Guild Wars 2

Sarisa.4731:

As long as the elemental still triggers the hellish sound bug, I won’t use it. Fire triggers it most, but all the elementals can.

Sarisa, to what are you referring here? Does popping the Elemental sometimes make your sound bug out and just give a constant ringing?

Ever since I’ve started WvW’ing more once I reached lvl 80 and geared up, I will occassionally have my sound crap out forcing me to turn off my speakers and play in silence. Could this be the reason?

I too have high hopes for the patch, particularly in the area of bug fixes. As an Ele, there are so many skills/traits that are quite simply bugged. Cantrips mastery doesn’t effect mist form, windborne dagger simply does not work AT ALL, healing rain lasts for half the duration the tooltip claims, final shielding doesn’t trigger at 25% hp making it worthless half the time, etc., etc.

I’m not expecting a RTL fix, I understand that’s difficult, but some of these other fixes are just super easy and it’s a shame they haven’t gotten around to working on them yet. I’m sure many classes have similar issues, and hopefully these get addressed in the latest patch.

I’m not quitting the game either way however, just holding out hope that some of this stuff gets worked on finally

This video has been around for awhile, and although it’s hilarious, it’s not particularly true (it’s edited, the thief footage DOES have assigned traits, not random ones, and as Dual said, it’s from before the bunker specced was discovered and mass disseminated).

The elementalist class is perfectly viable in tPvP, but for the most part, only as a bunker build for point control and AOE for treb in Khylo. This frustrates many Ele players because they rolled the class wanting to play a “mage” and nuke stuff from afar, and that’s really just not easily achieved with the class. It doesn’t bother me however, cause I rolled the class for support/healing, I love playing healing classes, but I can see what it angers people.

Yes because elementalists that can continuously heal and buff themselves to be nearly unkillable are clearly weak. ESPECIALLY in a point control game. Yep, so sucky.

In point control, if you know how an Ele plays they can be killed somewhat efficiently with timed burst and proper/smart timed use of conditions. Much of the healing power for Ele’s comes in the form of regeneration, which doesn’t stack in duration so they’re susceptible to burst, and condition clearing. Their biggest direct heals (aside from their healing skill, which every class has), come from evasive arcana dodge rolling into the two water fields from staff, and just dodge rolling for the cleansing wave effect (only once every 10 seconds).
If you can get them to blow their condition clears on bleeds, chills, burns, etc., poison and particularly WEAKNESS will wreck them (poison is self explanatory, but weakness slows their endurace regen and effectively cuts our healing potential in half. If we can’t dodge roll, we can’t heal effectively). Again, these might get cleared fairly quickly but it’s still worth putting them up.

Also, healing rain has a long cooldown (45 seconds), so geyser is used most often for the dodge rolling combo. This skill lasts only for a short while however, 2 seconds on a 20 second cooldown, so if you can catch the casting animation and CC/knockdown/snare us immediately after we cast it, we’ll miss our dodge roll chance and be screwed out of water-field combo’ing, which is a big heal missed.

Not sure why i’m telling you guys this, forget I said anything. Please don’t kill me

Where else are you gonna get exotics? The only other exotic armors out there are from Crafting, WvW and Karma.

Crafting and Trading Post I haven’t done a lot of dungeon’s on my 80 Ele cause i’m not a huge fan (i’d rather WvW or PvP). I prefer PvP to PvE any day of the week.

I had about 12G on my Ele when I hit 80, which was enough to finish out my exotic gear (all 6 pieces plus staff) and buy Superior Runes for it from Trading Post, but now I’m kinda broke. I make good $$ in WvW though, and cash grinding PvE is pretty effective too.

Are those PvP numbers?

Yes, just talking pure sPvP numbers.
For example, in sPvP you can get 24,685 HP by wearing Knight’s ammy (and jewel) and then adding Vitality runes (e.g., Runes of Sanctuary).

Of course, this makes your other stats subpar as you’re ONLY stacking vitality, which is why I like Soldier’s jewel (cause you still end up with 20k HP, but your power isn’t total garbage). I believe all of these #’s are obtainable in PvE gear.

Play with the build editor to find out different/better combinations
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Kita.7819:

its the Koda armor, gotten from HotW.

Prepare yourself for the worst time of your GW2 life.

Also, I adopted your color scheme Sargent Light. I kinda like it

Ah, thanks for letting me know. /sadface, cause I’m not a huge fan of dungeons

Actually, Can anyone give me some color scheme ideas for this armor?

Note: I am not color blind. I am a candy corn.

http://i.imgur.com/yowmQ.jpg

Kita, where did you get that Bearskin helmet, I want one!

I need it for my Mr. T lookin’ Guardian Alt named BA Bearacus It would be perfect!!

Same question to you RenRen. I hope that’s not the helmet you get when choosing “Bear” spirit animal at character creation, cause I went with the Pauldrons

I rolled Norn for my Guardian alt, for the simple reason, that if I’m going to be a Guardian and protect people, I wanted to be big and badkitten while doing so…

Double post to relay a funny story from when I was allowing myself to be killed repeatedly in the mists to test Ele vapor form.

