Guild Wars 2

Mines rather different to most people, I don’t have a gaming mouse either, just a 5 Button mouse. (Two side buttons)
Movement:

T – Forward
G – Backwards
F – Strafe Left
H – Strafe Right

1-5 Skills:

1 – Z
2 – X
3 – D
4 – S
5 – A

Utility Skills:

Heal – Mouse 4
Utility 1 – Mouse 5
" 2 – R
" 3 – E
Elite – W

Attunements:

Fire – Y
Water – U
Air – J
Earth – N

Misc:

Call Target – Left Alt
Nearest Enemy – Middle Mouse
Interact/Finish – K
WvW/PvP Points – Tab
Look Behind – Q
Dodge Roll – B

Means I get the most use out of my keyboard, and have the most movement ingame while still being able to reach skills (I find it awkward to use the numbers above WASD, I’d rather have them at the side).

I wish the Soothing Water trait worked as it should with the Ice Bow, when it does the Ice Bow will be a part of my set.

Lightning Flash: I’ve noticed that sometimes using it after you’re stunned will teleport you to the place intended but will still leave you stunned.

Trait – Soothing Wave – Water X: It does not grant regeneration when you equip and or use Frost Bow.

Trait – Evasive Arcana – Arcana XI: Does not have a 10 second internal C/D as stated, in fact does not have a C/D at all.

Downed – Mist Form: Sometime when you rally while in the mist form it does not rally you and you go back to being downed.

Skill Unlocking: If you have a low level character and enter the mists then change to an attunement you haven’t unlocked (Lets say Air) and leave the mists while in air attunement you will be in air attunement while in PvE meaning you can level up those skills before you unlock the attunement in PvE.

I run a 0/0/30/30/10 build, I was originally 0/0/10/30/30.

The attunement buff on the arcana trait line imo is too effective to go ignored as it effects everything we do, it’s the only traitline to fully synergies no matter the attunement we’re in so it’s no wonder as to why people feel pigeon holed into arcana, with the build I’m running I’d love to run 20 arcana, in a way I feel I need too however I can’t take any points away from earth nor water otherwise my build won’t work as well. So either way I don’t feel as if my build is working at 100% efficiency.

I do agree with reducing the GCD and removing it from the Arcana traitline, reduce the base GCD to 12 seconds and add a trait too arcana that further reduces the GCD. However we also need some changes to other traits in other lines 1st, what the ele really needs is a bit more synergy and some bug fixes and I think Ele will be more or less balanced.

I balance my stats bar from prec and crit damage, my build is more about sustained damage, support and bunkering. I have a bit of everything which is good because you’ll get something out of any attunement you’re in.

I generally use it to defend a point or to support my team – Cast healing rain then pop tornado and you have AoE healing bolts and AoE Blinds with knock back. It’s not a bad elite if you use it on the right situations but it doesn’t have much versatility and feels more like an utility than an omg elite game changing skill.

Fury for 5 seconds maybe, but usually you should be saving your blast finishers for water/fire anyways?

I use conditions on my S/F(D) point defender build, scepter has easy ways of applying conditions so no matter how often they cleanse they will always have conditions on them. As a point defender you can’t really rely on brute force (You leave your defense open) so I prefer to outlast my opponent, as far as I know I have about 1k healing and 900+ condition damage with 3k toughness so I can usually outlast. Guess it’s playstyle more than anything.

Honestly I couldn’t watch it, the quality is shocking and the 720p is a lie, to put it bluntly.

Why so much hate on the ele >-<
And does every single ele I meet always use D/D? D/D is too predictable imho.

Yes we’re a class that really is only 50-60% functioning but kittening, whining and all this theory crafting will get you no where, just play the class and enjoy it.

Why not be happy we got an improvement instead of whining about the smallest of things. Some people will never be happy. -.-

C/D reduction/range increase would suffice but it’s not the top of the agenda of fixes/changes.

So you don’t like the Ele, great. Why not choose a different class or go back to WoW instead of coming to the forums whining because you don’t know how to play. Ele is the hardest class to learn, though it isn’t exactly that hard to learn….

