Guild Wars 2

As far as PvE is concerned, yes you can use d/d for pretty much anything (including high level instances) and no, you don’t need the slighest bit of tankyness, not even defensive traits, especially since you want all the damage you can get to eat through mobs as fast as possible. I would recommend switching between D/D and Staff depending on the situation though, because it’s worked for me. Just remember not to use D/D if you don’t know what those mobs/bosses do, when in doubt switch to staff.

PvP/Wv3 imo you should get a different build/set entirely, and that part is personal preference and playstyle.

@Rhoto Actually that means that Eles are unbalanced, we’re too strong when it comes to sustain and too weak when it comes damage, personally I don’t see how we could ever lose a 1v1 with the right setup and kitting, we can outlast pretty much anyone except Necros, who are able to stack poison through our condition removals and can turn our boons against us.

I love tanky mages personally, but wouldn’t reject a change either, bunker Ele is a tad bit too strong atm, while dps Ele is useless and can’t compete against other classes.

Daharahj.1325:

make cantrip"s" remove condition"s"

Was speaking generally, obviously I meant 1 condition per cantrip.

But yeah, it’s very situational.

Selix.5670:

Spec 30 into water. You just removed 1 by going into mist form, and another 2 by changing to water. You can remove another one by using your heal if you are taking damage. If it’s that much of a problem, bring cleansing, and you can remove every condition on you at once.

You forgot Evasive Arcana in Water Att.

There’s also a way to make cantrips remove conditions by combining 2 traits.

Whatever, Eles aren’t bad biggerthanthesun, I would take anything TheWarKeeper says with a grain of salt, it just takes practice and a good build, eventually you’ll be 1v3ing people in spvp.

TheWarKeeper.5374:

Hahaha daharahj its getting more funny to remember ur post in my thread after watching this one XD

Your english entertains me as well.

In all seriousness, your posts only show what a bad Ele you are -if you ever played as one- coming from someone who claims that he plays 4 different classes, I find it hard to trust your judgment, or take it seriously.

We can pvp whenever, if that’s what you want.

I’m gonna get flamed for this, but as an Ele myself we have no excuse to lose to another class 1v1.

Maybe to a very good Necro, but that’s about it.

.. Same old “I played this game longer than you” card, but you make no sense at all, your first mistake was comparing 2 different games who happen to use the same name for a class (yes, even GW1 is a different game).

I’m saying it now, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and your knowledge about GW1 is irrelevant.

I have too leveled 2 eles to 80, only because I wanted to play different races/story and eles are the only class I find fun to play.

However I disagree with the OP, they are harder too play but are also more rewarding in the sense that you get damage and cc if played properly, while other classes get only dps.

The issue right now is that you can’t get away with building full glass cannon, as far as PvP is concerned, you’re not gonna get far with it. Compared to a thief who can just 3shot someone and vanish in stealth.

I wouldn’t be playing this game if everything I had to kill was Charr.

I feel bad enough killing flame legion and renegades.

It does do what the description says: break stun. It shouldn’t remove immobilize/bleed/poison.

Lol, you’d think people would learn to NEVER use RtL as an opener by now until it gets fixed, for me its exclusively an escape/catch up tool.

Magnetic Grasp works better, even if it glitches you’re not stuck in its animation and can cast other skills, somewhat.

Not worth it imo.

You’re wasting half your cooldowns for 8ish usable stacks of might, the other 8 will go off before you start chaining your skills (whatever was left unused).

Wasting Earthquake is kind of a big deal.

@Zonzai You have the reading comprehension of a snail if that’s what you took from my post.

Eles underwater (especially after the Whirlpool nerf) are a CC bot, that’s about it.

@Zonzai I disagree that Eles are in an awful state right now, if anything, they’re not what the players/devs expected, a mage. They ended up being a tanky self-sustaining monster, with no spike damage whatsoever, of course you can build damage and do damage but it’s not nearly as effective since you’re gonna contribute much less in the long run.

Staff ended up being a support weapon both control and damage wise, unlike the common mage concept staff users don’t have a single target nuke to rely on, to burst down single targets quickly, rather they get a bunch of aoe spells that are supposed to make up for the lack of burst.

S/D filled this role the most, and it was effective the first few weeks when people didn’t know what the hell was going on, and rarely dodged anything, but right now it’s not viable, it doesn’t have enough mobility or sustained/reliable damage, so hardly anyone uses it anymore.

Eles are not gonna change or improve unless they do a skill overhaul for staves, tweaking numbers isn’t really gonna solve anything either, the problem right now is that staves are our only long-range weapon but it was designed to be a SUPPORT weapon as well. They need to change that, or allow us to use pistols :]

tl;dr: people rolled an Ele wanting to be a mage, and they got stuck with a ‘monk’.

