Guild Wars 2

Instead of buffing Elementalist’s downed state however, I suggest we nerf everyone’s downed state to the level of the Elementalist’s.

man, if you did that, suddenly the crying about the Elementalist downed state would be deafening.

No more “L2P” and “it’s a team game, get a mate to interrupt the stomp,” “vapor form is a great escape, nevermind that it literally hurts you to use” excuses would ever be heard…

katniss.6735:

I’m going to test this out because I play with 15 arcana and my attunements already have a 12s cd; so after using all 4, and setting up the next rotation, I should be able to get 12 stacks and maintain them, or higher.

The limitation does not want you to be able to get 25 stacks on your own, which is fine, because that would be 875 power and condition damage. Every good tournament team is going to try and stack to 25 at the start of every match. I, personally, prefer WvW, and every advantage I can give myself there is eagerly welcomed.

I don’t think you’ll be able to maintain 12 stacks. The sigil carries a 9 second cooldown and grants 3 stacks for 20 seconds. Might stacks in intensity, so they will roll off by the time you get to the 3rd swap.

Example:
1.) Swap to fire, get 3 stacks (time 0:00 to 0:09)
2.) wait 9 s, swap to water, you have 6 stacks (time 0:9 to 0:18)
3.) wait 9 s, swap to air. This WOULD get you to 9 stacks, but after 2 seconds the first 3 stacks from the fire swap fall off, leaving you at 6 total stacks (time 0:18 to 0:27)
4.) wait 9 s, swap to earth. Again, your total stacks goes to 9, but after 2 seconds those you applied under fall off, leaving you with 6. Rinse, repeat.

The most you can realistically “maintain” assuming you’re swapping every 9 to 10 seconds is 6 stacks. And if you’re making a point to attunement swap every 9 seconds JUST to maintain 6 might stacks, it’s fairly safe to assume you’re not playing up to potential…

Spifnar.4712:

If you’ve played other classes, then you’ve noticed that the #3,4,5 skills for ele are significantly longer than most non-ele #3,4,5 skills, but don’t have a better effect.

For example: Compare Air/Staff #4 to Warrior/Warhorn #4. Same effect, but a 20s cooldown for warrior and a 30s cooldown for elementalist.

Meteor Shower is an exception. It’s the compansation skill that carries the ele on it’s shoulders.

Well yah. Considering we have twice as many #3, #4, and #5 skills as every other class, it kinda makes sense that some of them carry a longer cooldown…

Take the classic S/D Updraft?Dragon’s Tooth combo. You go into air, use Updraft to knock the enemy down, then flip into fire while you’re in mid-air of the Updraft animation to crank out a Dragon’s Tooth — looks flashy and, hey, now you land that nice damage DT that you would never land against a target that wasn’t floored. Great skill combo, right?

Or you could have just rolled a class that lands attacks that do the same damage as DT without having to do all that attunement-swapping, CC-applying setup.

But good players don’t mindless spam updraft JUST to setup the DT combo. You’re looking at it with tunnel vision. The point of updraft is NOT to set up a DT combo, the point is to interrupt/knockback the target. The added perk is that it seamlessly sets up for a DT combo, should one choose to do so at that time.

This is why I shake my head whenever I watch a PvP video with an Ele that does RTL and mindlessly uses updraft, then switches to fire to land DT. Dude, that’s some fancy button pressing you pulled off but you didn’t use blinding flash OR Lightning strike when you had air up, that’s free damage and a blind you left on the table!!! They’re both instant, you could have used them WHILE you were in RTL!! Wtf?!?

Sure, sometimes the class is frustrating, and i’d like to see the multitude of class bugs fixed (that alone would bring us up to par with other classes) but we’re in no way, shape, or form “fundamentally flawed.”

Basically you’d designate what weapon is equipped on the character sheet based on attunement. That would offer real flexibility.

possibly, but even that might be overpowered. Personally, i’d still run D/D for fire/air/earth and just replace the water skills with those of staff so I could drop water fields and evasive arcana roll into them for massive heals. Even that alone, would be ridiculously overpowered.

Can we please stop asking for a weapon swap (in combat at least). It’s a dead horse, stop beating it!

Ukaei.8694:

Just give us weapon swapping.

