Guild Wars 2

I actually just posted almost this exact build in the build thread. Been using it with Valk’s for a while now. I use Signet of Earth for 8v8 to land those Fire Grabs. Extremely fun, and pretty effective.

The build I’ve been using in 8v8, and with a tweak here and there, in 5v5 is basically a standard Aura/Boon/Power D/D.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/d-d-spvp-d-d-elementalist-spvp-tpvp-7678.html

You can very easily stack up Might (and a lot of AoE Might) with Fire 4, and Evasive Arcana. You have a ton of Fury uptime, and around 80% Prot up time while using the Glyph in Earth Attunement, and the Elemental Attunement Trait. Not to mention the AoE regen and condition removal for your team. You also have perma swiftness by cycling Air Attunement, Shocking Aura, and Frost Aura. With RTL you can traverse the map pretty quickly.

In 8v8 I run Signet of Earth for landing Fire Grabs. I can crit 3-6k on non-tanks consistently thanks to the immobilize. Churning Earth does around the same, plus the bleed damage. Glass cannons go down pretty quickly with an RTL > Updraft > Burning Speed > Ring of Fire > SoE > Fire Grab. Usually I don’t even need the Fire Grab.

In 5v5, swapping SoE for Mist Form can be beneficial for getting stomps. Or Armor of Earth for stability. Totally optional in 5v5.

The ammy jewel and last 2 runes are also options. I think the secondary bonuses on runes are far more beneficial than the slight stat increases. I like the Might duration or Protection duration runes here. Berzerker’s, Knight’s, Soldier’s, Valk’s, or Cleric’s jewels are all options depending on what you want.

The build excels in group fights as opposed to 1v1s, but the only 1v1s I lose consistently are Mesmers, Guardians, and Backstab Thieves (if I miss the dodge on Steal > C&D). With the AoE Might, Regen, condition removal, and damage you really play a significant role in a teamfight. The whole idea is to wait until it starts, then jump in with a Churning Earth > Lightning Flash combo and start stacking your boons, picking a target to burst down, or whatever. Get out with RTL when you start getting focused.

It seems squishy, but the high prot uptime, healing power, multiple healing skills, and practically constant regen with a rapid attunment swapping playstyle you tend to have quite a bit of staying power, and enough tools to escape a 100B Warr, or a PW Thief.

I think it’s a common/standard build, and I haven’t been through the entire thread, but thought I’d post it anyway.

I love my Elementalist.

Just tested Final Shielding on the Mesmer NPC in the Mists (he’s the least bursty with more consistent DPS) and it activated at around 3k of my 15k HP. Seems to be working fine.

Earth’s Embrace activated at roughly 50%, too.

Try testing it on an NPC with consistent DPS as opposed to heavy hitters. If you drop from 50% HP to 10%, then yeah, Final Shielding won’t activate until you’re at 10%.

Challenge accepted.

Took less than 10 seconds to kill him, and of course I didn’t bother kiting. Just did a backstab combo, then Haste and PW spam. Didn’t even use the proper build for this.

What? Mytheos, there is no real aggro system in this game. They don’t take more hits because of their DPS.

D/D is in melee, too. Why is it sub-par to other melee?

They also get higher armor, on top of the higher base HP.

Or are you being sarcastic? In which case, ignore me.

Bug fixes, please, ANet? I think we need to start doing what they on LoL forums. “AENT PLZ” and “ELE BUG FIXES WHERE”

ThiBash.5634:

To be quite honest, I think you’re all overreacting a bit. Yes, there are some things about the Elementalist that don’t work well. And yes, good player skill can compensate for most of those shortcomings.

Seriously, it’s been said by now. Playing the Elementalist takes skill, we know that now. Maybe more than other professions. A buff will come when it will come. Cluttering the forum will only make it take longer because Anet has to read so much junk to get to the actual feedback.

Naturally the devs are the ones who read the forums taking notes, right? Not their community/PR teams, or the moderators even? Nope. Jon Sharp is sitting there right this minute jotting down complaints from every subforum instead of planning or coding. Of course.

I just want my kittening bug fixes.

Wait, Ice Spike got nerfed? I don’t PvE, and I know that kitten ain’t used in PvP to any effect (people just walk away from it, even while chilled or crippled). Did it really need a nerf?

ANet’s not making any sense to me. Appeasement nerfs to Thief and Mesmer, no bug fixes to Ele, and one change to Necro. The two classes suffering most got nothing, and Ele even got nerfs?

