Guild Wars 2

Would you please stop comparing it to mounted combat in LotRo and start comparing it to mounted combat in GW1?

In fact, GW2 already has what OP asks for in the form of transformations (Armors in Tarir, Oakhearts in the Sylvari starter area, etc). The only thing missing is to make the mount available on the whole map and to place a model of our character on top of it.

While I’m usually against mounts, something similar to what OP requested already exists in GW1 and it gave me an absolute blast! Litterally, since I failed to tame it on the first try…

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Siege_Devourer

So yes, I’d like to see temporary versions of Battle Tanks and Oak Hearts, etc given to players as event rewards. They’d vanish when you leave the map, but exploring the map with one would be fun. They could also have a follow mode where they follow you around like a pet or companion and attack stuff.

I’d also advise you to craft a different ascended armor and change the stats in the mystic forge. The reason is that a full set of viper’s armor requires 425 Fulgurite, which is just way too tedious to collect all materials for.

I’m afraid the no flying zones will make gliding in LA bad. A better alternative would be to add a JP starter at the beginning of each JP that needs to be activated or else the chest won’t open. As long as you have the JP buff you can’t glide.

Shreddy would be quite nice if it also inherited the scrapper’s stats (like you suggested for Blasty) and whirl-finishers got a rework.

I think a good rework for whirl-finishers would be something similar to Sabetha’s flame wall (animation and mechanic wise), just in a smaller radius and faster. https://youtu.be/CZvnK9Bn4yQ?t=28s
Make a wall extend in a random direction that spins around the center of the whirl-finisher and applys it’s effect to anything it hits.

How about every item gets 2 options to their right-click menue:

• How do I get this?
• What can I do with this?

This would be kinda inspired by ChickenBones Not Enough Items Mod for Minecraft. A single key-press can show you for any item how it’s made or what other items you can make with it.

While GW2’s crafting stations show you how an item is made, it only shows this information if the recipe can be crafted at that station. Especially the Mystic Toilet is a mess, as the recipes can only be found on the wiki. Or by randomly throwing stuff at it.

Tldr.: We need NEI for GW2.

I’d love gliding in core Tyria. ANet only has to do 2 things to make it possible:

• Surround all playable areas with infinitely high, invisible walls, so you can’t glide out of map
• Add some nasty crows to jumping puzzles, that attack gliders on sight (Or add a jumping puzzle starter to the beginning that gives a buff so you can neither glide nor use portals, but you need the buff to loot the chest. This would also make camping jps impossible.)

@Donari: Wait, a spider in AC? The guy I had in my group who got a precursor also got his from a spider in AC. Coincidence? I’m off farming spiders…

I’ve played GW2 since headstart and only once have I seen a precursor drop for someone in my group. Don’t pin your hopes on something that’s as likely to happen as winning the lottery.

Ehecatl.9172:

I feel like the Bane and maybe some other places in the world could be designated as PVP dueling areas so that anyone can go and duel there if they choose to.

It would solve the problem of there not being a more accessible way to do PVP for those without a guild arena and who aren’t on the proper server and who still want to use their WvWvW builds.

It would also give the Bane and other such places a use. Come on, the Bane is a huge gladiatorial arena! Wouldn’t it be epic if you could sit in the stands and watch the duels below to pass the time as you wait for your WvWvW queue to pop or for a dungeon/raid party to organize?

I think turning the open world arenas into true, functioning dueling arenas is a good compromise. It should satisfy all those that wish for open world dueling and you can’t be annoyed by dueling requests because dueling outside of the arenas isn’t possible.

Ayrilana.1396:

A good example of something not worth buying (the materials to craft it) would be ascended viper’s armor. You’re better off doing the mystic forge stat conversion to get it.

You’d still need the exotic insignia for the stat conversion. Aside from the exotic insignia the cost for the ascended insignia (and the rest of the armor) is the same no matter what armor you craft, so I don’t quite get your point.

Or are you referring to the price of the recipes? You can get those as drops in the form of books, which can be traded in the tp. So buying these recipes from the exalted vendor is indeed a waste.

