Guild Wars 2

It’s because they do so much damage on hit… Joking.

What settings do you use on Dxtory?
I’m having trouble with it – I go from 60 Fps not recording to 10 Fps while recording with it however with Fraps I hardly get an FPS drop. =/

@Mindless, Mhm, I commented on your last one, I assume you let youtube “fix” the lighting? xD
I’ll link the thread here so it may not get so lost in the wilderness. – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/tPvP-DD-SD-Elementalist-Videos-11-29-12/first#post904519

@Blain, Haha, yeah, Ele is great for that. I especially love teleporting into unsuspecting zergs and updrafting/knocking them down while you proceed to RTL out of there.
I had a similar experience in sPvP too, I think it was on Foefire, I was using S/D too. There where 3 people chasing me, a Mesmer, Warrior and a Guardian and I just ran them round in circles for a while, untill RTL decided to get me stuck in the terrain (A couple of rocks near the Mine) then I was pretty screwed. =(
I don’t think people realize that being a distraction is actually a valid tactic and that usually they’re playing into your trap. I did it on the new map, again 3 (There was 4 until I updrafted them down the hole >=]) people chasing me (This time D/D) I kept them occupied for a while and because of it we captured all 3 points. =3

@Cres, I know but it would be great to have more, plus their threads are more dedicated to their own feats. I am surprised that pheo’s guide hasn’t been stickied, it really needs to be.

Seriously guys, aren’t you fed up of it already?
Can’t we get more stream/video threads or general “This is what I did on my Ele!” threads, PvE or PvP – anything is better than the doom and gloom that is constantly plaguing this part of the forum. ._.

So lets make this thread about sharing experiences, whether good or bad, funny or sad, it can be what ever you want, even the small things! (Screenies/Vids allowed ofc, just keep it civil, please)

I’ll start with something small – I was proud of myself when I solo’d the rampaging Golem (The event that is just down from the Fire Elemental) in Metrica province on my level 14 Human Ele, I used S/D and it was the 1st Champion I solo’d, I know it’s not an amazing level 80 Champ but it still makes you feel pretty kitten good. xD
I lost the screenshot though, well not lost it never took it. =(

So who’s next?

The C/D is perfectly fine, although I find no use for it, I have enough condi removal between regeneration and Ether Renewal but as TwoBit stated it could do with a bit of a change.

Arheundel.6451:

Semprenaviguare.2936:

hello , i am Elementalist Spvp and Tpvp 40 , i have only play elementalist ,
i have + 1000 tournement played
i play a elementalist tank/dps 0 0 10 30 30 with berserker amulet and sigil of energie .
on can trip specialisation .
i am a normal player , i play D/D

99% 1 vs 1 my opponent cannot kill me , and if a player are very good he can maybe kill me after 3 minute .
i can tank a position vs 2 or 3 player + 1 minutes .
i can tank graveyard vs 5 players ( medium player ) + 30 secondes .
i can fight fight and kill in the same time 2 thief without target , just radom aoe , dodge , and can trip survive .
mesmer isn t a problem , aoe party , finish clone
necro isn t a probleme i can remove all conditions when i want
war isn t a probleme , dodge , miss , dodge , miss cc ,
guardien tank not probleme i can /danse he cannot kill me .
guardien spirit is the same of war dodge , miss dodge miss .
engiener not probleme , aoe .
rodeur is not very difficult
i can rez a player on invulnerability or finish him on stability or invulnerability
i can rez himself if a heal elementaliste pet pop when i am on brume .

just elementalist spe who a god spé .
i don t want elementalist nerf because i am very happy play this class

but the reality is only that elementalist is op .
i am not a god , i am just a normal player !

i think too Elementalist D/D spé can trip is op .
because this specialistion have not probleme vs all class .

on pve can farm all event solo
can solo champion
can solo donjon , legendary boss and pack of mob .
on spvp can solo lord with 4 adds
on www can escap a bus , can fight and kill 1 vs 10 players unstuff ( look darkphoenix , is very good elementalist but i know much elementalist who make the same ) .

he have no counter class on 1 vs 1 for kill a elementalist .
and on battle fight just swat elements is a very good support !