Chris.7653:

Animosity.5231:

@Chris

Your argument may hold water if half the kitten we talk about weren’t bugs. Bugfixes would go a long way to buffing the class. These bugs have been with us since beta in many cases, and no fix in sight. It seems to me they don’t give a kitten about bug fixing, or suggestions.

It holds even more water for the fact that there is an in game bug reporting tool and the fact there is already a thread about Ele bugs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/NEW-Elementalist-bugs-and-glitches-thread

There is no need to clog the front page with nothing but complaints. I rather enjoyed when the forum had advice, videos, actual discussions on how to beat certain classes etc.

It would be nice to get them back there instead of a constant complaint fest.

Still doesn’t hold water. Most of the bugs have been here since beta, and none of them have been fixed. The backwards casting on signets? That kitten’s not even on that list.

There would be more advice and videos if people actually enjoyed playing the class. As it is, Earth 3 and Air 5 on Dagger bug out getting you killed half the time anyway. Who wants to see a video of that?

Yes, more indirect nerfs via bug fixes, with a direct nerf with it!

Hooray for SoF being fixed, I guess?

There are some stupidly easy bug fixes they can do to our traits, like Windborn Dagger, and the 20% CD reduction on Mist Form. It would show that they are actually looking into fixing the problems. kittening ridiculous.

@Chris

Your argument may hold water if half the kitten we talk about weren’t bugs. Bugfixes would go a long way to buffing the class. These bugs have been with us since beta in many cases, and no fix in sight. It seems to me they don’t give a kitten about bug fixing, or suggestions.

Just gotta wonder if they actually thought 15% on PW would be adequate considering the set also brings immobilize, and PW itself has a stun?

Didn’t even lose 1k off the top, and it’s still a problem due to the ability to essentially stun-lock with Dev. Venom, Inf. Strike, and PW.

Suppose we’ll see. I still think the problem isn’t the damage so much as the hasted stun-lock it provides with quickness.

Smells like an appeasement nerf, I think.

It’s back. Here’s a screenshot.

There’s a thread about this 2 threads above this one. :P

Ditto. Came here to post this exact thread.

Autobalanced while down spawns you in downed state. I lol’d IRL.

Just ran into a variant of this. Three guardians, engineer, thief on Foefire. They basically did the same thing, and couldn’t put out enough damage to kill me on my Ele, but they had enough knockbacks that after I kept the GY contested for 5~ minutes they finally capped it. Once that was done, even with all but one member of my team there, the only person we could kill reliably was the Thief. When we’d manage to down a Guardian, Shadow Refuge, knockback bubbles, whatever they could do and they would get him back up. Mist Form stomping is pretty much useless with Shadow Refuge.

Says something about balance when 4/5 members of a team are bunkers.

Oh, and despite my 2800 armor I got crit for 10k by Backstab, 4k by Steal, 4k by C&D.

Once on my Ranger I swapped pets just before going down. Popped pet rez when the guy ran off to kill someone else, and he came back before I rallied. He just used IDuelist to keep me from getting back up, and you can’t cancel the pet rez without swapping pets. Watching my health stay steadily near the top but never going down, or reviving me for another 10-15 seconds, followed by him just letting me bleed out once I swapped to stop the rez really, really, really kittening annoyed me. I must have spent almost a full minute like that.

A half-decent condition Necro is the only thing I fear on my Thief.

Go play 8v8? kitten All I see, and how I personally feel, is that 8v8 is wayyyyyyy too much for the size of the maps. 15v15 would be kittening nuts. Never mind that the game promotes zerging when you have a kittenton of players, so I doubt there would be much team-skill involved in winning that scenario.

Big difference between Warrior and Ele, though. Eles still can get around 5k~ HP in heals with Valk or Clerics ammy, and almost all of their primary damage abilities are AoE. Never mind the ease in stacking AoE Might with combo fields. Warriors can’t get nearly as much regen or healing, even if they use a healing ammy, simply because they lack the extra healing skills, and while they do attack in a cone like everyone else, it’s not quite the same as the AoEs Eles have. Dagger Fire 4, Dagger Earth 2, 5, and probably another I’m forgetting all have large AoEs.

You can’t really compare two classes side-by-side like that. Should an Elementalist be able to dish out as much damage as a Warrior if they run 15k HP and 600-800 healing like I do? I don’t know, the healing has group applications with certain traits, and skills, plus if I play correctly I can have an effective 25k or even 30k HP pool simply because of the amount of healing I pack. With the build I use, I still crit for 5k on fire grab. Personally, I think Eles are in a decent spot numbers-wise, but they REALLY need bug fixes, and some animation changes because the majority of their damage is laughably easy to avoid.

