Guild Wars 2

Hey Cal, welcome to GW2! I hope you enjoy the time you spend in game, and all the epic adventures that lay before you.

As far as a Profession choice for your first/main character, let me suggest Elementalist. To me they are (by far) the most fun profession in the game. And while they have the steepest learning curve, once you get the hang of it and find a good build, they can be quite rewarding to play.

Let me say right now they are not the typical “mage” class. And you will not just be focusing on one element; you will use them all. It’s not a “nuke them before they get to you” kind of thing, it’s a much more engaging and exciting play style. Although, if you build a certain way, you can have pretty good survivability through healing. It’s sort of a jack-of-all-trades class, you have some control, healing, damage, condition (damage over time), TONS of mobility (no problem moving around the map quickly, or maintaining constant movement speed buffs), and access to some very powerful combos / combo fields.

Elementalist will probably require more effort to succeed with (have to hit more buttons, dodge around more, etc…) than any other profession, but I think that’s part of what makes it fun. And I think that’s part of why you won’t get bored with it as quickly as you would another class. It’s also not the easiest class to start out with, but if you stick with it I’m sure you will grow to love it as I have.

Anyway, I’m going to stop rambling about my favorite profession now, and just let you decide for yourself. Good luck with everything, and have fun adventuring in Tyria!

An easy way is to trait 0 10 0 30 30. Air: I, Water: III, IX, XI (or III, V, XII if you prefer aura sharing; better for groups / dungeons), and Arcana: V, VI, XI. Use Cleric’s weapons and jewelry (Healing, Toughness, Power; crafted gear), and Soldier’s armor (Power, Toughness, Vitality; from AC dungeon tokens). On armor you’ll use Major Water x2, Superior Water x2, and Superior Monk x2 for runes, and on weapons you’ll use Superior Battle on offhand with either Superior Life or Superior Bloodlust on main hand. This is a D/D build, but it also helps to keep a scepter in your bags just in case you need to swap for a bit of range on some fights.

P.S. You can also get a decent rare back piece for cheap (Soldier’s Spineguard) on Trading Post, and put an Exotic Sapphire Jewel in it. Which is good, because you won’t be able to get an exotic (or ascended) back piece for quite a while after you hit 80.

I hope this helps,
Good Luck, codingCaptor.

I strongly support this post. I am for anything that would reduce the number of loading screens I have to sit through each session.

Creslin.1758:

This drunken rant paints a better picture of how Ele is than all of the sober class whiners on this forum.

^ This.

I use full Cleric’s weapons/accessories, and PTV armor from AC. I use Major Water / Superior Water / Superior Monk on armor, and Superior Life / Superior Battle on daggers. I have great survivability through Healing, good Toughness, decent Vitality, and plenty of Power. A bit lacking in Precision / Condition damage, and if you really wanted you could always trade a few pieces out for something different. But so far that combination has worked really well for me, and I would definitely recommend it.

I too had hopes for this AMA. And again I was disappointed.

I just wanted to point out that, if properly built / geared (as in getting the right stats on your gear, not having rares/exotics) Elementalists can be very survivable. Even while leveling I never had any problems on mine (after I learned how to play it correctly and what gear and traits to get, that is). You just can’t built them glass cannon and get away with it very easily, especially at early levels.

Putting 5 points in water ASAP will help (for the passive regen). Also, points in arcane reduce the cooldown of attunement swapping, which is crucial for viability. Also, what ThiBash said; get your summon elemental glyphs ASAP. The earth elemental is a very decent tank while leveling (and with the elite glyph, the water elemental does some aoe burst healing). Also, the more points you put in water and arcane, the more useful +healing gear is.

EDIT: P.S. Ultimately you will have 0 / 10 / 0 / 30 / 30 traits, with Air: I, Water: III, IX, XI, and Arcana: V, VI, XI. Healing gear helps a lot with survivability. Oh, and for dungeons if you want to share your Auras (with D/D that’s Air #3 and Water #4 for shocking aura and frost aura) you can change Water: IX, XI traits to V, XII. This build is primarily focused around D/D, but it can also be used for other weapon combinations just as well if you just change the traits around a bit (without even retraining).