I haven’t read everything but from what I can gather Bsquared has the right idea for a start, I mean staff + S/D combo would be so freakin OP, that would mean you have the most combo fields AND blast finishers (And we all know blast finishers is where the magic happens), not to mention 40 skills to pick and choose at whim, heck some of the combinations I can think of would keep a player permanently CC’d no matter how many stun-breakers they pack.

Now to another point, STOP SAYING THAT STAFF IS LONG RANGE ONLY, kitten me.
If you are smart, which I hope you lot are you would realize that staff is more about dancing just outside of their melee range, how else do you suppose you get guaranteed hits on your AoEs? Force them to walk through your cripple/frozen ground or get the bit eruption hit off? We have so many CC skills to slow them down, evade out of damage or knock them back to get us some breathing room if they’re on our kitten.

Only thing wrong with the Ele is the fact that we have a cannon made out of wet tissue paper and buggy traits but get in line, there are other classes that are in the same boat.

Now I’ll go back to day dreaming about the day we get a poly morph skill in which we get to turn people into kittens. Kittens, Kittens everywhere! ._.

The 4 kills on the right where all done by thieves, lol.

@Arcs Pic, 69, 69. Ahh dirty mind. :L

I remember once where there was me as my ele and a warrior and the rest of the teams were made up of thieves.

Combo of Acolyte and Winged.

The thing that makes me play my Ele is the fact there is more skill/work involved to make it good, I don’t find it fun to have everything handed to me. For me the main element that makes Elementalist fun for me to play is the challenge it provides. (No pun intended) :P

Definatly agree with this thread (Although the content of it people are still whining), thank you ANet for addressing said issues.

Happy Halloween!

Don’t nerf the one thing that makes us good. D’:

Maybe we repel other Ele’s too, like some magnet stuff, maybe we’re attracted to these situations but when we’re out and about we repel everyone. I never see any other Ele’s about unless it’s a dire AoE DE situation. We’re a mystical bunch. o-o

JohnnyRockets.7593:

Care to elaborate?

And I edited my post. I meant One with Air (permanent 25%), NOT Zephyr’s Speed (10%).

That 25% does not stack with swiftness though which is 33% – For staff all you need to do is be in air, use your heal glyph in air, your AoE swiftness then place your static field and use Arcane Blast while inside of it to grant AoE swiftness, I do it all the time as it is great to upkeep AoE swiftness for the zerg and if I’m soloing when I’ve done that combo I’ll equip an off hand dagger for RTL and Updraft.

Also I found that all out damage is not worth it, most of the time you’re in a zerg and will be hit my countless AoE’s and usually it’s about outlasting either another zerg or a points defenses, I mean a dead ele is a useless one and will only contribute to you loosing so you need to have some form of defense so you can last longer.

I wish people would stop saying ele are glass cannons because frankly they’re not, our glass cannon builds aren’t viable in tPvP and if you really are having trouble surviving try traiting in water/earth. It sounds like Diogo either uses my exact build or something similar. :P

Now I’m not saying I’m pro (by any means I’m not) nor can I vouch for the opponents skill however I did manage on my staff ele to win a 2v1 one being a mesmer the other an ele, I downed the ele twice I didn’t get the finish on him the 1st time but the second time I did and I made the mesmer quit the game after I killed the ele and made the mesmer retreat (then left the game) then the ele left the game. Now yeah our burst damage isn’t great because we have to heavily invest that we can’t really have many defensive options unlike other classes that only have to press one button and they have more burst than us however we do have more sustained damage and a lot more CC.

So please stop comparing Ele to other classes, really, the ele is nothing like the other classes, I guess the Ele is an acquired taste it seems?
Oh and by the by, Mesmers excel in 1v1s, try not to 1v1 them it is not cowardly in fact its a better judgement as if you can’t beat them you will only feed points to them and really you should be playing to win.

The term Damage Per Second means exactly that and trust me it does not have great DPS however it does have a lot of AoE which is great for zerg situations ect but DPS usually is considered one target based and thats where D/D is far superior.

