Guild Wars 2

FrownyClown.8402:

Smooth Marc.8743:

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

Air is in a good spot,but the problem with taking air is you leave yourself vulnerable to power builds if you don’t get earth you have no access to protection aside from overloads.If you don’t pick water then you leave yourself vulnerable to condition builds, because you have very little condition removal and you have very little team support.

Even though air is fine, it needs some kind of built in self defense or dps ele will never be viable.

One with Air is very strong and under utilized.

One with Air is strong but its not enough to make DPS ele viable.

DeceiverX.8361:

As long as the ele can have access to such a breadth of abilities and boons, and that boons are as overpowered as they are, it won’t have diversity in its competitive builds.

Nerf boons and buff scaling while putting stricter emphasis on buffing certain attunements through traits, and the class can be fixable and have a degree of diversity.

I sincerely doubt many people are willing to take boon nerfs, and I doubt ANet is willing to put in the surrounding work to make boons balanced for the rest of the classes just to fix ele.

Eles need those abilities and boons because every other class in the game has way more baseline effective health/armor/built in defense than ele. I’m not going to get into the specifics of class baselines survivability, because it’s already been argued to death.

Eles don’t have diversity in competitive builds because anet took away or changed all the amulets dps eles used.Introducing amulets tailored to dps ele would help more than buffing traits to be honest. DPS Ele needs some of every stat to be viable. That’s why celestial ele was so good in spvp. Now elementalist has to play with vitality and healing power but no toughness, or toughness and vitality but no healing power, or toughness and healing power but 11k health.

Simply put there aren’t any good dps amulets for elementalist.

@kyon
Record a few games of you playing DPS ele with glyph of elemental power.Glyph of elemental power can more or less keep high up time on weakness, but I guarantee AOE weakness won’t make a difference in helping you stay alive.

Weakness looks promising on paper, but once you start having to deal with everyone running tons of condition removal,resistance and AOE being spammed on a point weakness becomes really bad in practice.

Right now the only way for DPS elementalist apply protection is by overloading attuments which is not always feasible.Even if you are overloading as much as possible the uptime on protection is still fairly low, which is why i’m arguing for another way to apply protection. 40% damage reduction is way way better than a 50% chance for attacks to do half damage.

Glyph of elemental power and arcane precision already apply weakness on hit so adding another trait that applies weakness would be redundant.

Air is in a good spot,but the problem with taking air is you leave yourself vulnerable to power builds if you don’t get earth you have no access to protection aside from overloads.If you don’t pick water then you leave yourself vulnerable to condition builds, because you have very little condition removal and you have very little team support.

Even though air is fine, it needs some kind of built in self defense or dps ele will never be viable.

Guizao.4167:

FrownyClown.8402:

Guizao.4167:

@Kyon
Maybe Persisting Flames doesn’t need to be changed, but those minor traits are really terrible. I love the idea about Burning Rage, considering how it is difficult for DPS eles to deal consistent dmg while managing to survive (I’m not considering fresh air with s/f). I just wish all of our skills to have a cooldown reduction and some others get offensive buffs. PvE is brainless, everything works on PvE. It doesn’t concern me. WvW is just another extension of it so I really don’t care.

The way I see it, we will only be able to deal consistent damage if we can improve our overall survivability with traits. I don’t think buffing traits for improved defense in underused trait lines would promote bunker builds, because there is a trade off of losing condition removal or protection on auras.

Perhaps adding survavibility options to dmg traitlines would be great?

Yes,if the air trait line had access to protection dps ele would be in better shape.

What if weak spot was changed to give 3-4 seconds of protection on crit with a 10 second ICD instead of vulnerability on crit .I don’t think this would be unreasonable because bunker eles would not benefit at all from going air.

If you’re still having trouble here are few tips for soloing lupi.

You can push him into the wall if you want, however I think you should try to kill lupi in the open your first time.If you solo him in the open you’ll have a much better understanding of his mechanics and how to counter them. That plus killing lupi when he is pushed in the wall is basically a joke.

For specs use 30/30/0/0/10 ,0/30/0/20/20 or 0/0/30/20/20.For your first kill I recommended using 0/0/30/20/20.The 30 earth spec is good because it allows you to survive several mistakes in p3.However the dps is horrific so avoid using it once you have a good understanding of p3.The 30 air/20 water/20 arcane spec is probably the best choice for your first kill because you can still do ok damage while being able to survive a few mistakes. Don’t bother with 30/30/0/0/10 unless you can do p3 without getting hit by anything.

For traits grab lighting flash,mist form,Armor of earth. You can drop armor of earth for signet of fire if you feel like domes are not a problem.If you push him into the wall don’t bother with cantrips and grab arcane blast/arcane shield

Use all zerker gear with scholar runes. Use sigil of undead slaying and sigil of energy. If you’re really struggling with p3 put on few pieces pvt gear until you get it down then swap back to zerker

P1
Lupi kicks after he attempts to spawn a grub on a player or after he spawns locus swarms. Occasionally he may not kick but assume he will.You can max range lupi with lighting whip and still not be hit by kick but it makes the phase take longer if you do that.

Try to burning speed after he does a kick.

P2

You can kill the grub to make p3 easier,however it makes the transition much harder.

You can do this by moving out of melee range and using obsidian flesh/armor of earth so the grub will not stun you. If he aoes right way you can use magnetic wave(with obsidian flesh or mist form up) and the reflects should kill the grub for you.If he does not aoe put up swirling winds and dps it down.Keep in mind he may try to teleport to you so dodge if he does.

