Guild Wars 2

Lacrisma.1540:

DeWolfe.2174:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat.

Sounds good except, this change will increase pin sniping to an extreme. I wouldn’t make this change.

Logged in to add this, too.

Commander focus has been a problem for a loooooong time now, and with this change some people might be even more tempted to snipe the enemy com.

(I would love this change as much as the others if it excluded Squadleads, the “trying to rezz a downed player on top of a dead player” can be pretty frustrating.)

I would think the issue of ressing downed on top of dead won’t exist anymore if there isn’t a res option for full-dead players while you’re in combat.

As far as driver sniping, it’s true it’s a problem and kind of a cheese tactic but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to not implement the change – it helps far more than it hurts. Ressing your driver from full-dead is usually a luxury only large groups can afford, and in my experience most smaller skill groups have a back up driver who is able to immediately take over or the players know their own roles well enough to coordinate with one another even with the commander dead. Being able to res from full dead while in combat has been a major issue in trying to tackle outnumbered fights for a long time and this change would really help smaller skilled groups against enemy blobs.

Honestly I have barely gone into WvW since HOT came out since it really hasn’t been fun, but these changes are ones the community has been requesting for a long time and it’s great to see ANet responding and announcing it ahead of time so they can listen to our feedback. This is a huge difference from how you’ve handled it before and really appreciated. If all of this rolls out as well as some fixes to WvW population and adjusting the new BL maps to be a little more appealing / functional, I’d be thrilled to get back into WvW.

ANet: We’re going to design an elite spec that brings back Auramancer!!….oh wait, Auras cause too much visual clutter, so we’re going to make it so they’re practically invisible.

From an aesthetic standpoint, I don’t like the change at all. I’m really unhappy about the "reducing visual clutter’ patches they keep adding because it makes the game look less beautiful and feel less fun, especially in a game that is all about the visuals.

But more importantly this is a HUGE problem functionally. If the point of reducing all the visual noise is for #esports spectating (and lol, there are so many problems with GW2 spectating that have nothing at all to do with clutter), it is a big problem to not be able to quickly identify when your opponent is using auras, especially for Shocking and Magnetic aura. The previous visibility (which imo was perfectly fine) allowed for counterplay. Because of Tempest we have the potential for an absolutely stupid amount of Shocking Aura uptime (Dagger 3, Tempest Defense, Rebound, and Unstable Conduit / Fresh Air) and others not being able to tell when we have that in combat is really not okay.

IMO Anet should not be doing universal visual nerfs, they should be putting in checkbox options like OP suggested (I’d say split at least by self, party / squad, enemies) or sliders so we can custom adjust it.

A guildie decided he wanted a personal guild hall (he’s pretty rich and he wants to make a mega jp) and I know he was able to claim it w/ 4 people. I don’t think there’s a number issue…the final boss may be difficult, but reaching the timed mobs should not be hard? Does everyone you are doing it with have glider to get to some of the further ones w/o taking the stairs, and are you efficiently targetting the vinetenders before the big maw? That’s really all I can think of…

I have only done it w/ ~25 people (split into 2 groups to reach all the things) and heard about the 4-man claim, so I am not sure how it scales for 8, but you might just need to strategize differently. Good luck!

Sorel.4870:

amaranthined.5167:

but it’s hell of a lot more difficult to carry bad/new pugs.

You think? I find it harder to carry inappropriate builds (like shatter mesmer or celestial engineer), but a lot easier to carry bad players. All they have to do is to pack and spam skills. If you play a tanky CC spec, you can really carry hard, while in conquest, if one player can’t rotate, you are pretty much in a 4v5 situation.

I usually queue with at least one or two friends, so it’s a little easier to rotate and try to compensate for the bad player on conquest. Whereas on courtyard, there’s not a whole lot I can do about the guy who ignores you in chat and instead just dives straight into the enemy and feeds them 200 points over the course of the match, especially when those fights tend to snowball off the first kill…

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to manually level /any/ character, but I’ll try to drop some tips. If you are looking to level in PvE, as opposed to EOTM or pvping for tomes, I would recommend zerker stats for gear, and a staff for the weapon, mostly because staff has a lot of aoe, so you can more easily clear mobs and tag more enemies for exp/loot.

Most endgame builds for ele will have you putting points into water and arcana, so I would suggest working on unlocking those first. This should also help you with sustain if you are running zerker gear. As far as skills, you probably want your cantrips – lightning flash and mist form especially, for mobility/gtfo situations. Signet of Air is also nice for mobility if you’re doing map-completion style leveling. Ice Bow is a great source of dps (5 to immobilize, then rain 4 down on them). I also use Arcane Shield and Glyph of Storms in pve sometimes.