Balance it.

Except that giving us weapon swapping would make us horribly absurdly unbalanced.

If they gave us weapon swap, they’d have to nerf all of our skills into the ground to make it even remotely balanced. Cue the increased crying about “I gotta use 40 skills to accomplish what a thief/warrior does in 3” all over again….

Fox Soul.4809:

The problema with Mist form ( downed state ) is that is a “insta ress – insta death” skill. Each time you use it, the system “think” that you die again and put you a mark.
So, if you use it 2 or 3 times you’ll insta die.

^this.

Not only is vapor form only marginally useful as a stomp-interrupter due to the long cooldown before being able to use it the first time, but if you DO get it off, it counts as a 2nd down state and hurts you.

iNauticus.2450:

Lol, I can’t wait to fight whomever takes your advice. I enjoy playing very strategically on my thief using slows, stealths, blinds, and bleeds to maintain control over the opponent, so it’ll be a hayday fighting the people expecting just burst damage.

Pretty much this. The OP needed 20,000 characters (seriously, it’s 4 posts!!) to say how to “beat” thieves and the advice pretty much amounts to “be prepared to pre-dodge or pop your long cooldown stun breaker the second the thief starts attacking you.”

Of course, this assumes it’s 1v1 against the thief and all your skills are off cooldown (cause you haven’t fought anyone else recently). Then if it’s not the burst build thief, you’re completely screwed…

If someone has to pop their long cooldown stun breaker just to negate your very first strike as you’re coming out of stealth, there’s pretty much something out of balance…

Aba is the OP. :-P

Whoops, my bad

Staff is fairly inferior in PvE. There’s a few situations where it works but I wouldn’t recommend it.

I guess to each his own, but I highly recommend staff in PvE (I honestly do not understand the hate it generates with PvE content).

It gives you the longest range (if you can start the fight at 1200 range, you won’t get hit), tons of control (water #4, Air #3 and #5, earth #4 and #5, and a free dodge in fire), and the best heals of any of the weapon sets (try blast finishing in geyser or healing rain, watch you HP pool go to full…). Against a regular mob, if you get hit more than once, you probably messed up.

Seriously, when running PvE content I put on D/D or S/D when I wanna jump around like a crazy nut and burst mobs for fun (I’ll be honest, D/D and S/D are more entertaining than staff). I equip the staff when I wanna read a book or watch TV while solo’ing mobs, it’s that easy. Why all the hate?

Edge, I’m not sure what Maximus said is correct. When I first used Signet of Water (which clears a condition every 10s) I found this:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/45599-utility-signet-of-water/

I haven’t personally tested this, but I believe the signet waits for the 1st condition to come up, immediately clears it, and then goes on a 10s cooldown. It doesn’t “pulse” every 10 seconds based on when you slotted the trait, entered the map, etc.

So if you have 3 skills like this, they’ll simply wipe the conditions as they are applied, and go on their respective cooldowns. In this manner you could wipe 3 conditions immediately, and then have 10 seconds of no clears. Someone else may offer additional clarification, but i’m about 99.9% certain they are not “pulsing clears” on a set timer…

Aba.6419:

And what skills are you using?? Mist? Earth Armor? Arcanas?

They’re shown in the builder, click the link.

He’s using Signet of Earth, Arcane Wave, Arcane Shield, and Glyph of Elementals as his elite.

No please i put screenshots for a reason…

Fair enough, I didn’t know you were referring to screenshots in another thread.

That’s intriguing if this is the case, I personally have not noticed it (Armor of earth seems to trigger around 50% for me, but again, I have not control tested it) and final shielding I have no idea about (cause when I’m that low on HP in PvP, the last thing I worry about it at what % my shield popped, so long as it pops up).

Obviously, if they are truly bugged like that they should be looked at.

first, anet needs to make each weapon viable in each situation, since eles can’t swap weapons in-combat.

THEN work on balance.

I don’t see this as big of a problem as many other elementalists apparently.

Staff has no issue imo since there is no minimum range on any skill. You can hit stuff from 1200 range to 0 range. Sure, it’s not intelligent to use it when engaging in melee range, but it’s not broken. If you’re holding a staff, it’s priority #1 to keep them at range.

