Guild Wars 2

Rain.9213:

I’ve been playing D/D Ele in ranked and doing just fine so Ele technically doesn’t have just one build. I’ve seen S/F builds running around too. So that makes at least 3.

The times you’ve done fine you could have been replaced by another class who would have had greater impact on the game. By going any of those builds you’re being selfish and relying on your team to carry you.

As mentioned with so many conditions about the elementalist is always stuck taking water and usually earth. Boon nullification and the long cast time of alot of its utilities leave it open to stuns, The ‘effective’ hp pool suddenly becomes a regular low hp pool.

They took away the ele’s ability to bunker for a while, and gave it no alternative role.

Why?

Currently ele has only 1 build in pvp. Anything else just falls over too quickly. So you’ve made the only build it has worse, and given nothing in return to strengthen the survivability of alternate builds/weapons.

You cut some abilities on the thief, but beef up pistol and shortbow??

Same with warrior??

Apparently so!

Needs to be instant

I thought the whole point of shouts were that they’re instant, much like the warrior/guardian?

Ok regarding armour, but in the current game is our ability to mitigate damage/refill better than anyone elses?

It made sense at the start, but with powercreep, everyone getting new aoe/healing ranged abilities

I don’t see why were already at a disadvantage in every template and fights having lowest armour and lowest hps.

It’s actually worse imho as you can’t rely on any of the effects to initiate any follow ups.

As in if I can see the opponent is going to heal and I want the air ele to stun him, I can’t click it and guarantee a stun. The stun will come maybe 5-6 seconds later.

All the other abilities rely on the elemental being in range, so maybe they never happen, or the time they occur is completely variable.

They’re just a massive disadvantage and with the fgs nerf it definately puts eles at the top of the worst elite skill list.

It’s utter garbage and is unusable in www and pve.

Wow, just wow.

They are absolute garbage now. The abilities have 3/4 sec cast times, then the elemental may or may not cast it, and usually after a 3-4 sec delay.

Then unless the player/mob is standing right on top of it (not air), it won’t get hit.

The air one can miss.

The elementals won’t attack unless you attack first.

Since the elementals have a radius for effects (like the speed from air), you have to be really close to get it, so it makes it so clumsy to use.

Completely useless in both www and pve.

All i’m saying is i disagree with the OP statement.

The thing I see most killed are buffless up-levels in WvW roam vids.

What people want to see is people fighting the harder classes/setups so as better to improve their own ways of dealing with that class.

I think you’ll find the staple ‘go to’ class to kill in WvW videos are rangers.

I cry when I see someone showing themselves killing some bearbow rangers like it’s a thing. No one wants to see that.

You never see them facing good PU mesmers, or condi engineers.

In this game, you should never win 1v2 if your opponents are of equal skill.

Never switch through all 4 too fast, or you’ll be stuck in 1 with no place to switch.

Yes you want to combo, but if you’re in water and have no place to switch to it could be game over. Try to learn how to space at the right time for the right opponent.

Yes. It should be a choice.

We need a short cooldown elite which is useful. Or a long timered one which is REALLY useful. All we have now is tornado (which is being nerfed), the elemental, which is terrible, and FGS, which is being nerfed, and only serves as a device to run away.

There are no really useful one which benefit your group or you directly in a winning a fight.

Having an attack range >900 will give you an advantage.

Amazing advice!

Glyph of storms is useless as it has a 3-4 second casting time with a huge cooldown and tiny radius.

I toyed with it, thinking the earth with blindness would be useful, but by the time i’d cast it a thief could take me down to 10 percent hps from full.

It needs to be instant, bigger radius and lower cooldown to be vaguely useful.

I regard diamond skin as punishment for people who want to play cheese condi spamming classes.

If you say anything against them all you get is ‘You should bring more condi clears lol! L2P!!!!’

Suddenly you’re faced with an ability where all you have to achieve is 1800 damage (approx), to negate it and you can’t do that? Playing cheese specs makes you lazy, this is what your actual problem is.

@reborn.

Nice, you posted an out and out dps template.

It’s a shame you have 0 healing and 0 condition removal and 2300 armour. You don’t understand tradeoffs very well.

