Guild Wars 2

so we’re moving

I log on and see RE spamming Mag LA mapchat trying to recruit.

Insert milkshake joke here.

lol EBG on mag… i used to go there every so often, now i basically only go there if i want to do my gather for daily then get out. its a disaster zone in there, actually trying in there is asking for a headache and a half….

meh.. tornado dmg is lackluster, if its dmg was buffed abit more i might actually use it some. i can hit harder in a single hit with fireball then the tornado. right now all its good for is some special location uses. none existent dmg, slaughter by confusion, ele being one of the squisher class based on stats combined with close range only effect, slow movement, no projectile protection. add it all together makes it a pretty sucky elite for general use bar the few occassions

sentries actually give point depending on how long they have been up. i have gotten about 10 point off a sentry that has not been flipped in a long time, and then i flipped the same sentry back as soon as i can and i think i got 1 or 2 point for it.

sadly D/D in fire does much higher sustained dps. their auto atk is rated at .5 sec per hit instead of 1sec per fireball. if u hit all 3 of ur auto, ur dmg output is approximately 30% higher per atk compared to fireball. ring of fire also has a short cast with a nice fire field and dmg. of course doing it in d/d requires u to be meleeing the boss for all 3 hits on fire1 to hit consistently. which leads to the issue of u having a high chance of getting murder by being up close.

^ percentage is estimated from full glass build switching from zerker staff to zerker d/d. require all trait/gear to remain the same in staff and d/d besides wpn.

Thunderbrew.7034:

SuiRyuJin.4615:

if ur server got some well organized groups, a staff ele on either dmg build or a bunker build is a god send. a well organized zerg finishes the battle in like 1min. either ur wiped, or the enemy is wiped. they stack up, they push, smashing into and through each other. personally, even as a glass cannon, i am almost always in the front line, right behind or close to our commander leading . as u run through, u drop ur aoe in the back line of the enemy. some aoes like eruption or ice spike can interrupt the cast time by dodge rolling foward to keep mobile. glyph of the storm can be casted on the go. magnetic aura can take care of any range atks as u charge forward. its a… risky style as a glass cannon, but when the fight is over in about 1min-2min, it really doesnt matter much once u finish ur cycle.

i started wvw as a staff ele glass cannon, i am sticking to it unless some major changes get applied to staff.

So let me get this straight. You are a glass cannon ele, that stays in the front
and “runs through” their zerg while dropping AOE? If that is even remotely
true the only thing saving you is complete and total lag in large zergs, preventing
the enemy from attacking. That or they are complete newbies.

After 1500 hours in staff ele WvW at tier 1, I can assure you that that doesnt work.
You are the first target they look for.

there are things called vails, refuge, mass invis, and just shear body count. they cant target what they cant see. there are plenty of little things u do to avoid dmg.
1st is u dont run first, but u definitely dont run last, somewhere a few body behind the lead is best.
2nd thing people dont look behind them, once ur charge goes through the enemy front line, very few enemy will hit u from the back if any
3rd theres a target limit of 5, so combine that with magnetic aura ull be set for survive from any range sniping for a while
4th most melee target should be downed on ur 1st charge, arcane shield can take the few hit u need
5th, water field for organized zerg combo can bring u from 1 hp back to max in an instant.
6th, after the initial charge, step to the side, enemy focus the center once ur through the line dont stay in the center
7th heal on kill food can provide healing thousands of hp in healing for the course of the 2min fight.

obviously most of this dont work with general pug zerg with bad organization and slow communication. its best for a decent sized organized guild. and personally if ur a dedicated wvw player u should be in an organized wvw guild of decent size, otherwise is a massive waste of talent. plenty of things that dont work for pug zerg works in guild zerg/squads

though even in general zerg fight, staying in the front line is just fine, if u go down vapor back to the backline so they can res u. people dislike changing target most of the time so dont be 1st one up, and go up just to cycle ur aoe before u either roll all the way back or vapor back.