You will never be able to tank 1 player of equal skill level who know how the ele works, you’re built for survival while you face people built for pure burst dmg who are unable to recognise how the ele works, give me a single burst profession who know you…and you go down in no time

Of course ele D/D tank got counter….an equally skilled player

From GW2 GURU FORUM:

@Prince vingador
why do people think ele is op? For me is one of the weakest class,i think mesmer are the op class in pvp,i have my share of pvp and eles are not op in any way.

P.S – You holding 2 people is pure bullkitten, take 2 decent players, a necro and mesmer…you last 0.5s, one shatter burst you and the other corrupt boon you at the right time…you are kaboom after 0.5s, Good Luck winning against players of 40+ when they put the matchmaking

I’ll be honest, rank means nothing at the moment, all it shows is how many games you’ve played which does not equate to play skill, I’ve been facing a lot more rank 30+’s recently and to be honest I’ve been dissapointed, I’m only rank 14 – I don’t PvP too often however I still manage to top rank 40 players, in fact not just myself but others of the same rank as me. Earlier there was a rank 4X thief who actually tried to use the rank 14 against me yet didn’t do so well himself considering his rank.

We only have one viable build and one viable weapon set, I don’t see whats OP with that. If they nerf us again I seriously might consider leaving the game and that not a threat at the company (I doubt they care about 1 person leaving) but it goes to show what they’re doing to their playbase, meta and how they’re actually ruining their ideals of an E-Sport.

S/D Op? Lmfao, to me its the second worst weapon set to use at the moment, worst being S/F.
I’ve noticed that a lot of high ranked players aren’t as good as their rank states.

No offence but WvW is not evidence enough to warrant any form of balancing (Unless it is completely broken) so those in WvW that cry over an Ele doing that need to check out other classes doing it, I’ve seen Mesmers to Necros do the same.
And honestly they can’t balance the classes too much other wise the Meta will just the X,Y,X,S and A always in the same comp and it will become stale, thats why they need the “Perfect Imbalance” so the meta is constantly evolving – there needs to be a counter to everything. And if I’m honest (Based on experience, so it may be that I’ve good had a good/bad experience in PvP) there is no real counter to a decent D/D ele (Note that I say decent) because I think they’re too balanced aka they have everything for every situation in one build. I hope that sounds right, I don’t really know how to explain it tbh. ._.

Hmm something may have changed then, can’t say I’ve had much experience res-shrouding lately as I’ve been on my Ele mostly. So it was probs a stealth nerf/fix or maybe they tried to fix something and broke that while doing so. =L

hackks.3687:

I’m not inclined to think it’s an exploit given that Engi’s and Ele’s can pop skills while casting stomp/revive that make them invulnerable. Other classes can do a variety of little tricks for stomping/reviving as well. I really don’t think it’s intended design though either. It’s just a bug that happens to have no effect on balance, and makes life a little easier on Necros. It’s not like it’s 100% reliable either and doesn’t work at all with reviving.

Even if you don’t spec for stability, shroud stomp is uber useful for finishing off downed players while you have low HP.

Almost 100% sure that it works while reviving. o-o

Comaetilico.3645:

Curring.9752:

Seetoo.9316:

1. If you’re not attunement swapping, you’re doing it wrong. You should be attunement swapping during a fight so as to get the most out of your elementalist. Elementalists were balanced around attunement-swapping, so anyone who’s not doing it is hobbling themselves. This leads us to a few of the next ones, including…

FALSE. Elementalists are NOT balanced around attunement-swapping. The community in majority wants it to be this way but it is NOT. How to tell?
- The arcane trait line reduces our attune swap cd. If it were true that we are supposed to swap as much as possible, then the cd reduction should be baseline.
- Trait lines cater to specific elements (more damage in fire/wind etc)
- Only 1 trait line builds around the idea of constant attune swap

For the statement “elementalists are balanced around attunement-swap” to be true, all traits must cater to this idea.

Again, it’s something we want. It’s something we’ve fooled ourselves into believing is true. Right now, it just isn’t.

