Guild Wars 2

magnafides.8136:

cero.1209:

over the past month i went from feeling under powered to some what balanced to the other classes.

So, for a class that takes a month to learn, the pay-off is that you’re “some what balanced to the other classes”? Wouldn’t you expect the Ele to be at least “marginally more effective”?

Simply, no. The pay-off imo is the fun of playing. If the class was hands down more powerful than other classes, even marginally, that would be an unfair advantage. MMOs, and GW2 is no exception, are designed NOT to give advantages to one profession over another, so that ALL players can compete on an equal footing with the classes they like to play.

Your view is not unusual by any means. Many players have posted it the forums that they feel there should be a payoff for the extra work. In other words, more work should equal more pay.

Loosifah.4739:

Have you been in the game lately? Have you seen how much of the map isn’t open yet? Or how many bugs are in the game still? You don’t really think this game is completely coded and finished yet; do you? So why would you think that all the gear was ready to go straight from the start?

I’ve been wondering some of the same thing. People keep saying this and that was promised and now those promises are broken but I don’t see it. I keep seeing links to the supposed promises that say no such thing. Posters are twisting devs words and misrepresenting facts to insist a few percent difference in stats is game breaking and makes gear grinding necessary, lol, because exotic gear is now obsolete when it is not. Grinding is not necessary any more than getting exotic gear and legendary gear is grinding. You get it just by playing the game. I hear the new gear can be crafted which means it can be bought.

The gate, if one wants to say there is now a gate, is more like a crack in the sidewalk. Players seeing it will only do so after many many runs in the dungeon at very high user selected difficulty levels. And you don’t have to run the dungion to get the gear or have the gear to enjoy the dungeon at lower levels of difficulty. The infusion or whatever it is that can be purchased on the gear only allows one to run the highest dungeon difficulty and does not affect the gear stats.

You don’t have to grind the higher level dungeion difficulty in other words or the dungeon at all for that matter.

Greep.6394:

Baladir.2736:

lmfo. All this thread does is show that people dont’, can’t read.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/leah-rivera-on-the-new-fractals-of-the-mist-dungeon/

We don’t need to use the new gear to run the dungeon. If we run it over and over and over, it will get harder. After some point, it gets so hard that you need the new gear to offset how hard it gets. By that time, people would have gotton the drops they needed. When a group runs it, it will never run harder than that highest difficulty level of a player has successfullly attained.

This only affects people who grind. Everyone else can do all the same content many many times at increasing difficulty. I don’t see the problem.

I can read fine, but you can’t. You do know they said they’re bringing ascended to WvW right? That’s my and many other’s reasons for quitting now.

The stats are virtually the same as any other exotic. There is no measureable difference to be seen in game, maybe a few percent. So someones crit will hit for 1030 instead of 1000 for a player with exotics. Whoopee! lol.

lmfo. All this thread does is show that people dont’, can’t read.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/leah-rivera-on-the-new-fractals-of-the-mist-dungeon/

We don’t need to use the new gear to run the dungeon. If we run it over and over and over, it will get harder. After some point, it gets so hard that you need the new gear to offset how hard it gets. By that time, people would have gotton the drops they needed. When a group runs it, it will never run harder than that highest difficulty level of a player has successfullly attained.

This only affects people who grind. Everyone else can do all the same content many many times at increasing difficulty. I don’t see the problem.

The Temple of Lyssa is a good place to go. The three objectives that need to be taken to spawn the Goddess have quite a few mobs, there are follow up events that bring good sized waves of mobs, there are fast respawns, and there is usually no one around.

This would be a good place, that is, if you are interested in the number of mobs that will instantly agro on you and keep coming in waves and respawns.

Personally I try to pull them in small groups, but if you want to run up to the objective and agro them all at once, have a blast.

Wolfies.8152:

I may be wrong, but I don’t think armor is accounted for when you have elemental attacks. Even if it did, at 33 my flame breath doesn’t do 284 a tick..nor does my burn/dot dmg from this ability pump out 1770 dmg in 3s. So it has to be a tooltip error.

:X

The same skill can have different success against different mobs even of the same type and level. In testing in the mists I found some skills do more damage against a medium armored goIem than a lightly armored golem for example.

Armor is surely not the only mitagation mobs have. I have gotton the sense that some mobs are affected more by some spell types, ice by fire etc. but I haven’t tried to test that. Who cares after all? No one is going to alter skill rotations for specific types of mobs. It’s not a critical issue for success and attunement swapping is far more important.

I won’t try to claim that there are no tool tip errors though.