Also, no RtL fix, was really looking forward to it.

I’m so sad that they changed Air Pocket, it was sooo good for getting out of trouble.

I guess it’s worth it, when i read the “Cone of Cold” part I was expecting a huge nerf, to my surprise, they buffed it big time, so I guess bunker/healing builds will be more popular than ever.

Really nice overall.

Some D/D builds have insane amounts of sustain.

I would tell you how to counter them, but then people would know something that doesn’t benefit me ;p

As for the daze thing, in my experience Shocking Aura never lasted long enough to make a substancial difference for me, it’s very situational. So yeah, you probably got unlucky and got chain KD’d right after his daze aura went out, seeming like a really long time, especially in pvp where cc’s seem to last forever no matter how small they are.

FatFuzzy.2659:

It’s not a bug/glitch..it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, leave it alone….dam no wonder we getting nerfed., we are thieves man!! Stealth baby!!

You get to have insane mobility/stealth alternatives, or insane burst, not both. Note; Burst and good dps are not the same. They could probably get away with having good dps.

The argument “but thieves are so squishy!” is rather silly when they can get out of danger repeately with an ability that at the moment has no counter (stealth).

Wildclaw.6073:

Drake’s Breath fits D/D just fine.

If you want to complain about skills that don’t fit D/D, let’s talk about Earth 1 and 3. Those are the only two skills on the whole kitten set that requires a target to work.

Earth 3 is awesome.

In fact, for closing gaps it’s much better than Air 4 even though it doesn’t do damage simply because it doesn’t glitch 80% of the time.

The day ANet fixes RtL Eles will receive a huge buff.

Drake’s Breath is the longest range skill you’ll get with a D/D setup, I use it when I’m kiting or i’m afraid to take some hits, otherwise you’re simply gonna have higher DPS with auto attacks from melee range.

There ARE other uses like using it to exploit some traits (Zephyr’s Focus, Obsidian Focus) but I feel like Cone of Cold is better for this since it also heals you.

Its uses are limited I agree, it could use a buff imo, the damage feels lackluster for being a channeled skill with such range.

I already do this with my D/D setup, Power/Prec/Crit, AW and cantrips of my preference. You don’t need all those defensive stats if you’re mobile enough to avoid getting hit.

PvE has always been a joke for Eles though.

Something that annoyed me when i first saw a Charr cub was that they’re not actually cubs, they’re a miniature version of grown up Charrs.

They have none of the charasteristics a cub should have other than small size (reduced snout, small horns/teeth, eyes should look bigger, “chubby” face). And what’s funnier, some of them have scars, old-grumpy looking expressions and fully developed horns and teeth. It seems like ANet didn’t put too much effort to differentiate them like they did with human/norn children for example.

Funny fact: if you take your gear off and grab one of those red mushrooms that decreases your size in the sylvari zone, you’ll look exactly like cubs are shown in the game.

I have 3 major problems with the class right now, I’m primarily a staff user, but:

• Ride the Lightning (Air-Dagger-4): It needs to get fixed, asap. S/D is not a reliable build for me right now because it’ll get you killed 50% of the time. A lot of great suggestions have been given already (tweaks like letting you detonate it yourself by doubletapping is a good one).

• Lightning Surge (Air-Staff-3): I can’t say it enough, this skill is essentially useless in pvp, and it’s nothing more than a noob trap, by the time you’re finished casting it you’ll get hit enough times to make the blind effect meaningless, and the damage is mediocre for the time it takes to cast. Either decrease the cast time GREATLY or remove the cast time completely, blinds in this game aren’t strong enough to justify such penalty.

• We don’t have elite skills.

I can put up with temporal air trait bugs that are highly situational, or having miserable damage unless we combo skills perfectly, but these mentioned above are priority for me.

Well D/D is really risky for people who are yet not used to kiting and dodging vital skills, I’d recommend Scepter/Dagger, early levels you can burst down 1 and even a group of mobs with a single Fire Ring – D’Tooth – Phoenix – Fire Grab, remember to use them within the circle so you get might, switch to wind att to finish the leftovers if they’re not dead yet.

Arcane skills are your friends at early levels, I don’t know if any this has been suggested already because I only read the OP.

For Dungeons I’d personally recommend replacing Arcane Wave for Mist Form and switching over to staff for better aoe/support from safe range, but everyone has their personal preference on this subject.

GL, it’s a really fun class once you get the hangs of it.

Huh, same generic Ele vid I’ve seen 100 times before.

I wonder if there’s anything out there besides some guy spamming Earthquake/Updraft – Fire Ring – Unload on people that don’t know what they’re doing, and from that point spam atts/skills the moment they go off cooldown, then editing the speed to make it look cool.

Gotta give props for the editing though.