Try to rotate swirling winds/obsidian flesh/mist form to survive the aoe in p2.Be sure to start off with swirling winds.

Lupi does two swipes before he does the mass aoe.

If you cast swirling winds while lupi is casting the mass aoe be sure to dodge once(while staying in the swirling winds), because the first hit may or may not be blocked depending on your latency

P3

Like others have said if you stay perfectly still lupi won’t dome you.So don’t move don’t even blink.

He likes to rapid fire after landing from levitate, or doing a life suck so use swirling winds after those attacks to save dodges.

Use lighting flash to get out of dome first. However if you’re at low health or have really bad latency like me consider just using obsidian flesh, armor of earth or mist form first.

Try to swap to air attunement for swiftness/run speed when you run out for levitate

Don’t dodge right away when he levitates there is a bit of a delay before he starts to damage you.It takes a bit of experimenting to figure exactly when you should start dodging

During life suck dodge left then right, or back then forward. The idea is to end up in the same place you started before the first dodge.

When you swap to proc sigil of energy try to get back into air before your sigil comes off cooldown. Also consider might stacking while your sigil is on cooldown.

kyubi.3620:

maybe then the solution is to add unblockable ability to bosses wich deals heavy damage to players without thoughness every now and then.

Problem with that is it screws classes with low baseline armor/health over.

Lian Olsam.9541:

Smooth Marc.8743:

Lian Olsam.9541:

ether renewal is orrible u cant cast anything and if someone interrupt u you dont get healing, in heavy content u are death before healing is finish to cast
with lh he cant use the focus skill so he have only utility if he use mist form he lose his hammer so it is sensless..

If he would die before he got 2-3 ticks of ether renewal he was going to die no matter what traits or heal he has equipped.

So what if he has to drop his hammer could still use dps with his weapons,pick up another hammer or might stack the group.The point of having the focus equipped is so you can fall back on those skills to stay alive if things go badly.

Dagger main hand damage is not that far behind lighting hammer dps so you can deal with using it for a few seconds.If you have a scepter equipped you can still do somewhat decent dps for 5-10 seconds.He would still be doing more damage than an ele with tons of points in defensive traits or stacking defensive stats on gear

with ethear renewal u cant cast anything for 3 second, its an eternity in this game, worst healing of the entire game imo
in high content u are underpressure 90%of time so you need focus anytime u can just give 2-3 hit with lh before need something else, conditions is the king of the game, and in fotm you also have a big damage…
this is why i asked a video, cause in this forum, everyone is “pro”, maybe they really are, and so its a chance for learn something, but in my experience, when i have played with other elementalist, i see no burst one, stay alive enough, i’ve played with alot of ele, at any fotm lvl, and when i saw a burst one, usually i spent 50% of time ressing him… there is no glory to deal a big dmg if you are downed

another fact is about other classes, i have also a full zerk war, i have really less problem on this heavy content, i do alot of dmg and have more survivability, i dont need to switch and cast fast as hell like ele.. my dmg is like full dps lh ele, and my survivability its a bit less then full bunker ele…

we need a different balance imo
1) because of the last things i wrote
2) because i chose ele cause of attunement if i have to use lh for deal high dmg i have less option than anyone in this game
3)other classes, like mesmer and war (maybe also other classes) do more or same dps with better survivability

ele is my main i love to play it, but if i was an harcore player i dont whould like ele, i can have better dps/survivability with other classes

Everyone has been complaining about elementalist health since the game was released.It makes zero sense why warriors get twice the effective health as an elementalist when both classes are required to melee in pve to be effective. There is nothing we can do about our baseline health but deal with it.The devs obviously don’t care and feel like health pools are balanced for reasons beyond me.

Ether renewal is just a solution to a question you asked.You wanted to know what glass cannon elementalist could do vs bosses/mobs that apply a lot of conditions.I’d rather channel ether renewal 3-4 times a fight instead of investing points into arcana and water for condition removal.If you have a problem with ether renewal just take cleansing fire/signet of water and hope it’ll be enough.If not play another class that can deal with conditions as their glass cannon spec.

In dungeons mobs don’t put out much pressure you just get 1-2 shot if you get hit.Which goes back to my previous statement about learning how to avoid all the damage or die.Unfortunately you have to deal with the danger of being one shot to play elementalist effectively.If you end up in a situation were you can’t stay alive on your ele just play your warrior.

The class won’t fall apart if you have to dps with dagger/focus if you end up dropping your hammer.You can still might stack the group and dagger main hand does a fair bit of damage.

I’m derailing the thread so this is my last post about these issues if you wanna discuss it further start another thread.

Lian Olsam.9541:

ether renewal is orrible u cant cast anything and if someone interrupt u you dont get healing, in heavy content u are death before healing is finish to cast
with lh he cant use the focus skill so he have only utility if he use mist form he lose his hammer so it is sensless..

If he would die before he got 2-3 ticks of ether renewal he was going to die no matter what traits or heal he has equipped.

So what if he has to drop his hammer could still use dps with his weapons,pick up another hammer or might stack the group.The point of having the focus equipped is so you can fall back on those skills to stay alive if things go badly.