For the majority of the player base, this is their first game when a light armor wearing caster is reponsible for their own healing and when damage evasion has become so important. While many players have been adept at often successfully playing casters in other games well enough that they did not need much heavy healing, many needed healing and received it. Everyone would need it at one time or another. And by heavy, I mean enough that it overcame all incoming damage and was necessary to survive. Now that does not exist. There is no healing spec.

Agro management used to work well to avoid damage and that is out the window now. It’s often random. I often seem to find myself laughing my kitten off when a melee mob starts chasing my ele around in a dungeon, ignoring everyone else, much to my as well as everyone else’s amusement. How often in this game have you heard, “He must really like you.” That’s a rhetorical question lol. The elite mobs in a dungeon really can two shot an elementalist and there is no healing or much of anything anyone can do until the mob randomly changes agro again.

In other games, players could often effectively play a caster if needed and not need awesome skills. There were true glass cannon builds who could stand in the back of a group and contribute little else other than dps, not now. There were crowd control specialists and debuffers who were safe from most agro, not now.

@TheGuy You sound like the kind of player who lived, and lives now, to take your caster out and solo whatever comes your way, maybe even challenge yourself in how many of what kinds of mobs you can solo, or what objectives you can solo. Maybe you are even one of those who have tried or succeeded in soloing a supply camp in WvW. For you this game does not require a drastic change of strategy because evasion, crowd control, debuffing, and pulling have always been part of your style of play. My point is simply that many casters have been able to do perfectly well in other games without that, and now they can not.

I assumed when he said was asking why DD was considered a DPS build, that he was refering to those for who that build is the best DPS build, and those are PvP players.

If you ask a PvE player or Dungeon rat, DD is not considered as such. PvE mobs group up nicely and stand still lol, and groups benefit nicely from the synergies an Elementalist offers with staff and scepters. Ask a PvP player who is often in melee combat, as many 1v1 turns into, and the answer is often DD.

Point is, DD is a melee range DPS setup that has virtually no inductions to be interrupted, high burst damage, defensive abilities to mitagate melee damage, and does that better than any other setup in melee range combat.

Course the easy answer is that it doesn’t do much of anything else. It’s a DPS build because there are two but only one useful group combo field, the healing and aoe is subpar compared to other weapon sets, and there is no aoe or ranged attack of any kind. I don’t know what else you could call it. It does not offer much of any support to other players. It’s singular strentgh is melee combat.

Homitu.7216:

…….I don’t know what more to say other than the class is seriously not the problem. Some classes are just more intuitive to some players. Warrior might just make sense to you. Ele makes sense to me. I have an 80 of both as well, and I personally find it significantly easier to sustain and survive on my ele, although that’s probably because my ele is support specced. ……..

That struck a chord when I read that. I have always played casters in every game and they always wear light armor. The tactics are very similar across all the different variations of the class as is the terminology, “glass cannon” for example.

For players who are not familar with fantasy light armor wearing casters ie. wizards, mages, sorcerers etc. , the Elementalist as GW2 implements the profession must be a big shock, especially with PvP and the entirely new level of difficulty and playstyle that involves. But, still, there appear to be more players than I would have expected having issues.

In all fairness, this has to be the hardest profession to play well, in all the different venues of the game, that I have ever played.

This was mentioned for WvW coordination but I am suggesting this for, simply, community communications, a place to go to see what is happening on my server, whether that be looking for groups, planning events, or whatever.

ManyTailedFox.8973:

……It’s still kind of ridiculous that dedicated healers have no purpose in this game, and it’s almost infuriating when I try to do anything even with a small group and we end up wiping and having to start from the beginning of something.
……..

You are not going to be able to outheal incoming damage. The other players are going to have to know their classes and mitigate or avoid damage and use their own heals too. But, wait, there’s more, for a limited time….

The complaint seems to be that your groups are falling fast. In other games the dedicated healer class can make up for alot of bad play on the part of everyone else. We all know how the healer always get the blame when the others are the ones who sucked. Be thankful neither eles nor any other class can be blamed for lack of healing lol.

It sounds like you are running together with the same people and if so, there is alot that you guys can learn to do better together than most pugs. Attack with surprise. Target marking is #1 for concentrating dps. That is the first thing you guys should be doing. At that point there is nothing to heal yet. Put up some fields for ranged projectile finishers. Concentrate your melee on one target and get on the offensive fast. Pick the targets in the correct order. They will be the ones scrambling to stay alive and the ones getting rolled. In theory at least.

These are just a couple things:

1) Drake’s Breath is huge damage, much bigger than anything Scepter has and is the biggest single reason.
2) Dragon’s Tooth has a nice range but takes too long to land and so is very easy to see and avoid. Phoenix can be hard to hit too when both players are moving. The rest of the damage skills are nothing special.
3) DD gives two auras instead of one. With proper trait setup this gives alot of crowd control and defense.
4) Dagger has Burning Speed and Magnetic Grasp to get close and do damage. Or, Burning speed can be used to separate. Together with Ride the Lightning that is alot of mobility.
5) No inductions. All instant cast.