Huh my bad, I swore they did, then again I never really keep track of my stacks of might but I notice energy. Sorry for the incorrect info then.

Honestly I didn’t read your post, all I am going to say is that an Elementalist is not a mage nor a conjurer, nor any other archtype. It is it’s own thing.

Yeah they do work together.

I think what wild is getting at is the fact that any good Ele will attunement dance as much as they can to get the most potential out of their class. Most Ele’s including myself feel that arcane is too effective for us to go without (-60% attunemnet c/d), it means we can kick out a lot more skills in X amount of time, I really have trouble working without 30 Arcane, except my bunker build, but I still need 10 points in arcane at the very least.

They need to change the base C/D to 10-12 seconds remove the -60% from arcane and replace it with something else but also offer a trait that will reduce the C/D a little. Ele’s are more or less pigeon holed into Arcane.

Kinda agree with Evie, the main thing that annoyed me was the lack of the simple updraft/knockdown, firefield, DT, Phoenix combo ect.
Oh and if this is a dodge build wouldn’t sigil of energy be a bit mandatory? I mean it’s a free dodge every 9 seconds.

Shiny ones, with a glow effect.

The problem lies in the traits, the class has potential of being great at everything but we’re only good bunker and maybe a roam build but that only because water and arcane trait lines are actually worth it.

The main problem I see is that we are not rewarded for attunement swapping, in fact feel punished. Now why do I say this?

Most traits are only working while attuned to the said element, (exception being Arcana) they need to work across the board as in theory most traits only work 1/4 of the time.
So lets take the 30% chance on crit to cause burning (Fire trait) thats good an all but wouldn’t it be better to have it so that while in fire it burns, in water you cause vulnerability, air causes weakness and earth causes bleeding?

10% Damage while attuned to X, yeah lets take X and make it water, water atunement will not benefit from this at all, so why not make a 30 point trait in fire and say 10% damage no matter what attunement you’re in, at least then our damage would be viable in every element but excel while in fire. I’m not saying it should work exactly like this but you get the meaning, traits should benefit every element not just one, otherwise they should make us specialize in two elements and call us a mage instead because at the moment we are the the master of element*S*. Oh and they should reduce the base C/D on attunement swapping and remove the 60% recharge from Arcana and replace it with something else. ehh random rant
PS we need a skill that either polymorphs people into kittens are a spell that throws kittens at people

I’ve been researching different glass cannon builds for the past two days, best burst I’ve had was with scepter/dagger, however it isn’t all that viable. You actually need to burst people down before they can react, if you don’t you’re more or less dead, don’t get me wrong I could get 150+ points easy blah blah blah, but in tournys there is no way that a GC build would be viable. I’d honestly say quit while you’re ahead, look into more sustained damage.

Usually I feel like I am pigeon holed into getting 30 in arcana, not for the traits in fact I could live without them however I can not live without the 60% reduction on attunement cool down, which I think is wrong and needs to be changed.

But mostly my builds focus around something, if you have no focus on a build you’ll be flying spells anywhere without much consideration. For example some people run aura builds, take away their aura trait and that their whole build nullified.

That said, if you took away every trait from every class and made people play then everyone would switch to thief/warrior. Some classes are more trait reliant than others or through my experience of playing all the classes that’s what I’ve felt.

You should use the runes to either amplify your build or cover a weakness in your build. For example if you’re running a bleed build you can opt for 2x Afflicted, 2x Krait and 2x Centaur these will maximize your builds potential (Just an example). Or if you feel you need more defense you can run dolyak to maximize your defense. Its down to what your build works with and what suits your play style best.

My build revolves around applying regen to remove conditions ect so I chose Dwayna to maximize this.

These runes would compliment a Power/Vit/Tough build well;
Rune of;
Fighter
Fire (using blast finishers for might ect)
Hoelbrak (Might be usefull if you lack anti-condi)
Ogre (Quite commonly used)
Strength (Again, good for might stacking)

So yeah, choose something that compliments or covers a weakness in your build, runes are really icing on the cake – your traits/jewelry matter more.