Dagger main hand damage is not that far behind lighting hammer dps so you can deal with using it for a few seconds.If you have a scepter equipped you can still do somewhat decent dps for 5-10 seconds.He would still be doing more damage than an ele with tons of points in defensive traits or stacking defensive stats on gear

Lian Olsam.9541:

Can u post your build and explaine how can u manage all dmg and conditions? Dont tell me just dodge cause u have 2 and condition dont go away, and mobs doesent disappear in the mid time… i’d like to know for example at high lvl with shaman how can u manage with 10k hp no thoughnes no water/arcana cleasing wave evasive arcana… u will take alot od direct dmg alot of immobilize… i d like to see some videos but some explanation will be fine too, ty

He could ether renewal to remove conditions.

He could use obsidian flesh,mist form,magnetic wave and swirling winds whenever he does not have a dodge available.

On the off chance that he gets downed by adds he could get a rally by having his team focus one down.

It’s more about using cool downs and dodge properly than it is about using defensive traits/gear to stay alive.If you’re party kills everything quickly you won’t end up in a situation where you run out of cool downs and die.

HeavyMetal I doubt you’ll get an acceptable answer to why ascended gear exists.

ANet added ascended weapons to generate more gem sales.It’s obvious that was their intent,because they knew leveling crafting to 500 would be extremely expensive.If they wanted gear progression or to get players to do more world bosses they would have just left the cap at 400 and just had material cool-downs to time gate players.

Instead they upped the crafting cap to 500 and made sure you’d be burning like 200 gold leveling crafting.If a player only has time to play for an hour a day, or spend most of their time in pvp/wvw they won’t have the gold to level crafting.So chances are some of those players are going use their credit card to buy the gems, because they don’t have don’t have the time to grind gold or just hate doing things that generate high amounts of gold and would rather pvp/wvw.

Fair enough I did not use gear with survival stats when posted numbers from the spread sheet

To simulate what it would be like for the op in a pug I took away all banner/might buffs,vulnerability stacks and put knights gear in the spreadsheet .Under these conditions churning earth was higher damage per cast than lightning whip.However the the small amount of damage you gain is not enough to make using a dagger offhand worth using over a focus.

Also the spreadsheet does count condition damage, so the bleed portion of churning earth is being buffed.

We might as well end the churning earth vs lighting whip debate because like you said we can’t consider everyone gear/traits.

There is not much we can really help the op with if he’s having problems staying alive in full knights gear.He needs to start watching mobs and dodging attacks.

I’ll give a few pointers but most of this stuff should be obvious.

Try to stay behind mobs.
Our daggers skills have a 300 hit range so you don’t really have to be in melee range to hit mobs.
Use sigil of energy for more endurance
Put 20 point into arcana for rewnewing stamina.
If you can’t see the boss clearly use go to earth attunment for protection in case you miss a dodge.

I used a spread sheet written by Puandro
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3A3Op-Hj3dOUkJRU0xvcng5ZWc/edit?pli=1
Here is the link if you want to input your stats and traits.

Going off tooltips/wiki isn’t a very good idea because they don’t give accurate skill activation speeds or damage values.

Eyeballing damage numbers you get in game isn’t a very good way to compare skills either,because you can’t control certain variables.The only way to properly figure out skill damage values is by using a spreadsheet.The spreadsheet takes everything into consideration.So the numbers I gave include condition damage,critical damage,power,banners,food,buff etc.

Lighting whip does actually exceed the damage of churning earth.Using lightning whip is not a huge leap forward in damage.It just means you to use focus offhand without losing dps.

I don’t see how we’re hijacking the thread.The op was interested in how to build his character for Fotm.Arguing which weapons are the best is no different from arguing about which traits are the best.

@Baladir

Pretty much what Zelyhn said

I’ll show you the numbers I get from a spreadsheet

Lightning whip is a 1.15ish second cast time and does 8233 damage per cast.

Churning earth is a 3.4ish second cast and does 18051 direct damage + 5395 bleed damage so 23446 damage per cast.

So you’re getting the same amount of damage if you’re hitting 3 targets.

If you need to hit more than 3 mobs then lightning hammer is a better option because the 3rd part of the auto attack chain hits 5 targets for 10k and blinds them every 3 seconds.

Actually players need to be within 360 units of were the blast finisher occurred to receive the might/fury.Which is the same range as receiving auras from an aura share build.

I can understand someone not enjoying these builds, but both of them are very practical.

By the way Dagger/Focus is way better than Dagger/Dagger.I’m surprised people still haven’t realized that dagger offhand offers basically nothing in pve.Fire grab is on too long of a cool down to give your a noticeable dps increase, and bosses are immune to know-downs.So you’re left with a 1.5k heal on a 45 second cool down, and a bigger fire field to use combos in.

Fade.1743:

I have to disagree that Aurashare is weak in PvE. It’s a good jack of all trades build for the jack of all trades class. It’s good for starting out as an Ele and I wish that the radius for the share was larger…and hopefully that will change.

Fresh Air (S/?) has a higher skill floor but lower skill ceiling than a D/D build, imo, in PvE anyway. I would recommend it once you get some practice with Ele in a D/D Aurashare build then switch to a FA one with 0/30/0/10/30 set up.

Auras builds are bad in pve.The problem with auras is you have to get hit for them to do anything.

Magnetic aura is out classed by swirling winds.If you want to provide fury to the group then 30/10/0/20/10 is way better at it.