Another “helpful” player was practicing on the dummies near me, and he/she kept running over when I would go into downed state, then try to kill the dummy and revive me. He must have thought I was the worst player in the world, to get killed repeatedly by the NPC dummies. After the 2nd time this happened, I had to whisper him to tell him “let me die, i’m testing something on my downed form.”

He laughed, and then offered to help for a minute. Then, when I would get downed he would take over beating on the dummy (but not killing it) so I wouldn’t get stomped by the NPC and could get the 20 seconds I needed for vapor form cooldown to come up again.

It made my testing MUCH faster, only of course after he stopped killing my experiment

Actually, testing this seems anything but easy.

Of course it would be easier to find a friend/guildy and go into a low pop sPvP match to “duel.” This would be your best testing option.

Outside of that, unequip your automatic condition removal abilities (or detrait them), and fight the compu necro a couple times. They use the same skills over and over, they’re dumb NPC’s (he’ll always use poison, easy to see if it comes off or doesn’t go on at all cause your character turns green), so learn the casting animation and the condition it applies.
Retrait and equip the removal abilities, watch the casting animations and see if the conditions get applied. If he uses a condition skill, but the condition doesn’t go on your bar, start a stopwatch and wait 10 seconds to see if it wipes something again after 10 seconds. Start with just 1 condition wipe skill to test the mechanics, then add more to see how it works.

I understand this will never be as easy as being with another human over voicechat and “dueling” them, but it would work. It might take a couple fights to see everything clearly, you might trying fraps’ing it (if you have access to this software or something similar), so you can rewatch the fight multiple times to check the condition wipes. And yes, you’re gonna die multiple times learning the cycle (and thus have to run back to the NPC a couple times), but it’s the mists so you don’t get repair costs, it only slows ya down.

I’m not trying to troll here, only help. I tested vapor form for my Ele this way, and it was a pain in the A, but it works slowly without begging for a partner in guild chat.

What I do see? Conditions landing on me and sticking within moments of a fight starting, despite the fact that I have two automated condition removal abilities “waiting” for something to do. What should I believe?

What is probably happening is the enemy is applying multiple bleeds, etc., from multiple skills. They use a skill that puts up 1 bleed stack, then follow with another skill that puts on 3 more. The autowipe takes off the 1 bleed stack as soon as it’s applied, and then the 3 stack sticks. This is the inherent danger of autowipes. Guardian’s have a lot of these autowipes, so if i’m fighting them I try to get their autowipes on cooldown (but applying single bleed stacks, a chill, etc.) and then once they stop coming off hit them with churning earth so the 7 bleeds it applies stick longer, even if it’s only 4 or 5 seconds. I’m a bunkerish Ele, I can’t kill bunkered guardians anyway (but they can’t kill me either)

I’ve always thought the skills fire off as needed then recharge to fire off again.

This is how they work as far as I know. This could be tested easily (fight the Necro computer mob in the mists).
And I always see folks in discussions such as this talk about “Zoning in.” How they got the impression that this has anything to do with the matter baffles me.

And by doing so you are giving up the massive damage boost that you would have gotten from going Fire. 100 points of stats is a massive boost early on.

You don’t want to waste early trait points on stuff like boon duration, attunement recharge or crit damage that doesn’t scale up in power as you go down the levels.

I suppose you could think of it this way, but I just found that the buffs Elemental attunement provided to be too good to pass up (the boon duration and attunement recharge rate were just added bonuses). I especially loved the swiftness on air attunement. Coupled with windborne speed (staff skill #4) I basically had perma-swiftness for any travel throughout the world that I had to do, which at low levels greatly speeded things up for me. I also like the regen/protection on water/earth, as it was basically ALL the defensive setup I needed at low levels.

One I had 10 pts in arcane though, I did do what you suggest (that is, pump fire for added power). At low levels, 100 power is great, yes. But at low levels I also didn’t get the impression that my damage was particularly subpar (that doesn’t happen until lvl 60+).

I guess to each his own, which is probably the best advice for the OP to begin with At low levels, spec’s don’t really matter, do what YOU want to learn the class and have fun

There are many problems with WvW. Arrow carts are not one of them…

Moxrox.2496:

I would love to see a better combat log…the one we have is really very limited

This I would agree with. A combat log that counts condition damage as well as healing (and showing condition removals) would be great.

But Just NO to damage meters…

I’m going to disagree, 10 points in arcane is a HUGE boost for new eles, for elemntal attunements,

^this. Your first 10 points, for ANY elementalist, should be in arcane to get Elemental Attunement.
This gets you free buff whenever you swap attunements, which is ALL THE TIME. WHy wouldn’t you want to might stack for moving to fire, or the free regen for moving to water, or free protection when moving to earth, or swiftness for travel when swapping to air.
Elemental attunement is just so good, no Ele should be without, especially a new one still in the process of leveling.

Also, since you asked about staff, I’ll give a good “rotation.”

I ALWAYS start in earth and place Eruption under the target first. They won’t aggro until the blast goes off, so the long cast time does not create problems.

