Guild Wars 2

Next patch notes:

Removed “unintended” boons due to other traits from Powerful Aura when an aura is applied to allies.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel that having a Public Test Realm would stop things like this from happening… At the very least we’d have been aware of the change before hand.

I’ve never been one to hop on the “ANet hates ele’s” bandwagon, but holy kittens this patch is making it look mighty tempting to start thinking that way.

I too built myself around Evasive Arcana, I absolutely love the playstyle. To me it was the biggest fun factor in the profession and a huge reason why I would play my ele over say, a guardian. I loved dodge rolling INTO enemies instead of away from them to deal damage when playing solo. It made me feel like I was a battle mage of sorts and I didn’t NEED to use D/D to feel that way (prefer support staff). It was different and fresh as opposed to your average spellcasting type classes in other games that just stand there and sling spells all day. It required movement, careful positioning and guts, basically allowing enemies to have a shot at you. Using this trait as support in dungeons was a huge departure from healing in any other game too since you had to run straight up to your allies and blast them with some healing, it kept you in the battle and not just on the outskirts laying down fields. Not to mention it made the geyser (water staff 3) actually useful, since dwayna knows it’s nigh impossible to heal anyone with that spell considering no one pays attention to it and runs straight away after it’s dropped (let alone have the reaction time to execute their own blast finishers on it).

I get it, Evasive Arcana was a very strong choice for a few builds, almost necessary for most and that this is a way of making it so other builds focusing on other things are more prominent. But why nerf Evasive Arcana? Why not just make other linchpin grandmaster traits stronger so they can compete on the same level? None of the other grandmaster traits come close to actually changing playstyle, they just have small effects. The only other playstyle changing one that comes to mind is the aura sharing trait but even then aura’s are so spaced out between weapons that it’s basically useless. Since launch it’s been said that ele’s need to be reworked a bit since other classes can bring everything an ele can with less effort, why take one of the only things that we could do better than other classes away?

I really REALLY hope that this change is actually bugged and that it was only supposed to fix how finishers would sometimes proc even when the spell didn’t (that happened a lot). Sometimes it happens, things get nerfed more than was intended, I hope this is one of those times…

This is a fantastic idea and I would love to see something along these lines implemented. As it stands if you basically need to get multiples of everything if you want to switch between two skins on the same armor/weapon, which is very dangerous.

A few thoughts:

Identification of profession and level prior to inviting – Party UI
Not completely necessary considering you can definitely beat dungeons with multiples of the same class. I was in CM yesterday with 3 thieves, a warrior and Ele (me) and we were able to beat it (was hard but CM is just hard anyway). However, it could be useful but then again just asking people before inviting them is just as useful.

HP bar in numbers – Party UI
Well, first of all, no one should be straight up tanking and players who are built to be up close and personal with enemies should know already if they can or not. It comes down to communication. If someone is planning on staying in melee a lot, they should tell the rest of the group “hey guys, I’m built pretty tanky and will be spending a lot of time in melee.” considering there are no single target heals in the game, it’s not really necessary to have numeric values since you won’t ever need to ask yourself who needs healing the most based on their healthbars, it’s more based on their position and whether they have aggro. What would be nice though, is for floating healthbars above people’s heads, as a support ele, that’s what I’d love to have (as well as color coded healing aoe borders but that’s most likely never going to happen).

Ready check
Sure why not, though the same thing can be done just by asking in chat, so it’s not a huge deal.

Player Inspect option for gear
No. A thousand times, no. Player skill and build means far more than equipment in this game. Standing around gear checking people for an hour before a raid in WoW sucked, especially when you were told (or had to tell someone) that you needed better gear. This just breeds elitism and locks people out of doing content they want. At 80 it’s extremely easy and cheap to get all lv80 green gear, which is good enough for anything so it’s safe to say all level 80’s most likely have all 80 gear. Different people build differently and there’s no easily measurable way to see if the armor someone’s using is best for their build, you just need to trust they know what they’re doing and if they don’t it’ll be apparent by the way they play, not their gear. The only way I’d like to see an inspect option added is for seeing what the name of the skin on a weapon or armor is, no stats, and even then it can be done by asking the person.

