Your character doesn’t take one of the kits if you don’t need it, e.g. if you’re at full health or not suffering from a condition.
Your pet responds to your commands at some point in the next zero to three seconds and you have no way to manually use 2/4 of its abilities.
One of the most mentioned issues with the Ranger is that you cannot “play your pet”.
The comparison is really between Berserker’s and Rampager’s, since those are the two full dunk options available.
The exact break-even point depends a good bit on the exact ratios of your skills and what percentage of the time you can spend attacking. Higher ratios and more time spent attacking makes Berserker’s better, more time kiting / using utility skills and lower ratios makes Rampager’s better.
On the upper end, with good ratios and 100% attacking uptime, the break-even point is around 9 stacks of bleeding against squishy targets and 6 stacks against harder targets (and probably even lower against legendary world mobs). Poison is worth ~2 stacks and burning ~5 stacks. The more you’re focused on burst, the better off you’ll be in Berserker’s; similarly, the more time you spend kiting while waiting for cooldowns while your dots tick, the better Rampager’s will be.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Berserker’s doesn’t play well with others, while Rampager’s plays reasonably well with others. If you’re going to be using Berserker’s items you should really go all-in on them, since Precision and particularly Prowess really depend on each other to be effective, and diluting it makes it worse. Rampager’s does have some dependence from the Precision, but not nearly as much since Precision is key for procs, and otherwise plays well with other pieces you might want.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/64113-condition-damage-vs-critical-damage/#entry1950993
Also you feel rather weak because an Elementalist performs badly when going glass cannon and the Fire trait line is weak; it may not be much of a problem at lower levels but from level 60-75 onwards even normal mobs start to fight back and then subpar build and gear choices become more severe.
YYou can’t remove thief’s burst damage without just removing the thief from the game. Thief literally has nothing but burst damage that it excels at.
Giving a profession with invisibility also superior burst damage is poor game design. Not only it’s almost impossible to balance but it’s also not fun to play against such a profession; for a certain amount of time they are fairly harmless, and every x seconds they attack you have to react correctly within one or two seconds or you’re dead.
ANet has seen how broken such a profession is with the GW1 Assassin, why they decided to include a profession just as broken in GW2 is beyond me.
Earth is condition damage and defensive; also, I would say Immobilze and Cripple are defensive.
I wish i knew before i made my character that i cant be that if i choose elementalist :/
Yeah, a lot of the complains about the Ele come from the misleading profession description.
30 points in Arcane Power can give you almost permanent Vigor, boons on every attunement swap, a blast finisher on each dodge and ~1.5k healing every ~10 seconds.
How can you spend 30 points to gain more than that?
Only the highest speed buff counts, so you will only have +33% speed; you can get up to +40% by using the Speed rune (if I remember the name correctly).
However that’s still not enough to offset the combat speed penalty because 0.7*1.4 = 0.98.
Good thing I’ve played GW1 and knew that ANet’s profession descriptions are inaccurate as hell and superior damage won’t be one of the strengths of this profession.
I only have one stunbreaker and it was on cooldown whenever the warrior showed up, unlucky sure, but it’s pretty upsetting that if my stunbreaker in on CD there’s nothing I can do…
Make a Warrior, go to the Mists, equip Bull’s Charge. Use it and remember how the animation looks like. The next time you fight against a Warrior dodge when you see that animation, without that knockdown such Warriors are a lot less frightening.
When I have my guy gear’d out (level 80), hundred blades usually finishes off with numbers like 8k/10k/12k i’ve even had it as high as 10/14/18k on the final three slashes (pending boons). Try making that up on auto attack.
I also use the trait for might gain per crit on greatsword.
auto attacks range from 800-1200
That means the last two attacks dealt 2k damage; the numbers show the damage the whole skill did, not the damage of a single hit.
This really sucks for eles in WvW where we have the lowest health pool.
So many jumps others can make you end up dying from.
Falling damage is x% of your max health, if a level 1 Elementalist would die from a fall a level 80 warrior would die, too.
