Guild Wars 2

I took some of your advice and switched up my spec a little. I took 15 out of water though to put into air for bolt of heart.

I won’t really get into the specifics, but doing a lot more damage now. Thanks for the advice.

etherfreeze.6834:

This build is good but you sacrifice all damage.

How exactly do you get more damage though? Evasive arcana is 12 stacks of might + 9 from battle sigil + at least 1 from fire attune + 3 from churning earth blast finisisher=25 stacks. This is a chore to pull off, though with sigil of strength on offhand plus 2 hoelbrak runes for + 20 might duration(+80% total) 20 stacks should just happen naturally.

25 points in water gives +2 percent for each boon. This build gives 100% uptime on fury, might, swiftness, vigor, and regen for +10% damage increase.

If possible I’d like to see a variation of this build that does more damage without sacrificing so much survivability as to make it worthless versus other glass cannons.

“Also very very very very fragile unless built highly specifically. I’ve yet to find a d/d build I’ve been satisfied with. Especially against thieves.”

Try this build

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/cantrip-aura-cantrip-aura-7577.html
use 2 monk 2 water 2 earth for the extra boon duration

You have 0 toughness but you get 9 seconds of protection every time you go earth attune.

kuviCk.6107:

ryston.7640:

There are a number of viable elementalist builds, most using staff or scepter mainhand.

The best for tournaments is, i argue, staff tank support.

Regardless of other details, all of the viable ele builds go 30 arcana. Most go 20 or 30 water as well.

While this is a dissapointing lack of diversity, its really not bad when you compare it to other classes.

Holly kitten! First person that actually knows what they are talking about. And here I thought that we are bound for ever to people who say that only viable thing is D/D.

I’d like to see a quote where anyone even remotely implies that D/D is the only viable choice for elementalist. I’m just using it as an example as it’s my personal preference. The whole premise of the thread is that regardless of weapon choice or roll being preformed that elementalist have very little variation in build (or if they do it’s to their own detriment). The person you quote seems to agree with that. Staff or Scepter/Dagger may very well be the obvious superior choice to D/D but it has little bearing on how you otherwise build your character.

“Thief is actually the only class who DOES have a counter to that.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shocking_Aura

Here’s an improvement I’d like to see to the windborne dagger skill …

Movement skills break immobilize when a main hand dagger is equiped.

Griffon.4716:

You can land a DT/phoenix combo 100% reliably if you look into your skills further, and they don’t pop a stun breaker (how it is for any classes burst). I agree though, comparably, it is much harder and doesn’t do as much as other classes bursts (you can still 1 combo glass thieves though), so it might need a damage buff.

The only cantrip you REALLY need to run is mist form, and I run glyph over twister. While the time throwing everyone around is cool and all, you can be doing a lot more out of twister to help your team, and you have to hold still for 2 seconds to cast it (never good as an ele to be holding still).

Running a roaming DPS ele, you can kill targets pretty quick and move in between points with ease. Maybe you aren’t running your build offensively enough or you aren’t reacting quick enough to enemy bursts, but you still have decent survivability with sig of restoration and water attunement.

I don’t actually use the twister elite for the twister form. I cast it and then cancel it immediately for 24 seconds of stability (15 base +60% duration). As a matter of principal I don’t use pets.

Mist form’s cooldown is currently bugged at 75 seconds. If you can be successful with only 1 stun breaker on a 75 second cooldown then props to you. I personally need lightning flash to avoid burst (or stomping thieves/mesmers), armor of earth for stomps/rez , and condition removal for when I just can’t shake that immobilize. With so much invested into the water traitline why wouldn’t you use all cantrips. Plus the 25 point water trait skill is +2% damage for each boon. The cantrip build gives perma regen/vigor on top of 100% fury, swiftness, and might for +10 percent dmg total.

What utility skills/ build varation are you using? At this point it doesn’t seem like we even disagree on that much so without that info there really isn’t anything to argue over. Also I use dual dagger’s exclusively, so admittedly my knowledge is lacking for the other weapons.