Also consider the idea that if our large AoEs were able to crit for 8k, that might be a huge advantage in PvP. Perhaps making D/D more single/cone like a Warrior, with the bug fixes and animations would be appropriate? Hard to say.

Realistically, good/bad is a matter of perception. Just because someone has excellent mechanical skills and wins most of his match-ups doesn’t mean he’s going to find solutions to problems. Likewise, I’m a baddie, but I still attempt to overcome obstacles. You may call me a better player than the other guy, because I can adapt, but someone else will see him as better simply because he’s stomping me repeatedly.

Just saying. Don’t try to bring psychology into it, or label it as good/bad. The necessary action it to adapt and adjust, but whether someone does or not doesn’t mean they are good or bad.

All weapon sets being viable doesn’t mean every build is viable. We’re kind of pidgeonholed into a few variants of similar builds. Damage and bunker builds both benefit heavily from Evasive Arcana, so speccing into Arcane is required. Support builds need the Water trait line, as do most builds given it’s the best choice for survivability.

Currently, I just run the typical 0/0/10/30/30 setup and swap weapons as needed. The only trait I ever change is the 10 Earth to Air on occasions. Fire isn’t viable in the least for the vast majority of specs. The only one that benefits is the SoF condition build.

Unfortunately having mostly useless/bugged traits, with a few really powerful ones spread only between 2-3 lines makes every build similar. The only change being the focus of the build, which is determined pretty much by weapon and amulet choices only. But in every build, except the healing build, we’re overshadowed by other classes.

D/D being the primary damage weapon setup is outclassed by just about every other damage build by other classes. The damage is unreliable (Fire Grab has a small cone, doesn’t home the target, and is very easily avoidable, Churning Earth has a 4 second channel that roots you, and Burning Speed more often than not misses due to slight movement from the enemy, is only usable as a gap closer or in combination with Updraft, and sometimes just pops the explosion at the beginning instead of the end), requires setup (Fire Grab requires burning to maximize damage, and Churning Earth requires heavy CC, or Lightning Flash to be usable), has long CDs (40~ seconds on the 2 big hitters, Fire Grab and Churning Earth), mediocre damage (even as a full glass cannon, the most I get on my two 40 second CDs is 5k), and is still only viable when using a Might/Fury stacking build where 10+ stacks of Might is achievable.

The bunker builds are still outclassed by Guardian and even Engineer builds because they lack point control. Is there really a point to tanking 3 people when you can’t get them off the point, and using certain skills removes you from the point/allows them to cap? (Think Burning Speed, Burning Retreat, and Mist Form) Engineers and Guardians having multiple knockbacks along with stability, still makes them better choices for point holding. Tank/Heal is the only place Eles aren’t overshadowed by superior classes/ builds.

Just need some bug fixes and animation tweaks all-around, I think, to make us viable. After that, focus on the traits so we can branch out a little and not get stuck always speccing 20 in Water and 20 into Arcane at the minimum.

Sharp already talked about the Mists being server separated. If they combine them, they will still need a bunch of overflows, and the problem will still be there. It makes sense.

In that case, how about the GW1 district system?

Ferg’s Crossing isn’t horrible in its activity.

Depends on what you’re up against. Glass vs. glass ends very quickly. Bunker vs. bunker obviously goes on forever. Balanced vs. balance tends to last for about a minute usually. Glass vs. balanced can often times end in seconds one way or another, though. Conversely, balanced vs. bunker takes forever at best. Some gap shortening between the extremes would be very much welcome. I think ANet said they wanted fights to typically last 20-40 seconds or something. It would be excellent if they could get the game to this point, with glass build fights lasting a little less, and bunker fights lasting a little longer. +-10-15 seconds? Pipedream, I think.

I believe it’s a little bit bugged which helps with its power. Sometimes after it wears off I have to button mash in order for my character to respond again. I’ve seen others report the same thing. And I know it has a rendering bug. Sometimes it’s applied, but the chain effect doesn’t appear. You have to look at the bar in order to tell. Hard to differentiate it from a stun, so removing it becomes either painstakingly long, or a 50-50 shot assuming you bring both a stun break and a cleanse.