Also 0/30/10/0/30 is inferior to 0/30/10/0/20/10(which offers more damage) or 30/10/0/20/10(which offers perma fury to the group)

Hamartia.3421:

You do not press 1 when using Scepter. I even have autocast disabled so I never waste a second using one of the crappy auto attacks.

Hope you didn’t sit there and waste your time coming up with this.

So do you just stand around when all your 20-40 second skills are on cool down?

Zenith.7301:

Or, you can stop being bad and play Lightning Hammer in PvE, which does far, far, far, far more damage than any ele mainhand weapons.

Scepter does horrible sustained damage. Don’t be fooled by the dragontooth/phoenix numbers.

Warrior/Guardians can stack might just fine and give group fury.

True,but I just wanted point out that this build is not very good for pve.

DJSkittles.7196:

Im sorry, but I dont understand how your getting the 100% Fury up time without Zephyrs Boon or Fresh Air. Please enlighten me so I too can create a new build.

You can get 100% up time on fury with the recently buffed Persisting flames by using blast finishers in a fire field.You can do this with any weapon set.

You can stack fury with a hammer build by dropping a fire field, picking up the hammer and using 2 auto attack chains + arcane wave.If you do that your party will always have 100% fury.

S/D is the worst weapon choice you can make for pve.

The biggest problem with scepter is the auto attacks in every attunment are inferior to dagger and staff auto attacks.

For example with my current gear trait set up which is full berserker gear with scholar runes and using 30/10/0/20/10.

as dagger/x

Dragon claw is 6191dps
Vapor blade is 3850 dps
Lightning whip is 6699 dps
Implae is 3381 dps

vs scepter

flame strike is 1833 dps
ice shards is 3132
arc lightning is 2633 dps
stone shards is 2244 dps

vs staff

fire ball 3676 dps
water blast 1418 dps
chain lightning 2960 dps
stoning 2121 dps

Dagger mainhands worst auto attack is better than scepters best auto attack.As staff you’re better off sitting in fire and spamming fire ball > lava font only leaving every 20-30 seconds so you can stack fury.

This leads me to my next problem with using scepter in pve.

Only phoenix and dragons tooth do meaningful damage.The rest of the damage spells in other attunments all do worse damage than auto attacks.As s/d you’re casting two hard hitting skills, and then not doing meaningful damage for the next 16 seconds.

You’re better off playing dagger/focus or staff and stacking might to 9.

Allelya.6830:

full zerkers is a waste, if you are playing right you should have PERMA fury.

Valk/zerk with 0/25/0/25/20 spec.

valk for hps (to not get one shot) and zerk to have over 35% base crit chance.

With my setup, without food, im sitting at 91% crit dmg, and got my first 11k fire grab last night, without doing the stupid piercing shards swap.

Full zerker gear is only a waste unless you’re sitting at more than 72% crit chance before fury and banner of discipline,or if you can’t stay alive.

Also how is your crit damage only 91% with valks/zerker? I have 108% crit damage with zerker/valks gear.

Even at 40+ you can still get away with a conjure build on a majority of fractal bosses

Ele damage without a hammer is still really good.But you can’t be 0/10/0/30/30.You have to be 0/30/20/20 or some combination of 30-40 points in air/fire.You also need scholar runes/berserker armor.

More Elementalist Solo videos.

Twilight Arbor Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFAK0HzrO_0&feature=youtu.be

Caudecus Manor Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MEFdqxwazI

Ascalon Catacombs Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LvKZUIVtgk

I never said dagger/focus does more damage than dagger/dagger.I just said both weapons have SIMILAR damage( as in dagger/focus dps = dagger/dagger dps)

I’ve been trying to show you and everyone else that the dagger off hand fire/earth skills do not give dagger/dagger a dps advantage over dagger/focus.

The real value in focus is the ability to only go into water attunment when you need to heal, and not for putting up an aura for zephyrs boon. Focus is good because you can use earth attunment to safely rez team members, and prevent yourself from being spiked down.The only thing dagger off hand really offers on boss fights is a 1.5k heal and cleanse on a 40 second cool down.But even the cleanse in focus is better it removes 3 debuffs on a 25 second cool down.Finally that you get access to swirling winds which works on a majority of projectile attacks.

If you need cc on trash then take dagger offhand or knockdowns.

I’m pretty sure swirling winds works on all the stuff you listed except the robot fist attack.But that’s only on one person and you can just dodge it anyway.I know for sure it works on the rapid fire attacks golems do because.I’ll solo cm at some point this weekend to be sure.

@byron

Swapping to water attunment and rolling around in earth is not going to up my damage by 30%.Every time you dodge you lose damage from auto attack.
All the stuff you’re suggesting won’t help my damage,because I’m spending time doing other stuff around not attacking.

The combo potential is the same both weapons have a fire field, and both weapons have two blast finishers.

The video shows that auto attacking makes up for the earth 4-5 and fire 4-5…

@Swimsasa Stoon

Elementalist projectile counter skills work on pretty much every boss.The only boss that reflect skills don’t work on are Old Tom or the cave troll in ac.

None of the dagger off hand cc skills are worth on bosses either, so there is no point in using that as an argument vs focus off hand.If you need cc for trash pack feel free to swap to a dagger off hand.

The dps you get from focus is similar to the damage you get from dagger off hand the video proves that.If you guys believe dagger off hand is that much better than you need to provide more evidence to back up your claim.Either make a video or use actually damage number to prove your argument(don’t just give rough examples like 7k damage 20k bleed damage, or 30% more damage by swaping to water attunement and dodge rolling).

