Guild Wars 2

Mate, forget WoW. Hostile atmosphere was present in GW2, meters have nothing to do with it. If anything, meters at least give some valid reasoning to it, because they show you’re actually underperforming. Before them, you’d get kicked for arbitrary stuff like LI count. People always find a way to measure others and act differently based on this measurement. It’s not the meters, it’s just people in a competitive environment. The question isn’t, and never was, “hostile or non-hostile”. The question is “arbitrarily hostile or accurately hostile”.

zealex.9410:

r make classes like condi ranger artificially harder :/

But this takes away the meaning of choice, it becomes simply a flavor one. Keeping difference in both difficulty and performance makes it a strategical one.

thrag.9740:

The problem with making it so that classes with harder rotations have notably higher dps, is that the inevitable meta that forms would exclude all the classes that have easier rotations. We have seen it a lot over the past year, frequently we use to see lfgs that wanted only eles, now we see them wanting only condi rangers.

The thing is, people wanted eles because of their potential performance and because there was no way to see how an ele actually performs. Now that we have dps meters, it would become obvious that asking for only eles is counter-productive because most eles perform on a level way below this potential and would, in fact, be better off using a condi ranger or a thief.

And we see now increasing demand for condi rangers not because their potential overshadows that of everything else – engis have higher potential, eles and guards too on large hitboxes – but because the easy gameplay of the ranger makes them far more reliable. And more reliable means higher actual damage output. Which is what you care about, in the end.

P.S. Fresh Air is already meta, but you can’t balance worse damage output with just “utility”. What utility? Your job as a dps class is to deal damage. Getting other stuff to do while dealing already subpar damage will only hurt your damage output even more.

thrag.9740:

3.) Elementalist: Make a decision, does ele damage scale with hit box or not? Because your meteor shower nerf just made us move towards things like wildfire, lightning orb, and phoenix, additionally skills like icebow 4 and lightning storm still do scale damage with hitbox size. Picking a single skill and putting an internal cooldown on it is inconsistent with the class. Either all skills should have internal cool downs or none of them.

My personal suggestion: Put an internal cool down on every skill, but buff its damage accordingly. Its stupid for 1 class to dominate large hit box, and then another to dominate small hitbox. Balance it so eles do the same damage regardless of hitbox size, and make sure that damage is competitive with condi ranger.

I’ll reply here, being an ele main, but it’s not just about eles.

There’s a big problem with the concept of competitive damage. Condi ranger is soooo much easier to play than ele. You don’t lose 10% damage when something sneezes in your general direction. You don’t lose 10% damage when you stop moving for a second. You don’t have to ground-target your skills just behind your target, or change distance to it constantly so you maximize the damage of your skills. You can simply flank in melee range and you’re golden.

Balancing the damage of both to competitive levels creates a choice between the two only for people who can play them at a near-perfect level. For anyone else (and that’s the majority of the player base), picking the harder class is simply a poor choice. They are limiting their own efficiency and hindering their own groups.

How about give these players an actual choice that actually matters? Because, let’s face it, whether qT take eles or condi rangers would only change their clear times, and only by very little. However, a player of lesser skill could potentially choose between an easier to play class for more consistent results and a harder to play class for better potential results. Taking a risk, betting on their own play. Now, that’s an actual choice.

And this doesn’t just apply to eles and condi rangers. Condi engi has the same problem compared to much easier dps builds. And there are other easy dps builds on thief and guard too, which produce far too much dps far too reliably. Not to mention the condi ps.

There has to be a bigger gap in dps to justify considering a harder class. Current balance only looks at final damage numbers. No, that’s not how you balance.

Uzunari.1964:

Well, you don’t get the point I consider DPS meter an advantage as even in this state it does not provide only the calculated numbers of dmg but other data as well (buff uptimes, downed stats and so no..) To me this seems like advantage to some degree. I am totally okay with it if it comes from official source though, because I won’t just download some kitteny non-official software from whatever the source is right now (Sorry, this is madness and nobody should). But because of the advantage in my eyes I ask for same opportunities for everyone – make dps meter ingame. Is that not obvious solution? If this is not possible (I really see no reason why it shouldn’t be) then simply block the usage for everyone -> easy as that.