D/D is fairly limited in that it’s melee range, but it has so many speed/gap closers that getting INTO said melee range is never a problem. That and I love all 20 skills on D/D, I would never volunteer to give one up for a longer ranged skill. Also, if one decides to run D/D in WvW because they plan on doing a lot of open field raiding (on supply depots and whatnot), just stick frostbow on the bar. Then if you find yourself on the keep walls during a siege and can’t get out of combat to switch to staff, just conjure the bow and nuke.

Um, I’m pretty sure the sigil says it has a 9second internal cooldown right on the tooltip…
L2Read I suppose?

You’re right. They must have ninja nerfed it with the latest patch.

I’m pretty sure it’s been 9 seconds since launch day.

LordByron.8369:

i remember you that from yesterday shielding traits are bugged -.-
i am so upset………so your 10 earth are no more a must.

Arcane armor pops out at 30-35% instead of 50%
Final shielding at 10% (if you survive because you will get hit often for more than 10%) instead of 25%

I haven’t noticed the two shielding traits being bugged really? Arcane Armor (I assume you mean Earth’s embrace for “Armor of Earth”, since you mention 10 pts in earth) pops out all the time for me. Yes, sometimes it happens when I’m at 40% health, but that’s only because you get hit down to that before it procs.

For example, you have 55% health (armor of earth hasn’t procced). You’re hit once, taking your health to 40% and armor procs. That’s not bugged, just the nature of the game. Also, it carries a 90s cooldown, so it doesn’t always go off at 50% if you just had it proc a minute ago.

Same can be said for Final Shielding. If you have 30% health (and final shielding hasn’t kicked in), you can be backstab killed to 0% hp without the skill going off as far as I know. Just the risk of the game.

Now, if you’re killed from 60% to zero (say a HUGE backstab crit) and NEITHER armor nor sheild procs, but the cooldowns go off, then yes, that’s bugged and should be fixed. I admit, I haven’t done extensive testing with these skills, but I do see them go off all the time in sPvP, so I use them, and love them.

I think Staff is fine. I don’t understand the PvE hate it gets, the control it provides outweighs the slight reduction in single target damage (vs. S/D or D/D) and undoubtedly you’re going to pull an extra mob or two now and again, so the AOE is useful.

Trait-wise, I might switch out arcane mastery for Elemental Attunement, I figure if the point of the build is perma-boons, why not take the free ones on attunement swaps. Sure you have to wait 4 more seconds for wave to come off cooldown, but with staff you have a good amount of finishers anyway, I doubt you’d notice the 4 second difference. Also, with elemental attunement, you get a regen boon when attuning to water which will trigger cleansing water. You can then get another double cleanse using your glyph heal.

You’re basically giving up 4 seconds of reduced cooldown on wave and 15s on shield, but you’re gaining a lot of boons, including a protection boon when switching to earth which may make up for the 15s on shield, a regen/cleanse boon when switching to water, might for fire, and swiftness with air. Elemental Attunement is just too good to pass up imo. That’s my 2 copper.

Um, just no. Staff leveling is very simple and powerful, I leveled from 5 (or whatever ultra low level I got my first staff) all the way to 80 using nothing but that weapon.

Solo mobs or packs, they all die in seconds.

Single mob:
Start in earth – cast eruption since it doesn’t pull the mob until it pops, you can then cast shockwave.
Swap to fire – drop lava font, cast flame burst, then fireball.
Mob will be dead before it can get to you.

^this. I don’t understand the staff hate. Personally, I love playing as D/D, but it’s not as if Staff is weak. You can kill any single mob before it even hits you once, period.

Hell, I can kill Veteran mobs with a staff without being hit once (provided they are not ranged, if they are, use the earth elemental, profit):
Earth —> #2, #5, #4
Fire --> #2, #3, chuck a couple fireballs, burning retreat if needed
Air —> #2 (to blind), eat the miss, #3 to push them back, drop a static field around them and kite.
Water --> #4, #2
Back to Earth, #2, etc.

Also, if you find yourself without a lot of kiting area, remember you can dodge through enemies (for this I love use the “about face” keybind, then burning retreat so they’re now standing in your fireline). You can kite enemies back and forth along a single line almost endlessly without pulling other adds.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

You are wrong, if an Elementalist is downed and a Thief is downed, the Elementalist will emerge victorious. It all depends on the situation.

