Guild Wars 2

Actually I am interested

I am interested because I want to train to solo lupicus, so any advice is welcomed.

I hear there is a guild that recruits players based on their lupicus solo … hm …

Inverted.7439:

The first rule of the forums is that you NEVER listen to the forums. These people dont know what they’re talking about 90% of the time. The only thing i’d suggest is trying it and if you like it, play it. Yes bunker ele doesn’t have as much dps as a warrior but it has a kittenload more aoe heals and team support & survivability.

I’ll follow your advice and won’t listen to you then

Hey guys!

Take a look at the page for the Dec 10 patch:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/december-10-2013/#events

It’s funny how the used the word “lingering” with “poison”
Hey maybe this lingering thing won’t be broken! Room for hope!

Hello fellow elementalists !

Here is an excel spreadsheet to calculate direct damage increase from stats:
http://www.filedropper.com/book1_5

It is useful more min/maxing purposes: see “marginal benefits” paragraph.
Most imporant cells to fill in are highlighted in blue.

By default the gear set is full berserker (direct damage!), and skill damage coefficient is 1 (normally: coeff=[skill coeff]*[weapon damage]/[target armor])

I have not made it very user-friendly, but it is still very easy to understand how it works.

(For those interested by the last paragraph’s calculations, the results are that for a d/x set up it is more efficient to trait full water & full air. I intend to make a guide of this build asap)

Ask me if you need further explanations!

Axelifus.3269:

Agony is only subject to agony resistance alone.

And Anet’s will to make us farm instead of rewarding us for our skills.

It seems to me we were perfectly fine on the dundun forums until a minority came here (wrong neighbourhood) and brought the mods with them. Now our friendly elitist community has to evolve in a toxic environment fearing to be banned left and right for speaking the truth … woaw …

I was going to make a big message explaining how I am disappointed and loosing interest in this game, but I don’t even have the motivation for this.

I do not have the will to connect for more than an hour anymore. I want to play ele, but the class is not delivering, and dev comments on its future frighten me. I want to play fractals but it is very hard to find a group with like-minded individuals. I want to do the Ascension Challenges but it is even harder to find people interested. I want to do dungeon runs, but I hate playing just for the rewards, so the amount of mechanics abuse disgust me. I used to want to train to get better, but now I am wondering what for? The top players I yearned to join seem to have all lost interest in the game. And no, destroying the same spore thing 25 times to get a text line telling me I am good does not amuse me.

I am posting in this sub-forum because this is where I can meet people sharing my mentality. This game could be so great, and waiting for it do achieve what it could be is a bitter hope. How are you coping with your frustration?

Alright I have some time to reply now. I am travelling and writing from a mobile device, sorry for the possible inconvenience.

If I understood you well Anierna you are saying that I should mention the fact that the D/F builds I talk about are generally less potent in terms of might stacking than S/x. You are saying that for speedruns it is more optimal to run builds dedicated to the lightning hammer.

I used to have a whole paragraph talking about the LH but I discarded it when I re-wrote my guide. Instead I expressed my gaming philosophy in the introduction and any cautious reader can then understand why I am not talking – and will not talk – about dedicated LH builds.

There are three reasons.

1) This is not a thread talking about speedrunning.
I understand that you wish to attract attention to your thread talking about “meta” builds for speedruns, I encourage you to develop it, but this is off-topic here.
The title mentions “advanced” PvE and I talk about “challenging content”. This may come as a shock to many but in my opinion the only thing challenging in a speedrun with an optimal team is skipping the mobs correctly. The fights last 30 seconds at most. Anyone interested in this boring type of gameplay can easily go on the Dungeon subforums and get all information they need (including my detailed talks about LH and staff).
Players wishing to do speedruns in optimal set ups are a minority and they are not my target audience.

2) The builds I mention are highly capable of performing in speedruns.
Yes I do use the LH, because with my build I can. Any of the builds you support are locked into one set up and this is simply limiting. Let’s face it: a speedrun build is worthless outside of a speedrun team, or in a challenging situation.
You are right that my builds stack a bit less might than speedrun builds, but my builds are so much more efficient in other ways. For example the combo of weak spot and fiery rush is incredibly strong and gives me value in speedruns. I have no dps numbers to give at the moment but I am quite confident that the dps potential of D/F is not far from that of dedicated LH builds, which leads me to my third reason.