The problem with the idea of “official” meter is that it takes time and effort to develop. I’m sure the devs already have similar functionality in place, however it won’t be in a form they’d want to present to public. Dev tools are built by programmers for their own use. They are functional, but often messy and very rarely user friendly.

So essentially you’re asking ANet to spend time and resources on something to achieve an already existing effect. It’s pointless. And it doesn’t really affect a large part of the player base, so I don’t think it’s going to happen. At least not any time soon.

I have 90+% of my playtime on my ele main. Mainly because I did some world completions on other characters, or I would have that percent be 97+. But I just love playing casters, specifically those relying on elemental magic. Mesmer could also stick with me, but I didn’t like their class mechanic at all. It felt too unreliable to lose phantasms when something dies.

Oh, I see. So focusing on the fight instead of looking at buff bars is the bad thing. I stand corrected. /s

lucadiro.4519:

What have this to do with a dps meter? I mean, you don’t need a dps meter to understand if you have poor alacrity (or every other buff) uptime.

It is waaaaaaaay easier to spot problems in buff uptime with a meter. Also, poor buff uptime might be caused by poor play by the buffer, but it also might be caused by poor positioning on your side. There’s no way to tell this without a meter, unless you’re constantly checking other people’s buffs as well as your own, instead of paying attention to the fight’s mechanics.

Uzunari.1964:

What I am trying to say is that DPS meter is made to give you ADDITIONAL info about certain situations. Squad leader/commander, whatever name you choose, now has the ability to modify his squad to some degree – low dps, low condi dps, little buff uptime and so on. He does not have to observe the game itself anymore and he can act based on some outputs given to him by script. As this info is not visible to anyone else (except those who use DPS meter) we might say, that it gives him advantage. How? Well let’s just say that someone decides to play without DPS meter. He has no info whatsoever about the damage people do and have to make decision based on what he actually sees (uptime of banners, stacks of might, chrono buffs, w/e) this task requires time, knowledge and skill (to be able to handle all of that in situation such as raid). Now this might seem minor to a lot of people but to me it seems like DPS meter in such form gives advantage to party who actually have them as it can make chances of going through raid for them better with less effort to actual team build and plays itself. Thus forcing other users to usage of that DPS meter as well in order to gain higher chances.

So you’re basically saying “dps meters help people become better players and hence push other people into doing the same”? And this is bad becaaaaause…?

Dadnir.5038:

They didn’t became easier. The difference between now and then isn’t even E-spec or gear. The answer is that general mechanisms, professions mechanisms and dungeon mechanisms have been thoroughly explored and compiled to reach a point were dungeon feel less chalenging.

Indeed, it’s mostly L2P. I would bet any time that experienced players can build a group without any elite spec and using green gear, and dungeons would still feel easier than what they used to.

That’s not “fractals vs raids” comparison, that’s “pug vs organized group”. And actually in higher-tier fractals – and especially groups who’re aiming for 100 CM – usually groups are “organized”, meaning they LFG for the specific professions to provide the combat buffs and healing.

The difference in fractals is they are easier, so you can get away with suboptimal groups and builds. So if you’re not looking for doing tier 4 on a daily basis, you don’t really care what your group would look like in the end. If you do it daily, however, there’s s a reason to go for the raid meta. Because you minimize the chances to end up in a group wiping several times in a row on the arm seals in Cliffside. It’s not a big deal once. But over the span of months it translates to a lot less frustration and a lot more fun from playing the game.

For best value they could be like engi kits. Click it once at any time to activate it, click it again to deactivate it. But I fear they’d be far too powerful like this. And I imagine ANet want to keep mechanics like this as distinct as possible across different professions to preserve their identity.

For the same reason I imagine they’d want to keep the option of other people picking them up – which by the way people do, because at least some of the weapons (icebow, hammer, fgs) are actually pretty awesome.

They can still do stuff like “picking up the second conjure decreases the cooldown by half” on a trait or something.

thrag.9740:

You don’t have to have a meta group to be a good group.