It seems the forum has deleted his post.
He said that Mist Form now interrupts you when you rez your team mate but you can still use it to stomp a player. Could have been the other way around, though.
You also have access to more fields/finishers through your other skills with summoned weapons and Whirlwind(whirl finisher). Frostbow has projectile finisher on 2, Axe has 2 fields(3, 4) and a leap finisher on 5, Lightning Hammer has field(5) and leap finish on 2, and Greatsword has whirl finish on 3.
Lightning Hammer has also a blast finisher at the end of the auto attack combo.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImMblRygjDAkCoEeEgAHIeYhDRA;TgAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukcB
7, Earth #4, (Air #4), Air #2, 8, 9.
It deals about 10-15k+ damage in 1-2 seconds every 45 seconds but surviving between those hits will be hard.
I guess this isn’t common knowledge so I created a thread about it:
Every time the Healing Turret grants Regeneration it also creates a water field around it. The water field itself is much smaller than the Regeneration radius, it’s about the size of the white fog around the turret. The water field only lasts for about a second, and by the time you see the white fog it’s almost or even already gone; the best indicator to know when the water field is up is to look for the white circle around the Healing Turret.
And yes, I’m talking about the Healing Turret itself, not the tool belt skill.
One way to use this: Plant the Healing Turret, wait for about a second until it creates the water field, then blow it up; you get the initial heal, AoE Regeneration and an AoE heal.
Unlike many other MMOs it’s not just the amount of damage or healing you do that creates aggro but being easy(er) to kill (than your team mates) also creates aggro.
However it seems not every mob follow this algorithm, there are reports that some mobs favor targets with high survivability.
Actually it’s one of three professions that can provide water combo fields.
The Engineer’s Healing Turret creates an about 1 second lasting water field every ~6 seconds and the Healing Turret tool belt skill creates a water field, too.Technically this isn’t correct either.. a thief can create a water combo field with the steal skill by stealing from a….. ranger. Yeah that is pretty priceless.
Let’s play the whatever you can do my thief can do better game.. come on play along.
Thieves are OP. :-P
Now let’s talk about Healing Spring/Spirit of Nature. Healing Spring, again, being one of only TWO classes that can bring a water field which can=permanent regen to your PvE or PvP team. AoE healig on splash.
Actually it’s one of three professions that can provide water combo fields.
The Engineer’s Healing Turret creates an about 1 second lasting water field every ~6 seconds and the Healing Turret tool belt skill creates a water field, too.
I think almost every skill activation time is incorrect, at least the auto attack ones.
E.g. the Shortbow fires every 0.52 seconds, if I’m informed correctly most melee weapons swing every 0.7 seconds or 1.4 seconds if it’s a lengthy final attack.
Btw: The Longbow had that slow attack rate since release.
Arcane Power V gives you Might, Regeneration, Swiftness or Protection if you switch to the related attunement.
Arcane Power 15 grants you boni for a specific attunement, e.g. +10% while in Fire, for 5 seconds after you swapped out of it; however it is currently bugged and doesn’t grants all attunement specific boni for 5 more seconds.
Use your trait points to get traits you want/are good, not to get attribute boni; use items for that.
Even with 0 points in Earth you can still get more than 900 Condition Damage without turning yourself into a glass cannon.
1. The oldest combo field is the only one that triggers, yes.
2. It uses the effect of the first combo field it flies through, if more than one combo field starts at the very same place it uses the oldest one.
3. It depends from skill to skill; e.g. Phoenix applies it boni when it explodes, Mighty Blow (Guardian Hammer 2) looks for combo fields at start up but applies the effect at the end of it.
4. Arrows apply the effect to every enemy/ally that it pierces once it touches the combo field, it doesn’t matter if the enemy/ally stands in the combo field. Leap finishers have to touch the combo field at any point, they neither need to start or finish inside the combo field. Blast finisher need to start inside the combo field but doesn’t need to end in it.