3) I want to play an Elementalist, not a boring warrior gimmick.
I have lost enough brain cells doing optimal speedruns when I first started playing. Now I want to enjoy my time. D/F works really well in so many situations, it works with LH, and it is fun.

In conclusion I can do what you can’t do and I can do what you do almost just as well. To each his own!
By looking at the type of content that Anet is releasing I know my choices will pay off even more in the future.

This trait is useless in PvE.

It was fun in the stream when they said “you can use one with air in daggers to catch up with your targets”

Yeah

It’s morel like targets catch up with us while we desperately run away

There will be scripted agony every time you open the wardrobe.

quaniesan.8497:

Leaked Memo from Anet management:

" Regarding players’ recent awesome and right-on criticism that we are rendered speechless with no comeback whatsoever, in light of the upcoming holiday, let us continue pretend we are not around"

Spot on.
“let’s continue posting in the Krait thread because we think it is waaay cuter than replying to legitimate concerns. Oh also who cares about PvE? haha, be merry!”

I like two things in this game: elementalists and fractals.
Both are dead and dead.
Meanwhile, we get living story. The contrast is astonishing
“Collaborative development” gives me nausea, it’s so cheap …

so meta
very definition
much interesting

Shockwave.1230:

If condition removal works on it, expect Diamond Skin to work against it.

The best tool against agony is the trading post.

Lightning hammer is very good at what it does, I don’t deny this. But like I said a build should not be made according to one utility skill because that is just limiting. A build should be able to adapt however, so you could very well be right: if you plan on using LH then go for at least 20 in water and grab that +20% damage on vulnerable target.
However bear in mind that LH is good mostly because of this trait, otherwise its coefficient per second is 1.42 VS 1.22 for lightning whip, and at 2000 power the damage difference is only 16% (plus the 8% from the stats). Factor in the 20% from water and you get something really strong, but you have to be in close melee range (150 instead of 300) and you cannot use most of your active defence reactively without a substantial loss in damage. Also you loose the fury (uptime of at least 70%) and lightning strike procs (coeff/s=0.14), as well as the heal and cleanse from water . . .
So yes, it’s very strong, but limited to CoF-like encounters in my opinion.

Anyway you may have a point: 10 in fire gives a damage increase of 10% (including the 5%) and some condition duration; getting 25 in water can give me more than this (10% above 90% hp, bountyful power ~5%) as well as 1k more hp, not bad! I will have to test whether I stay above 90% hp more than half of the time, but at the moment I prefer to go for consistency.

Arcane recharge rate is almost pointless with this build.

Edit: Although I find it not essential, I will make a paragraph on LH.

I think dredges should use their digging technology to randomly appear in every single fractal. Not just a few dredges of course, the complete repoping bandwagon thing with the boss!
This way, no more avoiding them.
And then they steal AR.

The patch was actually full of buffs.

Not enough buffs, but buffs nonetheless.

And I like the general direction that they are taking, I just wish they were less fearful

noobgood.8762:

Artasqweroldy.7458:

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

Isn’t that in every dungeon?

Well it is not in fotm 50+

See what I did there?

- reserved for future use -

Just go in there with full PVT and do as the others do.

As the wise Kodiak once said: " If I could wave my arms around excitedly with spell effects in hand while running around avoiding AOE’s no one would be any the wiser that I’m doing no damage."
And trust me that guy knows what he is talking about.

STRanger.5120:

Zelyhn.8069:

STRanger.5120:

shockwave.1764:

evasive arcana is one of the most fun traits in the game

Sorry dude, Evasive arcana WAS the most fun trait ingame, before it was nerfed to the 15 trait point level…..

Wait wait that’s lingering element’s level … nothing can ever that low !!!

Ok, maybe 20 point-trait level, but certainly not grandmaster level….

