Guild Wars 2

Something about Maguuma portal bombs and zerg stacking.

They pull it off really well when they were defending a tower and wiped Darkhaven’s zerg force. Bunch of GOON and few other guilds inside that stack. Around 30-40 came out of the stack after we wiped. Very organized. Very disciplined.

They then proceeded to easily bring down walls to AB keep in DH Map. Funny thing is, everything they do reach Lord’s area… the offensive force seems to be weak and they wiped. Same thing happened few hours ago too. They were already at Lord’s area. But they just stack at wall and siege us… even though they outnumbered us.

You guys should have just charged at us. So sometimes Maguuma pull off very nice and organized portal bombs and defense …. but at the same time your guilds do some questionable tactics or actions that made me go, Huh? Why they do that? They could’ve wiped us.

I ran quite a bunch pf dungeons using this build and D/D combo. Results are so-so. Survivability is good but dps is tad low. Especially of the group already had a good tank.

Instead I use same build but using full berserker gear and staff. Survivability is quite decent but dps is good too. Dungeons benefit from AE and that is where we shine. I just switch gear appropriately.

AC dungeon – high dps, staff meteor shower required

COF esp path 1 – I switch to tanky heal gear because mobs hit harder and are more in your face esp the gate part where mobs spawn. I am basically unkillable.

These are just sone examples. Just swap gear depending on situations. The build can stay the same.

A few more hours …

NSP now zerging supply camps.

Have to commend NSP on their fight. Very organized. Good numbers. They don’t just zerg blindly.

Their strategy is always:

• Crash Walls, at least 2 walls.
• Hang near wall and put up more trebs to allow allies to flow in
• Kill invaders at choke points of trebs location
• Crash even more inner walls
• Charge and kill

Very organized, fast and tough.

As usual, this time of the day NSP always take back everything. We are almost always outnumbered 3:1. NSP seems to have the numbers all over.

Same issue here. Did path 1. Cleared all the bosses. Finish last boss. No movie. No token, xp or money reward

Not all builts and gear are designed for Cursed Shores.

If you ran with tank heal D/D combo, it is easy time in Orr. 4-5 mobs easy no issue. There are variations of other builds too. Knight/Valkyrie does it, but it is missing the heal component.

daphoenix.4283:

Full Vigil Armor (Power,Toughness,Vitality) < Not sure if I can get this though…I’m not a vigil member. Maybe I can make another class to unlock it? Anyone know?

Mix of Jewelery (Toughness, healing power, and Power) and (Condition damage, vitality, power). I personally want toughness in every item possible.

Only problem with this build is that I can’t find jewelery with the stats I want… condition damage needs to be sacrificed to get toughness. I personally find precision to be a stat that I don’t really want as the effects are diminished when you have an already +20% crit chance from fury on most of the battle.

PTV set is available in few different sources.

• Dungeons – AC, SE and HOTW
• WvW Tokens
• Karma Vendors in the Cathedrals @ 42k/piece – 252k tokens Total (AFAIK only 5/6 set are available)
  http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

I think to fully complete a customized set, you need gear from dungeons too. They have a variety of different options. There are only 2 healing types of gear. Perhaps those could be used as your some-healing-but-not-too-much set.

Precision Vitality Healing – AC, HOTW, TA
Vitality Healing Condition – CM

Dungeons sorted by Armor
Sorted by Armor Types:
Power Precision Condition – AC, CM, COF, COE, TA
Power Precision Toughness – SE, Arah
Power Precision CritDmg – COF, COE, Arah
Power Vitality Toughness – AC, SE, HOTW
Power Vitality Condition – SE, COF
Power Condition MagicFind – COE
Precision Toughness Condition – CM, TA, HOTW, Arah
Precision Vitality Healing – AC, HOTW, TA
Vitality Healing Condition – CM

Anyone can provide tips on Scepter/Dagger playstyle and combo?

I have always been running staff or D/D. Tanky heal build with 20 water 30 arcane. I cant imagine ever using Scepter cos most of the spells are slow casting. Dragon Tooth??? Is it even worth it?

I dont sPvP. It is for soloing, dungeons and WvW.