In terms of CC, it is without doubt the most powerful. It lasts longer than stun, and it prevents turning which anyone with half a brain will use it, then go behind you to attack, effectively making it a mini-stun. No dodging, no fighting back, just trying to AoE and heal. This combined with the difficulty in removing it makes it a superb CC.

To the guy above me: DR isn’t there for 1v1, but for multi-person battles. Two people with a few CCs can effectively lock someone up until they’re dead. Other games implemented this to stop CC-chaining by 2 people. It’s extremely effective in any situation if you have the coordination, and very frustrating for the person on the receiving end.

Not sure I agree with just straight-up passive bonuses for sitting on a point. If no one is coming to attack it, you’re not actually defending it, are you? If someone does come to attack it, you get Objective Defender. What’s the problem?

Fighting a Necro today in some PvP, got hit by the 10+ second fear bug. Has happened twice. Next time I’ll grab a screenie and post it.

Elementalist God-Tier? Why? Because of their support build? How silly. Their bunker build is also good, but they lack a meaningful amount of knockbacks to keep the point under their control, so Engineers and Guardians tend to still overshadow them.

Anyway, funny picture. The Elementalist part reminded me of a fight I had with a Warrior on mine. He was holding the point, critting my for 2k with his AAs, and whenever he popped HB I took about 50% of my HP in damage before I could stun-break and dodge. I run 18k~ HP and 2.6k~ armor. I spent so much time healing it actually took me 3-4 minutes to kill him. D/D requires melee range, and is the only meaningful damage source, so kiting him was out of the question.

I was a running a Shortbow Ranger since a week after release, and compared to most other condition stacking builds, we have it easy. Super easy. Elementalists AAs are their most consistent condition stacking skills, but they tend to be slow, so it’s hard to maintain any sort of stack. Then their big stacker, Churning Earth, has a 4 second channel time. Try playing a condition Ele, then come back and say that Rangers don’t have it easy with their bleed stacks. The problems is not with Crossfire itself, but with Crossfire compared to other bleed-stacking skills.

I pack a ton of condition removal on my Elementalist, for instance, but Rangers still give me a little bit of trouble. I’ve yet to lose 1v1, but their ease in stacking those bleeds makes condition removal lackluster. Between Cleansing Fire, two traits to remove conditions on attunement swaps, and the condition removal on Phoenix, Rangers still have an easy time maintaining a stack of 8 bleeds. I’m not saying Crossfire is OP on it’s own, but that it’s far better than most condition builds in terms of maintaining stacks.

To insinuate that anything isn’t OP because only a few people used it before, and no one noticed doesn’t mean it isn’t OP now. And I don’t just mean Crossfire (as I said, it’s not OP), I mean anything. Pistol Whip didn’t become popular until a couple of weeks in, but then suddenly it exploded and now that people understand how powerful it is (though I’m not sure I can admit it’s OP) doesn’t mean that it wasn’t powerful before. Get it, yet?

And Rangers -do- just spam 1 to stack bleeds. Sorry. It requires little effort otherwise. Most of a SB Ranger’s effort is put into kiting, not bleed stacking, as that is entirely automated and efficient. You don’t setup Crossfire, you keep yourself alive while Crossfire does it’s work. I know, I play the kittening build, too, but at least I can admit it’s significantly better than most other condition builds.

marianitten.1247:

Sanis.1096:

really… elementalist… ELEMENTALIST… they have the worst downstate E V E R… you could have picked like mesmer or thief

Vapor Form -> Assume a mobile, vaporous form, returning to a downed state when the effect ends.

That may save your life if you are attacked by 2 or more enemies.

But we have:

Fear > Make your foe flee in fear.

One fear, to one foe. You are still exposed anyway. There is no way you could survive more than 1 attack.

If Ele have the worst downed stated.. idk what we have.

Except that you move at normal speeds, so anyone intent on stomping you is STILL going to stomp you. You also can’t be revived while in Vapor Form. At least as a Necro you can interrupt the first stomp (Vapor form has a long CD preventing it if stomping within 2 or 3 seconds) and you can be revived when you use fear.

I guess having 4 weapons swap (attunements) isn’t enough? I agree, the lack of range diversity within a weapon’s set of skills is kind of bad, but why wouldn’t you advocate for some diversity instead of asking to be made OP?

I sincerely doubt we are where they want us to be. The bug list for Eles is extensive, and I anticipate a decent enough power surge once they’re fixed (assuming they’re fixed). They have done some balance changes already, though. Heartseeker, and Line of Warding to name but two. I just don’t see sweeping balance changes for a while.