If I’m like…completely wrong and you’re looking to level in a different situation haha, feel free to whisper or mail me ingame (Zvezdana) and I’d be happy to talk stuff out with you or answer questions.

Honestly, courtyard should not be part of the same map rotation as conquest. People set up builds for conquest and not everyone is capable of adjusting within the timer to be suitable for a team fight, not to mention how much more unbalanced a courtyard match of pugs vs premade is compared to conquest. It’s certainly possible to win against the odds, but it’s hell of a lot more difficult to carry bad/new pugs. I suspect that stronghold, when it does come out, will be a ranked map or (even better) in a separate queue from conquest.

If you specifically only want to play on certain maps, you can always run down the hotjoin list to find them….I mean, I specifically avoid the ones you mentioned but to each their own?

I used to love running your staff builds (like Maesto said, that Blinding Ashes one continues to drive people nuts in 1v1s, its amazing haha) but I mostly play Fresh Air these days. It’ll feel pretty weird to drop ER/LF but your video play is pretty persuasive, I’ll probably try this next time I head into pvp c: Thanks for such thorough but interesting to watch video guides to your builds, really makes it easier to understand and pick up quickly.

If your goal is to make this a condi d/d ele, I personally would stick with the meta celestial amulet. You lose direct condi damage, but you gain sustain, which is important to a condi build – you have to be able to outlast your opponent so your conditions can actually wear them down. Also, the stats you gain from cele ammy let you use traits like Burning Precision in Fire (you only have 5% precision with the carrion amulet so…it would probably not do much for you as is) or Strength of Stone (you have sub-2k toughness) etc. If you wanted to move your traits around, I’d drop from 6 to 4 in water and swap to Cleansing Wave so you still have easy condi clear.

As far as Arcane, I agree with Tei / the meta, the benefits of Renewing Stamina / Elemental Attunement / Evasive Arcana are just way better than the ones you have right now. Arcane surge doesn’t even make sense your build right now because you don’t have a single arcane skill equipped?

Also, you don’t have any sigils chosen…I don’t know if that was an oversight or you just weren’t sure, I suggest Doom & Geomancy.

Freiyr.7482:

Right click on the GW2 shortcut and select “Properties”. You’ll see the Target box there. Then it’s just a matter of copy-pasting “C:\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -assetsrv 93.188.135.37:80 into that box. Click okay and you should be set to go.

Worked like a charm, thanks so much! Been waiting since this evening trying to get the new build to patch. As a note though, you may want to remove the assetsrv part after you download the patch, running the actual game with it turned my language to German?

….No.

At random (usually once every 5 matches or so) my loading time into the match will take so long that I finally load in when the final 10 second counter has already started, or the match has just begun. I know I’m not the only player with ridiculous load times. Even if your load time is normal, insta-ready would start a match before any player would even have time to say “no wait stop”.

I ran this last night for 2-3 hours of dueling with a friend who plays every class and another ele friend. It’s been a long while since I did staff dueling (been playing a lot of s/f lately) so took me a bit but this build really has a lot of 1v1 potential and was quite fun. I struggled more with a medi guard than mes actually, since so much of the damage in this build is condi and I just couldn’t dish out enough before all the teleport burst destroyed me – occasionally I’d be able to catch them with a static but I probably just don’t know them well enough to catch the tells. With mesmer, I think my main issue was that I’m used to running a sigil of energy and/or Renewing Stamina, so I was struggling to not waste dodges before their shatter spikes.

The signet of earth, which I hadn’t tried post-patch, is absolutely incredible for setting up bursts and the bleeding is a nice chunk of damage. The short CD as well as all the other cc available to staff eles got pretty ridiculous the longer the fights went on. While I don’t think I’ll be running it in pvp, for dueling I really enjoyed it! Been a fan of your builds since that first staff 1v1 video you posted so I was thrilled to see this new one and hope to see you keep making these.

Firstly; I’m not gonna say don’t go condi, but in PvE it’s not ideal, although if you’re just running around solo doing map comp or something I guess go for it? But most groups won’t really be happy if you run this for dungeons or something…on the other hand if you roam with this in WvW you can probably have some fun trolling people.