After a month of testing I still can’t get the client to launch in 3D. It’s frustrating at best. Does no one have a working solution?

nica.5829:

Seyiwaji.4082:

No, please no.
what would be the piont seeing some heavy armor class with shirt?<——- Hyperbole

Like we already do with outfits? I don’t see the difference. You can play a warrior in a wedding dress, for heavens sake.

Yup, that’s one of the reasons why I don’t like outfits and a big reason why I hate this idea. You are supposed to see shiny metal plates and know immediately that that’s a heavy armor wearer and not a squishy elementalist.

I wouldn’t mind making some of the hoods, head ornaments or even some gloves available to all armor weights, but I don’t want to see a Warrior in Bikini and Mini Skirt. Outfits should be limited to cities or at least auto hide when drawing a weapon or being in combat. That’s what the old town clothes system did a lot better.

Atrossity.3716:

I would love a main hand pistol. Not sure of a legend to match it as I never played GW1 to know all the lore. Maybe from Snaff as someone suggested earlier?

Either way, I love the idea of pistol/shield that engies enjoy. Such a cool combination of weapons you don’t see elsewhere.

GW1 didn’t have pistols, guns, torches, etc, so it’s gonna be hard finding a fitting legend. Also if the pistol is released with an elite specialisation you will never be able to play pistol/shield because you can’t have 2 elite specs at the same time.

I think Bonfaaz Burntfur would make a great legend. His actions can still be seen just by pressing M and having a look at Ascalon. Since he was an elementalist he’s another contender for scepter (or focus). Though, since he was fire themed, we can also argue for a torch. I’ll use torch for this idea because I’d really like to see scepter being given to Wesir Lich Khilbron.

The unique mechanic would be overcast, which turns an area of the Revenant’s energy bar grey, so the maximum energy is limited. The grey area retreats at a constant rate of 2/s.
As for the skills… Why not take a copy of the skills he had in the Nolani Academy mission?

Aura of Restoration: Cost 5, For 60 seconds the Revenant has +2 energy regeneration (this can increase the regen to 7) and is healed for 50hp for each energy point spent when activating an ability.
Conjure Flame: Cost 10, Regen -6, The Revenant’s attacks cause a flame burst on each hit, dealing damage in a small area.
Flare: Cost 5, Send out a flare that deals damage to the target foe and applies Revealed and Blind for 3sec. If the Revenant is overcast it hits everyone in an area around the target instead.
Lava Font: Cost 10, Places an aoe on the ground for 5 seconds where the Revenant stood that deals damage and cripples foes. If the Revenant is overcast, the area is bigger.
The Searing: Cost 100, Overcast 75, The Revenant puts down a Cauldron of Cataclysm and for 7 seconds there’s a second searing in a huge area around it, knocking enemies around and dealing massive damage and burning.

Torch 4: Glowing Coals: Cost15, Overcast 5, Creates a field of glowing coals for 5 seconds in front of the Revenant that removes Chilled from allies and deals damage to foes. Foes that are crippled will be immobilised for 1 second. Leaves a smoke field for 2 seconds when the effect ends, that blinds foes each second.
Torch5: Meteor Shower: Cost 25, Overcast 10, Create a Meteor Shower for 9 seconds at the target location, spawning a meteor every 3 seconds, that deals massive damage and knocks foes down for 2 seconds.

The problem is that there exists no tooltip for the fields that the overloads leave behind if they are successful. The tooltips only describe what happens while overloading. My guess is that the field that air overload leaves behind somehow dazes.

Actually you loose dmg modifyers from picking Tempest, but you gain dps because of the high base-damage of fire and air overload. Also fire overload is nice for might stacking.

kuritsutian.2987:

Yup, very similar to a build I posted few days ago!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFEQJBLhdSfJ00A2fJYABwhJWGAM3Vbrd2GEAiANAhMQF4EA-TxRBABU8AAuS5He6BqZ/BAOBAUq+jZKBDAcA8bfDglXe5lXe5+93f/93fDA-e
I would recommend you to use harhorn instead of offhand dagger for only two reasons raw dps of lightning orb, and might stacking on fire atonement (fire field+overload fire and heat sync).