Indeed. But if anything can qualify for meta, it would be the druid/chrono/ps/2x dps comp. It just covers all the bases nicely, gets you all the buffs to ensure smooth and easy kills.

thrag.9740:

Raid meta is notably different from fractal and dungeon meta as power builds are much better the faster enemies die. Any basic 5 man comp (raids are usually just 2 subsquads with 5 players each), will have the 3 buff classes and 2 dps slots.

Typical 5 man meta comp is:

ps war – druid – chrono – dps slot – dps slot

ps war can be condi or power, with condi the clear winner in raids and most fractals. Honestly I consider power ps niche at this point.

druid can be damage focused (condi vipers) or healing focused (magi) based on needs

chrono can be glassy (zerker+commanders) or tanky (full minstrel) based on needs.

two dps slots can be almost anything, especially outside of raids where time isn’t an issue. Condi ranger and condi engi, are all quite strong, but power ele, power engi, power thief, power guard, and pure condi (i.e. not ps) war are all quite competitive in these slots too. Condi mesmer has niche fights where it is good for these slots.

Additionally, sometimes these dps slots are filled with a lower dps classes that can provide additional utility. For example, hammer guard and power rev can both provide good protection uptime and a lot of cc, which can make raiding very smooth. Condi necro can be very good at clearing large amounts of ads and providing group sustain. Power necro is a build that many of us would like to see buffed to fill this role, it is currently viable but it is noticeably weaker (with that said a good necro is better than a bad ele, and bad eles are prevalent).

So… how exactly is the raid meta notably different? It is essentially two identical parties, with the occasional sacrifice of some dps for utility…. Which is totally fine for dungeons and fractals as well, even if it is less useful there.

There are different… let’s say “meta” comps for fractals, as the noob-friendly “4 condi 1 druid” one, but just taking half a raid comp works perfectly, provided the players are at least semi-competent.

Check here.

Eles only ever have advantage on large hitboxes. Other classes, which are a lot easier to play aren’t far behind and even overtake them on small hitboxes. And that’s assuming perfect play. In a real scenario, be it raid or any other kind of group content, it is only going to get worse. Because the easier the play, the less likely the mistakes. Less mistakes mean less dps lost to imperfect play. So yeah… do tell about half decent eles besting the dps of one-button rotations and condi damage dealers. The only thing a half decent ele can match is a pretty bad ranger or guardian, half decent engi or a really terrible thief. All this while being the most likely to get downed of all these.

AliamRationem.5172:

Soloing group events/champions in HoT is exactly the sort of gameplay I find enjoyable and I see plenty of benefit to using non-meta builds to do so.

Great! (Sincerely)

You’d still agree (I hope) that this is a niche scenario. There are certainly players like this, but they certainly aren’t the majority. It doesn’t make much sense to take niche applications into account when discussing the viability of skills in general. Most players simply never run into the situations which make these skills good.

And by the way, when I’m saying “there’s no reason to not run full glass” I mean in the typical usage for your average player. Of course, if you’re seeking solo challenges this changes. But the players who do this type of content usually know what they’re doing. So I’m disregarding them and generalizing for simplicity.

katniss.6735:

My 2nd set is maurader. It’s just a little bit extra room. Especially at the circle run before the dargon in DS.

Yeah, I used to run Marauder armor. In solo scenarios the dps loss is negligible, but then I got tired of swapping gear all the time and went full zerk everywhere. And… the survivability loss is negligible as well.

AliamRationem.5172:

Feanor.2358:

More dps is always preferable to less dps. It means killing stuff faster, which in turn means stuff poses smaller threat. There’s literally no reason to not run full glass in the open world. Even on HoT maps.

Unless it kills you first. Then there is literally every reason to not run full glass.

I’m not saying that you can’t succeed in full glass or even that it’s a bad idea to run it. However, to say that there is literally no reason to run anything else is only true for you and your priorities. Other players may have their own reasons to do otherwise, including but not limited to being less skilled than you are and participating in activities which you would also fail at in full glass, but don’t bother with for your own reasons.

Telling everyone they should always use full glass and that there is literally no reason to ever do otherwise isn’t helpful. It’s probably part of the reason so many players call elementalist a “squishy” class when it has some of the strongest healing and why a lot of players struggle with solo open world HoT content.

