Guild Wars 2

You mean the text that appears when you mouse over a skill? I did not know this was a tooltip, it looks closer to some piece of lore or something

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Zelyhn.8069:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The whole system was more or less abused to get to higher levels anyway.

People want to be rewarded for that? You have made it, you got the loot (even though loot in this game fails) and the memories. Good enough I say.

It was not abused. I got to level 80 without using a single glitch/exploit, ever!

I would say the same if had abused the system. It doesn’t matter what you did or not. The fact that it was abused massively justifies the decision not to give out any reward/compensation.

I do not care about compensation, really. Of course it bothers me a bit that other communities get compensated for resets while we do not, but that is not personal, it is a matter of justice. In fact I speak out only because I can not tolerate Anet being OK with treating their player-base like that. If they can be so incredibly insulting to some part of their community what is the reason to believe that they won’t act the same way for the rest of the player-base? This time it was us, but next time it may be others, and then we well see how people feel offended …

My point is that the Fractured patch showed one thing: Anet does not care.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The whole system was more or less abused to get to higher levels anyway.

People want to be rewarded for that? You have made it, you got the loot (even though loot in this game fails) and the memories. Good enough I say.

It was not abused. I got to level 80 without using a single glitch/exploit, ever!

Lilith Ajit.6173:

So… I’m glad you are all letting it go. I’m jealous of your ability to brush it off. I hope you all can move forward and have fun with your future guild wars endeavours.

But after being lied to, blatantly, I just can’t. I’ve been working really hard these past couple months, defending our dungeons, our community, being Loud for the attention the dungeons and fractals deserve, and it has brought us to this point.

I can’t invest as much energy as I have in something that is going to be swept under the rug. I invested everything I had in this. But now there is no point. There was no reason to anxiously await this CDI as I have done. The glimmer of hope has extinguished. I’m done.

You are not the only one.
Usually this sentence has a positive touch to it, but in this case it does not.

Many of us, being passionate about what this game could have been, have tried to speak up. We brought our concerns forward, always respectfully, we tried to start discussion with Anet. But we were met by a concrete wall.

A quick question:

Are we going to see changes to Fractals anytime before November?

@Maliken
Out of curiosity, are you in any way related to the designer of HoN?

You need not mouse-click, ever.

I have bound a keyboard key to replace my mouse’s button and now I can change my utilities without the shadow of a click.

Did you know that there are some people on this forum who get multiple infraction points just for saying they have flood control?

Consider yourself lucky not to be part of those people … for now.

You mean to tell us you are a mouse-clicker ??

Once I saw a dolyak do the impossible. If we could get more dolyaks, it would be deadly.

The developers do not have the resources to make their story live up to the expectations they inspired to their player-base either.

The developers do not have the resources to fix the bugs you are reporting.

LordByron.8369:

I could say many instabilities push the lack of balance between professions…..that is the first thing to do when speaking of fractals…

There could be a reason why 99,99% of lvl 30+ groups have a guardian….

They should just increase the variety of encounters to deal with class differences. We need more fractals!

I play since pre-release, pretty much everyday, and yet I have only one character!
Making an elementalist has been a true blessing and I have deleted all the other classes I have tried because they are so boring compared to ele

I can only tell you that accurately if you tell me your exact rotation, gear and build.

Magnetic leap has a long animation time, but Fury is a strong boost to damage, so the end result is not clear.

I am quite surprised that with Zephyr’s boon and arcane fury you do not maintain 100% fury uptime though. Are you using Fresh Air to its full potential?

noobgood.8762:

Artasqweroldy.7458:

TA forward where you can just jump out of the path and skip safely…

Isn’t that in every dungeon?

Well it is not in fotm 50+

See what I did there?

Thank you Anet for making the ele class and making it interesting

I must admit I don’t even know what to write about anymore: DEKeyz and I have theorycrafted everything, Dub and Haviz have said it all, and Anierna has stopped bothering us. Hopefully the next balance patch will give us food for thoughts!

