Combo
This combo can easily stack up to 18 area might. Have a scepter and dagger (focus can work but it is more difficult) with arcane blast. Lightning Flash is nice to have but optional

1. Start in fire attunement and drop a Dragon’s Tooth
2. Run or Lightning Flash to your Dragon’s Tooth point of impact and use Ring of Fire
3. Use Phoenix and Arcane Blast on your Ring of Fire
4. Most things should be dead by now, if not follow up by switching to earth and using Earthquake with Churning Earth for good measure

With the new Persisting Flame trait this also gives about 55s of Fury and Pyromancer’s Puissance trait stacks might up to 21.

The Lava Font Chills!
Or immobilises or blinds. You will need a staff, the Elemental Surge trait and Arcane Power for this.

1. While in fire, use Arcane Power and cast Lava Font
2. Quickly switch to Water and watch as your target gets chilled

You can modify this with different combinations and weapons. For example, Arcane Power a Shatterstone and switching to fire will cause enemy’s to burn! Feel free to try out other different combos. The alternative is to use Glyph of Elemental Power but this will give different set of conditions.

Hey guys,

I came up with this build yesterday night during what we shall hereby refer to as a ‘drunken stupor’, which as we all know will either be awesome and movie-worthy like Stephen King’s Cujo or the mad ramblings of a hobo.

Link: http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#5|0|2771|3928|2481|1848|1027|20|1653|1658|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|1684|1674|2259|20|2250|1630|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

The general idea is to use the staff to be a support; throwing heals, remove conditions, etc. Then if I need more DPS I switch to my conjures to unleash hell.

Few variants I can think of are picking up the water reduce cd trait or Burning ‘named by Capt Obvious’ Fire with conjure axe.

I intend to use this for WvW but b4 I spend my hard earned gold remodelling my ele I would like to know your say; yea or nay?

I can confirm that it stacks. I have built my warrior around the idea and it is painful to the enemy.

I think the issue with conjured weapons is that there’s is not many viable builds around them. Also, there are some useless skills like Magnetic shield 5; sure it’s an invulnerable but you can’t move and you can’t do anything so what’s the point?

Also, I think they should just remove the charges unless they intend to significantly buff the overall weapon damage (frost bow 1 and magnetic shield 1 comes to mind).

Thanks for all the constructive responses (except for that one troll post). I really learned a few things about perma-stealth thieves.

FYI I have ran D/D in sPvP before and find that it is really cheap/easy (take your pick).

So moral of the story is CC/AoE/stand in the black powder circle and hurt thief and/or force a reveal.

bobross.5034:

Scorael.8952:

Incurafy.6329:

Like Xmtrcv said above me, you basically answered your own question. Snare a Thief and they’re dead regardless of what build they’re running.

Also, just to clear something up, a Thief using D/P for a pseudopermenant stealth isn’t able to burst people down in seconds, ttheir damage isn’t that great. Secondly, they gain stealth by using Heartseeker through Black Powder. If you stand in it then they can’t use it to gain more than a single 3 second stealth.

The thief I engaged just kept dropping black powder on the floor (red circles with smoke?) and still maintained perma-stealth without engaging anything else. He still managed to burst down a ranger in a good 5 seconds.

Also, first thing I do when I see a thief is to throw snares at him. The issue is if he stealths I don’t know where I can throw my snares. If there is a way to at least gauge where his position is, it will even the odds.

Try playing a thief for a bit in pvp…once you do, their movements become predictable, and then once again skill level of the thief will determine whether you catch them or not.

You mentioned indicators that the thief is there…the red dot from black smoke in a perma stealth build, the little house above shadow-refuge, the little puff of smoke from blinding powder. All of that stuff gives away a thief’s location, the combo for perma stealth is:
drop black powder on your location
heartseeker out-turn around
heartseeker back in
heartseeker out.

If you can aoe on the black circle when it goes up, there’s a good chance you catch the thief. If the thief reacts quickly and avoids the aoe, well that means they didn’t pull off their stealth combo and just wasted a lot of initiative. The stealth will start to run out if this happens once or twice.

If you snared the thief before they went into stealth, keep aoeing the spot they were standing. They may have condition cleanse on stealth, and they may have heal while in stealth, but they can’t have all of that and solid perma-stealth.

