Guild Wars 2

They nerfed more than that, unfortunately.

I’m in the same boat as you. I haven’t been on since about February. Now that I’ve come back, my used-to-be-main Elementalist is now played quite infrequently. I play a Guardian now who does roughly the same amount of damage while having about 5x the survivability.

I feel like maybe I just need to rework my build, but I had already invested a bunch of time in the gear for (and learning to play) my current build and don’t feel like redoing it.

Elementalists’ Dagger 3 in Earth (Magnetic Grasp) has been changed.
It’s now a two-part attack, with part one being a projectile finisher and immobilize with a 1/2 second cast. Part one is unblockable as well. Part two is the leap finisher that pulls the ele to their target.

Kaeden.6952:

Idc if people bring lvl 16’s to fracs with them, like I said I can’t just figure out why people would not even have the respect for other players to level up past 16 before going “ok! it’s time to take on Jade Maw.” This thinking boggles me even more-so when people go “it is fair that I do more work than this guy and we get the same reward.”

….maybe there is some more important/pressing content for that level 16 to do first, like, oh, I dunno, getting his/her second utility skill? XD

Again, players get their second utility skill at 10.

And people are saying that if you want to run with only 80’s that’s fine. You don’t have to run with 16’s. But don’t stop people that may want to run with 16’s from doing so.

I think it’s obvious people are gaming AoEs in WvW by working together and coordinating attacks.

Obviously what we need to do is not nerf AoEs but instead nerf programs like Ventrilo, Mumble, and TeamSpeak.

I don’t think you need to limit it. If you don’t want to run with a low level, don’t do it. The low level fractals can be done by some pretty low level characters.

I did level 1 fractal on an alt the other day and the party’s levels were 24, 26, 62, 66, 80. It was a PUG and still went incredibly smooth because people were willing to listen to directions and work together. Hell, this group did far better than groups I’ve been in with all 80’s on similar level fractals.

Additionally, on a side note: Level 16 characters have two uSkill slots, not one like someone mentioned.

JudgeD.5673:

I see the sniping has already started. Too bad. I’m not too impressed by what I’ve seen from HoD of GoM, but the week is yet young…

You make a comment that sounds dismissive of sniping, and then proceed to snipe yourself.

And it’s funny, because I was kinda feeling the same thing about Kaineng.

Awesome guide! Thanks a lot for this. It really helps explain a lot about the Necro I was not getting.

xXTattsXx.4361:

robocafaz.9017:

Laiboch.4380:

I am still waiting to see something I can compliment either of these servers on, but alas all I can give them props on is way to ride a break out event and leave.

There is literally nothing else for us to do this week. When you guys find yourself on the receiving end of a matchup like this, you’ll understand the situation. When your opponent has held everything long enough (about one night) to upgrade everything to max level and put waypoints everywhere, it is near impossible to make a comeback.

You have infinite supply, an untouchable map presence, and you’ve crushed the morale of the casuals who make up a majority of the servers. The only thing for us to do is run supply camps, and if we don’t do that in a very sporadic fashion your response team will typically catch up to us after about 30 minutes.

You speak as if we didn’t get pounded quite a bit before we were able to rise up. Get some Cajones.. pull some people together and push .. just think of how good of a morale boost it would be to take something that has steel walls… even if we do take it right back.

That sounds like it would give the opposite of a morale boost…

Manos.5486:

cznrhubarb.5946:

I’m a noob to Necro, but I was trying Corrosive Poison Cloud and didn’t think it was as bad as I’ve read a couple places here. I was using Scepter/Dagger and Consume Conditions as my heal, so I never kept the weakness on myself. Scepter 3 CD’s fast enough that I was always ready to give it away, or if I needed a little bit of extra health I could consume it. I was also grouped with a shortbow Ranger, so the poison field was a nice addition.

I was trying it out with some Blood Is Power and Epidemic so I could take advantage of the corruption traits, Consume, and Scepter #3.