I think our builds are very different. The very core of this build is using fresh air to be able to overload air with only 5 seconds cooldown instead of 20 (or 25 if you switch out of air after overloading). That’s the major source of damage in this build.

I’ll think about the Warhorn since I’m currently only using the dagger offhand for mobility and occasionally breaking a break-bar. Since I’m constantly holding a LH while infight I don’t expect much of a dps difference from this. That’s why I’m even considering switching to staff, so I have a ranged alternative when needed. Because of LH the equipped weapon really is this irrelevant.

Gokil.2543:

Lightning whip is 1.26/s, lightning hammer auto is 3.5/2.85s.

That’s coefficient/s. Which makes lightning whip better dps than lightning hammer.

Difference is about 3%. That’s not counting dps gain from burning speed, or dps loss from casting lightning hammer, added dps/utility from having an extra free utility skill slot. Besides, lightning whip has a much larger range. In the end you’ll end up behind d/x in pretty much every way.

When evaluating the dps I just looked at the dps as calculated from the damage log against the indestructible golem in the PvP Lobby. Lightning Whip was around 1.8k to 2k dps while LH was around 4k to 4.2k dps. Of course the gap that’s caused by the added stats from LH is a lot bigger in PvP than in PvE, but the dps in PvE should still be higher for the LH. Also the added stats add a huge damage boost to the overloads, which is the main reason I’m picking LH.

BTW: This build’s dps is around 6k using a rotation that overloads fire on every 3rd overload since I don’t get might or fury from external sources.

As for videos: If you can recommend a video capturing tool I might consider it. Though I’d need to update my YouTube account to a Google account, which I was avoiding up to now.

I don’t care about the ele elites anymore. I just take a racial one since they’re better.

Like reallife: I’m selling my last shirt for some booze.

No no no no, the lore is even way better:

There have been Revenants since before the pact was founded. As a Revenant you become the Pact’s commander, defeat Zhaitan and stuff. Then Rytlock vanishes into the mists and somehow manages to change his class. Later in HoT he returns (becoming the “first” Revenant) and you wonder what those new skills and the new magic is that he uses (Even though you can do the same since the beginning).

Multiple years (story wise) after you’ve started your journey as a Revenant, Rytlock becomes the “first” Revenant and brings with him completely “new” and “unknown” magic.

Since I didn’t find any similar build on metabattle or the forums I decided to post my tempest build here. It’s quite difficult to play since you’re a glass cannon that’s not allowed to dodge most of the time, so positioning and moving out of attacks without dodging becomes crutial. I’ve had a lot of fun testing and getting used to this build (and dieing a lot in the process).

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYnMIClNgNNAGQAcYilBAzN1GbrtBBgIQBQoSWBmhA-ThRBABXt/o8r8TIAe6JA4BBQp6PmpEkUARMGA-e

How to play
The idea behind this build is to use fresh air to switch out of air attunement after overloading and switching right back to reduce the cooldown to 5 seconds. That’s one air overload every 9 seconds, or in other words: you’re 4 out of 9 seconds busy overloading air. The time in between is spent with using glyph of storms, LH 4 or auto attacking with the LH.

At the beginning of a fight it’s ok to overload fire for a fire-field and some might stacks. Immediately switch to air afterwards and start beating the kitten out of that fire field with arcane brilliance and LH. Make sure that you’re always holding a LH while overloading as this increases your stats and thus the overload’s dps. Also LH has the highest dps auto attack chain of all weapons an elementalist can use.

Rotation:
1. Cast LH (Always recast it as soon as possible)
2. Overload Fire
3. Switch to Air
4. Cast Arcane Brilliance
5. Auto Attack until step 6 is possible
6. Overload Air
7. Switch to Water
7.1. If Water is unavailable switch to Earth
8. Switch back to Air (Your Overload is still dealing damage and one critical hit should reset the cooldown on Air immediately)
8.1. If you’re unable to reset Air, switch to fire, try to do something useful and start from 2
9. Cast Glyph of Storms (If you didn’t use it for Sandstorm and it’s off cooldown)
9.1. Cast LH 4
10. Repeat from step 5

