Guild Wars 2

Razor.6392:

Baladir.2736:

The loss of stun breaker from Cleansing Fire to Glyph of Elemental Power is a puzzler.

Cleansing Fire least made some sense. I used it for defense and only when stunned or many conditions.

Glyph of Elementals I had been using whenever entering battle, but now I get to keep it in reserve in case I am stunned? It is now a defensive skill? So, I get stunned, pop it, and go into air, water, and earth attunement for defensive conditions, skills, toughness and healing? Maybe that is what it was for all along but I didn’t know until they just made it crystal clear. Likely as not, it won’t be off cooldown when I really need to use it.

GoEP always worked on the attunement you were on when you activated it

Meaning that, if you activated it on earth, you would get the cripple proc for the entire 30 seconds (even if you switched to other attunements)

And now that the glyph is instant… unless they changed the way it works, it doesn’t really allow you much of a condition choice. If I happen to be in the fire attun. when I get knocked down, I guess I better enjoy some burning chance because I’d be forced to use it!

I guess I read that in the wiki notes and it went right over my head, didn’t register because it made no sense to me at all. They certainly confused me when they said, “Gain a chance for spells to inflict a condition based on your attunement.” and then changed the implication of the description in a footnote.

Thank you for clearing that up Razor. Much appreciated. I owe you for that one. That makes a huge difference in how I plan to use that skill from now on…Proc in Air, AOE weakness with staff’s Meteor Storm, Lava Font etc. holding a bridge in WvW. This opens up alot of other possible uses too. Nice.

And yeah, no attunement swapping while stunned…..and instant.

I seem to recall the wiki it used to say the chance of a proc was 50% in two attunements and 25% in two. Now, it just states a flat 25%.

The loss of stun breaker from Cleansing Fire to Glyph of Elemental Power is a puzzler.

Cleansing Fire least made some sense. I used it for defense and only when stunned or many conditions.

Glyph of Elementals I had been using whenever entering battle, but now I get to keep it in reserve in case I am stunned? It is now a defensive skill? So, I get stunned, pop it, and go into air, water, and earth attunement for defensive conditions, skills, toughness and healing? Maybe that is what it was for all along but I didn’t know until they just made it crystal clear. Likely as not, it won’t be off cooldown when I really need to use it.

I expect alot of fun and interesting times with the 6/25 changes to the staff.

One has doubt the wisdom of the AR commanders who have made another pact with BP, to possibly come in second, which failed last week.

By teaming with SBI, that guarantees at least a second, and possibly a first, once BP is trounced. Coordinating with another against a common stronger foe has always been the way of warfare for just this reason.

To ally with the stronger enemy plays right into their hands, guaranteeing them a first place. Why play this role and into their plans? The smart play for both SBI and AR is to go for the guarantee second place. If there are any alliances, that is the way of it.

I speak the truth and the truth rings true. This has been the way of the world since the birth of mankind. We should learn the truth from the blood of our ansestors and honor them by learning their lessons.

Rinzler.8072:

No hate, but…

IOJ and SBI, where is your small group/solo talent?

All my guild seems to run into is:

A: Zergs
B: Cowards (Even when they outnumber us 2:1)
C: Equal size groups that get utterly destroyed

The only semi decent fights we have run into are JQ and a few GEN peeps.

Lol, that is pretty much all we have on SBI. And, we are getting out butts kicked. Our “evolution” is down -118K, 4 times worse than any NA server. Either SBI players who think we are doing well don’t pay attention to this or don’t think it matters or is not a true indication of performance.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/

We don’t defend or siege up anything we take, we run one commander for one zerg on any one map. Anyone who dares display a second commander tag is beat down by the SBI community for interfering in its strategy which is, see above…I won’t say this is a bad thing. It’s one long zerg for rank and skill points, by retaking and losing and retaking the same points. It works wonderfully well, for someone. I know our guild wanted to run a commander tag so we could organize our guild for a WvW and we were promptly told to turn it off.

I don’t know if SBI commanders don’t defend towers because they don’t what to, or because the player base won’t do it and they have given up trying. But, it is clear the score suffers because you guys take away what had been won and hold it longer with reinforced walls and seige. Unless someone sees what I don’t. Anybody ever find any siege in an tower they have taken from SBI?

My hats off to AR and loJ. You guys play well. Must get frustrating sometimes to see the SBI zerg run by a tower and not stop to PvP. Stop reinforcing those walls and putting up seige and we will be happy to stop by

Vayne.8563:

rogerwilko.6895:

cryforthemoon.9326:

So what people really want is WoW end game. Why? What is so great a out WoW end game.