Looking for group
I haven’t had too much trouble finding groups in /map but an actual working LFG system would be amazing, this is probably one of the most requested features right now. So yes, please.

Aggro Meter
I think an actual meter would be going a little too far, and there are effects in play that do let you know that you have aggro, but I think they could be improved a little. Sometimes it’s hard to notice the little red circle around your feet when you grab aggro and there’s nothing telling you exactly which mob is aggroing you. I’d like to see some visual representation that is very easily seen that tells you who’s targeting you and that you have grabbed aggro.

XodoK.8734:

Very interesting build, I was actually thinking of trying something like that in WvW. I am currently running staff cantrip 10/0/10/30/20 and it is providing me with awesome survivability. I am not sure I will be able to face the zerg well in melee range chaining the fields. Have you had any experience with this? Was the Lightning Flash sufficient for escape?

I actually haven’t even stepped foot in WvW yet, so I can’t comment on how it would work out. Though I may try it sometime this weekend and update the thread with my opinions on it. I would suspect that the variation that I mentioned would work a little better, taking 20 points out of fire and putting them in water for the extra vitality/healing/condition removal. Since there are so many people dealing damage, you personally wouldn’t need all the power that comes from 30 points in fire since everyone’s dealing damage all over the place and it would give you more survivability, it wouldn’t hamper your ability to stack might like a fiend either.

Edit: As for escaping, In PvE I haven’t found that it’s been all that necessary to escape so either lightning flash or mist form works just fine, in WvW on the other hand it may be best to swap out the Earth Signet for a second escape utility.

@Eddard
With our ele elite skills being kind of lacking, I wouldn’t build around an elite (maybe the GS conjure though). Other classes, maybe though. I just find one little niche, be it a skill, trait or playstyle and find things that compliment it.

@Isila
Ooh that sounds interesting indeed! Especially how you use it in dungeons. I haven’t played around with scepter or daggers in a while. perhaps I’ll look into it some more thanks for the info!

Skills:

Really, other than Arcane Wave pick what you want, there’s no right or wrong choices with this build. I suggest taking Signet of Earth for the extra toughness and Lightning Flash for the blink. For the elite, I suggest the elemental, mostly because our other elites are pretty meh. But again, all preference, so do what you want.

Rotation/Play style:

Alright, here’s where it gets fun, this is how the whole thing comes together. As previously stated, you’ll be focusing on setting up fields and dodging into them and casting Arcane Wave to make tons of combo fields. Most of the time you’ll be in melee range of enemies, so this build requires a LOT of movement and dancing around your foes.

A standard fight goes like this:

• Start out in Earth Attunement
• Aggro a few enemies and start casting eruption in a place where it will hit all of them.
• Switch to fire and place a Lava Font on top of the eruption.
• Dodge straight into the Lava Font and cast Arcane Wave, the eruption will go off at the same time, this will set off 3 fire combo finishers, giving you about 9-10 stacks of might if you do it right. This will also deal a ton of burst damage and cause bleeding.
• Cast Flame Burst to set all the mobs on fire
• Use burning retreat to get some distance from your enemies
• After your foes follow you back into the fire, dodge back through it, causing another fire blast finisher for even MORE might.
• By now you’ll have about 15 stacks of might and your auto attack will be dealing some kitten good damage as well as add another stack of might every time you cast it.
• Continue to auto attack, set up fire fields, dodge into them and cast Arcane Wave whenever it’s off cooldown. Doing this, you can easily keep yourself over 20 stacks of might at ALL times. If my math is correct (and it very well could be wrong so let me know) that’s about 700 extra power and condition damage that you’re providing to yourself with very little extra effort. Seven-freaking-hundred!! That’s insane!

Usually that’s all you need to do, however if you’re taking damage, don’t worry about it. If you’re stacking at least one defensive attribute in your gear you’ll be fine and the Earth’s Embrace trait you’re using will provide plenty of time to swap to water and heal. The best part is that when you DO need healing, drop yourself a water field, roll into it and use arcane wave. Not only will the water finisher from the dodge heal you, it’s blast finisher along with the blast from Arcane Wave will most likely over heal you no matter how much health you’re missing (I’ve gone from 25% to 100% instantly using this).