So, it goes like this. Eruption —> Shockwave (this will immobilize them), swap to fire quickly (gaining might) and place Lava font (because shockwave has such a large travel time, your font will be down before shockwave hits them, so they’ll be immobile in lava font for quite some time). Eruption will set off the blast finisher (giving you 3 more might) and shockwave will keep them in lava font for a couple of ticks. As soon as you drop lava font, throw ONE fireball and use Arcane blast during animatoin, and then hit flameburst (skill #3). I throw ONE fireball because of the way casting animation works, you can basically get a free cast before the lava font ticks (and aggro’s the mob) whereas flame burst (an instant cast) will aggro them right away. It’s free damage before they “wake up”. They now have 7 stacks of bleed, burning, a good chunk of HP gone (lava font ticks, eruption blast, arcane blast, and one fireball), and you’re still at 1,200 range ready to kite. You can basically stand still and autocast fireball at that point, they’ll die at your feet before they get a chance to hit you (due to bleeding/burning).

Easy Peasy….

Edited to add: Shockwave travels in a line and WILL hit multiple targets. If you’re trying to pull 3 mobs at once, try to find a starting spot that puts then in a line, target the one farthest away, and shockwave will hit/bleed ALL THREE!! Most people aren’t aware, and/or do not take advantage of this, but ALWAYS target the mob farthest from you for shockwave so it’ll pass through the ones closest to you hitting all the targets.
Again, easy peasy…

Druitt.7629:

I just hit 40 and respeced traits to include Blasting Staff, so this is a little disappointing.

BUT, I just thought of the question: I assume that the the larger radius is a total win for, say, Healing Rain and that you get the same effect in a larger area. But what about Meteor Shower? It drops meteors in an area and you literally have to be hit by one, right? Does it drop more meteors, or the same number spread out over a larger area. If the latter, it actually dilutes the power of the cast.

I believe more meteor’s drop to keep the scatter roughly the same (in my anecdotal experience).

Others will probably tell you the same thing.

If you’re trying to stack Vit, go with Soldier’s Ammy (and Jewel) cause it carries Power, Vitality, AND toughness.

Just Ammy, Jewel, and 30 pts in water gets you 20,245 HP, 2480 Armor, and 1840 power BEFORE any gearing or other traits.

You’ll be a kitten tank, but your attack will be decent with the power from soldiers…

Daays.4317:

You don’t have to run staff bunker. In fact a D/D glass cannon ele will destroy a D/D thief because of the knockdowns, burst, and lightning shield. Same with D/F. In fact a D/F hybrid build is impossible to beat as a D/D thief because of the massive amounts of immunities combined with the damage output.

You see so many bunkers ele in tPvP because of how Conquest Mode works and that it favors having 3 bunkers. One of the strongest bunkers out there is staff ele because of the team support it brings. Not because of D/D thieves killing people.

You see thieves in sPvP the most because they’re strong killers. And you’re rewarded for offense, not defense. Simple as that. Why else do you think games are filled with shatter mesmers, BS thieves, and other pure offensive classes?

I actually run a D/D semi-bunker with soldier’s ammy/jewel (so my power isn’t complete crap). I do far better damage than most true bunker ele’s, but get good survivability through speccing (0/0/10/30/30) and gearing. And I agree that bunkers are popular because of the nature of conquest. I disagree however that glass cannon ele’s are particularly viable in PvP however because although you CAN take down a D/D thief (with the appropriate amount of stun breaks) you’ll get rolled by almost any other class. Sure they exist, but they’re certainly not the most popular. I suppose I overstated the reason why most Ele’s roll bunker builds, it’s NOT just because of glass cannon thieves, but because of glass cannon anythings and anything that can survive your burst…

Arheundel.6451:

@Bsquared…

As usual you’re talking gibberish, non-sense and more.
Once you dodge the backstab build ( which is way too predictable) the thief have to wait several seconds where you can easily burst him down.

Every mesmer, along with his grandma, dog and cat got 3 daze on his bar + an immobilize with teleport and if this was not enough, the burst is availalbe every kittening 15s at least with illusions on a 8-10s CD.

But no you, being the greatest player of all times can dodge every kittening time regardless of being dazed-immobilized-crippled, I really want to know how the kitten you consistently dodge shatter mesmer of a limited space like a point.

The funny thing is you, who still die from a thief backstab dare to tell me how to fight mesmers which is 100x harder, after being praised by champion illusion players for being one of their hardest foes (on ele), I can say with confidence that your comment ( once again) will be placed in the “trolling posts” section like others

First thing, I rarely, if ever die to a backstab thief build for exactly the reason you state, it’s predictable (and I spec defensively with 3 cantrips). That doesn’t mean I don’t see the cheese in it and welcome a change to this mechanic in favor of adding additional utility to the thief class as a whole. Apparently, based on the linked post by the OP, Arenanet agrees…

Second, I never really intended to suggest that mesmers are easysauce and that shatter builds don’t drop me. Hell, EVERY class has dropped me on occassion, even 100B warriors when I was surprised and had all my utilities on cooldown. That being said, there is a reason Mesmers one of the more popular PvP classes out there. But the same argument people use against those saying “backstab needs a nerf” (e..g, bring a stunbreak, pre-dodge, keep moving, etc.) apply to fighting mesmers.