You know what warriors get for 15 point traits? a 50% reduction in weapon swap recharge time.
With 30 points in arcana the best we get is a ( ( 16 – 10 ) / 16 ) = 37.5% reduction in our weapon swap’s recharge time
Ha .. haha .. haha … ha.

- reserved for future use -

About LH:
The reason I say that you are locked out of attunement swaps (and fury) is because it is more optimal to stay in water with the 20% increased damage to vulnerable targets. Even if you take 15 arcane (lingering elements, bugged) you will not benefit from this bonus in other attunements. It is a soft-lock, I admit, but a lock nonetheless.
I made some calculations, with 0/30/0/10/30 if you swap attunements constantly to proc perma fury, lightning discharge and stay in water as long as possible (6s) to benefit from the 20%, your LH does 7% more damage than my build’s lightning whip.
This is because you loose the damage from fire, you loose the bonus damage from air, you loose the water bonus on 90% hp and the 1% per boon (~5). However you have a bit more might, which I did not include in my calculation.

About going into arcane rather than water for survivability, you have a point: if you disregard my set-up (I play with a guardian) then arcane gives you more survivability on average in the long run, it’s true.
However I go into water not really just for survivability. Water gives me damage as well, and not just a bit! Water also increases my passive defence (more hp) which solves one of my biggest worries: getting one-shot.
One move that you could do is take 5 points from water (get rid of bountiful power) and put them in arcane to get the boons. In fact it is a matter of play style. It could be quite valid to go for more arcane, depending on your group.
Like I said, never copy a build, experiment and find what is best for you. I like that you ask me this kind of questions, thanks!

Conjures

Lightning Hammer
Swing: 4 (total) | cast+aftercast=2.82s (total)
Lightning Leap 1.00
Lightning Storm 0.50
Wind Blast 0.33

Fiery Greatsword
Weapon damage compared to one-hand weapons: +1.7%

Flame Wave: 0.62 (4 hits) | cast+aftercast=3.0
[360 degree attack window]
Fiery Rush without target: 0.32 ? (per tick) | ? | cd=10
[70 ticks with flash/wall trick (aka hardest hitting skill in the game)]
[Traces targets even if they become invisible]
Fire Storm: 0.62 (9 ticks to unlimited targets) | ? | cd=15

Hello fellow elementalists!

Disclaimer: I am expanding my analysis to damage and buffs. This is work in progress and I am editing this thread continuously

I have been working on theory crafting and modelling healing. It is a much more complex task to analyse healing than damage because it requires to take into account specifically what spells we are using. What I call passive defence is the survivability granted by the combined passive actions of your vitality and toughness (Effective Health Points). I am focusing my analysis on direct damage survivability from stats for the moment.

What is survivability

Once all your proactive defence has failed and that you are going to take a hit, I distinguish two aspects in survivability:
-Short term threat: you are subject to high damage in a short period of time, you may not have the time to heal in the period, so you are in danger of being “one-shot”.
-Long term sustainability: you are receiving damage over a long period of time during which you can unfold your full healing potential; while your health may often be not full, your life is not in imminent danger.

In practise, you may never clearly distinguish these two aspects. This is because a lot of the combat output occurs in bursts. It is also very rare to be one-shot, you almost always have time to throw a heal. But the idea remains the same: if you get hit very hard your health will be low and you will change your gameplay until you can heal up, or you will have to “burn a cooldown”; in any case you get diminished to some extent.

How are stats affecting your survivability

The three stats that increase your chances to stay alive are vitality, toughness and healing power.
-Short term: only your passive defence matters. To survive in the short term you must have a high enough number of Effective Health Points (EHP), given by the product of your health and your armor. The stats involved are vitality, toughness and defence from your armor type (wich is just toughness with a different name).
-Long term: the level of your health matters less, instead it is your ability to heal and sustain yourself that is prominent. If your are continuously getting damaged and healing it, then the stats involved are your armor (toughness) and your healing power.

