Guild Wars 2

Greetings fellow elementalists,

For the longest time I’ve been cooking builds for this class, trying with the best of my abilities to make DPS elementalists work. I wouldn’t say I hate playing support ele, it’s a necessary evil with the extreme state of conditions at the moment. But it’s not where I feel the potential of this class stands from a “this is fun” point of view. DPS ele gameplay is so different, they might as well be different classes. If you’re a fan of DPS scepter and want to try something new, this build is for you.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhFyxgGH25ADHwHxSDg5eZ7sjWidQN4HIEIDAfQA-TJBEQB/Y/hCWGgAPAAAcCAAA

General Scepter DPS considerations:

- Scepter DPS simply cant be played if the opposing team has 2 revenants or 2 necros, one of each can be dealt with, swap to other class/build accordingly.

- Strong vs guards, mesmers, quickly procs endure pain.

- Avoid 1v1 unless you already have your 25 bloodlust stacks/ have already gained fight momentum.

- Overload Overload Overload (Air). Always proc your FA and recharge your OL before starting your rotation to another point. I found the best way to do this is to proc your FA on top of corpse, swap to another attune and inmediately swap back to start the 5s charge + gain superspeed.

Current S/W build Considerations:

- Revenants are your BEST friend in this build. If you can run with a rev that knows how to benefit from you, you will have a lot of fun. Quickly stack 25 might with fire 4, fury for you. Buff trading.

- Swap cleansing fire to mist form if your opposing team only has 1 condi class (not very likely in this season). Mist form can help a lot vs high power teams, only way you can stomp/rez, clear guard traps, etc.

- Swap ferocious winds with One With Air if opposing team has lots of melee classes/ you need more kiting / your team doesnt have many rotators.

- Trap opponents in your overload with air 4, predict their run away path with air 5. Air 5 + Overload air can get someone down very quickly.

- It’s very important to maintain your bloodlust stacks, since that’s where your build becomes more unbalanced than your opponent’s. Get quick kills early, play defensive, build momentum, play with your team and avoid getting outnumbered.

Good luck and have fun! I sure have.

“Chilled to the bone” shout elite. Should’ve been ours, not necro’s.

Necroing this thread as a thank you to ANET. (and a lol to the deniers)

Thanks!!

Can confirm, has been happening to me as well from 9:00 P.M. to 11 P.M. EST. Seems to be a prime time congestion issue for east costers. Random latency spikes depending on which instance server I get. Sometimes I can lag in HOTM but not in a match, or i can lag in a match but not in HOTM, other times in both. Seems random but the only constant is between that time frame.

If i ping that specific server i get average 110-130ms pings in congestion and some packet loss, after prime time it normalizes in 40-60ms and no packet loss at all. This NEVER happened to me before last week’s patch.

There is no difference in the traceroutes between low or high latency time frames, only difference is the latency on the last hop (anet servers).

If ANYONE is having this issue PLEASE post as well.

Thanks.

Can confirm, has been happening to me as well from 9:00 P.M. to 11 P.M. EST. Seems to be a prime time congestion issue for east costers. Random latency spikes depending on which instance server I get. Sometimes I can lag in HOTM but not in a match, or i can lag in a match but not in HOTM, other times in both. Seems random but the only constant is between that time frame.

If i ping that specific server i get average 110-130ms pings in congestion and some packet loss, after prime time it normalizes in 40-60ms and no packet loss at all. This NEVER happened to me before last week’s patch.

There is no difference in the traceroutes between low or high latency time frames, only difference is the latency on the last hop (anet servers).

If ANYONE is having this issue PLEASE post as well.

Thanks.

This has been happening to me as well. after the patch i’ve been getting weird skill lag on prime time EST.

This has been happening to me as well. After this week’s patch hit i keep getting lagspikes at prime time (7 p.m. – 11 p.m. EST). I do SPVP exclusively.

DrDivine.5378:

Viprek.6730:

DrDivine.5378:

Hamster.4861:

IMO Fresh Air, S/D annihilate or S/F are both dueling, roaming, ganking builds.

Play it in conquest the way you would play a thief, or a shatter mesmer. It is quite a comfortable way to 1v1, but 1vX is definitely a serious challenge.

Link me some builds, as I do not have any to go by other than the metabattle variant.

Try this burst ele spec. Let me know what you think!

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k3d;2B2kX025gMFZ0;9;55-33;159C;149-17-IZ0;3F-03F-035BW

Will do, thank you! I have to ask though, why run tornado? Isn’t this a little squishy to be in the fray?