EDIT: P.P.S. Runes on armor are Water and Monk for boon duration and healing (at 80, you will use 2 / 2 / 2 Superior / Superior / Major). On offhand always use Battle, and on main hand either use Life or Bloodlust. Always use Glyph of Elemental Harmony as healing skill, Glyph of Elementals as elite skill, and 3 Cantrips as utility skills (Lightning Flash / Cleansing Fire, Mist Form, and Armor of Earth). Although, while leveling you may want to use Glyph of Lesser Elemental (Arcane Wave is good for an extra blast finisher and burst damage skill, and at lower levels Signet of Fire gives you ~10% increased critical hit chance).

That’s the same build that I use. I would definitely use Cleric’s (healing + toughness + power) gear. The healing helps a LOT with survivability. And since it has power you will still do enough damage, especially with might stacking. And for runes use boon duration runes (water and monk). Your sigil will always be Battle on offhand, and on main hand either use Life or Bloodlust (depending on if you want extra healing or extra damage).

ThiBash.5634:

You probably weren’t the one who came up with the name, but really…was that the only ‘cool’ name that could be attached to it?

As for how it works, yes it’ll work with a scepter too, though you may wanna check if you have enough auras to activate the air trait.

I agree. Very distasteful build name.

Immobilize. If we can’t move, we can’t do much.

Easiest weapon to use? I’m afraid you would have to roll a thief for that.

I think that they should keep the blast finishers, and just make them tied to the spell effects.

EDIT: To be honest, this was the fix I was expecting. Boy was I disappointed…

Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable (Path 1 & 2). Farm these two paths and you will make a gold or two a day, and 120+ Ascalonian Tears (dungeon tokens). Doing this you will have a full set of exotic armor in a week or two. You can also obtain weapons this way. However, you may want to invest some of that gold into Accessories (rings, amulet, earrings, etc…) and Runes/Sigils.

To me it sounds like Elementalist would be perfect for you. I’m guessing you haven’t tried a survivability build with the correct gear yet, though. With points in Water and Arcana, and plenty of healing gear (and boon duration runes), you will be incredibly survivable. It’s a different kind of survivability than say, a Warrior for example. You won’t have a ton of health or armor (actually the lowest health and armor of any profession in the game), but with your ability to evade damage, control enemies, provide tons of boons, aoe damage, and support, you will excel in an entirely different way.

And don’t let anyone tell you that Elementalist isn’t good in sPvP either. My Elementalist is very, very hard to kill in sPvP, and can take on multiple enemies at a time. And the same goes for PvE, of course.

It’s definitely not the easiest profession to play. In fact, it may be the most difficult, and take the longest to master. However, it is a VERY fun and rewarding play style once you get the hang of it.

Hope this helps,

Elementalist. /15chars

Adding a cooldown that prevents the spell from being used before your downed skill bar appears would be a life saver for sure.

I would like to suggest a new mystic forge recipe that uses Basic Transmutation Stones. Many of us have more of these than we know what to do with, as many of us prefer to play our level 80(s). It would be nice if these were at least useful for something to an already level capped player.

It could involve a variety of materials and/or ingredients, or simply require 4 stacks of X amount of Basic Transmutation Stones. These could possibly yield Fine Transmutation Stones, or even a chance to get them. I’d like to open this topic up for additional suggestions of possible recipes from my fellow players, as well as comments and/or feedback.

I run D/D (0 / 10 / 0 / 30 / 30) and I do just fine. I use cleric’s amulet (w/ knight’s jewel), 3x Water and 3x Monk runes, and Life and Battle sigils on daggers. With this build I have plenty of healing and survivability. I like it because this is the only build that I don’t feel squishy in. I can also do okay damage, but that isn’t the focus. It’s great for capping / holding points, 1v1 (or even 1v2 or 1v3 sometimes), and has a ton of mobility so roaming is very much an option.

My favorite set is Cleric’s (which is crafted / on TP), however it is quite expensive to buy an entire set with gold. Even crafting it yourself, the materials often cost more than the final product. Also, I hear having a full magic find set is very important for farming (apparently you’ll make gold more than twice as quickly with a full set and food buff).

