Guild Wars 2

If Arcane Shield broke stun then it has an extra benefit over mist form. You can use your skills and utilities with arcane shield up. The question is what you like more: block 3 hits or invul.

Littlefeather.8623:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

@Pecar I’m just wondering how did You get shelter interrupted while that skill is blocking EVERY atack while casting

It does get interupted rarely, I think its due to the timing of when its actually casted and if you get a CC on you.

That and CC based fields. I don’t think you can use shelter and walk into something like a static field and not get stunned (without stability of course).

Yes there are. I believe Excala’s d/d guide has a staff guide link. On top of that you can read this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Help-with-my-WvW-build/first#post2270072

I helped another individual with staff ele questions so that might help you as well.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Thank you for that very condescending statement of yours. Your GW2 101 and tips and tricks helped a lot too. You must be pro.

I think that CF with the stunbreak is useful. Removing the stunbreak would make the skill not so appealing to me anymore, and that is my personal preference.

Anyhow, with regards to comparing CF to Portal, maybe you should’ve compared it to more similar mes utilities like Blink, MI, or Decoy. These three serve their purpose even without the stunbreaks so I’m expecting similar changes done to them or they just leave CF and LF alone. Armor of Earth and Mist Form should have been the candidates for the stunbreak removal and then a major reduction in CD rather than CF and LF.

I’m only returning your own attitude. If you dislike it then don’t do it in the first place.

You know based on your reasoning eles are like trash tier and they just get condi locked over and over.

CF is useful either way and if it was your personal opinion then fine. But you made it seem like the most useless spell in the world if it doesn’t have a stun break. On top of that you acted like burst 3-4 condis is useless. Like mesmers not having portal decreases their team utility and in combat mobility. Without CF Eles would have less access to burst condi removal which will affect their survivability. It was a comparison of the importance of a utility in terms of build diversity (you can run signet heal + CF + say -20% on cantrips or fall trait instead of water V or ER).

MI is like mist form if both had their stun break removed. MI with stun break is very useful you can break stun then summon two clones and shatter. Without it, it may not be as useful. Already people are running without MI in some builds and replacing it with portal, veil, signet, and arcane theivery. Mist form breaks stun and makes you invul to damage for a short period of time. Now if mist form doesn’t break stun then it isn’t that good anymore and you might want to swap it for another utility.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

CuRtoKy.8576:

Cleansing Flame will still be useful. It is like mesmer portal even though it doesn’t break stun it still has a purpose.

Removing 3 conditions once every 30-40 seconds in a condition heavy environment where every ranger and necro has insta bleed on every auto attack is just.. I don’t know what to say.. really. They could’ve made it 4 or 5 (5 maybe too much) since 3 is just not worth it IMO as a utility. and then COMPARING IT TO PORTAL??? Dear Lord, the sky is falling.

lol what dear lord. I don’t know what to say. 3 condi removal instant with 4 (traited) is good. I’m sorry if you get hit by every condi known to man. There is a dodge roll and also move around. If you try to 1v10 and get constant condis then that is your fault not Anet or the game. Learn to play the situation. I’m sure other professions would love an instant burst condi removal. On top of that why did anet give Water XI give an internal cooldown for sPvP due to burst condi removal?

Also learn how to pull people to you into an environment that you as an elementalist has an advantage. I would think after Excala’s guide everyone would know to use the environment. It seems like you aren’t playing guild wars 2.

Portal is a utility that gives Mesmers certain things. It doesn’t need a stun break or anything just the mechanic itself. Cleansing Flame without stun break gives Eles burst condi removal, the mechanic itself is useful regardless if it is a stun break or not. That was the point.

Dear lord I wish a stone wall is created that said “Discussion open to good Eles please”

I would like build diversity too like mesmers but the unfortunate thing about Elementalist is that they lack sustain/base defenses which forces them to go into defensive trees (15 water and 30 arcana)

I used to run an aura buff build 0/10/10/20/30 . I think having an additional water trait like boons on cantrips outweighs the benefit of air 15.

Kniphis.9725:

So I’m tweeking…I currently run a build with PVT armour, scholar Runes and a mixture of zerk / Cleric trinkets, mainly for PvE / Fractals but I’m branching out with a new computer coming to WvW.

So I’m thinking I need to toughen up a bit, I’ll swap some cleric (vitality seems more or less useless) in, maybe run some Divinity Runes and all stat trinkets, for a blanket improvement.

My only issue is as I do this I lose Power…a considerable amount, I can counter this with increasing crit chance / Dmg but it pains me to see that Attack Number dropping….So just wanted to hear how much Power, people think 1% Crit Dmg is “worth”

Trying to optimise I’m sure other people have had this dilemma, thanks

In terms of stat importance (offensively): Power and Critical damage are equal. You want a decent amount of power and at the same time have high critical damage. If you are low in one or the other it isn’t good. Like if you have 2300 power but like base critical damage I would decrease power and up critical damage. If you have say 1500 power but 120% critical damage then I would decrease critical damage and up my power stat. I find it reasonable to have like 1700-1800 power with 60-75% critical damage.

This build lacks a lot of sustain that a D/D ele needs. The sustain comes from Water 15 minor trait and 30 Arcana trait Evasive Arcana. Going 30 in air takes at least one of these sustain sources away. Going into earth on top of that removes another source of sustain. The build that would work out well are the builds already out: 0/10/0/30/30, 0/20/0/20/30, 0/0/20/20/30 . All work pre and post patch (if the leaked notes are correct).