If adds join in on the fight and you need to regroup, switch to water and put down a frozen ground or go air and try to stun everything, then switch to earth and try to catch most of the enemies in a Shockwave, cast another Eruption and start the standard process all over again.

Personal thoughts/variations
I love this build, having played almost nothing but staff from 1-80, staying away from enemies and kiting them, this is a huge change in play-style and is a ton of fun. I’ve tested this build out in Orr and have had great success with it so far. However, I mostly use a slightly different variation of the build since I like to do dungeons and would rather build for more support. I put 10 points into fire, 10 into earth, 20 into water and 30 into Arcane when I play, that way I have more vitality and I can easily swap my traits/skills to more supportive ones in case I choose to do dungeons. Even built with water instead of fire, I usually tear through mobs fairly quickly after stacking so much might but I figured I’d go to the extreme with this guide and show it off with fire.

I haven’t tried stacking different attributes on armor with this build yet, as I said before, I use clerics for the extra healing in dungeons. I’m sure balancing out all the power with some condition damage would do nicely for this build though since there will be a lot of bleed and burning going on (and might also gives bonuses to condition damage). So that might be a good way to go.

Anyway, that’s about it, I hope you guys enjoyed the guide and I hope you give the living bomb a try and tell me what you think! I’d love to hear some suggestions and constructive criticism! Thanks for reading!

I came up with a pretty fun elementalist build the other day and I thought I’d share it with you all! I present to you, the living bomb build!

DD Elementalists, you may thought you were the only ones capable of fighting in melee, well think again! With the living bomb build, even us staff users can join in the front lines!

Some disclaimers before we get started:
First of all, due to the nature of builds, this of course is by no means the hands down best thing ever. Most of this comes down to personal preference, and I’ll even go into further detail at the end that I actually use a variation on this build. This build works well for me and I have a lot of fun with it but it might not be your cup of tea and that’s perfectly fine, just don’t flame in the comments because you don’t share the same opinion.

This build has been tested in PvE ONLY and mostly for solo purposes, though since you’re using a lot of area combos, others will definitely enjoy all the boons you’ll be giving them.

Also I’d like to point out that I’m no theory-crafter, I don’t have the time to generate spreadsheets showing exact numeric changes in stats/damage etc. This is merely a fun build I came up with and it’s effectiveness is based totally on observation, not math.

The living bomb build:
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#5|0|2771|3983|2816|48|4480|30|1664|1653|915|0|0|0|0|10|1645|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|1838|1630|965|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

What is this build all about?
This is a solo PvE build based on creating as many blast combos as possible using Evasive Arcana and Arcane Wave. Doing this can rack up tons of might stacks and allow you to tear straight through enemies. I’ll go into the actual “rotation” later but the general play-style of the build involves constantly setting up fields and dodging into them while using Arcane Wave. Due to the fact that you’ll usually be dodging straight INTO enemies instead of away from them, it’s a great idea to pick up defensive traits/skills and armor to ensure that you don’t die.

Trait breakdown:

Arcane Mastery – This is a pretty great trait to have, it makes your arcane spells recharge 20% faster. Now, we may only be using one arcane spell BUT trust me, the more you can use Arcane Wave, the better since it’s such an integral spell to the build.
Alternate Suggestion: Final Shielding – Arcane shield at 25% health. More survivability just in case? Yes please.

Blasting Staff – All your area attacks with a staff become larger. This is the one trait in the Arcane tree that I’d say completely comes down to personal preference. I happen to like using this since it makes dodging into your fields much easier while making sure the enemies stay within them.
Alternate Suggestion: Arcane Energy – Every time you use an arcane spell, you gain 25% endurance. This synergies very well with Arcane Mastery for a constant supply of dodges and Arcane Wave casts.

Evasive Arcana – As stated previously, this is really the cornerstone of the build. This trait allows you to produce a blast finisher at the end of your dodge roll. This is KEY. It allows you to stack ungodly amounts of might on yourself or throw out some insane heals if used correctly. There’s a cooldown on the finisher, but it’s fairly short, either 10 seconds goes by really fast or the tooltip lies since it sure doesn’t feel like it’s on a 10 second cooldown.