But like I said. I’m a new at this, so I probably could have been some more optimal skill. I didn’t hate it though.

Fair.

Like I said, there are some situations where it can be useful. I just think they’re few and far between. You only get 3 utilities. And poison+weakness every 40 seconds, in my view isn’t really worth taking up one of those spots especially when your target(s) can just move out of it.

It’s one problem a lot of Necro utilities suffer from. They can just be moved away from.

Perhaps that was why it worked for me. This was PvE and the ranger pet was tanking most things and I could cripple what it wasn’t tanking.

Also, with the corruption CD reduction trait it’s only 32sec. If you can actually keep things in the field, that’s about 50% uptime.

I’m a noob to Necro, but I was trying Corrosive Poison Cloud and didn’t think it was as bad as I’ve read a couple places here. I was using Scepter/Dagger and Consume Conditions as my heal, so I never kept the weakness on myself. Scepter 3 CD’s fast enough that I was always ready to give it away, or if I needed a little bit of extra health I could consume it. I was also grouped with a shortbow Ranger, so the poison field was a nice addition.

I was trying it out with some Blood Is Power and Epidemic so I could take advantage of the corruption traits, Consume, and Scepter #3.

But like I said. I’m a new at this, so I probably could have been some more optimal skill. I didn’t hate it though.

Kardiamond.6952:

Master of Terror build

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMax7pbib07JApHXD9zRKC2YKFlnOA

You rely on fear for damage and control. You use a lot of conditions, and stay at range. I played for some day with this build in WvW, it was really useful.

Especially Reaper protection, when a warrior charge you, he is gone for 4 sec of terror!

P.S : To get de 100% increase in fear duration with this build, you need to use food. I also swaped a lot the 10 last points in curse for others trait. And I swapped blood is power for corrupt boon.

Thanks for the reply. That looks similar to a build I was imagining for WvW:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcVm0cz9MmTnwMmbnTM0Gx0GzoMVRcs8kiT707kiT7kiO7070z7kIa70z7kNL70c7ow170m

But it kinda shows what I was talking about. All three of the minor traits in Death Magic are kinda (very) lame. Maybe Deadly Strength is helpful? But the Jagged Horrors are going to suck even if the AI is fixed, and +20 toughness for each of my zero minions?

I also wouldn’t mind seeing some more builds.

I had a lot of fun playing my Necro through the early levels, but now that I’m about 70 I’m seeing what people have been complaining about here. It feels real hard to find trait combinations that really feel like they synergize the way I want. I main an Elementalist and while they seem to have a narrow choice of builds, at least those few builds have traits that work really well together.

I can’t come up with anything as complementary with Necro traits other than a DS power/might-stacking type of build, which I don’t really find terribly fun.

(I’m willing to admit this may just be inexperience with the class on my part.)

I’m sure a bunch of people are going to write them off because underwater combat plays such a small role in regular play, but I’m pretty excited about these changes. One of the things I hated about underwater combat as an elementalist was that it was boring compared to the above-water combat pace. I feel like I’ll have a lot more reasons to switch out of water attunement, or even use the earth attunement at all.

So if you like Cleansing Fire in place of Arcane Shield, but don’t need the condition removal of Cleansing Water, it would still free up 10 points in the Arcane tree.
You could try embracing the self-described awkwardness of your build and choose a trait no one uses: Vigorous Scepter. You should already have vigor running pretty consistently, but if you add in Vigorous Scepter you would have a ton of endurance. This obviously gives more rolls, but also would let you take advantage of the 10% damage boost from the 25 point minor earth trait.

Alternatively, you could still take the 10 points out of Arcane and put it into Fire to get Spell Slinger, which would work well with having three cantrips for your utilities.

Cool to see someone not running 0/10/0/30/30.

