I’ve found it immensely helps in DE because you can use your AoE without being face-to-face with a huge mob group. You can also set up traps faster at appropriate places, e.g. between a foe and your ally in a dungeon.
Currently I’m not sure if the trait increases the radius or the area of the trap by 50%, I have hardly used trap without the trait once I almost died during a DE when I tried to set them up; can anyone clear this up?
Wow, amazing what kind of words get censored; US guys are really hyper-sensitive about cursing.
Even if we assume that an about 4 times bigger area of knowback, combo field and heal is insignificant it goes against the premise that the race choice is purely cosmetic aside from the racial skills.
Will Ele players ever understand that the class doesn’t follow the typical mage archetype many other games use and thus scream “Underpowered!” because they don’t have the highest DPS: 0 (No)
I think it should stay as is. It makes sense that Asura, being smaller, would create a smaller shield bubble.
Yeap, it makes totally sense that you’re kittened for the rest of the game for making a mistake at the very first minute you played the game, like choosing the wrong race…
Pets always behaved like that, be happy that you didn’t suffer from it beforehand.
The second Hydra doesn’t listen to your pet commands and just attacks enemies randomly, that sucks.
Pets need a huge fix to their AI and responsiveness.
Afaik it was in one of the BWE but was removed before release.
The solution was to remove the blast finisher from the “mine field”, with multiple mines, and put it on “throw mine” with the single mine and explosion. Which is exactly what they did.
The utility mine or throw mine always had the blast finisher attribute, it wasn’t added in this patch.
Are you sure Might doesn’t increase Condition Damage? Because the wiki says:
“Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage”
They are trying to fix the bug that auto attack vanishes when you unequip Kits.
However, how should Grenade auto attack work? If you just throw Grenades at the current target’s location it will always miss a moving target. If you would make skill #1 hit faster you would need to nerf it to compensate. So, what’s your suggestion?
2) – flame blast – make it a 2 skill combo with the blast being triggered.
That one is nice.
Btw: Wouldn’t this be better suited for the suggestion forum?
1.) I’ve played a Mediation Guardian in PvP and with 0 points in Honor the Meditation skills healed for something around 1.5k to 2k health; I doubt you need even more Healing Power.
2.) A Guardian has already strong armor and you get +300 Toughness from your traits but has the lowest health pool of all professions so you want to prioritize Vitality a bit more than Toughness.
3.) I would rather see a Guardian that can bring Shouts or Consecrations along but you still bring Cleansing Bolts and a Blast finisher on a short cooldown; still, not being able to bring no team support is the reason why I stay away from Meditations in PvE, even though they are awesome in sole PvE.
4.) You might want to switch the major Valor trait with the instant Meditation trait but because that can be changed freely.
Because every game starts perfectly balanced and each buff respectively nerf has to be compensated by the other…
I see your point regarding mighty blow, but do you agree that the auto-attack needs work? Do you have any suggestions?
Changing the auto attack isn’t easy because you have to keep the synergy with itself, Writ of Persistence (longer Symbols) and skill #2 in mind.
If I’m informed correctly the first two attacks take 0.7 seconds to execute and the last one 1.4 seconds, so it takes 2.8 seconds to execute the entire chain. Symbol of Protection lasts 2 seconds without and 3 seconds with the trait, so it’s active a little more than 70% respectively 100%.
If you reduce the length of the chain you would also have to reduce the length of the symbol; afaik effects like a symbol are always rounded to the nearest integer, so the only options are to last it 1 respectively 2 seconds. If we now reduce the time of the chain to 2.1 seconds (which is afaik the length of each other chain) the Symbol of Protection would be active for less than 50% respectively 100%, making it overall weaker.
Another thing to keep in mind is the timing with skill #2; you don’t want to have skill #2 ready when you’re just swinging your hammer the second time or so.
Until now I haven’t seen or think up a solution for all above mentioned synergies and restrains that is better than the current solution.
i love the gw2 combat style, with dodge, no mana, attunement and so, but i feel so disappointed of the work do about ele..maybe i wrong, ofc, but i wanna play a precise kind of class..(among other things , this class is present in any mmo).
If I understood you correctly you want to play a character with low survivability but big damage, preferably from 1200 range. Such a profession does not exist in the game and most likely never will because Guild Wars works different than “any mmo”. If you want big damage you have to go in melee.
Take a look at the Thief, it should fit your desire for a low survivability/high damage profession the best.
I propose simply separating Symbol of Protection from the auto-attack chain and assigning it to the number 2 skill slot, and giving it a short (~5 second) cooldown. Mighty blow, the current number 2 skill, would become the final attack in the auto-attack chain. This would give us more strategic control over when we fire off the symbol of protection, in addition to smoothing out the hammer’s attacks.