The Pros and Cons
+ Extremely high, sustained dps (From my tests even higher than the meta staff build)
+ High Vulnerability output
+ High resistance to movement impeding conditions
+ High mobility infight
o Glassy as hell (but you already knew this when picking ele)
- No constant Fire Field and Fury uptime
- Lightning Field that could overwrite other, more useful Fields
- No ranged option for fights that would require it
- Dodging is not allowed while overcharging

Alternations
Equipment:
- For Fractals, short Dungeons or if you’re dieing a lot, change Superior Sigil of Cruelty for something else. Stacking sigils only work if you can hold the stacks.
- If you need survivability change some of the equipment for Knight(Toughness, Power, Precision) stats.
- Pick Focus over Dagger if projectiles are a problem.

Skills:
- In situations where you need to dodge an enemy while waiting for a damage window (Mai Trin) change LH for Earth Shield.
- Change the elite skill to anything you like anytime. I chose Rebound because it makes you survive something that would otherwise have killed you in one hit, but depending on the situation there are better picks.

Rotation:
- If you need to wreck a break bar use LH 3, Air 5, Earth 3, 3, 4, Water 3

Food:
- Bowl of Seaweed Salad is actually better, but I didn’t find it in the build editor.

*LH = Lightning Hammer

Edit:
After some optimisation I decided to change the weapons and one trinket to Assassin’s to reach 100% critchance with Fury, LH and a Banner of Discipline. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYnMIClNgNNAGQAcYilBAzN1GbrtBBgIQBQoSWBmhA-TxRBABXt/o8p8TIQh6JITJEAPIAKV/xMlgkCIixAA-e

The funny thing is: When the map closes and it fails to put you on a new one because the new one “is full” you get to stay on the existing map and don’t have to fear any timer anymore. Well, there’s still the cold ticks, so the JP doesn’t get easyer, but at least you don’t get a loading screen and a forced restart every 30 minutes anymore.

Also, as people are leaving the instance but no one can enter, you’ll soon have your personal instance.

I’m all for removing this ridiculous requirement. But not because of the JP’s difficulty (I used to farm it for presents), but because I’ve been spending half an hour running into the stupid portal just to be told that the instance is full.

I’ve already gotten the achievement and collection item on the first day, but since then I’ve been unable to enter the JP. How is anyone with a little less luck supposed to get this item if he/she can’t even enter the JP?

First one was Herald, because who the heck plays Rev without it?

I had some doubts about Tempest and switched back and forth between playing and not playing, until I created my current build. Now I’m not playing without Tempest again.^^

I unlocked scrapper simply because I wanted to give the big shiny wrench (Hammer) to my engi because it compliments her looks well. I’m still trying to build a good condi scrapper hammer dps build. It’s probably impossible though. What a shame…

I also unlocked daredevil because some of the new skins fit my thief’s style really well.

This is Bheffi. Her design came from the rumor that the new specialisation would be called forge, so she’s wearing a metal plated coat and fire resistant clothes. The gloves can easily handle the heat of glowing metal making precision smithing easy because she doesn’t need pliers, but can hold the hot metal with her hands. The monocle is for quickly welding a new gyro. She just closes her right eye and opens the left one to not be blinded.

1. Change your soldiers to berserker gear and you will notice a major difference. As a pure glass cannon ele you will die in 2 ticks from the mordrem sniper’s line, one attack from the hammer mordrem, 2-3 attacks from any ranged mob, etc. For HoT I’ve switched my rings and trinkets to soldiers for survivability.

2. I’ve had a look at your build and it’s a good support build with a lot of boons and condi remove. Applying auras to the frontline of a zerg is exactly the exception I mentioned where someone else is tanking for you. Although with the new squad-ui the preferences who gets your boons are a bit strange. Did you notice any pattern there? For example one class getting your auras more often than others?

3. What does commanding DS have to do with that? You want me to give you a cookie for that? I’ve commanded DS a few times, too and didn’t die. Does that make my build any better? It just means that I can avoid most damage. Please don’t state (and repeat) stuff that doesn’t matter.