Anyone who goes into WvW with no condition cleanses is going to be very dead very quickly.

Depends on the spec of the thief.

Easiest to hardest for me:
P/p<D/d<D/p<S/d<P/d.

P/d is just a joke of a cheese spec, I do much better against it when i play with diamond skin though.

None of the others will be a push over, if the thief is good it’ll be a close fight and if you’re caught in the wrong rotation it’s over. Even poor thieves will be a pain if they land a backstab as it can be a sudden 7-9k damage, and then they spam heartseekers for 3-4k a pop.

So my advice is to time your dodges really well, don’t wander round spamming auto attacks in a circle as it makes it so much easier to land backstabs when you do that. I played a d/d thief for a year, and i found eles to be one of the easier classes to kill.

Initiative hands down.

What makes it so strong is it’s ability to regenerate so quickly, meaning hardly any cooldown on strong abilities and no need to swap over weapon sets in fights. Between that and stealth is what makes thieves such a strong class. No 40 second cooldown for you!!

It’s fun, but as dahir said, you’re reliant on FGS if you’re roaming solo.

Which is annoying as i’d love an elite I could use actively in fights instead of always just sitting there as my escape tool.

Also ele’s are usually focused first by everyone when there are multiples, especially rangers, and it’s then you realise your low hps and low armour are an issue. I honestly think eles need a better ranged dps option.

Ele’s really need an elite which benefits them during a fight.

FGS is great…for running away/chasing, but is cumbersome and doesn’t pack that much of a punch now. It’s not like other ‘ace up the sleeve’ elites which can turn a fight if they’re up.

Tornado is rubbish and so situational (infact it only has one situational use).

Glyph of elementals is terrible, the pets have awful ai, fall over easily and do damage at large intervals.

Eles need an elite which they can use whilst retaining the ability to switch atunements (important!!!!), doesn’t lock out all their skills (important!!!!), and can actually influence a fight.

The Fgs’s abilities should switch depending on what atunement you’re in. All it is, is a lazy summoned weapon.

I wouldn’t hold your breath for any changes.

Rangers were meant to get the first make over and that was promised months ago and still no news.

Don’t know what to say man, I either win or it’s a draw.

In WvW I never lose to warriors.

Did Ash really get perma banned?

I knew he was a downer on every single thing ele related, but I wonder what he did to get banned…

There are other posters fa more worthy of being banned, like most of the thief forum..

Oh it’s spvp.

Go 0,0,2,6,6

It’s all just a timing thing. Watch his buffs for stability and don’t waste knockdowns.

It’s hard to give tips as I find it’s all alot of practice in 1v1 with any class and is nearly always dependent on the skill of the other player. There’s not a class in spvp 1v1 who you should be facerolling if the other guy is equally skilled.

Two choices:

1) go condi build and win easily.

2) Just normal rotations, don’t be a tanky build and remember to dodge the big hits. Know how to lightning flash + burning speed well.

I don’t have any problems with thieves 1v1 tbh.

I played a glass d/d thief for a year and the survivability due to stealth was insane.

You’re already crying about aegis removals, something which every class fighting guardians has to contend with without using stealth. A good player would have already worked out a way to deal with it, you just want to be able to spam one key whilst sitting in stealth.

Poor condition sustain? Shadows embrace is just ridiculously good for an adept. I wish my engi had such ‘terrible’ condition sustain.

Like I said, raises the skill cap.

Judging from the posts it’s already begun to filter out the bad players.

Some of you speak of initiative as though it never returns once you use it. At the moment what the thief class has isn’t stealth. It’s invisibility.

Thief sub par at duelling? I wouldn’t lump in your abilities with the general thief population.

You just want to be able to spam backstab until it hits, which is pretty easy considering the massive backstab zone but if the guy dodges at the right time or blows an ability to prevent this you don’t want to be penalised. Invisibility will always grant the user the biggest advantage, but you want it with no trade off.

I still don’t see anyone explaining why stealth should remain on having your attack blocked/evaded etc. You ****ed up your timing, so pay the price. As I said, if I use a knockdown and the guy has stability on it’s my stupidity, I don’t get to have another go a few seconds later.