Focus provides similar cc, and damage that dagger off hand does on bosses.The only thing you lose is the water heal #5 which you don’t really need.Using the reflects and damage immune skills are better than the 1.5k heal you get from dagger off hand.

Here is proof of how little difference there is between bursting with dagger off hand and just dpsing with dagger/focus.I hit the mob with both weapon sets for 13 seconds, and I made sure all of the dagger offhand skills crit.

There’s basicly no differnece in damage between the weapons sets like I said in my previous posts.

Youtube is taking it’s sweat time but the video should be avalible soon.

Using conjure weapons/glyphs does not require focus, but it’s an alternative to using a dagger off hand for killing trash.You can get mobs against the wall by losing them.

You don’t just lose 80% of your damage by not using two skills.To be missing out on 20,000 damage you’d have not be doing anything.Casting Fire-grab into churning earth takes time to do.If you spend that same amount of time dpsing as dagger/focus you’d be doing similar damage

Since I’m not sure how else explain it in words, I’ll make a video demonstrating this when I get home in a few hours.

You can might stack with focus if you really wanted to it has the same amount of blast finishers as dagger offhand, and you have access to a fire field.

I never said the Henry Pablo could not use ranged weapons with the build I posted.I just suggested that he should use dagger/focus as his primary weapon set on bosses, if he can get away with being in melee range.

I said the knockdowns dagger offhand offers is useful on trash.Honestly if you want to burst down a trash pack just los pull them and use fiery greatsword #4,or use glyph of storms in earth + lightning hammer to spike them down while they are perma blinded.

Like I said before the spike damage on dagger off hand really isn’t that amazing.Fire grab is 10kish damage on 45 second cool-down.That is like a two lightning whips,so best case its saving you 1-2 seconds on a trash pack.Churning earth takes 3 seconds to cast.You can get off 3 lighting whips in the same amount of time that would do equivalent damage.If the mobs are pushed against the wall you can burning speed then swap to air and get off 2 lighting whips.

In short if you need the knockdowns and water #5 heal the daggers are the better choice.If you don’t need any of that stuff focus is a better offhand choice.

@byron
I though using staff when meleeing is not safe would be obvious to the op.

Focus offers the group utility the op was looking for. You can fill gaps in projectile deflection rotations, and you’re able to safely revive people by using obsidian flesh. I think the daze always works on bosses, but I’m not 100% sure on that so I’d need someone to confirm that for me.

Replacing the dagger offhand does not hurt your single target dps. Fire grab is on too long of a cool-down to make a difference dps wise, 10k damage every 45 seconds is not that much. Earth #5 is not that great either, you spend 2 seconds channeling a spell that does 10kish crit damage. In addition to churning earth taking forever to cast, not being in fire or air is a dps loss. If you stay in air/fire and auto attack you end up doing more damage. The only thing you’re really losing by dropping dagger offhand is the heal from water #5.like I said before bosses are immune to cc for the most part so using the knockdown skills are pointless. Trash is another story because the knockdowns are actually useful.

About the 25 water thing I was under the assumption the OP is going to not be in organized groups. Unless you have two warriors feeding you fury and might plus access to 5-6 boons going 30 air and 10 fire seems like a better choise.30 air lets you get bolt to the heart,zephers boon and air training and 10 fire lets you get inferno fire. Since most of your DPS comes from fire and air you always have the 10% increase in damage. By going with the build I posted you don’t have to rely on your team .If you go 25 in water you’re pretty much counting on your team to give you fury and a large amount boons for a majority of the fight. Take this with a grain of salt I’m in class at the moment so I’d have to run the numbers through a spreadsheet when I get home.

If I was going for pure damage in an organized group I’d do something like 25 fire 20 air 25 water. I’d drop zephers boon and have the two warriors give me fury. Then just swap between fire and air while keeping burning speed on cooldown and using airs attunement auto attack as my primary source of damage.

The lupicus thing is offtopic. I’m well aware that reflect damage and abusing fiery greatsword #4 is not a valid tactic vs most bosses in fractals. However lighting hammer is fair game if no one is picking up your hammer, your team provides the buffs you need and you can stay alive I see no reason not to use it over daggers.

@haviz
I was using 30 fire/ 30 air/10 water with signet of fire, arcane blast and arcane wave. The build works for phase 1 and 2 but falls apart in p3.

@raif

WhenI killed lupi for the first time I used a defensive build and a lot of ptv gear so it took me like 29 min lol.I tried lighting hammer but it did not really work out. Fiery great sword is pretty good if you wanna speed up p1 and p2. In phase 3 it’s not that great, because you want to move as little as possible.

Try out 0/30/0/20/20 or 10/30/0/20/10 dagger/focus.Pick up offensive traits like vital striking,air training etc.

For runes and gear go all berserker with scholar runes.If you’re worried about dying use valkrie armor and weapons(but keep berserker trinkets) with divinity or some other defensive rune set up.Like Byron said if you get hit your dead anyway so you might as well maximize the damage you do.

I use sigil of energy for extra endurance regen, but if you feel like you can stay alive without it use something else.

I honestly think 0/10/0/30/30 d/d is overrated in pve.Dagger offhand does not offer much on boss fights except extra healing.Churning earth and fire grab are on too long of a cool-down to make a difference and bosses are immune to knock downs.

I don’t think aura sharing is worth it, because auras are pretty worthless in pve except magnetic Aura.Evasive arcane is pretty much overkill for self healing.If you need that much healing you’re making too many mistakes.