MadRabbit.3179:

BunjiKugashira.9754:

I didn’t say anything against zerker and tempest, only against zerker and auramancer (which doesn’t even imply that tempest is part of that build).

I’m not entirely sure wether tempest is a dps increase over fire air water or fire air arcane, or not. You’re sacrificing a 20% damage modifyer for a few highly damaging overloads after all, so I guess it depends on the situation.

However I can say with confidence, that auramancer doesn’t play well with any 0 defense setup. Except maybe if the only one you’re supporting is a tank? But that would basically require that you constantly run around together with a tank.

I use soldier’s armor, beserker weapons and beserker trinkets with a Air/Water/Tempest staff build with full shouts when I lead world events as a commander. It provides good damage with a large amount of AoE sustain and support for keeping the squad and myself alive.

Soldier’s only adds about 2k health so I am debating dropping it for full Berserker. I would go with Zealots if healing power didn’t scale so horrendously. I think I am sitting at commanding four successful Dragon Stand runs with only one of them where I died in the blighted towers. This is with me at the front of the zerg.

It’s not easy by a long shot; you really have to understand your skills and when to use them, particularly water and earth overloads. But a berserker auramancer certainly is viable and works in this scenario. It provides competitive dps with some of the best support in the game.

With the exception of Wash the Pain Away, the shout radius is large enough to support your squad without having to move into kill range of some of the harder mobs like stalkers.

I would bet that most of that damage comes from overloads and weapon skills while the aura’s effects are close to never proced. Because if you take a hit as a full zerker ele you’re dead and if you don’t take a hit then the aura’s effects can’t proc.

If you only take a hit ever so often you have to ask yourself seriously: Is going for auras worth it or is there a better alternative? Granting auras to someone who doesn’t get hit is as useless as healing someone who’s already at max health.

I didn’t say anything against zerker and tempest, only against zerker and auramancer (which doesn’t even imply that tempest is part of that build).

I’m not entirely sure wether tempest is a dps increase over fire air water or fire air arcane, or not. You’re sacrificing a 20% damage modifyer for a few highly damaging overloads after all, so I guess it depends on the situation.

However I can say with confidence, that auramancer doesn’t play well with any 0 defense setup. Except maybe if the only one you’re supporting is a tank? But that would basically require that you constantly run around together with a tank.

Zerker and auramancer don’t fit well together imo. Except for the magnetic aura all other auras require you to get hit to do their effects, while zerker elementalists don’t want to get hit. Ever.

Thank you for clearing this year old rumor.

Husks are not projectiles, but can still be blocked by invulnerability. Wether it’s allowed to block those has been a long standing question. I know that some communities saw this as a bug and refused to use it to block husks, while others use it all the time.

From your answers I’ll take it that blocking husks is indeed allowed because there is some skill required.

DoctorDing.5890:

Don’t restrict it to just certain items. Make it so that players cannot place/drop anything within the “interaction zone” of anything else. It’s not a big deal to place that banner/boost/whatever a couple of more paces away.

Although I did find the guy who kept dropping the aviator memory box on Silverwaste chests quite funny. Even though you could not see other players doing the plane thing you could still enjoy the chat meltdown. Special mention to the chap who was attempting to duplicate the plane sounds in chat: “Brrrrrrrr”, “Neeee-ooooowwwww”.

But it does highlight that you also need to prevent placement where a chest might be about to spawn, which might be a bit trickier to code.

All the chests are basically always there. The same goes for resource nodes and some other stuff. They’re just deactivated and thus not visible. So implementation should be fairly easy.

So the change we need is:

Placables (food, banners, boxes of fun, merchants, etc) can no longer be placed within 300 range of

• other placables
• vendors, event npcs, etc
• resource nodes
• event interactables (such as turrets, kegs, etc)
• chests
• world bosses (because we want to be able to pick up conjured weapons instead of trollfood)

Did I miss something?

Anything that says +x% damage (be it a trait, rune, whatever) only affects your direct damage. Condition damage is only affected by +x% condition damage modifyers.

Caladbolg’s owners:

• Riannoc – dead
• Waine – dead
• Traherne – dead

Do you want to be the next one? I’m glad that the sword’s curse is finally broken.

