Guild Wars 2

Overloads: Air and earth are very very strong. Some people seem to have not noticed, but earth applies about 30 seconds of aoe protection. Combine that with heat sync and your team just wins in spvp. Air just does a stupid amount of aoe pressure. They are almost too strong, but that’s punishment for enemies letting you complete a 4 second channel.

Water should probably leave a field behind or some kind of after effect like all the others to “normalize” it. Probably make it a chilling field for more aura potential. A healing/regen field could get out of hand with healing and condi cleanse. Fire and air are pretty redundant. Fire should be changed as everybody seems to like air overload. Instead of a fire field, a meteor with knockdown falls once fire overload is finished.

Traits: Elemental bastion should be combined with powerful aura, and give water magic a chill buffing trait. Tempest is going for an aoe/support thing, but you need water to do it properly. Tempestuous aria should get a shout cooldown reduction. Latent stamina makes no sense because tempest encourages less frequent swapping. Make it give a boon or endurance when an overload is prepped or something.

Skills: Wash the Pain Away should probably remove a condition on each pulse with soldier runes. There are counters because the heal can be interrupted, it promotes use of a seldom used rune and gives a bit more condi cleanse options outside of water/arcana. Lightning orb is really bad. The only situation where it is good is when your enemy moves in a straight line while matching pace with the orb. It would be better stationary with a second skill that lets you move it.

Shadowflare.2759:

Changing it to ground targeted means that I can anticipate where enemies will go and target that, rather than having it be placed right at the position where the enemy currently is (and which they probably won’t be by the time that DT lands, if they’re even just walking).

What makes people think enemy players will continue to walk right under the dragon tooth? You can anticipate all you want, but you’re still dealing with a 1 second cast time and 2 second delay afterwards. Without cc, it will always be a matter of whether the enemy wants to avoid the hit or not.

Yeah, rebound is pretty bad. It’s a skill that does nothing on its own; the only value is in combos. It even makes whatever skill you plan on using easier to interrupt. You literally announce you’re about to use a skill you consider important.

It shouldn’t have a cast time, and the cooldown should be at most 30 seconds. Considering guardians have aoe quickness and fury on a 30 second cooldown, rebound should more like 20 or 15 seconds.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Goodbye lingering elements

I will

not

miss you

It’s funny that they remove it right when they made it useful. We could have had permanent super soothing mist, lingering +25 movement speed and/or 150 power. Lingering elements would be better than 10% boon duration actually.

Every elementalist weapon outranges reaper attacks. Ele can counter reapers with snares and kiting. Burning precision and blinding ashes will counter reapers. You can prevent chill pretty easily and remove it when it is applied. The strongest chill reapers have will be a trait necros already have, that free unavoidable spinal shivers.

Kodiak is more or less right. Ignoring the tempest traits, which we don’t know, ele specs probably won’t change significantly. Most builds just used 3 trait lines, and our traits aren’t changing that much really. I don’t really consider it adapting for my 6/6/0/0/2 fresh air build to get more defense and utility in exchange for lower damage. I don’t need to adapt to the fact that my d/d build gets 4 more air traits.

The amulets for pvp will probably be valkyrie with pack or a precision rune and zerker. Accuracy sigil might see more use too. Celestial might still be good. I believe the nerf was stated to be 10% which would only be 43 stat points each. We’re talking 3 crit damage, 2 crit chance and not even 2 stacks of might.

Sadrien.3470:

Arcane: AE AS ES

Air: OwA SA LR

Fire: BP PT BA

This just annoys me. Abbreviating every trait like people have every trait name memorized when names are changing and traits are moving. Plus, two of them aren’t even the right abbreviation. If you’re posting on the gw2 forum, your time is not so precious that you can’t spare a few seconds for clarity.

The very idea behind conjures was a mistake. They replace all 20 of your weapon skills and take up a utility slot which means that conjures have to be better than a utility and all your weapon skills to be worth using. They have to be broken in some way because of their massive opportunity cost. Turning them into kits would be just as bad for similar reasons except they would have to be heavily nerfed. Not to mention the balancing nightmare of 4 different sets of skills with completely different themes and uses that all just need to have the same cooldowns and number of charges for some reason.

