Guild Wars 2

it sort of already exists but not directly as part of the skill.
if it were pointwise possible you could get +70% or more damage with water spells when the target is bleeding, burning, knockdown, vulnerable, almost dead and you are heavily buffed.
then use a weapon conjure and cause damage…. hmmm.

in pvp i did not like staff but i have seen its hard to kill a staff defense build.

my favorite to play is dagger/dagger.
exciting combat.

I have been messing around with some success with a
0/25/0/30/15 d/d build.
I am forcing myself to use weapon conjures…

I use the axe conjure and utilize the 20% more damage with spells while attuned to water and target is vulnerable. 25 air gives vulnerability on crits.

Axe has a 900 range autoattack that will hit for for about 1400. plus a built in aura combo. and each boon gives 2% damage. the aura alone is +4% but getting all the boons i normally generate it’s easily 10%.
then a knights/shaman amulet/jewel with fury that runs 60% crit with +40 crit damage.

its a logical combination but questionable being as my skill is low…
bonus damage from boons. passive regen. high damage for an ele.

the timing of the axe tends to fit in well with my ele playstyle.

water made the most sense to use the conjures with to me as it adds damage and defense.

and its better than some other stuff i have tried….
I am still an ele noob at rank 17.

although still an issue with wasting a slot timer, i have used lightning hammer to set an air field and do all that to get 1minute+ worth of swiftness.
Although i did not get 16 stacks of might… i think i neglected phoenix
now with dagger/dagger its harder to get that much.

Putting on shocking aura isnt exactly a noob move as it last only a few seconds and a person would have to know that it works against condition damage.
I didn’t know that and as a noob i just started to understand that shocking aura can be used against thieves fairly effectively if i can get my fingers there fast enough.
Noob meaning im only rank 17 after several days of playing the ele in spvp.

however… whether its supposed to work that way i dont know… I would wager its not. But compare it to other abilities. what else does the same thing?

SecondtoNone.7549:

DesertRose.2031:

If the quote option isn’t there just post some non-sense like “I want to quote”, once you posted in a thread you’re able to quote and edit/delete your own posts (weird bug, huh?). Just delete your non-sense post afterwards.

It worked! Thanks. :]

Personally I wish comboing with static field did something else. Swiftness is boring—especially in pvp/wvw. Id love if it blinded or pushed or really anything other than swiftness.

I just tried to make a post with a body of “nonsense post” it gave me an error saying it wasn’t long enough and now i can reply.

use leap in the static field. that’s a dazing strike i believe.

magnetic grasp.
lava axe and lightning hammer both have a leap.

for aura builds
lay down a fire field and leap to get a fire shield.

id say glyphs too.
For convience consider getting 20 points in air to get the air trait 8.

air trait 8 will double the healing glyphs utility power. gives a a 20 sec run buff all by itself. combined with air staff its an easy perma run buff. 10 points in arcane for the atunment bonus with give 30secs of run buff just by switching to air and enabling the healing glyph.

Glyphs last longer in general. signets are good too in particular the signet of fire.

If you have fighting tough content you must have mist form. likely you take mist form any way and just get used to using it as damage immunity is damage immunity.

so i guess i would go with
healing glyph.
glyph of elemental power
arcane shield
mistform.
20 points in air.
10-15 points in arcane.
rest in water for group friendliness.
then bump precision/toughness/vitality.

However PvE content is just easy. there really is not much of a concern to spec right.
Fight higher level content to hone your edge and do the ac dungeon.

if you want to try a weapon then replace arcane shield with the axe. its my favorite currently.
lightning hammer is a little too melee but has come cool effects.

Thats likely not a bad approach as thieves can kill an ele in two hits… or one.

It good to know how the enemy works.

Not silly at all. Problem is that it can take a really long time to get enough to get them to work.

For me it has taken a lot of grueling hours to start to make some headway. The word is its better to use an easier class to learn the pvp ropes and then bring out the ele.

the class learning curve is really steep. reminds me of the EVE learning curve.
if you havent seen it…
http://www.restokin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Sensory_Overload.jpg

lightning whip seems to take out the illusions pretty fast.

I just made rank 17 on my ele and im getting a few more lights turned on with how to play it.