Lightning rod + tornado burst . interrupt dmg + blinds should keep you up. Play it smart, you might not be able to survive a focus in the middle of a legacy 5v5, but you sure can peel for your team who is getting focused 2v1, avoid a rez/stomp, win a losing 1v1 vs. a squishy, pressure a shoutbow. Use your dodges smartly when in tornado, if you really think you will get high initial dmg then obsidian flesh + protection before going in.

Never said build was easy to play, you probably haven’t used earth shield in a while. After using this spec for hundreds of matches I could constantly feel improvement in how i used its skills.

Earth shield 4 can counter stealth play pretty well. Get thief out of shadow refuge, avoid mesmer heal, destroy mesmer clones with aoe burst, air burst + earth shield (Stay in air) “1” sustain dmg while you wait for air cooldowns then earth 4 then 3 into air 2, ES 2 block basilisk venom, ES 3 interrupt anything AOE on 3 targets, 1.8k autos IN SCEPTER. Trick is to ES while your air attune is in CD to go around not having fresh air.

Speed is everything in the build, cant waste a single second against thieves, beware poison and take full advantage of that resto sig, ES also gets you skills to proc a lot of it on.

After 7k+ ele tournament games I kinda know my kitten.

DrDivine.5378:

Hamster.4861:

IMO Fresh Air, S/D annihilate or S/F are both dueling, roaming, ganking builds.

Play it in conquest the way you would play a thief, or a shatter mesmer. It is quite a comfortable way to 1v1, but 1vX is definitely a serious challenge.

Link me some builds, as I do not have any to go by other than the metabattle variant.

Try this burst ele spec. Let me know what you think!

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k3d;2B2kX025gMFZ0;9;55-33;159C;149-17-IZ0;3F-03F-035BW

Sigil of strength can be swapped by doom sigil, depending on the poison application efficiency of your teammates.

Even lightning rod is viable as a burst spec. LR+Earth shield is an extremely fun way to play ele, actually. Been using it for a long time with great results. It wrecks thieves if played well, pressures pretty much any zerk spec out there. Granted, it takes some time to get the hang of it… But oh god is it worth it.

First I’d like to post the Flanking Strike / Larcenous Strike update history to make my point a bit more clear.

Game-Update-Notes-April-30-2013
Larcenous Strike: Deliver a quick strike that steals up to two boons from an enemy. Costs 1 initiative.
Larcenous Strike, Stab skills: Reduced aftercast by 0.5 seconds.

Flanking Strike skill:
Now evades and delivers one strike instead of delivering two attacks.
Removed boon removal.
Reduced initiative cost from 4 to 3.
Now toggles for 5 seconds to a second skill, Larcenous Strike, if the attack hits an enemy.
Improved reliability of flanking strike.

Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013
Larcenous Strike: Increased the initiative cost to 2.

Game-Update-Notes-October-15-2013
Larcenous Strike: This skill now steals only 1 boon.

Game-Update-Notes-September-9-2014
Larcenous Strike: Initiative cost of this skill has been reduced to 1.

Flanking Strike: This skill now must successfully hit a target before giving the thief access to Larcenous Strike. Initiative cost has been increased to 4.

To summarize the initiative changes
Flanking strike
- From 4 to 3 (4/30/13), from 3 to 4 (9/9/14)
Larcenous Strike
- 1 (4/30/13), from 1 to 2 (6/25/13), from 2 to 1 (9/9/14)

Initiative costs were reverted back to how they were in their initial implementation on the patch risk was added to the skill.

Larcenous Strike was weakened by removing only 1 boon from the target because it was possible to use the skill on missed Flanking Strikes, hence it was too strong and there was no risk to it.

On the 9/9/14 update however, risk was added to the skill, initiative costs were reverted but no change was made to the amount of boons the skill removes. Given: the risk of missing the skill, the current high boon state of the game and the lack of boon stripping I believe it should at least be considered to revert the skill to its original potency, while still keeping the added risk to it.

MMR should be displayed ingame. period.

That is correct Evan, it is the same thing that is happening to me. some IPs lag but others dont, it’s completely random if you get a laggy server or not. But the lag is constant for that specific IP (if I get it again in another match).

It is happening again tonight, this time with the server 64.25.38.137. These are my pings

Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=111
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=111
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111
Reply from 64.25.38.137: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=111

and traces
1 95 ms 96 ms 99 ms 10.0.0.1
2 7 ms 8 ms 9 ms pri-198-b3.codetel.net.do [196.3.74.198]
3 13 ms 9 ms 10 ms 172.23.24.145
4 38 ms 40 ms 38 ms xe-5-0-1.GW1.MIA19.ALTER.NET [63.65.189.89]
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 72 ms 73 ms 72 ms GigabitEthernet6-0-0.GW12.DFW9.ALTER.NET [152.63.97.94]
7 85 ms 71 ms 72 ms 65.205.119.210
8 73 ms 74 ms 73 ms 64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9]
9 73 ms 72 ms 73 ms 64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26]
10 73 ms 76 ms 74 ms 64.25.32-82.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.82]
11 71 ms 72 ms * 64.25.38-137.ncsoft.com [64.25.38.137]
12 70 ms * 72 ms 64.25.38-137.ncsoft.com [64.25.38.137]

Notice how i lose packets in the last 2 hops.