Conjures just need a complete overhaul. The only idea I have is creating a spell on use and giving a passive buff.

Conjure fire: Cast “combustive shot”. For 10 seconds, your fire fields cripple enemies.

Conjure water: Cast healing rain. For 10 seconds, chilling an enemy also applies slow.

Conjure air: Cast windborne speed and daze nearby foes. For 10 seconds, your hard cc skills are unblockable and recharge 50% faster.

Conjure earth: Stunbreak. Weaken and blind nearby foes. For 10 seconds, damage a nearby enemy every time you block or reflect a projectile.

You aren’t getting it. You are not risking changing your armor because other much cheaper pieces of gear give stats too. If you are 100% zerker right now, you can use a soldier ring and backpiece once the changes hit to get the hp and armor you’re missing from earth and water traits.

You would obviously change the cheapest pieces of gear first in response to any meta changes. This means accessories get swapped then weapons. Any meta shift would have to require you to change over half your equipment to start affecting your armor choice. If you’re going to use the same gear for wvw, you should definitely hold off. However, you are 99% safe for just pve.

Head Kracker.4790:

uhh this is ascended armor you know, its not exotic that costs like 75% less. Silk and blood alone cost a good chunk of change

The cost only matters if zerker stops being the pve meta, and there is no reason to think you’ll want to change out every piece of gear for the expansion. Like I said, ascended rings are essentially free and can be used for added defense without worrying about crafting new armor.

Taking the “rather safe than sorry” approach is fine, but the chances of being sorry are so small you might as well go for it.

Just craft the armor. Even if you feel like you need more hp or armor at some point, you can just get a soldier ring or something. There is almost no chance that will pve change to the point that changing 2 or 3 accessories won’t fix your build.

Sunshine.5014:

1) Fire

• Flamewall fine as it is

3) Water

• Freezing Gust fine as it is

What? These two are the absolute worst weapon skills for ele. Arguably, they are the worst weapon skills in the entire game. Flamewall is literally old unsteady ground levels of uselessness.

Flamewall weaknesses
1)weak damage
2)1 second of burning every second
3)field is a narrow line (no enemy will stand in this and it is harder to combo with)
4) longer cast time and cooldown than other more damaging ele fire fields

Flamewall strengths
1) 8 second duration lets it set there being ineffectual longer than other fire fields
2) dropping it on a downed player and walking away is a max swag move
3) getting a kill with it is amusing

Freezing gust is just a single target 3 second chill on a 25 second cooldown. The damage is also weak. It is literally, mathematically and objectively inferior to every other chilling weapon skill on any class.

Jekkt.6045:

discussing if something should become the way it currently is is pointless.
fact is: the trait is too weak and with my suggestion it would be an alternative to non cantrip builds, because cantrip builds will never take cleansing wave over soothing disruption.

A lot of traits can look weak if you don’t talk about the other trait lines they can be combined with. Using your logic would just result in broken traits everywhere. That is what I meant.

I prefer cleansing wave over soothing disruption, and I’ll probably still prefer it when this specialization thing hits. Soothing disruption is overvalued by a lot of people. With the cooldown reduction, cantrips are 60 and 32 second cooldowns. You already have permanent vigor from arcana and high regen uptime is easy without disruption; You just want it for cleansing water synergy. 1 condition removed on 32 and 60 second cooldowns is not very strong. I may not need condi cleansing when I use a particular cantrip, but attuning to water is pretty much only for healing and condition cleansing. Cleansing wave actually helps your allies.

Traits are meant to be combined especially if they have obvious synergy. Discussing them without taking that into account is pointless. SDZ is right.

I’m not sure why you people are surprised. Did you think we’d get nigh invincible earth, water, arcana specs with no changes? It was either going to be an arcana nerf or an earth nerf.

Every traitline is getting buffed defensive options besides arcana. Blinding ashes can more than make up for a 2k heal and condi cleanse every 10 seconds. One with air will make kiting melee enemies and running circles around ranged enemies extremely easy. Earth’s defensive value is even more obvious.