Never been a fan of Scepter here. I find all their spells too slow. If only Dragon Tooth is faster. Zzzz…

All depends on your spec but generally a few sets:

PvE farming: MF set (green or yellow suffice)

PvE solo: Knight + Valkyrie (fire air spec) or Cleric + Carrion (water arcane spec)

PvE dungeons: same as above

WvW: Full Berzerker

DreamOfACure.4382:

Having to constantly attunement-swap contradicts the point of traits and specialization.

While attunement swapping should have its benefits for maverick jack-of-all-trades type players, sticking to one element should also have its benefits.

I should be able to focus entirely on Fire, and be able to burn through my enemies like butter, just like how Thieves can focus on crit, burst damage, and executioners to cut down targets within 5 seconds.
And I shouldn’t have to swap to Water/Earth just to keep myself alive.

That’s the appeal of concepts like “Master of Fire”.

Right now our traits punishes us for switching traits for those focused on DPS. I agree that if we want to do DPS, we should be able to do it across all traits especially with Fire.

I disagree on how we shoudn’t switch to heal. Water traits are precisely exist for it. How then would you expect to survive? Stand there and get kill?

I still want to see traits that has synergy throughout all 4 attunements. I.e. Instead of Fire traits we have Explosive Trait Line – Focus on Burst Dmg or Long Range Dmg. Ex: 10% dmg to all Staff spells. Remove the minor traits that has to do with getting hit in melee only. Why give us such a situational trait? Right now if you take Fire trait, to have most DPS you need to stay in fire. No point going to other attunements.

While we are encourage to switch attunements, if you don’t take arcane it is useless. I lose more DPS by switching.

Most of the minor traits too are attunements related. Look at Warrior or Thief’s minor traits. All of them benefit them regardless of what weapons they use.

If you are out to do DPS, there is no point switching to other attunements. Our traits sort of punish us for switching. Our traits are all based on individual attunements.

If I am 30 Fire, 30 Air, 10 Arcane. I will stay in staff, suit up full zerker, stay Fire and do max DPS. I do more DPS than any other attunements. The only time I need switching is the occasional need for some utilities, CC etc. Beyond that it is useless.

Now if I have at least 20-30 Arcane, playing D/D style … you would probably go through a lot of attunements switching.

I have said it before, our traits synergy is weak. It forces us to go a particular attunement. Now if you go 20-30 Arcane, which is sort of the basic requirement of Elementalist, your DPS drops quite a lot. Probably by half. So we are a weird class. We are required to switch attunements. But at the same time the way our traits work doesn’t really help us a whole lot.

When your attunement CD is so long, there’s not much point outside of 20-30 Arcane. I don’t like that our traits are all based on individual attunements. Look at other class. Most if not all traits help the class across the board, and not specific weapons, skill etc. Yes, there are major traits to change for specific weapons, but those are interchangeable. Ele’s is more or less stuck in a particular attunement.

I have been testing this build with similar gear. But it seems the dps is quite low even w all the condition dmg.

I have never been a fan of condition. So I was wondering if I could remove condition and replace it w more power, precision and some crit dmg. I wonder if overall dmg would be better.

I was calculating a few other gear mix. A few possibilites at least from PvE side include using:

- power vitality toughness gear
- zerker accs
- precision vitality healing 2x daggers from AC dungeon

It is possible with mix of knight, valkyrie mix too. You would get stats similar to cleric+carrion build with no condition.

Outside of traits you get:
800+ power
400+ precision
20-30 crit dmg

Cleric/Carrion build gets you:
700+ power
500+ condition
170+ precision

All else being similar in both gear:
300+ healing
350 vitality
390 toughness

I am still getting some of the gear for testing. So we’ll see.

Nikkala.5842:

I saw a “Projected Profit” on the screen last time I sold an item. Maybe that’s a recent change?

Even with the projected profit, the way the alingment is set, it is still not clear. Most still have to compute using a calc that is is another 10%.

Xhenya, LOL!

You must be kidding me. You come in here with your brand new ele and say it is fine? 5s to cast a spell is not a challenge. It is a challenge enough to maintain 4 attunements with light armor and lowest hp. It is a challenge to place a static are spell on where mobs and players are constantly moving and dodging.

But please dont come in ele with your uneducated post saying about overpowering and bad for society. We dont destroy anything instantly. You have to refer to Thief and Warrior for that.