If a thief hits/gets evaded/gets blocked stealth should break. It raises the skillcap without breaking the profession.

If I miss a skill it doesn’t get refreshed instantly until I land it.

That’ll stop the HS from black powder and hit whilst still staying in stealth nonsense.

Or make backstab use initiative.

Stealth should drop as soon as the thief attacks.

If he gets evaded/blocked he should come out of stealth. It’s what makes stealth so unbalanced compared to other games versions. There’s no risk involved.

Spam button 1 until you get the backstab, don’t worry if he has a shield up or dodges your first two clumsy attempts, you get to keep trying until you land it. If I miss with my updraft I don’t get a refresh until it lands.

An attack even if evaded or blocked should still count as an attack and remove stealth. That would balance it entirely. It raises the skill cap without destroying the class.

I hate the ‘report’ threat so so much. After playing League of Legends people will threaten to report you for pretty much everything, usually if they don’t get their way.

It’s become the online ’I’m going to tell teacher!’.

It’s a sad reflection on how kids are becoming so inept on taking responsibility for and sorting out their own arguments their instant response to any issue is ’I’m gonna tell on you and then you’ll be in trouble!’ So placing the onus on someone else to deal with the confrontation.

Don’t worry though, once they leave mommies breasts they’ll realize no on gives a **** about their problems in adult-land and they’ll actually have to deal with things. (unless they become one of those loons who calls the cops every 5 minutes with reports of someone calling them a mean name.)

Who else would be the staple fodder in WvW videos…

IT’s a tough one to judge, the extra tick or two would probably make up for the slight reduction on condi damage.

Also remember master tuning crystal gets worse the lower your toughness, and dropping those points in earth brings that down.

I should probably run some actual tests on duration vs damage of those crystals.

Came here expecting to see a p/d thief press 1 a lot, not disappointed.

But really, the fact you basically never use 2-5 must tell you something.

Use the toxic focusing crystal, gives you an extra 10 percent duration for a sweet 80 percent duration bonus.

So that’s what happened. My roaming buddy said you’d ABANDONED Deso, so i assume it was more of a temporary thing.

Anyway, does the extra condi duration make up for the loss in the condi stat total, it’s like a 400 drop.

I beat them with your d/d 0,0,6,4,4 build.

Maybe it was the same 2 engis i fought as they were running round that right side SM together alot.

I tried it Broski. I honestly think diamond skin is more useful/fight winning.

I won a fight vs two engineers this weekend, they were both condi builds. They both dropped air supplies on me and I still came out on top. I just don’t think I could have done a 2v1 with blinding ashes spec.

Also necros…diamond skin is like a guaranteed win.

But nice to try new things, specs become stale I agree.

I laughed. Are we playing the same game as them?

Thief – limited condition removal? Are they having a laugh?? Low sustain in fight? Oh really?? Low survivability??

Warriors – More options to escape combat..lol?? Overrun by conditions…haha.

Elementalists : Low base HP is an intentional design so we can give them more support..EH??? ..And they basically want eles to be spiked down and have no way of avoiding this…

Pvp has become completely stale.

It sadly is the same classes/specs every single game now.

I play LoL as well, and honestly even though there is a meta going on the choice of picks is still fairly good (I know that certain champions will never see the light of day..).

Here though people are so desperate to only play the meta spec/class it’s painfully dull in spvp.

Any organised team will tear you apart. A mm necro/condi necro will end you. As soon as a chill/immob lands on you an ele falls over.

I’m sure your experience of playing one game with the ele is proof of what you say though, the whole single game.

Zord.6130:

Lol no, Ele, if focused, is far better at handling pressure than a Warrior. Perma vigor, Burning Speed, RTL, Lightning Flash+Protection and mistform are all great escapes. A warrior will NOT last more than 3-5 seconds more than a Ele ON point, but he has no means of disengaging, while Ele has a lot. If the Ele sees that he’s been focused, he can move away easily and only a thief can chase him down (but even then it would take quite a while and if this happens)

So the ele is basically good at getting away from a fight….or running away from a point. So you’ve left the point, and left your teammates. Also about a warrior vs an ele on survivability?…..really?. This is why tpvp team run so few warriors….they fall over so so easily!