How do you figure? Do you mean if we’re both downed at the same time, and we each spam out #1 skills on each, the Ele will win? Cause if so, you should know that will never happen.

To even compare the thief’s downed state with the Ele’s is laughable.

marianitten.1247:

The CD is not the problem. If you have the skill ready, and you are downed by 2 enemies. And you could be saved if you cand stand 2 seconds more.

Wow, it’s so obvious you’ve never played an Elementalist. You can’t USE vapor form immediately when you enter the downed state. An enemy has enough time to stomp you TWICE (if they get interrupted by one of the Ele’s teammates) prior to even being able to enter vapor form once.

Oh, and it counts as a 2nd downed state, so when you return to downed, you have less health.

Wow, what an awesome amazing ability those Ele’s have…

It’s a steady weapon.

Along these lines, what the hell is the point of the steady weapons anyway? Never even bothered buying one, the damage #’s are for like lvl 10. Is it just for theorycrafting?

Warmage Timeraider.5861:

i like how still the guy at top is an elementalist XD

Fair enough, but points in sPvP aren’t necessarily an indication of class balance. If one simply follows the enemy zerg back capping their nodes, you can lead the scoreboard with single digit kills.

But seeing 50% of the players in a couple matches in a row all rolling thief, that’s not fun at all…

Dennace.2086:

/snip

Sheesh. That scoreboard is depressing. All I can think of when looking at that pic is:

“#2, #2, #2 like a boss”

Hillarious lol’d hard, but I disagree with some of the positions. This is how it should be:

God Tier: Mesmer, Guardian, Elementalist.
Cat tier: Engineer, Thief
Mice tier: Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger

Anyways thanks for sharing.

Wait, wait, wait…
You play a thief (it’s in your Sig), and you think Elementalists belong in the “God” tier? And warrior is in the “mice” tier? WTF?!?

Just a silly anecdote for the Ele world out there. Playing in sPvP last night and find myself against a pug team consisting of 4 thiefs and 4 mesmers (I got a screenshot, but I’m not at home and can’t post it here). My team had a good mix: 2 warriors, a thief, mesmer, engineer, myself (an Ele), I think a ranger and something else.

We ended up losing in a close match, but needless to say, it was the biggest pain in the kitten match I’ve ever been a part of. I killed my fair share, but about a minute into the match our entire team just gave up on attempting to stomp downed enemies, it was fracking ridiculous. Normally I don’t have a lot of trouble with glass cannon thiefs (because I have x/x/10/30/30 spec, and I stack toughness/vit) but as the lone Ele on our team, I think the entire group of them made it a point to single me out. 2 or 3 of them would pop outta stealth right on top of me, focusing me all at once, even if teammates of mine were around. I think they figured I was the squishiest. They were wrong a lot

Any other crazy match stories out there?

TL:DR 1.) It’s kinda sad that half the world it seems is re-rolling thief and mesmer. They are tons of them in every match, and typically I’m the lone Ele. I imagine Necro’s feel like this as well. In this match, 10 of the 16 players were thief or mesmer /sadface
2.) This match really highlighted our pathetic downed state to me. We could barely stomp a single enemy, but I got insta-stomped any time I went down. I don’t think Ele is super underpowered, but I 100% agree that our downed state sucks.
3.) Can we get cantrips mastery to work with Mist form please?!? The extra 15 seconds off the cd would be super useful in PITA matches such as this.

Thanks for reading (if you made it this far).

Sarisa.4731:

Tested it and you’re right. They NOW (but not in BWE2 when I first tried them) are instant cast.

I do regularly use Air 3 because it’s another source of blind. I just never bothered with Air 2 because it used to break channels.

Fair enough. I didn’t play the BWE’s so I didn’t know they used to break channeling. That would have been stupid (and I can see why they changed it) given that the auto-attack skill is a 3 second channel

Since #2 doesn’t break #1 channeling anymore, throw it in the rotation. Free damage that basically can’t be dodged = good stuff.

Thanks for testing this.

Air 2 I barely use at all.

why wouldn’t you? It’s instant cast, instant hit, on a fairly short cooldown. You can use both skills #2 and #3, they’re both instant and can be cast while in the middle of RTL. I believe they can even be cast while channeling #1.

