Guild Wars 2

Is there anyone who’s happy with their Scepter 1? Elementalists hate theirs, and Necros don’t seem in love with it. Guardians are the least unhappy, I suppose.

Ironically, every class that uses their scepter seems to use it the same way — for huge burst on a single skill, and maybe some utility on the other. Maybe. They don’t seem to be handing out a scepter on any of the elite specs. Does Arena just hate scepters?

Honestly, maybe they do. Rangedone-handers, especially non-projectile, are inherently a bit problematic. The ranged 2-handers lock you in to being ranged. When you do close on a longbow or rifle player, it’s a problem for them. Scepters can be paired with melee offhands, for kits that would be really obnoxious if scepter were good. Scepter/Focus Elementalists and Scepter/Sword or Scepter/Torch Mesmers would probably be pretty obnoxious if scepter were stronger.

Comparing scepter damage to sword damage is kinda weird, because nobody picks sword for the damage. Which also means sword doesn’t force you into close combat. Sword is good for one reason, and that’s low-cooldown long-lasting evasion. It’s a million times better than a single block. With the sword out, you get your damage from your offhand, from utilities, and from phantasms leftover from your other weapons. When you want to do damage, you use your greatsword.

I’ve looked at a bunch of post-patch engineer builds, and most of them are rifle/power. Even the condi builds are use rifle for utility. Is there a decent build that uses pistols for damage? I like the animations and I just want to actually use the other weapon. The trouble I’m having is that even with condition damage, it seems like I can do more with the elixir gun or grenades. I’m thinking a pistol build would be firearms/invention/alchemy with turrets and/or elixirs. Still, elixirs go well with elixir gun and turrets go well with longer range. Maybe gadgets would be the way to go, but then you’re kinda scrounging for traits.

But condi-phantasm is probably different.

How does condi-phantasm work? Generally speaking, I haven’t been happy with phantasms in any build; they simply attack too slowly for me to justify leaving them alive. Phantasm fury and illusion %damage are better for power than for condition. (Fury could be good for bleeds, but if I took dueling I would take pistol, and then I would take the pistol trait, because the other phantasms attack so much slower) Plus, Scepter clones do risk bumping off phantasms. I’d probably rather just use sword flurry to stay alive while my pets attack.

After trying to hack out a build, It looks to me as though the trouble with scepter is that the traits just aren’t there. Very few of the minor traits are inherently useful, so each trait line pulls you into specific off-hands and utilities to make them worthwhile. Great traits often conflict at the same tier, while other tiers have nothing exciting. Weapon traits are in the wrong trees. It’s just a mess.

Critical Traits: These pull you out of Carrion into Rabid or Marauder. Going rabid is really painful because the condi builds still have a lot of direct damage. You will be using mind wrack because of its CD, and so going without bonus power is pretty sad. Crit does nothing for your conditions unless you’re in Dueling.

Interrupt Traits: To get a weapon skill interrupt, you have to go pistol or focus. Greatsword doesn’t have any conditions. There’s tons of easy blinds, not so many dazes. Utility interrupts are in mantras and signets; those traits are hard to get, while manipulation traits are easy and glamours synergize with torch.

Phantasm & Illusion traits: if you do use the scepter for clones, you don’t need attack haste or bonus health; you’re also not taking full advantage of bonus damage unless you’re Marauder.

Boon Traits: Boons come from Staff, Greatsword, or Traited torch. Staff is a good secondary weapon for scepter, but if you have chaos then you should probably use staff as your staff weapon; it’s not clear to me that scepter is a great secondary for staff. Boon traits encourage you to go for glamours, leaps, and blast finishers. Sword and Staff have leaps, not scepter. Torch has a blast and some boon traits, but the glamer/torch/stealth traits push you into otherwise mediocre lines.

Reflection Traits: There are so many. It’s really easy to end up with flagrantly unnecessary amounts of reflection.

Or to put it the other way: Domination minors are based on interrupt and daze, which means pistol, mantras, or signets; the tier 1 options are pretty bad. Dueling forces you out of Carrion and probably into pistol. Chaos forces you into staff and glamours. Inspiration has the glamour trait but no other synergy. Illusions is, of course, amazing, and you wish you had all 3 tier 3, but you don’t. I just don’t see any way to choose 3 trees I’m really happy with.

tobascodagama.2961:

In order to have respectable damage, though, you need to use Rampager amulet

I hadn’t thought of that. I was tearing my hair out trying to make a decent Carrion or Rabid build, but it would not come together.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

The extra clones are, frankly, just too slow. They also appear right next to the enemy, which generally means they get cleaved in .000001 seconds.