Not really a suggestion, but something to try: Have you thought of using Cleansing Fire instead of Arcane Shield? It’s another cantrip that would work with your water traits and you could free up 10 points in arcane (by not using Arcane Mastery) to use to max out water. It would make you even tankier with extra vit and you could use Cleansing Water for even more condition removal. I know Magnetic Wave and Ether Renewal clean conditions, but if you’re focused toughness, conditions still seem like the best way to take you down anyway. It could also potentially allow you to switch Ether Renewal with Glyph of Elemental Harmony so you can have some extra Protection in a pinch.

Additionally, Cleansing Fire would give you some AoE burning, which certainly wouldn’t hurt with all the +condition damage you have from speccing Earth and Carrion.

Anyway, take this with a grain of salt. All the PvP I do is WvW, and even that I’m fairly new at. I’m just hypothesizing here. =D

Good thread. The big one in this list for me was that weapon swap sigils work with attunement swapping.

I don’t suppose someone would want to explain how to properly treb block here? I’ve heard it mentioned before in regards to using Foci. Do swirling winds, magnetic wave, and magnetic aura all reflect treb shots?

I play with auto-target off and I still have that problem some times when I actually am trying to hit something. Some mobs (usually larger ones) in PvE just have weird hit boxes or something, because it happens several times a day where I will RTL with a target, fly towards the target, stop ~150 range away, and sit as a ball of lightning for another second and not do any damage when I (finally) burst.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Whats with the overuse of the word “kitten” in almost every post
I read? Is this a “fill in” for other words because people dont have a
broad vocabulary? Being serious, not insulting.

Haha. It’s the swearing filter.

I agree with everyone else here in that Elementalist is by far my favorite class.

That being said, I also enjoy Necro for similar reasons to Caffynated. Playing Ele is a fast-paced fight for survival, which is exciting, but sometimes it’s nice to just face tank with the Necro. And if you want survivability, conditions, and slipperiness, that’s pretty much what Necro is all about. You have an extra health bar in shroud, plenty of conditions, the ability to not only remove conditions but to give them to your enemies, etc.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Hmm in my experience the air spike damage is a bit better. I put 20 in fire mainly for the cd reduction on fire grab and extra damage on fire. I picked up 30 in air for 20% damage to knockdownsd/cc’d foes which to my surprise came up more often than I thought. I real good spike damage combo that I was working on (this is nothing unknown, just regular combos) was Ride the lightning, Updraft, burning speed like normal and Ring of Fire arcane wave for the might stack (the Point Blank AOE one) then firegrab… All of these attacks these benefitted from 20% extra damage to cc’d, as well as 10% damage to burning foes. Burning speed was hitting like a truck which surprised me. Arcane wave hits hard with the extra 20% percent damage (not sure if 10% to burning foes applies for this). It produced laughably good results against glass cannon thieves who are so used to insta killing other players that they are completely lost when it happens to them, especially if you RTL from a good distance off, you can unload this combo in an extremely quick amount of time and be stomping immediately after.

Have you tested the damage difference if you have Grounded or not in combination with Updraft? Someone was saying in another thread that Grounded’s extra damage didn’t affect Updraft since it was a launcher and not a knockdown (or something to that effect).

BlueprintLFE.2358:

10 in arcana can definitely still be a good spec. I actually kept 10 points in earth for armor of earth at 50%, stability in pvp is just too good, but then again I’m bunkering so it’s most likely going to be a different playstyle than you also. Yeah as you integrate more into pvp (which is a lot of fun on an ele) you will start dodging more often. In fact pvping has made me a better Pve’r. I’m so used to fighting players that dodge moves, cc and react to me that I blaze through dungeons haha.

How are you liking the extra damage at 100% endurance? Is it noticeable? I’m kind of against traits like that as dodging can be a lifesaver, but I’m not saying the trait is bad just my personal opinion.

When you start spvp’ing, if you have any questions or need any help or advice on anything shoot me a pm and we can meet on an empty server and go over some things. Same for anyone else.