Thanks for the tip, though. You are so pro, bro.

If something is consistently killing you in the open world, you’re doing something wrong. It’s fine to use defensive gear and/or abilities while learning to play the class, but it doesn’t make either of them an actually good choice. It only makes them good a) while learning the class and b) in niche scenarios like if for some reason you want to solo group events like HoT hero point champs. But in general, I’m sorry, they are simply poor choices.

Also I’m nowhere near pro. Most I can qualify for is “decent”. And you don’t even need to be decent for the open world.

More dps is always preferable to less dps. It means killing stuff faster, which in turn means stuff poses smaller threat. There’s literally no reason to not run full glass in the open world. Even on HoT maps.

Fresh Air seems like a waste if you’re going for condis. You’ll want to spend most of your time in Fire and Earth. Taking the whole trait line just for the fury… I don’t know.

The thing is, Icebow is better utility than “Aftershock!” in addition to better dps.

Valento.9852:

Overloading Earth just for the purpose of Magnetic Aura seems silly, and “Aftershock!” is just a helper utility. If it’s taking that much longer for you to finish killing a crowd of mobs you’re probably doing something wrong.

Yeah, like running “Aftershock!” instead of Glyph of Storms, Signet of Fire and either “Feel the Burn!” or Conjure Frost Bow. Meta is there for a reason.

Overloading has drawbacks, that’s true. I actually ran with “Aftershock!” for a while, but ended up replacing it, primarily because of its cooldown. It doesn’t really justify spending a utility slot for something you’re forced to use sparingly and therefore only occasionally.

A part of it is I like to run either Staff or X/Warhorn, both of which have access to Magnetic Aura.

You can always Overload Earth to get a magnetic aura and it’s not on a 45-seconds cooldown.

Jski.6180:

Feanor.2358:

How is that relevant to the lack of reward for playing a harder class? DPS meters are now widely used, the community would shift from eles anyway, because the majority of the players can’t play an ele effectively. The nerf only made the minority who can that much smaller and removed the incentive to become part of it.

For ele to play good healing they need to be very tankly and (i guess) that bad for pve due to how aggro works. Where these other classes have build in tanking skill that lets them pull off the glass support with out going high risk.
Now support ele in wvw is fun (missing some QoL for support in gw2) but ele dmg is non existences in wvw. I am not sure why they have not made overload air dmg pve only and different from wvw like they did with epi.

WvW is a different matter. I’m talking about PvE, where the one and only role an ele has is damage. Technically you can get healing gear and kite at Deimos, but that’s quite the exception, you basically get a solo role in group content.

There cannot be such thing as a support ele in PvE, because every support we can give others give with additional benefits. Aura healing? Yeah, but there are druids. Our heals are better sustain but then druids give GotL and Spotter. Protection from auras is possible, but isn’t very important and a guardian can supply it without losing as much dps. Stacking might and fury? Nah, there are PS warriors who also bring Empower Allies and banners and druid’s Tiger which keeps perma fury on the whole subgroup by itself.

So, in short, we’re damage dealers. We used to be a high-risk – high-reward damage dealers. Difficult to play, but being able to produce the best damage output in the game if player properly. Thanks to the “balance” changes, we’re now competing (and most often losing) in the dps race with classes which are a lot simpler to play.

Can you link the video you mentioned?

How is that relevant to the lack of reward for playing a harder class? DPS meters are now widely used, the community would shift from eles anyway, because the majority of the players can’t play an ele effectively. The nerf only made the minority who can that much smaller and removed the incentive to become part of it.

Catastro.8410:

Feanor.2358:

2. Fire 2, 3, 5,
.

Just out of curiosity, does it matter what order this is done?
I ask because I like going Fire 5>2>3. That way Wildfire has already spread a bit behind the enemy for when I Phoenix, so I can stack up some extra might.