D/D builds would be a version of Excala’s WvW builds. 0/10/0/30/30, 0/15/0/25/30, 0/0/10/30/30, 0/0/20/20/30.

S/D build I would use 0/20/0/20/30 and you can look up Zoose for that style of play.

Great guide here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-5-12-12/

lol these threads again

Scepter damage will be the same as always. It is only feels gamebreaking if you are like trying to duel or something. Outside of that in sPvP it will be the same. You can run 30 air for more damage and try to roam and gank or you can run the more defensive sustain build at 0/20/0/20/30 which people run. In WvW in a 1vX situation or in larger fights you won’t have sustain with 30 air since you have to take out traits from water or arcana. You will lose either water 15 or Evasive Arcana.

Cleansing Flame will still be useful. It is like mesmer portal even though it doesn’t break stun it still has a purpose. If you want quick condi removal you would take cleansing flame. If you feel you don’t need that and want something else you can take that. Previously, cleansing flame was extremely useful since it breaks stun and removes 3 condis.

Focus needs a rework it doesn’t work as well as Dagger OH for almost every situation.

Glenstorm.4059:

Wow, thank you so much. Excellent post. You’ve pretty much addressed all the questions I had, and then some. I’m going to be using this post as the baseline for my future Staff builds.

For your “baseline” stats (15k hp/2.6 armor or 16-17k hp/2.4 armor with 20-25% crit chance and 50% crit damage): are these stats possible to acquire using only Exotic armor and trinkets? I was trying various combinations of Knights/PVT/Valkyrie armor and Knights/Valkyrie/Berserker trinkets but couldn’t get those values. (The only Ascended piece of gear I have is my Berserker Circle of Logic amulet, and I’m working towards the rings and accessories.)

Np trying to help all the eles out there. As for my personal baseline you can achieve something like this: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|6.1p.h1h|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.71g.1n.71g.1n.71h.1n.71h.1n.a1.1n.a7|1i.61.1n.61.1n.61.1i.61.1i.61.1i.61|0.a6.0.u38b.u58b|0.0|1n.1o.1t.1v.28|e

The problem with exotics is that you don’t have an upgrade slot with power, toughness, critical damage you only have power, vitality/precision, critical damage. If you managed to remove 100 toughness from the build above you an add it into vitality for 1,000 more hp giving it 17k hp and 2.4k armor. My baselines are just what I personally like and feel comfortable with. Your comfort level may be different so I would use that as a reference to tweak your style.

Having ascended gear is much better and I tend to like the zerk/valk over pure zerk since it gives me that extra health and eles don’t need a lot of critical chance since we have a high uptime on fury. You can cast something like Air #2 and before it hits swap to another attunement to get fury.

jportell.2197:

But no boons from those stun breaks or condition removal. The only thing you don’t get in your stunbreaker/stealth (no duh!) none of our stun breakers do damage inside the skill themselves and none of our stun breakers remove conditions. And none of our condition removers break stun.

Blink is a lower CD than LF and it can be traited to be 1200 in a trait line that is used by mesmers often. No damage on blink allows them to blink into group without being in combat unlike LF.

Mirror Images produces two clones which you can use for your shatter skills. On top of that it can be traited to inflict conditions on your enemies or traited to increase damage or decrease damage.

Decoy stealths.

It is silly to say Eles have it better. No profession can have it all

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

I usually do 48 and it takes maybe 4 shuttles of bombs. I’m a guardian though and I usually swap to PVT gear for the bomb/cannon part (let’s face it, most of us use MF gear for Dredge), so I don’t really understand the concept of suicide run lol. Just depends on what kind of party you end up with. Stealth and speed boost makes the entire thing a joke.

But if you suicide in a bad comp you can do it in 2 or 3 runs of bombs. You can use stealth and swiftness but it just takes longer and most people don’t want to add time on an already long fractal.

WvW (in large groups/zergs) it is important to do damage but not that important where you want to stack all zerk. You need a balance between damage and defenses. You don’t want to die fast since that rallies the enemy down players.

With that in mind your fire trait should be +10% when attuned to fire rather than cantrips grant you might. The reason being is that the cantrips you have are mostly used for defensive purposes. Cleansing flame to remove condi and mist form as an oh crap have to be invul against this burst. You wouldn’t go oh man I need more might and burn cleansing flame and mist form only to not have it up when you really need it.

If you don’t want to go fire then there is always 10 air for bolt to the heart or 10 earth for armor of earth at 50% hp (which you will get from time to time in fighting big groups).

I recommend water 30 (cleansing water) for the extra condi removal and this allows you to change water V for something else like Arcane Abatement (fall damage) or reducing cantrip mastery without losing condi removals (only 1 is lost from attuning to water [from 2 to 1 if cleansing water is used]).

As for stats, my base lines are 15k hp with 2.6k armor or 17-18k hp with 2.4k armor. Both of these with 20-25% critical chance and 50% critical damage. I would work around those baseline stats. If you are the support staff ele in your group/team I would get a bit more healing power and defenses to support your group. If that isn’t your role then I would use the trinket slots to stack some damage stat. Good ones are: Zerk/Valk Ascended, Cavalier Ascended, and Celestial Ascended. Alternatives are: Knights or Soliders ascended when you need more pure stats and less critical damage and Berserker if you have enough defenses (like around my baseline recommendations).