In practise the two aspects are linked.
You get damaged and then heal up. If you do not have enough healing potential to heal yourself sufficiently until the next time that you get damaged then you are not sustaining yourself and your life is under threat. If you heal yourself too easily and spend most of your time at full hp while your maximum effective hp is low then you are sustaining yourself but your life is more likely to be in danger.
Therefore you must get the right combination of stats that help you to best respond to the situations to which you are exposed.

As elementalists we build our survivability on the following base:
-Armor (toughness): 916 base + 920 from armor = 1836 base total
-Vitality: 916 base + 164.5 from class = 1080.5 base total (or 10805 hp)
-Healing power: there is a base healing specific to each spell, and in addition they benefit from a coefficient of your healing power (0 total base) [ skill data ]. This is why it is complex to model healing: in order to determine how much base heal and coefficient of healing power you can put out you must first determine what spells and traits you are going to use.

Analysing

So far, I find that the clearest way to analyse direct damage survivability is to compute maximum effective health points (short term response), and effective health points healed per second (long term response).

Max EHP = vitality . 10 . armor
EHP/s = (base heals + coefficients . healing power) . armor / offtimes

How you value each of these aspects is up to your judgement. There are no reliable metrics for it.
For example you may be fighting Giganticus Lupicus so you are not sustaining much long-term damage but rather you want to avoid being one-shot from missing a dodge on his projectiles, so your max EHP is more important; or you could be tanking the flame legion mobs in Citadel of Flame path one to keep the gate open, so your EHP healed per second becomes more important.

Notice how you base vitality is much lower than your base armor. This means that to increase your max EHP is it easier to focus on vitality.

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

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

I refer to scripted agony as the agony attacks that are generated by the dungeon script rather than by mob attacks. Scripted agony is unavoidable. Therefore scripted agony is bad.

What are your thoughts on scripted agony? If you share my opinion that it is bad please express it as loud as you can.

Downed
Discharge Lightning 0.80
Grasping Earth 0.30?

Utilities

Tornado
Dust: ?
Electrified: 0.55?
Debris: ?

Traits

Sunspot: 0.5
Electric Discharge: 0.7
Earthen Blast: 0.3
Healing Ripple: 1302 + 1.0

Trident
Same weapon damage as one-handed weapons

Fire
Magma Orb: 0.40?+0.40? | ?
Boil: 0.50 (5 hits?) | ? | cd=10
Steam: 0.25 | ? | cd=25
Lava Chains: 0.50 | ? | cd=30

Water
Water Missile: 0.40 | ?
Ice Globe: 1.00 | ? | cd=10
Ice Globe: Detonate: 2.00
Ice Wall: Detonate: 2.00
Undercurrent: 0.50 | ? | cd=25
Tidal Wave: 1.00 (per hit) | ? | cd=25

Air
Forked Lightning: 0.30 (3 hits) | ?
Electrocute: 1.6? | ? | cd=10
Air Pocket: 0.75 | ? | cd=12
Lightning Cage: ? | ? | cd=35

Earth
Rock Blade: 0.05 (3 hits) | cast=? aftercst=0.2 {stacks bleed to 12?}
Rock Spray: 1.50 | ? | cd=12
Magnetic Current: 0.50 | ? | cd=18

J Eberle.9312:

Hey guys, what are the pros and cons of sigil of speed in dungeons?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Speed

Please remain on topic.

This OP contains a LINK!!

Move it to linksville.

You mean like less diversity?

I see many suggestion of spell reworks, or trait changes. Most of the time I find them very dull because they are just pale copies of other spells and traits in-game or because they are redundant. In this thread I would like to talk about creative spell and effects that could be used to make new skills or reworks traits. Feel free to contribute.

These ideas are just suggestion to increase the creativity of future suggestions
The occasional numbers, use, and source of these spells and effects would have to be discussed for balance, but this is not the intent of this thread.

