The wiki no longer says that.
I don’t think it’s possible to self-combo with Lightning Hammer and Geyser, absent a lot of set-up. (E.g., cast Hammer, drop the first copy, do the Geyser, pick up the other hammer, and bash.)
But it should work OK with Healing Rain, allowing for 2 or even 3 blasts, or double that if somebody picks up and uses the other hammer.
Gareth,
You got the general idea.
Carrion is for DPS builds, Cleric’s for support builds. When I switch to staff in landscape PvE I just go with whatever I have for my scepter/dagger build, except that I may take the time to swap in the Blasting Staff trait.
Actually, if I solo in Staff, which I do mainly inadvertently on my way to a DE, Eruption isn’t bad.
In a standard scepter/dagger rotation, Dragon’s Tooth accounts for about 6 stacks of Might, which is 10-15% of DPS. A bug that takes that away needs to be fixed FAST, even if it’s just by reverting the change in the patch until the new functionality can be gotten to work.
Similarly, if the intent of the Evasive Arcana “fix” was to reduce the number of blast finishers rather than eliminate them entirely, that too has to be made right QUICKLY. Again, if the change needs to be reverted while the programmers take time to debug, so be it. But the current version of the trait is intolerable.
At least, that’s my opinion. Agree/disagree?
Even pre-patch, the whole scepter/dagger rotation only worked well in melee range. The stated functionality change doesn’t really change that.
Dragon’s Tooth, assuming it gets fixed, will be fine for PvE.
Live human opponents, of course, are a whole other matter.
I was planning to go Power/Toughness/Vitality on my armor, w/ boon extension runes, and get both Carrion and perhaps Cleric’s sets of other gear (offense vs. support). This for S/D and Staff.
But of course with the Staff nerf, I may not play my elementalist at all any more.
I’ve been enjoying S/D for a while.
Not sure what I’ll do in group events that scepter is unsuitable for, now that staff has been badly nerfed, as I don’t like dagger mainhand. Probably just play less, perhaps a lot less.
Anyhow, the Dragon’s Tooth bug gives me some hope that the complete EA nerf was a bug too — but again, communication is called for.
Read LOTRO patch notes some time. Depending on what class you play, you may love or hate their decisions, but at least they explain them straightforwardly, or even with humor.
For clarity, I tested by dropping the DT on melee enemies who are within the ROF.
Just tested it; that bug is indeed in there. No point playing s/d until it is fixed.
My 20/10/0/10/30 S/D build had EA, but didn’t use it for field finishing (or much of anything else, actually). It gets through the landscape fine.
What will work less well now is running through the landscape in Staff on our way to a dynamic event, then fighting when snared. Those fights will be more problematic now, as will the DEs themselves (plenty of times I’ve emergency-healed myself in Water …).
Playing an elementalist in Orr just got a lot less interesting or profitable.
All the sadder now that other Might stacking has been nerfed; the trait working with Ring of Fire could actually be useful (get a second Dragon’s Tooth off in a single Ring, if traited).
I’ll probably slot it for the reasons stated above (attunement cooldown, water heal).
That assumes I play my elementalist at all, which I probably won’t if Anet totally ignores this outcry.
If I can’t have fast attunement swapping, the class isn’t fun anyway. So I’ll probably use 3 arcane traits. And it may well be that Evasive Arcana’s water heal — the only vaguely useful part — leaves it as one of the three least-bad traits for scepter builds.
Like many folks, I think elementalist is less fun, let alone less effective, when attunement swap cooldowns are extended. So 30 Arcane is a must. What is a good way to spend them?
1. Elemental Attunement is strong.
2. Evasive Arcana may or may not be good for the heal only; otherwise it’s almost literally useless, as you try to roll AWAY from enemies. Weakest in staff, where self-healing is based on water fields.
3. Blasting Staff is strong, IF you carry a staff.
4. Windborne Dagger is said not to work and would be pointless even if it did, given other speed buffs.
5. Final Shielding is said to be bugged into uselessness — if it doesn’t kick in until you’re at 10% health, it doesn’t protect you from hits any bigger than 1/10 your health.
6. Arcane cooldown is fine IF you’re carrying two arcanes. I did while leveling up, but don’t any more. Conditions on arcane usage is weaker than it looks, because the additional burning is worthless (due to duration stacking) in most builds
7. Vigor on crit is OK if you have high crit chance. I don’t.
8. I haven’t tried endurance recharge on scepter; maybe I should.
Elementalist isn’t fun in Cursed Shore unless you’re willing to solo a bit in staff while running to events. (Rapid out-of-combat build swap might fix that, but we don’t have it.) And I didn’t have the heart to be in tough staff fights without strong self-healing.