4.1 I don’t really understand the question. The size of a blast finisher is afaik independent of the skill that is being used, e.g. Might Blow has an as big blast finisher AoE as Eruption.
5. Afaik that’s correct. However it seems not every finisher is listed as one; I’ve heard Magnetic Grasp (Dagger Earth #3) is a whirl finisher but I cannot confirm it.
I doubt the tooltip is correct with its 0.75 attack speed.
According to some tests the attack speed of the Longbow is actually 1.25 seconds.
http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/
In your case that would mean you do ~4800 damage with your auto attacks during 5 seconds.
“Charge!”
15 characters
They were ok and fun before the nerf, but SB was the best weapon. It just got hit for a 7% flat damage reduction and perhaps around 20% damage cut on its burst (auto-attack plus quickness).
The attack rate of Crossfire+Quickness was reduces by 25%; but you’re partly right, that’s almost 20% more than it should be.
Regarding the OP’s question:
Up until level 70-75 Rangers are very good in open PvE.
At level 75-80 and dungeons you’ll notice that the Ranger’s main mechanic, pets, still needs work. Even if you pay attention to your pet and call it back with F3 because the champion is about to launch a big attack it dies because it decided to ignore your command for 1-2 seconds; the F2 skills have similar problems, sometimes it takes several seconds before the pet actually uses the skill, and sometimes the pet simply interrupts itself. If the delay would always be there you could at least adjust to it and make it somewhat work but other times your pet follows your commands flawlessly.
Another weak point of Rangers is their vulnerability to Immobilize.
Tell her to put 15 points in Water and 30 points in Arcane Power, traits are Water V, Arcane V, VI or VII or VIII (depending if she uses Scepter, Staff or Precision gear), and XI.
She can switch to Water every ~10 seconds to get an AoE heal, and dodge every 10 seconds while attuned to Water to get another AoE heal. On top of that Evasive Arcana turns every dodge into a blast finisher so if she e.g. dodges into the Healing Spring (water field) of a Ranger she gets another AoE heal.
Build example:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImmbpR5gjDAEFmcioQFlHzkjNA
Last 10 points can either go in Earth for Armor of Earth or Water for yet another condition remove.
If Glyph of Storms is used while attuned to Earth the resulting Sandstorm blinds foes which greatly increases the survivability of the whole group against non-champion mobs.
Actually Warriors are not tanky at all; higher base armor doesn’t makes much of a difference at max-Level and higher base health is not enough to offset their limited abilities do reduce incoming damage. By comparison an Elementalist is far more durable.
This topic kind of made me wonder…I thought attunment swapping was supposed to be done with a reason…but most here claim the pro way is to just race through every cd you have, completely disregarding the situation you are in… Am I really doing it wrong when I put thought into playing an ele?!
Yes and No.
There’s often a most efficient order to use your skills, and once you’ve found out this order you only need to think about which string of skills you should use next.
15 Water/15-30 Arcane Power is the basis of most viable builds.
If you already have 20 points in Arcane Power (e.g. the the bigger Staff AoE) I advice to put 10 more points in Arcane Power to get Evasive Arcana; it isn’t in the trait description but each of those spells count as a blast finisher. That means you can use it with a fire field to give yourself (and each nearby ally) 3-6 stacks of Might (+105-210 Power and Condition Damage at max-Level) and ~1.5k healing every ~10 seconds which is properly more than you get for 10 trait points in any other line.
Elementalist is weak at low levels because the attunement cooldown are so long and you don’t have important traits like Water 15 or Arcane Power 30.
It will get a little better from level 40 and much better from level 60 onwards.
Pretty much every profession forum looks like that from time to time.
Not saying that the Ranger is fine how he is, though…
They should already change the official profession description so it no longer states “massive damage” to give players false hopes.
That would already fix a lot because if you don’t go class cannon the Elementalist isaside from bugs all professions suffer from mostly fine.
What’s your suggestion exactly? The Conjure Weapon skills are removed and instead the Elementalist can use Greatswords, Axes and such as regular weapons?