Dying star
Description:
For a short duration after cast time, all damage received is also absorbed in a fireball growing above your character. At the end of this charging time, the fireball explodes and deal AoE damage around you in a medium aoe. The damage dealt is augmented by a percentage of the damage stored during the absorption time.
Notes:
The growing fireball remains effective even if your character is CCed or downed.
Such spell would allow for timely bursts, as well as a new way to deter foes from attacking you.
Theme:
Fire. Growing sun, feeding the fire

Overheat
Description:
Every 10 seconds that you spend in the fire attunement, you overheat the air around you for 3 seconds, in a small AoE bubble around you. This overheated air acts are a fire combo field. The overheated air blurs the line of sight of enemies: they cannot see through it.
Note:
This allows you and your allies to hide behind this bubble, untargetable, but you would still receive attacks if targeted before hiding.
This spells creates an incentive to stay in the attunement.
Theme:
Fire. Mirage in the desert

Devouring fire
Description:
When you burn your enemies, every instance of burning (every second of the effect) eats the endurance of your enemies by a small amount (5%). Every instance of burning decreases the recharge time of your fire attunement by 3s.
Note:
A mechanic similar to fresh air.
Theme:
Fire.

The burden of Atlas
Description:
A melee hit that inflicts direct damage equal to your target’s armor.
Note:
Punish targets for having high armor.
Theme:
Earth. Overweight, deadly gravity.

Bound to the Ground
Description:
After spending 8 seconds in the earth attunement you gain the Bound to the Ground effect. This buff lasts for as long as your remain in this attunement. Bound to the Ground affects all enemies in a medium radius around you. If enemies affected use a mobility skill (or teleportation) they get damaged a bit and weakened (weakness for a short duration). Short global ICD.
Theme:
Earth.

Levitate
Description:
Rush high in the air for a short duration, before returning to the ground (trigger on-fall effects). While in the air all your spells have a 300 increased range, your projectile speed is increased, and melee attacks cannot reach you.
Note:
This would synergize with the water trait that create a spell on fall.
Theme:
Air.

Draining water
Description
Morph into a snaky water monster and jump into your target. While inside your target you are invulnerable, unable to take action apart from switching attunements (like mist form). This effect last for a short time (5s), during which you drain your target’s health by small amounts per second and heal yourself. The target can dodge roll to force you out of its body.
Note:
A mechanic similar to the karka’s.
Attunement switching in this form is convenient to land Sun Spot and Earthen Blast on your target for example.
Theme:
Water. Virus, karka.

These are some example of what I consider to be creative ideas. I will add more as they come to my mind, I have new concepts every minute!

Do you think these could be interesting ideas to play with?

How about the only build that is both potent and truly feels like playing an elementalist: D/F ?

I am so frustrated today because I learned that attunement swap cooldown is two second long, not one like I though. This reduces our damage on FA D/F enormously. I am bloody tired of trying superhard to perform well with my beloved class and not being able to achieve enough despite my great efforts. If tomorrow’s patch doesn’t bring us one billion buffs they are in for one hell of a rant.

Well here is my opinion, it is only my opinion so you may discard it as fast as you neurons allow for it:

Removing the attunement cooldown would make us completely over-powered.

This has been stated over and over, that’s why at some point we might as well bring the AK-47 argument. Also if you want to play engi, just go play engi.

Anyone saying divinity anything is good has made no calculations.
There is always a better choice than divinity gear, unless you plan on fulfilling all roles so poorly that you are useless!

It never worked since pre-release although we have been as vocal as possible about it.

a t s e is a true jedi

You scumbag elitists are just siths

Yes, final damage is calculated as:
Dmg = raw damage * weapon damage * skill coefficient / target armor * modifiers
As you can see it is all linear, so calculating raw damage changes is the most simple and relevant way to evaluate stats
I define raw damage as:
Power * ( 1 + crit chance * crit damage )
Note that crit chance is (precision – 822) / 21 / 100
Crit damage has a base of 50%

I would be very glad to share my spreadsheet of course! I have improved it quite a bit now by the way. At the time not many people appeared to be interested. I will reupload it as soon as I am back from my trips, in two days

Fresh air happened.
Due to the proc from air 15, this trait boosts your damage by quite a bit (a lot in scepter), so a lot of people switched from scepter to dagger because it feels nice to burst a single target every 5s.
But what very few people saw is that fresh air is actually even better for daggers’ sustained damage

Is it me or anet put an “anet” tag on this thread without posting anything in it?