Don’t stand on his clones. You can see them running at you when he wracks, dodge when they go off (mind wrack has 15 second cd, you can dodge more than once every 15 seconds. I also run sigil of superior energy, so I get an extra dodge every 9 seconds while attunement swapping). Dazed is a PITA, I admit, but crippled/immobilized can be cleansed quickly and effectively by swapping to water, using cleansing wave (I run D/D), dodge rolling in water (I run evasive arcana), using cleansing fire, or popping ANY regen ability or cantrip (e.g., mistform or lightning flash). No, you will not dodge everything and you’ll be hit by shatter now and again, thank god the Ele class has such nice healing capabilities…

Yes, it’s even tougher if you’re fighting on a node and can’t leave the space for fear of him neutralizing it. But then, the same argument that people use against those saying “bunkers need a nerf” apply. That is, bring a friend or call out to your teammates for help.

Again, I never claimed that Mesmers aren’t tough to fight, they might be one of the hardest for Ele’s, but the fact remains that if have the utilities/abilites to dodge a venomed backstab, you should be able to dodge/avoid a fair amount of shatters.

So what else are you using your stun break on? Against some bunker class? Do you honestly believe that’s a good decision? And if a team is running multiple stuns, why aren’t you running multiple stun breaks? They’re utility skills for a reason. Not to mention every class has a way to deal with incoming attacks with their weapon sets alone.

If you’re so scared of a BS thief entering a fight, then your team needs to keep track of him. Put a target up. Most teams run 3x bunker 2x DPS, so you’re really only going to need to use your stunbreak for that basilisk venom.

Most BS thieves look for 1v1’s or look to enter a fight late. All of which can be taken care of with proper map awareness and communication. The spec is designed to prey on those who aren’t ready. A big target sign over his head is kinda hard to miss

Now you know. More GI Joe tips to come!

I play a bunker Ele, and run 3 cantrips (2 stunbreaks). That, plus my defensive spec, makes backstab thieves not that bad to deal with as far as staying alive. But they’re also very difficult for me to kill simply because I don’t have near enough burst damage to burn them down before they stealth/run off. Why do I have no burst damage? Because I have to spec defensively and run 3 cantrips just to avoid the instagib leaving me no option to spec for damage. This is why you see so many bunker Ele’s in PvP, because apparently Anet saw fit to nerf our damage after the BWE’s pigeonholing us into defensive support but left backstab damage insanely high inviting every noob fotm reroller to run that spec.

I tend to agree with you that backstab thieves aren’t really that big of a problem when you’re fortunate enough to see them coming and/or have stunbreaks at the ready. But it’s pretty obvious that something is wrong based solely off the sheer number of thieves encountered in sPvP. Anet seems to agree, hence the discussion they’re having internally about nerfing this particular ability.

I wholeheartedly welcome a nerf to the backstab instagib ability (which will cull the # of noob thieves in sPvP) provided that Anet provides buffs to other thief abilities and improves their general utility to make them more useful in some tPvP settings.

Daays.4317:

So you’re defining skill now in button presses?

A thief has to use 5-6 skills total. All you have to do is dodge, use a stun break, or a distance ability. 5 skills compared to your two max? Sounds like you got outplayed.

Then again, the number of button presses is kind of a dumb way to determine skill level.

If a thief is going to come on you, then he will most likely cast basilisk venom. That has a cast time and he gets a buff. At the very least Assassin Signet will be used. You know what’s coming next. So the whole “surprise” thing kinda goes out the window.

An invisible opponent? You can’t steal + c&d + bs from stealth. If they stealth before hand, then you should know it’s only going to last for 3 seconds. Unless of course they use SR. In which case that’s 10 seconds. Plenty of time to create some distance and get in a good position.

I agree. Playing against a BS thief is hard if you refuse to learn game mechanics and how abilities work. It’s the most punishing class to play against for being ignorant. Once you learn them, it’s very easy to tell when the thief is going to come at you bro.

Still not feeling confident in your ability to take on a BS thief? Get access to protection. Even the highest of burst classes can’t kill you when protection is up.

Now you know. More GI Joe tips to come!

Your entire premise of this argument is based on the fact that every player should save their stunbreaker for backstab thieves, and backstab thieves alone, and that every fight is 1v1, you versus the thief (this is the inherent flaw in this argument). And with regard to the “invisible opponent” comment, that mostly has to do with the stealth rendering bug which ensures the thief can pull off the entire combo virtually unseen, not that the combo can start from stealth.

And let’s not pretend like the backstab combo is hard to pull off, I laugh everytime I see this argument cause I rolled a thief myself to test it out. The fact of the matter is that the backstab combo is total cheese. This is why you see so many fotm thieves in PvP and why Anet has seen it fit to reexamine this build.

So sorry you’ll have to change your spec up after the nerf…

Kneru.8014:

At the end of the day, the question remains, how will people who cry about thieves without learning how to beat them, beat the good thieves that will continue to play because they love the class, and not because it’s FOTM? I myself will always play a thief, even if it’s the lowest on the totem pole because I enjoy the playstyle, as I did with Deception Assassin in SW:TOR. What excuse will you have when the thieves relearn their class and still beat you then?

I think that’s fine, if/when I die to a thief that uses more than 3 keystrokes, dodges my attacks, and generally outplays me, I say “ kitten that thief was good, how do I counter that”
I never get that feeling when I die to a backstabbing noob thief..