However, I’m curious what everyone’s opinion is about different healing sets. For a standard D/D Ele running 0 10 0 30 30 traits, would you go with Cleric’s (Healing Toughness Power), one of the Dungeon/Karma sets (Precision Vitality Healing), or possibly a mix between one of those and some Power Toughness Vitality gear?

Perhaps they intended to leave the Earth dodge roll as a finisher. The problem may be as simple as the fact that it does not actually trigger Churning Earth, but instead triggers Ring of Earth (although it does have the animation of churning earth).

However, judging by the most recent “bug fixes”, they will most likely claim that it was never intended to trigger Churning Earth, and they simply typed the tooltip wrong. They will then proceed to change the tooltip of Evasive Arcana to state that it triggers Ring of Earth on a dodge roll.

P.S. I agree with the OP about having, at the very least, the Earth dodge roll count as a blast finisher. However, I would prefer it if they changed the tooltip to state that each of the effects triggered by it (in each attunement) all count as blast finishers. They could still fix it so it only works as a blast finisher when an effect is triggered.

For example, if you put down ring of fire and dodge into it, if you had not dodged in fire (while in combat) in the last 10 seconds, and it produces a spell effect, then it would act as a blast finisher and grant you 3 stacks of might. However, if the effect was on cooldown and you dodge rolled, it would not act as a blast finisher, simply as an ordinary dodge roll. This would force you to change attunements if you wanted additional blast finishing dodge rolls.

This way, if you wanted to switch attunements and put your attunement swapping on cooldown, and spend your endurance, you could get a couple blast finishers out of it. But you wouldn’t be able to just stay in the same attunement and get multiple blast finishers through dodge rolling.

This would allow us to maintain this very fun play style, as well as keeping players from abusing it. It would basically be a Risk vs Reward type of situation.

But, at the very least, it should be changed in the way the OP has already stated. This, in my opinion, is the minimum functionality this trait should have. Anything less than that (i.e. it’s current state) is unacceptable.

Thanks for reading,
-Amaethon

For a second I though to myself “OMG a Dev response! Finally!” before realizing it was only because a Moderator posted something about keeping it civil. I spent about 5 minutes searching every page of this post as well.

I guess it’s too much to ask that they communicate with us. I’m starting to feel like a second class citizen just because of the profession I choose to play. :-/

I am also very dissatisfied with this event.

Heimlich.3065:

I’m sure they’ll change the tooltips to reflect current behavior (eventually).

^ This.

Seriously, this has got to be the laziest way of fixing a bug. Unfortunately, this seems to be ArenaNet’s preferred way of handling bug fixes. It really is a shame; I had hoped ArenaNet was better than that.

I have noticed this bug too. It’s always a little disheartening when a “bug fix” creates more problems than it fixes. Please fix this immediately with a hotfix.

I wasn’t aware that Elementalist had a leap finisher, and I main one. Maybe I just misread the tooltips.

I love the new map. However, I HATE Raid on the Capricorn. It’s definitely the worst map for farming glory, and the least fun to play. Unless they change the way gaining glory works, this will continue to be my least favorite map.

I agree with this to the extent that I hope they continue to add new maps for spvp in future patches. I would also like to see more game modes (i.e. 2v2 / 3v3 ranked matches, capture the flag, etc…) even if they continue to balance pvp around conquest. I think that the more options you give people, the happier they’ll be.

Using a blast finisher while in a combo field will still grant an effect to you and nearby allies. However, auras no longer count as blast finishers (it never actually said they were blast finishers on the tooltip, so they may be counting this as a “fix”).

They are definitely worth making. No other profession has as exciting, or as fun, a play style as ele has. Personally, I love D/D and am having tons of fun with it in both pve and pvp. Of course, it is nice on occasion to use Staff or S/D in Dungeons or WvW.

There is definitely a steep learning curve, but once you get to know the prof really well and get pretty good with it you’ll do just fine.

DiogoSilva.7089:

zombyturtle.5980:

Staff is the weapon that has been nerfed the most however. There is no way (other than arcane wave) to produce a blast finisher in water fields severely crippling the healing that bunker staff relies on.