At least before you post, do read what the post is about. It is specifically referring to spells with long cast time and unaccounted animation times.

Simply because we have a lot more range options. Then again we do have our D/D option…

Are the elementalist’s long animation time from spells intentional? At the rate a lot of the spells actually go off … I feel like wanting to kill myself sometimes. I timed it manually with a stopwatch so it is not 100% accurate.

For example:
Staff – Earth skill 2 – Eruption
Cast time: 1 3/4s
Actual time: 4.8 – 4.9s
Suggested change: Make Eruption work like Lava Font of Staff Fire 2.

Nevermind there’s a cast time. There’s actually a very brief pause just after click. But that is probably latency issue. On top of that waiting for the rocks to actually rise up before the dmg kicks in.

I timed it … it takes around 4.8 to 4.9s. 5s??? Are you kidding me?

4.9s for a spell to hit. Even with Earth 5 Shockwave, it is 2s Immobilize. Yes cast it before Eruption. Then it goes on 30s CD. We have an earth spell here that has 6s CD, but takes almost 5s for it to be effective.

Eruption needs to work like Lava Font. Bad enough it is a targetted cast. On top of that a super long cast and animation time? We have to be smart about where to put our spell. But please don’t kitten us this bad to have it kitten spell. Please please please.

Other spells that has ridiculous long cast time. I might as well just target kittens to kill at this rate. Please tell me this is not intentional. I mean animation is nice and all … but why some really take forever?

Please give us some love and lower the cast time AND animation time.

Staff – Water 2 – Ice Spike
Cast time: 1s
Actual time to hit: 3.5s

Scepter – Fire 2 – Dragon Tooh
Cast time: 1s
Actual time: 3.3s

Scepter – Water 2 – Shatterstone
Cast time: 2s
Actual time: 2.8s

Please change so that the listing and sale fee are clear. I would also add a % to the fee associated. Right now it is selling price for a lot of items are quite ridiculous. It is supposedly viable to sell crafted items. But some items does not make sense.

This way it helps both newbies and also sellers who does not seem to notice that they are burning money. I remember back in the earlier days, we have to post a couple of times in guild chat that there are fees of 15%. So it is actually better to sell it to vendor rather than to TP.

For example: 18 Slot Bags
Selling price around 2g 27s.
Listing Fee is 11s 35c.
Sale fee is 22s 70c.
Projected profit is 1g 92s 95c
Nett LOSS of 7s 5c

Discounting cost of mats from farming maybe, but just Rune of Holding is already 2g. I am not sure if most sellers are trying to lose money or do not notice the fees. Does someone has an explanation why a lot of people are selling items BELOW cost?

I attribute it:

• UI not clear enough
• Listing Fees are not obvious
• No mention of Sale Fees
• Projected Profit UI is not clear. Text on 1 side, Actual Numbers to the right

This UI change would also benefit newbies who are selling a lot of items BELOW selling to vendor due to 15% fees.

I would have the UI to be something like it below. Perhaps a better UI designer can come up with a more creative, simple but yet informative UI.

Unit Price: Xg Xs Xc Quantity: X
Listing Fee: Xg Xs Xc (5% – Listing fee is taken when Item is Posted)
Sale Fee: Xg Xs Xc (10% – Sale Fee is Deducted After Item is Sold)
Total Fees: Xg Xs Xc (15%)

Projected Profit: Xg Xs Xc

Vaerah.4907:

rias.6872:

Question: Wht not Carrion armor + Cleric accs? So they key is all the toughness?

From someone who painfully went from full Carrion to his build and gear (Cleric): yes, carrion is best for necros, they really health tank. Elementalists get benefit but not as much as having thoughness in its place does. In the end you don’t lose absurd amounts of health but you become a “though nugget”, it’s expecially noticeable in PvE because you know how much mobs usually hit you for and after you go thoughness you feel the difference.
I went from soloing 2-3 mobs tops in S/D (best weapon for carrion gear) to soloing basically … infinite mobs in D/D with thoughness.
Once I aggroed (and FRAPSED, but I won’t have time to publish it for 2-3 months) a whole plateau including a veteran and did not flinch while killing them all.

Wait … It seems odd. The math isn’t right.

Cleric armor + Carrion accs has more condition dmg, more vitality but less toughness and healing compared to Carrion armor + Cleric accs. With all else being constant … I am a little confused on the importance of stats.