That being said, I’m returning your build with my fixes and I’ll try and explain my changes, warning this is going to get LONG:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYhMM6cW5wvBf0AdAGxTwEYcAoAEALmDaBA-TxRHwABeAAsU/5uSQAnAA06BCt/wRlfBAOA2tuBgd3d3d3d3SBAzaA-e

WEAPONSET + SKILLS

I left it as d/d since I don’t know if you’re comfortable playing other weapons, but I recommend trying out s/f for condi, sceptre earth AA is much easier to stack bleed with and focus has some nice defensive utility to help outlast your opponent You could even try going d/f since you don’t need the burst of offhand dagger in a condi build.

Arcane Brilliance >> Ether Renewal: AB heals for less than a fully-cast ER, and you do not need the blast finisher to stack might since this build is not power based. Also, condi-cleanse is a good thing to have.

Signet of Air >> Lightning Flash: Personal preference, but in WvW there are lots of spots where LF can get you out of a bad situation or to use it as a gap closer on an opponent running away.

Arcane Shield >> Signet of Earth: Normally I would never seriously put a signet into a build, and condi builds usually take Signet of Fire for the burn on activate, but the patch tomorrow (today??) will add bleed on activate to SoE and its passive brings your toughness to 3k. (I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.)

TRAITS:

Taking 6 out of Fire and redistributing to Water and Arcane: You get 300 power and condition duration from this, the latter of which is nice but the power is unnecessary (the difference between 900 power and 1200 power is pretty negligible, you still hit like a wet noodle) and nothing you get out of traiting into Fire is better than what you get out of traiting into Water and Arcane, especially for the added sustain via condi cleanse and boons on attunement swap.

Geomancer’s Alacrity >> Strength of Stone: The reduced CD on earth skills is not nearly as good as gaining 300 condi damage (on top of the 300 you get from traiting full Earth) from your toughness.

Serrated Stones >> Diamond Skin: You have 3k toughness, they can’t apply condi until you’re below 90% health: you’re going to be a nightmare to try and get below the threshhold, and then you have ER/Water Attunement to cleanse condi and heal back up over it again. You don’t need the extra bleed duration since you are taking Krait runes, and the 5% damage increase compared to being last man standing is meh.

GEAR:
Sigil of Hobbling >> Geomancy: You have 3 sources of crippling, 1 of which is probably not going to hit most of the time (Churning Earth) Rather than duration of a condi you can barely apply reliably, geomancy gives you access to bleed even when you swap out of Earth to heal, and more bleed to proc your Krait Rune +duration.

Sigil of Agony >> Doom: Poison is a handy condition to have, especially against warriors with healing signet. Also, gives you another type of condition you can apply to mask your bleeds when they condi cleanse. You already have an absurd amount of bleed duration, you really shouldn’t need anymore.

Also, I gave you food/utility. Yay.

Take whatever parts of this you like or change it up, just tried to explain all the choices I made so you can make your own decisions about you want this build to be or not to be. Super sorry it got so long!

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

amaranthined.5167:

Originally came from this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/1v1-Serious-Staff-Elementalist-Video (I may have changed some stuff I’m not 100% sure?)

Thanks for posting this! I am the one who made this video. I’m flattered that you took the time to dig it up… I had thought they had all fallen into obscurity.

This is the most recent build from my latest tutorial video (Caution: this may be slightly outdated now)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLD2zAOOArEGgAQIm8Y4AFGUc7XA-TJxHwADeAAa2fAwFAoYZAA

This is the tutorial video featuring the build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCubgeoc6A0

Good luck

It was the first build I ever used in TPVP and I have plenty of fond memories of it :P I’d hate to bring it up without crediting you, though finding that thread took a bit of digging.

If you’re looking for meta staff builds there’s these:

Zerker Staff: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6c2zwyBr0AEAS4ARWIuUlOleD-TJRBwARuAA02fgcZAAPAAA

Bunker/Support Staff: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMMqc2zwwBr0AhAG5NwCoBOKAUuGUCWBA-TJxHAB1eBAQqMwP7PAwDAAA

I would recommend you make your own adjustments to them to fit your own playstyle, but they’re good starting points. Zerker staff is imo the harder to play of the 2 if you’re playing solo because it takes good positioning and some team support, especially if enemy team has mobile, burst dps specs to kill you before you can do any good. Played well and in certain situations, can totally turn the tide of a team fight.