Basically there is no reason not to use both skills #2 and #3 continuously, every time they are off cooldown if you’re in air attunement. Do you not like free extra damage?

Bsquared my man, thanks for the constructive criticism! I know I’m still really nooby

I didn’t think you were “nooby” at all, you kicked kittens from my perspective.

It’s far easier to watch a video and say “you missed a cooldown here” than it is to pull it off in the heat of the battle. No one plays perfectly all of the time and we could all use some improvement.

Also, the not dodge rolling through static field is something I see people do A LOT (I do it myself sometimes). Most people are unaware, but I believe static field is NOT an AOE stun, it only hits targets at the periphery. It effectively acts as a cage. If someone drops the skill on you and you’re in the center of the circle, you won’t get stunned (I noticed this when dropping it on stationary ranged PvE targets, I’d center the reticle and it wouldn’t hit them. I drop it so the edge hits them now, and it works). You only take the stun when crossing through the boundary, so you can dodge-roll out and avoid the stun altogether. This is actually why I’m not a fan of the “blasting staff” trait effecting it as it makes the cage larger and effectively easier to avoid (although the blasting staff trait as a whole is great, and I still take it when rolling staff).

Again, good work on the vid, I really enjoyed it.

So basically several of our traits are useless…

Yes, basically. This is why I feel that “One with Air” (the 10 pts trait) is completely useless. With 5 pts in Air you automatically get a 10% speed increase. I believe it takes 20seconds for One with Air to get up to 15% speed (5% for 0s through 9s, 10% for 10s through 19s, then 15%), so it does nothing for that time. During combat, how often do you stick with one attunement for more than 20 seconds?!?

If you’re using it for fast travel in PvE, just drop on a staff and use one of several ways to build infinite 33% swiftness. One with Air does essentially nothing.

Also, Windborne Dagger, the 20pt arcana trait that is supposed to give 15% faster movement with a dagger MH, doesn’t work at all (it’s bugged). And if it did work, it would make the 5 pt Air trait redundant to the point of repeating itself. So yah…

Fishbait.6723:

There`s a distance bar? Huh, never knew.

The little red bar under each skill is the distance bar. If the red bar is shown, you’re out of range. If the bar is gone, you’re in range.

For example, in the screenshot posted, your 1, 2, and 3 skills are out of range (the red bar is showing) but skills #4 and #5 are within range.

So PLEASE…. ArenaNet. Fix those bugged spells because Elementalist is so kitten frustrating if you’re playing with broken spells!

I have to agree with this. Just fixing bugged spells and making them work as the tooltip states would probably be all the buff the Ele would ever need as far as PvP is concerned.

Give mist form in the downed state a shorter cooldown before it can be used the first time so we can escape an immediate stomp like most other classes (oh, and make it so it doesn’t hurt you! When you use it, when you return to the downed state you have less health, almost as if you’ve been downed a 2nd time), and we’d be more than good to go…

slightly less useless

I’m not sure how anyone can feel this way about the whip now in it’s current form. The thing can hit multiple targets now and doesn’t miss all the time (like before), it’s probably the best auto-attack in the D/D arsenal.

/boggle

Mytheos.7205:

Guardians = Same HP, More Armor, WAY more mitigation, WAY more survival mechanics.

True, but we’re more mobile and do better damage.

I agree, killing a guardian is tough, it’s their class archetype. I basically can’t kill them when they’re tank specced, but they can’t kill me either.

We need CDs reduced significantly.

This is a pretty big thing imo. That, along with simply fixing many of our bugged skills to work as intended, would pretty much be all the buff the Ele really needs.

As D/D in PvP, I see no reason why fire grab needs a 45 second cooldown, 35 seconds would help put out a lot more damage in our rotations without straight buffing damage to all skills (as some here suggest and I disagree with). Making earthquake 35 instead of 45 would provide a lot more control. Frost Aura and Cleansing Wave don’t need 40 second cooldowns, the heal from CW is fairly meager and it only clears 1 condition, so 40 seconds seems like a lot. If Churning earth gets interrupted before blasting off, how about a 20 second cooldown instead of the usual 30?

