Guild Wars 2

Quick question for all the +condition dmg Ele builds out there.

When you down someone in PvP that has a lot of bleed and/or burn stacks on them, do the stacks drop off as they go into the downed state, or do they persist and continue to damage the target?

I ask because I’m looking at using a +condition build in PvP and was curious if it’s worthwhile to stack a large amount of bleeding on a target that is almost down. Why get 20 stacks of bleed on a target if they’re just going to fall off, right

{As an aside, I know I could go watch Ele PvP videos on youtube and pay attention to conditions when a target goes down, or test it myself, but I’m lazy and too many of the vids out there are grainy and hard to see what’s going on}

Thanks for your time

Guys… come on, I’m pretty sure the OP is being sarcastic.

I’d be more inclined to believe he’s a troll, and a bad one at that.

If his intent was sarcasm, it would have been far more effective to post a video of an Ele swapping attunements, using all the tools at his/her disposal, effectively dodging attacks, and generally playing well while still being roflstomped by a heartseeker spamming Thief (“#2, #2, #2 like a boss.”).

Dude, it’s been 3 and a half weeks. Seriously, get real!

Even monthly payment MMO’s (e.g., WoW) don’t update content every 3 weeks. Hell, I spent several YEARS playing wow in only 3 battlegrounds (WSG, AB, and AV), and that’s AFTER they took a couple months after release to even ADD battlegrounds in the first place!

Seriously, LOL, get real man….

Quick distinction here…

Skill points cannot be returned once spent. These are the points you get when you level up and complete skill challenges around the map. Don’t worry however if you’ve purchased a skill you do not like as you will get more skill points throughout the game than you can spend on the skills, so you will eventually be able to buy them all.

If it’s “trait” points you’re referring to, those can be refunded and reapplied at your class trainer (the same place you bought the skill book) for a couple silver/copper.

Also, when in doubt, if you need more info check out the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skill_point). You can also wiki from in game (type “/wiki skill point” in the chat box for example, and your game will be minimized, a browser opened, and you will be directed to the wiki.

Enjoy the game

Wheeping Song.6423:

This guy cant be seriouse…..I would be so embarressed if i posted a video like this on the internet.

I know right? If I had fraps’d that fight, i’d be studying it in my basement like a text book to learn how I managed to play so poorly and how I might improve my game.

Not posting it on the intertubes and gloating about how awesome I was…

WTF?!?

Normally I somewhat defend folks saying “Ele is fine, L2P,” (because the class isn’t “the sky is falling” bad) but you sir, have no room to talk here.

Man, those were some nice 1.5k to 1.7k auto-attack crits you were pumpin’ out as you stay in Air attunement ONLY for the entire first minute of the video. At around 1:01 you switch to water to get a small heal off (wow, you healed yourself back to almost 1/3rd life, that’s HUGE!!!) and then proceeded to pump out MASSIVE DAMAGING ATTACKS of around 500 before you died around 1:30.

You sir, are a terrible elementalist and a detriment to your team in that video. Grats on getting carried. If you intent was to prove how overpowered Ele’s are, you failed, and failed miserably.

Shaileya.7063:

254 hours. I consider myself midrange between casual and hardcore.

No, that’s hard-the-kitten-core, no matter how you slice it. Putting in 10 hours per day is by no means “casual.”

Malas.9425:

Near 350 hours, Yes I have issues.

Seriously?!? That’s literally 13.5 hours PER DAY since 3-day headstart launch (8/25).

How, or more importantly, WHY would you do that to yourself? This game is great, I admit, but doing ANYTHING for almost 14 hours per day (yes, even kittening) would get old…

dchsknight.3042:

You should go with him! You might enjoy it more. Threads like this have no place in our forums. So please don’t post trash like this insulting our game.

Why are you pushing him away? He says he enjoys this game and wishes his friends would return. Lets grow our community, not kick them to the curb for having the audacity to have friends who play other MMO’s and not this one.

There is your problem.
PuGs are never good.

I personally haven’t played WoW in years, literally. Stopped prior to WotLK when level cap was 70. I basically stopped because I hated throwing away $15/month to re-level (after every $60 expansion) and re-gear (continuous and non-stop).

The game was awesome in Vanilla (and even TBC days), Tarren Mill vs. Southshore was so much fun and cut my teeth on MMO’s, it’s a big reason I love the genre. But the nonstop gear treadmill gets old after awhile. I hated having the feeling of wasted time/money simply because I went on vacation for two weeks and didn’t play, or that I HAD to play to keep up with arena seasons, etc., ad infinitum.