Cleric Armor
Healing 315
Power 224
Toughness 224

Carrion Accessories
Condition 411
Power 285
Vitality 285

Carrion Armor
Condition 315
Power 224
Vitality 224

Cleric Accs
Healing 411
Power 285
Toughness 285

Cleric Armor + Carrion Accessories
Power 509
Condition 411
Healing 315
Vitality 285
Toughness 224

Carrion Armor + Cleric Accs
Power 509
Healing 411
Condition 315
Toughness 285
Vitality 224

daphoenix.4283:

@Rias

Thank you for the compliment. Arenanet should really focus on the bugs instead of nerfing imo>_>

As to your question , here it is

http://imgur.com/Z29no

I transmuted by gear into feathered gear from clerics.

Thanks for the image. It helps. I am helping my fellow guild elementalist gear up too because I see a lot of them dying.

So your 2 daggers are rampagers with sigil of battle + bloodlust (power prec crit).

Question: Wht not Carrion armor + Cleric accs? So they key is all the toughness?

LOL at this rate of how good you are, you are going to get this build nerfed. Thanks for sharing tho. You’re good. This is how an ele shld be. 30 arcane.

Btw, it seems your gear is green quality feathered gear? I am more interested in PvE.

Let me get this right. You use:
- 10 air, 10 earth, 20 water, 30 arcane
- cleric armor set (power healing toughness)
- carrion accessories (power vitality condition)
- rune of dolyak
- rampager weapons (power precision toughness)

I dont seem to get Hp that high as you. Your crit rate and crit damage seems very high too. Would you mind sharing your full stats in PvE?

I have seen both properly built Warriors and Guardians tank. They tank like a champ. I am surprised that their durability is so high. The Warrior is Defense/Tactics built. used Knight armors with Valkyrie accessories. Slap in your soldier rune, and he tanks like a champ. Weapons of choice were GS and Sword/Shield combo.

The Guardian I PUG once with … I have no idea what gear or traits. He used Mace + Shield. He is probably the most durable Guardian I have grouped with. He could stand there and soak all the hits and hold aggro.

Even an elementalist like me – if I equip Knight + Valkyrie or Carrion + Cleric … my survivability goes up by A LOT. So if you find you are dying a lot, it is time to stop using your current gear or traits. Check out the better Guardians and find out what build they are using. I see a lot of Warrior and Guardians running around in full berserker gear… Yeah right. Every fight I see them getting down at least 3-4 times.

With the right group composition, this is not heard. In fact deaths can be avoided. You have slightly the wrong composition, this is much harder run. My argument is that this is one encounter that involves a painfully long fight without giving room for some error.

I have a couple of different guild groups. Our most experienced group comprised of Warrior, Mesmer, Ranger, Thief and Ele (myself). We usually run this fairly easy. I ran the same dungeon with my other guild groups that is not so fully decked in Exotics and proper group composition (i.e. lack of heavies) … yeah, the result is quite painful. 3-4 tries, but we did it eventually. It is just frustrating.

The way Anet fixes it is just by doubling the timer of the fight. It isn’t smart fight anymore. A good example of a good similar fight is COF path 1 where we had to kill 4 acolytes. There are lots of mobs, but the fight seems decent enough. We can still kill quite decently without being overwhelmed. Plus we have a target. Keep killing acolytes.

Is the COF Magg bomb part design intended to be this way?

That is – eventually we have to kite anyway. I remember the devs posted wanting us to KILL all the mobs. Which is kinda impossible. Spawn rate is too fast too many. The only way is to kill smokelord plus 2-3 mobs and then kite. Which is funny is we end up kiting anyway. I remember devs did not want us to kite at all. I find this part of COF path 2 most ridiculous. Either let us kill decent amount of mobs or just let us kite totally. Don’t have ridiculous amount of mobs we can’t kill and yet must kite anyway.

Has any groups managed to totally clear the ALL mobs?

Unless you have tanky builds of guardian/mesmer/warrior … your probably have to die and run in continuously. Those groups with not much dps probably takes turn and run 3 and 2 without even trying to kill.

I though the original design was to kite the mobs in the first place. It was fun IMO. I thought it was part of the dungeon mechanics. My guild groups still clear Magg bomb part fine. But everytime I do this path, I just find it stupid that no mechanics exist and it is just blind suicide run.