Because ‘raiding’ was/is much more fun then any GW2 guild bounty / puzzle / whatever. May be because of the quality of fights and the game`s mechanics. May be because harder did not mean “scale the mob`s hp and damage up”.

That was and still is my subjective opinion.

Raiding was much more fun for a tiny percentage of the population. Every time they did any kind of poll, it was obvious that raiding was NOT main stream. That most people didn’t consider themselves raiders and most people didn’t like to raid.

You’re, of course, entitled to your opinion. But many people…in fact, most if polls are to be believed, don’t enjoy raiding.

Agreed. And, most of a raiding games’ population can’t raid, don’t have access to it, certainly not level appropiate, not until after skill caps go up and they can go in overpowered. Instead, GW2 made a game with a great deal of content, replayable for all levels, for almost every level of a player’s individual skill. And, there’s nothing wrong with that.

I never knew, would have suspected, that so many players like to grind for the looks of their charcter lol. They grind gold to upgrade the looks of their character, for skins, for legendaries, for tokens, for mats, etc. They pay real money for that lol. That stuns me. Absolutely amzaing. Somtimes I feel as if I am surrounded by fashionistas.

If I was to take a wild guess, I would say raiders also miss the Trinity and their place in it, the demand for their skill and class, and the armor they worked so hard for to be the best at what they do. They miss the thrill of working weeks or months to beat content. I know I do, but then I didn’t come to GW2 looking for that. If I was, I’d be hitting my head against the wall like to OP, looking for something that isn’t here.

If Anet wanted to have a trade window in game so that people could be sure they would not get scammed, they could.

It’s a good idea. I think alot of elementalists know how much vitality=hitpoints or power=damage. Personally I don’t download files to my computer as a general rule so I haven’t looked at it. I think a web based menu driven program would be more useful. I thought I had seen some links in the forums once, but I’m lazy. A pencil and graph paper does the job, with a big eraser.

Icarrus.5421:

I understand that. So I guess what I want to get a flavour of are some of the tricks you can pull off as an ele

“your experience may vary”, would be a way to start this lol.

There are so many ways to handle a situation depending on the weapon set, party makeup, and other countless variables that I am failing to come up with any one in particular to give you a flavour of the class. I guess that is in esscense the flavour of the class for me.

Just be warned, no matter what you do, someone is going to say they can or did it better lol.

Some of my memorable moments are soloing mulitiple veteran, elite mobs in a dungeon with a staff while three are dead and one is downed until they rez themselves, to assisting in holding a bridge choke point in WvW against a push using the staff’s crowd control and area denial skills until we could mount a counter attack. One manning a supply camp in WvW. Getting my kitten kicked in sPvP but knowing others don’t and there is room for improvement. Meleeing dungeon bosses and ranging the same because I have the choice. Clearing keep walls or defending the same. We can chill, stun, immobilize, cripple, knockdown, weaken, single target and aoe dps, heal, and the list seems endless. Grant boons, grant auras, remove conditions. Reduce incoming damage, increase outgoing damge. Combo fields and combo finishers. Countless builds.

That is the beauty of the class for me. It’s always asking the question, “How can I be most effective in this situation?” and finding the answer. It’s simply fun.

The word “support” is used pretty loosely. If you are thinking healing and condition removal is “support” and you should build for that, that is a no go.

If you mean that, above, plus crowd control, conditions, boons, and combo fields, that is not a build, those are skills of the different weapon sets that you can use.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have some Healing Power in your build, or boon duration, or condition removal etc. Those are helpful and useful, but do not alone justify a spot. Every character in a party should contribute some meaningful dps. That doesn’t mean the party will not succeed if you do not. Heck, alot of material for a party can be 2 or 3 or 4 manned.

The wiki should answer most of your questions

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigils

Perhaps use a flight controller joystick for the left hand. All your movement is there in the stick. Flight controllers typically have 4 thumb buttons on top, plus a thumb hat switch that has 8 positions (up,down, sideways and diagonally, although up down and sideways are easier to use), plus the trigger, all can be software programmed, at least the Logitiech can. If you need more buttons, program a crtl and alt on the mouse and now you have that many more sets of buttons on the joystick. (trigger, crtl trigger, alt trigger etc.) I wouldn’t bother with hotkeying the skills, use the mouse pointer on screen. It’s plenty fast enough that way.

