Guild Wars 2

Zaq.3762:

I just logged on today and saw the nerf, 40 milliseconds or what not. I’m amazed at the out cry over this! It’s so not a significant enough nerf to be calling out Devs and ‘threatening’ to shelve your character!

Expect that it’s 80ms, not 40ms as the update notes say and on top of that those added 80ms are not affected by Quickness. That means the damage of the Shortbow has been reduced by ~14% and Shortbow+Quickness by 25%.

Bsquared.3421:

Aba.6419:

And what skills are you using?? Mist? Earth Armor? Arcanas?

They’re shown in the builder, click the link.

He’s using Signet of Earth, Arcane Wave, Arcane Shield, and Glyph of Elementals as his elite.

Aba is the OP. :-P

BUT if some player is not keen on attunment swapping and would like to focus on something (for example on support), HE CANNOT.

And the point is that the second group of players (those who aren’t able to/do not like swapping attunments and skills so fast) will always just suck with this class. And I dare to point out that the second group probably outnumbers the first one.

How can you support your team better by staying in one attunement than swapping?

If you go for Condition Damage gear the auto attack of Scepter Earth #1 is about 1k DPS, you’re still able to get Toughness gear and you have almost 3k armor. If you need healing you can swap to water and do a dodge for 1.5k-2k heal and condition remove each.
No “attunement dancing” or “fast fingers” required and still do more than fine in PvE.

10 points in air grants you faster recharging Glyphs.

Also, without knowing what weapons you use we cannot give any advice where you should put your points.

Vaerah.4907:

DesertRose.2031:

Aside from being a combo finisher it’s also one of the hardest hitting skills of an Elementalist. With Condition Damage gear one hit of it deals 6k-8k damage without the need to go glass cannon, and in PvE most foes are not smart enough to actually avoid it.

I’d really like to know how often one gets “6k-8k” out of that and churning earth.

The damage of Eruption comes from the conditions, not from the hit itself. The hit itself rarely deals a four-digit number of damage.

Apparently not 40ms but 80ms were added and this 80ms are not reduced by Quickness.

Actually the Warrior sub-forum is often filled with complains that there are still no chances for the profession and it stays useless in PvP, so… no “perfect wonderland of happines and sunshine”. :-(

Aside from being a combo finisher it’s also one of the hardest hitting skills of an Elementalist. With Condition Damage gear one hit of it deals 6k-8k damage without the need to go glass cannon, and in PvE most foes are not smart enough to actually avoid it.

Glyph of Storms
It doesn’t say in the tool tip but the Sandstorm applies blind; that makes you virtually invulnerable during it’s duration and is one of the best defensive skills for PvE.

Lynx’s F2, Quickening Zephyr, Crossfire, pet swap.

However it seems that the “fix” to Crossfire has made it weaker than intended…

20 points in Earth for Geomancer’s Alacrity, 30 points in Arcane Power for Evasive Arcana, Blasting Staff and Elemental Attunement.
If you want to go full out damage put the next 20 points in Fire but I wouldn’t advice that. If you want to be able to better in 1v1 put 20 points in Water for Cleansing Wave and Cantrip Mastery or Soothing Disruption.

With Rune of the Undeath a single hit with Eruption deals ~8000 damage, Flame Burst deals ~3500 damage. You’re weak against organized W3 groups that run mass condition remove, though.

but anyway, to “answer” your question, I didn’t mention anything about ranged attacks.

So you are complaining that profession A deals more damage at 130 range than profession B at 1200 range. Sounds legit…

At lower levels Eles are frustrating to play; without a lot of points in Arcane Power the attunements recharge awfully slow and you lack the traits which increase your survivability.
Try using conjured weapons, they make leveling less frustrating.

And I do 3-4k crits in glass cannon spec just with auto-attack and lava field. So yes, 1000 dps with one and only effective skill is funny. Btw, how do you know about 1000 DPS without DPS meter?