Currently Hammer skill #2 is a Blast finisher, if you remove this the Hammer will lose A LOT of it’s current attractiveness (at least for Dungeons, dunno about PvP).
If you add that Blast finisher to the final attack of skill #1 it cannot be used strategically at all anymore, and would properly be so strong that it needed an even longer attack animation than the current final attack.
Sorry, your suggestion is just horrible.
Rapid Fire – Channels a series of shots doing single target damage that increases which each shot.
Nope, the damage does not increase, the damage that appears over your target after each hit is the damage of all the previous hits added up, not from the single one.
E.g. if each arrow hits for 10 damage you would see:
10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100
It’s a great skill but not a necessary one and it runs counter intuitive to one of the best beastmastery traits(the one that buffs your pet for each kill it gets as long as you don’t switch it out).
Master’s Bond is a pointless trait. If you would get the Quickness trait after you could acquire Master’s Bond it may be okay.
Also, keep in mind that swapping your pet recharges all the pet’s abilities, so in the same time a Master’s Bond Ranger’s pet has used it’s F2 ability once a pet swapping Ranger has used two.
If you make another video about your builds could you also explain why you chose certain traits and why do you think they are better than other options?
That would help a lot in understanding the build.
+15% crit chance is actually better than what most other professions have, especially as it affects three different weapons.
Meditations improved by the Adept, Master and Grandmaster traits are amazing, they are just not that useful for your teammates.
Both Honor Grandmaster traits are good.
Only Zeal has subpar major traits.
I see a lot of conjectures and experience here that seem to be only feelings, no actual data.
Measuring the damage output of the Hammer, I found it to be one of the lowest damaging weapons of the Guardian.
Some fresh player made a comparison about the damage of each weapon’s auto attack; Guardian’s hammer surpasses every other profession/weapon combination:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/63335-elementalist-vs-ranger-comparison/#entry1914453
If you don’t make the mistake you use the Staff in solo PvE or stay in Fire the whole time to deal damage (hint: Earth does more damage and has far more protection) you’re fine, but not great.
But still, at lower levels Eles are a pain to play compared to some other professions.
Use Shortbow/Axe+Warhorn.
Shortbow is for single target, Axe for AoE; usually when you want AoE in solo PvE it’s during events where a lot other characters are present so the Warhorn’s buff is nice for those situations. You can use the Warhorn’s buff also to run faster from A to B.
The only reason to use a Longbow is if you have the +range trait from the Marksmanship tree.
Overview of the class, and a but of personal story issues
in Elementalist
Posted by: DesertRose.2031
Design
Sure the class is ‘designed’ to be a ‘spell caster’ and by doing so means that they are vulnerable to enemy attacks in exchange for high damage output, BUT that does not seem like the case.
That’s the design of mages in pretty much any other role playing game.
In Guild Wars Elementalists gain utility and support for being squishy, not damage.
And don’t use the Staff in solo PvE, it’s a group weapon. It effectiveness increases dramatically if someone keeps at least some of the mobs attention away from you and uses all the combo fields you can start.
You want to have 10 points in Wilderness Survival to have the option to reduce the recharge time of Survival skills by 20% and 5 points in Beastmastery for the Quickness.
I would suggest putting 20 point into Skirmishing to get Trapper’s Expertise and try out traps:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMAQNBlODZkoquOuSwOA0KkJTxhO+FA
Put more points into Marksmanship as you level. For solo PvE you have to option to switch Trapper’s Expertise with Quick Draw and Shared Anguish with Wilderness Knowledge to play a Survival Ranger.
If you like traps you can go for Trap Potency at level 60 and eventually have a build like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMAQNBlODZkoquOuSwSAsUsXg9DZyecojP+FA
If traps are not your style you can go for a Survival Ranger:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMAQNBlODZkoKyOzSwSAsUsXgNFZyJnxhO+FA
The utility skills in both builds are optimized for solo PvE, for Dungeons you certainly want to switch Signet of the Hunt and maybe skill #8 for something else.
There is controversy with Longbow, many do not like the auto-attack skill (too slow). Shortbow is faster and better at DPS, but has less range. Personally, I prefer the longer range of Longbow and the 4 other skills are great.
Unless you take the Master Marksmanship trait the range of the Longbow and Shortbow are identical.
(edited by DesertRose.2031)
Opposed to the consensus I think that one or two rangers make a great addition to a party.
The most obvious asset a Ranger can bring is the Water field that’s up one half of the time, and if you trained traps you can bring a decent Fire field and afaik the fastest recharging Frost field. If you fight trash mobs pets serve as an extra body foes can hit on, and some even can provide a Poison field. Against bosses you can either switch to ranged pets or pets with group buffs.