if ur server got some well organized groups, a staff ele on either dmg build or a bunker build is a god send. a well organized zerg finishes the battle in like 1min. either ur wiped, or the enemy is wiped. they stack up, they push, smashing into and through each other. personally, even as a glass cannon, i am almost always in the front line, right behind or close to our commander leading . as u run through, u drop ur aoe in the back line of the enemy. some aoes like eruption or ice spike can interrupt the cast time by dodge rolling foward to keep mobile. glyph of the storm can be casted on the go. magnetic aura can take care of any range atks as u charge forward. its a… risky style as a glass cannon, but when the fight is over in about 1min-2min, it really doesnt matter much once u finish ur cycle.

i started wvw as a staff ele glass cannon, i am sticking to it unless some major changes get applied to staff.

oh, the patch note had wvw stuff? i never even saw that category. all i saw was…. pve..skip…skip..pve…skip…skill fix/change

if an ele is traited into fire, he can maintain a constant ~9-10 stack of might just going through fire 1-2-3. if the ele has boon duration that 9-10 can be anywhere from 10-15 stacks or maybe even more from just the 1-2-3 spells. while switching attunement provides alot of other utilities staying in fire will generate the highest dps for that ele over time. if the ele was traited into fire/arcana with sigil of battle, it might be worth it to cycle quickly every so often but doing so negates some of the best benefit of fire trait. if hes traited 30/30 fire/air then anytime switching out of fire hes losing single target sustain dps.

the wrong way of playing ele is simply believing u have to attunement swap. there are certain build that simply dont need much attunement swap, these are usually built specifically for certain task in the game, but its can perform that task better then the general attunement swapper can usually.

meh, we got a lackluster reset start, i am kinda dreading the score when i wake up tmw where it just might be cd in the lead. also assuming the current trend keeps going SoS is going to plummet and will be here nxt week in place of whoever is highest score

i would say go for it, especially in wvw. if ur roaming u dont want to take 2 long to kill people u jump because they might get reinforcements and u can get screwed, but as d/d u also cant go 2 much into glass cannon most of the time.
skilled d/d player are already slowly switching small amount of their bunker setup toward more dmg oriented equipment simply because skillful play can negate partial need of armor/hp/healing. going all stat is basically doing the same thing except u might end up with more overall.

ur comparing the splash range of a cannon to a treb.. or at least ur screenshot shows the radius of a cannon.

i can tell u for a fact that treb splash radius is bigger then swirling winds. i been on swirl duty, just swirling on top of a seige does not protect the seige. it can be hit even when the counter seige land outside swirl range. if it wasnt the case, swirling would be such an easy job except, nop good seige users vary the shot so u have to move around to make sure ur swirl blocks it.

30/30 fire and air. u arent a true glass cannon without it:-p arcane shield is a must as ur counter vs glass cannon thief. of course i only wvw with this so its spec pretty 1 sided for only 1 thing.

it take 2-3 ele to stop 1 treb at long range, it takes more to stop a single cata. if the enemy got 4-5 ele, build a 2nd cata and alternate fire, problem solved. defender still has the advantage in terms of efficiency per player. 2 cata > 4 ele 3 cata >6 ele, etc etc. the opponent pays double the price to get what they need to defend against urs. just dont expect ur 1 seige to go through 5 player spending their time doing swirl sole. it not only removes their combat potential massively, its 5 person to counter 1 person on seige sounds reasonable.

also, skilled seige user would vary the shot little by little to try and dodge through swirl and half the time pugs are… a little slow on realizing the fact and u get a few hit in. while the advantage is on the swirl side, it still requires skill on both side, there are just 2 many idiots who just repeat the same power/direction on seige and then QQ about swirl without even trying.

the ori nodes are in eternal battleground jumping puzzle

pray those 3 thiefs are idiots because thats the only way ull win. any 3 competent thieves will slaughter the 1 ele. of course there is a high chance the ele can run away before dying but thats just running.