OP-Hate to say it, but if you are getting wasted by two level 77 mobs, it is not the build. You are being mislead if you think changing the build is going to change the results. Nor the gear. Many of us when we did Orr were using the level 70ish Karma gear that was just then available to us there and doing just fine. Exotic gear makes it much easier. Same with weapons.

You asked for builds and you are getting builds, but I think what you should be asking for is tactics.

You say:
•Yes, I dodge (you only get to do it twice before you run out of energy);
•Yes, I swap attunements (I start with fire and end with water in the vain hope of surviving long enough to cast a heal);
•Yes, I hit heal in time.
•I throw as much shielding up as I can;
•I’ve tried staffs, daggers & sceptres, none of them seem to make much difference;
•I’ve tried cantrips, glyphs, arcane and all the variations thereof.
————————-
but none of this means a thing. You are apparently just pushing alot of buttons in the least effective ways possible. A different build won’t change that. In fact, what you don’t say about what skills you are using and when and how you are using them says alot. You say nary a word about your combos or your skill sequences or what you find to be your effective and ineffective skills. I would start by asking this. What are your opening skills? What do you follow up with? etc.

Whoopin.2943:

Wasnt gonna say anything because its really powerful but Albane already spilled the beans… Avatar of Melandru trumps all the racials clutter for WvW hands down.

My guild has over 30 Elementalists and we usually get 10 online for WvW action, 10 AoE roots + 10 Meteor Showers = Badgetastic.

If that mechanic is working the same as Grasping Roots I can’t see why that is so effective. No one is standing still in WvW and roots won’t root anyone if they are moving. Are you targeting people on top of a wall or down at the gate from a wall? I have never seen that in WvW. Where have I been lol?

I hadn’t looked up Glyph of Elemental Power in awhile, but since it was mentioned above I took a look.

Notes now say in the Wiki:

Effects are based on the Attunement under which the glyph was cast.
ex: Casting Glyph of Elemental Power in Fire Attunement then using your 1 skill in Water Attunement will still apply burning effect if triggered.

The effect chance is fairly high (around 50% for fire and water, and 25% for air and earth) but has a cooldown of about 5 seconds
———-

So if cast in fire, any spell has a 50% chance to inflict 3 seconds of burning for 984 damage with a 5 second cooldown, which is not a bad damage booster at all. As fast as we are triggering spells, that has to translate to about 3 seconds of burning every 7 seconds or so which would trigger about 4-5 times over 30 seconds with the first effect triggered after 2 seconds into the Glyph.

Water is Chill
Earth is Cripple
Air is Weakness

and the duration of the active glyph is 30 seconds with a 45 second cooldown. So, does that mean we can activate it 15 seconds after it expires? Have to test.
If cast in Earth, then any spell has about a 25% chance of a 5 sec Cripple, and an aoe cripple at that with our many aoe spells.

Seems no matter how well I think I know these skills, I seem to find points I missed when I go back and look at them again. Can I put the Glyph on auto-attack lol?

Bsquared.3421:

For Sylvari (my Ele race), take root is awesome in WvW because it grants 10 seconds of immunity and the turrets it spawns do good damage. It’s great for avoiding enemy AOE nukes when taking keeps, etc. The other two racials are just more summons, basically more Elementals.

There ya go, my 2 copper…

If you can show how you get 10 seconds out of Take Root I would be greatly impressed. Last time I used that I only got about 3-4. I am not in-game to test it out but I think I get my boon extenstion added. It is a very good skill to prevent dying or damage, for a few seconds anyway. It has a 150 sec cooldown too.

I was thinking when I went Sylvari that I would really like the Grasping Vines that entangles a target until the vines are destroyed. In practice though they only work if the target is standing still when the spell is cast. The spell is cast at the ground where the target is standing and there is a delay before the vines grow. That so destroyed their usefullness I stopped using them. If the roots grew immediately and could root a moving target, that would be great.

The two racial elite summons have 180 and 240 sec cooldowns where the elite Elemental summons is only a 120 sec cooldown. I can’t speak to how useful the Druid Spirit and Fern Mastiff are. I only paid attention when I cast them to see what the graphics looked like lol, and they do look cool.

For all the good they do, I rarely load any racial skills.

Brunners.7251:

If you don’t think the score is important why not just…not pay attention to it? Just because it’s there and you might be losing doesn’t mean you have to sit and stare at the score the whole time?

Why can’t you go on about your business in WvW without being worried about your score?

I…can, but it really seems to dig into alot of players. Given that the score is often skewed early on, it seems to reflect how skewed the game can be too. Not too bad if you are on the winning side.