My suggestion is to create a trait skill that makes movement skills break immobilize when you have a main hand dagger equipped. The actual skill could only work for main hand dagger abilities or both main and offhand. It would probably be more balanced if it only worked for main hand dagger abilities (burning speed and magnetic grasp) as ride the lightning is already an incredibly powerful escape mechanism.

I think the easiest way to implement this would be to add it to the windborne dagger arcana skill.

Thanks for the feedback.

Vaerah.4907:

Easy, you make the class simply unplayable for several months and slowly, VERY slowly buff tiny pieces here and there till you re-create a farce of the class itself. Has plenty been done in other MMOs, I don’t know if ANET follows the same methods.
.

This is what I’m afraid of.

etherfreeze.6834:

tl;dr unless they buff our damage OR make our skills more effective (especially DT, churning earth, and eruption) we can’t be expected to “diversify” to sub par options.

I agree completely.

It’s been brought up before, they should implement a profession cap on tourny teams. It would go a long way in improving balance. The only people who would complain are those that equate skill with exploiting imbalances in a rushed unfinished game.

I would even be interested in seeing an 8v8 1 of each profession “highlander mode” like in tf2. Of course I realize by the time something like that came out there wouldn’t even be enough players around to play it and therefore justify its existence.

It doesn’t matter what weapon you use or what role you are preforming (amulet switching required though), I believe there is only 1 viable elementalist build and any deviation from it is just kittening yourself. Feel free to prove me wrong. I’d be delighted to know if there were other worthwhile builds out there.

I theocrafted this build myself when I first made my ele, though similar ones have been posted such as the “not today bro” and “gundorix’s aura build”.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/cantrip-aura-cantrip-aura-7577.html

-For runes 2 monk and 2 water are mandatory for the +30% boon duration, the other 2 are personal preference.

Full arcana traitline including evasive arcana and elemental attunement are mandatory for any elemenatlist build. The other skill is personal preference. The main reason for this is with +60 boon duration you get 8 seconds(9 with 2 earth runes) of protection every 10.5 seconds.

If you eat the full duration of a stun or immobilize as an elementalist you are basically dead. Because of this you need 3 cantrips including the accompanying water trait skills.
This will give you 100% uptime on regeneration and vigor (also too good to pass up) as well as condition removal on cantrips.

Zephyr’s Boon gives dual dagger elementalist(with +60 boon duration) 100% fury and swiftness uptime. This is too good to pass up. These 10 points could be spent elswhere if you aren’t using dual daggers.

Sigil of superior battle will give you a constant 9 stacks (12 possible) of might during a fight. Including the fire combo fields +evasive arcana blast finishers 25 stacks of might are achievable in short time. Even if you are a bunker build having 25 stacks of might is more valuable then whatever other sigil you would use.

If you want to be a glass cannon (though with plenty of survivability) use berserker’s or knight’s amulet.

If you want a balanced build use Valkyrie’s amulet with knight’s jewel

If you want a bunker tank heal support build use clerics amulet with knight’s jewel.

There’s been talk of nerfing the tank heal variety of this build. Although if you use a berserker’s amulet with this build, I doubt anyone would consider you difficult to kill or overpowered (possibly underpowered). Herein lies the problem, how can you nerf the bunker build without ruining elementalist completely?

Warriors have the highest base health and armor so naturally they are going to offer a more no frills play style. A lot of the features that make playing an elementalist, for example, enjoyable simply wouldn’t be balanced if you added them to a warrior.

Perhaps you are just tired of playing warrior. I myself played warrior exclusively and gave it up to play dual dagger elemenatlist. I can’t really get into any other professions though because I need the 5 second weapon swap/attunement swapping or else I get bored.

I was unaware of this trick and am glad the op posted it, thanks (not sarcasm).