LOL! A mesmer complaining about thieves ^^, now I’ve seen everything on this forum, between fightning 2 thieves and a mesmer..I prefer the 2 thieves as they’re by far less OP than mesmers, as a matter of fact I’d prefer Anet to leave thieves alone and rather nerf that absurd shatter build which deal unavoidable 12-16k dmg every 8-10s on top of 6-8 stack of confusion-bleeding-vulnerability

By the way :" MESMER SHATTER BUILD NERF INCOMING" Ohh kitten YEA!! About kittening time!

“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”
Oh wait, that’s not it…
If you can dodge a backstab, you can sure as kitten dodge a shatter…

I haven’t focused on a single stat in particular for two primary reasons.

First, I used a bit of what I had, so if I had a piece of Carrion gear, I went with that. I have a berserker chest, so I wear it, etc. I did purchase a Berserker Staff from the TP, as well as Dwayna runes for all my gear (I went with Dwayna to up my healing stat).

Second, I like being a “jack of all trades.” Because I’m not solely pumping power/precision, I’m still quite tanky (I’m also water/arcane specced, i like playing a healer/support class) so I don’t die often, but those few pieces of berserker/rampager gear keep my damage from being total crap. I don’t know my power off the top of my head, but I have about a 25% crit chance too. The carrion pieces I have up my condition damage, so eruption and flame burst are pretty good (when using a staff, obviously). Seeing as how I start almost every PvE fight with Eruption (to stack the bleeds) and use Flame burst all the time, this plays in my favor. And with the Dwayna runes and 30 in water, I have 650 healing power, so when I swap to water to heal, my hp fills up quick!

I’m sure this spec/gear combination isn’t 100% min-maxed like some MMO’ers like to do, but I find it quite effective and I like playing it (which is really the most important thing). I’m covered no matter what I encounter in the world, I can nuke okay (but not as well as a glass cannon), I can bleed/kite well (but not as well as full carrion), and when I have to heal, I do that well too (but not as well as someone rocking 1100 healing power with no damage).

It’s a game, I save my min-maxing brainpower for real-life work…

I really like my water specced staff Ele for healing with Dwayna runes and evasive arcana (0/0/10/30/30 traits). Anytime I attune to water it heals, casts regen, and condition cleanses nearby allies. My dodge roll (in water) gives an AOE heal and condition cleanse. I can drop geyser or healing rain (which also cleanses) and dodge roll into them for AOE healing, and because of my runes i cast an AOE regen everytime I use my own healing skill. Attuning to earth gives AOE protection to the group as well, useful for avoiding big damage spikes.

Sure, it’s not the Disc Priest I played back in WoW days, but I pump out a good amount of regen (renew), cleansing (dispell), and direct AOE healing to feel pretty close….

“You tell them no, don’t let the bad man touch you. Like Nancy Reagan on the war on drugs, you tell them no.”

OMG, LOL, this was hilarious.

If you like healing (like I do), you can run 0/0/10/30/30 on staff. I runed my gear out with Dwayna to up my healing power (only about 650) but I can grant regen to allies by using my heal near them. I didn’t go 1k+ healing power cause it’s an expensive stat and I didn’t want to totally kitten my damage (you still need lava font and meteor shower to clear walls, my meteor crits for like 3.5k) so I use a bit of berserker/knight/rampager gear (berserker rings/ammy) to keep my power up, 25% crit chance, and roughly 17k hp. My toughness isn’t as high as I would like it to be, but it’s WvW so I’m not focused much (unlike in sPvP).

My goal when keep sieging is to keep the ram crew up when arrow carts and AOE rain down I can lightning flash in, swap to water (healing, regen’ing, and condition clearing a bunch of folks), pop my heal (granting everyone even more regen from Dwayna runes), drop a geyser, then dodge roll (with evasive arcana) to set off AOE heals and condition clears. If things get hairy, drop a healing rain as well, dodge roll some more for AOE heals (using lightning flash gives me vigor, so I can get more than 2 dodge rolls in quickly), then switch to earth granting the ram crew protection (from elemental attunement). Pop magnetic shield to reflect some enemy fire back at them, then attune to fire granting the door beating crew might. Then I get outta dodge and drop meteor/lava font while waiting for water cooldowns. I’m always moving, it’s not as boring as standing still just spamming lava font and meteor shower like a glass cannon ele does (as I tried at first), and I do well in open field fighting cause i’m kinda tanky…

I’m not saying this is the best build out there (I’m positive it’s not min-maxed to perfection), but I put it together cheaply/easily (a mix of what I had, plus a few trading post items, namely my berserker staff) and people seem to love me for it. And because I didn’t invest TOO heavily in pure healing, I still pump out decent damage and can clear walls, and I’m kinda tanky and can take a couple hit before I drop. Sure, a glass cannon build can clear walls faster than I, but I feel like I bring A LOT to the group. I think people appreciate it too, cause if I ever go down, there is a mad rush to ress me

Edited to add: People also rush to ress me cause I’m often the first to drop a ram at the door. Seriously folks, they’re like 6 silver. Why people don’t have a dozen in their inventory is beyond me…

I think they’re all intended mechanics, although I wouldn’t mind seeing steal/mug not work WHILE using CnD, just to spread out glass cannon thief burst a bit and give more time to react.