My personal preferred staff builds:

Modified Zerker: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6c2zw6Bf0AEAC5qFjGKQ53fLD-TJBFwAOeAAl2foaZAAXAAA

Has a lot more survivability than the above one (cost: less damage, but still hits quite hard), can actually contest/sit points if needed (not ideal but you’ll last more than 5 seconds) and not die instantly. I take Ice Bow to use the 4 when you get a down – if they try to res, usually you can take out the the resser too, it’s pretty nice. With FGS nerf it probably won’t be worth taking anymore, but until tomorrow it’s good for Khylo/Forest to hit treb/beast, or on Foefire if you plan to go for the lord.

Arcane Burst: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6Z2ywkBd0AQACxgtE2IQ5hHXC-TJBFwAOeAAl2fAaZAAXAAA

Originally came from this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/1v1-Serious-Staff-Elementalist-Video (I may have changed some stuff I’m not 100% sure?)

It’s a lot of fun to play since people usually expect zerker when they see a staff but you can burst pretty well, and it’s a total surprise. Can 1v1, contest/sit points, etc. I’d reccomend going to the original thread, I believe there’s a video that explain combos.

Good luck(: I don’t play staff as often as I used to in PVP but it’s a lot of fun, and I hope you find what works for you.

…while I really don’t agree with the idea of sitting in one element, I will point you towards the one remotely viable build I’ve seen which does exclusively camp in a single attunement.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/WvW-Elementalist-Stone-Heart-Conjuror/first#post4135598

Since build editor is down right now, summary is it’s an s/f ele build that revolves around the Stone Heart trait and requires you to never! ever! leave earth!, includes a solid amount of condi removal via Ether Renewal/Cleansing Fire/Cleansing Fire trait iirc, and then focus on conjure weapons for damage/the invuln of focus to buy time in tricky situations and the scepter AA to stack bleed when conjures aren’t up. It’s honestly a pretty troll build and not something you could run in the average scenario but it’s funny for roaming/casual wvw since enemies are usually pretty confused about what you’re doing…

Like others have said above though, the only way builds like this are viable is because of conjure weapons for damage, and even then it’s so far from maximizing the potential of ele that it’s really not worth it. This build in particular takes advantage of the only grandmaster trait that actually does make you sit in one attunement for its benefit….unlike diamond skin/aquatic benevolence, and I’m not really sure what gave you the idea that they did?

I assume he’s talking about the Combat Mode mod? I’ve never used it but from what I’ve read it might help you. If you don’t feel like modding, fast casting (in game setting) does exactly what you described…??

Happened tonight on an otherwise smooth run, same conditions as many have listed above (while doing arm seals, one person fell at right seal, they respawned downed on platform minus hammer, hammer completely MIA) – as it was with a guild group, we spent a lot of time trying every solution we could think of to try and reset. In addition to the methods Tesumia listed, we also tried different methods of wiping (falling, burning from the braziers, death by chanters) dying at different points to try and force an earlier check point respawn (from each of the floors, as well as all the way from spawn) blinking to grab the hammer right when it showed up on death of party, etc. We managed to get fast enough at it to trigger the picking up sound but did not actually pick up anything, and it disappeared almost instantly.

…Please fix this already, it’s infuriating to have happen towards the end of a third fractal, especially at the higher levels.

First off, do you have guard stacks? If you take a camp at the start of roaming or even just knock out some tower guards, you should have max guard stacks in a flash and that will increase your stats by 2500hp/100 power. If you do have guard stacks, take those into account even though it’s not an option on build editor.

Personally, I think you’re running far more toughness/hp than you need for a roaming build. D/D ele excels in burst damage for roaming and it doesn’t seem like you have much of it. In addition, the lack of any points into Arcane means you’ll be sitting at the base attunement recharge rate of 13 seconds – you’ll probably be stuck auto-attacking in longer fights. I would at the very least recommend putting 4 into Arcane for Elemental Attunement, the boons/fury on swap are huge and your Cleansing Water will be able to proc on Water attunement. Right now your only regen procs are getting crit hit or using a cantrip – if fighting a full condi build, they’re not likely to crit, and having to pop your cantrips for a condi cleanse seems silly.

I would also suggest swapping Spell Slinger for Internal Fire. The 3 stacks of might are nothing you can’t get off your Sigil of Battle and are not worth taking over +10% flat damage increase for fire. You don’t need a toughness food if you’re keeping the Soldiers trinkets, you’ve got waaaay more toughness than you need.

Lastly, while you’re still using the build editor, play around with your armour/gear mix. Full Celestial’s far from optimal, and outside of PvP where you don’t get a choice, taking advantage of the option to mix gear will usually be much better for your stats.