At least COF path 1 have some interesting mechanics and strategy. That’s what I like about dungeon design. We have to be clever players. Bad design is when you quickly fix something without much afterthought or testing.

Elementalist is a pain to balance.

The way attunements and traits work is that we either kitten ourselves by focusing or we become jack of all trades, being mediocre dps, support and heal.

If they buff individual lines, it will be strong. But might be OP for those that run 30 Arcane for attunement switching. I believe that they should permanently reduce CD of attunement switching and then balance from there.

Or the traits should be reworked based on DPS, Control, Heal and Tank instead of focusing on each individual attunement. So DPS traits actually benefit ALL attunements.
Ex Power-based Major Trait: 10% increase to all staff dmg instead of just fire damage.
Ex Toughness-based Minor trait: Gain toughness for every attunement switching.

So our entire traits works somewhat similarly to other class’ traits like Warrior’s focus on dps, defense, support or all. Either way any weapon they use will still be useful.

Imagine if Warrior’s traits are broken into Shield-based, 2-handed, dual-wield, ranged and Banners. Warrior will suck big time and be kittened if they focus on a particular style. Now they are powerful because no matter what weapons and style they still shine because the traits helped Warrior across the board.

D/D or S/D seems to benefit more from attunement switching. You can trigger more combos with yourself. The synergy for Dagger seems better. A lot of the minor traits seems to favor melee range. Trigger flame when hit. Evasive arcana affects mostly melee ranged.

If you go Air and Fire Traits for dps, Staff has limited dps options except in Fire. In fact, you get more dps from staying in Fire; switching if you require the utilities or other skills from the attunements. A full zerker with 30 Fire and Air has very good dps!

It is wasted that attunement based traits seems to pigeon hole us into specfic builds and kittening the rest. The potential of elementalist is lost. This will be a major overhaul but who knows …

I tested this build in dungeon romping with Carrion set + Cleric accessories + Rampager daggers.

1 word – Amazing!

You won’t see high raw dps output. You will get decent dps, high survivability, lots of healing, lots of might stacking, awesome combo finishers and good condition damage.

It is great to see D/D ele viable in dungeons. Drawback is that using same gear, staff dps sucks. It is slow and earth has limited dps options. Staff dps needs high power, precision and crit dmg to shine.

Yes, please fix this. This is highly annoying issue. You have to click actual items to see the prices.

Phoenix

How does this setup perform in PvE? It seems that using the following below … the condition damage is not very high. Instead you have lots of toughness and vitality. It just seems the power and condition dmg from these set is low. No way the PvE set will reach 1000 condition dmg compared to the PvP set.

Cleric armor + Dolyak Rune
Carrion Jewelries set
Rampager Weapons

Rhoto.8791:

What!/ Devs mentioned nerfing eles…. I wouldn’t of posted my build if I knew that. Its pretty hard to kill these builds but whats the issue .. we cant do much dmg at all if we run these builds.. why the F would they not look at guardians first, they are still harder to kill than us IMO

Mesmer, Guardian and Eles are being watched. I believe because devs think we are a little too good i.e. tank heal yet decent damage. Same as bunker guardians.

Good build. This is like a variation of the tank heal build that devs mentioned about nerfing. So basically any good of eles are being “watched”.

Yes, very worth it especially on WvW, events and certain dungeons. COE, SE, COF, HOTW … You can pretty much go 30 Fire 30 Air with full zerker gear and blast away. You can pretty much do it all esp if your awareness is good. Dodging etc.

Seeing your meteor shower crit for 4-5k and every fireball is 2-3k is quite delicious. Best is in WvW during keep defense. One time the enemies managed to break in the first gate. I proceeded to AE through the hole at the top. Seeing lots of 5k dmg pop up is so much fun.

Broken link …

Does anyone knows what tank heal spec devs are referring to?

Figured is is earth water and arcane. What gear set? And too op?

I posted something similar.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/PvE-WvW-Elementalist-End-Game-Built-Gear

I believe dungeon gear needs to be mix of Toughness and Vitality. Knight set + Valkyrie accs are best for that setup. When you get your dungeon tokens, you can also buy the Power Toughness and Vitality set. Every second you are downed, your dps drops greatly. My result after switching to Knight is improved survivability yet dps remained quite good.