i am curious, would u even survive 3 backstab+steal combo if they all hit at the same time so u cant react? because coordinated smart thieves should simple do that if jumping 1 player

we killed the invis mob at shadow behemoth, he spawned and instantly died. no quest reward nor chest.
on maguuma server if thats relevant

behemoth actually spawned about 5-10min right after this bugged happened and i heard someone say teq also spawned just a little earlier, so possibly its a 1 time bug.

heres an ss for invis/underground target at shadow behemoth

u can usually cycle through all ur aoes even without any arcana trait for attunement cd reduction. i would suggest u start in either air or water so u can static field/chill aoe to start. i prefer static field because it really can be a zerg breaker when people run through it, not to mention i probably start at full hp and rather save cycling to water when i have taken dmg.

air→fire→earth→water is my usual cycle.
static field→lava font→flame burst→meteor shower→magnetic shield→eruption→glyph of storm→crippling ground→eruption→ice spike→chill→1-2heal aoe→ice spike entire cycle takes easily over 10sec, usually in the region of 15 sec.
i usually end up back in fire since i am 30 into fire and any downtime is spent in fire til i start meteor shower again, not to mention static field takes 2 cycle for it to finish cd

if u got an upgraded keep and u see a zerg come wiping cannon and oil. then u also notice that for the past hr the enemy team has commited no major resource for an attack. u also notice they have no outmanned buffed, if ur a decent commander u should be expecting golems. and considering they just clear cannon and oil and a keep, extra precaution in that location.

major golem assault are actually semi predictable. also just because u lost outer/inner doesnt mean u lose a keep, plenty of keep got enough chokes in the lord room that when properly seiged with enough defenders makes it near impossible to take.

i use full zerker with rubies on 30/30/10/0/0. i am just about as squishy as u can get as an staff ele.

usually for ele, u either go glass cannon for aoe, or u go bunker for support. dont expect to take hits if u do go glass cannon. ur either, alive, or ur downed theres no tanking anything involved. oh and u should make sure to have arcaneshield if u got GC, its ur 1 lifesaver.

anyone got the time for its internal cooldown yet?

assuming they marked it at like 2 second, they just made the food worthless without a buff. if they did place it at around 2sec, they probably should have doubled the heal amount on a crit, make it more fitted of a sustained heal type thing instead of a completely op burst heal.

dragon tooth didnt need line of sight to cast last i checked, did they patch that at some point? if they havent, they simply needed to have target on u at 1 point and can spam it on u through wall as long as u are in range

if using a high crit build, use life leech food like omnomberry ghost. while the 10% extra crit dmg from food is nice, its not that big a difference compare to the 1-2k hp u can get back aoes in zergs. of course everything is situational, but i would stick with lifeleech especially as u trait closer to the glass cannon build.

smoke screen from thief and sanctuary from guardian both block treb/cata shots, its just extremely hard to aim due to small area covered, and long cd.

“why can your xxx skill do this while my xxx skill cant?” go play a game where everyone is the same class then. there is a reason why there are multiple classes, so each class can have things they can do that either they are best at, or unique to that class. the simple issue is balancing the game while having all these classes with their unique abilities either in synergy or opposed.

and coming from ele player who wvw frequently either man up enough to say, no i had enough swirling wind or sit there and do it. theres plenty of time where i sat and did swirling wind and then there are times where i said, screw it, ill let them treb this.
anet gave u a choice, u can provide an almost unique function in blocking seige atk, or u can join up and help ur team elsewhere, simple as that. just like a mesmer can waste tens of minutes to hours hiding inside a keep just so that he can portal the zerg in. there are plenty of mesmer who never bother trying to hide, just like there are mesmer who always willing to spend the hr hiding. take ur pick.

u can dodge while in tornado, i do it all the time. if u use tornado right in conjunction with ur zerg on the enemy, it can really screw up defensive positions on the enemy side. trying to get on a seige while theres a tornado parked on it is pretty hard unless u stability in which case it is also only for a few sec

personally, i think if ur using full zerker armor, u might as well go full glass and use a staff in wvw. would be traited 30/30 fire and air with the last 10 anywhere u want, earth/water/arcana all of their uses.