Ele is one of the hardest classes to learn how to play, but once you master its mechanics it becomes incredibly fun!

Also, we do a lot of damage

It seems that Anet is not replying to my emails anymore. I have been infracted for a number of posts and I sent appeals, so far I have had no answers. Is it normal that I am told to be able to appeal if they are just going to ignore my emails? Note that I have always been extremely respectful in everything I wrote.

Edit: posting this here is my last resort since they do not read my emails

CC Danicia.1394:

Bugs – The best thing to do when you know something is bugged is to put it in the Bug Forum, following this format: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Please-Read-How-To-Bugging-Best-Practices

This is absolutely doable.

My choice would be powerful auras. Then pick zephyr’s boon instead of bolt to the heart in air. This will reduce your damage a little (you still gain fury uptime because arcane fury is not enough), but it will boost your group damage significantly by providing them an estimated fury uptime of 30%. If you consider fury to be a 15% damage increase then you can easily see how this is stronger than the self bonuses of bolt to the heart and stone splinters combined.
Bountiful power is sweet because less optimised groups tend to output many boons. It can be estimated as a 5% bonus to damage on average.
Vitality increases our effective health pool more than toughness, although this does not take heals into account. Anyway, I find that short-term pressure and conditions are the most dangerous threats to eles. Also toughness increases your chances of being targeted.

@Iris
The only spell that can land in fire is burning speed. This 10% boost to its blast damage (most of the trail damage will take place under an other attunement, likely air) is lower than what extra burn could give you. Furthermore, it is quite easy to learn to swap to air during the cast of burning speed (before the blast) so that all the damage lands in air and benefits from air training.

@Nike
Don’t blame the man, his build is so much better than what most pugs would go for. Also there is no use for meta builds if you do not run meta comps.

@ComeAtMe
I like your style
Note that it is likely better to invest in defensive traits rather than defensive gear. Have you tried running 0/30/0/30/10 and more offensive gear? It terms of synergy this should increase your output.

Looks very much like THE build I wrote about in my thread :p

Friendly critiques:
- Fractals do not require to be ranged, actually there is virtually no area of PvE where you need to be ranged. D/F is the best weapon setup for fractals.
- Not using full berserker?
- Wrong weapon signets
- Not using full scholar rune set?
- Not mentioning IB3 and IB5 !
- Using internal fire instead of burning precision
- Using FGS in suboptimal attuenement and on target with retaliation

There is no need to get personal, Razor.

We are trying to explain why fire is more desirable than arcane. We have stated many reasons for this. The main point is synergy.

At the same time, we are aware of the difficulty of playing this class to its full potential. I am going to eminently quote myself and say that “every build is specific to its owner”. Some people prefer more survivability because they can not rely on their dodging skills and pro-active defense to survive. This is understandable and to anyone in such situation I would advise to invest in defensive traits.
However, it is possible to survive without those traits in most situations (including pugs and solos). At the same time, the offensive contribution of fire is so much more valuable than the defensive contribution of arcane. This is why it is best to learn how to survive without arcane traits. This is not easy, but it allows you to play the elementalist to its full potential.

By saying this I do not mean that “you do not know how to dodge”. What I am saying is that if you are skilled with pro-active defense then fire will benefit you much more. You are the only judge of your skill level.

Arcane does not give you utility, nor versatility. It gives you survivability. However this comes at a huge cost in terms of damage, and you can survive much better by learning how to dodge.

Haviz and I are strong proponents of utility, but there is none to be found in the arcane trait line.

haviz.1340:

I’ve always assumed 30 points in fire and I’m sure they’re better than lingering elements and arcane precision but to be sure check 2 of the 3 stickies. There, you should find a long explanation why they are so amazing.

One final note, when anet nerfs vigour on crit by 50% and you no longer be able to dodge just to trigger ea, what will you do?