Regarding Churning Earth for elementalists, they have to burn a utility skill to lightning flash on top of you, so your best best is to run when you see CE start casting (forcing them to burn the flash) and then dodge roll when CE goes off (causing it to miss). Viola, they burn a long cooldown weapon skill, a utility skill (and escape tool) and you take no damage….

That said, I think I might revise my build since I run mainly cantrips. With 30 in water, I can set it up to give regen with every cantrip, have cantrips recharge faster and get +2% damage for every boon I have on me. Cleansing Fire will be there to remove conditions and give me regen (but inferior to Ether Renewal) while Glyph or Harmony will give me a boon to do more damage.

Not sure if I’ll like the new build but I’m sure I can get used to it.

I love this build, it’s pretty awesome. I run 30 in water with cantrips grant regen/vigor, regen clears conditions, and cleansing wave (I skip the 20% cdr of cantrip mastery cause it’s bugged and doesn’t work with mist form, not worth it imo). Also, I run the ubiquitous 10 pts in arcane to get elemental attunement (EA). My 3 cantrips are mist, cleansing fire, and lightning flash, and I use glyph of elemental harmony.

Because of this, i get two condition clears attuning to water (cleansing wave and regen from EA grants clear. Note, both are AOE, so you clear conditions from allies and if granting them regen, get an extra condition clear for each you pump out). Mistform grants regen/vigor and clears 1 condition. Lightning flash give regen/vigor and 1 condition clear (great for when you’re “immobilized” as it clears it). Cleansing fire gives regen/vigor, burns the enemy and clears FOUR conditions. Finally, glyph (if used in water) gives a heal, regen, and clears 1 condition (2 conditions and more regen if I use dwayna runes, which I really like for WvW, I like to play healer). Basically, I laugh at condition builds, no other class can cleanse themselves as easily/quickly as we can with this build. I love it.

@Arc
Your point #1 isn’t correct i think. Ring of fire does do some direct damage to your target if you’re on top of them (unless it’s bugged, the tooltip says it does damage), but it’s not much. The bulk of the damage from ring however is the burn which only occurs if they pass through the boundary.

Everything else you said however is spot on, it’s better to save it for later. Just clarifying

Quoting this because apparently people overlooked it and it solves the problem that everyone keeps bringing up about having “40 skills”.

With something like this you’d have access to 25 skills, assuming you blow all your skills before weapon swapping. The other 15 skills of the swapped weapon would all be unavailable for 20 seconds, which would be too long to really consider “access to 40 skills at once” IMO. A 5-skill increase isn’t bad, especially when you consider that in order to gain those 5 skills you’re locking yourself out of all switching for 20 seconds, so you’re losing a lot of versatility for a pretty decent period of time just to “gain” those 5 skills.

Still a fairly dangerous route for a couple reasons. One, 20s isn’t really that long, by the time you’re done using up the 5 skills on the bar you’re half way to being able to swap again.

Also, I can imagine running S/D, stacking like 15 might stacks in fire in a couple seconds, then quick-swapping to staff to drop a meteor shower from God, Lava Font, and Flame Burst onto the enemies node scattering them like roaches. Getting those 15 stacks that quick is very difficult with a staff in your hand, with a S/D? It’s part of everyone’s rotation practically. (you’d have to implement a boon wipe like that mentioned earlier in this thread)

Or if you’re low on health running D/D, swap to water, use up cleansing wave then quick-swap to staff and drop a geyser to dodge roll (evasiva arcana) into healing yourself to full. Now you’re stuck in staff water for 20s, but you can group heal, frozen ground, drop a few ice spikes, and you’re off and running (dying in 20s with staff/water is your hands is next to impossible). You can use up all your S/D burst, then swap out and heal in staff, it brings too much healing potential. Who cares if you’re stuck there for a measly 20 seconds.

All-in-all, why are people still arguing for a weapon swap?!? It brings hardly ANY benefit other than those odd occasions where you’re dumb enough to get stuck standing on the keep walls in WvW with a dagger in your hands and frost bow not on the bar, and opens up a pandora’s box of potential exploits, imbalances, and would require just a complete class overhaul. It’s not needed, can we let the dream die please! The horse is dead, STOP BEATING IT!!

@Kruunch, that’s incorrect actually, the extra node is a WvW world bonus

Kruunch is correct I’m pretty sure, you can actually get more then 3 ore per node if you’re using higher tier tools.
It’s “crits” basically (you’ll see 2 ore get collected with one swing). For example, you can get 4+ copper ore from a node if you’re using darksteel/mithril tools, etc.

Considering sPvP encompasses all the servers, I would think “yes,” this is the same for all servers (cause it IS all servers).

And yeah, there are WAY too many thieves in sPvP, it’s making it unfun, lame, and predictable, even if I can usually handle them on my bunker Ele…

We need the weapon swap: just add a timer which cancels boons stack and poof the fear of having an overpowered “unkillable god” is gone.