Playing an ele in spvp reminds of playing street fighter2. How long does it take to figure out how to make the triple dragon punch come off??? problem is that some of the ele combos are not that obvious or are obvious but the application isnt…

What kind of PvP you play makes a huge difference in what role the ele can play.

Turn off melee assist? really?
Ill try it. What is the effect of melee assist on BS?

I guess i should be more clear that I am working on this in Spvp.

Is that generally how people land this?
rtl/updraft/BS

Any other tricks on this?

yeah no i agree. my issue is me.
trading traits makes almost no difference in my combat. But im getting better.

Made rank 17 last night.
Although i think rank is useful for a statement of how much experience i have its not a very good indicator of how good I am.

I just moved on to dagger mainhand and i am trying to get some of the skills down.

Burning speed is giving me some trouble in its usage.
it doesnt seem to target and i find myself burning off in unexpected directions.
Or zooming right past everyone.

Can anyone give some advice on how to play this?

Its a pretty high damage attack and missing it is a little nerfing.

yeah its not just the ele.
other classes will get owned by players with more experience.

On the ranked pug spvp stuff i was doing great. then i switched to a regular server and i just get slaughtered.

the pvp here is just hard.

design issue.
DOWN State Grasping Earth causes self CC.

When this is cast with no target is cast on the ele doing nothing but effectively CC’ing the ele.

The effect can not be interrupted and generally auto targeting has to be turned off to effectively use RTL.

I dont think its just about being strong…

whats the easiest class to learn to on? thief?

I have been struggling to figure out the ele in spvp. am rank 15 now.

The issue i am having is that im not having fun playing the spvp game. No “that was cool” moments. no thrill of a close match. no thrill of victory. no thrill of defeat.

All i feel when playing is a constant slight frustration. Nothing feels effective. my big attack does not really do any damage or just plain misses. This is not a dig on the ele. I understand the ele well enough. I switched up to a mesmer and felt the same thing.

My score is sometimes on the top of list but it didnt feel that way while playing the game. I always feel like im on the bottom. My score is higher than the people i can not beat in combat.

Does it get more fun once i understand the game more? Is the learning curve more like eve and if i stick with it ill like it.

or is it just not designed to be fun? More designed for tournaments and such.

Go to the mists.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/b/b7/Hero_panel_pvp.jpg/250px-Hero_panel_pvp.jpg

this is such a useful tool to learn this class.
play around with the different traits/weapons/bonus’s. use the target dummies, try to beat the npc classes.

Dagger off hand adds so much spice to the class.

scepter earth attack 1 with high condition damage is deadly.
Likely the best or one of the best attacks the ele has DPS wise.
stacked up its well over 1k dps sustained.
its also a projectile finisher for each of the 3 shots it does.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_2_amaa/

“Ok, so this is kinda secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. I can tell you because it’s easy to say and really hard to do.
We have a system which lets us run the old build and the new build at the same time. So we don’t need to take the old build down when there’s a new one, we just also host the new build.
That’s it, it’s that simple in concept. But complicated to implement.”

well they do have that system where the they can change the build with no downtime by having 2 servers mirroring eachother in the same world. read the reddit ama. facinating stuff.

If the other build changed nothing client side you may have been using a different build and would not know it.

it might be useful to check the build being used… when things like this happen.

I have been experimenting with the flaming ax conjure and here are some things i have noticed.

i turn on fast ground targetting so that the cast is a single button press.
its a 1/4 second cast time

Axe can give aura bonus : it has a leap finisher which grants an aura. It also has a fire ring to create that combo.

It can be cast and used WHILE in mist form.

The plus damage in trait lines effect the ax.
+10% while in earth/fire/air makes the ax do +10% while in that atunment

the base damage is pretty good.
auto attack is 900 range 260 base damage 1/2 second cast. it appears to be very fast. the auto attack alone is enough to hurt folks not just tickle.