As for your heal I would recommend the signet heal (due to the arcana traits it gives you a lot of sustain since Attunement and Evasive Arcana counts as a spell for the signet heal). Ether Renewal is another alternative if you need more condi removal. Glyph isn’t worth it since it only gives the boons which you will get enough of from swapping attunements already + boon duration runes. I would use arcane blast since you ranging enemies. Arcane wave isn’t needed if you run sigil of battle on your staff you will get enough might stacks and the arcane blast will add to your dps when you are running in a small group roaming around in WvW. Swap to arcane wave when say you are in a zerg v zerg.

Finally for your elite I would grab the conjure greatsword. It works well offensively and defensively. If you are in a bad situation (say your team gets flanked) or you are caught out of position (walking to where the battles are at) you can quickly escape with FGS #3 and FGS #4. And offensively you can you the evade frames on FGS #3 against zergs or just move as a group with FGS #1 which auto tracks and pierces enemies. Extremely useful with skill lag.

The problem I see with the build is low critical damage.

Cleansing Water is needed due to low condi removal in WvW that your current build has from utilities. Consider using Zerk ascended back piece, Cavalier accessory (on one), and use zerk/valk rings for both rings. For food use crit damage + either power or precision as your second. The reason is that your sigil of battle will give you a lot of might stacks and critical damage will greatly benefit from that (I like at least 50% or more critical damage).

If you are in a good group with good dps you can clear the mobs and proceed forward easily (there is a trick/pattern to it). If you are in a group with low dps or in a strange comp then you might have to resort to suicide runs since you may not have the dps to deal with it.

Different strat depending on your group.

Content can be temporary or not and the same complaints will be made. The reason is that any PvE based content will become repetitive or boring over time. The reason is that it becomes extremely easy once people master it.

If a content is not temporary it is a nice addition to the game world but after a while it becomes easy and then everyone will get bored and want something new (and at the same time rewarding). So the end result is that people will constant want new things to do. Expanding the map will take time since you have to do the art, scripting, reward system, story (how it fits into the lore), and among other things so to say that new maps could easily be added is silly. Remember southsun in November? That place was dead because there wasn’t really any thought that went into the map to make it interesting like rewards, meta events, and things of that nature.

Balance is awesome regardless of what game mode you enjoy the most. Since you want every profession to be valuable in its own way to any group.

If these leaked notes are real then the Ele meta won’t change:

0/0/20/20/30 with geomancer’s is good pre and post patch (Excala’s build)
0/10/0/30/30 still good pre and post patch with aura share (team based) or for the other good water traits
0/20/0/20/30 s/d build still good as it was before
0/30/0/20/20 or 0/30/0/30/10 s/d build is still good as it was before for 1v1 or small group encounters (2v2, 3v3). On top of that there is now a reason to use one of the grandmaster traits unlike before where you get +10% dmg in Air or -20% recharge on Air spells for your 30.

Fire is still lackluster and based on the notes there are very few changes to it compared to the other lines. Earth 30 is questionable since a s/d condi build doesn’t work really well due to the lack of condi spells outside of a few on scepter. Signet trait on earth 30 forces you to run heal signet to maximize heals due to the lost of EA. If you don’t run signet heal then you really lose out on a lot of heal compared to a player running 20 earth and 30 arcana. And you can’t use all signets on your bar because you would need something defensively like condi removals or mobility/invul (mist form/LF). 30 Earth can still work as a niched build with geomancer and rock solid.

What they need to do is to redo glyphs and conjures because at this point it isn’t useful for most players in most situations. The cooldowns are too high or they don’t add much outside of very niched situation (AC p1 frost bow). Eles don’t need more damage on silly spells like LF. This is similar to RTL 20s if it hits a target. Most people use these spells for worst case scenarios. What needs to be done is to lower cooldowns on certain utilities and give more defensive play and interesting options (like mesmer portal jukes for example) not add additional damage to utilities so that Eles can be like GC thief and just burst combo al day. Glyph of storms is a good example of something interesting but not used because the cooldown is really high for what it does.

Vitality is needed at some point due to initial burst damage and due to certain % hp mechanics. Having additional hp will combat this even though your heals will heal you for a smaller % of your total hp. It is a fine balance similar with toughness and vitality.

As for the trait line changes I don’t think it will do much since going 30 into fire or air sacrifices too much. 30 Arcana is really good due to EA and it reduces the cooldown on attunements. At the same time, this line synergies really well with water 15 minor trait. The faster you can swap to water attunement again the more you can heal through water 15 and EA. So from a survivability perspective you would use 45 points on these lines giving you 25 unused short of the 30 needed for any grandmaster trait in any other line (specifically fire and air).

On top of that, the fire and air trait lines give offensive stats and at the same time they are loaded with offensive traits. What Ele needs more are traits with defensive properties in fire and air or traits like Arcana VI. Arcana VI benefits from critical chance (damage stat) but at the same times gives you something to use defensively (Vigor). So I don’t think these trait changes will be enough for most people to go deep (30) into fire or air since Elementalist have the lowest base stat of any profession in the game. These changes are similar to some of the trait changes previously like Water X (Cleansing Water). Like really does anyone use that?

I think the signet they will do or should do would be like signet of air for builds without a lot of swiftness. AoE blind for defensive purposes, stun break, and you won’t use it as often offensively compared to other signets.

Armor of Earth is just a silly cantrip. Such a long cooldown for stability since you can easily get protection from switching into earth which gives you 5s of protection compared to what 6s of protection for armor of earth. Glyphs are just silly since they don’t provide much compared to cantrips or arcane utilities (even if all the glyphs have stun break).

I think Arenanet needs to like redo glyphs along with conjures as well. And on top of that knock down the cooldowns for some utilities like Armor of Earth and glyph of storms.