Whether I’m playing as a glass cannon 0 toughness ele or a bunker support role, I’m using the exact same build. There is only 1 build worth using as an elementalist the only real option you have is what amulet you want to use. I assure you no one is complaining about eles being hard to kill wearing a berserker amulet, but you put on a clerics amulet with the same build and now all of a sudden you’re op?

Also the bunker roll doesn’t have to be weak, use sigil of superior battle + evasive arcana to get 25 stacks of might. Use dual daggers+zephyrs boon for 100% uptime on fury.

A dev just posted about this 2 days ago. They aren’t going to change it.

DISCLAIMER: I am not talking about mesmer clones.

What is the point of displaying the guild tag on minions?

The amount of text clutter on my screen is ridiculous. At the very least I think we should be able to disable guild tag display on pets/minions if not on everyone. I don’t really care what guild my opponent is in, especially his ai.

Furthermore, I think we should just be able to toggle name and/or healthbar display for ai.

To all the potential L2P/deal with it crowd, the onscreen text clutter isn’t affecting my ability to play the game. On the contrary I am very aware of all the ai on the screen and I don’t need a nametag to assist me in any way. Also, all the text clutter doesn’t prevent me from acquiring the proper targets.

The issue is that the onscreen text clutter detracts from game immersion and aesthetics.

A hammer/mace warrior could potentially stun you every 5 seconds by alternating burst skills. Warriors can also trait to have movement skills break immobilize.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.

Don’t forget to keep an eye on all of the other viable elementalist builds.

To the above poster.

if player A casts an ability and player B gets hit, player B is punished for failing to dodge it.

If player A casts an ability and player B dodges it, player B is rewared for countering player A.

If player A starts to cast an ability, player B dodges, then player A cancels it. Player B is punished for dodging an ability that was never casted and player A is punished with a 3 second cooldown. This is balanced.

If you take away the 3 second cooldown people would just fake cast every ability and only actually cast it when they know their opponent couldn’t or wouldn’t dodge it.

Your idea would destroy the balance in this game and make it more like that other game which you stole that idea from and failed to give any credit. We all know your post is just another make this game more like world of warcraft post.

TLDR

All that work and you couldn’t make a pie chart in excel or something?

It’s just you.

For zephyr’s boon skill on dual daggers, shocking aura buffs scale with +boon duration from base 10, while frost aura is stuck at 8 seconds (which should be at least 10 according to the wiki).

Just remove all elite skills from spvp. Failing that, remove rune of lyssa set from spvp as it’s clearly imbalanced when some professions have access to 36 second cooldown elites while others 120 seconds at best. I do see a few thieves using it and it’s not exactly game breaking but it is imbalanced in principal.

Pandering to the lowest common denominator.

The downstate could use a way to avoid the first stomp, but other than that ele is fine.

I run with 0 toughness and rarely die. Here’s a screenshot of the last hotjoin match I played. Not a single death in that match or the one before it.

I have no comment on tournament play but it seems the consensus is that the downstate is the only major issue.

This is happening with the elementalist ability ride the lightning. It keeps killing me instantly when I use it off a cliff that would normally not even give fall damage.

I’ve noticed that if you die during ride the lightning there is no downstate. This has happened to me twice today.

I assume this is working as intended, the bug must be the completely worthless downstate that occurs during any other death scenario.

Nice build, I made an dual dagger elementalist last week and came up with an almost identical build.

I put 10 extra points in water for cleansing water, this skill has the exact same effect as cleansing wave except it also adds a self condition removal to all of your cantrips. In addition it allows you to take cantrips recharge 20% faster.

I also max out arcana with ele attunement, + 15% dagger movement speed, and arcane shield.

For runes I go with 2 water (+ 15 boon), 2 monk (+ 15 boon), and 2 earth (+ 20 protection). Having arcane shield makes up for not going full earth for the magnetic aura.