Yup because to be an amazing Ele you need to stay in one attunement. Thats why all the other attunements are locked when you spec into one.
/sarcasm

As I read it… he is not saing that if u stay in asingle attunement u will work the right way… but simply that if we really were tought to work around attunement swapping all the time than there are great flaw in the trait design… he simply is stating that the elementalist trait line is not how it should be if we were balanced around the swapping (there should not be that much need to reduce the swap cd nor there should be that much trait that only work in asingle element…)

so… wile it’ s true that we NEED to switch element in order to be a decent class… our trait line does’nt seem to be INTEDNED for that…

It was a joke, reinforcing what he said, he is right – if I read him correctly.
Our traits cater to one element while being in that element (Unless we get lingering elements) so while our core mechanic is attune swapping our traits do not reflect this instead they favor traits that in reality you will only get 1/4 use out of them. It is very counter productive and I’ve been saying this for a long time.

Bsquared.3421:

Kardiamond.6952:

Oh I thought it was 12 sec, that what I had in mind, My bad my mistake! And I also thought I saw it pop in the video? Would have to check it again later.

It may have, maybe he’s running 0/10/10/20/30 these days (so he doesn’t get condition clears on regen).

Sadly, Corrupt boon isn’t as effective as people seems to think. I used it a lot with a DD Elem I was fighting, it only slowed him down a bit, not like when I cast it on a guardian and he has to retreat.

Each time I cast it on a DD Elem, they cast their boon right up after. And the conditions.. well like somoene said you don’t kill a DD elem with conditions.

Yeah, you’ll never strip all the boons off an Ele. We get one just for switching attunements, which with daphoenix’s build happens every 10 seconds or so, maximum. But it can help

D/D Ele’s are very tough to kill solo (just like stealth spamming thieves) because of their mobility. It’s why we all play D/D now since staff and scepter are so lackluster in comparison. I hope we don’t get a 2nd round of nerfing, but I’m bracing for it anyway (I don’t wanna get trucked like with the EA nerf, which I never imagined they’d remove all the blast finishers entirely. I thought we’d keep the 1 in earth, c’est la vie).

I feel this picture is relevant to this topic.

(I could have swore someone posted a reply to something I said, I must be going crazy.)

Personally I don’t think it’s an exploit, if it is then every class can exploit it. Stealth Stomp, Elxir S Stomp, Mist form Stomp ect. So if they do take this away from one class they must do it for all of the classes.

Seetoo.9316:

1. If you’re not attunement swapping, you’re doing it wrong. You should be attunement swapping during a fight so as to get the most out of your elementalist. Elementalists were balanced around attunement-swapping, so anyone who’s not doing it is hobbling themselves. This leads us to a few of the next ones, including…

FALSE. Elementalists are NOT balanced around attunement-swapping. The community in majority wants it to be this way but it is NOT. How to tell?
- The arcane trait line reduces our attune swap cd. If it were true that we are supposed to swap as much as possible, then the cd reduction should be baseline.
- Trait lines cater to specific elements (more damage in fire/wind etc)
- Only 1 trait line builds around the idea of constant attune swap

For the statement “elementalists are balanced around attunement-swap” to be true, all traits must cater to this idea.

Again, it’s something we want. It’s something we’ve fooled ourselves into believing is true. Right now, it just isn’t.

Yup because to be an amazing Ele you need to stay in one attunement. Thats why all the other attunements are locked when you spec into one.
/sarcasm

Bsquared.3421:

Klassic.8057:

who is daphoenix? never seen him in tpvp :|

He’s primarily a WvW player, and one of the best D/D I have ever seen. He’s basically impossible to kill whether the enemies are upleveled or not, even 10 on 1 (here, check out his video below). He’s 0/10/0/30/30 specced without powerful aura (as far as I can tell), meaning he’s got mad condition removal (cause cantrips grant regen, and regen clears conditions) and good healing power. He’s a beast. He’s what players think of when they say D/D Ele’s are overpowered, nevermind that he could probably pick up any class and roflstomp pwn folks…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2_GXr9o-Us&feature=plcp

Arheundel.6451:

But if we take all the weapon sets as they stand without any trait , just counting skill 1 to 5; we’ll see that d/d got a single condition removal!

So when talking about “huge condition removal” you should refer to the build itself no the weapon set, on its own d/d got far less condition removal than s/f isn’t that right?