Plus, skills are being changed too. The actual cleansing wave skill could just get a cooldown reduction. Flamewall might become a skill with an actual effect. New sigils and runes will have an impact.

witcher.3197:

It has a rather long cast time which means it can be interrupted, unlike the signet. The boons aren’t good enough (yes the regen is nice but eles already have ~perma regen from the cantrip trait, soothing wave and attuning to water). What matters is that this skill is no longer being used and that doesn’t happen without a reason.

If there aren’t enough players interrupting ether renewal to make it a bad choice, you shouldn’t be having issues with the glyph. If you already stack regen traits, you just pick another boon. Protection and swiftness can easily be worth more than 2k extra hp anyway. You can also just take other traits. There are reasons the glyph isn’t widely used but that doesn’t mean they are compelling reasons. There are reasons I don’t use the signet ever, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t viable.

witcher.3197:

Yes the glyph heal is so good for PvP that nobody uses it since ~2013.

I gave actual reasons why the heal is good and your retort amounts to “it isn’t popular.” If you can’t come up with an actual reason for thinking the heal is bad, you should probably change your opinion.

Dragoonity.9387:

Btw, what kind of armor and sigils would you guys suggest to have?

I’m a fan of hydromancy sigils for scepter or dagger builds. It’s one of the few sigils that helps your offense and defense.

witcher doesn’t know what he’s talking about regarding the glyph; it’s a good heal. It’s solid for any build that invests heavily in water/arcana. The regen from water attunement gives it a high healing per second, it isn’t hard countered by interrupts as much as ether and the choice of boons gives it versatility.

The only arcana traits worth using are renewing stamina, elemental attunement, evasive arcana and blasting staff. Your other traits are acceptable.

Feathered armor is good if you want something opulent.

Water is the best overall. Heals for 6k, knock back, ice field and removes a condition. Air is ok but a 1 second stun is pretty low impact. Fire is just damage which you shouldn’t be lacking. Earth is for pve. The water ele can die pretty fast and he has to walk up to an enemy before he uses the heal. Actually knowing what you’re doing and assessing the situation is always better, but water is the best one to always summon.

Asura eles have the worst animations out of any class and race combo. They’re so absurdly over the top without even looking cool. Swirling winds is the only animation that is good.

Charr have good ele animations; most of them are actually similar to human animations. It looks like charr are exerting less effort though. Male humanoids are good with the exception of meteor shower and ether renewal.

“Fluff” and “:3” in the title but not a charr ele? Terrible music?

misleading and ear bleeding/10

Dante.1763:

To be honest anet cant win ever can they?

You say this like whoever is in charge of armor isn’t doing an objectively bad job on charr. They’ll start to win when some more effort is applied. This new outfit is one the especially baffling cases because it could have unisex like usual, but they decided one gender should get an inferior version just because. I wasn’t going to get the outfit regardless; the decision was just incorrect.

posthumecaver.6473:

Looks that is exactly my point, look to LFG, all Berserker 5000 AP or kick..

Then you go to dungeon, nobody waits for clearing the small spiders or gargoyles. All Berserkers meta relies on stacking up and supporting each other.

In PUG / All Berserker, first damage is everybody is at other part of the room.

And what is the purpose of going all berserker, if I am going to have so much DPS downtime when I have to hide one corner of the room and don’t DPS at all.

I strongly suggest you deviate from any speed clearing/meta guides you might be following. They aren’t written with pugging in mind, and you’re smart enough to realize some of the logic is questionable. You shouldn’t play with pugs as if they’ll do the right thing. Instead of even trying to kill the spider queen in 3 seconds, just kill at least some of the small spiders first. Yes, even if everybody else jumps on the boss, kill a few small spiders. It may not get you a world record run, but it’s the safer, smarter move. If they kick you for daring to slow down an ac run by a few seconds, they aren’t people worth grouping with or placating.