The only thing I hate about TD is that the lowest layer is mostly unused. It feels like a back-door entrance to the rest of the map and not like a part of the map itself.

Still my least fav map is AB. With the exception of a very few places it’s basically a central tyria map. Also it has the biggest fps killer places in the whole game. I die on a regular basis trying to jump down from the waypoint into the tunnels below Tarir because the screen freezes for 2 seconds and I can’t open my glider. Suddenly dropping from 60 fps to 0.5 is not fun.

I love pocket raptors. They’re perfect for filling bloodlust stacks.

And most of the time the ai is so slow to react to me that I can just sword auto attack them to death before they do anything.

Khristophoros.7194:

Of course it works like that. They want paying customers to be able to get gold even if nobody’s converting gold to gems.

Besides, the time investment required to get gold vs. the time investment required to get gems is skewed drastically in favor of gems. I mean if you make 10 dollars an hour that’s 93 GW2 gold per hour with the current exchange rate. So even a low end job will get you more gold per time spent vs spending that time playing GW2.

So people with disposable income inevitably pull way more gold out than farmers put in. Because of that, if it used an actual pool of gold from people converting gold to gems, it would always be empty.

It’s not a conspiracy or some big secret. It’s the only way the system can work.

It doesn’t work if you only think in terms of gold/time.
There are many people in this game who either

• Don’t have an income yet (students for example)
• Want to reach everything by doing stuff ingame instead of using cash
• Have too much gold aniways and don’t know what to spend it on (hey, there’s something new in the gemstore)

or are a mix of these. I’ve only ever exchanged gold for gems and never the other way around and I know there are a lot of players that did the same.

Since all the new stuff gets added to the gemstore it’s no wonder that the demand on gems is way higher than the demand on gold. There’s basically nothing new you can get for gold.

Argon.1563:

I think they deliberately avoided giving the Revenant a lot of weapons, so they actually have weapons to give it later with future Elite Specs.

Look at the problem they’ve got themselves into with Warrior. Where it can use every weapon in the game with the exception of a small handful, they’ll run out of potential weapons to give it in a few generations of Elite Specs, meaning they’ll have to go to the effort of creating a new weapon, rigging it and making skins for it, as well as adding it to other professions as a default weapon so its not exclusive to Warrior.

The less weapons a profession has at baseline, the less effort they’ll need to put in later on, so more time can be spent developing elite specs, rather than developing new weapon types every generation after Warrior can use all 16 current weapon types. (excluding offhands)

Revenant has enough remaining weapons for 13 generations, whereas Warrior only has 8 (including offhands). Lets hope ArenaNet gives us some interesting weapons.

My guess is that they’d rather release warrior elite specs without weapons than introduce new weapons. Though I wouldn’t mind a 2h axe. ^^

Who exactly are you doing a favor by joining a guild? Do you also enter parties saying: “Hey, I’m doing you the favor of being here, so treat me well!” ? Here’s the door. You don’t need to treat it well, just close it after you.

Do you know who’s harming a guild the most? Players that neither say hi, nor bye and never represent. They make a guild feel dead and make others leave. Any guild leader is well advised to kick those “corpses” before the guild corrodes.

I agree that with the guild chat overhaul it became possible in theory to be (as in interact and participate) in multiple guilds. However many people already have problems interacting with one guild.

Do you know what a guild is where noone represents? I am in one. It’s a list and a news board. No one knows each other and there are no events, but it still has 150 members. It’s the very definition of what a guild that aspires to be a guild should never become.

Lol, Glass Cannon, Short Fuse and Shrapnel are all part of the meta condi genadier build. They’re probably among the most used traits in PvE!

I think ANet chose celebrity over how interesting or coherent the story would be lore-wise. They left a lot of good opportunities in the game. Not just story wise, but at other places too, and then somehow chose not to use those opportunities, but to build something completely different from what was prepared.

I personally don’t think we will ever hear about Mallyck again. There aren’t enough people who know about his story (apart from those that frequent the lore forum or did the sylvari story themselves and paid attention to it probably noone knows him). With HoT ANet has shown their new plan for story-telling: drastically reducing the amount of relevant NPCs and using only those that are well known. While this makes for a more detailed character development of those characters that are involved, a lot of prepared opportunities get turned into loose ends that most likely will never get connected.