I do pretty good damage, but I still wish I was doing more. It’s part of the reason I’m going to change my build. I’m currently 30/0/25/5/10, working on my soldier exotic armor set with Flame Legion runes, and a lot of the +damage traits (Ember’s Might, Internal Fire, Stone Splinters), sigils of force, etc.
I’m in this sort of half glass cannon state. I don’t die a ton, but I also don’t burst super awesome. I’m a plexi-glass cannon.

Based on the break down Creslin gave in the other threads about traits, I was thinking about switching to Air/Water spec and focusing on spike damage over going straight up power.

I’d be interested in some more opinions on this as well. I play D/D and just tried dungeoneering for the first time last night and… it wasn’t pretty. After downing three times in the first fight I just switched over to my back up staff.

While I was able to stay on my feet the rest of the dungeon, I wasn’t spec’ed for it and just wasn’t having as much fun playing it as I do with my daggers.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

cznrhubarb.5946:

Well, the 10 second cooldown on the sigils makes the news slightly less exciting, but completely understandable.

Still that gives me a lot more options on my sigils, so thanks for letting me know about it. I guess my question now would be: Is 3 20s stacks of might every 10 seconds better or worse than just using a +5% damage Sigil of Force. Does anyone know the math on this?

Actually mate in a regular D/D fight, I was able to maintain 10 stacks of might from the battle sigil. Just going through my normal rotation. So It is definitely a big help. I personally prefer the energy one more though. I’m 30 in arcane though for the increased boon duration, and the lower attunements cd swap.

That’s good to know. I was thinking of only going 10 in arcana though.

Also, I’m probably ‘doing it wrong’™, but I don’t actually dodge all that much. I actually have 25 in Earth at the moment for the +10% damage at 100 endurance because I pretty much just use the weapon skills to change up my distance and keep knockdowns/stuns/chills going.

That being said, I have also been primarily been playing PvE. I’m about to start transitioning to PvP and I will probably have to learn to start dodging. I’m going to drop Earth traits anyway, so I won’t be using the full endurance buff anyway…

Creslin.1758:

TWMagimay.9057:

Weeeell…
One with air: You are looking at it from a D/D point of view. A staff ele, like me, isn’t exactly swimming in auras so perma-swiftness is far-fetched. I’m quote fond of this trait because it makes jumping puzzles a breeze(i don’t need to activate anything, just hop around like a bunny on speed xD) and for general running around and gathering purposes.
Serrated stones: There was a discussion somewhere about it…an ele was saying s/he could solo maintain 25 stacks of bleed. They were discussing what gives higher dps earth-bleed or fire-power build and last I looked, it seemed like a draw. It’s a very specific trait though and one would have to spec towards cond dmg, cond duration(bleed in particular) to pull it off, but it is an interesting possibility.

With staff, you can get perma-swiftness by equipping arcane wave, putting down an eruption -> attune to air (swift from elemental attunement) -> put static field over eruption, trigger arcane wave in eruptions (swift x 2 from two blast finishers), then use air 4 (swift). The swiftness you get from this exceeds the cooldowns so you can actually stack swiftness very high like this.

Still there is something to be said for the ease of use for One With Air. It doesn’t cost anything or require you to be anywhere specific to change your major trait at any time. If you’re already traited 10 points in Air and you want swiftness for a jumping puzzle without having to do the attunement dance, you can always switch back and forth.
I don’t know if it makes a huge difference, but I can see it being convenient as a backup trait.

So after reading this excellent analysis of the Elementalist’s traits, I’m thinking about completely overhauling my build.

New question:
Do auras applied from things like Superior Rune of Fire’s 6 ability (Gain a Fire Aura for 5s when you fall below 80% health.) or leap finishers (When Magnetic Grasp’s leap finisher works) proc traits like Zephyr’s Boon, Elemental Shielding, or Powerful Auras?

Creslin.1758:

On grounded, can we confirm that the damage bonus isn’t added after updraft???

Here Creslin was just trying to help everyone by starting a discussion and we go ruining his day by telling him Grounded doesn’t work with Updraft and that Lingering Elements doesn’t work with Elemental Attunement.