The Ranger itself can buff the party further with Call of the Wild, and as long as there’s not other character in your party that massively inflicts Bleed a flanking Shortbow Ranger has one of the highest single target DPS in the game.
So far I was indifferent about the attack speed of #1 but now that you mention a faster attack speed would break the synergy with #2 you convinced me that the current attack speed has to stay.
Nice read overall.
A hammer has a blast finisher on a 5 (or even 4 if trained) second cooldown; that’s afaik the fastest recharging blast finisher in the game. If your teammates play along that’s Retaliation, Might and healing for everyone, and possibly even more.
On top of that the Hammer #3 to #5 are not great but at least decent CC abilities but you can’t have everything.
Imo for general PvE the Greatsword is better, but no other weapon choice for Guardian beats the Hammer for Dungeons.
I had the same problem with F3 a few days ago but for me logging out and in again fixed that problem.
For simplification I’ll assume you have 35 trait points:
If you want to deal lots of damage with your bow go 20/0/10/0/5, traits are I, VII, VI.
If you want to try traps go 0/20/10/0/5, traits are I, VII, V.
I’ve gone for traps and they are fun to play with though I’m not sure if it would have been a better idea to wait for that until level 60.
I highly doubt ANet will do this. Your personal story is tied to not only your race, but choices you made during character creation.
An easy solution would be that subsequently changing your race or gender doesn’t affect your personal story line. Yes, it could break immersion for yourself but it’s can hardly damage the gaming experience of other players if you run into an instanced throne room as a Charr or something similar.
I have little doubts that this feature will eventually come.
New hotkeys to be assigned in the settings menu.
Cancel Attack/Action:
Your character stops attacking, and it interrupts any skill that can also be interrupted by moving.
I know you can do the same with ESC but in a hectic battle it may happen that you hit it one time to often and detarget your foe.
Detarget:
Often times you want to have a target to manually adjust the direction of a leap or cone attack.
I know that once again ESC does the same but again, sometimes you end up in the game menu which is very irritating in a hectic fight.
Loot:
If you use Interact to loot often times your character rather speaks to nearby NPCs, and you cannot loot until you manually close the speech balloon or move away; alternatively you could still loot while a speech balloon is active.
Rework Elixir Random Effects aka "66% chance to frustrate a player"
in Engineer
Posted by: DesertRose.2031
abilites should be useful even without traits or do you know any other ability from other classes that work like that?
Signets and Traps from the Ranger; but one evil does not justify another…
The randomness has to go, or at least reduced to a level it doesn’t make the difference between dieing/winning or not.
Grenades on land offer a completely different play style than any other weapon, and once you get the hang of it they become absolutely amazing.
If you want to be able to auto attack use a Rifle or Pistol.
According to the wiki Kit Refinement mimics certain skills:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kit_Refinement
I was very excited about that trait when I read that Detonate, the Med Kit’s special ability, does Knockback.
Dunno if it’s a bug that it does not, but that alone would make the trait worthwhile for Med Kit.
According to Valor they work together perfectly:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/62628-idiot-savants-iq-valors-pvp-condition-ranger-build/
Starts at 5:28, he states that they work together at 6:41.
Zealous Blade heals you for 25 HPs per hit, that’s next to nothing; put those 5 points somewhere else until that trait is fixed.
I like it that Kits don’t scale with weapons, that way always have 100% effectivity.
If you let them scale with weapons you would have to nerf them and you would need exotic weapons to be on pair with the previous strength.
Spirit Weapon:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUAQJARGlYgSBHCyNkiI/ALtPQwKF7TeYK0YGB
Meditations:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUAQRAsd7OlYgiDnGyNciw6BBPo/qKEvrHQMiNE;ToA5WStUbp0iaKzUipsT5mSOF
My own build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUAQJASGlYg6CXGyIkiIThIHp9BCi9QjZcj3CA
For solo PvE the utility skills can be switched with Signets and the traits are adjusted accordingly. For Dungeons you can run Shouts and Consercrations, depending on what your team needs/wants.
Yeap, it makes absolutely no sense that the trap traits are in the Skirmishing tree.
Do you know how much damage Crossfire does if you flank your target? It’s on par with the Warrior’s or Guardian’s Greatsword #1 but with 1200 range; if the condition for the bleed is removed it would had to be toned down to be put in line with other ranged options.
I would rather give the Longbow some love; Long Range Shots deals less damage than Crossfire even if both hit the target from the front and more than 1000+ range away. Increase the damage so it’s at least not subpar in that situation.
My main incomprehension about the trap traits is why are they in the tree that increases Precision and Prowess which both add next to nothing to traps?!