i ran full glass with both staff and d/d before in WvW. the biggest issue is not how squishy u are, but more how used to it u are. as u get used to how much dmg u take u can easily mitigate it with will timed dodge, or simply by not being there. and remember, dead enemies dont do dmg and downed enemy cant hit u at 1.2k range.

utility for staff i used, arcane blast, arcane shield, glyph of storm. since i am syl, takeroot for elite. sigil of regeneration mostly for the passive healing.
d/d: arcane wave, arcane shield, mist form, take root, sigil of regeneration.

use life leech on crit food with staff allows ur multi hit aoe like meteor and GoS to heal u up massively when placed in enemy zergs.

the color of ur team indicates ur location on eternal battleground. certain places have slightly terrain advantage, which is usually assigned to the lower rank of that tier. there is a reason for color assignment that effect gameplay. while they might be able to shuffle the home borderland without affecting color, i dont think its anywhere close to priority on their to do list.

on a sidenote. if ur rich enough to get ur legendary, i am sure u are rich enough to afford a server xfer to and back to finish ur map. think of it as an extra challanges/expense, just like how u got to farm xx and xx and do xx and xx for requirements, its just an extra step in ur requirement that everyone else has to get through.

8D seems like today was the day for epic keep defenses. kain was in on mag EB keep multiple times and wiped there also. i never get why a zerg on our wall will run ~2k distance, leave a bunch of their own downed player, then turn around and go back the same way only stopping when turning around and ended up wiping the other half of the zerg that didnt wipe on 1st pass. they only atk people in front of them 2, people aoeing from under the or across the wall doesnt gets touched, nor those that got behind them.

passing stability to 2/3 of a zerg is rare to impossible, and with 50 limit on a cata everyone at the door should get knockedback. while its possbile stability is screwing up some of the visual effect of the cata hitting the door while its stacked, i doubt it would be that big a difference. and of course, with a 50 limit, stacking at the door should have been completely useless since it will hit everyone and unless rammer has stability he will get knockbacked also. but this is apparently not the case.

should look into the target limit for catapult. when we gate stack while ramming the door the cata behind the gate definitely does not knock even close to 20 people back, even if u include some mesmer images and like 3-4 rams, with a target limit of 50, most of the entire zerg would be knocked back.

u say u dont want to give free stuff out well use it like everyone else.

just because u dont run in a zerg doesnt mean u cant use ur seige. take ur ac, cata, ballista drop a few in a keep/tower that there arent many and build it. when the location gets seiged nxt time, ur team will have the seige to defend the place easier. even trebs can be well worth it on defense to counter enemy treb/cata.

rams and golem, well those might be a little harder if u never go with a zerg. but simply stock up a few golem, then drop those 4 golem, build it and tell the commander about it. and suddenly ur zerg has 4 golem to take that hard to break keep. rams… meh>.> i dunno what 2 do here without being in a zerg.

of course ur going to feel, why am i building these seige that i will never use? the same reason goes for everyone else who drops seige for defense, to help ur server defend the location. i drop seige whenever we need, i am never using it unless the operator is simply being stupid or its some emergency. u might say, those zerglets who drop seige at least get to benefit from the capture/defense event of the location and i am not. but then when ur out there flipping those defenseless camps some of those zerglets might be out in the field providing protection for ur zerg with defensive skill and barely ever get kills, gets a massive repair bill, and end up with very few event complete as reward(since its in the field) or those treb operator who spend tens of min sitting the treb shooting and not getting any reward, or those ele who spend those tens of min swirling wind protecting those trebs/wall from enemy trebs.

there are plenty of ways use seige without being in a zerg. of course if u simply just dont want to use it because u can get money from it thats ur choice. but as many people mentioned, dont expect others who does drop those seige to be happy. difference of opinion and view, u cant make everyone happy.

alot is going to depend on all those recent transfers. i assume if we keep winning they will stick around, but i kinda hope we lose once or twice 1st to drop the ones that only stay because we are winning.