Just shaving 5 or 10 seconds off some of our 4/5 skills would buff the class tremendously, and since they’re all 40+ seconds to begin with I would hardly consider this game-breaking. We don’t need a 10% straight up damage buff, that would be overkill. We just need to ability to use more of our plethora of skills more often…

3. Turn on “Fast Cast ground-targeting”.

as some have said, I don’t like doing this too much either. I prefer to see my target reticle, mostly to see if i’m trying to cast something out of range. In addition, simply double tapping the spell key will set it off where your cursor is. This is nearly as fast as “fast ground targeting” but lets the reticle flash real quick before the spell executes.

Stacking condition damage is pointless, 12 stacks of bleed is still just one condition and can be easily removed.

And giving up the extra crit damage isnt anywhere close to being worth it.

As an Elementalist if you plan on killing anyone with reasonable success you have to use burst damage, and stacking condition to make 55 damage bleeds turn into 75 damage bleeds isnt going to do as much for you vs turning a 2.5k hit into a 3.5k hit.

I kinda find the opposite, given that one doesn’t stack condition damage in excess. PvP-wise, I have found it nearly impossible to stack enough power and crit to burn someone down before they have a chance to react. And by stacking all the “burst” stats, you make yourself ridiculously squishy and an easy target.

That being said, I don’t really “stack” a ton of condition damage either (it’s a poor stat really, you only get a small percent for bleeding, a bit more for burning). But I DO stack vitality, toughness, and a bit of crit chance (mostly to set off my “on crit” sigil). Other classes only have so much condition removal and once that’s on cooldown bleeds/burns start adding up. They are far from worthless. As D/D in PvP, I find that putting up bleeds/burns combined with moderate/low burst while remaining ridiculously tanky and hard to hit myself (I run 3 cantrips) is pretty effective.

To each his own though, which proves that this class is rather versatile.

Eicherjw.3926:

mindlessly easy yet we get LW to hit 3 targets now!!!!

Yeah, I was a bit disappointed to see some of our easier bug fixes not get any attention, but I’m optimistic they will come.

That being said, don’t take away my AOE lightning whip. I love that thing (and making it small aoe is far easier than fixing RTL, which is why it got done quickly).

It is, however the guardian has the ability to mitigate the damage, and its not very diferent from having 30k hp…
But this is normal because its a class SUPPORT, not the ele…

But Ele’s also have a plethora of ways to mitigate damage (toughness buff on attunement, arcane shield, armor of earth, auras, offhand-focus, etc.) and have a lot of CC and mobility skills as well. CC (e.g., chill, blind, etc.) in essence mitigates damage by making you a harder target. The same can be said for mobility skills (windborne speed, swiftness on attunement, RTL as an escape, burning speed, etc.).

Also, I haven’t seen Arenanet state that the Ele isn’t a support class?!? Considering how much we bring to the table through groups buffs, condition clears, combo fields, and healing, it’s fair to say Anet intended the class to accomplish quite a bit of group support.

Basically, this:

elementalists contrary to popular belief are not the wizards of this game

Have they agreed this is a bug?

I have not seen it stated explicitly, but there is no reason to think they do not consider it to be a bug (or at the very least, an underperforming skill).

I don’t think it would be hard at all. Essentially they would only have to match the pathing of Teleport. Basically if we can see it we can go there, with some variations. That would give us two very similar skills, except that Teleport takes up a very valuable skill slot.

But RTL and lightning flash work very differently.
Lightning flash just moves you to new coordinates (checking to make sure it’s not up a wall, through a wall, across a large ravine, etc.) This code is fairly simple, which is why this skill doesn’t bug out as bad as RTL. Yes, it still has problems, especially when changing elevation, but it’s far better than RTL.

RTL, on the other hand, tries to intercept your targets trajectory (from what I understand). If your target is running directly away from you, or directly towards you, determining the trajectory on impact (which is some time from when the skill starts, dependent upon the speed you move and the distance from target) is pretty easy, and the skill rarely bugs out. This is also why being closer to your target makes it bug less; if you’re 10 yards away and gonna hit in 0.1 seconds, the code essentially says “just go to target and explode.” This is why I suggest using RTL while in moderate to close range if possible, rather than at full range (because it bugs far less). On strafing or erratically moving targets, the trajectory prediction is pretty kitten poor, and the skill bugs out a lot. Making it teleport to your target (like LF) won’t fix this because it still has to make a prediction (and/or choose the targets coordinates at cast time, making it miss A LOT on any moving target).