Zenith.7301:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Of course all those ppl that don’t know the potential of a burst build and how to survive with it will only speak nonsense.

Yeah, that’s why you remained vague about said build.

This LightningBlaze dude posting in elementalist threads claiming this godly glass/dmg build he uses. Yet he has no videos or anything to show proof of it. Every top level (spvp and WvW) ele has a guide, build, or videos to prove their skills.

On top of that the math doesn’t work out. 1.2 ratio on Air #2 + 2400 power (food + high power glass build with some knight pieces) + high end weapon damage (1009) + 2.75 crit damage = 3k damage on 2.6k armor targets (which is like what most damage based bunker eles run). Bit from FA runs a ~74% crit damage with 2.7k armor with 16-17k hp build. 0.4 ratio on both arcane skills and 0.7 on switching to air attune. At most you’ll get like 7-8k damage on a 2.6k armor bunker target which is like 50% of their hp. And this is the high end range of that damage. At the same time, you have to waste 2 utilities for this which leaves you with one for a stun break or condition removal. Anyone who is skilled will tell you that there is a disadvantage with having these utilities.

As for the OP, the only time you would take like 10k+ damage and die from air attunement + arcane spells is if you are built glass with base/low hp + armor/toughness.

Jayne.9251:

Actinotus.6410:

Le Rooster.8715:

LETS WIN THIS SOS

Agree. SoS needs to bring the pain tonight. FA and TC assume too much…

Yep I think it would be hilarious if you kicked both our kittens.

But don’t think any FA have posted yet in thread. I suspect they’re all currently in one of the seven stages of grief (thinking denial phase right now) cos they thought they were shed of us, lol.

I did so HA! Here I thought TC has like the best intel xD . Either way since we can’t get rid of TC we thought (based on suggestion here too) to put a ring on it.

So like Jayne I hope you are available because we have a perfect match for you. Our supreme god leader of FA (Zoel) would like to take you up in terms of marriage. It has been weeks of this so I hope you won’t refuse :P

TC again :[ man. We need to break up this relationship now

Melkiah.2496:

The fact is that lightning flash does not work as a teleport but as a mere “very fast movement” to the target area (proof: you get all the conditions if you teleport with enemy fields between you and your ground target). Having this behaviour, it needs to have a clear path in order to work; if there’s an obstruction, an hill that can’t be climbed, or a gap between two pieces of land (eg. trying to teleport from one side of a breached wall to the other) the skill will fail and cause it to go on full cooldown. Seems it doesn’t work also on some stairs in keeps and towers (i believe it has something to do with those parts being destructible or not) but also work normally sometimes with high edges (eg. in borderlands, at the middle island you are able to teleport from the bridge level up to the ruins level by just using it on the edge of the high ground), so yes, its behaviour is not really clear

I just tested this in spvp against a Necro with fields, wells, and marks. If you teleport through these things you will not receive the conditions. The only time you might is if the target circle is slightly in the field then maybe. So being a “fast movement” based skill is not entirely true. It could be bugged in PvE/WvW since I am testing this in sPvP.

D/D needs more defense on fotm 30+ . If you run staff then a zerk based build is fine where you have good AR and LoS stack stuff with different fields.

It also depends on what you have in your group. If you end up in a PuG with no guard then this build wouldn’t be that great. But if you have a Guardian that is built as an anchor then I wouldn’t see a problem with this build granted you don’t get focus or go in first or something.

Not sure why you needed 15 arcana I would have drop 5 for like bolt to the heart.

Razor.6392:

welp keep using your useless D/D I guess.

D/D was only viable because of RtL

Nice explanation really. The only alternative for Dagger MH is D/F and why is that good? Mind explaining that over say D/D besides OMG RTL or RTL nerf as many have pointed out RTL can still be used as an escape as before and RTL isn’t the only thing of value on the Dagger OH.

Hamartia.3421:

I really don’t want to have to nit pick every part of what you’ve said because I’ve tried it and the damage is a lot lower. That’s really all it comes down to. Fire moves just hit hard and have short cooldowns.

Sure, you get a lot of % damage increases along the way— but percent damage increases can’t do much for you when your base damage is so low. 300 healing power and 300 vitality do nothing to help your damage. 20% reduced CD on air is crap compared to 20% reduced CD on fire, which hits much better.

Bolt to the heart only does bonus damage to those with less than 33% health. So its a 6.67% damage increase, not a 20%.

Those builds also throw away 3 moves that vastly increase your damage in favor of survival utilities.

Thanks for critiques.

I think there are some confusions here

Fire does have low CD, the build I just posted is using traits for PvP but you can swap out stuff for PvE dungeons like I said. For example going 15 air, 25 water for 2% per boon. The reason is simply from my experience running specific dungeon comps I get lots of boons (from myself when swapping) and from others. I can easily get 10% for all attunements and since you are running boon duration runes there won’t be any problems keeping it up. The thing is your build gives you more damage at the very beginning (first 2-3 fire damage skills) but I find you can get around that by staying out of fire attune before the fight like water/air attune (ideally air attune). Then you instant cast an air ability (ideally as someone is pulling). Swap to Fire (4 stack might + Fury along with 4% from boons) then hit arcane spells after fire field for vuln stacks (6%) then the usual rotation. Once you hit Fire again you’ll have a higher base % damage and higher at critical damage.