D/D as a weapon set doesn’t have a ton of condition removal, but almost every D/D build (bunker or auramancer) will have 30 pts in water and will run triple cantrips. As i’m sure you’re aware (but outside non-Ele players might not be), it’s the water trait line and cantrips that give us such amazing condition removal. You can make a staff build thats EVEN BETTER than D/D for condition removal (because of healing rain) but you won’t be as mobile and won’t burst as well as D/D. Focus doesn’t have a lot of condition removal (none, it’s worse than dagger) but has more projectile shields and an invulnerability (which I don’t believe strips already applied conditions, ala mist form).

I would have thought people would have learned by now, you won’t kill a PvP specced Ele with purely conditions. You kill them with burst and immobilize/chill (but you must COVER your immobilize with other conditions, e.g., bleed, burn, poision, weakness, vulnerability, etc., to prevent chill/immobilize from being immediately wiped).

Also, I think the mobility of D/D ele’s messes with people (especially melee) and makes them THINK we’re tougher than we are. If you watch Dapheonix’s video’s, he’ll stand in a group of enemies for seconds at a time and take little to no damage, cause they’re facing the wrong way and he’s a constantly moving target. He also hides behind walls/boxes/tree a lot to negate line of sight and avoid hits. They see this as “he’s too mobile, I can’t hit him, the class is OP, nerf!” when in reality if THEY could turn their camera, hide behind obstacles, and generally react as fast as HE does, they’d hit him just fine. The issue is that he’s a superior player (far superior), and he could probably circle-kite them as a greatsword warrior…

As you should know it is VERY hard to burst down a D/D ele, mainly for the interrupts and the fact we can survive the initial burst just to heal it all back up. I feel like I have an excessive amount of condi removal, especially with ether renewal which is a beaut of a skill, it means my movement goes unhindered. Now when it comes down to damage ect D/D is fine it doesn’t need any nerfs in that respect, though I feel the condi removal could do with being toned down, this may also mean more emphasis on Staff support build.

I’ve been PvPing a lot more recently and in the past few days I’ve seen 2 staff eles, one of which complained at how squishy they are, 1 S/D Ele which was me and around 6-7 D/D Eles, this on it’s own kind of proves that D/D is the only viable weapon choice, and by viable I mean competitive, by all mean can the other two work they’re just more of a gimmick at the moment – we took a nerf nuke that we haven’t still recovered from, it’d be nice to get some finer attention to detail.

I just think that Eles are in an awkward situation at the moment, they’re not UP by any means neither OP but they still need some love to make the class balanced as a whole.
Though there are two other classes that need more love than us at the moment.

The only thing I see “OP” is the amount of condi removal a D/D has, conditions should really be counter to the D/D builds as they pack a lot of healing and high defense however we have a crap ton of condi removal so even if we get rooted – a direct counter we’re out of it in a heartbeat.

Though D/D now outperforms the other two weapons sets but that is only due to the others being nerfed to a ridiculous point without any forms of buffs. D/D now supports better than the staff can and can dish out better burst than S/D. I hate the fact I am forced into D/D, I’m not the in your face kind of person, I like raining AoEs or being the support, I thought I’d get both with Staff but I got the support and some AoEs that thought they where damage. Now we need either a buff to the other two weapon sets in terms of damage or create a new weapon set that is 1200 ranged DPS so we don’t have to do D/D just to get a bit of DPS.

Already used a build that used PA, 0/10/10/30/20 D/D and it isn’t that great in tPvP and is ok is sPvP however this build is brilliant in PvE and I haven’t tried it in WvW so I can’t comment on that.

P.s. I didn’t read the whole thread, too lazy. ._.

The only thing that I genuinely hate is the fact thieves get a much longer fear by stealing from us, I’d like to know what they stole so we could use it, I mean 4 second fear is niceeeee.

Is it just me or does everyone assume Eles only use D/D? -.-

Yukishiro.8792:

Most all boons and conditions have a 1 minute cap on duration. I assume bleeding does too. Although really BiP is the only skill that could get near the duration cap, even with 100%+ duration.

Boon cap is 3 mins AFAIK – At least I used to get just under 3 mins of fury/swiftness on my Engi.

Heres one tip for might stacking, if you see an enemy zerg or are defending a keep switch to scepter/dagger 1st and build up stacks of might using that then switch to staff and stack any might you can with that then let off a meteor shower. That about 18+ stacks of might w/o any traits/attune swap bonuses ect.