This doesn’t happen when I connect to the .163 or .135 server. this happens right after i leave HoTM to a game instance server.

This was happening to me last night, while I was exclusively in heart of the mist / queuing for matches.

I figured out that my game lagged ONLY WHEN I was connected to the 64.25.38.114 server (which happened more often on maps like legacy and forest for some reason). Whenever I connected to the other servers I didn’t have the rubber-banding issue. This happened consistently throughout the night.

I asked my party if they were also in the 64.24.38.114 server, and they were, but weren’t experiencing any lag issues. While I was playing, I did a continual ping to google.com and 64.24.38.114 server, there was packet loss when the rubber banding occurred only to the .114 address, google.com had no packet loss issue.

If you have this issue again, type /ip and report here if this happens to you as well on a specific server. Might help the devs spot the issue faster.

Does the lag only happen while you’re in a PvP map? Does it also occur in the PvP lobby? Other maps?
Only participate in PvP. But have tried moving through maps (PvE / WvW) while lagging to test different servers/zones. If I am lagging, happens on every zone.

How long does the lag spike last? Does it ever clear up?
It lasts a couple of hours. Seems random, but I’ve noticed less lag situations in off peak hours (EST). When it clears up I experience no lag at all. I test latency delay using skills, weapon swapping, moving item, watching other player movements and it seems to be a 1-2 second delay. I have never been disconnected by this lag.

Of your last 5 GW2 play sessions, in how many of them did you experience lag?
3.

Are there specific times of day when do or you don’t experience lag?
Random. I may or may not experience lag on a particular day on prime time. Lag happens to some players and not others (when ive seen others question about lag in mapchat, i might not be lagging at that time).

When do you remember first experiencing lag of this severity in GW2?
I have never experienced this lag so consistently before the DDoS attack happened. It seems as if a countermeasure to prevent this, or some other change started causing this issue. Have played since beta.

Do you also experience lag playing other games? NCsoft games like Wildstar?
Not playing any other NCsoft game currently. Experience no lag on any other non NCsoft game.

Do you live in NA or EU?
NA
Are you playing on NA or EU servers?
NA
Was your account ORIGINALLY created on NA or EU?
NA

Tracerts seemed normal, tried it while lagging and not lagging. In no hop did the latency increase more than 60ms. Tried clientport 80 fix, has no effect while lagging. GW2 latency in process manager is no different while lagging and not lagging (100-200ms).

ip address: 64.25.33.60:0

ens.9854:

9/10 would run. Nobody likes down state.

Ground target is good/bad. Means u could precast it in some cases but thief/mesmer might teleport away randomly. Targeted skills land in stealth anyway if you were already casting them so w/e.

Anyway skill is too strong for anet and they don’t want professions to have anything terribly unique so it won’t happen.

I would like to add that I do like the system of down state, this skill is not trying to replace that at all. Just enhancing a layer to a system which adds a chance of threat to a situation, and a new possibility to a high risk/high reward class.

High risk: give up basilisk venom (easier kills), best targets to apply this to would be bunker guardians which generally are in dangerous high damage zones, long downtime if missed/used incorrectly.

High reward: Quick rally on a teammate/teammates (if done quickly you can beat a stomp in the process), quick decap, taking the bunker out of the equation.

RyuDragnier.9476:

This idea is a giant fail because it’s PvP-centric. The answer is no.

You do have a choice to choose between different elites. PvP/PVE centric elites shouldn’t be an issue if it enhances that respective game mode in an ejoyable, fun or competitive way. Besides, it can have some sort of modification of how it would work in PvE, or simply adding a PvE centric elite that wouldn’t work in PVP to compensate. Yes, i’m aware that it could open a gate that would complicate their core “we don’t design for each game mode independently” design philosophy. But hey, stomping IS an important part of the game which could get some spicing up too.

BrunoBRS.5178:

way too situational, way too PvP centric, useless in most situations, even when it can be used (dpsing the body is probably better as it damages the rezzer too). also pretty unfair in the few situations it could be used effectively, since it’s denying the chance of second wind that is pretty core to the GW2 combat.

