Or you could just put 10 points in air, and get permanent 25% speed while in air attunement, with no work required. That’s only 8% lower then permanent swift.
And it takes only 50 seconds until you have the 25% speed boost, yeah.
Staff and the Arcane Power trait which gives you a boon whenever you switch attunements is the easiest way to get permanent Swiftness.
Make a character of all professions that you might find interesting, play through the tutorial and then go to the Heart of the Mists via the last tab on your Hero panel.
There you are level 80 and have access to the best armor, weapons and upgrades in the game so you can get a feeling how each profession plays at max level.
Warriors and Thieves hit hard, Shortbow Rangers and Grenade Engineers are not bad in that regard either.
Its because kits aren’t weapons. Kits are bundles. And bundles don’t have a remembered auto attack.
Its working as intended, till they make kits not bundles.
Actually the only reason the Kits don’t have auto attack yet is because the Devs are too busy with other things to implement it.
The Elementalist is not a burst damage profession so don’t expect much.
Phoenix (if you hit three times), Churning Earth and Fire Grab are afaik the most damaging skills of an Ele.
For one, in most mmo’s when the damage of a class goes up, relatively the armor/protection/health goes down, not arguing that. When the armor/protection/health goes up, the damage of the class typically goes down.
In “most mmo’s” that may be the case, but not in Guild Wars.
Some quotes from Ensign about the Elementalist.
Ensign:
Similar reason to why Guardian damage is ‘god awful’ – you’re a very durable, high utility class that pays for all that utility with lower ratios.
Plus you’re a long range utility caster, which knocks damage down another tick.
Whether or not you’re taking advantage of that utility is up to you, but it’s the reason you’re not doing the damage of one dimensional damage characters.
Ensign:
Base armor makes very little difference in this game. Guardians are squishy as hell without active defenses either. You have your array of blinks and cleanses and bubbles to keep yourself alive; and you’re long range to begin with, which counts for a lot defensively (Guardian has ranged sets, which are terrible). Your downed state is comically bad though, worst in the game.
but solo it feels like they need to run strict rotations to get the best use out of self-comboes they can just to match what other professions can do trivially.
Ensign:
Offensively, yes, you do; and that’s because you’re a durable caster with a ton of utility, and you can’t just take that off your bar. It’s baked into the class. They pay for it with lower raw damage output; so you have to work harder. So you’re going to end up behind classes without all that utility and durability when it comes to raw damage output. That’s only natural.
I’m not saying that the Ele doesn’t need adjustment, I’m just saying that pretty much everyone is playing the class wrong – they’re playing the class they think it is, not the class it is – and it’s skewing perceptions of its power level.
D/D glass cannon is a very durable long range utility caster? Oh, I didn’t noticed that. Could explain why the damage is so awful compared to some other melee glass cannon builds from other professions which of course have not the utility and durability of an elementalist… oh, wait…
Ensign:
Where to start? How about that while D/D is short range, it’s not melee – with a variable range – and the damage reflects that? Your basic attacks deal damage somewhere between what you’d expect from melee attacks and long range attacks, after adjusting for AoE.
Then, on top of your damage, you have an assortment of snares, immobilizes, stuns, and/or knockdowns to harass with.
A substantial chunk of your damage comes from conditions, not as burst; you also have built in healing and condition removal.
Why is Elementalist damage weaker than other classes? For the above reasons. Why do you feel weak as a full glass cannon burst character? Because you’re playing a class that isn’t well suited to that. Sure, if the standard for ‘good class’ is putting full Berserker on everything and breaking out the stopwatch, you’re right, Elementalist is not a ‘good class’. But that’s the idiot bracket. Elementalists benefit immensely from a mix of stats, they want to be built with more durability to give their bag of tricks more time to work – and in that paradigm, sure, it’s possible the Elementalist still needs some damage buffs.