Earth skills have several combo finishers.

I think he was referring specifically to blast finishers. And while he is incorrect that there is ‘no way’ to create a blast finisher without evasive arcana while using staff, it does only leave us with one option to do so. Eruption (earth #2 w/ staff) is a blast finisher, although it is certainly not our easiest one to use.

Basically, because it takes so long to activate from when it is cast, it has to be cast before the Geyser combo field is even laid down or it will activate too late. Healing rain does last long enough that if you use it and immediately switch to earth and case eruption, it will activate just before healing rain’s combo field disappears. However, if someone else throws down another combo field on top of it, eruption might trigger a different effect and not even heal at all.

And while this may be the most difficult blast finisher to utilize, at least they left you one that’s still useable with staff. Not that it makes up for overnerfing Evasive Arcana…

Would it be too much to ask that they fix Evasive Arcana’s earth roll effect? It is true that it isn’t casting Churning Earth, as it does almost no damage and certainly doesn’t apply 8 stacks of bleeding. Although, as mentioned earlier, it has the same visual effect as that weapon skill, and claims to cast it in the trait’s text.

Please either change the text and animation to the spell it is really casting (ring of earth). Or make Evasive Arcana correctly cast churning earth instantly on the dodge roll (this must have been the intended effect, otherwise why have the text/animation of it).

And if they go the second route, then I would think that the earth roll would count as a blast finisher, as the dagger skill churning earth is also a blast finisher.

They nerfed Healing Ripple. They nerfed might stacking through dodge rolling in ring of fire. And they nerfed the Monk, Water, and Earth runes (for spvp anyway).

DiogoSilva.7089:

SecondtoNone.7549:

Funny how we used to have “hopes” for this patch…

Taking a look at the patch notes, it was a good patch. Important Bug fixes, nerfs to bunker builds, buffs to conjures.

But where were the buffs to our other trait lines promoting build diversity through creating more viable builds?

Yeroc.7516:

I bet the debs are sitting in a room with a bowl of popcorn with huge grins on their faces. “We did it guys” says one. "Yep, they will all reroll warriors, just like we planned. "

This made me lol so hard. It’s so true though…

Tornado nerf is a joke, since it needed a serious buff to even be on par with other elite skills. And because I play D/D the evasive arcana nerf doesn’t effect me as much as staff players, but I still used it while might stacking on occasion. I think making it have no blast finishers at all was a bit harsh though. At the very least the earth roll should be a blast finisher, since the dagger skill it triggers already is one.

I think it would have been more appropriate to simply limit the blast finishers from that trait to once every ten seconds per attunement. This way if you wanted to blow your endurance and switch attunements (putting most/all of them on cd) to get a couple extra blast finishers, you could. But you couldn’t just sit in the same attunement, blow your endurance, and achieve the same result.

That being said, I am glad they didn’t choose to nerf Evasive Arcana in an entirely different way. If they nerfed the effects themselves, and not just the blast finishers, I probably would have cried upon reading that. As I said before, I play D/D, and sometimes in spvp matches dodge rolling in water attunement is all I can do to stay alive. And IMO it is in no way overpowered while not combined with a water combo field.

Yes, you use power/vitality/healing gear (cleric’s amulet for spvp). Trait 30 water, 30 arcana, and either 10 air or 10 earth (i prefer 10 air so using an aura grants fury and swiftness). Always take evasive arcana (XI). You should have mad condition removal and healing (and tons of regeneration, esp with 3 cantrips). And for runes I usually go with 3 water and 3 monk for boon duration.

P.S. Also if you use staff you can do some powerful healing combos w/ your water fields.

I am loving my elementalist in sPvP. With the build I’m running, it’s very survivable (due to a lot of healing), which I really enjoy. And I can also dish out some decent damage (esp. with might stacking).

It’s definitely not the easiest class to learn, but once you get the hang of it it’s a really rewarding and fun play style.

P.S. I usually use D/D, although occasionally use Staff for more survivability.

I support this post. An out of combat weapon swap for elementalist (and engineer) would be a very nice quality of life improvement for both classes.