It’s really lame when the minor traits are bugged or useless, because you can’t even just decide not to use them…

Avatara.1042:

Lingering Elements: Excellent. Makes the already ridiculous Elemental Attunement skill even better!

Lingering Elements does nothing to Elemental Attunement. It is actually really bad

Yeah, when I originally read the skill I assumed it meant for elemental attunement as well. It didn’t seem like it was affecting it though, so I actually dropped from 15 to 10 points in Arcana on my build a while ago.

At least I know I wasn’t being crazy, now that other people are confirming there is something fishy with this trait.

Avatara.1042:

Ok I went to test Lingering Elements. The Earth 5 trait does NOT linger for 5 seconds when you attunement swap (no 80 toughness boost – not a big loss, but still a loss). Soothing Mist does gain a bit more time (variable amount), because it refreshes itself every 2 seconds if it detects the Water Attunement buff. I do not think Fire Shield lingers, but it is hard to test.

Oh and I am not sure why I thought Rock Solid was increased, because it stays at 2 seconds.

I guess the question then is: Is this skill bugged or does it just have a terrible description and we cannot intuit what it is actually doing?

Arheundel.6451:

My analysis:

1) Ember’s might= terrible, why should I waste 20 pts in fire to get a 5% increase on direct dmg only? What about increase burning dmg by 50 pts or something?

I pretty much agree with the rest of your analysis regarding the other fire traits

Isn’t “terrible” taking it a bit far? I spec’ed fully into Fire and use Soldier’s gear so I have a significant amount of power, and after the initial RTL/Updraft burst, I pretty much keep whatever I’m targeting burning. I do wish it was something more like 10%, but even a 5% bonus is a pretty big chunk. I’d have to agree with Creslin’s ‘Okay’ rating, personally.

Avatara.1042:

Does Lingering Elements do ANYTHING without Elemental Attunement or Rock Solid? Seems pretty ridiculous to have a 15 point bonus trait do nothing without a specific skill.

I believe this includes every 5 point minor trait. So water’s regeneration lasts 5 seconds, earth’s toughness, air’s movement speed, arcana’s fury, and fire’s burst-on-hit.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong though.

STRanger.5120:

cznrhubarb.5946:

Still that gives me a lot more options on my sigils, so thanks for letting me know about it. I guess my question now would be: Is 3 20s stacks of might every 10 seconds better or worse than just using a +5% damage Sigil of Force. Does anyone know the math on this?

That´s very hard to tell I think, because the Might also increases the Condition dmg (which is commonly used even by Direct dmg eles), bt the +5% dmg sigil doesn´t.

Also a good point I completely forgot about. I’m fairly new to using my blast combos to get might. I managed to get all the way to 80 in PvE without learning how to use combo fields…

Actually, if I think about it for more than a few seconds, I realize that the Sigil of Battle has to be better. Once I start rolling through attunements, I should effectively have 6 stacks of might constantly going (due to them being 20s duration and 10s cooldown on the sigil). Additionally factor in any +boon duration and it could probably be 9 stacks most of the time.

I think I’d have to have something like 4k power for the sigil of force to be a better choice, and that’s only considering 6 stacks of might. Does that sound right?

EDIT: My math:
6 stacks of might at level 80 = 210 power
210 power * 20 (1/0.05) = 4200 power needed to get an equivalent 210 power boost from a 5% damage increase

Well, the 10 second cooldown on the sigils makes the news slightly less exciting, but completely understandable.

Still that gives me a lot more options on my sigils, so thanks for letting me know about it. I guess my question now would be: Is 3 20s stacks of might every 10 seconds better or worse than just using a +5% damage Sigil of Force. Does anyone know the math on this?

Lifeson.4352:

It was the same for me, at the start I was just amazed at all the cool skills (“I can pound stuff with a giant fire spike and send a fiery pheonix to blow’em up!”), then I started dying.. alot.