Since it would be a single target/targeted skill, a counter could be to quickly stealth the target, so it wouldn’t 100% deny second wind. How confident would thieves be in swapping basilisk venom (the core elite in most meta builds) for something like this?

IMO elites should bend the rules of GW2 combat and feel powerful. Would it be THAT powerful though?

Say the Warrior’s War Banner for instance. It has cast time, rallies multiple players in a targeted area. In a way by doing this you are bending some GW2 Combat rules, you’re bypassing a normal rally, bypassing the need to rez slowly, and avoiding any of your teammates to get cleaved in the process. But just like that is a defensive/supportive warrior’s elite, why cant the alpha predator class of GW2 have a single target assassinate elite that can just as much bend rules too but in an offensive way?

Skill Name: Assassinate
Description: Instantly stomps the opponent.
Cast time: intant cast – 1s?
Cooldown: 120s?

I believe it fits the class and could be a potential elite that makes thieves a big threat in teamfights.

Would you replace basilisk venom for a skill like this?

Modified version

Skill Name: Mark of Assassination
Description: Places a mark on your opponent, if the target dies while the mark is still active, it will bypass the downed state.
Duration: 5 seconds
Cast time: Instant
Cooldown: 150s?
Range: 600-900, must have LoS.
*Has no effect if used after the target is downed.

I vouch for the skills of this fellow elementalist. Plenty of lives have perished by his hand (mine included), and is one of the few to handle the Way of the Staff with such flow and ease.

You have my respect, celestial celtus, even though you could use a bit more….fire, in your armor. Keep up the good work, mr. solo q 3v1.

Seikir,
Way of the Scepter

Standarize Team Colors.

You have no idea how many players get confused by the simple fact of switching constantly between red and blue teams. In one match you’re red, in the other blue, and you have to switch that mentality constantly between games. If you could always see your team as blue and the others as red, it would greatly increase the average person’s perception speed of who their teammates are in the minimap.

Before implementing the mini map class identifiers, this wasn’t that much of an issue communication wise. You might get confused identifying whether the capture point was really yours or not, but the identification speed isn’t as critical as making a fast reaction decision by watching your minimap and immediately identifying who your teammates are, where they need help or whether you’re outnumbering the opponent.

How many times have you seen the minimap class colors and then watched your own color to verify? I’ve currently played 4k+ spvp games, and I think I get more confused the more I play! The key in all this is the speed of detection, speed of communication should be improved, and its better if new players start learning their colors (blue) from the start.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Josh isn’t gone, but his focus will be shifted. I’m not taking his job, he was actually filling in for me while I was gone. He’ll be around, and with us on Ready Up still, just won’t be as active on the forums or behind the scenes.

As for skyhammer in solo arena, we’re kicking around some ideas (definitely not ignoring you guys, just fyi). As of right now, we have no plans to remove it. We’re not quite convinced yet that the majority of our pvp population want it gone, so we’re trying to get metrics on that before we make any changes.

Hey Allie, an idea that would help the devs simultaneously get feedback and satisfy the players could be to add a check box in the Solo Queue interface to ’’deny’’ a map, but only a single map (wouldn’t affect the queue times much). This would help determine the exact amount of players that dislike a specific map (or simply don’t like to use a specific build to be optimal in that specific map) , and it doesn’t force those that do like it to stop playing it altogether.

Players like me have been solo queuing Team Queue as a work around. Please help us!

Atleast dont make it the first map in the rotation after a server reset…please?

The Game Slayer.7632:

Iris Ng.9845:

The only two things really bad about focus in my opinion are Fire#5 and a chicken for legendary. I’d rather they just fix Fire#5 than screw the focus up all over.

You’re entitled to your opinion.
But… lol…. When is the last time you used focus? The focus for ele is beyond screwed, and even if they screw it up more (by some weird way..) thats better than nothing, cause, you know what, that tells me that the devs acknowledge the existence of focus.

I personally use focus (s/f) A LOT, one of my preferred weapon-sets vs. others of my class. It can beat most, if not all, s/d and d/d eles of equal skill in 1v1. Flame wall can be useful to bleed out downed players, for fury / might stacking while not being in melee range and not having to use staff (worse weapon-set than focus for 1v1). It has the most/fastest blast finishers in the game.

Burst can be great as well, having 2 cantrips that surpass the utility cantrips by far (cleansing fire / mist form), you’re able to use arcane utilities without sacrificing too much survivability, effectively stomp / rez, you CAN use arcane brilliance heal effectively with this set. Coupled with fresh air you can do pretty intense dmg on a not so long cooldown.