A separate set of full MF is defn warranted outside of dungeons. Loot are crap in dungeons now. Do not bother. Only when you do events like in Cursed Shores, put on the full MF gear. Green quality is enough.

A full set MF is around 130% base. Take omnomberry and you will have 160%. You would want Superior Rune of Pirate + Sigil of Luck on your weapon. The difference is HUGE. The rate at which yellows drop is a drastic difference. Try it!

Reserved for Stats Later

I have been testing various builds and gears. Finally found something I can stick with. I generally only do dungeons, WvW and events. The key is traits and the right mix of gear. Builts and gears are towards my playstle. 3 sets of equipment, but they are affordable.

MF set for Events. Full Berserker’s set for WvW. Third would be Knight’s Set + Beryl Valkyrie Accessories for dungeons. The dungeon set of Power Toughness Vitality (PTV) + Ruby Berserker Accessories would be viable too; albeit you will be losing more HP and Toughness for dps.

My reasoning for 30 Fire and 30 Air is that the most dps traits come from those 2 lines, especially Pyromancer’s Puissance and Vulnerability on Crit. It seems too much to sacrifice to put into any other lines. I have tried various build of 30 Earth, 30 Water, 30 Arcane, but none to my liking.

By having 30 Fire and 30 Air, the dps output will always be there no matter.

Weapon of Choice
Berserker’s Staff with Sigil of Fire or Bloodlust if you prefer.

Dungeon Runs (Or feeling the need to be less squishy)
Knight’s set + Beryl Valkyrie accessories are amazing! The DPS is still there except that Crit Chance drops quite significant to around 40%. Crit Dmg is still good. At least 65%. But Toughness and Vit goes up. The survivability is quite decent. My HP is at least 14k. I have not tried PTV set, so more testing required. Armor runes I just stick to Precision + Crit Dmg Ones. Staff I use Berserker.

WvW
If played right, full Berserker squishy set works very well for WvW. We just have to maintain our distance and not be caught alone. Thieves can easily kill us out in the open. Rune of Scholar or Eagle.

Events
Using Explorer MF green set, I just stick to green quality gear. If you can afford it, go Exotic. But the MF % doesn’t change. Runes determine them. Getting Rune of Pirate or Traveler would be most suitable.

Traits: 30 Fire / 30 Air / 10 Arcane

Fire Traits – VI, VII, XII
Pretty much standard to get most dps. Some prefer the burning trait. But this is what I go with.

AirTraits – III, IV, XI
Most important is the 25 Minor Trait of Vulnerability. Major is the Glyph recharge and 20% more dmg to mobs below 25%. And I like running fast. That can be changed to others as when you need.

Arcane Traits – V
I have always liked Elemental Attunement for usage in groups. I really miss 20 Arcane for larger staff area. Those are very useful for WvW and AEing mobs. But I feel the sacrifice to dps is just too much.

Staff’s Chain Lightning in Air attunement is bugged in TA.

Elementalist’s chain lightning skill miss/obstructed bugs when killing flowers in TA dungeon.

It seems most flowers CANNOT be targeted by the chain lightning. I can be beside the flower and I still get “obstructed” pop ups. If the lightning does it, it bounces of 3 targets nicely. The issue is getting the first lightning to actually hit.

Can we get a fix for elementalist’s chain lightning skill miss/obstructed bugs when killing flowers in TA dungeon?

It seems most flowers CANNOT be targeted by the chain lightning. I can be beside the flower and I still get “obstructed” pop ups. If the lightning does it, it bounces of 3 targets nicely. The issue is getting the first lightning to actually hit.

IMO, you either do highest dps but die fast or go condition build and survive better, but not so good at WvW.

Full Berserker Set is good for dungeons and WvW. You just have to be aware of your HP way more. Dodge more, change attunement more. You can blast the crap of enemies in WvW.

Carrion set is the other Power, Vitality and Condition build. Prob best for 30 Earth build. You can take much more hits. This is still good for dungeons. But conditions build isn’t the best for WvW because it is slow and a lot of classes are built to remove conditions. Your 20 stacks bleed might just be gone in a single move. Warrior has 3 skills that remove conditions.

Any such gear? Condition Vitality Toughness?