We don’t have a baseball, football, or basketball season where the winner is the one with most points scored at the end of a season. Tennis matches are best of 3 or 5 sets, not the first one to 12 or 18 games or 48 or 72 points. I fail so see why a match up of wvw has to be the world with the highest total number of points at the end of 168 hours, instead of playing best of 7 days for example.

I’m sure the Yankees wish the championship was based on total games won, bag the playoffs, which are best of 5 and 7 btw.

Olcsonn.9327:

Baladir, so I have to agree with Jonathan (as I was there last night and it was a blast) and Azaruil. You basically said that you want sPvP with some buildings and NPCs in there. More importantly I think you miss the whole idea behind WvWvW. It’s not just about running around mindlessly killing others, it’s about thinking beyond the point of your sword, it’s about a more in-depth strategy system, it’s about tactics, it’s about conquering, and it’s about working for a goal bigger than just one player’s personal gear (i’m sure others can add to that list). If you want to just run around a map and kill people because you don’t have any practice or ability to critically think and tactically plan, well then why are you complaining about WvWvW and not just playing sPvP? I love WvWvW far and beyond sPvP, reminds me of my days playing DAoC and WAR (Warhammer Online) and not the blind farce of the standard format of PvP.

Is beating on a wall or gate always fun, hell no; however, reaching that greater goal is far more rewarding than killing that other person over there for other reason than getting another piece of gear.

I have read over your 5 destructive ideas for destroying the fundamentals of WvWvW like 10 times so far and the only one that has any possibility of being even remotely helpful is number 5, but even as you have it, it would need a lot of changes.

I have to agree with everything you have to say, expect of course where you disagree with me heh. If that was actually happening in practice for everyone it would be a wonderful world. I don’t see any of the changes I listed as affecting your playstyle at all. What the changes are intended to accomplish is to give less organized groups and servers a more even playing field. Even though they have been strategically crippled, they will still have access to a distant rez point or two in a world to launch an offensive from, away from their, effectively, camped spawn point. They will not be penalized each and every moment of every day for a week for points they lost early on. They have some resistance against overwhelming zergs with scaling npc backup to hold what few keeps they have.

Not all the gains by a world are neutralized or trivialized in my mind by these changes. The strategic advantage is still there. Supply is still there. Unimpeded movement around the map is still there. The organization that got a world to that place is still there.

This is nothing more than a handicapping system. Well, except for the no gates part and #5, which by no coincidence takes the battle away from gates. man, I hate gates.

dirtyklingon.2918:

you say you want a sandlot, then ask for a theme park.

which is it?

do you want wvw or do you want tol borad?

I had to google that heh.

Resetting the score each night still grants a winner for that day. Setting the score contribution for points held at the start of the day to zero grants each world score only for new points gained, not already held. At the end of the week there can still be one winner, but the early lead a world can jump to and the disproportionate advantage that gives them for the rest of the week is minimized. The battles each day and points gained and lost each day have much more weight in the over all standings.

So, no, tol borad is not what I was thinking.

The rest is thoughts of getting players to play each other, not play walls, and to minimize zergs. What good is a castle lord with a sword the size of a locomotive if his aoe attack doesn’t actually hurt anybody lol. It’s no wonder most every defender bails over the walls once a gate goes down. What if the crashing of a gate by a zerg was only the beginning and overmatched defenders still had a chance? What if the map couldn’t be quickly turned at the start of a contest or in the off hours by small numbers of players? What if a server in control of a map could be easily attacked in the rear and had to defend multiple fronts? None of this minimizes the strats used in the game, it just makes them more accessible to more players. That should theoretically anyway be more fun. I gotta say, about the ime I log in and see I have no place to go outside of my spawn point, I am outta there.

I don’t have to read far into many posts in this forum before I run into a heck of a lot of hard feelings about players who are not having alot of fun because of the imbalances now in the game. Whole servers AFK? Most popular part of the game? No quenes? Give me a break.

@Jonathan
In most cases, when the gates are down, zerging is the name of the game. Up to that point there has been little if any PvP unless you want to count pouunding the gates or ranging the walls. If the npcs had any skillz at all, there would actually be some PvP as the defenders inside the walls were bolsered by the npcs, if only for a few minutes. And you bet, I would much rather take down a few defenders with npcs who were the equivilent of a gate instead of a gate itself.

Rez points? Yes. As it is, for a server which had been overwhelmed, the battles take place close to their spawning points inside the world anyway. They spawn, they run to the nearest point, supply camp, whatever, and then they die. Rinse and repeat. Few chances present themselves to attack inland. How enjoyable is that? Are we wondering why virtually entire servers are going afk?