As for the Sylvari, my guess is that their story is over. Maybe we’ll have a scene where the pale tree is back to strength and we have to report Trahernes death, but that’s it. And while all those loose ends are bothering me, I still have to agree: the sylvari had more than their share of attention. It’s time to focus on another race.

That track doesn’t do anything in WvW. Autoloot doesn’t work there. And that’s not a bug, it’s intended to now work in WvW.

Though I think ANet works on an alternative to autoloot for WvW. Maybe a new WvW mastery?

Well, for getting aggro ele is the best class imo. A friend of mine and I (both eles with very similar bersi builds) once kited the mordrem champion husk in silverwastes halfway into indigo because the husk would only ever aggro one of us. Of course we could’ve stalled it where it stood, but it was funnyer this way.

For carrying a bad group I can only recommend glyph of storms (sandstorm). The perma blind makes most encounters incredibly easy. Especially in dungeons.

You might also want to think about picking one or two extra blast finishers since boon uptime will depend heavily on you. Or for blasting water fields if your group is in trouble.

If you really want to play with a bad group (instead of basically soloing the content) I’d recommend celestial equipment (or alternatively one of the new HoT stats, didn’t have a proper look at them yet) with superior rune of the traveler for extra boon duration. Pick the arcane traitline for reduced cooldown on your attunements and more boon duration and switch your attunements off cooldown. Also pick some blast finishers (arcane wave + arcane brilliance) to blast whatever the situation calls for.

Your dps will drop significantly, but the constant flow of boons, healing and control can keep almost any group at full health. With that setup I’ve carried newbie groups that didn’t have any up to level equip through dungeons and experienced groups that got stuck through high lvl fractals. The best part about this is, that everyone got a sense of achievement instead of feeling carried (even though they were). Btw: you’ll still have aggro. You’re ele after all.

Question: Is this build supposed to be for solo play or a coordinated, fully buffed group? Either way I can give you some tips:

Stats
Unless you’re using some traits / other stuff that requires almost 100% critchance to be effective you don’t need Assassin’s. The formula for average damage is
(base damage * (1 + critchance/100 * crit damage/100)).
If you post your build in a build editor I can do the calculations for you how much power and precision is best.

For the highest average damage per hit there’s a balance between power, precision and ferocity that can be calculated. Since access to ferocity is limited (there’s no equipment with ferocity main stat) it’s important to get ferocity where possible.

In general going over 100% critchance has no merit. The formula for critchance is (Precision – 916) / 21. That’s 3016 precision for 100% critchance. If you have fury you only need to reach 80% critchance, which equals 2596 precision. If you expect to have a warrior with banners in your team you need another 170 precision less (2426 precision total) to reach 100% critchance. If you have a ranger with spotter on your team that’s another 150 precision less.

Runes and Sigills
Elementalists get most of their awesome damage from multiplyers that are either in the traits or equipment. Multiplyers in this game aren’t added before being multiplyed with the base damage, but instead multiplyed one by one. The result is that two 10% damage boosts don’t give an overall damage boost of 20%, but of 21%.

That’s the reason for using scholar runes and a force sigill. Also scholar runes give ferocity which is (as stated further up) lower in balance than power and precision and thus needs to be stacked where possible.

If you’re confident in your survivabilty you can pick a stacking sigil. Use either Superior Sigil of Cruelty or Bloodlust. Cruelty should be the bigger damage boost since ferocity is always low in the balance.

Traits
Staff Elementalists get most of their damage from fire spells. Thus it’s mandatory to take the fire traitline for reduced recast time (which is a huge damage boosts because you can cast lava font and meteor shower more frequently), a 10% boost while in fire and another 10% boost against burning foes (remember, mults are good) and longer fire fields (which makes lava font even better).

Air is important for the extra ferocity based on precision (this trait needs to be taken into account when calculating the optimal balance of power to precision) and another damage boost.