There is very little advantage in sticking with something that isn’t working for you. Clearly, you’ve given 100% zerker a shot; time to try something a little different. A cavalier ring, cavalier backpack, 2 points in water magic for vital striking and a knight earring will make a huge difference, and nobody will notice or say anything to you.

posthumecaver.6473:

I mean, I know all the videos from pro youtuber’s telling about all berserker meta but if you look closely all of their groups has a guardian, is that the untold truth, you should only go full berserker if have a guardian?

Basically, yes. 100% zerker lightning hammer ele isn’t a good idea for non-optimal groups. It’s doable, but gw2 pve isn’t worth being a try-hard. My advice is just to change 3 accessories from zerker to cavalier, knight, zerk/valkyrie or some combination of the 3. It will change some one-shots into two-shots, so it’s essentially double the survivability in some cases without too much of a damage loss. Also, arcane shield, ether renewal and glyph of storms (cast in earth attunement) are good for additional defense.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Honestly, if I step outside the game?

Loot in any case seems tedious and boring. I haven’t had a game where it’s not been tedious and boring. Yes, even Zelda – especially Zelda. (“Oh, look, a neat toy I need for this dungeon and may use only once more in the entire game.”)

I usually take care of it all when waiting for something else to happen or when I’m about to get off.

Zelda games don’t have loot in the mmo sense. Almost every item is necessary to progress in Zelda. There are relatively few items and they show up in predetermined locations. Loot in most mmos and rpgs in general is just converted into currency or material so you can horde or get something you actually want. It’s almost always random, unnecessary junk with very little value that rains from the sky. Just because Anet is eager to compare apples and oranges doesn’t mean we need to follow suit.

Also, Okami blows every Zelda game out of the water. I bet the new one will still make you use menus to hotkey items every time you want to use a different one while Clover solved this back in 2007.

The only thing more trite than whining, crying and qq is using those terms for opinions you disagree with.

data.4093:

Mbelch.9028:

This is the air GM buff.

It doesn’t seem to be a big deal. Still not worth taking IMO.

I’m still trying to understand how that air trait will work because it’s twin is halting strike. It procs for the same damage when you CC someone, so couldn’t you just chain CC and kill deal tons of damage? I know I’ve seen mesmers crit for over 3k with their version and they actually have to interrupt something. Couldn’t things like static field do huge damage in WvW? And then considering if people teleport out, they’d be struck twice, doing even more damage. I’m not seeing a weak trait here but then I don’t main an ele so idk.

The major issue with the trait, long cooldowns on ele cc, hasn’t been addressed. If we’re comparing this to halting strike, halting strike is an adept trait on a profession with shorter cooldown cc. It takes triple the trait point investment for eles to get a comparable trait. Weakness and an easier trigger condition are nice, but not 4 trait points nice.

Here are some ways to make lightning rod attractive. It could decrease the cooldown on your cc skills in addition to what it already does. The lightning could strip stability and deal more damage on strip. The lightning could be delayed by 2 seconds or so, but stun foes again. If lightning rod is going to be based on cc, it needs an effect that helps the player do that better. Otherwise, it’s just a subpar damage trait with some weakness utility. Fresh air helps with damage more, the attunement swapping utility is stronger and they are in direct competition with each other.

Mbelch.9028:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

You’ve forgot a major note and that is a nerf to Vapour Form. It’s no longer immune to cc’s. No more sneaking inside a keep in WvW.

What disappoints me is the lack of buffs to a new meta. I feel completely lost.

So I didn’t actually realize this was a change. Yes a huge nerf. I thought this was just a visual thing.

Honestly though, this was a merited change. Nobody should be able to sneak into keeps untouched. No other class can.

First, if you got downed beforehand, you didn’t sneak in. Second, he didn’t say the skill changed functions. Vapor form has never been immune to cc. It makes you invulnerable so most cc skills don’t affect you. However, wards and unsteady ground still stop you. Mist form goes through wards. He didn’t say anything about earthshaker hitting you in vapor form. Pretty sure it is a purely visual change to vapor form so people understand it isn’t identical to mist form.

Vayne.8563:

It’s easy to forget the stuff we have gotten, because we haven’t gotten all of it. But that doesn’t mean Anet doesn’t care.