Good for your buddy, tell him to enjoy his Panda’s.

As for me, I’m sticking with this game. I far prefer it, and love that I don’t have to throw $15/month at it to sit and wait on the dungeon finder….

@Zen, I happen to agree that Ele is a very fun class to play although it can be frustrating at times. D/D spec in PvP is a kitten ton of fun, so long as your expectations aren’t uber-pwnage. I watched much of your video, and yeah, the class plays decently (although I did laugh when you fought the guardian and basically couldn’t hurt him, AT ALL, like literally).

But you’re gonna get hardcore trolled in this thread (sorry about that, it’s already beginning), and you set yourself up for it by proclaiming how awesome the class is when the fact of the matter is that it’s middle-of-the-road at best.

PvE wise, the Elemental is a pretty good skill. PvP wise, its very lackluster. The Ice Elemental is usually the only one worthwhile, and it can be dropped pronto if they enemy so desires.

Personally, I wish I could replace the elite skill with an extra utility skill slot, I’d rather take one of them…

Also cantrip mastery doesn’t work for mistform, its bugged for some reason and still goes on full cd :/

well that blows. Although this HAS to be a bug and will get fixed eventually, hopefully soon.

Thanks for the feedback otherwise, 30 pts in water is intriguing for condition clears on regen, which trigger on all cantrips and on attuning to water. That gives a lot of clear/regen procs, possibly too many to pass up.

Although I love evasive arcana, not necessarily because of the blast finishers but moreso due to the free extra dmg on all your dodge rolls. Churning Earth —> dodge roll (w/ churning earth) is a LOT of bleeding

In PvE it almost never missed on regular mobs unless you use it over rough terrain (i.e., it’s a pretty awesome skill in PvE).

In PvP however, it almost never hits from long range. I tend to use it from low to intermediate range, and mostly for the quick re-engage, AOE aspects, and to set up an updraft combo. The skill could be greatly improved simply by fixing it’s functionality (although I doubt this is an “easy” fix from Arenanet’s standpoint).

Aerian.2751:

I asked the question about speed stuff stacking and also did a little testing myself and as far as I know, only the fastest speed buff matters. If you take Windborne Dagger, then the 5 points in Air is useless because you still only go 115% speed. If you take the air trait that gives you up to 25% speed after spending time in air, then you just get 125% and nothing more. Swiftness does 33% but that doesn’t stack with the 125% so your total speed with swiftness is still just 133%.

Good to know, so I’ll skip the 5 pts in air and probably dump them into earth for added toughness, condition dmg, and geomancer’s freedom or serrated stones (since the goal is to bleed stack). Serrated stones might be preferable since I have so many condition cleansers, the reduced CC time won’t be as useful (but 20% extra bleed duration is a lot of extra dmg potentially).

SilverUniverse.7103:

for personal preference i would go with sceptre main hand, higher bleed stacked from the first skill with added range. you are also capable of doing everything you mentioned as you didn’t specifically state a skill you would use on main hand

don’t use tornado. don’t. you’re a slow moving, easy to hit from range target, and you won’t hit for much damage since you didn’t spec towards direct damage. you can also be turned into a moa during the transformation. get the elemental instead

Good point on Sceptre, i’ll have to consider it, however I really really like Burning speed w/ the dagger mainhand, and although the bleed is better w/ the sceptre (i.e., stone shards) I find it harder to get a lot of stone shards auto-attacks off and sorta prefer ring of earth/impale to get two quick bleeds up while they’re knocked down. Also, windborne dagger only works with the mainhand, and I like the 15% passive speed buff for everyday kiting. Rock barrier is nice however, so i’ll consider it.

Regarding the tornado, yeah, it’s pretty bad, but I find my elementals just get dropped fast too and really don’t contribute much to the fight. Ele really doesn’t have a worthwhile Elite skill imo, it’s a shame.

Hello all,

I’ve been musing a new build in my head and would like to get the communities thoughts on this build, i.e., whether more experienced Ele’s than I think it would work, not work, and if so, why. I’m focusing primarily on sPvP here and the occasional WvW roaming (we all know that staff is good with AOE’s for keep siege/defense).

Anyway, the build is an anti-CC, high mobility, dual dagger build with 3 cantrip abilities.