I use the axe after i have cycled air/fire/earth/

when i burst through my initial damage cycle the axe is good enough to continue to do decent damage and keep the fast hard feel of the ele.
the default charge time last long enough for me to feel like i have it but short enough that when it leaves im ready to recycle atunements.

when i use ax i generally use arcane shield/axe/mistform/great sowrd or elemental.

well no… you dont need to dance fast just because you need to dance.

my goto skill is RTL.
thats a 15 sec cooldown. thats the default atunement cycle time.
If i take a 20% reduction on air spell recycle time that brings it down to 12.
20 points of arcane will make the attunement recharge 12 seconds.

So i want rtl to always be available at CD then i need to have roughly 12 secs on my atunement swap. I dont want anything else in scepter/dagger air that recycles that fast save for attunment bonus run buff but i can deal with that in other ways.

So speccing over 20 in arcane is done because i want the grandmaster trait slot or the run buff from dancing. i guess the 10% on crit at 25 might be buildable too…

I find that i do more DPS if i stay longer in atunments that provide that dps. generally earth.

You need to have arcane 10 either. the bonus for swapping atunments is fine but i generally only use it for the run buff and there are other ways to deal with that.

well i knew too kilger
i also know that i used to die if i mist formed more than 3 times or so in the past.

in pve it seems i still get a down penalty.

i did it both ways tonight. nothing has changed.
and mist form to use conjured weapons while in mist form.

He just caught a glitch or something and realized his mistake… Im guessing.

Wildclaw.6073:

you dont know who i am so what do you know about truth.

All I know is that you said " I have builds where i have 0 arcane.", and that is about as big of a warning flag as you can get when talking to an elementalist. There doesn’t exist any good elementalist builds that have 0 points in arcane.

so what. I have builds with 30 arcane. 20 arcane. 10 arcane.
point is that you were rude and kitten me off. “QFT”. literally careless man.
being angery makes me a little stupid so…
maybe you are right. ele is a hard class to use. It could easily be that im just not good at it. Hard to judge as very few people play ele in spvp that i see.

However It does make a difference having a good build or bad build for me.
but it feels about the same either way and its hard to tell.
Best i have had is 13 kills in one map…

it feels like an uphill battle all the time.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Buchfink.8613:

Yeah right.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Downed_penalty

I have some true stories too:
*I captured all the points while in downed state. Moved around the map in mist form. It was 8v1 but the opponents just couldn’t kill me.

*I specced healing recently. With enough healing power you rally yourself after mist form.

well the wiki is wrong or the down state mist form is broken in pvp. or the damaging mist trait breaks the down penalty.

vapor form does not reduce your returning health any longer in spvp

Avatara.1042:

If you use Vapur Form while you are both downed, the Engineer will simply heal, while you will exit Vapour closer to death.

possibly true. i had the trait that damages while in vapor/mist form though.

Buchfink.8613:

Yeah right.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Downed_penalty

I have some true stories too:
*I captured all the points while in downed state. Moved around the map in mist form. It was 8v1 but the opponents just couldn’t kill me.

*I specced healing recently. With enough healing power you rally yourself after mist form.

well the wiki is wrong or the down state mist form is broken in pvp. or the damaging mist trait breaks the down penalty.

so i figured out what i was doing wrong with my ele against the thief…
In the word of the PCGamer folks “slow down”

I was switching atunments too fast and trying to use too much of the close range abilities.

If i slow down and stay at more range the thief is not a problem.

I used to play scepter focus and that setup makes the thief easy. but i noticed that i really wasnt using the focus all that much. the difference was i stayed in attunments longer and stay at range longer.

does that work against players though….

Wildclaw.6073:

lol. Without traits I would:

• take 50% more damage most of the time.
• only be able to dodge half as often most of the time.
• be moving much slower most of the time.
• not be able to get 10+ might stacks.
• not regenerate an extra 4k health every 10s (more if running with healing gear)
• not be able to get rid of conditions with ease.
• not have +20% crit half most of the time.

how do I say this….you’re probably right that it wouldn’t make a difference for you. For somebody with a GOOD build, it makes a ton of difference

QFT

you dont know who i am so what do you know about truth.
without all those things a really good ele would likely still beat most average eles with all those things.

yes there are practice classes in the mists over by the glory vendors near the underwater practice area.
They are not terribly useful but its a good place to practice my finger dex as long as i dont fight to the npc.
I mean expecting the npc to do something, which it will, and then preemptively countering it.