Embers Might – 5% extra damage to burning foes. This one’s kind of a throwaway trait I pick it since most of the time things will be burning, so yeah why not add a little extra damage? Pick whatever you want in place of this though.

Internal fire – We’ll be spending a lot of time in Fire so an extra 10% damage increase while attuned to fire is a fairly obvious choice. However, it’s still kind of a throwaway so if you like another trait better, go for it.

Pyromancer’s Puissance – Is that even a word? Anyway, this trait is the reason we put so many points into fire (well, other than getting 300 power ). This build focuses on stacking might as much as possible so an extra stack with every fire spell cast is fantastic! It also synergies well with the fact that we have 30 points in arcane, increasing boon duration.

Earth’s Embrace – This trait is amazing for helping you survive. It gives you so much more time to swap to water and heal yourself if you’re in a tight spot. I highly recommend it and wouldn’t suggest picking anything else.

It’s a good idea to point out that you gain a couple of nice minor traits building this way as well. The extra toughness per level you get from Stone flesh in Earth is nice for when you’re in a pickle and switch to earth. Since you’re going to be spending a lot of time in Melee, the Flame Barrier in fire is also going to be great for when you get smacked.

(splitting into two due to character limits, haha)

I have an issue with conjured weapons that turns me off to using them completely and I’m sure others feel the same. I am not saying that they’re over or under-powered or that they’re completely useless, and this isn’t a thread to complain or start a fight about their effectiveness or not. I just want to point out one glaring reason why I don’t use them and perhaps make a suggestion that would possibly encourage people into using them more.

The issue
To start, let’s take a look at how elementalists are “supposed” to play: Any ele player can tell you that if you want to be a good and viable ele, you’re going to have to get good at attunement dancing. Unless in a huge zerg, ele’s should be constantly switching elements, taking full advantage of all their abilities, providing dps, control or support when needed or even just to combo off yourself when solo.

What happens when you conjure one of your elemental weapons? You’re stuck using that weapon until it runs out of charges or you put the weapon away… and if you put away the weapon soon after casting it, well you kind of just wasted that utility/elite (unless the sole purpose was to give an ally the weapon). Being stuck using one set of skills goes completely against an ele’s base mechanic, attunement swapping. You cannot swap to provide healing or CC or anything, you are stuck.

My suggestion
Swap the base elemental weapons skills with those of the conjured weapon while the charges last but allow for swapping between elements as normal.

For example: If you use the frost bow, swap that skill bar with the basic water attunement skill bar. When you swap to fire, your normal fire skills become available, and when you swap back to water again, you still have your frost bow skills until you run out of charges.

If this were the case, I could definitely see a huge increase in people wanting to use conjured weapons. It fits perfectly into ele’s base mechanic and provides tons more utility. Heck, I know I’d use them if this were how they’d work.

Problems
Of course, this isn’t a fix all. Complexity would be one issue as well as balance with all the other skills. Unfortunately, I’m running out of time to post this so I can’t go into much detail at the moment, but yes, I’m aware that there would be some.

Anyway, that’s about it. What do you all think?

I did AC story mode on monday and it wasn’t hard at all. I was an ele (support) and was with two of my friends (thief and engi, both traited for damage) and we picked up a pug necro and guardian. It was me and my two friends first time setting foot in a dungeon, we did the whole thing with very little communication outside of “don’t res him, i’m using my glyph” and we only ended up wiping once due to the lovers not actually moving when using pushbacks/rocks. My friends and I are very casual players only able to play maybe once or twice a week, I was around level 50 and everyone else was 30-35.

In my opinion the challenge was perfect. It was difficult but we never once needed to graveyard rush and it really helped us learn how to truly play our characters in the dungeon environment. I can’t say anything about the other dungeon story modes, but AC was just fine and probably my favorite thing I’ve experienced in game so far.

Great post! I’ve been trying to put together a post very similar to this for a while but couldn’t quite find the right words. I wholeheartedly agree that there’s really not enough synergy with ele traits. There are a few really good looking combos on paper such as an Air + Water vulnerability/crit build but at the same time, half of the traits in a build like that are better for daggers and half are better for staves meaning you don’t use your traits to full effect.