But that’s a far cry from ‘my character is not as good at being a Thief as a Thief is’ when the Elementalist is not a Thief – nor should it be.
Someone here at the forums made the effort to test how much more damage attunement dancing provides; so far his results where that it nearly gives no benefit in damage.
I hope he’ll return with more data soon.
So, you have a level 80 warrior, an Ele which you only play with your friend, and now you want to hear suggestions which third profession you should play?
Or is your friend an Ele and you want to know which professions synergies well with one?
I meant the trait tree Tools (it’s the one at the bottom), not the attribute Tool Belt Recharge Rate.
Condition your trait point distribution on what minor and major traits you can get, the attributes are secondary.
The thing is that longbow should reward u for staying at maximum distance. Atm max distance for longbow = same dps as shortbow.
Medium range should give the same dps as shortbow, max range rewards u and min range losing dpsThe short bow still out damages the longbow at long range.
He wishes that Longbow deals about the same damage as Shortbow without bleed at medium range, and comes at least close to the damage of a flanking Shortbow at long range, not stating that it currently behaves like that.
You want Speedy Kits (Tools). Running 33% faster all the time reduces the time to get to your destination noticeably. For Dungeons you can replace it with II, III or IV, depending on which utility skills you use.
There are multiple options where to put the remaining points:
20 points in Alchemy for Backpack Regenerator (requires the use of a Kit)
20 points in Explosives for bigger and faster recharging or stronger bombs and grenades
10 points in Firearms for faster recharging weapon skills
You can simply complete the tutorial and then go to the Heart of the Mists (it’s the last tab in the Hero panel). There you’ll be instantly level 80, have access to the best armor, weapon and upgrade in the game and can test it via some NPCs or other players.
Some professions have a totally different feel at level 40+ or 60+ because at that time they unlock their Master respectively Grandmaster traits so playing one only until level 10 or 20 may give you a distorted impression of said profession.
Also make yourself clear that no Scholar follows the mage concept of many other RPGs, meaning there is no long-range nuker in this game; if you make an Elementalist because you want to play one you properly will be majorly disappointed. This misconception is also the main reason why many players see the Ele as UP.
Zephyr’s Speed / One with the Air / Haste (boon).
When attacked or attune swapping and an auto strike happens, you lose all your speed boons. Even though haste will appear, it will not increase movement speed.
If you’re in combat you get a -30% speed penalty; are you sure the “loss of speed boons” doesn’t come from that?
One With Air — Function issue
Does not increase movement speed at all, will not override Zephyr’s Speed.
Have you tested [One with Air] increases your speed after 30+ seconds? In the first 29 seconds you’ll see no increase in speed because you already have +10% from the minor trait.
Engineer is a medium armor mid-low health class that for some reason still requires you to step on someone’s toes to do good burst. Oh, and Rifle warrior deals 10k damage in a single crit on killshot with the right build. Look me in the eyes and tell me thats not stupid in comparison to a class that needs to get into melee range and blow all your cooldowns to do even close to that much damage.
Yeah, how can ANET dare to break with the common RPG design that low armor means more damage and range and everything else is negligible.
You’re automatically kicked for inactivity, so you can do this only for a limited amount of time.
Depends on what your definition of “good” is.
In case it’s the usual mage-archetype of most other RPGs the Elementalist is bad.
In case you play him as a durable support and DoT character he’s good.
However because of his comparable low damage output it’ll take longer to kill foes in PvE so you’ll most likely level a bit slower.
Unless it was fixed [One with Air] only gives you a benefit after you have been at least 30 seconds attuned to air; that’s because after 10 and 20 seconds you get 5% respectively 10% which doesn’t surpass the 10% from [Zephyr’s Speed] so it’s ignored.
Combos are not explained ingame; if someone never visited a forum or wiki the chances are high they have no idea about combos.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed
“Being in combat decreases speed by 30% This is the only speed reduction that stacks with other penalties.”