The way I would try to fix it, if given the task, would be to loosen the pathing restrictions on the skill (to prevent hangups on rats, textures, small elevatoin changes, and things like that) and then make it move faster (it is lightning by the way). By making it move faster, it makes the trajectory calculation easier simply because the target has less time to move out of the way (the prediction doesn’t have to look so far into the “future.”), but it could still be dodged (making it teleport removes the targets ability to dodge it basically). This might make the skill nearly never miss, but I don’t see that as a huge problem given the fact that Ele’s aren’t exactly burning up the world out there…

{Note, I am by no means and expert here, just throwing in my 2 copper given this discussion. I may be wrong on some stuff, feel free to correctly me if you know more about this than I.}

For my money, absolutely. No question about it.

But expect a flood of “no, no endgame, DR sucks, wah wah!” posts from people with multiple 80’s and /age #‘s in the several 100’s….

Zaor.6085:

In any balanced game, the class with the lowest hp pool has the greater dmg output.

But hereeee is different, here we are a support O_o…

Gaurdian also has lowest base HP pool, and their damage isn’t awesome either. Perhaps raw damage isn’t everything?

I agree, RTL needs it’s pathing fixed, but I imagine this isn’t exactly the easiest bug to correct. Pathing in a game with as many obstacles, elevation changes, and potential hang-ups such as this is incredibly difficult (from my perspective, with modest coding experience).

I anticipate that this will be one of the last major bugs we get fixed for this very reason. Others (such as windborne dagger not giving a speed boost, cantrips mastery not effecting mist form, healing rain not lasting 9 seconds, armor of earth not breaking stuns, etc.) will hopefully get done far sooner as these seem like mindlessly easy fixes.

Great video Kevin. But according to many here Ele’s are crap in every aspect of the game, especially open world WvW when using D/D because they have to be in melee range, and they have no escape (apparently they haven’t thought of using RTL to get away you like).

Even better, not only do you take down a bunch of people and generally harass the kitten out of ‘em, but when carefully watching the vid I noticed many times when you didn’t even play flawlessly (e.g., you forgot to use cleansing wave occasionally when in water and you could have used a heal, you didn’t always put frost armor up, you missed with a lot of burning speeds, didn’t dodge-roll through static field a couple times even with 100% endurance, etc.). Note, i’m not saying I would have done any better, you were awesome, but my point is that you kicked kittens and there is still room for improvement.

But nah, listen to the haters on this forum, the Ele is crap. Again, great vid, thanks for posting.

CNTCRUSHER.7931:

It’s sad that I am more excited to login to the forums to see if they fixed this junk class than I am to play the game. I was super excited for this game but very disheartened now.

It’s sad that you feel the Ele is a “junk class” to begin with. Others, myself included, seem to be quite effective with the class (in PvP and PvE).

PvE is a little tougher, as our greatest benefit is group support, so solo’ing content can be frustrating at times, but PvP wise we’re good now and will be very good if/when more of our bugs get fixed (and I have no reason to doubt they will).

PvP-wise, try the splish-splash spec (0/0/10/30/30) with D/D, or even staff support, you might be pleasantly surprised. I don’t feel “squishy” at all with this spec and I kill plenty of folks pretty easily. Yes, I know, this class isn’t the single-highest damage nuker in the game like some of us thought it might be in our own personal fantasy, but with all that utility at our disposal we’d be OP if they also gave us the highest damage.

All other mouse failures have been due to unexpected flights across my room from a lack of anger managment.

This made me laugh. Can’t say I’ve done that, I’m pretty good about not rage quitting, but I’ve often thought about it

RakaNishoo.6071:

@Bsquared:

I look at it this way:
Class balance is not final but is very good. Designers that have over 10 years of experience in developing good combat systems tested it for 5 years.

If anything has to be proven, it is that elementalist ARE underpowered, not that they aren’t

I just removed the argument from ppl on this forum that are stating, other classes can deal more damage in shorter time, while their damage is not as complex to execute as an elementalist. I shown a simple way to deal tons of damage with elem. Period.