If you like to keep score, nothing is stopping you. I am sure there are plenty of bean counters who would set up threads and keep track of every keep and point controlled. Point is, is this a game for fun for everyone, or just the server with a couple of hundred Asian time zone players? I am as competitive as the next person and I will confess can be motivated and unmotivted by the score as well as the enjoyment or lack of enjoyment of playing. To have the score mean so little when it is so easily controled by such a small number of players makes it pointless.

Yes, I too enjoy logging in and getting into some open field PvP for the fun of it. About the time it turns into a siege the fun is winding down. By that time the opposing world has been unable to sustain any defense against seige weapons or mount over the wall offenses or flanks. The gate goes down and its over.
——
@Azaruil-

I for one don’t consider knocking down gates PvP.

No, waypoints somewhere in a general zip code would allow over matched worlds to mount somewhat effective threats away from the one world spawn point there is now.
——
So currently, the servers with the best Asian time zone presence dominate, period, game over. The territory won during USA off time hours is kept far too long and has far too large an influence on the final outcome. During peak USA time, the battles are far more competitive. There is quite a bit of competition in contested areas, but far too often there are servers which are limited to those areas which are close to their spawn point and little chance to even the score. Rarely does the score ever have a chance of changing, the advantage is so skewed. It is like allowing the football team that is ahead at half time to have 5 downs per set instead of 4 for the rest of the game. And, oh, by the way, the other team only gets to use the left side of the field to run their plays.

Nowhere else in any game I can think of is the outcome of the game determined so early on, because the playing field has been skewed so dramatically to the early leaders advantage, by players who play while most everyone else sleeps.

but they had to put in a score so people could win and lose. They had to build walls so we get to “siege”. How fun, lol. Attacking and defending walls. They had to give us Npcs that are about as powerful as wet toliet paper so that any group that does breach the walls has an easy time of it taking the objective, leading to rampant zerging.

It’s not really player vs. player at all. The players are an inconvenient obstacle blocking the way to the points and the win. When open field PvP does happen it is over very very quickly and then there is such a long long way to run.

I have some suggestions. I hate suggestion posts btw and apologize for making one.

1) Take out the gates to the castles
2) Put in NPCs that can actually kill something.
3) Install rez points so players can get back into the battle.
4) Reset the score every night and zero the point contribution of points already held, or better yet abolish it entirely.
5) Encourage open field PvP via WvW specific healing skills, rez skills, damage mitagations, and revamped open field map objectives and rewards.

If I could find a group that enjoyed worldwide openfield PvP I’d wager I could care less about those 5 points. But, somehow, a Master appeared and, thru game design, defined what was fun and what we should be playing for. And, it’s not on a small scale. This isn’t a game of golf that occupies five hours of someone’s afternoon, or a set of tennis that occupies maybe 1, or even a game of football for a few hours of afternoon delight. This is a 24/7 game for a week of dominence that burns out players’ psyche and lives with mind numbing, discouraging, tactics and gameplay. How many players actually enjoy that lol? That’s rhetorical for those who missed it, omg.

Of course the argument is, “Well, you don’t have to play.” That’s a macho postion for sure. Well, I’ll take that macho position and raise you. I say, “Kick the Master off of our sandlot.” Of course I can’t do that lol. Oh well.

Point is, the success of the game hinges on player satisfaction. I am getting tired of siege warfare, many do, have been since about the second day. I want more opportunities to Play vs. Players. Let the score keepers of the world retreat to a small corner of forum land and be out of sight and out of mind. Handicap the zerg. Let players play.

This link to the Wiki re Sigil stacking

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

The notes at the bottom detail the stacking and how the effects interact. Pretty interesting stuff in there. Just a couple of the things. The sigils all share the same cooldown so if one procs, the others all go on cooldown for active effects. If two sigils with conditions on kill are used, only one will ever proc and that is the one that goes off first.

There are definately some sigils we do not want to stack.

A bit of Healing seems a perfectly reasonable substitute for a bit of Toughness. Also, a character with some Healing stats seems perfectly capable of crowd control, damage mitagation and dps.

Basically, Vitality is needed for spike damage. Repeated lesser damage over time allows Toughness to give a return on the total amount of damage saved because it is a small percentage but it adds up. With +Healing, those small amounts of damage accumulated are offset by larger heals. In theory anyway, if the stats have any meaning or relationship at all.

I think that is why there is gear with healing in lieu of toughness. The Lyssa gear seems to fit this pattern and certainly does not skimp on damage either. I have not done the math, but I’ll trust Anet not to have created a useless stat, set of gear, mode of dps, and means of damage mitagtion.