Actually, I think the reason it’s easy to forget is because when Anet does something players have been asking for it often seems like a halfhearted effort and/or is rarely done quickly. We’re finally getting commander tag “improvements,” but it’s just account-bound and colors. Finally getting a solution to the asura pvp problem, but it is completely lacking options and won’t be usable in every game mode.

Plus, some of things players ask for are just fixes to glaring issues or inconsistencies that should have never made it to release. Anet already made karma, gold and pretty much everything account-bound before wvw exp. The playerbase shouldn’t have had to argue or ask for consistency in the first place.

You make it sound like most people won’t be satisfied unless they get everything they want. It’s more likely that people just want things done correctly the first time or improved more quickly. Plus, the way you put it sounds really condescending.

I don’t have confidence in Anet’s ability to change fgs and tornado appropriately. The very idea of them was flawed to begin with. You’re essentially giving up being an elementalist to use these elites. Fgs is actually doing just about what you would expect from an elite that only deals damage and has a 3 minute cooldown. It can deal sickening amounts of damage in specific situations. It can be argued that the situation is too specific for pvp and the damage is too high, but the basic idea is actually ok.

The only ways I see fgs with a nerfed rush being of any use other than running away is to have more damage than lich form, get effects other than pure damage and mobility that surpass what our weapon skills already do or have a 30 cooldown max and no cast time.

Tornado should probably stop being a transformation all together. How about we just pick a spot to place a tornado? If we want to get really fancy, we could call it back then shoot it out again as much as we want for the 15 seconds it lasts.

It’s great that anet is finally doing this, but it’s hard to hand out gold stars when it lacks options and is still two years late.

There is only an option for all enemies or none. Why not allow players to select which races to standardize? Asura are the reason for this, so why make every enemy generic looking when only race is the issue?

Why is the only standard model human when charr and norn are even bigger and easier to read?

There is no good reason to restrict the feature to certain modes.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Well yeah the problem is that we are arguing balance with wvw people… this discussion can go nowhere!

Surely you aren’t implying that spvp is well balanced.

Grimreaper.5370:

I agree with bunkers being too strong. Would be nice if bunkers were not based on healing done and maybe instead given some short term damage mitigation skills to block bursts instead. More skillful play, less mindless healing.

If a bunker is literally just healing through your damage without dodging things that should be dodged or using cc, your damage is just low. Also, damage is just as mindless and based on abusing bad mechanics. Why should healing be nerfed when fire sigils, air sigils and other crit procs result in damage that is essentially unavoidable? Instant cast attacks can’t be mitigated reliably through skill. Attacks from an invisible enemy have to be avoided with guess work. The damage in this game requires that healing be good.

LightningBlaze.4913:

I’m not saying take away the bunker builds just modify them to be less effective on 1v1 scenarios. Have you ever faced multiple bunker built players on 1v1?. You can tell the majority are not skillful at all , yet they survive long against you….. only because their build speak for them on healing themselves back up with minor effort/skill.

How do you propose to nerf bunkers in 1v1 without affecting them in other scenarios? Bunkers use the same skills and traits to survive against one enemy that they use to survive against 2 or 3. This game doesn’t have a variety of effects. The skills that are meant for defense against multiple enemies while being ineffective against one can be counted on one hand. The opposite is true though. Single target blind, cc and skills that only block a finite number of hits are more useful against one enemy.

Also, if you can’t defend yourself as well against 1 thief, how are going to be unaffected when you’re fighting that same thief plus a guardian and ranger?

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

What about all that stuff with healing power not scaling well and not really doing allies any good?

There is a thread in this forum that essentially argues that eles should not bother with healing power at all.

Healing power and healing power runes are very good. I get the feeling that most people who argue against healing power just don’t like healing people. The scaling can be bad on certain heals, but that isn’t the case for most ele heals. Healing not helping allies is just ridiculous. If we’re talking about directly adding allies in a typical support manner or even ccing enemies, healing power is the only option. There is no cc stat and boon duration armor is 1%. There is no reason you can’t cc, apply boons and spec into healing power.