I’ve been running a condi build with diamond skin on my ele recently. I’ve destroyed every 1v1 i’ve come across. It’s almost funny seeing necros/engis spam their condis and my health not even moving.

The only problem is when there’s an add on the fight and my health goes below 90 percent, then unless I run i’m toast, as just impossible to fight that level of condition application.

I do think condis are too strong and too easy to apply though. It’s a pretty skill-less setup, and if you’re a condi runner, you’re not outplaying anyone, let’s be honest. With the condi setup i have to try 10 times less with fights than before to win, and it’s so much safer…just kite around apply conditions, kite some more….profit!

I was duelling some thieves. The only thief setup who gave me some issues was the p/d thief, another condition user….(because he used thieves guild to drop my health).

Ele is fine 1v1 (condi classes are a pain though).

But if your team has any sort of focus the ele will fall over in seconds. This is the big issue and problem with elementalists. In a grp fight it’ll always be targeted first as it has the most to contribute if left alive in terms of heals/damage yet has the lowest hps+defence of all classes, no invisibility, no illusions and few escapes.

The eles best escape is casting FGS and running very far away. Not real helpful to your team on a point.

They do well in solo queue as there is no coordination . All it takes is two people working together to shut down an ele in no time at all. Every other class can weather/avoid much more of a beating whilst maintaining some sort of offense.

Stacking chill/immobilise (which there are ample amounts of in pvp) ruins eles with ease.

Also..WvW.

Hammer trains. Just, no. Why wouldn’t you though, on a class with high armour and high health and high damage being able to do an aoe leap 2 sec knockdown every 7 seconds. That’s nuts in a game with zero post cc-immunity timers.

This is why WvW is 80 percent warriors/guardians, 20 percent everything else (mostly thieves/condi engis and condi necros).

Strengths ele – Great 1v1 when you can play well and has a decent skill cap.

Weakness – When it becomes more than 1v1 . Meaning if it’s 5v5, and they focus the ele, the ele is so susceptible to immobilise/chill/snares (which are in abundance in this game), coupled with low hp+low armour+poor escapes it goes down so quickly.

In group fights the fight becomes more about trying to run away all the time from literally everyone who will target you first as you have no invis, no illusions, no blocks etc, instead of being offensive.

Arcana should never be an option, utility swaps should be fixed at 9 seconds and not susceptible to chill effects.

A fantastic post which once again demonstrates how out of touch warrior players are with the rest of the game.

You want an ability which hits for up to 8-9k at times, on a 7 second timer. When the ability firegrab, which hits for less damage, is on a 45 second timer.

Of course!!!, makes sense!. So you can run axe/shield, sword/whatever, eviscerate for 9-11k, then switch to sword and final thrust for 7-9k, then in 3-4 seconds eviscerate should be up again , and then you can switch directly back to sword for another final thrust. With sigil of intelligence you can be sure to crit with all 3 attacks!

It just seems so balanced on a high armour/high health/high mobility class with the best self condition removal in the game….

Adrenaline should be used up if the move is evaded/missed. Cleansing ire should only cleanse if the move connects and does damage.

If a mesmer shatter is evaded the ability doesn’t come off cooldown, if a ranger pet ability doesn’t work it doesn’t get to be used again until it does. Adrenaline is just too forgiving for how quickly it generates and is used.

The F1 skills are basically a 6th button with a 7 second cooldown. Earthshaker is an aoe stun leap with damage and on a 23 second second lower cooldown than backbreaker, a single target knockdown with damage melee range.

There’s a reason that in WvW 80 percent of players are warriors/guardians

If you’re going to play a d/d against a class with high melee range burst +melee range stuns you need to stay out of melee range as much as possible. It’s simple as that. If he earthshakers you he can’t land a big eviscerate.

Shield charge is very telegraphed, you should be dodging that every time.

Or switch to staff and just kite him.

Or do what i’m trying to do and get a charr level 80 and using the charrzooker to land 1200 range auto burn damage with a condi build.

Change the cast time of scepter 1 from 1 1/4 seconds to 1/2 a second?

Same for scepter earth 1?

Is that unreasonable? Having an auto with a >1 second cast time is nonsense.