>.> i kinda hate the sudden income of transfers, i was looking forward to at least another near equal fight over the weekend but it looks like it was not meant 2 be.

from what it looks, ur walking the middle ground of glass cannon and bunker. divinity would be simpliest solution since it basically does some of everything for u. however with how expensive divinity is right now, u might want to consider using orbs for ruby or emerald for dmg or go along with ur pvt and try to find something suited there.

with D/D ele u have a high chance of missing ur bags since ur constantly on the move weaving in and out of enemies. often someone u have tagged dies while ur in the enemy zerg and ur 2 busy in there to even notice, and then when u do see it ur out of the area and u got loot inside enemy zerg.
i am at ~11k kills and i gotten some 2.3k+ badges if i estimate in me using some badges for seige. so i am at about 1/5 chance for badge(u can count the # of times i did jp on 1 hand)

omg, i wish they would allow us that option to slot regular utility instead of elites. which technically is reasonable considering elites are suppose to be…more useful then any normal utility which is why they got twice or more of most utility cooldown.

for killshot from warrior, theres a pretty hefty cost and cast time for that. in small squad/1v1 fights ur suppose to be able to easily dodge/reflect it consider its considerable and obvious cast time/animation. in WvW downing 1 person is…annoying but usually theres enough people in the zerg to res the downed right back up unless u can follow up. which from 1.5k range is.. difficult

what kind of dmg are u looking for in the “traditional mage feel”? on high dmg build with staff u regularly score crits of 5k+ on multiple people at once in an enemy group without setup. staff ele isnt the high single target dmg, its high aoe dmg. staff ele has the highest aoe dmg of all class/builds. only churning earth from d/d does more dmg in 1 go, except d/d isnt able to follow it up with anything else unlike a staff

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

The thread got bunzied.

the truest of truth i have seen in this thread so far, not a single hint of falsehood.

^ while actual numbers are nice but leaving out traits make a major difference. one of the biggest argument here for staying in fire is the auto might stack from grandmaster trait combined with 10% bonus dmg in fire since ur in it the entire time basically compared to swapping to attunements without it. also staying in fire doesnt mean just using autoatk, it means using everything in fire that can boost dps and using auto when its on cd.

8D though if ur using D/D it might be better to go 30/30/0/10/0 and stay in water using piercing shards trait for 20% bonus dmg to vunerable foes. without the might stack and lower dmg but 20% bonus is alot especially since vunel is always on.

you people mention sigil of battle for swapping elements but have you ever consider if u simply use sigil of force or like sigil of air and dont swap so u keep the might stack from fire trait going u might end up doing more dmg?

also if u get 20% cd reduction, lava font has a 4.75 sec CD with a 4 sec duration. if the enemy ur dding is mostly stationary lavafont> all other aoe since not only does it only have a .25 sec cast time, it barely has any downtime. and if the enemy stays in it for 2 ticks it probably does about the same as icespike and eruption.

also, in full gc build attunement swap takes… a long time. if u could simply swap to for 1 ice spike and 1 eruption and back to fire it might be worth it, but u cant. once u swap out ur forced out for over 10 sec. u got to consider the amount of dps ur losing over that entire period considering both ice spike and eruption has a cd gap and their auto atks are crap. u guys provide arguments without looking at the side effects fully.

its ur choice to do 1v1 in WvW, expect to get interrupted. i see a 1v1 while running towards where i am going, i will always,defintely 100% join and kill the enemy. 1 enemy is enough to kill a supply doylak, 1 GOOD enemy can solo a supply, 1 smart enemy can block off our keep waypoint. u DONT let an enemy go(unless ur zerging, in which case, stick with zerg), the consequences of that enemy surviving and going off some where can be dire.

i expect everyone else to hop in and kill the enemy if they ever see a 1v1 and arent busy. WvW is a place where u kill the enemy using any advantage, either it be seige, pure #, skill, portals, w/e. its war, the only rules are those the game provides us, everything else is open.