So I didn’t bother playing tonight.
One of two. The RtL burst is also fun.
Agreed that the class REQUIRES rapid attunement swapping. That’s the class concept. That’s what makes it fun. And since the 1 skills are in most cases weak, it’s also crucial for effectiveness.
Problem w/ the guardian hammer idea — she’ll be putting her own combo fields down, so she’s just as likely to cause Retaliation as a heal.
Not that Retaliation is a BAD thing …
Agreed. Unless one likes to play D/D, elementalists’ viability is down to landscape PvE and WvWvW.
I don’t like d/d or WvWvW.
Landscape PvE is getting repetitive.
We need guidance as to the future for the profession, if any.
The loss of Evasive Arcana isn’t so bad if party members have lots of blast finishers and know how to use them.
So which classes actually run short cooldown blast finishers?
My wife doesn’t on her guardian. (Doesn’t like hammer.)
Necros aren’t going to — they’re down to bone minions, which might not live in dungeons long enough to be detonated.
Scepter elementalists actually do.
But that seems to be about it.
I should have done my personal story escort mission before the patch. I’m pretty sure staff would have been the right way to go given the number of NPCs. Now it’s either nerfed staff or s/d.
:(
Just tested; still broken.
What’s really sad is that having a lot of points in Arcane just makes the class more fun, because swapping attunements is fun.
But now that they’ve heavily nerfed that trait line, it’s hard to justify kittening oneself to that extent …
If this was intended, it was a terrible, terrible idea.
If it was a bug, it’s a huge one that should be fixed immediately.
I suspect that the complete elimination of blast finishers from Evasive Arcana is just an appalling bug.
Might stacking in general was nerfed. Scepter/dagger lost Might because of how the Dragon’s Tooth blast finisher works, except in fights that start in melee range anyway, as well as losing the Evasive Arcana/dodge roll option.
That’s how I thought it should work, but I didn’t even see that happening. I’ll look more closely. Thanks!
A fire field extender that doesn’t extend Ring of Fire. OK …
Thanks for clearing that up!!
It’s tough to control and observe all variables in the heat of battle. But I do often cast Phoenix on or near my location.
Phoenix supposedly clears some of your conditions. However, using the skill doesn’t ever seem to lower the number of conditions on me. How does Phoenix’s condition clearing actually work?
I tested Persisting Flames in the Mists lobby and couldn’t get it do anything. For example, Arcane Wave in the location of a fire field after the field’s normal duration didn’t give Might.
What does Persisting Flames actually do?
I just went through the grawl tunnel in Frostgorge Sound, playing entirely one-handed (i.e. mousing everything), in a 20-10-0-10-30 S/D build, barely dodging or evading at all, and thus benefiting from only 5 of my 7 traits.
I.e., the problems with elementalist in PvE are surmountable.
Unfortunately, scepter doesn’t work in any form of PvP due to the slow hits. But while I play neither D/D, sPvP, or WvWvW, I lean to believing the folks who say that elementalist is a viable class that just needs a lot of bug fixes and probably also a few true buffs after some of the bugs are taken care of.
Might stacking runes are a little extreme vs. general boon duration. But in fairness, only one style of boon duration superior rune — Water — is easy to get.
1. Mob density is pretty high, as are respawn rates. Don’t purposely aggro more than 1 mob at once, until you’re more comfortable with the place; you’ll have plenty of multi-mob fights even so.
2. I face-tank in scepter/dagger.
3. If it’s an ordinary fight, I try to win with my weapon skills, heal, and Arcane Wave. Glyphs of Storms, Lesser Elementals, and Elementals are held back for tougher fights, or when my weapon cooldowns are bad. That said — with lousy gear, I’d probably want an elemental out at all times.
4. You can get exotics for 42,000 karma per, which is a lot, when the event chains leading to the gate of Arah or the Temple of Melandru (among others) conclude successfully. Easier to just farm gold and buy on the Trading Post, which is more affordable than it might sound based on your pre-Orr experience. Only stuff I haven’t bought for gold is armor, because I want P/T/V, which can’t be gotten on the TP. (Ditto Monk runes.)
I leveled at various times with staff, s/d, and s/f. Now I think s/d is best for me. Great initial burst; bunch of things to do after the first burst.
Staff is better for group events, and not much worse when you’re solo; it also gives you permanent Swiftness really easily, which is nice. So running around with staff makes sense too.
I’ve soloed successfully with all of scepter/dagger, scepter/focus, and staff. General guidelines are:
- Carry enough defense of various kinds, and healing, where “enough” is defined by your play style. (I use my weapon skills, Glyph of Storms, the water Elemental, the Water trait Cleansing Wave, the trait Quick Glyphs, and, when in Staff, blasts in water fields. I don’t use cantrips or other defensive traits.)