Decent builds that don’t require D/D.

I don’t see how “the regular Joe (vast majority of players) could not distinguish between a mesmer and his (her) clone” would justify damage nerfs, the damage they could do was a bit overpowering and got it’s rightful nerf, it’s still a very strong class and “the regular Joe” will still QQ about not being able to find the real one (Although frankly it is a tad easy, but it’s a time waster which is invaluable in PvP), I do agree however that the fail to spawn patch was a bit stupid, how does one dodge/block someone cloning themselves? Don’t you think this is a bit over the top? I mean the odds of actually failing to cast an illusion is pretty low.

Staff is horrible 1v1, compared to the other weapons, however it isn’t unusable.
Imho, we need one more weapon, one that is 1200 single target DPS focused, it’s hardly fair as an Ele that we’re forced to go D/D to get any reliable DPS out of the class.

Also we’re glass cannon by design, however without the cannon and we have to spec into the cannon which makes our glass wet tissue paper. Yeah Evie may be able to pull of that burst but the draw back is long C/Ds and if you’re caught it’s more or less GG.

Creslin.1758:

Clackerr.6401:

People complain about anything. On another note… I haven’t lost a single 1 v 1 against a thief since the patch, and I’ve fought about 50 so far in tpvp and spvp. They seem to be going in the right direction with balancing thieves, despite bs still hitting too hard. I run dagger/dagger 10/0/0/30/30 cantrip build. Only class giving me trouble right now is extremely bursty shatter mesmers who take off half my hp with one root>>shatter.

I think that reality is that most (not all) thieves are poor players. They were doing well simply because spamming a few abilities allowed them to be effective. Now that the class is being brought more into balance, their crappiness is showing.

Mhm, weeding out those that jumped on the bandwagon.

WhimsicalPacifist.2943:

Curring.9752:

Thing is, according to him, I was the one trolling.

That’s good, embrace your inner troll. If you’re lucky you’ll have a thief scream, "They’re eating her… and then they’re going to eat me… OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD! "

Seriously, thieves who complain deserve no sympathy at all. They are too used to having their targets fall at their feet to backstab and heatseeker spam that a lot of thieves don’t know how to respond to a prolonged fight against an intelligent foe. More brownie points to you for beating him down with a staff- (I can’t get the feel for staff)

Oh my, I laughed out loud. xD
Well thanks, as I said I was just testing a new build out, though tried D/D too and I’m not sure which I have better results with. The only thing that offended me about him was his grammar and punctuation, makes me sad.

Thing is, according to him, I was the one trolling.

…… thieves are kittening about us.

Well I decided to do a bit of sPvP, I haven’t in a while because I hated the state it was in (I.E 5 Mesmers and 8 Thieves in total), anyways I pop on to test out my new staff bunker build, I was doing well, surviving 2v1’s ect, but in a few games people left and it ended up being a 1v1 match between me and this thief. We brawled it out in the Graveyard, I won in the end and to quote this dear friend “lol more luck spammer”, yeah, coming from a thief of all professions. He then goes on to say that we’re a “self heal noob class” which is wrong considering my heals are AoE, obviously he goes on to insult my mother with no grammar nor punctuation but he ends it with a PM; “….no skill and heal 1 wrong button ill reap ya where ever i find ya noob than without advantages kiddy” (Then goes offline).

I’m actually confused out of my head, I mean seriously? By his logic we spam skills but from what I gathered from his PM he says that if I wrongly click on button I didn’t intend to he will “reap me” where ever he finds me. Doesn’t that mean to say we have a precise order to our skills and that one mess up can cost us our lives? But yet we spam skills, and spam usually means in no particular order, needless to say during the fights I made mistakes, I always do but I still won the 1v1 against what people class as the spamming class….

I just thought I’d share that, something else to talk about than the plethora of EA/bugs/we’re up threads – at least we can still make thieves cry, I guess that is pretty OP. xD

PS. I do have the SS’s of this convo, however I thought it’d be best to conceal his identity. :P

My Asuran’s ears are still small, cute and “normal” looking thankfully. xD

Klassic.8057:

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

I want balance, not overpowered traits that every viable build has to have. There are inconsistencies within the Evasive Arcana trait that I think should be addressed.