I too find the staff clunky in close combat, especially WvW. But, I think it excells in WvW and Dungeons too. Nothing is more effective around sieges than a staff elementalist in WvW. In Dungeons I find the sheer number of Combo Fields I can put down at range, that others and myself can use Combo Finishers on, to be very helpful.

I’m pretty sure there is a mystic forge recipe for that…

I think a balanced build is a great way to go, to start. It’s also the easiest to gear for lol because gear sets specializing in areas take time to put together, or gold. I am assuming you are talking WvW and Pve. As you play more you will probably have a better idea if you want to tilt one way or the other.

I think it comes down to what parts of the game you are playing, how you are doing, and how you like to play. Many players play the extremes and develop bunker builds and cannon builds and they get the “best” defense and “best” dps etc. Those fit their playlstyles and the situations they find themselves in, each of which is very different from one another of course.

I am looking towards +healing myself and can’t wait to see how it turns out. Seems to me +healing can go a long way towards offsetting a lack of toughness and be of especially good use in groups with aoe healing.

The difference is the utility imo. The Ford Mustang can’t go off road, can’t carry a load, can’t tow a trailer, can’t carry 6 passengers, can’t fit an 8 cyl turbo diesel, doesn’t have road clearence or field of view, doesn’t have leg room or head room or elbow room, and surely isn’t rugged. Yes, I’ll take my Cheverolet Duramax 4×4 PU and my Ele any day.

No, I wouldn’t want it to be permanent. I like to use the elemental sometimes. It changes game play tremendously when I do. The earth elemental does a spectacular job of drawing agro. The others have their benefits too.

And, because it can change game play so much, that is exactly why I would not want to have one all the time. Pve would turn into an AFk fight and a race to see if I can stand still and burn down the mobs before they burn down my elemental lol. That’s not fun and the balance of the game has been drastically affected. I like having one handy for those binds when I pull too many mobs or run into unexpected spawns and fast respawns. But, I don’t want him up all the time.

Bond.4813:

“it’s an mmo bond, if you’re in a 1v1 you’re doing it wrong.”
Worst excuse ever. They might as well delete all but guardian and ele than.

Lol. But he does have a point Bond. One has to wonder why the game has no 1v1 option like duel availalbe. It certainly appears each of the professions have some glaring weaknesses which are exposed when 1v1 with at least one other profession.

I for one don’t expect the devs to have created the ele profession to be everything. Everything would be:
1) 1v1 on par with every other class
2) aoe dps leader
3) party healing leader
4) tank
5) single target dps leader
6) crowd control specialist
7) combo fields and finishers for party boons and mob effects
8) burst dps leader
9) condition dps leader
10) the list goes on
11) ranged aoe dps leader
12) ranged single target dps leader
13) the list goes on

However, players have done a pretty good job of scoring well in all of these catagories with the seemingly endless variety of builds they have created. To simply dismiss a class because they may not be on par 1v1 with every other profession’s possible build is ridiculous. That ignores every other aspect of the elemental profession’s contribution to the game.

Thank you for the testing Moose.

In the dungeon runs I have been in, the groups never stay close enough to really get much use out of this. I suppose the ele could run over to a group of melee on a boss and successfully grant the auras. Is that worth a grandmaster trait slot? It’s not worth the points imo.

I can imagine a duo of PvPers, who work together, would.

lol. yes, nice resurrect, very entertaining. I couldn’t help but realize the OP never actually claimed to kill anything in PvP, just how long he lived before he died. yes, PvP and WvW opponents are quite a bit more intellegent than mobs in PvE, usually anyway.

I don’t know about a max number, but the range of the effect is 400. 400 units is a small distance, the range of many dagger skills for example. In large groups many would be outside the range.

The trait Zephyr’s Boon grants Fury and Swiftness when Auras are applied. Both stack in duration. The Powerful Aura trait you mention would also transfer those boons to allies.

The condition damage and defensive oriented effects of earth make sense to me. We have to survive a little longer for the conditons to build up and give us the time till the mob goes down.

The fire and ice skills give nice burst damage until its time to refresh the bleeds in earth or in situations when others are keeping the bleeds topped off. I don’t know the math though. It’s just the sense I get from watching mobs’ health bars.

@ tarvok Just be aware that using conditions on bosses grants them a boon. So, the Earthquake finisher has a condition Knockdown. Shocking Aura has the condition Stun. Updraft has the condition Blowout.

There’s some mechanic that allows another player to take them off by applying a condition? I’ve never quite gotton the hang of it because the effects icons move so fast that I can’t keep the tooltips up lol, but I have definately heard players say they will take a boon off.