Also something important:
“Only the highest speed reduction is applied”
True, but rate of fire increases as you get closer to the enemy. Your damage increases the CLOSER you are to your enemy.
I have tested it in the HotM; in 10 seconds from ~1200 range I shot almost 21 times, from ~100 range almost 21 times.
If the attack speed is affected by distance the gain is less than ~2,5%.
Something I forgot to add.
A combo finisher can only affect one combo field, and if they’re more than one it will use the oldest one.Are you sure? I seem to get the most recent field. It can get annoying as I’ll often Combine frost trap with crossfire and QZ to get extra chilling on a boss we’re kiting, only for someone to put a fire field on top.
I tested it with a friend some time ago, and just tested it again with a Guardian with Hammer, Wall of Reflection and Purging Flames again; the combo field placed first was activated. It could be that not all combo fields are working consistently so far, though.
However, if the combo finisher moves your character the combo field you traveled through first is used. Also, the combo effect will be activated at the end of the move; that means you could stand in a fire field, use Guardian Hammer #2 to leap out of the field and grant your allies Might ~400 feet away from the combo field.
Forms of Regeneration that don’t actually give you the boon Regeneration stack indefinitely in intensity.
What I don’t like about short bow:
1. You have to be in close to be effective.
Not a single Shortbow skill gets any penalties for using it at 1200 range.
Something I forgot to add.
A combo finisher can only affect one combo field, and if they’re more than one it will use the oldest one.
Sorry to sound like a noob but are you saying that if you use healing spring in conjunction with the carpet arrow strike (long bow), your arrows actually cause a healing effect on allies?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrzwFP1vCag
Look for skills which have a line like “Finisher: …” in their tool tip; if you use those skills together with skills with “Combo Field: …” in their tool tip they will have additional effects.
E.g. shooting with arrows through a Water field has a (sometimes 20% chance) to apply Regeneration to all allies it passes through, with a Light field they would remove a condition, a Smoke field and they blind the target.
Using combos can greatly increase a team’s effectiveness.
Official forums are always a collecting tank for disappointed or upset players, and thus constructive discussions are a rarity.
If you want to learn something about the game it’s better to visit other forums.
What would you like to be added/changed to the Elementalist?
in Elementalist
Posted by: DesertRose.2031
We have to be in air to keep up our speedbuff, all the while, the other classes next to you can use it all the time, and even when you have the 25% air talent specced, other classes run just as fast as you, or faster, without having to spec into an “attunement”
With a Staff you can simply use Earth #2, Air #5 and #4 for Swiftness, couple that with Elemental Attunement and you have consistent Swiftness, not only on yourself but everyone around you.
The +25% speed trait is next to worthless, and worthless if you use a Staff.
You can cast Earth #2 somewhere and then cast a combo field on top of it, because Eruption has a 6 second delay or so you can blast finish every combo field by yourself.
Also removing the blast attribute from Eruption would greatly weaken a Staff Ele; first because they would lose the ability to self-combo and second because they would lose the (to my knowledge) second most frequently useable blast finisher in the game.
Ele has good survivability, utility and support, and to balance that a comparable low damage output; while this isn’t a problem as long as you’re in a party it becomes a bother when you solo PvE. Because of the low damage output an Ele has to make use of their utility to bring down a foe but other classes with a higher damage output can simply face-tank it and bring it down before they bring them down.
Therefor the Ele needs to be able to trade it’s utility with a higher damage output, but due to balance reasons it cannot be able to switch frequently between these two. The conjure weapon skills fill this gap pretty much perfectly, but other than the Lightning Hammer they may not give enough benefit to make them worthwhile.
The other conjure weapon skills, especially shield and axe, needs to be looked at.
There seems to be another but with Healing Turret which makes it even more undesirable: When the turret is destroyed the Regeneration drops to 5 or so, with no possibility to increase it until it runs out again.