I play a thief – though not a perma-stealth build. But I also play mesmer, today I dueled a d/p stealth focused thief in wvw (as mesmer) and won by just anticipating attacks. When he was stealthed for a bit, I’d throw up a block or dodge, all -the while doing aoe damage. I only occasionally saw the thief when he went out of stealth, just long enough to get up a few clones to keep up the pressure and keep the thief on his toes.

As thief I’ve dueled my guildmates who play d/d eles, and I have not been able to beat them. They are much better players than me, but that consistent pbaoe spam is just tough for a squishy thief to get through. So then the other option is to go ranged – which just does not work vs an ele, with those great gap closers. I realize in wvw, you can’t always anticipate a sneak attack, but hey we all have to deal with it, we need quick reaction time, and a good sense of awareness. Frankly without those, you can suffer the same insta-gib burst from a sneaky elementalist or warrior.

+1 For that.

That is a very helpful explanation. I’ll give that a shot.

Incurafy.6329:

Like Xmtrcv said above me, you basically answered your own question. Snare a Thief and they’re dead regardless of what build they’re running.

Also, just to clear something up, a Thief using D/P for a pseudopermenant stealth isn’t able to burst people down in seconds, ttheir damage isn’t that great. Secondly, they gain stealth by using Heartseeker through Black Powder. If you stand in it then they can’t use it to gain more than a single 3 second stealth.

The thief I engaged just kept dropping black powder on the floor (red circles with smoke?) and still maintained perma-stealth without engaging anything else. He still managed to burst down a ranger in a good 5 seconds.

Also, first thing I do when I see a thief is to throw snares at him. The issue is if he stealths I don’t know where I can throw my snares. If there is a way to at least gauge where his position is, it will even the odds.

xmtrcv.5236:

Thief isn’t shock and awe. Thief is a precision strike. (Pun may or may not be intended).

I think you answered your own questions when you said “boatload of snares”. Depending on his stunbreaker(s) + cooldown(s), that will typically do it.

Not really, he still has the initiative if he keeps on stealth. I can cast a boatload of snares all over the place but risk wasting them on empty space. It would be useful if there are any indicators on the thief’s position besides a thief revealing himself.

Hi Thieves,

I recently started getting more active in WvW an yesterday I met a perma-stealth thief and I experienced firsthand why people hate it so much.

I am not in any glass cannon zerker setup but this guy burst me down in 5 seconds. Later on while we were sieging a tower I was throwing all known AoEs on the floor and still he was around trying to pick off stragglers. When we took the tower he went inside and despite everyone actively looking for him, he still managed to take out another guy. Granted, he did melt like butter on the surface of the sun once he executed that last guy and I threw a boatload of snares on him.

The point is, people hate this happening to them. For most people it makes them feel helpless when a thief can deliver a whole tonne of damage within seconds and they can’t counter it effectively. Sort of the shock and awe tactics that the US military loves so much.

I am tempted to say this setup is overpowered so I would like to know if you guys can offer any advice on fighting against these setup.

I read on a thread that I should stand in that smoky circle and 99% chance the thief will heartseeker me. Sorry, that doesn’t sound like a viable tactic to me. For one thing I am relying on him to screw up and if he doesn’t take the bait it will be back to square one for me. Even if he doesn’t HS me, the thief I fought against did not have the problem staying in perma-stealth.

innocent ouarior.1954:

Flamestrike is extremely bad. It makes Scepter’s DPS in fire terribly crappy.

I can’t say it is. I tested the damage in the mists with steady weapons and no stat boost (traits/jewels); Flamestrike is actually the heaviest hitting auto-attack of all scepter weapons because of burning.

On the topic shatterstone isn’t too bad mainly because of its fast cooldown, but it does need some tweaking. Can’t say the same for our poor Dust Devil though.

Dingle.2743:

Scorael.8952:

On Burning Fire, it only affects utility skills that already cause burning (unless there’s a tooltip error) and since burns do not stack intensity it feels pointless to invest the trait slot into it. No point changing attunements since they are all utility skills.

Burning Fire increases the base burn duration of Signet of Fire from 9 seconds to 12 seconds; this reduces the amount of condition duration required to maintain permanent burning through that skill alone from 127% to 70%. My condition build has 76-80% condition duration, depending on food, so Burning Fire is actually resulting in 100% uptime on burning, and I never have to leave earth attunement to get it (and the cast time of Signet of Fire is so short I barely lose any bleed stacks casting it)

In return that allows me a lot more freedom with the other utility slots, because I only need to dedicate one to inflicting burning. This is the only set-up I’ve found for maintaining burning at a 100% uptime without leaving earth attunement; there’s a glyph set-up which can work for up to 30 seconds before needing to leave it, but nothing else. Elementalists lose around 9-12 bleed stacks (minimum, and nearly every stack without points in Arcana) if they leave earth attunement to get access to burning, which means it’s not worth doing so (Burning’s only worth about 6 bleed stacks in a dedicated condition build)

I never thought of it that way. That does provide a use for it but, like you previously mentioned, it is very niche.