@Burrid Lol. I have found that to be true of other mmos too. In Pve, excluding dungeons, the mobs go down so fast with good grouped players you don’t have time to do much. There is post somewhere in these forums where a player suggested not to take a scepter into Pve because in the two seconds it takes to cast Dragon Tooth the mobs will already be dead lol. So true. If you go d/d you have some nice insta-damage skills in all the attunements and can still cast a Cleansing Wave for a heal if need be and a Ring of Fire for a combo field for the group from time to time. Everyone else in the group is also thinking there are too many players for those squishy mobs, excecpt the warriors lol, but that’s their ego thinking they are doing all the dps anyway.

My 30 in arcance I think gives me, I seem to remember, a 9 sec cooldown on attunemets. I guess mathematically it is 10.5 but I only ever seem to see the number 9 I like it because I can access the main hand skills much more often and rarely use auto attack which is usually meh at best. If the game has time to slip in an auto-attack I will not complain lol, but I am often interrupting or preempting it with another skill. And yeah, I am loading skills like there’s no tommorrow and liking it alot.

So if you leveled to 35 with 1/3 from crafting you have actually played ele for about 20 levels, or the equivilent of about the starter area plus one? That is way too early to be proficient in more than one weapon set, let alone five. Cut the profession some slack. You’re just getting started.

Well, I am not sure why I am answering your post heh. You can level him if you want to of course. Many have made it past 53 I think it’s safe to say.

Forgetting builds for a sec, I do know there is a difference between reading posted tips and suggested strats in the forums and truly understanding them and using them. Do you have go to strats to go to if you are taking too much damage and need to avoid damage and heal? Do you have strats for maximizing dps that include the use of fields and finishers? Do you have level appropiate gear? Are you pulling only the mobs you want? Cause if you do, then you wouldn’t be having issues.

Playing an ele imo is based on offensive, in other words a mulit-faceted pro-active approach. We don’t dps until we get so low on health we need to heal. We don’t ignore damage until we have taken too much. For me it’s more of a continuous rotation as I go thru the attunements to keep heals up, continuous movement to escape damage and group up mobs for my next aoes and field finsher combos, tab target to mobs who I can eliminate first. Like that.

It can be the little things that add up that can matter. Knockdowns, auras, chills, cripples, blowbacks, grouped mobs for aoes, finishing combo fields, well timed dodges, line of sight if available, stacking bleeds and burns more than once are details that add up to better results.

This kind of stuff is far more important to successfully playing the class than the build. At 53 the game is far less about builds because you are 17 levels to low and far away from getting any gear sets. It’s more about using what you have available.

Weapon changing sigils working with attunement swapping is a nice discovery. I’ll have to do some testing lol. So, now I can poison and life steal? I hope life steal comes with a graphic. That would be freaky. Probably have an identity crisis.

Nice. Updraft just got a whole lot better for me. lol. I can’t imagine how I missed that for so long. Wow. I’ve just been stunned. 10 minute duration. Better pop Coffee. Effect: Self Reflection, Readjustment

@Levian Nice. Now you’re getting the hang of things. Keep experimenting too. The forums for sure have alot of qq going on. Ignore that and there are alot of tips and tricks you can pick up and fit into your rotations. You’ll be squishy for a quite awhile but don’t get discouraged. Dodge is a great move for damage reduction. The Lesser Elemental Skill when you get it will draw alot of that agro you are experiencing and make things a bit easier.

@ Levian

Actually I found his comment very constructive. You make statement that it is “so unreliable unless you’re constantly kiting the enemy through it.” That is proof of nothing except that you don’t know specifically how the skill works nor how or when it can be used to best effect. You can test it anywhere. The Mists just happen to be a place the test dummys aren’t trying to kill you and they stand still

/agreed with Crunchy Gremlin. funny name lol.

Testing is key. Take Earth #2 for example. How fast does Earth #2 apply 6 stacks of bleeds for 12 seconds? How long do you have to kite mobs, as you say, thru it in other words? How high can you get it? It’s a combo finisher blast. Is there a field you have that will go with that? How does that work? One question inevitably leads to another, and another, and another.

Traiting for Lesser Elemental and summoning an elemental of your current attunement helps a ton. They will grab the agro of the mobs and divert their dps. The Earth Elemental makes a decent tank. I rarely Pve without one. Don’t use it much, but when needed it’s very handy.

Well, if you run scepter/dagger you have an opening ranged attack with Dragon’s Tooth that does decent damage. If you open with Ring of Fire, Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix to pull, you get combos for might, two ranged hits before he comes to you, a Flamewall the mob has to run thru to engage you in melee and you are waiting with Fire Grab. Switch to Lighting for some quick no induction dps. If you need healing jump to Water. If you need knockdown, cripple and massive dps and bleeds jump to Earth. Don’t forget to dodge and keep moving. If you need range, use Ride the Lightning. Range and bleed with Stone Shards. Use Phoenix for Endurance regen to keep your dodges up. Rock Barrier for defense. Dust Devil and Blinding Flash for damage reduction. There really isn’t a skill in Scepter/Dagger you can’t throw in there alone or in combination with something else. Most take no time to cast at all and are good for something too. If you are in that attunement, why not cast it while you are there? Or as the saying goes, “Fire Everything.” You can get some nice burning and bleeds going. This will help make leveling in 71 to 80 areas alot of fun imo. Try differnet skill sequences. Worked for me anyways lol.