I run more generic traiting for roaming I guess, but this is my build (with full guard stacks): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcM6cW5wwBf0APACxhvE+IQ5qJfC-TVTDABos/Qg6AmRdAYURYTVKeSJ2LqgAlyjKeAAgoFAATQKoEUiTAQAAEgdGAkQL0szhuzhuzECY0CA-w

Wyrden is correct, max speed in the game is capped at 33%. So the effects of your traiting + sigil aren’t making any difference if you have the swiftness boon (and without the boon, they are just overlapping each other. Drop one or the other.) The swiftness boon’s duration stacks, but movement speed does not.

Also re: Mist Form, which gives +66% movement speed in the tooltip, does not actually make you move faster. What it does is counteract the effects of conditions like chill or cripple when you go into Mist Form, so that you move at normal out of combat walking speed.

One With Air’s effect of +100% movement speed similarly negates chill/cripple and gives you the normal out of combat +33% swiftness as well.

I have zero idea how any of this effects the speed of walking backwards.

insanemaniac.2456:

i bet no dev has ever participated in a GvG

Not true because we once invited someone from ANet who was watching in OS into our guild to do like two rounds with us lol.

Totally support this idea, would be great to be able to gvg any guild (well-known top tier ones as well as lower-tier ones) without having to transfer. Would probably help with the population imbalance as well, since everyone won’t have to go to the top 2-3 tiers for better fights.

The stats on your armour do not matter in PvP, as PvP uses a build separate from the one you use in PvE/WvW. As long as you are wearing armour + have the correct type of weapon equipped (ex staff, daggers, etc), you determine the stats using a PvP amulet in the build editor.

So yes, you can take your celestial gear to both, but just letting you know it doesn’t really matter lol.

Agreed, how many millions of clicks have I used to upgrade siege in bulk….

Or, since maybe some people don’t want to have to go and start crafting, just let us have a “Forge All” button. Ex, we set up the recipe with all the components, and then hit that. I’m sure that could be useful for things besides siege too.

I would love for this to be an option, considering EOTM is not suitable for GvGs, but realistically ANet probably doesn’t care enough about GvG to dedicate resources into this.

I run 0/4/0/4/6, and take Air I, VI, Water III, X, and Arcane II, VIII, XI.

You could swap out Arcane II (Renewing Stamina) for Arcane VI (Windborne Dagger) for +25% movement speed if mobility is really important to you – I usually decide depending on if I’m roaming by myself or with other people who have more swiftness uptime.

Gear-wise I go for a mix of Knights and Celestial with Zerk/Valk trinkets, Battle and Energy sigils, but obviously you could try out different stuff.

Grevender.9235:

Sadly, A.Net has a mysterious love for promoting skilless deadly builds (hambow war, PU/condimantra mesmer, spirit ranger, MM necro ecc)..

This would be because that’s what they run. Played a team that had 3 ANet and 2 pugs, the ANet devs were a minionmancer, a spirit ranger, and a hambow warrior.

I main a staff ele in PVP as well, I don’t play glass but I do love 1v1ing people and then killing them because they assume I’m a glass build/assumed I would be an easy kill because staff.

I run this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISJD2zAuMAdEGACQIGslwGBKP84SA-TJhIwAAeAAX2fYwFAQYZAA

I found the original version of this somewhere on the forums but I don’t remember the person’s name…I’ve been playing around with runes/sigils since patch and lately I’ve been running these, but there’s room to play around with those if you want. I swap the heal to Ether Renewal and Arcane Blast for Cleansing Fire if I see at least two necros on the other team/know that they’re going to be condi heavy, haha. Takes some practice but I usually do decent with this, can handle most opponents 1v1 except for decap engi, but those are kind of a pain for everyone. It’s also pretty good for ranged nuking if you’re supporting teammates who are sitting on the point without being too squishy.

As someone who’s on HOD, I’m sad I’m seeing this so late in the matchup haha, would have loved to get a practice duel with you. It’s been a hard week for roamers in general I think, but looks like you got some decent fights in. Staff’s my fave to run with, and you do it well.

My roaming buddy mains warrior, with a ranger as the fave alt for roaming. Both have been solid and fun for roaming with – I personally main staff and occasionally go d/d just to practice. We’ve won outnumbered fights plenty of times, imo it can help just knowing each other’s play styles so you can have each other’s backs.

That being said, I certainly wouldn’t turn down a thief or a guard to roam with. As far as duo-roaming goes, the only class I would be hesitant about is mesmer for the same reasons maeggle listed.