Power is a good stat don’t get me wrong but the scaling isn’t like 1:1. Only in an ideal situation like Fire grab or Earth 5’s high skill ratio where you get 1:1 damage to power ratio. For DT and phoenix the ratio is lower than Fire 5 or Earth 5. So you get less than 1:1 ratio and if your DT and phoenix hits hard like 2k base already then a 10% is 200 damage or 5% (50% crit rate) is 100. Which is why even if you want to go fire, 30 in fire isn’t good and the grandmaster trait isn’t that good compared to say 10 in air for bolt of the heart.

My experience using the build in dungeons with a 3 warrior 1 mesmer group for most encounters is that trash mobs die fast (if you have to clear them). And like champion bosses die really fast under Time warp with warriors tossing Fury and Might along with banners. As for legendary bosses they will survive a few rotations but it’ll hit 33% hp where you will now do more damage to help your team to finish something off while at the beginning you would do comparable damage in both builds and your warriors will burn all their burst to lower the boss’ hp. Being able to do more damage to lower hp mob is useful for trash mobs along with mobs with low hp mechanics like the first boss in CoF p1 or the champion risen abomination (as examples).

Hamartia.3421:

A lot of people have suggested that build instead. I don’t understand why except that it is more standard. It does not seem to do nearly as high of damage. The gear choices are absolutely tragic. Why would anyone need that much survival for PVE? There isn’t any content that hard in this game.

High level Fractals and Arah somewhat. For easier stuff you can toss full Zerk and it’ll be ok. The gear choices is a balanced approach so you don’t have to swap out gears but hey if you want to have multiple armor pieces feel free. The choices in that is surprisingly high damage with high survivability. Now you can like I said take out some valk or whatever and toss zerk for even more damage if you want.

Hamartia.3421:

Fire moves hit harder with this build than air moves do with that build. In practice, I did not find that I was able to get full might stacks without the talent— it might just be that the extra time accounts for user error/lag.

It also helps a lot with keeping up the 25 might stacks during a fight, when it becomes far more difficult to do this rotation perfectly— I’m almost never able to do this perfectly in an actual boss fight, but I can always maintain the 25 might stacks. It is possible that that talent could be swapped around though, and maybe even the points taken somewhere else.

My experience is that it doesn’t really matter plus instead of investing 20 points under fire for an extra 3 stack from casting DT again you could just run like sigil of battle which gives you 3 stacks of might on swap and since you are already stacking might on fire then swapping into earth or something you’ll have enough might without throwing 20 into fire. This opens up for air which gives you crit damage plus crit chance which increases your dps output.

Hamartia.3421:

It sounds like you’re suggesting abilities that are a lot more useful for pvp— just not a concern of mine as I don’t mind retraiting.

It’s possible that all the condition damage, with the 30% duration, is actually boosting the damage more than one would suspect without any additional crit damage beyond what might provides.

Condition damage is iffy even with 25 stacks of might. The build I just posted along with suggestions is aimed at bursting down easy targets as fast as possible like trash mobs, vets, silver mobs, and champions (dungeons). In dungeons and stuff you will burst down mobs really fast with a high crit damage along with a high power build which is what I posted. On top of that, I run bolt to the heart which gives 20% addition damage (for damage calculations it is like having 20% more crit dmg but only when an enemy is at 33% hp or lower). This gives you really high low hp burst dps to kill all the PvE stuff really fast. When mobs are dead condition damage is pointless since the mob is of course dead. And this is what PvE is pretty much about, killing stuff really fast. Conditions like burning and bleeding do good damage but it is over time and +condition duration just adds to this time which is again pointless when your goal in PvE is to kill stuff in a matter of seconds. Think warriors and why they are so valuable to dungeon groups.

My thought process:

10 into air = 10% additional crit damage vs 10 into fire = 10% additional damage in fire
40-50% crit chance means you’ll get this damage 40-50% of the time versus if you swap between (fire→earth→air→then fire again) that is like 33% of the time.

Bolt to the heart = 20% damage at 33% hp

15 air is similiar in damage to 15 fire

25 fire = 5% to burning targets vs 25 water = 2% per boon (at fire start, might + vigor from phoenix = 4% then swap to earth for protection + fury which gives you 8% and then swap to air for swiftness boon giving you 10% total). Swapping during earth 5 gives you these buffs allowing you to do more damage (both with and without arcane power).

Your build gets: Base crit damage + 10% in fire attune + 5% for burning targets
Mine gets: Base crit damage + 2% per boon (easy 6-10% damage all the time considering might and vigor on fire plus fury swap burst) + 15% additional critical damage + 20% from bolt to the heart

Even if you wanted to say drop 5 for the 2% per boon damage along with 5 in air and to go 10 in fire for 10% you are only losing 200 power and +5% to burning and you can go arcane spells causes vulnerability. Arcane Wave + Blast = 6 stacks of vuln (6%) + 1 stack per attack in Arcane power which gives you 10% additional damage at the same cost of losing 20 in fire.

I just find that the traits bolt to the heart and other % traits you can grab will give you more dps to go 100 to 0 most mobs in PvE.

Geotherma.2395:

• Fixed a salvaging bug introduced in the last patch that sometimes caused salvage kits to yield incorrect results.

They should say ecto rates or was it more than just ectos O.O

Mijo.3274:

After a good day of playing now i think i understand better this build, i actually owned really easily mesmers, necros, guardians, rangers and other eles in 1v1!
It may sound stupid, but i actually have problems with warrior and thief, having only 1 stunbreaker with 75s CD is deadly sometimes, i cant survive a 100B or backstab->spam2 while stunned, i suffer the burst more then the sustained dmg.