Note that channeled skills like Hundred Blades shows the damage of each hit added up, so if you see your final hit dealing ~10k each of the 9 hits actually dealt around 1.1k damage.
Except that all of the summoned weapons except for shield, hammer and greatsword are ranged, not melee.
Actually the Greatsword is mostly ranged, too.
Prior to the nerf Shortbow shot every 0.48 seconds, after the nerf every 0.52 seconds.
With Quickness Shortbow should shot every 0.26 seconds but only shots every 0.32 seconds.
Source:
http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/
If your Quickness numbers pre-nerf are correct the old Quickness attack speed was every 0.25 seconds which is very close to the theoretical value of 0.24.
However it appears that the recent patch broke Crossfire+Quickness. I’ve made a thread about this specific bug:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Quickness-doesn-t-affect-Crossfire-correctly/first#post402131
Many weapons hit multiple foes in a small cone in front of you; that makes both the Warrior and the Guardian good choices for “powerful AoE damage”.
Also, since it is a light combo field, your own rangers shooting through the wall constantly gets their conditions removed – which is a bigger deal than one would first think.
The arrows will remove conditions of allies they hit, conditions on yourself aren’t removed.
The problem with our traits isn’t that they’re that bad, but that for the most part our trait trees are built the wrong way around.
Face it, if you spend only a few points in fire, you’re most likely doing it to get some trait that synergizes with the rest of your build. If you go deep in a air, you’re most likely going to focus on that element, because the air tree synergizes best with the focus of the air attunement spells (crits, spikyness, etc).
However, in the Elementalist’s trait trees, the traits that boost that element the hardest are very early in that tree, and the traits that synergize best with other trees are at the top.
I dunno, it just seems weird to me.
That’s because with [Lingering Elements], the 15 points minor Arcane Power trait, you’re supposed to retain those boni after you swapped attunements; however that trait is currently bugged and doesn’t work on all boni.
You can either choose to spend more points into a specific trait line to get traits that affect all attunements, or spend 15 points in Arcane Power to make prior attunement-specific traits affect more than one.
At lower levels the Elementalist is very weak and the Warrior is very strong; only at about level 60-70 the Elementalist manages to catch up somewhat.
Also if you haven’t played GW1 and thus let yourself been fooled by the profession description and now want to play the Elementalist as a glass cannon you’re in a world of pain.
Crossfire now attacks once every 0.52 seconds, and with Quickness the fire rate should be doubled meaning it should attack every 0.26 seconds.
However according to these tests Crossfire only seems to attack every 0.32 seconds; that’s almost 19% less than it should be. It’s unknown if this behavior was caused by the latest patch or if it already didn’t worked properly before.
http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/
Was someone able to replicate this results?
This is one of the skills that makes me wish we had more convenient ways to stop attacking…
Is left clicking virtually anywhere but your skill bard too hard? :p
Haha, I didn’t know about that. Thanks man.
The skill descriptions are very irritating, it seems allies is short for your allies, your pet and yourself, yet some descriptions explicitly state you and your pet, too.
edit: To answer your question, yes they remove conditions from you as well.
The 15 points trait in Arcane Power is supposed to grant you the boni of the previous attunement for 5 seconds after you swapped out of it; however it seems to work only for the “+10% damage while in x”-type of traits, not for the 5 points traits in every trait tree. Hopefully that’s not working as intended and will be fixed eventually.
This is one of the skills that makes me wish we had more convenient ways to stop attacking…
I go longbow and shortsword + warhorn (sometimes dagger) so don’t group all of us together… currently it seems only the really bad rangers (or those that actually like shortbow) are using only the shortbow
Sure you could use the Longbow over the Shortbow before the nerf… if you don’t mind dealing only 3/4 to 1/3 of its damage.
(edited by DesertRose.2031)
Correct.
15 characters.
Be glad you’ve never played GW1, Elementalists dealt even less damage in the predecessor. ;-)
Are you looking for PvE, Dungeon, W3 or sPvP builds?