I’ve already made my thoughts on this known, but the power of having a weapon swap for Ele has very little to do with boon stacking, and everything to do with just the sheer number of control skills, healing skills, AOE and damage skills available to us should we be given a total a 40 skills to choose from. Just making the boon stack wipe on swap still does not address how grossly overpowered we would be. (if you don’t think we’d be grossly overpowered with a weapon swap option, you’re probably not playing the class up to it’s full potential as it is, doubling the amount of buttons you’d have to press to accomplish the same thing won’t help you with that…)

If Anet ever gave us an in-combat swap, they’d have to go through all of our weapon skills and nerf them (e.g., reduce damage, reduce healing, increase cooldowns, limit combo field/finishers, etc.) to rebalance us in light of access to 40 skills (cause we’re already quite balanced with 20).

People already cry “I have to use 10 skills to do what a thief/warrior/mesmer does in 3, wah.” Should a swap-then-nerf total class overhaul go through, cue the chorus of “I have to use 20 skill to do what a thief/warrior/mesmer does in 3, wah.” It would never end. We are quite fine right now with access to twice as many skills as any other class (save a kit-wielding Engi), make due with them.

Edited to add: Sorry for the “elitist tone” of this post, but we should all be sick of these “Ele’s need a weapon swap” threads popping up on the forums since the day the forums launched. We don’t need it, Anet feels the same (hence why they didn’t include it), and arguing for it would probably hurt the class more than it would help cause they’d have to rebalance everything FORCING every Ele to use it along with 40 weapon skills to maintain their current performance. Seeing as how the Ele class if already one of the tougher classes to play properly (not that ANY class is hard to play) this will not help you. If you’re concerned about getting stuck on the keep walls in WvW while wielding dual daggers, put Frost Bow on your bar and lobby for conjures to be buffed (cause we can probably ALL agree that should happen). Problem solved!

LOL funny thread.

I agree. When reading the patch notes, I instantly thought “ah cool, so earth skill #2 might be more useful now” and “that’s cool, more CC in the earth line, that’s great. If earthquake is on CD, at least I can slow them down,” etc.

How people mistook it for ring of fire I can’t fathom.

BishopX.6453:

staff… throw down rain, throw down puddle throw down frost field.
switch to scepter dagger fire
drop ring of fire+dragons tooth + phoenix+roll forward.

now lets just leave the damage you do OUT of the equation for a sec

you have just granted regen, frost armor, 4k healing burst, fury, swiftness, and 9 stacks of might to every teammate………… oh and you can do it all over again in 15 more seconds………. ya thats totally fine.

to be fair, I believe you will only get the area healing from rain. If you blast finish inside multiple combo fields, you only get the finisher from the first field placed (in your rotation, water from rain).

But yeah, you mean I could have all the mobility of D/D, the burst and gap closers, then switch to staff to get mass AOE, lots of CC, and the ability to blast finish my water fields for full hp healing? Yeah, we’d be overpowered unkillable gods.

Without weapon-swapping an elementalist can only be strong at one range, long range with staff, melee with d/d, kind of in between with s/d but not as strong as either of the others.

This is, for the most part, not true. Staff has no minimum range, it’s good anywhere from 1,200 to 0. D/D, the other extreme, is only effective damage wise when up close, but that skill set has so many gap closers it’s ridiculous. If a player can’t get into melee range, and stay there, it’s their fault not a flaw of the skill set. In WvW, D/D is worthless when standing on keep walls, yes. So don’t be dumb enough to get stuck on the keep walls holding dual daggers…

An elementalist that could swap between staff and d/d would not be the strongest class but it would be able to hold its own against the other strong classes.

An Ele that could swap, on the fly in combat, between staff and D/D would be an unkillable god. It wouldn’t just “hold its own,” it would wipe the floor with every other class, bar none.

If you don’t see this then you don’t understand the skill set of the class.

100% agree with this suggestion, and I also think it should work somewhat close to that in sPvP with the winning team getting a large glory/rank bonus.
This would steer people AWAY from zerg farming and circle backcapping, and into PLAYING AS A TEAM TO WIN (e.g., defending nodes, etc.)

Arheundel.6451:

You call yourself a good player? You talk about rotation while enemy defenses are up, maybe it’s time to look at more than your initiative bar to spamm 1-2-3 and actually l2p..if you think Anet will nerf non-spammable defense skills for the sake of random button smashers baddies…you’re sadly mistaken

Arheundel and I have certainly had our issues on these here forums before pertaining to the Elementalist class, but in this case, I have to agree 100% with him here.All-in-all, this really is a learn to play issue.

Are you honestly complaining about an Ele eating stack after stack of bleeds JUST to keep you stunned for 5 seconds so that he can unleash hell on you and take away 30% of your hp? Really? Seriously? Maybe he’ll wind up his REALLY BIG DAMAGE item while you’re stunned in melee range, that is churning earth with it’s FOUR SECOND cast time (why that’s only 1 second less than the maximum available stun duration).

Solution to this “problem” (which isn’t really a problem), use your one stunbreak, move out of melee range, resume beating on him while shocking aura is unavailable for 20+ seconds. Oh, and no one believe you “spoke to a Dev” about this (it appears as if the post in which you insinuated you had has been deleted, for good reason)…

I’ll take the 50% more damage on backstab compared to making that stupid combo do 75% more damage. At least with the 50% more Dmg on backstab if they screwed up they had to wait to try it again.

Math doesn’t work like that. Percents are not additive.

Actually, they buffed bunker ele making healing boost affect Cone of Cold more. =p

Most bunker Ele’s run staff anyway to blast finish their water fields.