Trait point allocations are as follows:
1.) 30 pts into arcane with Elemental Attunement (V), Windborne Dagger (IX, for 15% speed increase), and Evasive Arcana (XI, for extra damage and blast finishers).
2.) 20 pts into Water for added vitality and Cleansing Wave (V) and Cantrips Mastery (IX, 20% cooldown reduction on cantrips).
3.) 15 to 20 pts in Earth for toughness and condition dmg, Earth’s Embrace (III, earth armor at 50% health), and if choosing 20 pts in Earth, then Geomancers Freedom (IX, 33% reduction on CC duration).
4.) If I choose to put only 15 in earth, the last 5 pts would be into Air for 10% speed increase provided that this 10% speed increase stacks with the 15% speed increase from Windborne Dagger (can someone answer if these stack?) for an effective 125% run speed in air.

Skills:
1.) Glyph of Elemental Harmony for healing, Mist form (60s reduced cooldown), Cleansing Fire (40s reduced cooldown), Lightning Flash (36s reduced cooldown), and Tornado as my elite (mostly for the blowout and 15s of stability)

Perks of the build (imo):

1.) In this build you have a multitude of escape abilities and condition removal (e.g., cleansing fire, cleansing wave when attuning to water, cleansing wave when IN water, mist form to remove cripples/chills/etc., lightning flash to get away, possibly geomancer’s freedom, etc., etc.). I feel like this build would be VERY hard to lockdown and subsequently bursted on.
2.) I like using lightning flash offensively with churning earth. One can start churning earth cast, teleport to the enemy at the last second preventing them from dodging it, knock them down with earthquake (use Ring of Earth and Impale to stack more bleeds), then dodge roll when they get up to set off a 2nd churning earth from Evasive Arcana. Switch to Air attunement, ride the lightning —> updraft, then move on to the typical fire combo (e.g., burning speed, ring of fire, Fire grab, etc.). Dodge roll again to set off flame burst, hit cleansing fire to add more burn and clear any conditions, then pop mist form and get the hell outta there. This leaves the enemy with a TON of bleed stacks and a long burning duration as you float away scot-free in a vapory-misty-miasma
3.) If you find yourself surrounded, pop Tornado to blowout the enemies and gain stability (so you can’t be CC’d again) and then get the hell outta there!
4.) I know this build suffers from poor direct damage, but the general idea is condition stacking coupled with being very hard to hit yourself. Basically being a PITA.

Anywho, that’s the gist of the build. Feel free to call me an idiot or otherwise tell me why this build is worthless. I hadn’t seen anyone else propose such a build, so I felt the need to share and gather opinions.

TL:DR version: Come on people, read my post. We’re all adults here (well most of us are, anyway), one should be able to read 500 some-odd words without our eyes glazing over…

Flawed post based on a flawed premise using flawed logic.

1/10 imo, try harder…

I 100% agree with you on how awesome the skill is once its casted, especially paired with evasive arcana, but the cast time/channeling with lead you to take a lot of damage to the point it becomes a wash (for yourself, not so much your team). You should be allowed to cast it while on the move.

It would be nice to cast it on the move, however I haven’t really limited by it’s 2s-ish or so cast time. When using a staff in WvW, i rarely find myself in the front of the fray anyway (again, that’s just suicide), and HR is a ground-target 1,200 range skill. So I’ll position myself in the back, take 2 seconds to drop it near the front of my team, then run into it using every blast finisher i can come up with to unleash waves of healing on the group. It’s not a perfect self-heal skill when used in this manner, I know, but it gets the job done.

For self-healing, I find simply being in water and using my glyph of elemental harmony is usually fine. If you’re really desperate and on the move, drop a geyser ahead of you while running and blast arcane wave when you pass through it. You’ll get a tick or two from geyser and the healing wave your blast sets off.

Volatility.6729:

- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused

Most of what you said is fairly true (I don’t agree 100%, but generally yah). However, I think people underestimate healing rain. That skill is AWESOME!!

Yes, the amount of healing it provides alone isn’t great, although 2000 healing in the form of regen is pretty good. Also, and I could be mistaken here, but since it’s a 4 s regen buff on a 9s field, you can get the regen to happen twice in a single cast (raising the default healing amount to over 4k.) if you stand in it for the full duration. This isn’t that hard to do even when kiting cause the field is HUGE.