BlackBeard.2873:

Assuming you had a couple of eles dropping static fields to make the DT land, it would be nearly instant-death by retaliations for the eles.

lol

Ramethzero.3785:

I almost exclusively play staff in WvW when I run with groups. When I roam, I have other options available.

First thing I learned is that while fields and AOE’s are powerful, you are not the top of the food chain. From what I have observed, staff seems to be more devised around area pressure and denial. That is the hallmark of a support weapon. The staff Ele is not for ranged ganking, despite the nice big spikes every now and then. These spikes are deterrents, mostly. Even if you have terrible damage, the thought of being surrounded in red circles is not something people are likely to enjoy.

Every profession that has enjoyed ranged ganking has had their skills pruned against that sort of thing. Even with the availability of something near it can be hazardous and risky to field.

On some of your other points, all I can say is that your experience does not match mine at all. Some of the points are actually rather incorrect, and pretty much QQ.

You said that so well.

I think the word “support” has been misused to an extent. Players use that word when referring to healing, buffs, and builds. In the useage you are describing, I think “strategic” or something like that is a more descriptive word. As you put it, “area pressure and denial.” but that is 4 words . How many times have we heard, " I have a support build." or “Is a support build viable?” WTF are those anyway?! No, I think you hit it right on the head. Support is a playstyle. It takes what we have and uses it to good advantage. It does not take what we have and try to make it into something that it is not.

Watch your conditions. Confusion and Retaliation will kill you faster than anyone else can for example. Recognize all the conditions. Know which you have to remove and which ones can stay awhile. They are small icons. I wish we could customize the gui and put them where they are more visable. Looking down to see them is a pain.

Check your combat log to see where your damage is coming from.

The successful PvP eles know what the other classes are capable of and can anticipate what their next move is. So, it’s not just about doing your rotation. Many of a classes moves are telegraphed in advance. In other words, knowing how to play all the classes is a huge advantage. If you know ahead of time what conditions you will be getting and how often that helps alot. If you can anticipate what big damage skill the other class has you can dodge or move out of range to avoid it.

PvP is not for everyone. The best never look at their keyboard. Their fingers dance on the keys faster than the eye can follow. As has been said, everyone sucks at the beginning. If you stick with it you will be successful.

Know your limitations. You obviously are not skillful enough right now to hold a point so don’t accept that assignment. Nor can you go solo and take a point. If that’s all that you get, fine, trial by fire lol. If you can , be a roamer and run with another in a group of two. Maybe, go in with someone you know and run together. Often the pick up matches are kind of unorganized anyway. That way you will have someone looking after your back.

Study the other classes in the wiki. Talk to others who play other classes. Check out their forums. Like that. If you want to be consistantly successful, you have to know what you are up against.

MIxed reactions. Standard d/d fare. Roll around and get the 14 stackes of might, blow all the skills, before the battle begins. Get into battle, and RTL out of there to roll around and heal up while outputting no damage (hence the big RTL commotion, no escape, I gotta run) Have to wait for cooldowns. Little might stacking there.

Or,

Go into battle with no might, build it and use the skills and thier cooldowns for something useful like dps. So, there is no 14 might for the battle, only part of it, before RTL the heck out of there and roll around and heal while doing no DPS. Have to wait for cooldowns. Little might stacking there.

What is in common with both is that 14 might is 14%, big whoop. The ele is out of melee range after RTL, any might stacking is not going towards those in melee in range at that point, the skills used to generate might are on cooldown. If everything died its all good. If an ele has to be in melee range d/d is excellent, I agree. 1v1 it is excellent I agree. And, no, many skilled eles do not have to RTL the heck out of there, but there are an awful lot who do. Judging by the qq about the RTL nerf, it is more then I ever imagined.

Seems d/d fanatics ignore conversation about the lower dps of the bunker eles and the downtime of the glass cannon eles while out of range. Both builds with zero condition damage most all the time. My preference is for continuous damage. Its adds up fast.

There is a point here somewhere. I think I am saying that d/d is not the stick that should be used to judge the abilites of the player behind them, certainly not whether they should be in a party.

Umber makes a very good point. There are alot of people in pugs who think the attitude of someone successful should be to kick people from parties, mindlessly drone on about how uber they themselves are, recite dribble about the best builds (one in particular) that they have, and cut down anyone who doesn’t agree. Oh, and /ragequit from parties. That seems to be the best expression of their uberness that they can flaunt to their friends. I think the more times they do it, the better they must be.