-Flame burst 10 second cooldown
-Blinding flash 10 second cooldown
-Churning earth – kittened hybrid version of shockwave/churning earth
-Cleansing wave 40 second cooldown non kittened version

I think cleansing wave should be toned down as it’s the strongest one and churning earth should be given a blast finsher as it’s the weakest one.

There’s an ele grandmaster trait that gives shocking aura, a 25 second cooldown, every 90 seconds. If you balanced that trait around the fact that evasive arcana allows a 40 second cooldown every 12 seconds then shocking aura would be procing every 7.5 seconds. It’s just poorly designed.

How about a nice cup of shut the __ up. Your logic fails and you should restrain from ever posting in any class balance discussions, please and thank you.

Technically it’s not his logic but the developers, by that standards of what the devs have set, what he says is true.

I’ll be honest I wasn’t for a nerf on EA however I was for fixing the bug, but as usual the devs love to go to the extreme on nerfs but not buff anything up. I’d like to at least see blast finishers brought back on earth at least and fire too and limit them to 10 seconds each, even one will suffice.

@Chesire, no, they said they are D/D.

Can I ask why you have 30 in earth?

I run a 0/0/30/30/10 bunker staff build and can tank the burst just as well as before, i’d suggest at least taking 10 points from either water or earth and putting 10 into arcana. Also most burst can be stopped with static shield, there shouldn’t really be any reason why you can’t outlast their initial burst or even stop it.
If the other player knows an Ele and their skills you need to step out of the “Everyday” combos, for example most players updraft after a RTL and a good player will just dodge after the RTL hits to stop the KD, they will make you waste your control skills so they can safley get their burst off. This means you might have to be a little creative with your combos, this will make it harder for them to get their burst off because they’re waiting for an opening.

Honestly, D/D is the best option to go for in the current state of Ele (I hate to admit it, I’m not a huge fan of D/D) but D/D offers the best support now (Focus may offer better in certain situations), yeah you’re down a bit on healing but you can might stack, share auras and break up enemies/mobs and keep them locked down for reasonable time (Which means if they’re down, they aren’t attacking which means no damage taken which is just as good as healing).
I’ve played Ele since 1st Beta, always with the staff, always tried to make it work only other weapon set I liked was S/D but after all the nerfs ect D/D seems to be the only set that feels complete and functioning how it should, the others are awkward they don’t function how you’d think they would and even then don’t function 100%. May be just my way of seeing it, so D/D 10/10/0/30/20 – might through cantrips, aura sharing ect. That to me is the best supportive, tanky build while retaining a source of damage. I ranted on a bit, sorry. :s

The most common D/D build at the moment is 0/10/0/30/30, very tanky while still having decent damage.
D/D or S/D will be your best bet for any reliable damage, staff is great if you know how kite a group of mobs around without any hassle but suffers in single target damage however the staff is the most survivable.

Are you talking trait focused, or skill/element focused?

Kneemin.4235:

You know the main thing I find disturbing?

The all-in-all answer to this and other survivability questions is nearly always:

Well, you obviously don’t run D/D with water/arcane.
Great so then your saying the only way to survive is by running a SINGLE build on a SINGLE weapon set…. and we can’t swap, so we can’t just keep D/D around to help us survive.

We simply need to be more flexible. While our traits are balanced b/c D/D is strong, they make it so running another build is almost entirely non-viable because those weapons dont’ have enough to survive on. Make us more hardy and you would make D/D OP. Perhaps the answer is to nerf D/D a little bit and buff our base survivability and/or the other weapon-sets so we can run something else in PvP.

That aside, if your REALLY good, you can do decently with any weapon set but a really good enemy will almost always beat you. Ever try to kill a warrior with a rifle whose auto attack hits harder than our heals can heal for and faster than any of our attacks go off (again, for more damage as well and more accurately since our projectiles are so kittening slow)? Its fun… really.

I personally find that the only really viable weaponsets are staff (when not alone, its amazing) and D/D; Even then, with a relatively small number of build options since we need arcane to get anywhere with any build.