Against an up-leveled foe in W3, an equally equipped foe in sPvP or one of the test golems in the HotM, how many stacks of Might and Vulnerability and any food?
How often Staff attacks, once every 1.5 or 2 seconds? How often do you attack when casting other skills as well? And if we assume that everyone can perfectly dodge the four times bigger Eruption Lava Font should hit at most once. With how much DPS do you end? 1.5k? 2k?
And the 1000 DPS is just from bleeds, you still have to add the damage of Eruption itself, auto attacks and other skills.
And why would one need a DPS meter? The damage and condition damage formulas are already known, and speed is easy to find out.

And yeah, ~1000 DPS is funny when your foe has over 20k HP and smacks you for 6k easily.

Which profession and build can hit a ~2.7 armor target from 1200 range for 6k damage on a regular basis and cannot be avoided by strafing?

And about staff. He wanted you to 1vs1 because its standart situation in WvW. When you are in zerg, you are cool AoE death bringer (bwahaha), but when you are little away from zerg – 100% kill for any thief, warrior, guardian etc. Of course you can be in bunker spec, but in this case you are useless in siege with your funny damage.

You can go bunker spec and still deal 1000+ DPS with Eruption. Is ~1000 DPS really funny damage? Maybe I suck but as a glass cannon Ele I couldn’t deal significant more damage over time with it.

[Elemental Attunement] and some other trait that trigger on attunement swapping like [Cleansing Wave] and [Healing Ripple] should only work in combat then?

They are bad if you try to play them as a glass cannon, they are good if you try to play them with a combination of Condition Damage, Survivability and Support.

I run longbow/shortbow for W3. Quickening Zephyr + Longbow attack 2, and I am hitting for 3 and 4k on the last couple hits.

Channeled skills like Rapid Fire show the added up damage, not the damage of each hit.
E.g. if the 9th arrow showed a 3,000 and the 10th arrow showed a 4,000 the 10th arrow actually dealt 1,000 damage.

What’s your build and gear?

Here’s a video where one player explains his point holder Ele build:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xub9tBassHE

Here is basically the issue with the Elementalist.

Limitations:

Specifically Trait limitations.

(snip)

This issue should have been taken care of already by [Lingering Elements] which allows you to retain such boni for 5 seconds after you switch Attunements. However this trait is broken and doesn’t seem to affect all possible boni.
If that trait is fixed this issue is gone.

You don’t get any Regeneration for shooting through the water field, you get Regeneration for being “hit” by arrows fired by allies that flew through the water field.

In case you’ve known that already:
Some abilities have a 20% chance to proc a combo field but you get a notification every time an arrow flies through the combo field, so you may just have been unlucky.

If neither explains why you didn’t get Regeneration it’s properly a bug.

But back to my example. the last hit of my RF on this other player in WvW (they were an 80, not upscaled) was for 17,460. And the 3 before that were in the 10,000-14,000 range.

Channeled skills like Rapid Fire don’t actually show the damage of each hit but the added damage of all hits.
So, your last arrow hit for 17,460-14,000 = 3,460.

At lower levels Scepter+Dagger is very strong.
At lower levels Earth #2 gives you a huge armor boost (I’m not entirely sure but I think it’s more than a Soldier with equal equipment), Earth #1 is iirc after Dagger Earth #1 the most damaging auto attack and with Fire #4, #2, #3 you can give yourself 6 stacks of Might every ~20 second and some nice AoE damage.

At higher levels Staff becomes good too because with Evasive Arcana (Arcane Power trait 30) you can blast finish all the combo fields you throw down.

I’ve tested it with a guild mate, I was a Hammer Guardian, the second one was a ranger on my team. We both had a Solder’s Amulet (no Healing) and Cleric’s Amulet (798 Healing).
On the first test we had both the Solder’s Amulet equipped; the combo of Healing Spring and Mighty Blow did heal for 1390.
On the second test he equipped the Cleric’s Amulet; 1390.
On the third test he switched back to Solder’s Amulet and I equipped Cleric’s Amulet; 1575.
Sadly he had to go before we could do a test it with us both having Cleric’s Amulet equipped but I goes the result would be 1575, too.

So, to summarize:
It seems the stats of the character who created the combo field are ignored, only the stats of the character who finishes the combo matter.

If elementalist (frailmentalist) isn’t a bad class that isn’t broken, then why is this the only class specific forum always with such complaints and uproars?