But then, I don’t believe staff sucks. I believe melee is sometimes not the place to be as an elementalist. That depends on the situation. I think the sustained dps of the staff, the combo fields, and cc, and healing is often better with the staff at range than the d/d. And, I like the might stacking of the s/d better because I can use weapon skills to stack might instead of utility skills, meaning I can use utility skills that allow me to stay in melee range longer so I can do more damage.

Just one persons opinion. I wish everytime I look for a pug that I don’t get one of those know it all kids.

We will have to agree to disagree that a possible few seconds off a run are not a game breaker, or that one persons favorite build for their sytle of play does not trump anothers build that fits their style of play for the small difference it may, not will, make. Or that the dps of one character in a party is more effective than team play.

In truth, this is behavior I have seen over many years of mmo play. I can recall only one instance in GW2 of a player rage quitting and one we booted out. Most groups seem pretty decent. But from the stuff I hear on the forums, we have been lucky.

Jarek.2430:

I enjoy playing Staff Ele in WvW.

Playing staff I maintain two targets (individual and specific areas). Say I am in Fire I would be targeting an individual with Fire 1 or 3 and then cast Fire 2 or 4 in a specific area whether on the same individual or front-line, flank and etc.

However, you are only as good as you team is around your party/guild need to be aware of the look of your combo fields to get the best benefit.

We have 6 combo fields + 1 more depending on race.
Example: Prior to battle, stack, cast lava font, guild-mates and yourself now cast combo finishers (Eruption) to get might. If done together you can easily hit 25 might stacks prior to fight.

My Newest Build 0/20/20/0/30

Air: quick glyphs, inscription
Earth: Earths Embrace, Geomancers Freedom
Arcana: Ele Attune, Blasting Staff, Evasive Arcana

Utilities:
Glyph of Elemental Harmony
Glyph of Elemental Power
Armor of Earth
Radiation Field
Tornado

Soldier/Knight armor with Melandru
Beserker Staff with Accuracy
Soldier trinkets with ruby/beryl

Conditions (I have no condition removal skills or traits (well dodge in water) instead I use the following):
Melandru, Soup and Earth trait (geo free)
Buff – Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup (-40%)/Bowl of Poultry and Leek Soup (-36% – less but a lot cheaper)
Condition Duration: -61-65%
Trait: Geomancers Freedom (Chilled, Crippled, Immoblized -33% (total -94-98%)
Stun Duration: -33%

Glyph, Air Traits and Boons:
Swiftness – Add in Winborne (air 4) allow for near constant swiftness
Regeneration – Add in Healing rain and other combo fields for near constant regeneration
Might – As stated above
Protection – switching to Earth and timing with Glyphs up to 16secs.

I like it. Because:

You play with your team in mind.

You put offensive dps in.

You built synergy.

You are survivable.

You didn’t use and don’t need the utility skills many elementalists think they must have.

cc tank…never heard of one before. imo our staff cc is best used at range. In fact all our skills are best used at range. It’s a ranged weapon.

Damage + support is by far better than 0 damage + support. In fact, I cannot fathom why anyone would have a staff ele with no damage. Our cc is in our skills; it’s automatic. There’s not much more to build for except dps and survivability at range. Survivability can come in part from healing power, which can mitagate quite a bit of damage over minutes of time using a dash of regen, and some toughness and vitality. But to ignore dps is just silly. This isn’t a trinity game. There isn’t enough support or increased effectiveness of cc available to justfy such a one sided way of playing.

Personally I get most of my staff dps from crits. It has the desired effect. It catches the other players attention and gets them off the walls and breaks their lines. We don’t need melee vitality. We don’t need melee toughness. Melee utility blast finishers on ranged combo fields is just another example of what we don’t need. I don’t know why players want to put melee stats and skills on a ranged character.

cc and support are not builds. They are a proper use of the skills of the staff weapon.

Those combo fields, skills, you mention are mixed up between dagger, scepter, and staff or something. Regardless, I get the point. You died. Assuming you do not mind an answer from someone other than Anet, (you won’t get one lol), I’ll put in my two cents.

Apparently it is balance for them cause no one sees any changes coming our way in that regard.

I’m impressed you made it 6 minutes.

yeah, it sounds like a l2p issue. ya don’t need tons of hp with staff because of the range. High crit will break the opponents line and when they run they die lol. The aoes usually seem to be falling on the front line or just in front of it. Snagging the other players with our cc lets the melee classes mop them up. The ranged damage I attract is damage the melee classes are not taking. I can dodge and reflect the ranged damage. And it just goes to show how much attention the eles are getting that there is so much ranged damage, that those aoes are effective, especially when crits come into play.