{Note, as an aside, if you’re using a staff in PvP, it better be WvWvW anyway, staff in sPvP is just suicide.}

Also, HR provides 3 conditions removals and most importantly, a massive 9s water field. In dungeons, for example, if the entire group knows to set off blast finishers (even DPS oriented ones) when they see the rain cloud, it’ll set off AOE healing waves. 2 or 3 blast finishers and the entire group can be healed to full in seconds. It’s very powerful. Hell, sometimes i’ll run inside the rain cloud and use arcane wave near some teammates even if I’m not striking a SINGLE mob, the healing waves unleashed are just too powerful to pass up.

It’s somewhat lacking, but don’t underestimate the auto-attack in air. That chain-lightning bounces far between enemies and can be used to effectively AOE a couple of MOB’s who aren’t packed tight enough to use regular AOE on (e.g., lava front, eruption, ice spike, etc.)

Air provides a lot of utility however w/ speed boosts, impairment breaker, stun field, and blind (yes, skill #2 is a fairly long cast time, but you can move while doing so, so it doesn’t break the skill). Air is great for kiting after you’ve put up a couple bleeds/burns.

However, sometimes (95% of the time) we just don’t care which element to attune to, we just want ANY element because of CD’s

I have never found that to be the case. I always think about which element I’m switching to and why I’m switching prior to doing so.

If you have a life, like me, you probably often check on your keyboard which F1-F4 are you choosing, because you don’t know 100% for certain on which button is your finger

I won’t spend the $60 or more to buy a fancy gaming mouse, I simply see no need for it. I just rebound my attunements to Shift+1 through Shift+4 and rebound all my 6 through 0 skills (utility through elite) to “R” (for heal), shift+R, “A” and “D” (I unmapped “A” and “D” from turning cause only bad players keyboard turn).

Basically my fingers never stray to far from 1-5 and the movement keys.

I think the real solution that may be too late to change is the three way server system. The reason for this system was so that if one server was too powerful the other two servers could essentially “team up” and bring down the big guy…ahh, that is not happening Anet, and you know why? Because no cross server communication was given to us, so the entire three way server system is pointless.

I could be way off base here, but I had a kinda cool idea of how to help rectify this. When one server (say Red) gained control of say 75% of the map, an icon would pop up for the two servers getting crushed (e.g., Green and Blue) asking to “forge alliance with Server X.”

If 2/3rds of the members from each server opted to do so (through a popup prompt) it would execute that alliance providing each of the weaker servers a damage buff to the Red one, and a reduction in both direct and AOE damage (on a sliding scale relative to the domination of the Red server) to their allied server. The dmg reduction would actually allow members of the two servers to hunt together without fear of nuking one another accidentally through AOE and whatnot.

The alliance would automatically break (with say a 3-5 minute pop-up warning for the allied groups to disperse) when the Red server control is reduced back to 50% of the map. Basically it turns a 3 server match into a 2 server match (voted on by the lesser servers) whenever one of the 3 servers gains an unnatural amount of control over the map.

Obviously the #‘s could be tweaked, and I haven’t thought about long-term consequences of this type of gameplay, but the I thought it a cool idea initially. Let me know if I’m an idiot

Telemachos.2370:

Eternal Battlegrounds – as a sole entity, I feel should be allowed to character level 60 and above. Server battlegrounds should remain as is.

No. Just no. No explanation needed.

EnochDagor.6185:

For meteor shower, have a ranger friend find the guy with his arm in the air standing perfectly still…. a few shots should do it.

QFT, and I’ll admit, I lol’d a little….

Morthis.3968:

The solution is to place arrow carts on the back end of the wall, not the front. With some camera turning, you can still easily shoot where you want with the cart, but you’re far less susceptible to AoE’s.

Wow, it took like 10 posts for someone to get to the root of OP’s problem.

Learn 2 place siege equipment properly. Ele’s can’t get their meteor showers and/or glyph of storms that far up the wall, so if you put your arrow cart on the lip of the wall, it’s gonna get nuked.

Treble.9378:

Where as with ele, it’s more like.. Ok, you used this element, now you can swap to this next one, which has all the same survival/utility/raw dmg type stuff as the last element, but with different gimmicks to it.
Regardless tho, you can get by with any of those elements, and don’t NEED to be on another one to 100% perform.