This is a bit off topic, butI don’t think ele dps is as bad as you make it out to be.I was messing around soloing Lupicus as glass cannon ele, and my kill time was not that far off from my warrior’s (which is 7ish min).It’s a nightmare to stay alive in phase 3 so I’m still working on a kill, but I’m on pace for like 10-11 min kill.It’s only slower than a warrior because I’m forced to sit in water and earth attunment for extended periods of time in phase 3 so I don’t put sigil of energy on cool-down.

Elementalist Sorrow Embrace Story Solo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRnQ8wO37hA&feature=youtu.be

By dps ele i mean scepter/dagger or dagger/dagger.Weapon skill healing,healing ripple ,soothing mist,regen and self healing is more than enough to keep you alive in a 1v1 fight

It’s easier to play10/30/30 air/water/arcana builds with clerics amulet than an offensive 30/20/20 or 20/30/30 builds with valks or berserker amulet.

I quit pvping after the 2nd month the game was out so I’m sure the meta game is totally different.But personally felt like offensive builds with valks or berserker amulet was always more effective than a clerics elementalist.You could still sustain yourself in a 1v1 for quite awhile .But you could also arrive at point kill someone mist form stomp then leave before the other team realized what happened.

The control aspect of ele is not nearly as effective as it was in gw1 were you could stop a spike with one blinding flash.You could help your front line land a kill by knocking down a monk during a spike or landing a snare on someone trying to kite.

Anet is trying to push ele in an offensive direction, but they are going about it the wrong way.What they should have done was give us a way to get rid of the 40 second cool down on ride the lighting by picking offensive traits.For example if you get grounded with is a 30 point trait you’ll always have a 20 second cool down on ride the lighting.But if you don’t you’ll have to hit someone to get a 20 second cool down on ride the lightning

Alternatively anet could always just reduce the healing power on clerics and shaman amulets and replace it with something else.That would probably be the easiest way to get rid of most bunkers specs.

Solo.9027:

Does the reflect have to be in melee in order to damage him? Also, why d/f instead of s/f? Is it to melee and avoid the single target ranged blast he does?

You can reflect from range but its a lot harder to time because his projectiles take longer to reach you.

I used a dagger main hand because it offers more single target dps.Even if I did go scepter/focus I’d probably stay melee range because it’s safer to be in melee range of lupi during phase 2 and 3.

@haviz

I don’t worry about the adds lupicus kills them off in phase two when I reflect his aoe.

Being invulnerable or having stability can prevent the grub spawn.But it does not always work it’s like a 50% chance of happening.

To guarantee I made it to phase 3.

I did not expect the attempt to go so well I was still trying to learn phase 3.

I wanted to make sure I had enough hp/toughness to prevent being gibbed from the AoE projectile barrage.

If I ever do it again I’ll probably do something like 30 air 20 arcane 20 water with enough pvt gear to get 14k hp.

I could not find a video of an elementalist soling Lupicus so I thought I’d make one.

I use 1234 for attunments instead of ZXCV.I found myself in a similar situation as the op so I ended up using

alt + Q,E,R for my utility skills
5 for my healing skill
alt +F for my elite skills

Shift or control also works if you’re not comfortable with hitting the alt key.
A mechanical keyboard is a better investment than a naga…

They could just get rid of all the healing power amulets in pvp.Stacking healing power turns 1.5k heals into 2.7k heals which is the real problem.

Ether renewal condition removal needs to be toned down but that’s really it.

I honestly think Anet was forced to launch the game earlier than they wanted to.It seems as if someone decided the game was finished enough.Told the development team forget finishing pvp/fixing bugs and prepare to launch the game so I can cash in.

I don’t have any proof but it feels that way.

It’s hard to believe a team of developers could be happy with 3 pvp maps,no rankings,ladders,matchmaking system and tons of bugs.

What is wrong with somone having a way leave a fight if they realize they’re going to lose?

If an elemetalist has to run away it’s going to be awhile before he can have a real shot at taking a point back.If you’ve forced an elemetalist to run then you’ve probably forced 3 cantrips,his elite and all of his 40 second off hand skills.If you’ve done all that the elementalist is not to going to be able to take the point by himself for at least a 30-40 seconds.

At that point the elementalist has to let you capture/neutralize the point or wait for a team member to help him recap.Meanwhile your team is 2-3 capping his team and winning them game.

I don’t understand why you complaining about not being able to finish a 1v1 when capping/nutralizing a point is your main objective.

Schnitter.9857:

I dont play agaisnt the top players, but during my fights agaisnt eles, my problems with them is the excessive condition removal and the mobility. E.g, I try to stack the bleed after the water attunement or the heal (when they’re using the condition removal heal), but since they have a constant access to both them its kinda effectiveless. And about the mobility, i mean that for some good times i almost killed the ele, but the guy just go away and i cant catch him. I dont blame him, he supposed to do it, but since the times i reach him is less by far than the times he successfully escapes, something might be wrong.
And sorry for the english, its not my main language.

If an ele runs off a point then you can neutralize or even capture it.If you can force a bunker off a point then there is a high chance he won’t be able to take it back solo.

I don’t get all the complaining about eles running.Crying about an ele running is like crying that a thief or mesmer using stealth to run from a fight they know they can’t win.