By the way i’m actually thinking about a change in the build, getting aquamancer alacrity instead of vital strike may be a good change, and ther’s 1 more thing did you guys tried the immobilize from signet of earth? i think it could be an awesome chain:
Updraft -> Signet of earth -> Dragon Tooth -> Fire Grab
gonna give this a try for sure…

Aquamancer is a good idea. Another idea for traits would be to use final shielding instead Arcane Mastery to block some attacks when you are cced and they burst you. Might be useful.

Signet of earth is nice for the 3s immobilize but the problem I find is that if the other person is smart they would remove that right away unless you stack like a Fire scepter AA or stack additional conditions on that person. Another interesting idea is to use glyph of the storm if you are planning on assaulting a far away point in a 1v1 setting. Dropping that under earth attunement would increase you defense through blinds and all of your scepter abilities in close range would force the person off the point or they would take a lot of damage while not doing as much to you.

Those are my suggestions, I typically run a similar build and trait with slightly different utilities than you do.

Your main damage stats are: Power, Critical Damage, and Precision

Condition damage is a minor damage stat for an Elementalist due to the amount of conditions you put out along with the scaling of condition damage versus the main damage stats. With this in mind some condition damage is good (through might stacking, sigil of battle, or celestial trinkets). However, you should not sacrifice too much of your main damage stat for condition damage.

I think the point is that RTL should now be thought of only as an escape since it isn’t a good reliable gap closer and that some players actually viewed RTL in this way so the nerf didn’t have a huge effect. Although, these same players including myself did abuse RTL with its low CD.

Yes I have had this happen to me before. I think part of the reason is that lightning flash is cast really quickly and it doesn’t register. With the nerf to mist form I am now spamming lightning flash as soon as mist form is finished. Previously, I would use it during mist form to enter towers or keeps when there is a large zerg on the gate.

It might be that lightning flash is slightly bugged atm. I do have issues using it now in certain conditions.

Here are my thoughts:

1. 30 fire trait I find is just wasted because your ring of fire will go from 6 seconds to 7.8 seconds. I just find that you will be able to stack might in the normal 6 second duration since you will cast the fire spells in melee and arcane + earthquake is almost instant. On top of that, Earth 5 gives you the might stack after the skill is used so this trait is wasted.

2. 20% on fire I don’t find that useful since you are going to use like say: Dragon’s tooth → Ring of Fire → Phoenix → swap earth → Earthquake → Earth 5 → swap air → Air 2 → some damage maybe air 3 if needed → swap fire. Something along these lines and when you go to fire again the 15 second skills will be up. The trait reduces these skills to 12 seconds but I don’t find that useful since it will be up under both conditions based on my experience. You can try this to see if it is true for you as well.

3. I would drop 20 in fire and go for 20 air with Bolt to the heart which helps you finish your enemies with higher burst damage. And the extra 20% for RTL.

I would suggest something along this for traits (from my previous s/d build):

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|b.1c.h1h.8.1c.h8|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1|2t.0.2t.0.2v.0.1n.67.1n.67.2v.0|0.k69.0.k38.u54b|39.7|1l.1u.1r.1t.28|e

or

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|b.1c.h1h.8.1c.h8|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1|2t.0.2t.0.2v.0.1n.67.1n.67.2v.0|0.f6.0.p38.u54b|39.7|1l.1u.1r.1t.28|e

I know this is a PvE build but I feel that these trait lines are very good for harder PvE stuff like dungeon bosses and at the same time it is good for WvW pvp if you ever wanted to go into it. This will decrease the amount of grind that you have to do since you have a set that works well for both game modes.

Yeah it isn’t a daily since I just did it upon reset just now and I didn’t get a reward

Buttercup.5871:

Curtoky, You might want to check the posts made by the people before you. Some people buy rares by the thousands, and then salvage them.

I’m counting on John. Last time he did a test he salvaged 1 million rares. Yes. One million.

Anyone here work for ArenaNet? Anyone know the actual code? Ok then. I have 2k ecto so to say I don’t salvage by the thousands is soo wrong just because I don’t post. I am just posting it out there for others to understand that the system may be more complicated than what it seems. This happens a lot when people write about stuff like RTL or something as if they know 100% how the system works when it is completely more complicated or about precursor stuff when the business side and such is complicated where they won’t have a system in place in a very short period of time. Please be careful what you post beforehand, just because someone choose not to post on these forums about things doesn’t mean they don’t know what they are talking about (I choose not to post because of individuals that jump the gun like this).

Salvaged pre and post patch and still getting 2 ecto and 3 ectos at about the same rates. The thing is nobody knows how ecto salvaging works like are there rates for 0, 1, 2, 3 ectos or is it more like rerolling where you first get a chance at ecto or no ecto (0 or 1) and then you get a % chance to reroll for chance at another ecto (0 or 1) and then for the 3rd you get an even lower % chance [think Minecraft enchantments].

The point is that it could be something wrong with 2 or 3 ectos so that would overall decrease people’s average salvage rate.

As for the price of ecto it increased after this thread and if you look at the sell listing you see that people are trying to make a quick profit like any other market that people “flip” . 1k listing at a specific price point smells of this, I am sure the price of ecto wouldn’t change if this thread wasn’t made

Without weapon swap on an Ele the focus will not see much use because it is only useful in very niche situations. However, most of the time the focus OH will not allow you to solve a lot of problems that you might run into as an Ele in the open field (WvW) and sPvP or solo queue tPvP. Dagger OH gives more than just mobility through RTL it gives a lot of control, defensive abilities, and burst damage. Burst from Fire 5 and Earth 5. Control from Updraft, Earthquake, and Ring of Fire. Defense from Cleansing Wave, control abilities, and Frost Aura (-10% dmg along with chill).