Swapping between a melee/ranged wep as a War does not feel anywhere near as smooth as ele swapping for an elementalist. :/

Also, Elementalist basically gets 20 skills with smooth swapping due to them all being viable for 99% of situations, vs a melee char switching to a ranged wep to catch up to someone or hit a fleeing mob that then turns around, and stuff of that nature.

Lemme take a stab in the dark here. You really haven’t played an Elementalist, have you? Virtually 100% of what you just said here is 100% incorrect…

And not sure what you mean by 100% perform. Perform what? DPS? This game is not about “look at the damage meter and max dps”. If you try that in sPVP you will fail.

Hell, as an Ele, if you try “look at the damage meter” in PVE you will fail, and fail hard.

CoolNitro.6490:

I honestly don’t see the squishy factor everyone is talking about in PvE

I don’t see it either, but that’s because MOBS are stupid, don’t dodge your CC, and walk right through your fields generally.

PvP however, now that’s a whole ’nother story…

Trenith.1832:

in what universe would I want to have to walk up to the Warrior to do my damage?

I need this explained to me.

In a universe where you can conjure a lightning whip Seriously, that thing is freaking awesome, I want one IRL!

Rhoto.8791:

and adjusted some of the CDs on dagger offhand skills.

This I agree with as well. Generally speaking, the cooldowns on our #4 and #5 skills (regardless of the weapon of choice) are very long, yet these are our most powerful spells. I’m not asking for earthquake, for example, to have a 15 second cooldown (it’s currently 45 seconds), but 35 or 40 seconds wouldn’t be game-breaking either and would go a long way towards making the class play better.

Rhoto.8791:

Lets assume that all of our skills actually worked as intended, Do you feel we are balanced?

My opinion from a d/d stand point: I think that we could use a boost to dmg. I see other classes that do burst dmg builds dish out FAR more dmg than we do. Our survivability even as support build is pretty lacking too. But I can get away from any fight extremely easily, which doesn’t do much for me unless there is an unoccupied node to take.

What do you all think?

I think the class is slightly underpowered with respect to some of the others and because of this I expect to see buffs from Anet coming in the future once they’ve had the opportunity to gather enough metrics to make informed decisions. No, I do not think the class is horribly broken as some of the threads on this message board would have you think.

I think we can expect to see slight buffs to our damage, but not too large as the class has too much utility to make us the the undisputed #1 damage dealers (as many here feel we should be). In addition, I think modest bumps to our passive defenses and/or crowd control abilities would help by keeping us alive longer and able to pump out more damage (with or without direct damage buffs).

All-in-all however, I love the class and will not change, buffs or not…

Strang.8170:

There´s nothing wrong with utility though.
Not dealing maximum amount of damage at all times and instead focusing on helping team or just buying time for yourself are good things to do too.

Yay, smart Ele! Sometimes against a tough mob (a veteran that you’re solo’ing, for example) it’s far preferable to keep slow, constant dmg up and kite better (w/ the swiftness and knockbacks of air, and healing/chilling of water) than it is to play ultimate glass cannon and die when you run out of endurance because you can’t kite properly in fire.

For example, one can switch to earth, gets a couple bleed stacks up, switch to fire, get a burn in, then move to air and /laugh as you run in circles around the mob as it’s health depletes. Then again, if you’re DPS is high enough that you can just burn the Vet mob down in fire before it reaches you, more power to you, although I have yet to see an Ele be able to sustain that kind of dmg threshold…

Yukishiro.8792:

No, no they arn’t. Water and air are vastly, vastly inferior to fire and earth no matter how you spec. If you sit in either for more than 3-5 seconds you’re doing something wrong 95% of the time.

that’s only if you consider the healing/chilling of water and swiftness/CC of air as “inferior.” It’s well known that fire/earth are the best dmg attunments (although air can pump out good dmg too), whereas water/air are control attunements.

There is nothing wrong with that, and that doesn’t mean you should never switch to water/air when playing simply because their damage isn’t uber (this is especially true in a group setting).

Allcoast.1758:

As an elementalist, there are so many broken spells and such that they should of fixed that before fixing the changes to the profession that they did. Absolutely absurd.

Um, to me it looks like they made some changes to ALL the professions, basically.

snaplemouton.1294:

Because all the traits help only 1 attunement. So it’s worthless to switch to another attunement since you’ll get more damage staying in one.