That’s fine, I happen to agree with you that Ele is not underpowered. I think the class is pretty fine (bugs notwithstanding, but none of them at this point are gamebreaking).

But melting down Svanir pretty quickly doesn’t really prove this point and others will troll you hard for your original post. Not saying I necessarily agree with them, just be prepared for it

Eddard.2930:

Thanks guys, this is very helpful. I’ll be limbering up my pinkie! And getting a gaming mouse.

Eddard, if you go buy a gaming mouse, I suggest the Logitech G700 for three reasons.
1.) It’s on sale for $59.99 at Best Buy (hopefully it still is) so it’s not overly expensive.
2.) Logitech is a great brand for keyboards/mice, you’re not buying crap
3.) The button layout is PERFECT for the Ele. There are 4 buttons on the side (for your thumb), one for each attunement. 3 buttons on top (one for each utility skill), and click the mousewheel for healing. I then bind my elite to the keyboard (‘R’ specifically).

Going with a Razor Naga, or something like that is going to cost you more, and you’ll likely find that having 12 buttons on the side for your thumb is supreme overkill for this game (they’re harder to hit ‘cause they’re smaller, there are 12 of them). This is, of course, unless you play other games and want a 20 button mouse (to each his own…).

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/mice-keyboard-combos/wireless-gaming-mouse-g700

Grats Eicherjw, you are a glass cannon who managed a big crit on a very debuffed target, but guess what? Other classes have done a lot more than that, and they can do it way more often than Fire Grab which has a 45 sec cooldown by default.

Hell, Arcane Shield has a 75 second cooldown by default, and that accounts for a big damage item and a couple of adsorbed hits (it must have taken 3 if it set off the wave).

This post, while well-intentioned, does nothing to prove that Ele’s are not underpowered, although I personally believe the class to be fine…

How did you hit him twice with your arcane wave?

Shhh…
I think that’s a current bug where Arcane Wave can hit more than once (one of the few that benefits us). I haven’t tested it myself, but I’ve heard others mention it as well. I’m sure it’ll get fixed eventually, but in the meantime…
Shhh… Rule #1 is you do not talk about “good” bugs

Edited to add: I stand corrected, Raka claims that the 2nd “wave” was arcane shield going off. This is more likely.

The game is 1 month old, but there was 6 months of beta testing and these bugs were reported by the time and still not fixed…

Fair enough, which is why i’m unhappy that more bugs weren’t fixed. There is no real reason why things like windborne dagger, or cantrips mastery not affecting mist form, shouldn’t have already been fixed. These are theoretically easy coding fixes. Others, like lightning whip (which is why they made it AOE) and RTL are much harder to fix and may require more time.

That being said, those in this thread complaining the class is “broken” and behaving like the class is just pure trash that can’t kill anything are completely overreacting and need to, quite honestly, “L2P”. Yeah, I said it! (and I loathe doing so, as I have flamed others for saying this dreaded turn-of-phrase)

Bug fixes will come, perhaps some buff/balancing will come as well, but it’s not as if the class is unplayable in it’s current state.

also in earth attunement it casts the ability “Shockwave” instead of the ability on the tooltip “Churning Earth” .

I’ve been informed that the combat log says “Shockwave” when it’s used, but I think it’s working as intended. The animation looks like a mini-churning earth, it hits AOE, and it inflicts some direct damage and ONE bleed stack (real churning earth stacks 8 ).

I think this is intended as the ability to cast a full-power churning earth every 10 seconds by dodge rolling would be vastly overpowered. They had to nerf both the direct damage and bleed damage on evasive arcana else I’d just run S/D, sit in earth nonstop, keep rock barrier up, and dodge roll every 10s to melt faces…

Looks like Lightning Surge became another waste of space just like Drake’s Breath.

I’ll admit, Lightning Surge without infinite range (which HAD to be fixed) is a little underwhelming, I wouldn’t mind it being buffed to shorter/instant cast.

That being said, how can you say Drake’s Breath is worthless?!? You can hit a whole pack of people with it and inflict burning on ALL of them. Sure, it’s not the best skill in our arsenal, but it’s ridiculously far from “useless.”