Focus OH first off lacks mobility. The fire skills are very lackluster with Fire Shield being one of the weakest aura out of the 4 possible ones. Flame wall isn’t that great compared to Ring of Fire on the Dagger OH since you are melee and having something close to you with a bigger radius allows you to do more things with it (might stack, leap, point control, etc). Water is pretty decent with the update. However, an extra chill I find does not help since you already have a chill on your Dagger MH so I would rather have something that is more defensive (frost armor) or damage. The Water 5 ability is good since the speed was increased a few patches ago and it is also a blast finisher. However, the focus lacks a good sized radius based field which allows you to easily drop it for might stacks or something. Air is bad due to the high cooldowns and it isn’t useful compared to what a Dagger OH gives you. Updraft is aoe, gives swiftness, and is a lower CD than Gale. The range on Gale is nice but as a Dagger MH you would have to gap close at range anyhow in order to be in range to do damage. And if the enemy is close enough the Dagger MH has an advantage with AoE based control (updraft, earthquake, ring of fire). Earth on the focus is good but I find that the invul on earth 5 isn’t that useful because the weapon lacks something like damage to make it useful.

Best information about D/D Ele: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-5-12-12/

Just look at the videos and read the guide to understand D/D mentality. For leveling just do a more damage spec and upgrade your armor, trinkets, and weapons every 10 levels. Event farm.

1. LoS and PbAoE: being able to use the environment structures (trees, walls) to protect yourself from enemy attacks while at the same time having your own attacks go through these environmental structures to damage the enemy is amazing.

2. Attunement swapping and using it to solve literally any problem thrown at an Elementalist.

3. Being able to free target without actually targeting an enemy. I love using this to quickly disengage or engage another enemy that just entered the battle. Along with the fact that you have to position your character correctly to execute skills instead of having to target so that your skills with follow that target.

4. Not a cheesey professions where either you burst with 1 combo and hope someone dies or you just bunker and do no damage. An Elementalist feels in between where they do damage not as high as say Warriors, Thieves, or Mesmers. At the same time, they can be durable and bunker like.

5. Lots of AoE

Chaith.8256:

Whelp, for being ‘useless’, it sure helping your mobility a lot still, innit? Elementalist is still in the top tier of mobility rating among all the professions.

The reason for the change was primarily PvP/WvW. Too much abuse to.. well, never die, ever. You get the good cooldown rate when you use it as a gap closer – you get punished when you use it to zap to a node or cheat death.

It was totally warranted, whether or not it makes you sad that your favourite weapon was nerfed.

Actually, you get punished for using RTL as a gap closer due to it not procing 20s under various conditions or at near max range. It is actually less punishing if you use it as an escape because you know exactly what you are doing and what to accomplish. If you use it as a gap closer and fail due to bugs, range issues, blinds/blocks/invul/etc then you are punished heavily because you will be closer to your enemy for them to engage, will not have RTL for mobility or escape for a VERY long time (40s), and you are prone to be dead if other people come to attack you while RTL is down.

ArenaNet should just make RTL a flat CD like 30s under all conditions. Like Pre-Patch: RTL escape – Extremely good RTL gap close – Ok, predictable, but you are only punished slightly if you fail. Post-Patch: RTL escape – Still really good RTL gap close – Terrible.

Either way Dagger OH is still the way to go because the only other option would be Focus OH (lol).

No I don’t think that idea is good. The thing with 2v1 is that it is based on blind trust where you don’t really communicate with anyone on the other servers. Yes I know people talk to opposing players on others servers. But hypothetically if you didn’t you don’t really know what the other server will do exactly (if you are part of the 2 servers attacking 1 server). So like sure both servers may 2v1 another server but at some point maybe one of the servers are like hey letkitten something completely undefended by the other server. In a way this is an interesting dynamic.

As for implementation, it will never work because if you are 2v1 a server and attacking their keep say in EB. You will obviously kill people from the other server when both servers break into inner. You (for your own server) want the keep for PPT but not let the other server who may have “helped” you with the 2v1 get it. It doesn’t solve anything since you have to consider who captures it and PPT

Bonedoctor.2796:

We will get the last laugh in the end this coming week , when your happy little family is broken up and paired against new servers. Without your alliance you will fall and fall in the rankings ,all you have done is make us that much better . We have had to adjust to this tag team and find ways to overcome it ! Will be funny to watch Db treat you like a tier 10 server when your on your own ….Gl to you all !

lol this dude is really mad or something. I find it quite funny you said this “we have had to adjust to this tag team and find ways to overcome it!” yet you are like QQ here about it lol so what is it? Overcame or no? lol . Yeah t10 exist and man DB must be some like some really good server in T1 ranked 1 right? Oh wait that is SoR, rightttt. I want to see what you say when you get matched against SoR + JQ. Like OMG soo much transfer and bandwagon on SoR and JQ we are like better than SoR + JQ they just have more people they suck blah blah something like that? lol

Seriously it is called WvWvW for a reason not Server v Server or Guild v Guild. Transfers, 2v1s, and such are part of the game no point in complaining every server in any tier does it. Also, that is like saying DB without those transfers wouldn’t be nothing. Like whatever just play.