I’m going to say that runes of dwayna are actually very nice. At the very least water and dwayna are equal. The condi removal on water is random; I used to use it. There were times when it would remove long immobilizes almost instantly and save me. There were times when it would activate on a single stack of vulnerability. Dwayna’s regen on hit is pretty much always going to be as useful as it could possibly be. If you have 700 healing power, you’re looking at about 3500 hp from 16 seconds of regen. The aoe heal from water is weaker than dwayna. Water has boon duration in its favor though. Out of the 3 runes, Dwayna has the best balance of reliability, personal sustain, and aoe healing.

Soloing Mai Trin isn’t significantly harder after the update. The way you solo any boss is to not get hit by most of its attacks. The attacks didn’t get faster or more frequent; they just deal more damage. It’s not like people literally tanked Mai Trin alone before.

I’m just saying that soloing this boss now doesn’t really make more of a statement than soloing it a week ago. Just because something got harder for groups to do doesn’t mean it got much harder to solo.

Gokil.2543:

snip

Honestly, you believing what you’re saying is a fact is a pretty bad sign. You can only measure these facts with the leaderboards and the opinions of others. Neither of those is worthy of being the ultimate authority regarding what’s viable. Something not getting top results or not being used very widely used are signs that it isn’t viable, not proof. The correlation is not as direct as you make it sound. Do you even know exactly how people are ranked on this ladder that you’re elevating to such status? I won’t say much more because you’re making it very clear that your thoughts are purely factual while others are just being immature or changing their opinions without proper cause.

Gokil.2543:

SonOfKrypton.4357:

I for one am supremely salty that people are rolling FotM Ele now that they’re strong again. I kinda wish we’d stayed how we were pre-patch where only decent players got the results new Ele players are getting now.

And that’s why we can’t have nice things… You have to realize how ridiculous you’re sounding.

I for one am glad elementalist is a viable pick now, and PvP actually has all professions in it again. There will always be something people can complain about.

Ele has pretty much always been viable though. Viable just means that it works reasonably well. Something can be generally considered bad or not meta while still being viable. Now, it’s just stupid easy to have good defense and good offense. Ele went from being good if you didn’t faceroll and played with a little intelligence to just being good. I consider the former to be a much nicer thing than the latter. Every profession and build in the game should at least strive to not be faceroll.

@OP
Initiating with rtl—>updraft is one of the scrubbiest things you can do on a d/d ele. I mean, you used it on an engi, took out about 40% of his hp then he got up and nearly killed you. That combo doesn’t burst or create any meaningful initial advantage against any halfway decent enemy.

If you’re fighting one ranged enemy and one melee enemy, you should pretty much always attack the ranged one. Assuming the melee player doesn’t break out a ranged weapon too, you’re guaranteed to hit both with some of your aoe while taking less damage by kiting melee and running circles around the ranged.

Darox.8069:

Sigh … Why don’t people who want to contribute to damage calculations just contact me?? It’s a shame to see work being done twice when we could improve on what has been done instead!

The man likes making spreadsheets.

Hydromancy is the best sigil for a d/d ele. Other sigils can deal more damage reliably or provide more reliable and specific utility, but hydromancy is the only sigil that is going to provide both quality utility and damage.

- The only sigil besides ice that snares
- chill extends enemy cooldowns
- hydromancy deals very good damage and it’s one of the few aoe damage sigils and it can actually crit
- it is instant, untelegraphed damage

I’m currently favoring hydromancy and leeching. 2 sigils that are effectively hybrids just seems logical for a weapon set that is almost always built like a hybrid.

D/D can do just fine against s/d thieves; it’s a pretty fair fight. S/d has two attacks that deal any significant damage to you, the auto-attack and larcenous strike. You can kite and out-range the auto attack, and larcenous strike is telegraphed enough to dodge reliably. There’s no counter for evades. You can only try to hit them between evades. So, just don’t get frustrated and stay patient. If you’re using a 0/0/2/6/6 celestial build, you have the sustain to wait. There really isn’t any trick; you beat that build by outplaying the thief.