Staff is a lot more survivable than D/D however D/D has more mobility and sustained DPS. And I do agree, it seems like every ele I see runs D/D, not saying there is anything wrong with that but when the majority of the player base is using X it’s usually because Y and Z aren’t kitten good as X, for example D/F is considered unviable and I haven’t seen a single person use it (Not that I see many people use focus anyways).

You don’t need arcana, though yes the buff and synergy it gives is far too powerful in respect to the other trait lines, those need a buff to bring them in line and most people do feel pigeon holed into arcana due to it’s effectiveness.

Frye.4608:

Riiiiight……Achilles. If you had no trouble at all leveling then all setups work out for you.
So why ask him for his? Or did you spec into an armor/vitality build without ever dieing? What was the reason for doing so?

Far more likely is, that he’s full of it. And he did die just as much as all of us.

Respawns at low health will get anyone and can’t be avoided at all times. Double knockdowns kiling you before you get control back aswell. One single missed dodge of a catapult WILL kill you, if you are unlucky enough.
I got one-shot by a mob two levels higher than me at around level 50.

How likely is it, that all that never happened to demi-god Achilles here?

Anyways. Things will improve as you go up, especially from about 60 upwards. Especially storyline quests get easier, because the npc’s will actually tank for you.

Erm, what?
I hardly die in PvE content unless they’re champions that you really can’t solo for your level, or it’s a giant DE where everyone dies no matter what class/build. I’ve only ever been two shot by champion mobs, though there are the occasions where you somehow aggro the whole area and no matter how you try just die but generally I didn’t much more than my Guardian. I don’t see anything wrong with the class in PvE, I made a new Ele so I might keep a death count.

Ghertu.7096:

TWMagimay.9057:

HrI don’t think OP was talking about survival issues. More like…a mesmer has 50% more hp than an elementalist and the mesmer also has stealth and clones to take a lot of heat off the char. So, if protection turns your 14k hp into 21k hp, the mesmer protection turns his/her 21k hp into 30k hp.

This exactly what I mean.

Active defense? But thieves or mesmers have stronger active and passive defense both. Thief has more armor, mesmer has more health, and they both have stealth. Also, what benefit? Damage? I didn’t notice that ele’s damage output is really huge, it more seems average. Not bad, but average.

They’re more escape mechanics than active defense, for example if a thief gets low they need to stealth to run, they can’t use the stealth to stay in the fight longer (Well could be arguable at the moment due to the rendering bug) they have to use it to escape whereas Ele’s active defense keeps them alive and last longer and if you’re D/D you still have decent escape mechanics. Most of the time thief’s have less armour than us and Ele’s damage is more about sustainability, in fact the whole class revolves around sustainability.

Zaxares.5419:

Might vary for different races, but my Ele is an Asura and I just LOVE the stuff he shouts when he switches attunements.

“I have ignition!”
“Severe weather warning!”
“Cleansing will now begin!” <- Favourite
“Rocks and stones will break your bones!”

I re-made my Ele int an Asuran and the lines are great, they have so much personality, though my fav line is “I personify genius.” although you only hear it once in the personal story.

I wish they had a viable single target 1200 range weapon rather than having to go D/D for any real DPS.

“I can outrun a centaur!”
I honestly quit my human female ele because of this.

For me Ele’s are much more fun to play, they’re more dynamic in my eyes, both classes are good and can each hold their own. At the moment Engi does have more various builds than Ele although their turrets builds aren’t all too viable at the moment. As others have said just pop in the mists and try them out thats the only way to know if YOU like them.

Ele is fine in PvE, it’s sPvP where we need some love…

Bsquared.3421:

Curring.9752:

Just fix Evasive Arcana so the blast finisher is on a 10 second C/D as it should be and maybe reduce the healing a tad on the water evasive.

I wouldn’t even want that. If you reduce the healing from cleansing wave on evasive, you’re screwing D/D and S/D ele’s because that’s their only real healing capability aside from the regular, 45 second cleansing wave on the skill bar.

And putting the blast finisher on the 10s cooldown (so that it matches the 10s cooldown of the evasive wave) would hurt support/healing Ele’s a lot in things such as WvW. Don’t add the 10s cooldown on blasts, just make it so that you can ONLY evasive blast any given field ONCE.