Honestly they should be removed from all professions, ofc siege weapons and such should still have them but I don’t see the point in PvP, thats just the game telling you don’t stand there.

They should probably keep them in PvE/Dungeons though.

Oops, I meant armour, I can get up to 3.2k armour (While attuned to earth) and I think around 3.4k with scepter earth skill 2. Yeah 3k toughness would be OP. xD

I use Signet of earth just for the CC sometimes.

I just don’t know if the trait has an internal C/D on it, that will require better testing.

Theres more than one example of other people doing what he was doing, yes the orbs help and yes you can’t fight unscaled people 24/7 but it certainly showcases what the class CAN do. So stop the hate and watch other people do this, in fact there are people that do it better than him but they’re doing the same dance either way.

Yes WvW is no indication to the class as well I’m sure anyone will agree that Ele in WvW is more than fine. If you can provide sPvP action that’d be great.

Bsquared.3421:

Yeah, the hp regen on Dolyak is disappointing, which is unfortunate cause I really like stacking the toughness/vitality it provides.
Dwayana is also good for the 6 piece bonus, but I hate that it provides no toughness and only healing power. Healing power is too expensive a stat, and it doesn’t add a lot to regen ticks.
I’ve basically taken to using Dolyak with Signet of Restoration when running D/D (the healing on casts from Signet adds up with D/D cause you cast a lot, and quickly) and using Dwayana for the staff healing build (with Glyph of elemental harmony). This does leave me feeling a bit squishy though cause I don’t have as much HP or toughness (thankfully, you can heal it up quickly).

That leads me to a question however (caues I haven’t tested it). When you use glyph of harmony with Dwayana and in water attunement, you should get 10s of regen (5 from glyph, 5 from runes). Does this also provide 2 condition clears since it’s technically 2 regen procs? I assumed it does, but haven’t tested it.

Really depends how you build, I mean my tanky set has 3k toughness, 14k HP, 1.1k Healing and 950 condition damage. I use the signet too as I’ve taken 30 in earth can use the signet and still get it’s passive and with dwayna I get another AoE condi removal through applying regen.

They do stack and unless the trait has an internal C/D it should always remove a condi per regen applied. I went straight into water used my glyph (It gives regen in water) and I got around 23+ seconds of regen, so two of those regens are AoE (Water attune and Dwayna set, 5 sec each) and then the Glyph which is 13 seconds regen. So that on it’s own is 3 condi removals two being AoE.

If the Doly set stacked with healing power then it would definatly be worth it, however 30 per tick barely mitigates 1 stack of bleed. :L

Yeah they stack but trust me I was sorely disappointing, I was running the Signet, in water and dolyak hoping that the dol regen was affected by healing power so that I could get some awesome passive healing, but no it heals a flat 30 HP/s and as Wild said it is not worth the 6th rune.
Dwayna is a good set to choose, especially if you’re running a support build (Take the trait that removes condition when you apply regeneration) as when you use your heal you’re granting AoE regen which will remove conditions.

Zenyatoo.4059:

AVHero.7382:

wertyuio.8630:

i hope you guys realize they fixed the downed sickness bug for mist form about a week ago… ele’s downed abilities still suck, but they don’t kill you now.

Not sure what “bug” you are talking about, but right now every time you use downed 3, it adds a stack to your downed state when you drop again, making you start with less health than before. This is to prevent people from chain resetting their downed state indefinitely i’m sure, but it still happens.

Worse still, if you are in mist form you are counted as “up” so if something dies while you’re mist forming, or if someone burns their hard rez on you, then it will have no effect, and you will stay dead.

A friend of mine pretty much cost us a lupicus kill this way. I was a half second from reviving him an an engineer. The engineer WP’d back, and my friend mist formed away, leaving me to be the only alive person in the room <.<

Not too sure about that, when I was in sPvP earlier I was down’d (Managed to to get into mist form!) and as I was in mist form the other guy was stomped and it rally’d me while I was in mist form.
________

And Engis “Get over here!” downed skill does interrupt, it also has great utility like stopping someone else get down’d or pulling people that are low health too you so you can set off your bomb, kill them and get the counter stomp. Not saying it always happens but it can do.