Reality.9256:

I usually do solo roam as a Staff Elementalist in WvW but I usually never end up killing my opponent because of the lack of damage with my 0-10-0-30-30 with 3 Cantrips.

I roam a lot with those traits too, mostly because I roam after guild stuff and I’m too lazy to change my build and swap gear and blah. I’d agree that it’s pretty hard going solo, but get a friend to come with you (someone running a high damage/condi build) and it’s totally possible to do 2v2-5. A lot of opponents will focus you first because staff eles outside of a zerg are often easy prey. Assuming your 0/10/0/30/30 build is on the tankier side, you can survive and your friend can burst them to death while you kite a little, throw in some dps (kite while moving backwards/sideways so you can keep attacking) and control the area you’re fighting in with aoes. I roam most nights on staff ele with a friend and we do pretty decent.

I meant to comment on this when you first posted it, but I figured I’d wait until I actually gave it a test run myself. Now that I have, I can say it’s been a lot of fun running this in PvP and actually being able to 1v1 people for caps somewhat dependably (or at least being able to bunker long enough to call for help when I need to, haha)

Staff has been my favorite weapon for a long time and it’s nice to see a build for it that’s not support or zerker. I usually get some good fights while roaming but your video was pretty inspiring.

If you’re going with a ‘water ele’ theme, you might as well go for full 30 in water. It gives you access to more vitality and condi-cleanse. Depending on whether you’re running cantrips in your skills or not, there are some really useful traits at the adept/master level (Water III, Cantrip Mastery and Water IX, Soothing Disruption) If not, I’d recommend ones like Water X and Water XI, which are condi cleanse when attuning to water and condi cleanse when granting regen respectively.

For the heal slot, I would recommend Arcane Brilliance, the blast finisher heal. Using that on top of the small water field (Staff Water 3) is almost a full heal in most situations and of course is an area heal for your allies as well.

As far as WvW, you definitely can play a non-staff ele. D/D is good for solo-roaming, and I know a few people who run S/F as roamers.

As far as the lack of solo ele roamers, I would agree that I haven’t seen many lately…but in general, most people seem to be roaming in groups a lot more often.

edit// Also…I personally would advise against running full zerker in WvW as it’ll make you super squishy…especially if you plan on roaming. I use Knights/Cav on my roaming build, and Valk might also work?

I don’t know about full builds, but I did map completion with a staff ele (in retrospect, a d/d ele would have had me moving a lot quicker, sigh.) For the run-like-hell-and-don’t-look-back moments, like when there’s a mob around a POI:

- Sigil of Air
- Mist Form, for when those mobs are perhaps a bit too tough to run through the normal way.
- Arcane Shield, see above.
- FGS, skill 3 for movement across maps and quick get-aways.

For when you actually need to do some fighting, like a communing skill point that needs to be cleared out first:

- Earth Elemental Elite is a good kiter in most PvE situations
- Ice Bow, skill 4

IMO I don’t think you need to gear yourself up for a whole build just for map completion, just be aware of what sort of situations you’re heading into and swap your skills accordingly…and once in awhile you gotta ask a friend for help or hope for a kind stranger, lol. I f you feel really squishy when running away from mobs, you can go for PVT, but I really don’t remember having too much of a problem with most of the map. Good luck!

The wiki says “The chance of receiving rarer items increases as players achieve higher World Rank.” but I would agree with Drakma that in my experience the rewards have not noticeably improved. You might get an ascended or two after 1000 ranks but it’s not like you’re going to start getting them often.

I don’t really see how that screws them over – they’re in the same boat as everyone else…it’s not really ANet’s fault if a player chose to rank up lots of different characters thus keeping them all low instead of playing only one/two characters and having lots of ranks on those. If anything, wouldn’t this be good for them since they’d get a sudden boost into supposedly-better-loot territory?

I use PVT armor with Celestial/Valkyrie ascended trinkets on my staff ele (same trait set up, 0/0/10/30/30) and it works well, leaning towards survivability but decent dps. Since you already have PVT for roaming, you can also just use it for your support ele. Full valk is also a good alternative if you want more crit damage and aren’t as worried about toughness…and if you slap some Divinity Runes onto your gear it should be good.

I agree that it would be nice to have a way to carry extra siege around when running in small groups – you can get siege up with a 3-man group if you can claim a camp for 15 supp, but that’s not always possible, and it sucks leaving all that supply behind for the enemy to take back.