I would suggest dagger/dagger, when you get to level 30 respec into 20 arcana. The reduced cooldown on attunement swapping makes everything just smoother. My “rotation” for mobs is something like: (air)Ride the Lightning -> updraft -> Shocking Aura ->(fire) Burning Speed -> Flame Breath -> Ring of Fire -> (earth) Earthquake(combo with Ring of Fire for might stacks) -> Ring of Earth. I improvise in other spells but this is my bread and butter for just killing hoards of mobs. :P Fire Grab is a nice bonus whenever of cooldown. Ligthning Hammer is also good for just killing stuff with almost perma-blind, though very faceroll-ish.

You can take on alot of mobs at the same time like this if you pay attention to when to dodge and when to go into water to slow them down, kite around and heal yourself. You can pretty much solo any melee champion, constantly kiting around. Churning Earth with it’s long cast time is good to use with Lightning Flash(teleport, 900 range). If you see a bunch of mobs, initiate combat with a Churning Earth, teleporting into them just before the spell goes off.

Also I suggest getting a Sigil of Battle in one of your weapons, since every attunement change counts as a weapon switch, you get alot of might stacks this way.

You can’t spec 20 into anything until you are level 40.

As a side note, are you serious though about attunement swapping counting as weapon swapping for sigils? I thought we just couldn’t use those sigils because we couldn’t weapon swap. If that’s true, you have just made my night.

So I assume this also means that RtL does less damage for those of us traited in Fire or Air?

Great to hear, John!

Also, if you’re looking at combos (which I am shamefully just learning to use well), you should know that a couple of the elementalist skills are combo-able even though they are not labeled as such in the tooltips. I don’t remember the main hand scepter skills, as I haven’t used it in a while but here are a few I just found out about recently:
Main hand dagger in earth’s Magnetic Grasp is a Leap Finisher.
Off hand dagger in earth’s Churning Earth and Earthquake are blast finishers.

When I started playing Elementalist, it went something like this:
Levels 1-12: This is really fun! Look at all these weapon skills I get!
Levels 13-30: I do good damage, but WHY AM I DYING SO MUCH.
Levels 31+: Oh. That’s how you play an elementalist. This is really fun!

I’ve been doing only PvE, and when I’m lazy and fighting trash mobs I’ll just stick to Fire attunement. I spec’ed pretty heavy into Fire though, so most non-veteran mobs fall pretty quick to Burning Speed > Ring of Fire > Arcane Wave > Drake’s Breath > Fire Grab.

The real fun though is when you go up against something tougher. It feels awesome when you know how to dance through your attunements and can take down veteran mobs 4 levels higher than you just because they can’t touch you.

Thanks for the tips. I think I’ll probably just have to give an air-centric build and a water-centric build a try and see which one I end up having more fun with.

I have another question for the WvW ele’s out there that I forgot last post: Which elite skills do people use? In PvE, the Glyph of Elementals was fantastic because it gave me a tank when I was solo’ing. I don’t expect people to turn their fire off me and onto my golem in WvW though, and it feels like it has a pretty long cast time for the faster paced fighting of PvP. And I don’t really like the idea of giving up my weapon skills for either Tornado or Flame Sword.

I play a Sylvari, so I was actually thinking about trying out Take Root…

Thanks for the thread and the advice, Creslin.

I just started playing WvW the other day, and had been playing only PvE up to that point. I feel like I did pretty well, despite my inexperience in PvP. My build is a lot more aggressive than what I’ve seen you and others mention here though.
The detailed version of what I was using is:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVszz9molMTMobMTMx0pVacokcaV
But the short form was 30 fire, 25 earth, 5 water, 10 arcana.
For utilities I went with Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, and Cleansing Flame.
For runes I am using a Flame Legion (power/burning) set instead of a +boon duration set.

So my question is: Does anyone else play aggressive fire builds successfully in WvW (or sPvP) or are we just too fragile to not spec more conservatively? I feel like the majority of my survivability is based on a combination of being mobile and stunning over healing.