What happens when you conjure one of your elemental weapons? You’re stuck using that weapon until it runs out of charges or you put the weapon away… and if you put away the weapon soon after casting it, well you kind of just wasted that utility/elite (unless the sole purpose was to give an ally the weapon). Being stuck using one set of skills goes completely against an ele’s base mechanic, attunement swapping. You cannot swap to provide healing or CC or anything, you are stuck.
That’s the point of the conjure weapon skills; you lose your utility, support and CC of your weapon skills and primarily gain damage in return. Whether the benefit of conjure weapon skills is big enough compensates the loss of the former is up to debate.
Mostly to give you a chance and answer me why do you believe that it’s ‘common sense’ that the short bow will do more damage on a boss event, like the level 74 (I think it was) dragon event?
The “common sense” comment was directed to the people who responded to my presentation of a simple, quick test that Shortbow’s auto attack and Longbow’s Rapid Fire both do the same amount of damage with “l0l, m! RF cr!t$ f0r m0r@” or “get better gear, n00b!” and being ignorant of the fact that your gear is standardized in PvP or that if their RF will hit for more damage the Shortbow’s auto attack hits for more, too.
Cause you won’t believe anyone else why don’t you simply test in yourself?
Go into the HotM, take of all your armor, reset your traits and remove any damage upgrades from your weapons.
Go to a Heavy Golem and attack it from the front with your Shortbow’s auto attack; how long does it takes until it goes down?
Now, try the same with the Longbow’s auto attack. Then, use Rapid Fire, too. Did you managed to get the golem down faster? In the next test, use also Hunter’s Shot. Did you now managed to be faster than the Shortbow’s auto attack?
And remember, that’s still without the bleed from Cross Fire.
Now, let’s get back to the event; if the boss has constantly 25 stacks of bleed on it so you can never ever apply a bleed during the entire fight the chances are high that it also has close to 25 stacks of Vulnerability, so Hunter’s Shot helps as little as the bleed from Crossfire.
And still we ignore that Shortbow will proc combo fields more often.
You guys realize if you want to compare the damage of two weapons that are both affected by the same attribute it doesn’t matter if that specific attribute has +0 or +300?
You guys realize if you want to run an empiric test it’s best to reduce the chance and impact of an random event as little as possible as thus reduce Precision and Prowess as much as possible?
The lack of common sense in this thread is stunning…
You also have those big events where everyone is bleeding the boss mob, you can only stack so many bleeds on a mob which means your short bow won’t be doing as much damage as your longbow from a max range.
Even in that situation the Shortbow deals more damage.
QZ and RF go beautifully together, it’s probably the best burst a Ranger has, albeit on a long cool-down.
Fun fact:
QZ and Shortbow auto attack deals in the worst situation for it just as much damage; the only advantage of the Longbow has is that you can do it at a range of 1500 for the price of a Master major trait.
(edited by DesertRose.2031)
Yeap, it’s a common issue with all of these jump back skills; Lighting Reflexes and Rocket Boots have the same problem.
I just got GW2 yesterday, and I played as a mesmer for awhile. I liked the class, but I thought I’d go for something a little more direct, and since I liked the Elementalist in GW1, I thought why not.
From a pure PvE viewpoint:
The GW2 Ele has basically the same strength and weaknesses as the GW1 Ele: Low survivability, low damage but great support. However in GW2 you’ll often run around alone and for that having great support isn’t that useful; overall this makes the Ele slightly less powerful/easy than some other professions in solo PvE.
Scepter+Dagger is a good weapon choice for beginners.
Start in Earth and use skill #2, at lower levels it will increase your survivability immensely. Later if you’re more comfortable you can swap your attunement more to create combos, e.g. Air #1, #3, #2, wait for the first attack to miss, #4, #5, Fire #4, #2, #3, Earth #4 (supposedly you’re able to cast the fire skills in a different order for the same/even better result but I’ve never managed to pull that off).
As others have said have a Staff in your inventory to be able to switch to it during an event or dungeon.