As a matter of fact we discussed arcane versus fire in my D/F thread just a day ago

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/page/6#post3678417

haviz.1340:

Secondly, fresh air is very strong with dagger as its air autoattack is simply way above anything else (maybe except fireball but it’s just clunky to use in melee).

Lightning whip has two times the damage per second of Fireball.

Not everybody plays with mesmers and guardians …

It is best to keep wielding the LH, while a team mate wields the other, and cast a sandstorm. This way most elementals are kept blind long enough for the group to clear them.

If you are part of the true master race then you can use the best tank EU.

@oZii
Thanks! I couldn’t just leave and let down this community Work is draining most of my time though.

@Ancient Ranger
I am talking about the central hub (with the bank and BLTC) where there is the waypoint. And sorry, I meant to say that 120 is the length of three hexagons (from center to center).

What I found is that it is also affected out of combat (Rata Sum test).

Also, the most interesting finding here is that the range is not 600 but more around 450.

I just tested myself and my results differ.

1) First test. In the mysts, to be in combat.
I find that swiftness makes my BS go slightly further.

2) In Rata Sum, central hub, The floor is is made of hexagons of 120 range (if I am correct).
Normal BS moves me 480 units forward (sometimes a little less, like 400).
With swiftness I reach 600 units.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Have you tried using Glyph of Storms for some blinds on those lava eles? Or possibly an LH for a quick 5 – kite into static field – 4 – drop LH?

Why would you drop LH?

Iris Ng.9845:

Dear master haviz and master Zelyhn, even though I’m still clueless at what that skill did to the fight. It somehow worked! Flawlessly! And it only took me two wipes to get the hang of it. Awesome, thank you very much!

\o/

Haviz is the master, I am merely a disciple.

I do it with D/F as you can imagine
It took me some time to learn how to dodge the arrow but now I dodge it consistently.
I position my camera so that the boss resides in the up-left corner of my screen. This gives me better visibility.
It is important to understand that DPS is not that crucial for his normal phase, you can focus on dodging more than on maintaining an optimal rotation.

My teammates usually position themselves around the boss, so that when he turns towards one of us we know that an arrow is coming.

Ephemeral.5409:

Lawful.5314:

So i see there are all these guides on skill traits and all, but they are all for endgame level 80, while i have no idea and nobody is actually making a step-by-step guide to tell you which traits you should use for PvE while leveling, what would you guys suggest to get while yo uare going trough levels 10-50+, ect?

Go in to fire first, to get the conjurer trait. After that, try to ping as many damage modifiers you can. You’ll be nuking stuff before it can deal any damage to you.

Or don’t. Because this won’t teach you anything about the game. Instead follow Shirogatsu’s advice: leveling up is the best opportunity to experiment, try everything!
In fact it is the best time to learn how to dodge. All open world mobs have a type and you will find these type of mobs again in dungeons/fractals. Therefore learning how to deal with each type of mob will teach you the most important things about this game. Take a melee setup and go toe to toe with mobs. Learn how to master them. This will make you a good player

Iris is right
Except for the staff build: I’d never take inscription, instead I would use arcane lightning.
Also you need more Ice Bow! And in ascalon I would use the lightning hammer, making sure that one of my teammates wields the other one, so that mobs don’t land a hit. This is an other reason why fire is desirable: you can take the conjurer trait.

I have always wanted to publish a little something about the potency of D/F when you are attacking mobs against a wall. In such situation, all the ticks of burning speed will be stacked into the same place. This is damaging. In fact if you did the usual rotation against a wall your DPS would increase by 14%.

I like to compare this with the staff build (30/20/10/10/0). I do this because staff requires enemies to be immobile in order to be effective. I have updated my calculator with a few builds (staff and DF-wall). For this comparison I am ignoring meteor shower and I am assuming permanent arcane lightning.

The result is that D/F against a wall beats Staff by a small margin.