- Stack Might.
- Use multiple attunements.
- Buff some part of your DPS when you can. (I use the traits Internal Fire and Pyromancer’s Alacrity, to hit harder in Fire and also get my combo fields faster for Might.)
It isn’t hard to introduce a ladder-like system.
Just do Elo ratings. In the first iteration, a team’s rating for matchmaking purposes is the average of the individual players’ rankings. That’s imperfect — it takes no account of whether a team has played together at length — but it’s a good start.
That playstyle seems like madness.
1. Where is your condition clearing?
2. If you’re in s/f, don’t you want to use the great defensive skills in Earth?
And by the way — if you’re being chased by somebody who wants to be in melee, Ring of Fire hits hard, and it hits, and you can land Phoenix as well, which is also a big hit, and stacks Might as well.
I keep one of my armor pieces green, and buy many replacements for a few coppers over vendor price. When it’s damaged, I replace it. That solves the repair bill problem.
As for not dying — you should be able to win against two ordinary enemies pretty straightforwardly. Kill one, heal up, and finish killing the other.
Suppose elementals had the minion-like mechanic that their best special skill was under your control?
E.g., the Water Elemental’s icon would become a skill that teleports him to you and does the AoE heal. The lesser Fire Elemental would do his AoE blast finisher on command. Etc.
What complaints would there still be about the elementals?
I can think of one — the elite Fire Elemental was over-nerfed, period. But would there be any others?
When Jofast sets out to retake her camp, there are waves of attackers. If you let all the NPCs die except the dolyaks, you can probably be pretty busy on the next wave.
Same idea in her camp after she retakes it.
When Shank Anchorage is under enemy control there are a lot there and, as a bonus, most of them are immune to burning.
If you’re planning to 1v1 w/ conditions, Glyph of Elemental Power has a lot of potential, especially as used in Air or Earth.
As far as stats from the early traits:
1. Fire stats add a LOT to DPS.
2. Air stats are wasted at low levels (high levels too, but a little less so).
3. In most cases you’ll do more direct damage than condition damage (the Earth/Staff rotation above may be an exception). So Earth stats are decent but not awesome.
4. Water stats are pretty decent but not awesome.
5. Arcane stats add to the fun, and help you learn your class. But they’re not very useful directly at low levels.
As for Elemental Attunement — let’s say it gives you a permanent single stack of Might. At level 80, 1 Might is 2% or so to DPS. That’s like 1/4 or so the benefit of Internal Fire. Of course, Elemental Attunement has 4 benefits in all. So it’s a pretty fair trade-off.
If you put down Eruption and Lava Font a considerable distance from you, who exactly gets the Might from the combo? Mainly, it would be your pet.
The ideal scepter/dagger rotation would be something like:
Air: 4/2/3 in any order. The big deal is 4 — Ride The Lightning — which gets you up close and personal with the enemy.
Fire: 4, then 2, 3, and Arcane Wave in some order. 4 — Ring Of Fire — happens to hit hard and burn, but that’s not the only point; the other point is that it’s followed by three blast finishers, each of which stacks Might
Earth: 4 — Earthquake — because that’s yet another blast finisher.
Notes on specific skills include:
Fire 1 is lame, because mainly it causes burning, and your other skills cause enough burning already.
The trick to landing all three hits with Fire 3 — Phoenix — is to aim a bit behind your target. But you’d like to still land it in the Ring of Fire, so that it serves as a blast finisher.
Fire 5 is notoriously hard to hit with, but hits hard when you land it.
Earth 2 is great defense. Refresh it whenever you get a chance. Get familiar with how the 2 phases of the skill work.
Earth 3 and Air 3 are blinds worth using.
Air 2 is damage with no casting time; what’s not to like?
Earth 5 — Churning Earth — is sloooow, but I usually find it worth casting even so.
If you do the ideal sequence in one fight, or something close to it, you’ll find that in the next fight that the cooldowns don’t line up right for it. So be it. The stacks of might you start the fight with will help with your damage, direct and condition alike.
Your utilities should probably be Arcane Wave and Glyph of Lesser Elementals. The latter should usually be used in Fire, but Air isn’t bad either — at least against single targets — and gives you some Swiftness between fights.
Glyph of Storms is a good choice as your third utility; it provides awesome defense if you use it in Earth. Arcane Blast also works well for pure damage. Glyph of Elemental Power is good if you know you’re fighting a single enemy, for example in a Skill Point challenge. In Air, it keeps them Weakened; in Earth, it Cripples them (which is only important against meleers).
If an enemy survives long enough to experience all the burning from both Signet of Fire and Flame Burst, I have to wonder whether we’re using the right build.