This was fixed awhile ago in a stealth patch. It now resets ur health to like 70% and is very nice in PvE… If the mob gets u to low, pop mist, and back to 70% and rally. Lol

Edit: Go to Mists and test on svanir if you’d like (training one, not in a match)

This. It used to drop your health with every use, but has recently been changed. Someone else (Kilger I believe) claimed this and tested it in another thread, and I went home and tested it as well, and it doesn’t decrease your hp anymore. Which is nice

Grasping earth does some nice damage though!

AND it’s a leap finisher. A good combo I’ve found against melee enemies is if you’re in fire, drop a ring of fire, then swap to earth and use magnetic grasp (I only use this skill in close range so it hits, it’s pretty worthless from far away), then dodge roll back into the ring. If you use evasive arcana (EA) like me, you’ll get the damage from ring, damage from grasp, a short immobilize, a fire shield, 3 might stacks, as well as the damage and bleed from the churning earth that EA sets off. What’s not to like

They broke Magnetic Grasp. You sit in mid-air for several seconds like RTL.

It’s always done that. If you haven’t encountered it before, you were very lucky.

downed state is much worse now than it was before, 20 seconds cooldown on vapor form just lol, how stupid is that? only noobs were crying about ele downed state

/boggle
Worse than before?!? Newsflash, vapor form ALREADY had a 20 second cooldown but now we can use it to interrupt an immediate stomp. And more than noobs were crying about the Ele downed state, it was one of the worst in the game. Anet agrees with these “noobs,” which is why it got buffed.

If you think the downed state got nerfed here, you’re playing the wrong game…

Edewen.8304:

These threads make me giggle. You guys may as well be saying all females should wear is a combat bikini. To all you guys who really can’t seem to grasp why you make normal people laugh, I refer you to this wonderful video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTGh0EMmMC8

Armor does not need to double as a stripper outfit to be considered appealing. If that is your standard then get out more often.

That video is hilarious. Gotta love college humor…

Wut? I got dazed at least twice (Being in Australia probably meant that the longer dazes would have seemed like lots of short ones, it tends to do that for me, don’t know why but its probably ping related).

Again, a D/D ele does not have a single daze in their arsenal, not a single one. In addition, the Elementalist, as a class, does not have a single utility skill that procs daze unless they use Magnetic Shield which I seriously doubt the Elementalist was using.
In addition, I don’t think there are any sigils that proc daze. If the Ele did not have a shield in his hand then you were not dazed even once throughout that fight.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

Because everyone thinks i wasn’t dazed lets change the subject, how do you beat a d/d ele using mass crowd control skills against you (Dazes, stuns, chills, immo’s etc.)

A D/D elementalist has 6 crowd control skills on their bar, total. Frozen Burst and Frost Aura are both chills in water (15s and 40s cooldown’s, respectively), Shocking Aura and updraft (25s and 40s cooldowns, respectively), and earthquake and grasp (45s, and 12s cooldown, respectively). For both the aura’s, e.g., frost and shocking, simply don’t use melee attacks against them for that duration if you want to avoid the CC associated with them (note, that the Ele will still eat the full damage if you attack them). If they conjure an earth shield to get a daze, they lose access to ALL of these other Crowd control abilities unless they drop the shield, it has a 60 second cooldown so they will only conjure it once.

Regarding updraft and earthquake, the cooldowns are WAY too long to be spammed. Perhaps the Ele had various signets (e.g., signet of earth immobilizes, or signet of water chills, etc.) but both of those are on 30 second cooldowns, so THEY can’t really be spammed either. Signet of Earth and magnetic grasp are the two immobilizes a D/D ele has access to, by the way, try to dodge grasp if you want but it pulls the Ele towards you (and he won’t want to be in melee range of a warrior if he’s smart).

In summary, this crowd control spamming D/D elementalist is a very rare breed and is probably fully earth specced (to get written in stone, since they’re likely running dual signets of earth/water)., they will be tough to kill, but are sacrificing a TON of raw damage to be so. In addition, the only CC they can really spam is chilled, at which point do what every other class has to do, bring condition clears to the fight (you’ll also want these to clear bleeds, cause if he’s earth specced he’ll be using these as well)…

Magnetic Grasp is a dagger mainhand ability. You can’t have it and Dragons Tooth/Phoenix.

Haha, whoops, my bad I know that. In my quick typing I got mixed up about the build we were talking about

shalmont.2539:

have any of you been polymorphed in world of warcraft?

probably not.

trinket much?

I personally think that the heart of the mists should encompass 3 servers, that is the 3 servers currently paired in WvW (implement this AFTER they’ve stop the free xfers.)
It would give a larger pool of players for finding tourney teams, and boy would it spice up WvW play

You do realise its about elementalists.. not thiefs.

sorry, I misunderstood your original post. Better theives?

Seriously speaking however, I don’t think Arenanet is going around stealth nerfing/buffing classes, specs, damage, etc. It would be foolish to do so, it’s a customer relations nightmare waiting to happen.

You’re probably just facing more glass cannon classes. You’re probably doing more damage cause your opponents are speccing for it. Just my 2 copper, I doubt Anet made any stealth buffs/nerfs.