In this sense, I wish the developers would put in a trait to increase burn duration and/or damage.

It is possible but are you talking about PvP or PvE?

For PvP, I won’t try it. Elementalist are just way too soft for glass cannon.

For PvE, use the scepter and stack area might. Both dagger and focus can achieve this but I find the dagger to be better at it. Focus on the other hand is better for dungeons because you can stack area might at range.

Dingle.2743:

Persisting Flames, at least, is mainly aimed at Staff. It increases the duration of Lava Font long enough that it should grant an extra damage tick, and with the 20% CD trait, the player should be able to reach roughly 100% uptime on that fire field – which, if your party is aware you’re doing this, can lead to a lot of might-stacking through blast finishers. It also makes it easier to land your own blast finishers with Eruption/Evasive Arcana.

The issue is that it’s way too far up the fire tree to be practical. You have piqued my interest on the 20% CD trait though; Perma lava font sounds interesting. I’ll give that a try.

Dingle.2743:

Burning Fire… probably has a niche role. I’d say it’s aimed mostly at condition builds that don’t want to leave Earth attunement and need to get more sources of burning in utility slots. (As Navsar said, it might be a good candidate for boon hate, or possible condition removal, but I think it’s functional as-is, just niche)

Burning Rage is somewhat useful for stacking up on damage multipliers. A little boring, but functional. Maybe the increase could be larger.

On Burning Fire, it only affects utility skills that already cause burning (unless there’s a tooltip error) and since burns do not stack intensity it feels pointless to invest the trait slot into it. No point changing attunements since they are all utility skills.

And Burning Rage is, as you said, boring. It feels like the developers never put it a lot of effort in designing elementalist traits.

Hi developers,
With all the recent nerfs to our class I think it is about time we got ourselves some buffs. Yes, double dagger is overpowered (probably) but if you want to break the bunker we need alternatives. Let us start with our fire traits

1) Flame Barrier – To be fair, this is a 5 point minor trait but its probably our worst. 20% chance to burn anyone that hits you in melee isn’t really appealing given that if we’re attuned to fire the enemy is probably already on fire. Also, taking 5 hits usually means we’re dead or spilling guts from our stomach wound (excluding bunkers).

Improvement: increasing the chance (without another trait) would be nice. Also instead of burning why not a direct damage or perhaps (borrowing from WoW) a reduced chance to get hit critically.

2) Burning Fire – Aside from being named by Captain Obvious, this trait appears to be a legacy from the time cleansing fire, etc., did not cause burning. The added extra seconds are not worth the trait slot.

Improvement: Just replace it with a new trait. Maybe one that increases burn damage.

3) Burning rage – Its an OK trait but it felt like the one a developer came up with on a Friday night and the bar is just around the corner. The trait feels like a lazy attempt; it is a carbon copy of Ember’s Might, just deeper into the tree.

Improvement: Making a new trait for this sounds appropriate

4) One With Fire – Now you’re assuming Flame Barrier is useful?

Improvement: Replacement required. Increase damage the longer you are attuned to fire?

5) Persisting Flames – Ha ha now my fire fields last longer… hey where are you going? OK it actually isn’t that bad a trait but 30 points into fire just so your thin flame wall can last 2 seconds longer is probably not worth 30 trait points.

Improvement – reduce its trait level or better yet increase the duration of fire fields to more than 30% somewhere around 50% sounds about right

Feel free to add more guys. I’ll probably be touching on air later on but for now I am being lazy, also the laundry does not wash itself (has anyone invented that yet?).

IMHO, they need to buff our damage. I find that when I went glass cannon I was too glassy and not too… cannony.

With regards to changes to conjured weapons I agree on some but disagree on not summoning a second weapon. Strongly agree on the removal of charges.

One other thing I thought would be awesome is for the conjures to reflect the elementalist’s attunement so I can conjure a fire bow or a lightining greatsword all with a new set of skills.