Why is dropping them into melee a bad thing? You can shatter them instantly for damage, or use distortion and actually benefit from AoE shatter traits, or use them with F3 and a ranged phantasm for a multi-daze.

Embolism.8106:

You want to swap out of Sceptre ASAP because every Sceptre Clone you create is reducing your DPS. You only rely on #1 for Clones if you’re desperate.

Why do the clones reduce your dps? The only reason I can think of is if you’re trying to keep 3 phantasms alive, which just seems unlikely. I didn’t think people even used the phantasm utilities. Plus, shouldn’t their torment damage be decent?

Inflames.8026:

I will definetly try this build out, but I am not a big fan of flamethrower because its so easy to get punished while you spay them, but its a nice cleave when hitting people kittens. Also you have to be a might stack god in order to get a decent flamethrower.

I’m not sure you even have to use the flamethrower. I think you can just carry it around between fights so you start with huge might stacks, and you have perma-stability out of combat to prevent stunlock surprise burst. (Or does the flamethrower trait only work in combat?)

Since the specialization update, there aren’t that many guides / builds available, and for each class, what I can find is usually just 3 or 4 variants on one basic strat. Almost every Mesmer I’ve seen is some kind of sword/greatsword shatter. I saw one supportish celestial staff build, but it didn’t grab me. Even taking a cursory glance at some old stuff, I that’s a lot of what I’m seeing.

Is Mesmer scepter just took clunky to use? I know the cast animations are long, but making extra clones really seems like it should be valuable, and while long channels have their problems, the confuse ray hits pretty hard. Is it neglected because the extra clones are unnecessary? I’ve been playing sword/greatsword shatter and I do find that traits and utility makes it possible to get just enough clones to use most shatters on cooldown. Still, it seems like it would be nice to get longer distortion or more multi-daze combos. Or is the problem that condition-shatter is just far worse than critical-shatter?

Howdy folks. I’ve been reading lots of Tempest reaction threads, and there’s one talking point that I don’t entirely understand, so I wanted to ask about it. I figured it might help flesh out the community discussion a bit, but even if not, it might help me learn more about this game. My only level 80 is an Elementalist. I love playing it, I feel strong, and I don’t know other classes well enough to know what I’m missing. So:

There are a lot of complaints about the Tempest that have merit, or at least could have merit. I haven’t watched the video myself and while I tried to look up the numbers, I didn’t totally understand them. If indeed the skills are just numerically weak, that’s obviously a problem. If the long channel skills aren’t worth the payoff, that’s a problem. If the shouts aren’t as good as cantrips, that’s sad, since they fill similar roles, but I’m not sure how to fix that. Cantrips are just so strong right now that I’d be kind of terrified of the shouts they’d have to make if they wanted to compete. I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect every elite to get utilities on par with the very strongest ones in the base class.

Anyway, the one thing I don’t understand is the complaint that “tempests don’t add anything new. We already had boons/auras/pbaoe/combo fields/etc.” This is where I betray my ignorance, because I can’t think of anything elementalists don’t already do. We have melee and ranged condition and crit damage, boons, combos, aoe, healing, cleanse, etc., etc. I really don’t know what an elementalist spec could do besides let us do the same stuff in a new way.

So there’s my question: What is the base elementalist lacking? (bonus question: how could either tempest or a hypothetical elite with a different name or weapon provide it?)

G’day folks.

I’ve just recently ramped up from playing once a month to playing every day. I’d like to run dungeons with some friends who don’t mind that I watch the cut scenes. If they were willing to help me dabble in the PvP modes without expecting me to play them regularly, so much the better. I don’t have any mad skills yet, but I do have a very agreeable personality. I’m happy to play support builds, or whatever class will fill out a team, and when I don’t know what I’m doing I’m very willing to take direction.

I’m a youngish guy (25) whose life is still a work-in-progress, so even though I play daily now, I’d love a guild that will let me disappear for a month or two without booting me.

If you’re not familiar with SJW, it’s a derogatory term sexists use to refer to people who care about ending bigotry. I’m a bisexual Mexican-American feminist, and I’d rather play with people who share my values than anyone who took part in GamerGate.