Because damage is the only benefit that a Ele can bring to a group apparently. Nope, we have no CC, boons, or condition clears to add. Might stacking the group, regen stacking the group, swiftness stacking the group, and toughness stacking the group simply by switching elements when specced properly brings no benefit to group play…

Better just stay in fire if you have 30 points in fire since you get +20% damage from 10% trait and 2x 5% on burning. No real reason to go to earth since you will just reduce your damage by doing so.

unless you’ve specced 10 pts into arcane and can get your entire group a 33% dmg reduction when switching right before a big damage item. And it’s not like Earth has any other useful skills, like massive bleeds, ranged shields, cripples, and immobilizations. Oh wait…

Water without water traits doesn’t help your team. It slows the fight as you will be dealing no damage. The heal without +healing is barely noticeable.

Unless of course you have to the foresight to notify your group that (w/ a staff at least) both your 3 and 5 skills (geyser and healing rain, respectively) classify as water fields and can be used with THEIR blast and leap finishers to provide massive AOE healing that fills the entire group to full…

Seriously, it’s thought-processes like this that lead people to think the Ele is massively underpowered when we’re clearly not (although I will admit we may not be up to par in certain aspects of other classes. I’m not trying to turn this into a UP/OP argument).

Not sure why people think staff is underpowered in solo PvE? I use it sometimes (switching between it and D/D to keep things interesting) and it absolutely kittens.

Pull w/ Eruption/Shockwave (that’s two bleeds) and immediately place the wall (skill #4) in front of them so they get crippled the instant they come out of immobilize? Yes, thank you very much, I like my mob crippled, damaged, and bleeding as it hobbles towards me.

Switch to fire, drop a lava front in their path, blast a fireball and burn (skill #3). Yes, I like my mobs, crippled, bleeding, and burning, thank you very much. You can almost stop right there, the mob will die from the DOT’s. But if you’re so inclined, go ahead and keep blasting fireball until they’re almost on top of you, then use burning retreat (free dodge) to back up, they’ll walk right through it!

Switch to air, and gust them backwards making them walk through your fireline TWICE before they even get a chance to take their first attack. By the time they reach you (if they ever do, cause of skill #4 in air), you can blind them (skill #2) so they miss! They should be dead, twice over by now, but if not, switch to water for the chill field, or back to earth, your skills should be almost off cooldown by now. Seriously, w/ a staff, you can kill just about any mob without being touched even once.

Yes it’s more fun to burst/combo them with D/D, but I feel practically invincible with a staff in my hand in PvE. Not sure about everyone else…

I’m not sure the skilled is bugged so much as the tooltip is confusing.

And yes, the skill is difficult to pull off properly in PvP due to the long cast time, but it can be used if timed correctly (e.g., knockdown the target with earthquake and immediately start charging, have a buddy chain CC then after they hop up from earthquake giving you time to get it off).

Also, and i’m not 100% sure here (i’ll have to confirm later), but I believe you can start the cast, then pop mistform to become invincible while channeling the cast (you can teleport while casting too). Can anyone confirm/deny this for me?

Bluebird.1890:

Fix: Invest in an Invisible Bag. Put that bag at the LAST bag slot, and put anything you want to keep in that bag. When you double click the weapon, your other weapon will replace the one currently slotted.

Doesn’t work. For example, I have dual-daggers equipped, open my inventory, equip a staff. Now one of the daggers is in the lower bag (where my staff was) and the other is somewhere randomly in my top pack scattered amongst the vendor junk and collectibles.

Anndy.5632:

i’d prefer if they just let us swap, very annoying to have to back off and wait for aggro to go away

Too powerful. Ele’s should NOT be able to weapon swap while in combat.

But I wholeheartedly support an out-of-combat swap feature one a moderate cooldown (say like 2-3 minutes or so).

Nenthil.4312:

About that one, yeah it was pain in the… well, you know where:P.

In the kitten, right?

Rzep.4592:

3)But there are no dedicated healers. So you will not be able to run around for too long. I most defenatelly want environment obstacles. Otherwise it would get borring pretty quickly.

Fair enough, that’s a good point. In my Wow days nothing screamed “fun times” like chasing that resto druid w/ his HOT’s around pillars all day

But you’re right, w/o dedicated healers (and specifically w/ weapon swapping, so that bow rangers are defeated purely by a pillar), some obstacles might be acceptable.

Amra.6028:

Make a training are, put dummies in there that give you an exact breakdown and you may optimize. No one gets hurt.

^this. I suggest this in my first post as well.