I am trying to go 30 Earth Condition Build. I wonder if it better to go Cond, Vit, Toughness? Or simply go Power, Precision and Condition?

Please correct me if I am wrong. Power and Precision affects only first hit right? It does not have any effects on bleed/burns?

Zenyatoo.4059:

I use a similar, but more widespread build. However, I tried a D/D 30 earth build before, and in regardless to channeling churning.
1. learn its max range and try and stand far away
2. Arcane shield is your friend.
3. With the bonus 300 toughness, and if you get it, the toughness while channeling trait, you can tank long enough to drop the churning.

What kind of gear do you use for 30 Earth? Condition + ? + ?

wertyuio.8630:

now let’s take, for example, earth element power/toughness/vitality 0/0/30/15/25 dual dagger elementalist instead. you can still crit churning earth for 4.5k damage + another 4.5k bleeding. your fire’s 5 ability is instant and can hit for almost 4k damage. your fire and earth autos still deal 900 damage a pop, you’ve got 3 range closers and 2 knockdowns as well as a snare, you have much more chances to inflict burning and bleeding on opponents…. and with a far less squishy build, i can oftentimes take 20 autoattack hits before i’m downed. how many can you take? 6? 7? i haven’t been killed by a non-champion mob for over week (when i don’t AFK in a stupid place, at least).

I like your build. Can you link what kind of Major Traits you took?

Also, how do you afford to do the super slow churning earth? Don’t you stand still and get hit while you do that channeling move?

My Warrior can solo ome of the Norm stories where there are 6 mobs at the same time. Later boss appeared and summon 2 more adds, most of them ranged. If I have been playing my ele, I think I would have quit. It was challenging, but I actually defeated all of them without having to restart from checkpoint. Amazing!!!

LOL Snaple. I love your skill #2

I often wonder what our real role as elementalist is. I have been elementalist since day 1. Been 80 for few weeks now. I love my class but sometimes it still frustrates me to play this class. We shine great as support, beyond that yes we are somehwhat decent but nothing overly good.

Are we really meant to contribute purely as support class?

Our traits line pigeon to a few attunements. We are jack of all trades master of none due to 4 attunement based. To survive and kill we are required to have attunement dance. Yet at the same time we have to spec traits that split up into Fire, Air, Earth, Water and Arcane.

Our traits synergy is weak. Each line only has very few minor and major traits to help the entire class. Once we put in points, esp 30 points, our other line looks weak. If we don’t put in points to Arcane, we are even worse at attunement dance.

Warrior’s traits on the other hand don’t pigeon hole into specific weapon base. In fact NONE of their minor traits are weapon specific. They have traits that benefit their class across the board and can be customized to suit them. Their major traits can be switched to weapon specific if needed. Ours? 8 of our minor traits from each attunement lines are attunement specific. None of them quite benefit each other attunements. A 11s++ CD does not help attunement switching too.

Just compare our traits line to Warrior or other class:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_traits
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_traits
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_thief_traits

No matter how we spec, we are continuously kittening ourselves. We tell ourselves to attunement switch. But at the same time the attunements traits are not helpful across the board. We gain specific bonuses to the traits leaving our other lines weak when we switch attunement.

Other classes like Warrior, Many of their traits benefit them across the board whichever weapon they use. Their major traits can be changed on the fly.

Lets look at a similar trait line of Warrior and Ele that focuses on crit.

Air Magic
Air Magic is a trait line of the elementalist that focuses on use of air magic and additionally glyphs, movement speed, and spike damage.
Per point: Precision +10, Critical Damage +1%

2 minor traits are Air specific only — run speed and when we switch to air we get lightning. The 3rd minor trait for vulnerability is actually good.

Arms
Arms is a trait line for the warrior that focuses on critical hits and use of bleeding as source of damage.
Per point: Precision +10, Condition Damage +10

Warrior’s all 3 minor traits really boosts crit and Warrior’s dmg as a whole. 33% chance on bleeding on crit, Burst skills increase 10% crit, Dmg to bleeding foes 10%

So basically they way our traits are designed require us to fully be traited and attunened to make that line useful. Our traits to help us across the board. Whenever we spec towards a certain attunement, we kitten ourselves.

Suggestions? LOL not without having a major traits redesigned. Which we wont see anytime soon.