I’d love to make friends and have conversations about more than this game. I’m a chatty fellow, and if you like discussing literature, game design, economics, psychology, or religion, we’ll get along like gangbusters.

If anyone on here is recruiting for a scholarly, conversational semi-casual socialist PvE-ish guild, please contact me here or in-game as TeuthidPurveyor.1790. I’ll explain the username on request.

—Orion

Do not buy white items, ever. You can buy blue on the trading post for comparable prices, and the difference is huge. Especially for weapons. Try to get green weapons whenever you can, though. Sometimes they’re cheap on the ’post. Other times you can get them from renown hearts, but you may need to consult a guide to find the right hearts at the right levels.

Charrbeque.8729:

If you want to get the game for a friend you should wait until the expansion releases. Otherwise you’ll be paying an extra $50 on top of whatever you payed for the core game if you can find a copy at an authorized retailer/Amazon/eBay/etc. No release date has been announced yet, but it’s possible it could come in August for the 3rd anniversary of the game. At most I’d say 3 months tops.

Pre-ordering the expansion now doesn’t make the base game playable?

Anyway, the logic of buying the core only for a friend would be that as far as I can tell, the expansion doesn’t add much before level 80. I don’t know if this friend will even like the game enough to get that far. If I can get the core for $20 elsewhere, then that’ll be $20 wasted if my friend loves it — but they’ll be the one spending the $50, not me. And they can do it some time in the future when they have cash. Meanwhile spending $50 of my own cash isn’t really feasible right now (certainly not spending $100 to upgrade us both), and risks wasting $30 if they don’t stick with it.

sebradle.7034:

Standing back and pew pewing is my subjective definition of lame when I play my thief/assassin class I want to be gibbing and evading people. When I play my ranger I want to be standing back and pew pewing.

This is what you don’t get. The point of elite specs isn’t to give people already playing that profession a pile of all the goodies they’ve been wanting. It’s to make that profession appealing to people who weren’t previously interested. It’s supposed to encourage alts and keep people playing in the same way that new professions would, but with massively less development cost in animations and art assets. If the Sniper feels nothing like a Thief, that’s totally fine. If someone who previously only played Ranger now makes a Thief, then that’s a win for the devs.

Are you imagining these as magic weapons being conjured by magic, or as physical weapons she was carrying around?

sebradle.7034:

arenta.2953:

but who would use it? when Dagger already works so well?
that sounds like it would benefit mesmer more or ranger.

People who wanna use staff maybe? With that mindset why give any option or variety? Why does…

Warrior need Greatsword and Axe, Hammer and Mace
Ranger need Sword and Greatsword
Necro need Greatsword and Dagger
Guardian need Sword and Greatsword
Thief need pistol/pistol and rifle

Uh… Ranger needs sword and greatsword because sword is about evasion and escape, while greatsword is about gap closing and damage. Necro needs greatsword because they didn’t have an off-hand melee weapon and because non-initiative classes need 2 melee sets to play dedicated melee.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Melee staff isn’t even cool, or a thing that plugs a gaping hole in the Thief’s line-up.

What if Staff had block, AoE cripple, AoE protection, and confusion? That would be a very different kind of melee/control thief.

Laraley.7695:

It could be either, but in the end of the day at least you’re not getting a warhorn.

I would have been pysched for thiefhorn actually. When I heard someone was getting shouts, and that there was a war horn, I was hoping the thief spec would be a support thief (Bard or Tactician) with war horn and a line of shouts. Turns out necromancers are getting then shouts for some weird reason. I mean, I don’t mind — shouts are cool, why not give everyone shouts — but a magic class with wells isn’t where I would have started. Engineer shouts, thief shouts, or even mesmer shouts would have made more sense.

Pockets.3201:

Thieves can have staff, I don’t want it. Give me main hand dagger.

Sorry, for which class are you requesting dagger? Ranger?

Hey folks! I had 3 questions I can’t seem to find the answers to. I’m sure the first 2 have been answered somewhere, but I’m not so sure about the 3rd, so I’m just asking them all.

1: This web site currently sells the core game + Heart of Thorns for $50. Is there any cheaper way to get Heart of Thorns if I already have the core? (I assume “no.”)