The way I look at it most classes have two categories of traits: ones that are general buffs that help regardless of weapon choice, and ones that are weapon specific. As elementalists we have general traits, weapon traits AND attunement traits. If like in your example, a warrior switches from a greatsword to a hammer, they just have to swap out a major trait, we can’t do that since even if we swap out our weapon we’re still using our elemental attunement.

A good way to put it is that being a complex class, we have more choice but don’t have an increased choice capacity to reflect it. We have the same number of traits and same number of slots as everyone else but more diverse options meaning as a whole they become a little weaker.

To be clear, I’m not saying I think ele’s are “OMG SO UP!!” I love my ele and at least in PvE I kick a lot ofkitten and don’t have much trouble if any at all, but I do think that the traits (along with elite skills) are pretty weak and could use a little love.

I’ve heard this brought up in a bunch of different threads, I don’t think it would fix all the problems but create new ones. Of course it would allow you to play whatever dungeon you want without complaint that you weren’t getting the tokens you wanted but it would cause more problems than it fixes. ANet is trying to reduce the amount of farming going on in specific dungeons that are “easier” or that people exploit. Consider how everyone was/is farming CoF, if they want to get pieces from say Twilight Arbor, set they must do that dungeon instead, so they’re essentially just doing CoF for money/exp if they don’t want the gear. If tokens were universal then a lot of the dungeons would NEVER be touched and a few would be farmed 10 times more than they currently are. I don’t know if you played WoW but back in Lich King, I don’t ever recall anyone farming Occulus for tokens (or Magisters Terrace back in BC shudders)… since the tokens were universal no one wanted to do the hard dungeons. I think this is the biggest issue ANet’s trying to fix with dungeons (farming etc) at the moment and universal tokens would work directly against that.

Now, how about this instead: Tokens aren’t universal, but they can be “transmuted” through a vendor somehow at a cost, such as 20 AC tokens give you 10 CM tokens. You’d still make more tokens actually doing the dungeon you want the gear from but if you want to join friends in other dungeons you can still use what you get from those towards the gear you want. This to me, is a win-win. Do any dungeon you want and still contribute to your goal of getting certain gear from a different dungeon, yet there’s incentive to complete the dungeon housing your gear of choice.

I think there still needs to be a little more incentive though. Referencing WoW again, those hard dungeons I mentioned also had a few things specific to that dungeon that you couldn’t get anywhere else. MgT had my best in slot trinket and a rare mount, Occ had a rare mount, stuff like that. I haven’t spent too much time in GW2 dungeons myself but I don’t believe there are many if any really rare skinned loot drops that are completely specific to certain dungeons/EM paths. Adding them (or more if they already exist) may give people more reason to complete some of the not-so-popular dungeons.

I took a couple of before and after screenshots to further illustrate the rather large difference there is between the targeting circle and the actual AoE field.

http://imgur.com/a/PdUYE

I agree, elites are pretty lackluster for Ele. The problem I have with the elites is that most of them change your skill bar for a while. As an Elementalist, swapping between different elements constantly is a huge part of the profession, anything that prevents you from doing so and locks you into some other skill set kind of goes against the way the profession is built. The utilities are done perfectly, particularly the glyphs, changing their effect based on what element you’re attuned to. This, just like traits and everything else about elementalists, promote element swapping. Turning into a tornado, losing all ability to swap elements yet still taking damage works completely against that…

Hynoris.3684:

Outside pve i easily trade my elite slot for another utility slot and i not the only one who think like that.

Even IN PvE I’d trade my elite for another utility, as much as I love the greater water elemental (and I do love it to pieces), we already have the lesser elemental utility so it feels kind of disappointing just getting a bigger version of an existing ability.

When using the elementalist arcane trait, Blasting Staff, the AoE fields increase in size as intended but the targeting circle does not accurately reflect this change. This makes it difficult to judge where to place your fields in a lot of circumstances, especially when using Static Field (staff air 5) since the outer edge is the only part of the field where any effect takes place. I have confirmed that this happens with every ground targeted AoE skill on the staff.