Also, I would like to add that conjures were meant to provide elementalist with options because we can’t swap weapons. In a way, conjures are our weapon swap (besides attunements of course). For example, I go d/d in a dungeon and this boss needs to be ranged so I conjure my ice bow. Too close range for my staff to be effective; pull out my hammer.

Changes I’ll like to see in conjures would be a revamp of the conjurer trait, and total revamp of the flame axe and shield skills. I believe the other weapons are all right at the moment.

Hi All,

I’m just wondering if anyone can recommend a build that would use fully utilise all-zerker armor for PvE and WvW.

I’m currently in the full CoF power, prec, crit dam set and I’m trying not to swap out (because my toon looks wicked).

Trinkets and weapons are still changeable

Thanks in advance

Fuzzion.2504:

It is mathematically possible but rare.

Do we output like a god? If you mean burst we are 3rd or 4th on the list.

I think the warrior meant to say burst damage. I guess it is possible if one specialises as a glass cannon but that would ruin our survivability, won’t it? I suppose it also relies on the enemy blindly walking into the Giant Fiery Tooth of Doom That Has Red Circles.

Daecollo.9578:

The counter to it is he can’t do anything while perma-stealthed, and to perma-stealth you have to sacrifice almost all your damage.

As a necromancer player, I would Lul if thieves got taken out of stealth by damage, stealth would just become the most useless ability in the game and thieves would need massive buffs in survivable and damage to compensate.

I would laugh even more if it broke on bleed and burn, because then they couldn’t even stealth at all, or do anything to my necromancer, MARKS FTW!

I don’t see how not being able to do anything in stealth would count as a counter. I consider a counter to stealth to be something a player can do to break a rogue’s stealth. On the permastealth builds, so far the rogue’s I have encountered are quite capable of delivering solid damage and appear to be invisible 90% of the fight.

If I had my way with thieves I would probably make stealth break on damage just for the lulz. However, I do recognise that stealth is an essential part of the thief’s class mechanic and that tweaking it too far would ruin the class.

I would also like to add that I hope the devs can fix the culling issue. It would unlikely destroy the nerf cries but I can hope that it makes it easier to fight thieves.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Scorael.8952:

2) Revealed debuff refreshes when attacked by foe. I’m basing this off the assumption that thieves are skilled enough to run away. That being said I am guessing ranged weapons could undo this quite quickly.

How would this be fair in Wv3?

By not attacking a group of people, lol?

Kidding, I do see your point but I have seen many thieves attack 1 person who is surrounded by friendlies though and seem to have no trouble running away to do it again.

IMHO, the biggest complaint people have against stealth is the that thieves appear to be able to go permanent invisibility and there <strong>appears</strong> to be no counter for it. Sya what you may about eles at least you can target them for CCs unlike thieves.

That being said, I think stealth needs to be calibrated and I have a few ideas. These are just my friendly opinions:

1) Increased reveal time to 4 or 5s. I think this could work but it should be tested before rolling out.
2) Revealed debuff refreshes when attacked by foe. I’m basing this off the assumption that thieves are skilled enough to run away. That being said I am guessing ranged weapons could undo this quite quickly.
3) Stealth breaks on bleed/burn. Not a very popular one I think but you have to admit it’s weird that I can’t see an invisible man on fire or leaving a trail of blood

Another thing I believe should be removed is execution while in stealth. I reserve a special hatred in my heart for this. Possibly because that means I cannot stop a thief from executing a team mate. Also, perhaps only thieves can do this and quite often too. Personally, I think executions should count as an attack.

Anyways, just my opinion.

SkeeLd what did you do?
I deleted local.dat and repaired the client and there appears to be some improvements

Fuzzion.2504 you missed the point of the OP. He is commenting on how ridiculous it was having a warrior state that GW2 elementalist are better than GW1.

I have seen that post and it is nonsense. The warrior was saying that we output God-like damage. Has any ele managed to break the 10k in 1 hit yet? I have seen a warrior do it before but not an ele.

Hi All,

My fiancé’s game just experience a massive FPS drop after the recent update and I can’t figure out what’s the problem. I updated the drivers but it isn’t working. FPS is lagging around 20s and is still very bad at the lowest settings. I copied and pasted the game (to save on data. I’m from Australia where we pay for our bandwidth) if that helps.

She is using a Asus G74sx and running on a GeForce GTX 560M. Should be powerful enough to run the game.

Thanks in advance