LightningBlaze.4913:

As a matter of fact no good thief will ever die to anything less that is not massive burst combos. They can easily resets fights, recover or simply get away.

I never understood why people say this. Resets or running away is for when you’re losing. Running away as a thief is so easy to do it’s not the slightest indicator of skill. all a thief running away proves is that he was losing and doesn’t want to die. A good thief might stay to fight because he’s not a complete kitten or coward. A willingness to take more risk does not mean a thief is bad. The difference between a good thief and a bad thief is that a good thief can kill you or at least come close.

Sandstorm from glyph of storms is good against groups of trash. You get blind and decent damage. Persisting flames with s/d is easy perma party fury. Lightning hammer is more aoe blind, good damage and blast finishers. It’s situational, but you can use magnetic aura and stand between an ally and the projectile aimed at them. Yes, deep freeze on certain bosses is nice, and ice storm deals nice damage against a few of them. It’s been awhile since I tried it, but the earth elemental might absorb projectiles from Old Tom.

There are plenty of things eles can do to make life easier while still being glass. People probably won’t be looking for them or expecting them from you until you make a habit of doing them though. If we’re talking about pugs, they probably won’t care so long as you deal damage and don’t die.

8/10 would chuckle again

WereDragon.6083:

Unfortunately this is the PVP community we’re talking about. If the change did take place there would be no sweeping adaption, just a wave of intense complaining from the Elementalist battle-stack crowd and guardians. To the point we might even see said classes simply drop Tpvp matches when they notice a necro on the other team.

Logic wise it makes sense, balance wise it’s tricky and grey.

Corrupt boon is instant cast, 1200 range and unblockable. There is no way to outplay that. You can get a lucky dodge, but that’s about it. The only way to adapt to corrupt boon is to not use boons. That isn’t really an option for most ele builds. All the boons eles have really just evens the playing field. Even without a sigil of battle, eles have fire fields and blast finishers. Guardians can’t exactly do their job without boons either.

phaeris.7604:

Tei…updraft is 180 radius, so basically melee range.

and on a 40 sec timer. Unless you’re completely certain where the thief is you are wasting a potent ability for the chance of knocking him out his stealth. Better to use it when you’re sure to benefit from it.

Sr is really only slightly bigger than 180; Sr is 240. Besides, I already said the radius difference makes it not entirely reliable.

It isn’t a waste because updraft is your only option for countering it. If you don’t try to use updraft, you’re just letting the enemy get away or reset the fight. The only other uses for updraft against a thief 1v1 are defense, interrupting a heal or a somewhat random cc when he’s low to prevent him from even trying to save himself. Earthquake is a viable interrupt. Eles have no shortage of defensive options on d/d and traits, which most d/d eles will spec into. Letting 100% of thieves get full benefit from sr isn’t worth holding onto a skill I don’t necessarily need for anything else.

LordByron.8369:

The fact DD ele lacks untargeted pull/push, and thief can still dodge and heals, makes SR uncounterable unless the thief is bad .-.

Updraft can knock thieves out of sr. The radius on updraft is smaller than sr, so it might miss even if the thief doesn’t dodge. However, updraft is instant cast so no thief regardless of skill can react to it; they have to guess.

Mijo.3274:

-in DD you can refuel your life every 10 seconds in cleric, or get 50% of your life back in celestial, having a class that can self sustain that much make everybody a decent DD user. Most of the DD users have 3 cantrips: vigor, regeneration, stun breakers, stability, protection etc etc…

-SD fresh air on the other hand what offer? Being good with SD means that you’ll be able to sustain damage after using the combo, and be able to win 1v1, and believe me, is not that easy if you don’t have any condi removal, 1 stun breaker, 16k life and 1800 armor, and more important, you need to be sure that your combo will hit every time, so that means that you constantly need to watch: blinds, aegis, retaliation, possible LOS obstructions, defensive skills like protect me or defy pain, thieves around that could kill you in 2 seconds etc…

A lot of people completely forget about the support aspect of playing a d/d ele. That sustain isn’t just for you; every sustain trait is aoe. A really good d/d ele has to position himself to pressure enemies and heal/buff allies. Out of all the ele weapons, d/d requires the most role switching, battle awareness and positioning to be truly effective. If you’re attempting to bunker, it isn’t your job to use all your defensive tools as soon as possible. You’re supposed to hold on to them for as long as possible to minimize your periods of vulnerability or to use for better reasons than defending yourself. The objective best use for armor of earth or mist form is to guarantee a finish. If you need to use either of those utilities to defend yourself, you messed up. Also, you lose some credibility for suggesting the use of rtl > updraft > burning speed > fire grab to initiate.