10 points in Earth and Water are a good starting point, you gain Vitality, Toughness and Condition Damage which is all very useful to the above mentioned playstyle, and Healing doesn’t hurt.
At level 40 you might want to take a look at Conjure Lighting Hammer:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/
I do believe your comparing apples and oranges, when you say “SB is better than the LB”. Firstly, the LB requires different traits, different attributes and a different play style. When I equipped a SB on my ranger, who is build around the LB, it’s damage was ridiculous.
Care to post your build and gear?
Do you have tamed a pet yet?
A tameable pet has a green name and is called Juvenile <animal’s race>. More information:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet
Rapid Fire – This is one of the best skills the ranger can have, shooting 10 arrows in a rapid speed is highly damaging and very effective. does more damage than all of shortbow skills put together.
I hope you know that the damage you see is the damage all shots did combined, it doesn’t show the damage of each single hit.
I’ve tested it in the HotM, Rapid Fire shots 10 arrows in about 4 to 5 seconds for a little more than 3k damage, a Shortbow shoots 10 arrows in about 4 to 4 seconds for around 300 damage each, resulting in around 3k damage.
The best way to use both weapons is to unload all cd’s> swap to the other> unload all cd’s>swap again, nothing can survive your amazing SPM (Skills per Minute)
Yes, Longbow makes a great secondary weapon to Shortbow, but what is when you want e.g. Warhorn for the speed boost? Which bow will you use in the other weapon set?
When you’re interrupted your next and your pet’s next attack deal 150% damage; basically a critical hit every time you are interrupted.
Not 100% sure about the “you have to be interrupted” part, though.
Conjure Lighting Hammer:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/
The OP argues it’s the best PvE build for an Ele from level 40 to 80.
Conjure Lightning Hammer is one of the best skills Ele has for PvE, and Conjure Fiery Greatsword can deal huge damage.
Frost Bow could be nice if it would do more damage instead of healing and two or three skills had a 1200 range.
Flame Axe and Stone Shield look like lackluster to me, so far I don’t see why one should want to use them or how some simple number tweaking could make them desirable.
is there a way to cancel a target without spamming escape until i open the game menu? kind of annoying when i am running around , and accidentally target/aggro something with air attunement, and i start running slower because i am in combat.
Disable auto attack or auto target (not sure which one it was at the moment).
The Greatsword’s #2 could be given the Whirl Finisher attribute, that would make the Greatsword a little stronger in solo play and much more useful in group play.
Interesting; I thought the maintenance was finished, not still ongoing.
But maybe you should have read the whole OP, not just the title; BLTC hasn’t worked for me since launch, not just since a few hours.
If I open the Black Lion Trading Company I just see the rotating, yellow circle, no matter what tab I select. This error has been there since release, when I read that there was some maintenance done I hoped it would work afterwards, but no, still nothing.
Anyone else has the problem that it’s not working at all, or do others only have minor problems like disappearing gold?
Assuming you’re level 40+:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMAQJAVDjEV11xVC2BguAmiDd8L4i7OZC
You have to constantly swap your weapons and pets to gain benefits, use your pets’ abilities and throw AoE spells around.
I find in fun having to do so many things simultaneously, dunno if it’s also your definition of fun.
Instead of the Longbow you can also your Sword or Axe and Warhorn.
I haven’t noticed any difference but I’m so far just running around in level ~55 areas, so it may change once I face the Risens.
The Jaguar has 100% crit chance while stealth, combine that with QZ for huge damage.
1. The third hit of a Hammer offers a Symbol of Protection which gives gives you the Protection buff which decreases the damage you take by 33%. That may be the reason why you feel less squishy with a hammer. There’s often a comparison of the damage between the Greatsword and the Hammer and so far it’s known that the auto attack of the Hammer does more damage but I haven’t seen a conclusive post which compares the damage output when all weapon skills are used.