With all the plus boon duration/ quicker attunement swap I feel that protection on aura is a worthless skill. You could swap to earth, get 9 seconds of protection, swap out 1.5 seconds later, swap back 9 seconds later, and have 85% uptime on protection. The cooldowns on auras are just too long to justify such a small protection duration.

With all the plus boon on this build you can also drop vigor on crit chance, you’ll have virtually 100 percent uptime on vigor with the + boon/+ 20 percent cantrip recharge.

Zephyrs boon is a must imo, the durations are bugged currently as magnetic aura scales with +boon, while frost aura does not. Magnetic aura gives 16 seconds of fury with my build which allows for 100 percent uptime.

I use sigil of superior battle, which with all the attunement swapping allows for a constant 9 stacks of might (12 are possible but only for a few seconds). Add another might from fire attunment, then 3 more from fire combo field for 13 stacks. My build doesn’t allow for might on cantrip (which would give me about 20 stacks of might), however I feel that the sigil makes up for it.

Also, with all the +boon you can pop tornado elite, get 24 seconds of stability, leave tornado form and still have the stability. I’m not sure if it’s intended to work like this, however it’s nice having that stability duration.

Taugrim’s “Captain Hammer” build has been around since June.

According to the wiki this trait should give 10 second fury and swiftness boons.

When I use magnetic aura I get 16 second durations, which is 10 seconds + 60% boon duration from traits/sigils.

When I use any other aura I only get an 8 second duration.

The question is, is zephyr’s boon supposed to scale with +boon duration?

Furthermore if I apply a +20% fury duration sigil set; the magnetic aura applied boon becomes an 18 second duration while the other ones go up to about 9 (still not a full 10 second duration I believe).

I play a boon heavy spec and I’ve noticed lots of inconsistencies with which boons scale with +boon. However, this particular inconsistency results in 50% shorter duration and I find it to be particularly noteworthy.

Disabling show all enemy names helps a lot.

I’ll trust the game developers decision over someone who wants to express themselves artistically with their armor’s color scheme. I understand you’re a unique snowflake and all but no one in spvp cares what color you are.

xBeefy.4073:

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

Suggestion: Post in the suggestion forum.

Team should easily be discerned without any aid from a user interface.

exp.
Tf2
Unreal Tournament
Counter-Strike
Day of Defeat
etc.

/thread

None of the games you listed include a customizable character where color actually matters. If the red nameplate isn’t enough to discern it then why did they change WvW from color coated players to simply wearing the normal colors in PvE? Obviously at some point someone decided “hey, they can tell JUST by looking at the names!”

And don’t feed me this excuse that “the character should be discernible apart from the UI.” The nameplate over a character’s head is as part of the character as his arms and legs are. It’s blatantly obvious.

It ruins customization and defeats the purpose of getting cool gear. The only goal to achieve in PvP is to earn cool gear as it stands right now. Why take that away?

It’s not even a dye thing. What it comes down to is if you dye your armor 1 color flat out, it becomes indistinguishable and bland.

I suppose tf2 is the only distinctly relevant example I listed since it has a red vs blue team colors, a very similar crafting system, vanity gear, and dyes (which only work on your hat I believe).

I’m fairly confident that in guild wars 2 lore people don’t have magical health bars floating over their heads. They are in the game as part of the user interface. I suppose this depends on the your definition of user interface though. I don’t consider my character’s head to be part of the user interface. I do consider a health bar that is only visible when certain criteria are met such as range, what in game options I’m using, etc. to be part of the user interface.

Anyway, virtually every team vs team competition from quizbowl to Olympic badminton involves team colors. That’s the way it is in guild wars 2 and I believe it will continue to be that way.

I personally wish the game was solely structured pvp with no vanity items or character size discrepancies. I realize that is minority opinion so let’s just accept the fact that we have differing opinions and leave it at that.

Suggestion: Post in the suggestion forum.

Team should easily be discerned without any aid from a user interface.

exp.
Tf2
Unreal Tournament
Counter-Strike
Day of Defeat
etc.

/thread