S/D fresh air can be tough to use because it is a gimmick build. The build is limited and one-dimensional; that’s where the challenge is. The actual role you take on and the thought/ execution it requires is less daunting than both staff and d/d. Honestly, the fact that some players like it sets a bad precedent that anet can continue. Instead of buffing all the low damage, easily avoided scepter skills, anet just made it easier to spam the instant cast trait and air attack.

I don’t think any build in the game is particularly hard to use. I’m not trying to argue that one is harder than the other. Let’s just try to give a balanced assessment of how hard builds are to use.

Mijo.3274:

finding spots to hide and dropping aoe in the circle!

I wager this is the source of most of the hate. Ranged dps standing off point spamming aoe does deserve some hate. You aren’t much different from a nade engi in most people’s eyes. This is especially true for Niflhel and Silent Storm because a typical “hiding spot” at the mid point can be way too time consuming to reach. You’re basically immune to melee and some ranged attacks can have difficulty hitting you too. You might have more trouble than most builds when kitten hits the fans, but when things are easy for you it’s not like you’re working 5 times harder.

Pics speak louder than words in this case, so here’s my ele and guard.

Any face can look ferocious or timid by playing with the eyes and brow. Downward slants and more squinting gives you ferocity.

Every face is going to look normal or vanilla unless you do something that makes it stand out slightly. My ele’s face isn’t all that vanilla because of the red eyes and the white patches around them. I don’t consider my guardian’s face vanilla because nearly solid black charr seem pretty uncommon, the dreadlocks/hair wrap add some character and there’s that white spot on the forehead.

Yeah, don’t make a charr that’s primarily white. I see way too many of them and they rarely look good. You pretty much can’t go wrong with brown.

As a general suggestion, you should pick one or two things that are most important and base everything else around those. Pick the fur and/or hair out then use the face you think looks best with those. Or pick the face you want the most then make the fur and hair match.

Graendall.4765:

He said that all Dapphoenix did was run away,basicly calling him a coward and a troll when its so clear that in all these situations he had the superior skill to outmaneuver and outplay several enemies.Don’t know about you but if i was Dapphoenix and i was called a troll by a random dude i would get a little offended (very little…since this is a game)….hence he is disrespectfull.

And once more this guy got me into my favorite class and the reason i keep playing this game..

Mblech already covered how you just put words in his mouth.

Everybody runs away sometimes. It’s not a good sign when people take it as an insult.
Running from superior numbers doesn’t make you a coward.

If you don’t want people to think you run away a lot, you shouldn’t post lots of videos that show you running away. If there are people out there that think dapheonix runs away too much, it’s his own fault.

Also, outmaneuvering people isn’t always a matter of skill. First, enemies could be using builds with very poor mobility. Second, I recall him using a build that made him immune to snares at one point. Wow bro, how you outmaneuver guardians, necros and bow rangers with 98% reduced snare duration?! That type of stuff is hardly different from your typical cheese greatsword warrior, which rightfully don’t get any props for their skills.

Graendall.4765:

Your opinions will be respected when you will respect your co-player.

The threshold for respect is so arbitrary. Some people are so sensitive and defensive that any negativity is seen as disrespect. Every negative opinion shouldn’t have to be watered down because people need emotional babysitters.

I didn’t see Mblech say anything inflammatory or disrespectful. Sorry he has an opinion people disagree with though. Pretty sure that doesn’t make him a jealous foolish scrub or whatever random generic label you pull out of a hat though. And why people feel the need to defend a guy that probably doesn’t even play anymore is beyond me.