I just don’t understand how we didn’t get the use of the torch I mean it’s a source of power, using the elements and such.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

D/D Has two blast finishers and the staff only has one and the scepter has the most blast finishers when coupled with dagger.

Actually Staff has 3 finishers, 2 Projectile (Shockwave and Stoning) and 1 Blast (Eruption) where as D/D only has 2 Blast finishers (Earthquake and Churning Earth (which isn’t really going to be sued as a blast finisher in a fight))

Actually, re-read what I wrote, I was talking about blast finishers only.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

D/D is very much about burst and close combat where as staff is more a long range drop AoE fields so it’s understandable that it would have more fields (and finishers).

Also Magnetic Grasp is already a leap finisher o.o

D/D Has two blast finishers and the staff only has one and the scepter has the most blast finishers when coupled with dagger.

Remade how my Ele looks.

Veenix.5248:

have you played the game from anything other then a 1v1 perspective?

Most of the ele’s skills are AoE, what does that have to do with anything? I usually take on 4 mobs at the very least whether D/D or Staff and I can usually kite around 2-3 people. Most of the Ele’s CC is AoE so what is your point?

Veenix.5248:

Its not about having more skills its about the lack of its ability to adept on the fly to a situation. this isn’t a big deal in spvp/tpvp since everything is a close range battle or easy enough to close gaps.

But can dagger switch to a long range fight? can staff hold its own on a close range fight? etc etc. running away and trying to get out of combat to switch is not my idea of adepting.

Each weapon set has skills in their 4 attunements to deal with such situations. No offence but have you actually looked at the skills?

If you’re using staff and they’re in melee range you can use burning retreat, plus numerous other CC skills to stop them from getting to you. The dagger has 3 gap closers (one being an immobilise) and 2 knockdowns plus chill and stun effects. SO even if you’re DD against range you can still counter and like wise if you’re staff against melee. Elementalists are very versatile.

reQuiem.5986:

Well I’ve played around with this build in PvE and I like it quite a lot (using Carrion armor + Cleric accessories, I wasn’t going to farm gold to redo my armor set) – I still need to test it in WvW. I’m not 100% sure if the damage is enough for me, but its a very balanced build that seems to last well in the frontline…the boons really make up for the what a balanced build might lack, such as enough crit (fury) or power (might stack). I personally like defense over offensive in GW2…so I’m ok with it. I might tweak it a little, once I play around with it some more.

I ended up using Rune of Dolyak..cost like 7.5g (getting more and more expensive now), but if you guys think Divinity, Undead, or Earth works better..let me know – will need to farm for the cash again. :P

BTW – how much regen does Dolyak do? Also, with a good amount in healing power that this build has..I personally thought having regen would be nice…I am pretty sure the hp regen from Dolyak runes get a boost from healing power…so I wonder how much the standard amount of regen is…and how much it is with like 600+ healing power. With the significant investing into healing power…you might as well make the most of it..no? Unlike the other stats, healing power isn’t consistently being utilized, so the passive effect might be nice.

Do let me know if you like Rune of Divinity, Undead, or Earth better.

Thanks,

~ Arcadian

Doesn’t stack with healing power and it is 30 per tick. The rune itself is decent but for the healing it is meh, Divinity is a good choice 60 to all stats and 12% crit damage, Earth is a good contender more so if you run aura builds.

Edit: I didn’t see the edit untill after I posted. :s

Hsulf.9370:

I’d agree with the bugs and fixes, as that’s all I want too. But trust me one thing, if either the ele or the necro get buffed people will be moaning about them on these forums for a long time to come.

Good eles and necros are destroying games now, buffs would just be silliness.

Defiantly agree, though the staff does need a bit of work, but it’s mainly bug fixes. They’re complicated classes to try to fine tune, the two classes are tricky to fine tune and they end up breaking something when they fix something. I’m just fed up of people making out they’re in such a bad spot when they’re not.