Maybe instead of siege or a trap, since I’m not really sure this falls into either of those categories, it could be an upgrade/payment thing at the camp where you can hire a personal dolyak to carry some extra supply? Dolyaks are kinda slow so while it may not be as fast as resupplying (depending on how close your target is to the camp) you don’t have to worry about your siege getting killed by guards or enemies when you leave it alone.

1) How would forcing an even numbers cap be even remotely fair? If your server got matched up against a server with much less population, and perhaps only ever has 5-10 people, should only 5-10 people from your own server get to WvW that week?

2) “Have it kick everyone at 12” 12 where? In America? In Europe? In Asia/Australia? People play this game from all over the world, and people play this game at all hours. I personally put in the majority of my WvW hours at 11pm-6am EST, as that is when I am usually home and able to play.

I get the frustration about uneven coverage and nightcapping, as my own server is currently facing two servers who have more numbers and very different coverage hours. Our ppt drops like crazy every night EST, because our night is their prime time, and yeah it sucks. You learn to strategize, utilize distractions, form small groups and map-hop often to keep them wondering where you’re going to hit, etc.

The way things are currently isn’t great, I just don’t think your suggestions would improve anything.

Would agree with the above poster, and suggest putting cantrips (Lightning Flash and Mist Form in particular, imo) into your skill slots if you are running by yourself (ex, trying to catch up to zerg from spawn) Both of those have gotten me out of bad situations while running alone. Sigil of Air is also nice just for the passive speed increase if you’re just running, since you can easily switch it out once you reach your destination.

For the WVW Match Up forums, they announced that they were going to be archiving it at least two weeks before they actually did. ANet thought they were getting too toxic/off-topic etc and didn’t want to deal with moderating it anymore? I know some people are now using gw2wvw.net as the new match up forums, but there are probably other sites as well.

Apologies if anything in this post is stupid, I’m still learning about builds and what makes a good one, but I play staff ele as my main in WvW so here’s some of my opinions. Feel free to take them or leave them or argue back!

First off, I think if you’re going to fill your skill slots with cantrips, you might as well trait into water for Cantrip Mastery (Water 3, reduced recharge) and Soothing Disruption (Water 9, grants 6.5 secs of regen and vigor when using a cantrip) These two traits are super useful – especially since it seems like your build currently only has 12.5k hp, if I’m reading this thing right?? Which makes me assume that you must be using your cantrips an awful lot to stay alive, so reduced recharge and regen/vigor are good things to have.

Also, you say that 30 in fire is a must, but I don’t really agree? Your first trait in Fire is Spell Slinger, cantrips granting you might, but Mist Form doesn’t even let you use combat skills while you’re in it, so you waste 4 seconds of might there. If you really want 3 stacks of might mid-battle, you can trait into Arcane and get Elemental Attunement (Arcane 8 ) Your second trait in Fire is a condi-remover but it only activates once you have 3 conditions on you, and imo you want a quick condi-removal on hand for when you’re immobilized. Cleansing Wave (Water 10) or Cleansing Water (Water 11) can give you that.

Personally, I run a fairly standard 0/0/10/30/30 staff build, focusing on group support and survivability. You mentioned that you don’t see a whole lot of different builds, which imo is probably because there aren’t a whole lot of ones that work very well for ele right now, especially with staff.

To get good dps with a staff, you have to give up a lot of other things. (See: HP pool) Staff is mostly a support weapon. It’s a lot of fun to play and it’s my favorite, you certainly can get a lot of kills with it and even 1v1 on occasion, but in general it’s meant for support. It seems like you want to have good dps without going as squishy as full zerker, and I kind of wonder if maybe using a different weapon would help your build? There are probably lots of other people in these forums that can give you more specific direction.

I’m sorry this is so long, and I hope at least some of it was helpful? Good luck out there!

I would love being able to grey out dead enemy names. I’ve done the same bombing mistake you mentioned loads of times and it’s a total pain.

Maybe not flat gray because that might make it too hard to read against all the particle effects? I think black might be alright for legibility + differentiation…but I’ll take any non-red color, really.

edit// CreativeAnarchy, isn’t there already that red symbol above downed enemies’ heads? I think that’s more noticeable than the names being greyed out….

As far as the items – I kind of doubt it? I suppose you could contact ANet, but since you deleted them yourself and it wasn’t like you accidentally destroyed an expensive item by misclick or got hacked, I feel it’s kind of unlikely they would restore your items. Can’t hurt to ask, I guess.