Smooth Marc.8743:

The numbers I listed are condition and direct damage of skills added together.For example drake’s breath does 4592 burning damage + 3682 direct damage for a total of 8274 damage if you land an entire channel.

The spreadsheet assumes you have 100% up time on fury.If you want to see how much more damage you get from the one stack of might from switching to fire you can do so.I’m not re listing the entire dagger spell set so you can see how much more damage one stack of might is going to give.

I can’t account for electric discharge or sunspot without making a dps simulation spreadsheet or having a dps meter.But I highly doubt there is going to be a massive gap between sitting in fire and attunment dancing.

I went over everything you’re complaining about.

There is no point in talking about healing/swiftness/protection boons because we’re discussing if it is worth attunment swaping for extra dps or not.If you’re in danger of dying then you should use earth attunment for protection and water attunment for regen.

Here is what you get from 15 point traits using an attunment swap rotation .

I went fire 3 times and air 2 times over 1 minute.

3 sunspot hits for 1200 damage – 3600 damage per minute
2 electric discharge hits 1700 damage – 3400 damage per minute

I gave up on trying to get non critical strike after 20 minutes so lets just pretend attunment swap damage will always be a critical strike.I used a Risen Plaugebearer mob to do the testing so it has less armor than the spreadsheet’s target(which has 2600 armor) .Don’t take these numbers too seriously I just wanted to give you a rough idea of how much damage attunment swap damage traits do.

Here is the link to the spreadsheet so you know where I’m getting these numbers from.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3A3Op-Hj3dOUkJRU0xvcng5ZWc/edit?pli=1

Wethospu demonstrated that warriors can use 100 blades on fights where you have to move often.The only time the root is a problem is pvp because players don’t stand there and take it.

I agree warriors should bring lots of damage to the table.But I don’t think warriors doing twice the damage of someone who is geared and spec’d for maximum damage and no support is fair.

The numbers I listed are condition and direct damage of skills added together.For example drake’s breath does 4592 burning damage + 3682 direct damage for a total of 8274 damage if you land an entire channel.

The spreadsheet assumes you have 100% up time on fury.If you want to see how much more damage you get from the one stack of might from switching to fire you can do so.I’m not re listing the entire dagger spell set so you can see how much more damage one stack of might is going to give.

I can’t account for electric discharge or sunspot without making a dps simulation spreadsheet or having a dps meter.But I highly doubt there is going to be a massive gap between sitting in fire and attunment dancing.

If you really think attunment dancing offers superior dps to sitting in fire attunment then do some testing and post the results there’s no point in speculating about it because we’re just going to go back and fourth.

No one said elementalists are ineffective in pve all people are saying is that warriors are better because they are doing twice our damage maybe even more.

Staying alive is not really a problem as an elementalist.My problem is you can’t use berserker gear to maximize your damage unless you want to risk getting gibbed.

If warriors want to spec for 100% damage they can without risking death if they make a mistake.Elementalist have to spec into survival traits to survive.Thankfully we also pick up a ton of support by specing into survival traits.Warriors don’t have to do this their Self Healing/HP/armor/Utility slot condition removal is enough.

The damage problem I’m complaining about is you can’t make a 100% damage oriented build that can compete or even come close to warrior dps.

@Namu please post a video of yourself killing the boss faster than me with an attunment swap dps rotation.I’d like to see proof your claim that I’m doing it wrong.If you can’t video record I’ll gladly record it for you just send me a tell whenever you can do arah.

Changing attunments as staff is a dps loss.Casting lava font on cooldown and spamming fireball is the highest dps possible for staff.

Swapping as scepter/dagger is worth it because the fire auto attack is crap and all the fire skills for scepter/dagger have long cool downs.

Swapping as dagger/dagger is up for debate but there is no way to really know if it’s worth it without a dps meter.You could swap to earth use ring of earth,churning earth then go air ride the lighting then auto attack until you can get back into fire.Even then its only worth it if burning won’t fall off before the boss dies.

According to the spreadsheet Puandro made

Dragon’s Claw averages out to 2071 damage per cast and takes 1 second to cast – 2071 dps.
Drake’s Breath averages out to 8274 damage per cast and takes 2.85 seconds to cast – 2901 dps
Burning speed averages out to 4994 damage per cast if the target sits in the fire field the entire time if not then 4091 damage per cast the skill takes 0.9 seconds to cast- 5548 dps or 4545 dps if the target moves out of the fire field.
Ring of fire averages out to 4177 damage per cast and takes 0.9 seconds to cast – 4641 dps
Fire grab averages out to be 5154 damage per cast and takes 1.3 seconds to cast – 3965 dps

Nothing in water is over 1300 dps so its not even worth going into water unless you or a party member needs healing

Lightning whip averages out to be 2577 damage per cast and takes 1.15 seconds to cast – 2251 dps
Ride the lightning is 1841 damage per cast and takes 0.35 second to cast – 5260 dps

So its only worth it to go air to use ride the lightning then auto attack until you can get back into fire.

Ring of earth does 2804 damage per cast and takes 1.3 seconds to cast – 2157 dps
Churning earth is 9043 damage per cast and takes 4 seconds to cast – 2260 dps

If you look at the numbers non fire skills are slightly better than dragon claw spam.However the extra damage you gain may not be worth it because you miss out on drakes breath and pyromancer’s puissance if you are 30 points into fire.

Like I said before elementalist are fine to do all content in the game and great sword damge is broken theres not much left to discuss.