Dub.1273:

Lorgus.6148:

Dub.1273:

Lorgus.6148:

Dub.1273:

http://gwscr.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=6
You can see a full solo of me, a 7 minute duo of us (third run after 3 month of zero AC) and some other things there. Duo’ing the burrow part is about 20 seconds.
With 5 men you can split (some people waiting at scepter search while others do burrow part) and killing bosses doesn’t even take 5 seconds then.
Also, farming AC rewards me with way more money than CoF or even Arah.

What do you know, even on that forum, where you go by the name “Sylars” people have called you out on dubious claims. As far as anyone’s concerned, you haven’t provided the evidence needed to back up your claims. Besides, this isn’t at all what the OP was looking for in an answer, so kindly take your ego elsewhere, thanks.

What dubious claims are you talking about that i didn’t proove?

Same ones discussed in this thread (easily photoshoppable pictures), please don’t waste time if you already know the answer

Highly doubt that since screenshots are accepted as proof there.
I don’t need to proove anything here, though. I answered the OP’s question with the right answer. I didn’t say pugs are capable of farming AC quick, just that it is possible to do so. Believe it or not, we are doing runs in the time mentioned above.

Actually if you claim something then you have to prove it. I can say I can clear AC p1 run 5 man group in 4 minutes. Now people will ask me to prove it because honestly I can be lying so unless I can prove it then it is just a baseless claim. Screenshots don’t prove much because if you can skip certain bosses then obviously that cuts down on the time. For example skipping Kholer reduces the time.

AusterlitZ.7941:

CuRtoKy.8576:

The question is what was skipped during that run? Kholer is a chest and gold loot. Spider boss? If you just do burrows + scepter find + final boss it is possible but definitely not better than CoF p1 farm with 2 gold loot + 3 chest versus this possible 2 chest + 1 gold loot. On top of that AC tokens can’t be used to get ectos easily like CoF.

maybe read the OP?he wants pvt gear,not to farm gold

How about you take your own advice because the question was answered. And I’m saying for the person that did AC really fast when everyone knows it isn’t that fast. Like maybe read above and look at context.

Also, for Tokens you get 60 then 20 then 10 then it depends on DR. So actually doing it faster gains you less unless you have a lot of alts.

The question is what was skipped during that run? Kholer is a chest and gold loot. Spider boss? If you just do burrows + scepter find + final boss it is possible but definitely not better than CoF p1 farm with 2 gold loot + 3 chest versus this possible 2 chest + 1 gold loot. On top of that AC tokens can’t be used to get ectos easily like CoF.

@Dub

No it isn’t it takes about 7-8 minutes without kholer (haven’t timed it yet) but with Kholer it takes 10-11 minutes.

@OP

The fastest is SE p1 and p3 then it is a toss up between AC p1 and HotW p1. Pretty much SE is the next CoF with 1 downsize and that is you get less gold from SE than CoF since CoF has two bosses that drop coin versus 1 in SE (the final boss drops nothing).

Uhhh what. The enemy has water fields too. That suggestion wouldn’t work because you would just have more people blasting it and getting the heal anyhow.

Static field is stronger since it doesn’t take have a 5 AoE limit. “AoE mitigation” is stronger than water fields. Running as a zerg you will in generally take less damage since AoE is capped. I don’t get the point of this where there are a lot of stronger things/mechanics in WvW. WvW groups benefit the most from team utility, fields, damage, and CC. This is why Hammer warriors, guardians, mesmers, necros, and elementalist are valued compared to other professions like Engi or Ranger. In a zerg they just give more. It isn’t that water field needs to be changed but rather WvW needs to be more interesting and dynamic rather than a Zerg fight being the best due to AoE mitigation and getting easy wxp + loot compared to other alternatives.

loseridoit.2756:

Dude all Aoe including time warp is capped at 5 random players. It takes coordination since any random player can ruin a time warp. I dont think you understand the game at all.

That is untrue. Not all AoE spells are created equally. Static field isn’t limited by 5 players. Technically it has no limit since you can stun 10+ people when they walk to it. Frost field has that as well when you walk in. Fire 5 on staff has a 5 player limit on each meteor.

loseridoit.2756:

What is hyperbole about kite wars? Putting your enemy in disadvantageous situation is a strong skill.

Every class can do that. It isn’t exclusive to Eles.

loseridoit.2756:

easy defeated by dodging. The problem is not exactly the lack of swiftness boon but the lack of swiftness uptime. Focus is a nicely design weapon in Wvwvw. Temporal curtain is awesome

RTL + Updraft combo easy to dodge. The point is Mesmers can force something like a dodge, con removal, or blink. They dodge the cripple that is fine, Mesmer is still in range to pull. They burn a blink on use OH focus that is even better. You know that a skill is on CD. They take a longer path to go around that curtain. That is fine the point is that a Mesmer can force certain things. Dodging counters most things in the game so what, it doesn’t take away from the fact that you are forcing the enemy to do something that they don’t want to do. Or you force the use of endurance or skills so that when you counter attack (if you choose to) you are at an advantage.

Eles build for swiftness they do not have skills that grant them easy swiftness. Air I (swiftness + fury on aura). Arcane V (swiftness on air attunement). Eles don’t get free swiftness it just feels that way since Eles don’t have anything else to spec into that is good from any trait line outside of Water and Arcana in WvW. This on top of the use of boon duration runes to extend the duration of boons. People that say Eles have easy access to swiftness or that they don’t have to spec for it don’t understand that Eles DO spec for swiftness (from traits and boon duration). It is just that the other traits aren’t good so you see Eles being forced to tunnel into certain trait lines.