I think of it as team play, not support.

edit The l2p comment is not meant to be harsh. It’s a matter of playing to the build and taking what it gives you. If you are weak in an area, change the build and that can take some work. By work, that kind of means being creative with the build. I have exactly 2 pieces of pvt gear out of all my gear. Yet, I have managed to pull out 1461 Vitality and 1507 Toughness. Those are not great 1v1 stats but then I don’t look for 1v1 combat. It does however make me hard enough to take down when I am at range using a staff. I’ll often look down to find 5 or more conditions on me but a cleanisng fire, water attunement, and a dodge roll takes care of that. Healing power is a highly underrated stat. People forget to add up the healing that generates over minutes with regen and it adds up to high numbers. The change to all the healing adds up to high numbers over time. Not so much good in fast quick 1v1s but alot of staying power at range.

yeap. Going back and doing downscaled stuff is alot of fun. With the advantages of being 80, previously impossible stuff is now possible but very pleasantly challenging. It’s like new content. And, like has been said, being able to play with lower leveled charaters really opens up the game. Sometimes it all seems new again.

Basharic.1654:

…..
Playing an underpowered profession or build.
Taking off pieces of your armor until content gets hard.
Aggroing more mobs (limit to this one)
Farming Arah instead of CoF p1
Killing champions/events with too few people/solo

………

Agreed. I have no doubt many of the players who claim the game is too easy also take advantage of every trick to run by mobs, find spots where they avoid damage, over come npcs where being underleveled is not much of a disadvantage because that doesn’t compensate for the awesome stats on exotic and above level gear, and run the same dungeons over and over again. I think there are more posters in this thread than I seem to be able to find willing to run Arah anytime I look.

Imo it’s driven by gold farming. Everyone wants their legendaries and that takes alot of gold. By the time everyone has run their alts thru all the easy runs and done the round robin of the dragons, the night is over lol. The only satisfaction for the night is the gold earned and that suddenly seems like a cheap reward for all the time spent. But, how does one change the need to have so much gold?

As someone who could care less if I have a legendary, my options are wide open. I go back and find the champions who were so tough and solo them if I can. I play parts of the game I have bypassed because I have the time because I don’t run CoF part 1 over an over lol. I run dungeons strange to me. I look for groups that are not in the WvW zerg and those are hard to find lol. Running with inexperienced players is especially challenging.

It’s an interesting player base to be sure. There are a dozen reasons why players say the looks of the legendary staff do not make it desirable, when what they are really saying is that they can’t or won’t get 500 Arah tokens. Is it merely coincidence that the armor and weapons people covet are the ones from the easy dungeons? Or that full sets of exotic Karma gear are less desireable than dungion gear because they take Karma that is otherwise used for legendaries? I don’t think so.

By doing away with a gear grind needed for the best gear, Anet has made the game alot more evenly balanced in terms of player equality. They substituted the legendary grind instead. I am not sure that is any better given the lengths players will go to have one. I for one never imagined how much real money players would spend and how much in game time would be played just to look good in a video game lol. It is a freaking amazing phenom.

Vayne.8563:

Try getting some cheap humanoid tonics. Then you can do jumping puzzles as a smaller character.

yeap. The plushie griffin tonic makes a great jumper for the puzzles. Not sure that is the exact name lol, but that is what it is. A cute little thing.

If you go north out of the Black Citadel, that will put you in Diessa Plateau, level 15-25.

As for the story line, just run by all the mobs to get to the story line instance. Not sure why such a big difference though.

Pick up groups are a crap shoot. Some days you get great ones and others days you get nothing good.

docMed’s advice on guilds is solid. A guild will not guarantee you a run whenever you want, but it’s a good place to start and learn. Barring that, build up your friends list of the players you enjoyed playing with. If you find yourself in a group of players from one guild that went well, ask if they are taking recruits.

Fractals have alot of puzzles and without voice chat, a guild voice chat server for example, they can be difficult to explain using in game typed chat. Dungeons are much more straight forward, but there are still nuances that you will not know about. That’s not an excuse for the behavior you ran into, but it is why. Every mmo is the same in these respects.

Sounds like there could have been a stealthed thief or two.

I think that trinket has some good stats. Building for condition as a primary focus is a mistake, but ignoring it is not acknowledging the fact that bleeds from Churning Earth stack up to alot of aoe damage. That skill alone justifys putting condition damage in a build imo. Base damage bleeding for 8 seconds 2720 damage times 5 targets and it bypasses armor. Adding 100 condition increases bleed damage by 11.7%. It adds up to alot real fast with very little investment in the stat.