Sir Mclain you honour us! Two messages in four days is a lot more attention than we are getting used to

Well the top PvE players are in EU
The top PvP players are also in EU
The top WvW payers .. what?

Well you know, it’s not that easy to have 8 lvl 80s and master them all!

Kodiak in the post where you talk about your condimentalist build you clearly state that it is designed for small skirmishes and single target attacks; so basically: duels.
You provided us with videos. Videos are a great way to demonstrate the potency of a build that is non-mainstream (for mainstream build we need maths). Then I demonstrated that your performance in those videos is largely under average.
Maybe if you were able to provide a proof of the efficiency of your build, by either defeating skilled players in duels or by showing us meaningful videos, we would reconsider our positions.

Until then what I see is the following:
-This is not a condition build, it is a hybrid damage build. The issue with being hybrid is that when you intend to do two things (direct and condition damage) there is a good chance that you will be bad at both. In your build your damage may actually not be bad (yet to be seen on video) but your sustain and supporting abilities are so few that it is obvious you will not be able to put out this damage. Nearlight confirmed this.
-The resources implied are not being efficiently used. When you are in fire you do no longer benefit from the cd reduction in earth and the bleed duration increase. When you are in earth you no longer benefit from the fire damage increase, the cd reduction and the pyromancer puissance. So half of the time half of these traits are wasted.
-Again, alacrity does not increase your condition damage output in most cases. This is because the vast majority of your conditions in scepter are applied by the Auto-attack.

Please try to understand that here we are not trying to compare builds. But we are trying to guide the less experienced elementalist away from bad builds. Many non-conventional builds are not the best choices, but that is not the question. If people want to play non-conventional build it is perfectly fine, but we will always make sure that they are non-conventionally optimal (like maybe for example TGSlaher’s build). Your build, Kodiak, is non-conventional and non-optimal.

You put a lot of effort in defending it. You are probably taking this too personally. Or maybe you just don’t know what it is to be efficient in this game?
Now stop fleeing: if you are confident about your build then go duel, even if you loose, or give us meaningful videos. Until then our position will remain the same: your build is a bad build.

All our alacrity traits are complete rubbish.

Excelsior comrades!

Hidden between two dusty tomes in the Durmand Priory’s library was a mysterious note. I found this piece of paper, hastily written, hardly decipherable. It appears as if it was a lost page torn out from a book long forgotten. Here is what it says:

Getting closer to the Gods, seeking their guidance, such is the meaning of Ascension.
Many heroes have tried and the tales of those who succeeded are few, for the blessing of the Gods is not bestowed upon the undeserving.
Are we ever truly ready to face the tests lying on the path to greater powers?
We are not prepared.

I looked everywhere. I asked the wisest of all the sages in Tyria, and none have given me an answer. But one thing is for sure: there will be a time when we will face great hardship, and when that time comes we must be prepared, we must be ready!
_

My friends, I hereby present you:

The Ascension Challenge
Volume 1

_

This is the time and place where you can engage the best players for a friendly test of your skills and imagination.
The Ascension Challenge is a very simple concept, there is a Challenge Master, he defines a Challenge and anyone can try to beat it to claim the title and become the Challenge Master instead of him.
To achieve a challenge you have to beat the test defined by the challenge master exactly in the terms that he has stated. You have to provide a video for proof. The community then decides if you have properly performed, and in the end it is the challenge master who validates or invalidates your achievement. If your claim is approved then you become the challenge master and you have to define a challenge. You can be as creative as you want when designing challenges (group solo, traits, camera angle .. you name it). The point is not to make it impossible, but to make it interesting and entertaining.

Current challenge

The Russian rabbit roulette
21st of September 2013

Challenge master: Sanderinoa.8065 [rT] :
Finish the Uncategorized Fractal’s champion fight (right after the first set of harpies) by killing the rabbit last.
The fractal level has to be at least 28.
No consumables allowed apart from nourishment.
Kiting the rabbit out of the room is not allowed.