If they could just fix the kittening bugs in a timely manner so many UP builds would be vastly better.

Shocking Aura seems unreliable. I’ll use it in a PvP match and won’t get any animation, no stuns go off despite being attacked, and it goes on a regular cooldown. Not sure if I’m just missing something, though.

RaptorSpectre.3271:

Ele’s are weak if by weak you mean can’t take a lot of burst damage and don’t output massive damage. That isn’t what they are meant for though. They are one of the best support classes in the game.

I assume you didn’t read any pre-release interview or blog where ArenaNet specifically stated there is no such thing as a “support class” but rather “support specs”? In other words, no one class is supposed to be pidgeonholed into one or two of the roles in the “trinity”, but each class should be able to spec to fill a role, and bring something somewhat unique in their own way. “Best support class” doesn’t mean a whole lot with this in mind, now does it?

40 skills on weapon sets alone would be rather OP, sir.

Don’t think PvErs want to be forced into PvP to get a skin they want, and I doubt competitive PvPers want PvErs joining PvP just to grind. I’m also pretty sure ANet is against this.

As said, you’re pretty much hard countered by condition removal. Shortbow, however, is quite strong with a Power build, too. The bleed stacking becomes less effective, but it’s just gravy anyway. Your sustained damage is no longer hard-countered by condition removal.

The biggest flaw with bleed Rangers, and Thieves is that they lack multiple conditions for condition protection, and many specs are starting to include more passive condition removal. They pretty much have short-duration everything besides poison and bleed stacking, so anyone with a couple of remove 1 condition every x seconds, or on-swap/skill use is becoming quite powerful against them.

Problem most people have with HB, HS, PW, and Crossfire is that they require significantly less effort to be effective than many other specs. Take an Elementalist – with a power build; it requires upwards of 10 key presses to do 13k~ damage, while a HB Warrior only need to Bull’s Rush, Frenzy, and HB to that, and in far less time. Necros have similar issues, and especially since so many of their builds are condition-reliant, and more people are taking condition removal with them, stuff like Crossfire that easily maintains 13 stacks of bleed really makes the Necro seem lackluster.

This combined with the lack of Quickness on every class but Rangers, Warriors, and Thieves throws balance out of whack. They already do a ton of damage, but when they start doing it in half the time it becomes an issue for many classes. Some classes just don’t have access to the tools (or having the tools kittens them too severely in some other way) to deal with these professions. Quickness is really the common denominator between the 3 “problem” classes.

No, he meant that burst counters bunkers, but ret counters burst. Go read his word again carefully.

" frankitteno much prot also. but that is not the heart of the matter. the core problem is retal. because with it, bunker builds eliminate spike builds from the meta game. which in turn makes bunker builds OP. so the counter to them is beeing countered by them. aka balance problem. "

He specifically mentioned spike builds.

Sustained DPS should counter bunkers. This allows the bunker to perform his role by stalling the enemy until his team arrives. Bunkers should counter burst. Blow CDs to burn someone down, blow CDs to counter it. Simple, effective. If burst counters bunkers, it becomes a fragfest.

Just wanted to say that IZerker still spawns on top of you and seems to ignore terrain. Only had one Mesmer on enemy team, though, so more samples might be needed to be sure.

I play a Thief build that can solo Lord with all the NPCs up anyway, and more often than not I still down him with 1-2 defenders on me. Actually, I did the same thing on an Ele build earlier, but without any defenders. Probably way harder with Ele than on my Thief with defenders, but there’s a good chance you’ll down him before the enemy comes to defend either way. The bug fix for that was relatively easy, and really shouldn’t overshadow bugs that severely hinder or break a class’ skills or traits, IMO. Besides that, these skill bugs have been around for months with no fix in sight.

I recently rolled an Ele. Was a Thief and Ranger main prior, but I must say I love the complexity of the class. It’s extremely fun, but the problems are glaring. The effort put in to kill anything is orders of magnitudes more than other classes, and it’s still weaker. Really makes my mind boggle how this class made it out of beta like this. I remember Eles killing me in 2-3 seconds during BWE 1 and 2, then suddenly they got beaten to near-death with the nerf bat. kitten shame.

Problem with Eles is it’s all or none one way or the other. I can do a S/D set and hold 2v1, and some 3v1s indefinitely, but my chances of killing anyone even 1v1 are pretty effing slim. Likewise I can go glass, kill people rather quickly, but I die if someone sneezes on me. Even with the glass build, the effort and time requirement to kill people is far above just about any other glass spec. If you play Ele, you’re stuck support because Guardians still better bunkers with more knockbacks, and Thieves, Warriors, and Mesmers still make better burst builds with more survivability.