I love playing my Necro for the fact they’re bunker wreckers.

I agree with almost everything, though there are a few things;

• Water trident: I was thinking it could be turned into a 1 second water field, so the trident would come out of the ground then do a pulse heal, I just feel like the scepter was missing a water field. Would this be too much?

• Flamewall: I feel that it might become too much if everything was changed like that maybe keep the C/D the same but change everything else.

• Magnetic Grasp: I just want the bug fixed where if you cast it you’ll do the animation but will get stuck at the target for a second or two unable to do anything.

• Ice Spike: Shouldn’t this be a blast finisher? It acts the same as dragons tooth in a way.

• Unsteady Ground: I think it should apply a more prominent cripple, it is very easy to avoid and is only 2 seconds, maybe buff it up to 4 second cripple too.

Grevender.9235:

@OP:
yesterday four members of my party have been deafeated by a Champion mob, while one member was cast away from the combat area and would take several minutes to reach again the battlefield.
At this point, a random Mesmer of another guild appeared: he kept busy the Champion for three straight minutes without ever falling below 50% HP and being able to damage it for at least a good 15% of its health pool.
Alone.

Now that’s what I call a good class.

http://youtu.be/67ToSaS9xjQ

http://youtu.be/QIrqAv8yO7Q

(Thank you daphoenix for the videos)

Whats your point? The Mesmer was skilled and 4 of you had trouble? That has nothing to do with Ele being UP, considering in PvE they’re in a good place.

TWMagimay.9057:

I think the class as is sucks, plenty of traits are useless or broken. I personally think damage could be up’d a bit since we cant weapon swap your stuck in the classes weapon limitations to adept to different ranges. Animations can be sluggish.

Am not talking about strictly spvp or tpvp or wv3 or pve. but as a whole.

But i still log on and enjoy playing my elementalist. does that mean i must just suck at the game?

We technically have more than other classes, 4 attunements, 20 skills, attunement swapping still counts as weapon swapping so in a way we get more out of sigils. Please carry on playing your ele, if you enjoy it why not?

TWMagimay.9057:

If it sucks so much, what exactly do you enjoy about it? Or are you implying that you are a masochist?

Besides, you didn’t really name anything that sucks just for the ele as a class. Other classes have useless/broken traits, I have seen a lot of staff/gs mesmers so being stuck in a range can’t be underpowering and d/d build has enough catch-up skills anyway, other classes have funky animations also. I have mesmer and ele. The mesmer 2nd downed skill bug annoys me more than anything I ever experienced on my ele.

So having a bugged 2nd skill (Even though you have the second best down’d skills) is more annoying than having no down’d skills that stop you from being finished? I’d rather something that works some of the time than having nothing.

All I’d like to see are bugs fixes, viable glass cannon builds and a bit of a re-work on the staffs damage/skill animations. I also suggest people who complain about Ele to go create a Necro, they’re arguably worst off.

D/D doesn’t need better healing skill, Scepter does, I think scepter needs a water field. As someone already said in PvE the Ele is fine, more than fine in fact, and how do we possibly need more survive-ability? We have a lot of get out of jail free cards, it’s just they lack on the competitive scene but so does the Necro, the biggest problem is the bugs, and the problems with staff but the class isn’t so unplayable it forces you to play another class.

And to those saying that Ele is more difficult to learn than the other classes, you are correct, but it’s all about play style, I love how the Ele plays and if I’m honest I’d rather play a class that is harder to play in fact I tend to always go for such classes. How hard a class is to play is irrelevant to how under powered it is because once you master it you will do as good if not better than the other classes that are “Plug and play” so to speak.

I want these threads to stop and see more constructive threads that issue the problems we face in sPvP an work WITH ANet to get things sorted, they aren’t going to listen to these whiny threads that add nothing constructive.

Moa could do with a slight nerf in duration, take it down to 8 seconds, but what really needs to hapkitten all the other elite brought up to par, out of the three classes I main there is only one elite that I find worth the use.