The exact order isn’t very important, as long as you’re doing all 3 casts in a similar time (I’ve tried 2-3-5 and 2-5-3 and didn’t notice a difference). I imagine it’s all about cancelling aftercasts. Stacking might I find unreliable, as you already have OA field and blasts often produce area swiftness instead. Maybe delaying fire 2 helps in this respect, haven’t tried that. But in a group chances are there will be lots of fields overlapping, so it’s still unreliable.

Shouts really aren’t that great if you’re not building around auras. FtB has some place, being the offensive one and having a short cooldown, but that’s about it. I generally prefer to have icebow instead, it offers better utility and comparable/superior damage against small/large targets, respectively. Though I admit the Scepter/Warhorn initial burst gets even more awesome with FtB in it.

Yuyuske.7182:

“The problem with this spec is that you sacrifice a whole trait line and several utility spells just for the sake of survivability.”

…As opposed to sacrificing equipment slots for the sake of survivability? If you need raw DPS for an encounter, you can swap out your traits and utility spells far more easily than you can your gear.

No, as opposed to avoiding damage. Or, like reikken pointed out, to going condi. Changing a traitline every other encounter isn’t something you want to do. Utilities can be problematic as well, as you might need to wait for cooldowns to wear off, which again is going to be tedious in the long run.

You’re regarding gear and traits separately. They aren’t. Both are parts of your build. You can change one while keeping the other, but this is just gimping your build. If you want survivability, get them both to work on it. If you want to keep decent damage as well, get them both to work on it.

There’s no way you can take the most offensive stat set in the game and make a decent survivability build with it. Your survivability will be mediocre, and so will be your damage output.

Nope, I’m dead serious. Middle Earth is a magical place, but magic isn’t widely or often used. Magic in Tyria is much more common, a better parallel would be the age of legend from WoT or the world of Eberron. Gandalf himself doesn’t perform epic feats of magic comparable to what Tyria has seen – the Searing, the Foefire, the sinking of Orr are all feats of magic of epic proportions which dwarf everything from LotR.

As for Vader, it was simply an example how a magic user wins a fight without having to even lift his lightsaber. Again, if you expect to build a character like Vader, prepare to be disappointed.

Pure single-target is a rare sight in games. Most of the time there are a lot of enemies around which makes the single-target gameplay feel sluggish. The current Scepter/Warhorn meta is s decent tradeoff. Air skills are either single-target (1, 2) or deal more damage when used against a single target (5). At the same time you still get some AoE coverage with your Fire skills.

I pointed out a specific scene for a reason, you chose to ignore it and discuss the character himself. OK. Anakin Skywalker is a perfect example of what you can’t have in a game, as he’s both exceptionally skilled at lightsaber combat and one of the most powerful Force users.

Gandalf is from a setting where magic is used very little. I don’t see how he’s relevant.

I disagree. Remember, thematically speaking. Why would you even consider letting an enemy close, letting him fight with you when you can make him fight the environment. Remember Darth Vader defeating young Luke Skywalker by simply retreating and throwing inanimate objects at him with the Force?

P.S. Not only have I seen, I have played one many times. And they NEVER turn out as cool as they sound. For balancing reasons you can’t have everything in a game. So you’re either an amazing caster, an amazing martial warrior or a non-amazing mix of both.

The problem with this spec is you sacrifice a whole trait line and several utility skills just for the sake of survivability.

It would make sense to run this spec in a condi-oriented build, where you can take advantage of the bleeds and burns applied by the signets’ active skills. In a power build they do very little outside of their passive (which, for Signet of Fire is pretty great, don’t get me wrong).

Additionally, in a power build there isn’t much reason to be in Earth attunement. Warhorn 5 is nice and Dagger 3 is decent for breakbars, but they are both situational, normally you just switch between Air and Fire, which greatly reduces the value of Geomancer’s Training.

By the way, you’ve sacrificed probably the most potent of all utilities available to the ele – Glyph of Storms. It’s much more versatile and useful than flat 180 toughness. It combines solid offensive capabilities (Air, Fire) and outright ridiculous control (Earth, Water). Just Sandstorm by itself is already better survivability than the earth signet.