I mentioned Time Warp, please read my post. No warriors take Standard due to limited range, and some other problems, but valid point. So, 3 skills total is all we can come up with, and your class has one of ‘em, but you’re complaining about a nerf to it? Of course it got nerfed, it’s one of THREE skills that actually have a battlefield-wide effect. You can also use that little knockback dome to cast it in peace.

Retaliation was over the top. It basically makes the ultimate outlast build since most DPS classes will eventually just kill themselves in their futile efforts to take you down. Was incredibly stupid to have 100% uptime a possibility on it. I’d prefer seeing a bit more skilled usage with it. Thief pops Haste on you? Retaliation! Not this 100% uptime crap.

Arken.3725:

All i’m saying is the nerfs from every patch make it seem like the Profession wasn’t designed as intended. It’s almost impossible to use the tomes without stability, retaliation is what was helping us with the low health tier. Before any of you say, “just use stability before your elite,” tell me what other elite requires the use of another skill to use? This is getting out of hand.

Tell me which other elites have the ability to completely change the tide of a teamfight, 1v1, small skirmish or any other battle? Moa, in 1v1s or small skirmishes, and Timewarp for all of them. No one else’s elites are as powerful as those 3. Moa isn’t even all that great, anyway. Rather have Timewarp.

Wouldn’t matter if they could discern a real DC from a leave. If they implement a system that distinguishes it, players will just unplug their ethernet cable. Easy workaround.

There just needs to be a leave penalty. Nothing incredibly harsh. A 15-30 minute debuff that prevents you from doing any sort of PvP. You could as far as how Riot handles it with LoL using the tribunal and banning consistent leavers, but that would take some time to setup.

Haven’t seen it myself in GW2, but coming from others games I can certainly imagine it’s happening.

Don’t understand why. Just playing casually I’ve racked up 35k+ glory, just hit rank 20, and have the sets I want for my characters. If I enter a game, I’ll likely do the same as the OP. Feel free to try to farm me. I enjoy challenges.

Interesting data. I may continue this little project myself.

Just to concur with the Thief thoughts… I had some 8v8s with 7 total Thieves. The teams with the majority of Thieves also lost consistently.

I managed to hold out for a while, but I’m beginning to feel neglected, as well. And it isn’t just PvP suffering, some traits and skills are broken. Just… broken. We had months of beta testing for this kind of stuff, but there still hasn’t been a fix to any of it. It severely impacts all aspects of the game. My favorite part? Ride the Lightning, and Ranger Sword 1 are two of the most complained about skills I see in terms of bugginess, but Thieves got an HS fix within a couple of weeks – one of the most complained about skills in PvP in terms of power.

Good post, OP, but I feel much of that stuff will be moot if they don’t get a handle on the mechanical issues the game has.

Raijinn.9065:

I have the same problems the OP is talking about. It’s already hard enough to differentiate between stun and immobilize. But after it wears off you might think you will just start running and you won’t. Sometimes I have to reapply a movement button 2 or 3 or 4 times until I move

Noticed the same thing. I was standing there for a solid second after it wore off despite tapping keys furiously before I died to the zerrrrrrrg.

Also, why does it stop you from turning? Most ridiculous thing in the world. Really annoying with Entangle, and even more so if your condition removal is on CD.

It’s stuff like this that hurts PvP the most currently. Thieves spamming 2, and HB Warriors, etc. won’t be so bad if stuff worked properly or worked consistently, and idiotic mechanics like no-turning while immobilized are fixed.

He really isn’t. Longbow AA is very nearly the same damage at MAX range as Shortbow 1 skill is. Shortbow also has the benefit of poison, and a super fast AA for crit-proc builds, bleed stacking builds, or crit/power builds to benefit from. Longbow is pidgeon-holed into a Rapid Fire/Quickening Zephyr build. Only reason to even take it is the vulnerability shot and knockback.

Sword has excellent damage, but it suffers from a bug that causes you to lock into the attack animation preventing other actions. Only way to handle it is by turning off AA, but even then you can still get locked the moment you need to use a heal or something else.

Axe is OK, I suppose. Outclassed by shortbow, though. GS does the same damager per hit as sword with an attack speed 1/3 of it. It’s a shame it was so overnerfed in the BWEs. The skill set is excellent.