I don’t get 100s like Swimsasa, but my balanced build is getting me 60s for 3840+ times 5 targets plus crits on the initial proc for 3000+ per target. Crits of course are wildly variable.

2nd on the elementals to draw agro, especially the earth. Try scepter/dagger or scepter/focus. That will allow you to get off a nice ranged attack before the mobs try to get into melee range. Of course try to manage the pulls to your advantage, but yeah, you will get three and three is hard to handle. Pull the mobs thru your fire 4 and aoe them with your fire 2 & 3 for good damage and stack might. Chill them with your water 4, vulnerable with water 2 and blind with air 3 and earth 3, and keep your toughness up with earth 2. Your major damage is going to come with earth 4 followed by earth 5 and if they are agroed on the earth elemental, so much the better. Pop an Arcane Shield part way into churning earth if it looks like you will be hit or interrupted.

Use all the skills. Everyone of them gives you an advantage. Stay out of auto-attack as much as possible.

Make sure you have gear close to your level. The karma gear is nice but will lag your level by a significant amount. You can buy some crafted gear from the Black Lion.

Force leveling your character in lower easy levels will not teach you the skills you need to be the best when you are 80. You will only have learned to play carelessly. Learning the way to play to beat mobs 3-5 levels above you is the best way to go imo.

Air 5 btw is a frontal aoe knockback. Like that. Use all the skills.

Interesting point. There are alot of events where we work together assualting/defending camps, roads, towns etc in Pve or Wvw but we don’t have to be in communication to do it and so are doing it, solo.

Whatever server you are on probably has a community website where events are planned and people are looking for groups. That would be a good place to interact socially with other players.

Yes, it is true. Jack of all trades, master of none. This is a good thing. Many situations require a trade that is not avalable to other classes. We always have an answer and we make a noticable difference. No group of 5 thinks they 4 manned something when an elementalist is in the party.

All weapon sets are viable and allow for very different ways of playing the class.

Like the fact that so many skills are wrapped up in one character.

Ele is a fast paced character to play requiring swiftness and endurance continually to keep moving and avoid damage. Thieves can disappear. Messmers hide in their clones. Necros can turn into a shadow. We are out in the open, an easy target in light armor. It is very challenging.

Bri.8354:

McGarnagle.3607:

Except it doesn’t really give you any edge at all. The few points of extra stats aren’t even noticeable. Wearing exotics and fighting someone with ascended gear is no different to fighting someone with exotic gear.

Not counting the bonuses with infusions, a full set of ascended accessories will give 1,322 stats compared to the 1,200 that exotic gives, or a 10.16% increase.

If you include infusions you can get another 30 stats, bringing it up to a 12.6% increase. As better infusions are added, including the WvW specific ones, the gap will only grow larger.

Maybe its not very noticable at the moment due to us only having a limited set of ascended items, but once the armor and weapons are released it will make a pretty noticeable difference.

That’s very misleading math. Take the 30 stats for infused as a percentage of the stat you are increasing, say vitality from 1600 to 1630. Thats an increase of 1.018% It’s nothing to write home about, even less to start up a thread. Just saying OP. imo you take the min/max argument a little too far.

Agony is explained in the wiki here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony

You only need 10 in a level 10 fractal to get the minimum agony which is 1.

Hard to read your post. People under estimate the usefullness of regeneration. It adds up to big numbers over time. Together with procing our own water combo fields and/or those of others, we can put off using our glyph for much longer. There are other threads that do the math or you can find that on the wiki too. Funny enough, other threads point out what they say is a low number, but fail to figure out what that number is if we choose to use regne whenever it is up. It’s not a big deal to attune to water every 9 seconds and do a dodge roll using Evasive Arcana.

You may not be using your staff cc enough. Crippling in earth, frozen in water, and stun in air will keep mobs away from you and your party, all the while at the mercy of your and your parties ranged aoe, where they are for a long time. If they make it through that they are, again, controlled, in melee range, doing far less damage then normal allowing your party to stay in melee range and use their max melee skills.

If a mob does get to you, a quick dodge roll and you are out of range. If you keep moving too, that will usually lose the agro of a mob. With our swiftness you should be able to stay away from most of them before they gain agro. That too will minimize your damage and reduce your need for healing.

In fights where you have no choice but to take condition damage, use your condition removal.

I would recommend putting something in your build, (which I can’t read from your post so maybe you have it), to grant you Vigor so that you can increase your endurance for dodges.

The build dictates how you need to play the character. The player, not the build, determines how effective you are with that character. A lot of players get that backwards. They think there is only one way to play a character and are upset there is only one build to support that (read bunker build).