Not to compare the damage output of a thief or survivability/damage imbalance of a warrior, which are the extremes of the current meta, but they are far from useless and very beneficial on making those classes even stronger with all the damage buffs and long range burst.

related link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0bW4as-nI&feature=youtu.be

Granted, this is a hotjoin fight filled with players of various skill levels and far from the requirements of a class expecting a spot in a top 100 t. arena. But I don’t believe useless is the correct word.

I do wish gale would have a shorter cooldown and flamewall a faster cast time, though…

I’m interested, been playing ele for quite a while.

- Seikir / Zeikiri / See K

Dusk.4708:

FeelsAlright.5860:

Why doesn’t endure pain prevent point capture? “protect me” shout on ranger does. Invuln on guardian does. Stealth does. Stupid.

…..your still susceptible to conditions that’s why,

“protect me!” makes your pet a meat shield basically,
“renewed focus” makes you invulnerable for 4 seconds (correct me if I am wrong with the duration)
Stealth well.. obviously, YOU CAN’T SEE EM! so it wouldn’t be right to let it slide,

Mist form wants a word with you…

What is your current standing on removing elemental attunement trait from arcane and making it a base class mechanic? Would that change really make it an overpowered class? Just like reducing the base attunement CDs would have previously been considered an overpowered change? With such low base HP, protection should be A LOT more accessible to this class. If you truly want elementalists to have other options, reducing cooldowns (done in dec. 10 patch) AND this, is the best way.

“The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well. As these additional skills and traits are added, they’ll be automatically unlocked and available for competitive PvP just like all existing skills/traits work today.”

Taken directly from the blog post….

Extremely depressing to not see this mentioned in “The Future of Guild Wars 2 in 2013” blog post.

Are they working on this AT ALL? I hope they just forgot to mention it.

How about we double blurred frenzy cooldown if it doesn’t hit a target? sounds familiar? Stop your QQ, it could’ve been worse.

- A toggle that would allow you to deactivate losing target when left clicking empty space, and pressing escape should work 100% of the time if you want to lose target. Other games call this sticky targeting. Spamming ground targeting skills shouldn’t make you lose target…

- Disable ground targeting on a per skill basis (want to ground target attacks but not teleport).

- Salvage items on bulk.

- Character bound skill bindings.

Two tables

Join as Party table = JP

Solo Queue table = SQ

JP takes into account the leaderboards MMR.

SQ takes into account the solo queue MMR.

SQ MMR isn’t visible (Devs can manipulate this code as they see fit)

The first time you solo queue, your SQ MMR = JP MMR.
In this case, if you do well with a premade, the first time you solo queue you might get a team full of players of your grouped skill level vs. another team of equal skill (who are also solo queuing), or vs. a premade of similar skill level. Further changes to MMR will be applied to the SQ table, leaving the JP/Leaderboards table intact.

Note that everything works exactly the same as it does now, just that SOLO QUEUE DOESN’T AFFECT YOUR LB MMR, players can actually do solo queue without worrying about their leaderboard rating, players that want to be in the leaderboards will be motivated to form a premade, player base wont be separated, leaderboards will have less drastic jumps in ratings, swapping between premade and solo queue will help you fight with and against players of your skill level (supposing your group skill level = solo queue level), skilled players will be rare among low level players that just solo queue, and happier players in general…

I cant help but notice the sudden appearance of posts to nerf us eles when, coincidentally, spirit watch is in the rotation….

I wonder why…

A quick temporary change (until matchmaking is implemented) could be to create a bracket system where you could play with rank 1-10 players if you so choose, being that same rank yourself with the possibility of disabling it if you’re on a higher skill level, on either hotjoin or free tournies. This system will at least guarantee that new players will be fighting new players.

An equal system could be implemented for 10-20 and 20+. Yes, this will increase queue times for people rank 20+, but I guarantee those players wouldn’t mind waiting an extra 2 or 3 minutes to considerably reduce extreme stomping and a highly demoralized handful of players that will likely just end up giving up on spvp.

Another useful change could be to create a couple of builds for each class (combination of traits/skills/necklace/runes) which have been proved useful in spvp with a name and a general description of the playstyle it intends to create. Although, with the ability to: create, save, load and link builds, this wouldn’t be necessary…go figure.

Impressive and well thought out post Spell, best combination of ideas I’ve seen. I’d add 1 vs 1 team fights winner takes all, with matchmaking implemented on one of the tournament formats. High level structured tournament play seems best for weekly/ monthly paid tournaments, not daily routine PvP.

I’m sure Arenanet has some of those in their list, I hope they print this one to their next PvP meeting though.

You have my signature.
- Seikir

/signed

We definitely need a middle tier tournament.