For example, right now you can get 2, sometimes even 3 (with rune of superior energy) blasts out of healing rain. Just make it so that ONLY the first blast sets off the AOE healing. That way if I wanna cast rain, roll into it (AOE heal), then follow with geyser and roll into that (AOE heal) to keep my WvW team up (which I do all the time), I can still do it, and pull it off inside of 10seconds. I mean, if you want to blow your entire endurance bar and put your only 2 major healing skills on cooldown (45s and 20s, respectively), you should be able to. Just make it so you can’t blast rain multiple times and it would be much improved.

I did say maybe. :P
I don’t see how that is really much different, all it would mean is that you have to put another field down which will still heal you either way, so that to me isn’t much of a nerf just making it a little bit harder because you have to push an extra button. It may work, I’m not saying it won’t but I just can’t see it to be honest, especially in WvW where theres plenty of fields going around anyway the balance would be aimed more towards sPvP and would affect staff bunker builds – I play one myself, although I don’t use EA anymore and I think the 10 C/D would be reasonable.

I run a staff 0/0/30/30/10 build, mainly focusing on passive regen and mass condition removal while maintaining fairly high condition damage, a truck load of armour and a decent amount of healing power to boot. I used to run with evasive arcana but I’m starting to find that I can live without it, it’s more of a bunker build with support built in, I guess I can’t heal as much as other builds (EA means I can’t combo field as well) but heavily investing in earth isn’t that bad, well for staff at least but for D/D I’m not too sure. Though I do want to ask your opinion, it’s something I’ve been debating, do you think that S/D would be better suited to this build? I feel like loosing out of healing rain would be too much, it’s like a triple edged blade on this build.

Also is there a chance to see sPvP/Paid Tournys at any point? I’d love to see some decent Ele action in those areas to help me along, great guide, keep up the great work, you’ve done a lot already.

Theifs complaining about Ele’s? Oh god I’ve seen it all now.
Just fix Evasive Arcana so the blast finisher is on a 10 second C/D as it should be and maybe reduce the healing a tad on the water evasive.

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

Anyone else think evasive arcana triggering cleansing wave, a 40 second cooldown, about every 12 seconds is overpowered? I think the heal should at the very least be made non scalable to tone down bunker builds without affecting low healing power builds.

I also think the amount of blast finishers should be toned down to only when the spells trigger or even when only fire/earth spells trigger. I thought it was originally intended this way as you would only get the visual combo cue when triggering a fire or earth spell. Although now you get the visual cue on all dodges in fields.

Even with these “nerfs” I would still consider evasive arcana mandatory. It would just seem more balanced to me.

Also I only play ele. I care more about game balance than exploiting broken builds/mechanics.

I agree, it should at the very least be fixed to 10 seconds per blast finisher as it was intended, getting 3 powerful AoE heals off in a matter of seconds is a bit ludicrous, that is why I don’t use it atm because it is OP, on staff at least.

Before you start the fight with a Mesmer call target on them, this will mean they will have a target above their head so you know which is the real one, however if they stealth or use the sword 2 ability (I believe it is) then it will disappear.
So what I suggest is that you memorize how much health they had, what boons they had and stack some conditions, also if they player is using signets/glory booster/sigil that adds stats/special finisher they will only apply to the original so those are other great ways of spotting the original. Using AoE’s or if you’re using staff Lighting auto attack works great, you can’t really burst a Mesmer down, unless they’re bad so your best bet is to outlast them.

If you don’t feel confident enough to take one down on your own, don’t, you will only give points to the enemy if you die, so either double team one or move on.
Good Luck.

PvE balance doesn’t belong here because Ele’s are probably the most capable in PvE, if you’re having trouble in PvE then it’s a LTP issue, which I don’t say often.

In general quite a few of the skills are bugged anyways so we need to wait for fixes before we get buffs or C/D reductions, some skills do need their damage up’d and/or C/D reduced, theres a million and one threads about Ele’s and how kitten they are, stop with the threads please. >-<

@Shadow: That could be a great alternative, don’t know why we never thought of this.
Wonder if ANet would be willing to do this though.

It worked for two of my friends so I thought I may post it to see if it helps anyone, for me it’s the most comfortable so it doesn’t feel like a workout. :p