I wish that the mesmer npc used illusions though so i could practice the mesmer shell game. that ruined me in pvp for a long time.

arcane shield trait has no visible signs.

I see it explode once in a while by the damage numbers but i have taken to not using it and dont miss it.
same with earth armor.

glass cannon or defensive most of my tanking and survival comes from my usage of utilities and weapon skills not from traits.
I used evasive arcana as well.
on or off i dont really notice it. combos and all.

but its a good point that people do this involuntarily already.

so no challenge really needed.

the game really needs better communication.
The voice chat in DDO was helpful to PUGS.
sure guilds and whatnot are going to use a third party system but casual players who REALLY need the voice instructions dont have it.

It doesnt have to be voice though.

A better in game text chat system would help too.
calls for help. expanded target calling.

Its really important for mesmer fighting to know how to deal with targeting with the illusions. it would be nice if the practice mesmer npc in the mists used these.

warmage how long before you do notice?
The first thing would be swiftness from attuning to air if setup that way.
I have builds where i have 0 arcane.

when i run this kind of setup, ani may be different, and with dagger off hand i generally go air for the RTL then fire for the ring and the grab then earth for another knock down and then the big slow ae bleed with an arcane shield on. ani likely uses the earth armor for a like effect.

I try to go to water on an as needed basis but generally i use water after earth just before i get back to rtl to clear out conditions and turn on some regen.

However when i f it up i hit water after fire before earth.

heh. i know it looks so cool. reminds me of an eddie murphy comedy routine about watching rocky. that is exactly the kind of thing i want to do. I need to run away more though.

I use a nostromo and i hear that razor is coming out with some left handed gaming devices too.

I still get finger tied trying to hit all the right keys but im getting better. even when i end up in the wrong element i know what i can do from there and my finger accuracy is improving.
I havent macroed anything yet….

its cool to see but its way more difficult to do then what they show.
maybe they should also show the hundreds of deaths before they got there too.

Its like looking at a nice painting and then trying to paint it with no skills but the same brushes and paints.

Where is this lord in the mists?

I get your point about playing defensively and i do work on my defensive skills.
I want to see an ele take on both the thief and the necro NPC’s at the same time using dagger off hand.

yeah i likely am. so the thief gives you no trouble?
interesting… as its burst damage is high enough to rack up 15k damage in a few seconds.

If its no trouble for you than you should be able to take on the thief and the necro at once.

maybe you cant answer the question because you have not done it?

Im thinking more that they should balance the ranks not just by points but when those points are generated.

so that the matching gets based more on a point signature, a graph of points over time, rather than on just raw score.

or as a friend of mine pointed out allow some mode of existing voice chat to access the game.

So that the game doesn’t do anything but manage the information not the actual voice chat.
Right click you and use the option of join your voice chat and it connects mumble or what not to the settings you provided in the options of your character.

I would like something more like eve has where i can show my awards and skills and bio and messages and whatnot that i choose to show in game.

Mists: which practice NPC gives you the most challenge with the ele.

for me it generally is the thief.

That is the only one that consistently gives me trouble. I can generally beat it but often it get me to a down state and ill just let it kill me as its faster than beating it.

When i do everything right i can beat it with almost full health.

the warrior is likely the easiest.

I bet i could take out the guardian and the warrior at the same time.

huh i missed the dagger/dagger part…. i dont know much about dagger dagger but i know the trait\skill set used here.

i use scepter/dagger mostly. I am going to try out dagger/dagger as i have pretty much done all i can with scepter/dagger at the moment.

kitai it will help you a good deal to spend about an hour in the mists messing with different combinations and fighting the practice npcs.

a basic 30/0/30/.. (10)
or a (10) /30/30 build.

it will help you a great deal in pve if you get yourself to about rank 10 or so in spvp.

at 41 i can take on 2 level 44 mobs pretty easily and 3 level 44’s if do it right.

you might be right.

so try it. forget my opinon or what i said there. just try to get a kill with no traits set.

man that hurts my feelings.
i am only rank 14 and i have only spent hours trying to find combinations i like…
the ele is hard though.
I still am under the impression that a good ele player with a bad build is way better than a competent ele player with a good build.