I try focus in WvW from time to time. Gale is great for knocking down players who are trying to flee. Rangers are often our biggest ranged threats and with Swirling Wind, Magnetic Wave, and Obsidian Flesh they are nulified. Daze is good too.

Alot of my mid Pve leveling was done with focus for the defense until I got a better grip on closer melee range combat. In the upper level areas with multiple mobs and fast and instantaneous respawns in melee range, the long cooldowns on focus and lack of dps are troublesome. I find it more effective to go with dagger offhand for high dps, aoe and healing.

So, yes, OP. Focus is weak but effective in the right circumstances. Five of the eight skills are very effective and can be used proactively to deal at range with ranged attackers and/or their projectiles. The focus is primarily a defensive weapon.

The term attunement swapping has been used thousands of times on the forums before. It sounds like you are calling this term your own lol.

STRanger.5120:

Dal.6801:

if we get to swap weapons in combat i’d be happy

Sorry to dissapoint you, but we won´t. It just doesn´t make sense, we already have twice the weapon skills compared to other classes, you want to have four times than others?
But that would be some challenge to play efficiently, that´s for sure

agreed. Don’t ever see it happening. Even with the weapon swap cooldown, being able to play the best skills of two weapon sets would be OP. Currently we gain dps with shorter range weapons. Gain dps, lose alot of cool defense with focus. Gain dps, lose lots of aoe and nice aoe fields with staff. Gain short range dps with main hand dagger, etc. Each weapon set has its own strats, disadantages, and advantages in other words with different play styles and strats.

Take that away and the class will become easier to play and much more cookie cutter. We will use fewer skills, not more. Many skills will become unused and therefore useless. I would say the same potential exists for some attunements. Some will be unused and therefore useless too.

Besides the simple fact that the skill sequences that become available would be OP. Lol. Short term thinking, making a short term design change in a profession that would require a long term nerf. That’s self defeating. Anyway, the result would indeed be an entirely different profession. That doesn’t mean in future releases Anet won’t introduce new professions that will meet the designs some players are looking for. I have no doubt they already exist. Anet said sometime ago they had the next two years of the game already laid out.

Very happy. I play Pve mostly. I find it’s alot of fun to get myself into jams and then get out again lol. I find Ele to be a subtle class with alot of fine points that when put together give a very satisfying result. Pulling, attunement swaping, agro awareness, combo fields and finishers, weapon selection for differnet purposes, boons and conditions and their removal, healing, aoe, damage over time, burst dps, crits, evasion, kiting, dodging, group play vs. individual play dynamics, etc. There’s alot there to get the hang of and I like it.

I’ve been playing 0/10/15/15/30 since I could first afford to buy grandmaster traits lol. I know that there are so many trait builds that will change all the strats I have used that I will essentially be playing an entirely different character. That appeals to me too. alot! Although, I would surely miss 30 in arcane thats for sure. That might have to stay.

I am not at all concerned about what many see as greener grass on the other side of the fence.

Skills do different damage against different targets. Why would Arcane Wave be any different?

re your Pve question.

1. Ill use Shatterstone if I go to water for healing since I’m there anyway. It is a 4% increase in dps for 15 seconds. The casting time and animation make it hard to stack much and the skill does little dps so it’s not something I stay in. In a group it is much more effective due to increasing the dps of everyone.

Earth I go to at least whenever Churning Earth is off cooldown. Mobs in Pve are very bad at interrupting that and don’t move out of it. It is the best damage skill we have, especially when working on multiple mobs.

2. see above I guess
3. see above again I guess lol
4. Yes. Learn all the weapons. You say, “I built for party support DPS through boons and AoE damage” Still, there can be times you might find something else fits better. Staff is great in Dungeons. Great combo fields you can put down at range. Good Dps with both Lava font and especially Eruption, both short cooldowns. Flame Burst is not too shabby with a 5 sec burn. Throw in Shockwave when its up when you happen to be in Earth. Unsteady Ground to cripple which can help out the melee separate mobs if they want. Again if you happen to be in Earth, why not? Good healing both direclty and with combo fields in water for your party. It’s there why not use it? While you are there why not throw in an Ice Spike for a 5% increase in your parties’ dps for 10 seconds?