Perhaps our traits needed to be redesigned to be more playstyle specific rather than attunement specific. Or maybe even weapon specific since we can only use so few weapons. I.E -a crit based actually have traits that Improve crit spells across ALL spells rather than few specific ones. Increase 10% dmg to all staff spells instead of just fire, air, earth … Or increase crit chance to all projectile spells so all staff benefit from it.

So in the end every weapon, playstyle or attunement is viable. And not just forcing us to go specific traits and weapons for particular activity. A warrior wants stun based playstyle, he switch hammer without having to respec. Pulling out greatsword, just flip the major trait. No matter how we flip traits our attunements are generally weak.

TL;DR

• Weak traits line synergy
• Jack of all trades, master of none
• Traits don’t benefit class as a whole unlike traits of other class
• Requires Attunement dancing yet, slowed but attunement CD
• Traits generally benefit only the specific attunement you are in
• Switch attunement to untraited = weak
• Suggestions for traits to be designed for specific playstyle or even weapon rather than attunement specific
• Traits that benefits attunement across the board rather than just a specific line

Good job Munchkin!

Your posts is right on the spot. My Warrior alt is leveling nicely and I am actually having fun! To see a heavy armored, highest HP char mow through mobs it is actually disgusting when I think of my Elementalist @ weakest HP with lame damage. Warrior’s weapons and moves actually does both really good single and AE dmg!

Us Eles? No weapon swap. Want to AE after using scepter/focus? zzz, Dragon’s Tooth takes forever to hit.

Now I love my Elementalist … perhaps only in WvW, PvE dungeons and events farming. Beyond that, I hate soloing at the L80 zones because it is too much work to kill a regular mob.

We need more Oceanic, EU and Asian timezone guilds.

We are lacking of coordinated guilds of that timezone to hit back the forts so the US timezones won’t wake up to keeps all fully upgraded by the enemies.

Any Oceanic/Asian Darkhaven Guilds for WvW?

Darkhaven is being hit bad, especially in oceanic/asian timezone GMT+5 +6 +7 +8. We met Yak’s Bend this week and they are heavy on asian timezone players too.

We are looking for more guilds to coordinate WvW alliance for the asian timezone. The US timezone seems to be doing decent, but it is hard for them to hit back when they wake up to keeps and towers all fully upgraded.

Contact us or reply here

Circle of Kakis is open up for recruitment. We are asian based timezone GMT +8. We are looking for more members especially in the areas of WvW and also PvE gearing participation. We are all experience and casual players mostly base in Singapore + some overseas. We are rooted deep in MMO history dating from UO.

Other MMO involvement include DAoC, EQ2, WoW, Warhammer, Aion, Aika, SWTOR and generally almost all the MMO.

As most of us is working adults, we may not be as hardcore as other guilds but if there is a need to activate whole server population for WvW.. CoK will definitely be deployed to assist.

We have a current strength of 150 members who has been with us for more than 5yrs. We are now opening for new blood to join our happy big family.

Our members consist of both PVE’ers and PVP’ers. We have regular PvE, WvW events. We are aggressively looking for more members to hit WvW as we usually hit the fort at around 9pm onwards At the same time, we are actively seeking for alliance in Darkhaven for WvW who is able to play alongside with us during 9pm-2am, GMT+8.

Base requirement:

Location : GMT+8 (preferred)
Server : DarkHaven

Mumble VOIP (preferred) for chatting, or tok-kitten-sing-song as we coin in

Able to blend into our playtimes as most of us have work + family to take care of…

If you think you are able to met those requirements feel free to drop by the registration link below.

Registration : http://www.circleofkakis.com/forum

Direct GW2 Thread: http://www.circleofkakis.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=80

Facebook Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/111458712199429/

Thanks for reading and see ya all in Guild Wars 2.

Regards,
Xrande

Contact the following for guild invite:

Type “/w Charname.XXXX insertyourmessagehere”
Sometimes just putting in-game nick doesn’t work

Viceroyz (Viceroy.4736)
Xrande (Rias.6872)
Twistedhalo (syc.3564)
Xlanzer (Xlanzer.8965)
Fubss (Fubs.3706)
Chibi Koodies (Koodies.7280)
Sibei Siok (Tiberius Shiok.2978)