We should probably end this discussion it’s pointless continuing it

The bottom line is this

Elementalist could use a bit more hp

Elementalist bring a ton of utility to the table.

Elementalist are are good enough to do all the content in the game

Elementalist are probably on par or better than most classes in the game.

Great sword damage is insane I doubt any class is able to touch warrior dps.

Wethospu.6437:

Also one thing to realize is that your “melee” skills seem to be 300 range.

I think Warrior damage is bit too high in PvE (6.5 min lupi kill for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2KTFw3CaI , I rarely do it this fast in pugs..) but honestly I would like to see a proper comparison. I have done my best to find optimal DPS-spec. I’m quite tired of pvt-gear users complaining about my damage.

Sorry if my posts came off as me complaining about your damage.My intent was to show the difference between full berserker elementalist damage and a full berserker warrior damage.

The only thing I ever complained about is that a warrior in full berserker gear has more effective health than an elementalist wearing 7-8 pieces of PVT gear.

Sadly we can’t do proper comparison because we don’t have dps meters.

Yeah I’ve been considering using arcane power and elemental surge when I play scepter/dagger.They fixed the bug so you can land a dragon’s tooth,phoenix,ring of fire and fire grab and have all of it crit.In the video I had 68% crit so using arcane wave seemed like a better option.

When I get a chance I’ll try out persisting flames when I play staff instead of pyromancer’s pussisance.Persisting flames gives lava font an extra tick of damage.That plus staying above 90% the entire time(for vital striking),using food, and scholar runes.If I do all that I’m sure I can get my staff kill time to sub 7 minutes.

I agree that eles are more versatile and but we can’t compete with warriors in damage at all.

If you feel like you can compete with warrior damage then make a video if you killing the berserker abomination in 5 min.

In pvp elementalist are really strong but we don’t have many viable builds.You pretty much have to go 15 water/30 arcane or you can’t survive the rest of the traits points can be spent in air or water depending on if you want to roam or bunker.

Like 20 air 20 water 30 arcane and taking elemental surge if you roam or 10 air 30 water 30 arcane and getting evasive arcana if you want to bunker.

In pve I feel like the class is offers good support.We have access to tons of boons,combo fields and projectile reflection.Elementalist have excellent healing and condition removal.Elementalist also have really good mob control so you can shut down groups of trash mobs while your party kills them.Our aoe damage is also pretty strong.

The downside to the class is our single target damage is crap compared to some classes.Warriors can put out twice the damage we can.We have very low base hp so we’re forced to use a few pieces of toughness vitality gear while other classes can get away with full berserker gear.

If anyone is still interested here is a video of me doing Berserker abomination as dagger/dagger.

It took me about 8 min which was about the same time staff took.I had to use updraft to dodge because I kept running out of endurance, and could only use burning speed safely at certain times.I also could used arcane wave to trigger more blast finishers.

I am honestly disappointed with dagger/dagger dps I expected to go in there and kill the boss in 6 minutes.

I’m not going to bother doing scepter/dagger I tested it for a bit and I’m sure it would have resulted in a 9-10 min kill.You really need to use earth/air skills when your fire skills go on cool down as scepter/dagger. I attempted to attunment dance but half the time I’d have to dodge out of churning earth.Using ride the lighting a filler skill was also a huge problem.

Despite scepter/dagger being worse on a punching bag boss I still think it can put out as much damage as the other weapon because in a group setting you don’t have to deal with the boss following you around 100% of the time so you can safely use earth and air to do damage.

@ LeoG

You probably won’t ever read this but I agree eles/guardians/necros should not be able to do as much damage as a warrior just because we have easy access to support and control skills.I don’t think it’s ok for warriors to be doing twice our damage no amount of support is going to make up for that.

I still think elementalist need their hp bumped up in PVE.Half of our weapon sets force us into melee range so we’re not able to always sit in the back and spam damage.

Xplosiv.1503:

teg.1340:

People just see how hard it is to kill a bunker dd ele due to RTL + healing and cry for nerfs. What they dont want to realize is that those bunker builds deal mediocre damage.

I just love people like you, who play ele and defend their class ^ without any proper input in actual improovement.

Ele bunkers need a nerf because:

1. They can witstand 2vs1 easily, 3vs 1 with problems, meaning in pvp based on conquest enemies will need half of their resource team to take down 1 elementalist ( who thanks to knockbacks can easily take the points, and hold it)
2. At the current state, 2 ele bunkers are a part of 80-90% of the premade teams, meaning 2 safe kiting points and lots of time to switch for the rest
3. bunker ele does medium damage, but it’s not the damage here, it’s the part that he can fight 2vs1 so easily( and even manage to kill 1 in the process) for so long, it makes playing pvp in conquest mode no fun at all.

Thats why they need the nerfs. But, as always, ele players will cry, that ele doesnt need nerfs ( because they play 1, and they don’t want any skill involved in their gameplay, solely balancing advantage).

The facts are, that Instagib thieves and ele bunkers are the most gameruining unbalances atm, and they need to be dealt with in order to make pvp viable.

If you can’t 2v1 a bunker ele it’s a player problem.

I agree the whole bunker concept needs to go away.The real problem is the Cleric Amulet it needs to be removed from the game.If eles get nerfed everyone is just going to put a clerics amulet on whatever class can sustain themselves the best and have them bunker.

Go make an 0/0/10/30/30 ele and try bunker without a cleric then try bunker with it and you’ll understand.