meh, i run staff on 30/30/10/0/0 for staff purely for WvW. from a primary dd point of view, swapping out of fire is only when u need a few extra location target aoes and the situational cc/heal, dps stays optimal for staying in fire.
people argue that eruption for bleed is important for the dmg but really theres plenty of cure condition and getting the enemy to hit eruption is a 50/50 chance at best unless u setup ccs beforehand in which case ur losing more time on dmg.

while placing at least some point in arcana is a near must in spvp. in wvw theres alot more option considering the seiges, and the # of players involved.

alot of people says that fire trait sucks because ur forced to remain in fire for most of the effect. while that is true, however from a purely dd point of view, u should be remain in fire most of the time. use the passive fire might gain per spellcast for grandmaster trait u can keep up a stack of ~7-8 might constant for staying in fire and thats without any boon duration increase. for a full gc staff ele, staying in fire allows u to keep up a 3.6k atk stat.

while u have plenty of good spells in other attunement, the delay time for eruption and ice spike to drop makes it useless for aoeing downed player because group resser get there, res them up in 1-2sec. not to mention the outside of those 2 spells, earth and water dd ability is pretty sucky.
air auto is decent if ur fighting 2 people since the bounce will go back to ur primary target for a double hit, allowing for possibly the best single target dps. or, use air for fighting a small squad of spread out players though usually i find fire auto’s splash atk works better fire simply offers more dmg option regardless.

Atherakhia.4086:

What is the typical glass cannon build? I’m leveling an elementalist after a disastrous first decision to play a ranger. I’m finding the staff has a lot of defensive skills where I could realistically use a GC build and succeed. Especially if I can do it with 15k hp which seems quite simple.

this thread was started a little ago by someone on a glass cannon build. its actually pretty difficult to get 15k hp with GC build since u need both power and crit dmg for the high crit which ur primary source of high dmg, without precision to back it up though, it might be difficult. u could try something with fury through traits to make up for it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Staff-WvW-strats-and-possible-new-info/

usually u only notice glass cannon ele when ur downed while in a zerg. very very few gc ele is ever found outside a big group fight of some type, its the place where their ability truely shines. when u get hit by those 6k+ crit meteor showers randomly or those 7k+ ice spike, 5k+ eruptions etc. u know its a gc staff ele dropping it

think somewhere a gc staff ele posted kitten of his 10k+ meteor shower crit. the potential for devastating dmg is there as a gc ele, its just so spread out that people dont notice it in a massive zerg fight and its “buried” from public

with lingering element does the 10% extra dmg in fire stick with u for the extra 5 sec after swapping? if so the 10% extra dmg for meteor argument defintely works:-p

while arcane wave is a blast finisher and is a great skill by itself, its not that useful on a staff ele considering u should almost always be 900+ range. unless u plan to use it mainly just for the blast finisher as support in which case, go for it.

the current setup ur leaning more towards the support role then the dmg part. so do not be surprised if u feel ur dmg is lacking.

a full GC ele with gear can definitely crit up to 3k on a single hit off chain lightning. if they are runing towards u and with how slow the projectile move sometimes, a quick bounce off a 2nd target and back on u will be near the same time as the 2nd auto atk hit.

5k is nothing in terms of quick dmg off a properly built GC ele, i have done 7k+ hit with a single arcaneblast+sigil of fire proc. granted the target was cloth armor but i only had 3-4stacks of might on and target was not under 33% hp for bolt to heart.

people never usually suspect an ele being GC build, but a full out 1 can deal out some hilarious dmg, u simply dont have the single target burst nor survivability like other classes, but u make up for it in shear aoe dmg capacity.

meh, GoS on fire is ok. the best thing about it is simply its a multi hit skill so anything that trigger on crit/hit can proc off GoS multiple time while its running. it can also be casted on the move unlike many other location target aoe available. also if u consider WvW, more aoe option = more dead enemies
with the ability to move while casting, i assume thats part of while its in the 900 range. u can cast it and start moving away and i believe it will still go off. think u can also cast it behind u while running so long as u start casting while facing that direction.