Guild Wars 2

Looks like all your questions are answered already, but some things were left out about crafting.

You can also take crafting to keep your armor and weapons semi up-to-date and to help level your character during “slow” periods while leveling. Pretty much everything you do gives you experience in some way. For crafting, its every time you gain a crafting level you gain experience, and 25 crafting levels in two crafting professions equal about 1-3 character levels (depends on the crafting level). I tend to take an armor crafting profession and a weapon crafting profession.

And since you are new, here’s two bits of advice, one of which is very weird.
1) Keep an eye on NPC chat. This can give you a heads up on nearby events and sometimes the chat will either make you laugh or wish there was a face palm emote. That last bit is especially true during and after certain events (I’m looking at you 2 old charr over in the Iron Marches!)

2) Read any graves you see! Yep the weird advice. While most of them are serious and a bit depressing, they carry some references to other things. Also, a large number of graves are joke ones that you can’t help but laugh at. There’s a graveyard in Shaemoor (right outside Divinity’s Reach, if you didn’t choose human. Just take a left when you exit Divinity’s Reach and you will hit the graveyard.) with a few joke graves, if you don’t believe me. Also, if you see a Priest of Grenth there during the day, an event can be started later that night (in-game time). Also, a low fog (or was it mist?) during the night is another sign the event is there. Just look for a female npc in the graveyard.

I can only answer 2 and 3, and you already have 2 accomplished, just a word of warning. Like others said, the Elementalist dies easily. Cloth armor and lowest starting health. You also have access to only 1 weapon set in combat, but unlike other professions, you also get access to 20 different weapon skills with that one weapon set. Never stay in one attunement. There’s more I could say, but you can just whisper me in game.

For 3, never power level a character using a profession you haven’t used before. Each one has its own play style. Also think about taking a crafting profession or two, especially if you think you are leveling too slow. Getting a crafting level gives you experience, as does collecting the ore, wood, and cooking ingredients in the game. As for making money, I suggest collecting the materials you come across and selling the ones you don’t use/need on the Trading Post. Ore, cooking ingredients, and wood. If you decide to go into crafting, I suggest carrying around a few Salvage kits and salvage everything you don’t want/use.
If you have more questions on the elementalist, advice in general, or decide to be on Borlis Pass and looking for a guild, send me a whisper. I’ll answer your questions as best I can.

Name: Delmain.5167
Main Character: Elemental Delmain
Current Region/Server: Borlis Pass
Interested Activities: Dungeons and Fractals
Specific things you want help with: None
Active: Almost every day, normally in the afternoon and evening
Additional Comments: I am willing to help players learn how to play (or get used to playing) an elementalist, do a dungeon, or run their first fractal. I am, however, a bit on the bossy side when I take the lead.
Do you want to be a member of the guild Legion of Honour Y/N: n
Are you happy for people to contact you directly (whisper/PM) Y/N: Y, but if there is no response, means I am in the middle of a dungeon or fractal and will respond later.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

It’s not really that, more “You don’t need AR up to level XX, as long as you know the fights and what to dodge”.
Going to 19 without AR is fine, even with 0 AR you should be able to survive the agony.
20-29 is a bit trickier. Going with 0 AR at those levels can be done, but you’d need to know the fights well to know exactly when to dodge. So it’s ok for fractal veterans, not beginners, as the difficulty will become much harder.

They don’t even have to be fractal veterans as long as they are good at playing the game, just warn them what attacks will inflict agony so they can avoid/prepare for it. One pug I joined had a fractal rookie (no AR, didn’t know most of the fractals) and avoided being downed entirely by the Legendary Grawl Shaman, and he was the target of his Agony attack several times.

I chose my display name because it was the first character name I ever came up with online about 8 years ago. It came when I was trying to get the name The Man, but it failed, and started going with various variations. The Man = Da Man = De Man = Delmain.

As for Wall of Reflection not being able to work on Mai Trin’s Shadowstep shot, I think it’s because it’s how the reflections work and how the attack itself works.

Lets see… with field reflects its sorta like this: the attack leave point A to hit point B, but is intercepted at point C by a nonentity. Basically A<——→C—-x——B, but because of the shadowstep portion, the attack cannot affect a nonentity field (there’s a thought, a field shadowstepping to Mai Trin XD) so it goes through point C unhindered. A——→C——→B.

In the case of a personal reflection, the attack reaches point B, but due to an effect of some sort it reflects back to point A, and point B is indeed an entity which satisfies the Shadowstepping portion of the attack (the player in this case) A<—————>B. As for Mai Trin’s other attacks, I don’t think I ever reflected any of those, but I might not be remembering correctly.

(Please note, this is why I think personal reflects work while field reflects don’t on that attack. Only a developer will be able to tell you why this is the case.)

GoldenTruth.2853:

Astralporing.1957:

GoldenTruth.2853:

She had an attack which increased in damage the further away from her you were, it was undodgeable (bad design since it had a really big tell), but not unblockable or unreflectable.

Her ranged attacks were in fact unreflectable. I checked, ans she always could attack me right through the middle of Wall of Reflection with absolutely no problem. In fact, i can’t think of a single ranged attack in this fight that was reflectable (they were either reflection-piercing, or – like cannon shots – avoided this completely by being aoe’s and not missiles).
I guess we can be thankful at least that at the time they didn’t think about aegis-ignoring abilities yet.

I specifically remember that attack being reflectable. The problem with reflecting it was that you would be teleported to her (since her attack was a teleportation bullet).

And you are right about the attack being reflectable. To be more precise, though, it had to be a personal reflect, not a field reflect.