As for what to do now assuming you don’t get your stuff back…I really wouldn’t waste the gold – you’ll probably regret that in the far future too, lol. Maybe just make a pact with yourself to not use any of your extra gold (gold not earned on your new chara) until you max out and want to burn it on exo/ascended/legendary stuff. Just make a new char and start playing again. I think the game’s changed a lot in the last year (I don’t know when you quit, but it sounds like it was pretty early on?) Plenty of new stuff has gotten added, so there’s lots for you to explore and try out. Just play the game however you enjoy it.

idk if that’s even helpful but i’m really not sure what kind of advice you’re looking for haha

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I’m not sure what your question/problem is here. Do you want your items back? Do you want to get rid of all the gold in your wallet?

I run a control/support staff ele as my main. I get plenty of bags as my reward. I would not get nearly as many bags if I was a roamer, and I have a lot of fun playing the way I do. Running a support build doesn’t mean completely losing your ability to tag enemies – I play with the mentality of helping the group is helping myself. I’ve got decent survivability and dodging skills, but the enemy zerg isn’t going to sit around and wait for me to cast Meteor Shower on them.

In any case, I don’t really see how giving exp/gold for healing/giving boons would work within the existing system, because so many skills/traits do this as side effects or with just one click- they take hardly any effort. I think the person who said the copper reward thing was joking but like. That’s literally about the amount of reward deserved. Meanwhile, you should totally get something extra for reviving someone in the middle of a combat zone versus reviving them after the fighting’s done because that takes a lot more effort?

Idk, I wouldn’t be AGAINST getting more rewards because hey, free stuff, but I personally don’t see that it’s hugely necessary either.

I don’t really think a reward for giving boons and heals is necessary in WvW. If you’re running a build that focuses on support, the incentive to do your job is so the group you’re running with doesn’t wipe. A support build probably isn’t going to last long/do much damage against an enemy zerg on its own, so you help others so that they can fight the zerg and keep you from dying.

The game as a whole actually does encourage helping other players – shared exp + loot even if you’re not partying together, exp for reviving, etc. I don’t know if you just gave some bad examples for what you meant, but for the most part players do get rewarded for helping others.

8/10 – It’s a little hard to see the colors in this cap because of the lighting, for the most part it looks alright but I /think/ it looks like your sylvari char is blue and I’m not sure how I feel about the green/red in the armor then. (If those aren’t the colors, ignore me – the lighting is super dull and I’m kinda guessing here) The actual armor itself looks great though, I like the style of it.

This is my mesmer Aearial – I don’t usually WvW with her, but the lighting in BL at night is just so pretty.

ImProVocateur.5189, I would go with the third one! I feel kind of iffy about the color schemes of the other two….I think the third one meshes nicest. 7/10, I think it needs some different pants or shoes because those are so plain in comparison to the top half.

Human Noble caps attached, there’s two slightly different dye schemes I use for her depending on my mood.

@Drakh, thanks for the suggestion. I’ll take a look into it(:

@skacamow, it’s a control staff ele build, which means it’s nice against zergs if there’s a good place to stand up high or if we’re at a chokepoint. It lets me do some of the same “stopping the enemy zerg in its tracks” as your mesmer build, as long as you have quick fingers and constantly switch attunements. I’ve found that combos are really useful. I have fun playing it, though it could probably use some tweaking for better dps.

@Helios, I’ve only done HotM once but I might try it again to test some of this stuff out. Thanks.

@Clockwork, thanks for the advice. I admit that I was kind of expecting someone to lecture me about the greatness of swords (has happened elsewhere) and it’s nice to see something else. Different people like different things.

I’ll probably be using my mesmer for WvW, so I’ll take that stuff into consideration.

@skacamow, I read through the whole thread and it looks like a really interesting build, and different from other ones I’ve seen. It’s kind of reminiscent of what I like to do with my ele against zergs, so I think I might give it a try and do some adjustments as needed. Thanks for the detailed explanation of it!

So I finally got my mesmer alt to 80 and I’d like to settle on a proper build and armor and all that for her. Thing is almost every build I’ve looked up suggests GS/Sword+Focus, which I tried for about 30 levels and just….didn’t enjoy. My main’s a staff ele so I’m probably just too used to playing ranged. Is GS/Staff a viable build on a mesmer? Or should I just suck it up and learn to play with a sword, haha

I’d also appreciate tips on traits I should focus on/what I should have in my skill slots, I mostly farmed my way to 80 on this alt and I still don’t feel like I have a good sense of how to play a mesmer effectively.