2: This web site doesn’t appear to sell the core game by itself. Is it possible to buy the core game by itself from some other web site? (I’d like to give it to a friend)

3: If I buy the $50 package, will I received separate product keys for the base game and then expansion? Can I use the expansion key to upgrade my current account, and gift the core game to a friend?

Koviko.3248:

When I first started my Elementalist, I remember being told that Lightning Hammer was the way to go. I always found it awkward trying to stay nearby my other hammer while fighting so I got the full cooldown’s duration of hammers and eventually abandoned the idea completely when I started fighting Dredge.

Try the earth shield instead. Lots of damage once you factor in the bleeds and good AoE potential on the auto-attacks.

Personally, I’m hoping for a new element. It would be a ton of work, but they could outright replace earth or fire with “Aether.” They’d have to make… 17 weapon skills, plus new effects for glyphs and for various Arcane traits, but it would be so cool.

Adjust,

I would not level with staff in most cases. The damage is lackluster, especially if enemies are moving around, and the lack of mobility slows things down a great deal. I would definitely run dagger/dagger or dagger/focus. All that mobility will save you a crazy amount of time just walking around, and the damage against single enemies or small groups is much better.

Tyber,

Well, I guess you should stack condition damage. Look for Carrion gear mostly. In areas where you feel safe, run both air and fire signets to speed up your clears. In areas that are challenging, run things that don’t suck instead.

Consider grabbing a couple of conjures. Signet of Air, Signet of Fire, and Magnetic Shield or Flame Axe is a super inflexible build with very few ways to cope with surprises or escape from bad situations, but mobs are predictable enough that you can usually get away with it and you will do a lot of damage. If you don’t like conjures, go straight to unlocking cantrips, because they’re great.

You unlock your second spec slots at 41, and you’ll want to be either Earth/Arcane or Earth/Fire. If you can find the points to learn fire before then, then switch into it. I think solo fire is probably better for leveling than solo earth. I would not use solo arcane.

A bunch of people in this thread don’t know what Conjurer does. It gives you a fire aura when you summon the first weapon, and it gives you another when if you pick up your own second weapon. I’m not saying it’s a good trait (in PVP, which seems to be the focus, it’s still garbage), but it’s much better than you seem to realize.

Also, extra charges can be useful in PvE.

I really don’t think it will be war horn. If I understand correctly, the argument that it is war horn looks like this:

1: There are art assets for a new war horn, so some elite spec is probably getting horn proficiency.
2: We already know what Guardian, Ranger, Mesmer, and Necromancer are getting. Warriors already have horn. Therefore, either Revenant, Thief, or Elementalist is getting horn.
3: There is concept art of a thief apparently holding a staff, so it’s not the thief.
4: Therefore, Elementalist is the most likely option.

Here’s my counter-argument

1: I predict that each spec will get a different weapon proficiency.
2: Rangers are getting staff, so I don’t think Thief will get staff.
3: We know that one elite spec will get shouts. Someone in this thread said we know Tempests are not getting shouts; I haven’t seen the source for that, but I’ll go ahead and believe it. I would guess that whoever gets the horn will get the shouts. Elementalists aren’t getting the shouts, so they aren’t getting the horn.
4: Furthermore, the elite specs revealed so far are designer to push classes into new roles they didn’t cover before. Necros get a melee build for a mostly-ranged class; Guardians get a ranged build for a mostly-melee class. Rangers get a support build for a mostly-damage class; Mesmers get a tank build for a mostly-squishy class.
5: Warhorns are traditionally used for support and control. Elementalists already have a dedicated support build (staff) and an offhand utility weapon (focus). Warhorn would probably not change their feel that much. Therefore, Elementalists will not get war horn.

Personally, I suspect that Thieves will get shouts and a horn for a support spec called Bard or Tactician. I don’t think we’ll ever see staff on the non-magic classes (warrior, thief, engineer), because GW2 staves are spellcasting tools and they look like spellcasting tools. If we do get staves on one of those classes (either as a non-magic martial arts weapon or on a magic-themed elite spec), then I think it will be Warrior, simply because the devs have very few options for new Warrior proficiencies.

As for what new weapon elementalists will get, I have no idea. Personally, I hope it’s not sword, because that just doesn’t feel very different from dagger. Mace, Greatsword, and Torch are all available and all of them would excite me more than Sword does. Still, I have no reason to believe it won’t be sword.