So whatever build you have there cause I can’t see it, play to its versatility and strengths and weaknesses. For any Elemental build I suggest you need condtion removal, traited healing of some kind in addition to skills, endurance for dodges, and swiftness for evasion. After you have that you can tinker with the details and add vitality if you are getting one shot, toughness if you are taking too much damage over the course of a fight, and power or crit if you are not dealing enough damage. I always carry some healing power and condition damage but that is my preference. Many builds have zero of that.

Sorry for such broad advice, but I gather from your post you die alot, don’t think you contribute enough, maybe don’t contribute enough(you mention lack of party invites), and are generally having some issues.

A directional arrow would be nice or a highlight of some kind to compensate for graphic limitations. I think I am running some decent graphics but often can’t seem to pick out who or where the players are, especially unfamiliar ones. We get something for npcs, perhaps that could be used for other players?

For example, in a party I click on the party member portrait on my gui in the top left corner of my screen, select as a target, and I get nothing. I can be looking right at them and can’t tell if that is them or not, especially in dark dungeons where the dark graphics on my screen just kind of meld alot of colors so they are indistint from one another, especially with all the dyes now available.

This affects my ability to quickcy find a player to rez from a downed state ( I look at the mini map, back to the screen, back to the mini map looking for a direction and location, still can’t see them), or to target for an aoe healing skill (as an elementalist), or to provide whatever other support I can (offensive, defensive whatever.)

The vigor, however you get it, is important for the endurance, which is the dodging. That is the number one defensive move we have as. Just repeating for emphasis. The ele is best when mobile. This is not a class which can stand in one place for long. Dodging makes us invulverable and helps to shed deadly agro.

I really enjoy my ele in pve. Weapon selection makes a big difference. Npcs, veterans, champions and bosses will have melee and ranged strengths and weaknesses. Alot of that is tied to their different agro mechanics. I find the variety of the different skills and strats refreshing and fun.

Ditto on that!!

The content would be alot harder if players didn’t run by everything, use strats that befuddle the npcs, and such. You guys know what I am talking about. They are the strats that many people have to use to complete at all , or the speed runners use to farm gold. If they weren’t there, many players would not be able to complete a lot of the content and many players would complaing because the runs would take too long.

Someone already said it I think. Play the game straight up. Don’t do things like run into corners to avoid aoe. Don’t run backwards in HoW so you get pulled in the direction you want lol. You know the tricks. In a particular situation when you know the trick, don’t do that one.

No matter what content is put in, the devs will design workarounds so almost everyone can run almost everything. When you use those, you become almost everyone. It’s the choice people make or not.

I’m not saying people in this thread do this. If you don’t, then you know and people you play with know how well you play. I don’t see how the game can be programmed to know the difference though. There isn’t much in this game that supports bragging rights. In fact, just the opposite. Most achievements just take time and persistence and take little high level skill at all.

Your story will level you quite bit. Doing that, I didn’t need to go to other starting areas. In fact, the last time I leveled a character he was overleveled for areas. Part of that was probably the skill points from dailys they have now.

Um, what you do is what everyone does. Map completion for the fun events and story. Dungeons if you like them. Wvw if you like them. It really doesn’t matter what level your character is, you just play the game.

Now, if your question is where can you get high level gear and weapons, I’d say you need Karma and Dungeon tokens to buy the exotic gear from Temples in Orr and exotic weapons from dungeon vendors in Lion’s Arch. Probalby best to upgrade with Rare quality equipment and weapons from Karma vendors in the level 70-80 areas first before going into dungeons.

Yes, the only thing that goes up is base stats. Everything else you have otherwise stays the same, ie. traits, gear, skills etc. Although that puts you at a big disadvantage, you can still have alot of fun. The xp and karma comes fast too if you stay with a group.

Some thoughts on the thread.

Attitude is everything. It’s not a race. Higher level characters have no inherent bragging rights per se. Players who can claim dungeons and have leveled the hard way get the respect. The better players are picky on who they will take on difficult content and you can bet it is not based on a players level.

The challenge is the play. GW2’s skill system supports this. We can get all our skills by level 10 or so and are only lacking traits. A character at level 10 has quite a bit of diversity in the way they can be played.

For the challenge, permadeath players usually play level appropriate content, same level that is of their characters. GW2’s downleveling would allow higher level players to play lower level areas with other peoples’ lower level characters. While that the higher level players would have an advantage, I don’t think they would be downleveling far enough to matter much.