A meter on the training dummies in the mists to try out specs/weapon setups, blast rotations, etc., is a fine idea. I fully support it.

Turning every dungeon recap into “WoW, I’m leetsauce, I did over 9,000 thousand dmg per second in that dungeon even though we wiped 42 times” is not a good idea.

Rzep.4592:

That is why any decent dps meter tracks all those things. As for antisocial, well, internet is antisocial anyway.
Anti-casual is preciselly the reason why it is not implemented I think. Right now no way to check who has subpar gear, who autoattacks all the time and fails with dodges regularly. Why is that? So that no feelings get hurt, everyone is a “winnar” and is “speciul” snowflake.

A decent DPS meter will track when I blind a mob right before their high-dmg attack so that my buddy doesn’t get face-smacked?
A decent DPS meter will track when I use my blast-finisher in the fire-field I just laid down kittening my own DPS for a few seconds but buffing the rest of the groups?
A decent DPS meter will track when I use burning retreat in front of my ranger buddy to not only avoid dmg myself but buff his dps in the process?
A decent DPS meter will track when I switch to earth attunement providing a toughness boon to the group right before incoming damage?

As someone else said, DPS meters are designed for WoW raiding back when bosses had enrage timers and there was a time-element to downing the boss, I know cause I ran one back in the day and found it obnoxious. All-in-all, a measure of a good player is how easily his or her groups clears the dungeon by whatever means necessary, not by how much X dmg per Y time he/she can pump out.

Rzep.4592:

Dps meter is anti-casual so I’d not hold my breath. Sure would be nice.

It’s not that the meter is “anti-casual,” it’s anti-skill and anti-social. DPS meters cause folks to tunnel vision on their “leet DPS #’s” rather than focusing on clearing the dungeon.

I can see it now, a group leaving behind a well-specced skilled elementalist that AOE heals the group, drops AOE boons on them, crowd-controls, and swiftly clears conditions from everyone (all while putting up pretty good DPS) for that “L33T” 30 fire specced one that never switches attunements simply because he/she fills the DPS meter by 15% more…

{As an aside, I would love the addition on an in-game DPS meter on the combat dummies in the mists so that one can test/practice PvP burst rotations and see which one drops targets faster. Of course things never go as planned when facing a real target, but it still would be nice to know.}

Yes, let’s add the game-mode that has single handily caused more “nerf this class, buff my class” whining than any other in MMO-gaming history….

That being said, I would support 5v5 gladiator style deathmatch with three conditions.
1.) No gear grind attached (nothing says “skill” like outgearing your opponent, amirite?!?)
2.) only 5v5, 2v2 results in far too many buff/nerf cries when folks run into their class “counter”
3.) open Colosseum style maps without pillars, bridges, and other large obstacles (again, nothing says “skill” like a 30 minute LOS cheese fest…)

EVERY elementalist should have 10 pts in arcane at least (my personal opinion, but it’s hard to argue with). Using elemental attunement, you get a free group AOE boon EVERY time you change attunement (might for fire, regen for water, swiftness for air, and toughness for earth).

It’s just tookittengood to pass up for a measly 10 points…

Rudedawg.1760:

Apparently my guy looks like Jugganaut :S

“I’m the Juggernaut Kitten…”

I find they survive in PvE just fine provided you don’t pull an army of mobs and kite/dodge well.

For your given weapon set, be sure to learn all of your stuns/chills/cripples for each attunement, (for example, w/ staff there is a free dodge in fire, a chill in water, a knockback and stun in Air, and a cripple and immobilize in Earth). Between all of them, you can kite almost indefinitely without getting touched (and if you do, go water and heal). Multiple mobs can cause some difficulty however, but I think that’s intended.

Also, I think every elementalist should get 10 trait pts in Arcane for elemental attunement. It’s a free AOE boon for your group every time you switch elements, which if you’re playing correctly, is very often. I also (personal preference) drop at least 5 pts in water so that I passively regenerate health when attuned to it.

According to the Wiki, Anet removed capes from the release because of clipping issues, and currently the only back accessories do not show (they’re under your armor). Anet is apparently working on the cape clipping issue and will hopefully add them soon.

Sneakier.9460:

That is correct, each bleed deals that DPS, if you manage to apply 25 stacks of bleed, it will be 25x that DPS.

For how long?
That depends on each bleed duration you applyed

Sweet, it works as I had originally thought.

Thanks for all the clarifications Sneakier, good stuff!