The last traitline can be either water or arcane. Water grants a constant 10% damage boost while health is above 90% (which is most of the time). Arcane gives a 2% damage boost for each boon you have active. If you expect to have 4 or less boons it’s better to run water and if you expect to have 5 or more it’s better to run arcane. Remember that multiple stacks of the same boon are counted as one boon.

Utilities
Since you’ll be busy casting other stuff it’s a good idea to take Signet of Fire, which boosts your dps passively.

If you ever get into melee range, Lightning Hammer is your friend. The auto attack chain has probably the highest dps you can get and the hammer grants a nice stat-boost (you need another 180 precision less for 100% critchance).

Glyph of storms is your ace for any situation. Tons of trashmobs (pocket raptors?) cast a sandstorm and you won’t get a single hit even in melee range. You have a champion that isn’t maxed out on vuln? Cast a lightningstorm for damage and a ton of vuln. The foe is almost immune to direct damage? Cast a firestorm for burning stacks. Even though you’re not traited for conditions it’s better than being completely useless.

For the heal skill: Pick what you’re comfortable with. Arcane Brilliance if you need an extra blast-finisher or Ether Renewal if you need condi cleanse.

The elite skills are all equally bad. If I could I’d just pick another utility skill instead. Among all elite skills glyph of elementals is probably the least useless one since it’s fire and forget instead of locking you out of your skills, but don’t put your hopes on the elementals doing any damage. Most of them can’t even destroy a heavy training golem in the pvp lobby before they despawn on top of their amazingly stupid ai. I’ve found the earth elemental to be a reliable meat-shield in certain situations (such as the uncathegorized fractal).

Link
Putting all those thoughts together into one build it boils down to this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMIClNgNNAGQA0RgBBALCAFgDgcJDBpgaT2G+kA-ThRBABXt/o8r8LIAe6IA4BBQp6PmpEMAwBwv/G47v58zP/8zPvf/93f/93SBExWL-e

Edit: The calculated best balance of power to precision for this build would be 2064 (with banner of discipline, so it’d be 1894 raw) precision to 3123 power. Since I’m calculating with fury and banner of discipline in mind the maximum usable precision would be 2246 while wielding lightning hammer. 1894 is well below the number of what you need for 100% critchance so there’s no double-crit issue. But it’s also well below what you get in a mix of Berserker + Assassin if you only take Berserker. So the result is that the perfect balance can’t be reached due to game restrictions, but the closest alternative would be to go full berserker.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=max+%28%28%282774%2B2243%2B170%29+-+x%29+*+%281+%2B+%28%28x+-+916%29+%2F+21+%2B+20%29+*+%28%281490%2B170+%2B+7+%2F100+*+x%29+%2F+15%29+%2F+10000%29%29

So what do you think about this reward system? Is it fair? Does it reward players for what they did?

If not: What can be changed to make it fair?

Do you even want a fair reward system or is a system where you can watch a tv show while someone else does most of the work more to your liking?

Part of the tax money goes to the poor NPC vendors who need to buy your green runes and sigills. Another part is donated to the event rewarding association and the last bit is mysteriously stolen by bandits, mordrem and the like.

I’d pick superior sigill of cruelty over bloodlust because at about >50% critchance it’s the bigger damage increase.

Burtnik.5218:

Phoenix the One.4071:

Or teleport to target and then drag then back through the mist

“No valid path” as i said. It should pull like engi magnet and that is.

Since it returns you (and your target) to the position you stood when activating the skill it could ignore valid path to target like hammer 3.

Ferry – A person that takes people to a place that would otherwise be unreachable because of quest or campaign requirements
Runner – A person that takes people quckly to already accessible places
Taxi – A person that takes people to another instance of the same place they already are

Ferries exist in GW2 in the form of dungeon/fractal openers that open explorable paths for people that didn’t do the story themselves.

There are only very few places where you can be a runner for someone in GW2. For example underwater fractal the first one to pass can be a runner for the rest of the group. They don’t need to pass the swimming part themselves but can just respawn at the checkpoint after the runner has reached it.

Taxis are a new thing in GW2. In GW1 it was impossible to invite people that weren’t on the same map and instance as you, so taxying was impossible.