(In case anyone wonders, what I mean by a personal reflect is a skill is used to grant you, personally, a reflect. As an example, Magnetic Aura or Whirling Defense. A field reflect creates an area that enemy projectiles, upon passing the circle/line, get reflected. Examples being Feedback and Wall of Reflection.)

Leuca.5732:

Delmain.5167:

But part of the developers jobs is to balance the traits.

So attempt to balance it before nerfing it by moving it up a tier when you’re trying to decrease dependence on its traitline.

People may just get Elemental Attunement just for the protection

Protection is the most universally useful buff it provides, but it’s not even close to being the sole reason many eles take it.

but the fact still remains it grants might, regeneration, swiftness, and protection to you and 4 other people at most.

Remove aoe. Cutting a trait’s potential numerical output by 80% while letting it remain useful to its profession is bad how?

This trait has been stated by developers as being too strong for an adept trait and they are completely right on that issue. While this does nothing to improve our trait options, it does not give an excuse to have powerful traits early. As an adept trait, Elemental Attunement was the best choice among most of the adept and master traits. It is unreasonable for people to expect this trait to stay in adept, not to mention the outcry the developers would get if they weakened the trait to fit in adept.

Most of the adept and master traits are garbage; saying EA is the best isn’t saying much, though it is definitely good. It’s hardly unreasonable for people to expect some semblance of this trait to stay at adept tier because boons are base-level operating for Elementalists. I’m pretty sure more people would be more upset by a tier change than an efficacy nerf, because removing aoe and decreasing the protection duration would still allow for the Elementalist to function while also ensuring that defensive lines are actually utilized when one wishes to go for a support role.

The fact is that eles are a boon-hungry class. Removing our access to them without compensation does nothing to help build versatility, and counteracts changes made that try to accomplish this goal.

Since I don’t know how to speak between quotations, I’ll just have to make do.
1. In the end, you are still saying “nerf it” and I mentioned that a majority of people would get mad about this trait getting hit like that.
2. I know. I use Elemental Attunement for the protection, swiftness, and regen. The might is just extra to me.
3. Removing the AoE portion might have helped, if we Elementalists wouldn’t take a hit on its group playability (even with its rather low radius, a well-timed protection can change everything).
4. a good portion of the adept and master traits are indeed worthless which is another reason as to not reducing the effectiveness of Elemental Attunement, why make a good trait worth less when we already so many worthless traits? Also lets see what are now in the arcane adept. Vigorous Scepter, Blasting Staff, Windborne Dagger, Renewing Stamina, Arcane Resurrection, and Arcane Mastery. Can you honestly say Elemental Attunement is weaker than any of these?

The developers have to start somewhere and they are starting at both ends. Reducing the reachability of good traits, and improving weaker and less-used traits. Also if all our good traits were on the bottom, why would anyone want to go further in the traitlines? One OP build is just as bad for build variety as one viable build, and the developers know it.

Leuca.5732:

Delmain.5167:

as for Elemental Attunement, I have yet to see an argument that could have a chance at reverting that decision, mostly because they defeat their own argument when they state how important the trait is which can also be seen as how powerful this trait is.

Actually, the reason it’s so important is that Elementalists run off of boons; a great deal of their skills were obviously balanced around having decent might stacks, and protection is an absolute must for a low health profession.

You could completely remove its aoe and cut the protection duration in half and it would still be brought because the boons are base level operating for Elementalists.

More traits should have the synergy Elemental Attunement does; simply nerfing/raising tiers does nothing to help the viable trait option problem.

But part of the developers jobs is to balance the traits. People may just get Elemental Attunement just for the protection, but the fact still remains it grants might, regeneration, swiftness, and protection to you and 4 other people at most. This trait has been stated by developers as being too strong for an adept trait and they are completely right on that issue. While this does nothing to improve our trait options, it does not give an excuse to have powerful traits early. As an adept trait, Elemental Attunement was the best choice among most of the adept and master traits. It is unreasonable for people to expect this trait to stay in adept, not to mention the outcry the developers would get if they weakened the trait to fit in adept.

pho.9412:

renewing stamina moving to master tier trait.

It’s not renewing stamina moving to master tier, its Elemental Attunement. The people gave enough reasoning against moving renewing stamina up -mostly because similar traits in other professions are in adept-, as for Elemental Attunement, I have yet to see an argument that could have a chance at reverting that decision, mostly because they defeat their own argument when they state how important the trait is which can also be seen as how powerful this trait is. Stronger traits should be on higher tiers, not lower. The developers themselves have said this, though in different words.

Purifer.3946:

2) Every CD reduction trait is less effective (more or less half effective of those of a warrior).

I’m sorry to say but the CD reduction traits are not less effective, they only appear to be because “we have 20 skills”. Simply put, we are less likely to notice just how effective it is because it only affects 25% of the skills versus other profession’s 50%, but in both cases only 4 (8 for some traits if you count underwater combat) skills are affected. In fact, the Elementalist’s CD reduction traits are just as effective if not more so given how bad the cooldowns on our skills are. 20% off of a 40 second skill vs. 20% off of a 15 second skill. That’s 8 seconds removed vs. 3 seconds removed.

Which boons do you see up so often? I’m going to assume Fury, Swiftness, Regen, Vigor, and Might because 0/10/0/30/30 with dagger/dagger and cantrips can keep these 5 boons up often.

Question 1: Your problem is that your sigils are triggered the same way. Swapping attunements and swapping weapons are indeed the same thing, the problem is you are using two sigils that occur using the same method, switching weapons, and that triggers the sigil cooldown on both of them, though I thought one of them would activate so you possibly found a bug, as well. Someone else will have to answer that bit.

Question 2: The other elementalists are most likely using 2 Monk Runes and 2 Water Runes to gain additional boon duration.