It is especially interesting if you consider that I am assuming D/F to realise the usual rotation. Instead if the players were to stack might beforehand (like it is required for staff) then you could swap to D/D and deal additional damage.

This could have implications for speedrunning

To put it briefly I would say that the offensive contribution of fire far out-weights the offensive contribution of arcane Furthermore, the defensive contributions of the master and grand-master tiers of arcane are unnecessary (and potentially detrimental).

It takes a bit of practice to learn how to play without more than 10 in arcane but the drastic efficiency gain is worth the effort.

Also, you should really try switching for an off-hand focus. This weapon is stronger than its dagger counterpart in many regards. Such move will ease the transition from arcane to more efficient trait point allocations.

Many people are going to hate me but I can’t wait until they design all movement-attack skills like FGS rush or whirlwind attack to hit foes only once per use.

I am tired of banging mobs against the walls. I want real fights.

Then we will see all those “meta” ele and warriors fail so hard not knowing what to do

Don’t worry I don’t get you wrong

Might stacking with the focus is both faster and more damaging, look at the cast times and coefficients.

Now to the build.
Notice that I never said this build is “meta”. While it certainly is, I am not a fan of this concept. Contrary to an other thread in this forum I do not have the arrogance to call my builds “meta” and state that everybody should follow them. This would be very narrow-minded. Instead I claim that every build is specific to its owner. Therefore it may or may not work for you, depending on your play-style and your performance level.
However the build does work. It did not come out of thin paper. In fact there were people using this build even before I started writing about it. This is not something we simply theorycrafted (as opposed to staff builds for example): this build is the result of a lengthy game experience.
I bring this build everywhere: open world, dungeons and fractals (up to 80). I play with talented groups (not necessarily optimised) and I PuG with it. It requires a bit of practice, but it does work, and it works quite brilliantly!

I am confused then: you tell me that you never died from lack of dodge but also that cleansing a second earlier is matter of life of death for you?
How did you get the conditions in the first place, if not by lack of dodge?

Could it be because you spend time casting churning earth? This is also why we tend to favor the focus: the might stacking is faster, more damaging, and virtually risk free.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Bread.7516:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Anierna.6918:

Zelyhn.8069:

There is no correct way to read Guang.

Exactly. Case in point: Guang goes 30/10/10/10/10. Which is wrong. 30/20/10/10/0 is higher DPS in almost all sections of every dungeon. Not just with staff, but also with conjures.

I’ve said it before, 0/0/0/0/0 is really the new meta for elementalist. With tornado elite. Anything else and you’re exploiting because elementalist traits are blatant bugs, same with ele conjures, and pet summons.

btw, new meta is going human ele and [prayer to dwayna] [prayer to komir] [prayer to lyssa] [glyph of renewal] [avatar of melandru]. Stability+wiggle so op

Oh sorry, I’m not playing as the devs intended…. Mines an Asura.

Plus, I only use offhand weapons. And only focus. Doing damage is an exploit.

Only off-hand weapons?
(From the Ascension Challenge)

Hey Mikhail, I am going to try to give you a detailed answer as to why fire is much more desirable than arcana.

First let’s take a look at what arcana gives you:
- Fury on swap (very desirable)
- Vigor (very desirable)
- Lingering Elements (public enemy number 1)
- Elemental attunement (desirable for the most part)
- Arcane precision (public enemy number 2)
- Evasive Arcana (cleanse and blast are desirable)
- Boon duration (somewhat desirable)
- Attunement recharge (insignificant due to fresh air and relevant skills’ cooldown)

Then let’s look at the advantages of fire:
- Flame Barrier (public enemy number 3)
- Burning precision, internal fire, or Conjurer (all desirable)
- Sunspot (desirable)
- Pyromancer’s alacrity (very desirable: aligns the cooldown of our important fire spells with the rotation pattern of a build with little arcana points)
- Burning Rage (desirable)
- Persisting flames (very desirable)
- Power (very desirable)
- Condition duration (desirable)