Then you haven’t read the other profession’s forums much; Mesmers complain about being the weakest profession in PvE, Rangers complain about their uselessness outside of solo PvE, Guardians complain about the lack of a true ranged weapon, Warriors complain about losing every 1v1 and so forth. Players of every profession claim that the bugs their professions suffers from are the most most urgent and bug fixes for other professions can wait.

The Elementalist needs improvements in some areas like downed skills, Dagger MH and obviously bug fixes but it isn’t in such a bad shape as some people are clamming.

Combat gives you a 30% speed penalty; even with Swiftness and Speed rune you cannot completely offset this penalty.

Afaik they have the same cooldown as the active abilities. They may even be affected by the reduced cooldown for trait.

For starters, how did Rhyse get 6 stacks of might and 8 stacks of bleed? I’m missing something…

Staff Fire #2 is a combo field fire, Staff Earth #2 is a combo finisher blast; use them together and every ally around you gets 3 stacks of Might.
He properly also has Evasive Arcana, a 30 points Arcane power trait. What the tool tip doesn’t tell you that those spells are blast finishers which means they can be used to get 3 more stacks of Might. The 2 extra stack of Bleed properly come from Evasive Arcana too but I’m not sure.

Elementalist is a durable, versatile profession with good utility, decent DPS but low burst.
Some people expected it to be a squishy, one-dimensional burst profession.

Those people are now disappointed.

Zaor.6085:

In any balanced game with an easily predictable and manipulable aggro mechanic, the class with the lowest hp pool has the greater dmg output.

Fixed for you.

Ele has lots of build in support and utility and thus good survivability, dps is decent if you go for +condition damage but burst damage is rather weak. An Ele has the option to go for a higher damage output if they sacrifice their utility by using a conjured weapon. If an Ele goes for burst damage their durability decreases quickly.
Considering that this game don’t have an easily predictable aggro mechanic that’s exactly where you want to have the mage-like profession.

Ele’s downed skills and maybe Dagger MH and some conjure weapon skills need some tweaks but otherwise the Ele is working as intended.

Hyena.2037:

Another method requires a trait in the arcane tree to increases movement speed while weilding daggers, and then equip Signet of Air for an extra 10%

Finally necros can hit 25% via a blood magic trait that boosts speed by 10% for equipping a dagger in the main hand and an extra 5% for the offhand, add that with the faster movement speed from signet of the locust and you get the 25%.

Are you sure this actually works? Because normally speed boost don’t stack.

Engineers have a 33% speed boost with Speedy Kits; outside of a fight you can keep it up permanently easily.
Staff Ele can have almost permanent 33% speed boost with Earth #2, Air #5, Air #4. Add either the heal Glyph or the 10 Arcane Power trait and you have it permanently.
Warriors with two Banners and reduced cooldown have 33% speed boost a little more than 2/3. With the Warhorn it should be almost permanently.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Citadel_of_Flame

Does the Armor of Earth @ 50% hp trigger cantrip traits? Too lazy to test it.

Yes.

Your gear and traits are not down-leveled, so that’s properly the reason why you feel more powerful when visiting low-level areas a second time.

Brb rerolling guardian.

Maybe buff a little on ele/thief/ranger hp and nerf a little on guardian/warrior/mesmer?
(just around 300-1000)

You guys know that Guardians have as low base HPs as Eles, right?!

Gaius.2781:

• Eruption (Earth-2): Animation speed increased by 25-50%

That would remove self combos from the Staff.

Grenades are not that good before you get the Grenadier trait which is level 60+.
I think you’ll have a much smoother experience with Rifle or Pistol/Pistol and Elixirs, plus maybe Flamethrower to tag foes during events until you hit level 60.

2.) There are some crazy builds for all professions; I’ve seen both Elementalists and Engineers burst for something like 20k+, but overall Engineers can properly do it more consistently and with less sacrifices.

Cirion’s build is nice, though I use 10 Air/10 Earth for faster Glyphs so you can use Glyph of Storms and Glyph of Elementals more often; Sandstorm is an AoE blind, and Ice Elemental can heal a lot.
The main points of the build is 15 Water for the AoE heal and 30 Arcane Power for the blast finisher at the end of a dodge roll. The rest is pretty much just bonus.