Soloing guarantees premature death in any game lol. Part of the joy of permadeath is that, for that reason, there is constant grouping going on.

It is a skillful but time consuming wasy to play. Every pull is carefully thought out. Combo fields, now usually ignored, would be used. Buffs, now usually ignored, would be crucial. The strategies and group cooperation in permadeath is refined to the Nth degree. Where as now content can normally be run in GW2 without voice, that is a big deal in permadeath. Coordination is everything.

The lack of a Trinity in GW2 is a big drawback. The random agro mechanic is tough. Party makeup would be very very important and not so easy to put together as it is in a trinity. You can bet most players would be PVT and healing geared and centered. Dps would suffer as a result. And, I think I have forgotten how hard it was to play the dungeons as soon as I could get in at the minimum level when the game started.

Permadeath is easily the most exciting and stressful form of play. It pushes a player to learn and play his character with the best skill he is capable of. Dying is devastating almost always. Sure the character can be rerolled, but that is little consolation. That wears on people.

What gets oldest more than anything is playing the same content over and over again. Most players want to zoom to 80, play new content as it comes out, and enjoy the experience. Permadeath can be tedious by comparison. Much of the content in GW2 is not permadeath friendly ie. avenues of retreat, omg I pulled everything mechanics, jumping puzzles, etc

Permadeath players tend to stay with their characters and guilds, which they have played with for years. DDO was mentioned where there is a healthy community. There are no reasons I can think of to compel them to want to leave and come here.

I like the staff in dungeons. Combo fields are great as well as crowd control. The scepter dagger also works well because it can be used in melee range as well as ranged Pretty much all the drawbacks from scepter in PvP are gone in Pve and the crits on Churning Earth in Pve are spectacular as well as the condition damage.

Yes, do not pay attention to the rankings of the servers. That is a whole other thing.

Just about every doom and gloom thread in this forum deals with sPvP, or similar size engagements and 1vXs in WvW, roamers, etc. Eles are targeted because everyone knows we have low hps and light armor. Consequently, the ele needs all the speed and condtion removal they can get in melee range, especially when diving into the middle of a group. Those players have seen significant changes. While to you and me the difference of two instantly available condition removals is not a game breaker, their vulnerability is greatly escalated because of the situations they put themselves in.

Once you weed those people out, the rest of us seem to be pretty satisfied with the class lol.

Well….

Those are certainly 4 occasions when it doesn’t work lol. Four is unequal to Any, although those 4 do pop up often enough to limit its usefullness. In any groups I have been in, I have never had a request to slot it. Often the rezzed players go right back down again lol.

Condition would be a no. btw, Power is part of the crit/precision equations for damage and shouldn’t be ignored. That’s not to say some condition for Pve is not useful because it is. It bypasses armor and many npcs take a while to take down, but condition is capped and is not our main damage from our skills. Burns stack for duration only and bleeds cap at 25. In a group those are often maxed. In PvP, conditions can be removed and we have some significant cooldowns on some of them.

Our skills however have alot of burst damage and can be substantial.

Yeah, weapon swapping again lol. I’ve never been a fan of it for the Elementalist. I can bring up my Hero menu and do it manually.

Simply to make the game interface cleaner and easier to use, why not for non SPvP lock out all skills for 5 seconds, put a 5 second casting time on it, and we must be out of combat or it is interrupted? It takes that long to do it anyway. I can’t see the few times I run into a tree or off of a cliff, because the interface is in my face, as a deal breaker on this.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Mithfir.1038:

Probably got a little off track but I wanted to give some detailed feedback.

No, I greatly appreciate any detailed feedback you can provide. I typically only like to play 1 character though I’ll toy around with an alt or two. My perspective is that I try to learn everything I can about the class I’ve chosen so right now, I’m just trying to figure this out more.

On those Zerg runs where you’re defending a tower, wall, etc, do you all change over to the staff to provide more support and ranged attacks? I played around with the S/F and just didn’t care for it.

I change over to staff most times when in a group doing Wvw. The crowd control stuns, cripples, and freezes are just too powerful with the aoes and condition removals.

Caffynated.5713:

Adam.3716:

so would u recomend going a different weapon type then?

It just depends on what you enjoy. D/D is fairly easy to become competent with, but has a lot of advance techniques that are needed to compete in high level PvP/dueling. If you don’t plan to play an ele outside of PvE, WvW zergs, or hot join, you will probably never need to learn them though.

/signed

Bunker is a build for the PvP soloing Ele. Outside of that the sky is the limit for useful builds.