Now let’s analyse the contributions:
- First, Evasive Arcana. This trait is actually detrimental. This is because you are going to use your dodges for something else than dodging. Therefore you are actually more likely to take damage and conditions. So either you use this trait strategically and the outcome is paradoxical, or you don’t and then it is simply useless.
- I am going to assume that you are using EA strategically, and therefore that you are not dodging as efficiently as you could. This means that you need more sustain. Therefore boons like protection and regeneration are relevant for you. But you could do without them if you used dodges for dodging. Therefore only the might from Elemental attunement is relevant. This is a nice group contribution, but it is very weak compared to what you could get in fire for the same amount of points.
- Boon duration is nice. If we disregard unnecessary boons then the best we can get from it is the following: say you can maintain 19 stacks of might on average then boon duration will bring this to 25 (rounding a bit), this is a contribution of 6, and that is 210 power. Fire gives you 300. Granted, there is also a group effect to take into account.
- I personally use 10 in arcana to maintain perma vigor and ensure my fury uptime. This is because I tend to play in non-optimised groups. However it can be argued that persisting flames nullifies the contribution of fury on swap if you can realise a proper rotation.

In comparison, fire gives you the following:
- Offensive defense via the use of defensive conditions (chill, cripple, etc)
- Much greater group effect: fury for the group (equivalent to a 420 precision boost for the group), increased vulnerability stacks from Weak Spot = more damage for the group.
- Synergy everywhere.
- Damage, damage, damage. And well, the “Zerker Paradigm” dictates that the faster you kill your foes the less likely you are to get hit before they die. Therefore damage is defense, somehow

To conclude:
Once you are confident in your ability to rely on dodges to survive, then the defensive contribution from arcana becomes irrelevant and paradoxical. In contrast fire brings much more to the table.
In the future, burning speed and frozen burst will be buffed. This implies that pyromancer’s alacrity and persisting flames will be even more desirable.
My advice to you is to start playing with less arcana progressively. Keep vigor but start putting points elsewhere (water is a safe choice to start with). Then gradually increase your investment in fire. Also, you should grab a focus. In the end the most efficient build is 30/30/x/0/x (+10 in either arcana for vigor or earth for damage).

Fror.2163:

if, and I mean “if”, I read Guang correctly.

There is no correct way to read Guang.

In every possible PvE situation berserker (and assassin) gear is better. Due to its synergistic power it is stronger by a large margin.

Mark my word: there is absolutely no reason why someone should choose any other gear type.

If you wish to have more defensive possibilities then work on your traits, utilities, and weapons. But gear must be optimal for direct damage. This is because the marginal defense return from switching traits is drastically better than that of switching gear.

Edit
I have one hour flood control so I must edit this post to reply to the following message by Xyonon.3987.
Do not use staff!
Staff is generally underpowered, un-synergistic, and has little use unless you are a top level player with an adequate party.

Wisdom is contrary to forum rules.

Fext.3614:

Go ele if you want to be welcome in pug runs.

Aaannd there is always the one guy who doesn’t get it.

Nothing is necessary but support does matter. Yes, especially in high level PvE.
That being said you are right: there is simply no reason to use any other gear than berserker anywhere in PvE. Even if you focus on heal and support (via traits and weapons), berserker is better. The reason for this is that no gear is more efficient and synergistic than berserker. Therefore even if you don’t focus on damaging so much, the damage boost that this gear will give you is drastically better than the support and defense boost you could get from any other gear.

So people should try to output support if the build for it, but they should wear DPS gear anyway.

Hey EvilSnowflake, maybe you can tell us a bit more about your calculator?
I am generally wary of downloading anything that is not from a perfectly trusted source, so I would appreciate a slightly more in-depth preview of what your calculator can do

“This is a game breaking mechanic and needs to be fixed. Using a exploit like this in a record is like playing soccer with your hands.”

- Debbysaurus (on Reddit, Is Fiery Greatsword an Exploit?)