Just stacking Toughness/Vitality doesn’t increase your survivability by much, you also need to use active defensive.
Some +Precision to proc [Renewing Stamina] more often would properly increase your survivability more.

The poison from the Carrion Devourer seems to count as an attack, so shoot it into a group of foes, active RaO shortly before it hits and you should gain a big stack of Might.

Mongo.2490:

However, I can absolutely see threat-generating abilities that force the target to attack you TEMPORARILY (maybe 2-3 seconds) with auto-attacks. This would allow a beefier character to pull a critter off for a couple seconds and allow someone else to recover.

You can already use stun, knockback, immobilize, cripple, chill or fear for that.

deherch.3158:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

however, I have noticed inconsistencies…

When me and a friend went into my personal story for example. He let me solo the boss monster. So he stood aside, doing NO DAMAGE whatsoever while I was spamming melee damage. Yet the boss monster went after my friend most of the time.. wth is going on here?

Is it opposite day or something?

Did your friend played a character with less HPs and/or armor than you? A squikittenarget gets higher priority then a sturdy one.

What are you hitting?

DaisyRogers.6837:

there are also some traits you can pick up that boost run speed when you are specced with certain weapons. You might simply be getting caught by players who are specced to finish off deserters from the battlefield.

Only the highest speed boost is active; unless they have the speed rune-set or using leap/teleport skills they shouldn’t be faster.
In combat you have a speed penalty of 30%.

Something I wrote in another forum:

Spend 10 points in Earth Magic and get [Salt Stone]. Earth gives Toughness and Condition Damage, both is very helpful.
Fire Magic, Water Magic and Arcane Power are all suitable for your next 19 points.

Use Earth #2, but don’t use the followup which shots your armor at your foe, instead let it run out; dunno if it’s a bug but if you simply let it run out it has no cooldown which means you can have its +armor all the time.
Switch every ~20 seconds to Fire for the #4, #2, #3 combo to get 6 stacks of Might, finikitten with either #5 or Earth #4. You must be in close range for this combo, though.
To bridge the time until Earth is ready again (or use it before switching to Fire so you can imminently back to Earth after the Fire combo) use Air #2, #3. #4, #5 is a good set up for the Fire combo.
Throw in Water #3, #4, #5 as needed.

Use the Signet, auto attacking counts as casting spells; it may not heal as much as the Glyph when activated but its passive healing adds up.
Glyph of Storms helps a lot, if cast while attuned to Earth (which you will be most of the time) it creates a Sandstorm which blinds every foe in it, basically makes you invulnerable for a short time.
Use Cantraps.

At level 40+ you can try out the Lightning Hammer Ele.

Maybe it helps.

I love the randomness of the word filter…

orthonovum.8765:

You are all making this way more complex than it needs to be.. just attune to air when you want to go faster, then use the speed boost skill with a staff to stack with the speed traits and you will be angering your friends when you have already ran around and got 4 waypoints then came back to them on their way to the first one….

Speed boosts don’t stack, only the highest one is active.
Staff Earth #2, Air #5, #4 isn’t hard to pull of once you get the hang of it and gives almost permanently Swiftness; to make it permanently you can either use Glyph of Elemental Harmony or [Elemental Attunement]. Using a major trait for a speed boost is a waist.

You should be able to save two (or more) trait distribution between which you can switch freely outside of combat, dungeons and PvP.
Often you want a different trait distribution for solo PvE than for dungeons, so you either specialize your character for one area and be subpar in the other or trying to create a build which is medicore in both.

A Lightning Hammer Ele is considered the most powerful PvE build by some.
Basically it’s 20 points in fire for 10 more charges and 5 points in Water for constant Regeneration. The other two utility skills are used to protect you until you can blind your foes with the Hammer.

More detailed guides:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/57471-conjure-lightning-hammer-build-discussion-thread/

Macros.6120:

I believe it only takes 30 seconds, because you start with a 10% speed boost thanks to Zephyr’s Speed.

Does it finally work like this? The last time I tested it it gave first 5%, then 10% which is less/equal than Zephyr’s Speed and thus ignored.