I don’t particularly like to build tanky, but I totally get the fun to make your own build around your own idea. I spent a good amount of time playing a scepter/warhorn build optimized for maxing might and fury back when nobody played scepter. It wasn’t efficient by any means, but it was fun to create and fun to play. Recently I’m looking into offhand dagger again, but man, warhorn is so good…

Right, because it’s so much fun to spend in LFG five times more time than you spend in the actual raid. No, thanks.

Dagger/Warhorn, Scepter/Warhorn and Staff are all viable. Staff is best for ranging, Scepter/Warhorn gives the biggest opening burst and Dagger/Warhorn has the simplest playstyle.

Eponet.4829:

Feanor.2358:

Did you forget the hp and armor stats? We’re the squishiest of the squishy classes. And we already play in melee range if we want to produce any meaningful damage output. Sword is such a cliche… Still better than GS though.

Sword might be a cliche, but it’s also a cliché that makes sense. Elementalists don’t have access to shields, and they hold their daggers in an ice pick grip.

Additionally, they wear cloth, so they can’t rely on their armour for protection.

Thus, they’ll need to rely on their melee weapon for defence. Of the options, the only thing that’s anywhere near as stand alone defensive as sword is great sword, and does anyone really think that elementalists will ever actually get another 2 handed weapon? 20 skills is a /lot/ for them to devote to elementalists.

Thematically speaking, a sharp piece of metal is the last thing you need when you have power over elements. Why would we even let a foe reach close enough to us so we can use such a primitive tool? We can freeze the very ground they’re walking on, we can make it unsteady, we can call earthquakes and winds to knock them down. We can even turn our flesh to stone. Melee weapons? Please… Melee weapons are for those who lack imagination.

Jski.6180:

But poison i would think is king in pve because it counter healing effects and dose more dmg then bleeds.

Healing effects are rare in PvE, so all that matters is the burst. Hence, if you’re going condi there’s nothing better than burn. Except, obviously, if you can apply other conditions along with burning, like the condi ranger does.

Crinn.7864:

Feanor.2358:

For PvE it’s completely fine for the higher skill cap class to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

Skill requirement is irrelevant. People will take what is most effective and will learn any necessary skill to do so. Any player than cared about optimizing DPS rerolled to ele and taught themselves the class.

The skill requirement card is only valid if the required skill is beyond what can be realistically expected of a human.

Because every pre-nerf ele was able to perform on qT level, right?

Realistically, the vast majority of the eles sucked hard.
Realistically, in the current situation an average condi ranger outdps-es a decent ele by a fair margin. I’ve seen differences of 60%.
Realistically, all you get for playing a harder class is a dps loss. Great incentive to learn a new class or stick with the class you like, right?

Full zerk with Scholar runes is the meta. Basically, you shouldn’t get hit. There often is a druid healer to keep you alive and in Scholar bonus because you can’t realistically avoid everything. But it sounds like you get hit a lot more than you should.

AliamRationem.5172:

Wouldn’t that depend upon how much time you could expect to benefit from the might stacks? You’re only ramping up your damage unnecessarily if the enemy is dead before your rotation ends and there are no other targets, no?

Yes. And this is the case in 95+% of the actual encounters in the open world. The rest of the encounters are usually group events and you get might from other players around you.

qT rotation here gets 30k with realistic buffs on the small golem. On the large one you can get more if you’re good at exploiting Wildfire and Phoenix. Both are hardly realistic, because normally you don’t get to dps a boss staying in one place 100% of the time, with few exceptions.

If you’re still concerned about the rotation, it goes basically like this:
1. Start with Air 5 and Overload Air, switch to Fire
2. Fire 2, 3, 5, switch to Air
3. Overload Air, switch to Fire
4. Fire 2, switch to Air
5. Air 5, Overload Air, switch to Fire.
6. Go to step 2.

Use Air 2 off cooldown, it’s instant cast and doesn’t break anything.
Same goes for “Feel the burn!” if you’re using it.
If you’re using conjures, use them to fill the empty Air steps, where you’d be autoattacking while waiting for the Overload.

Rangerdeity.5847:

I love its current itteration sure its not as world shattering vs large bosses (probably want a needed nerf but whatever anet) i enjoy the terror of being inside that aoe and the rush it gives when you see it lands a big crit vs a group of enemies. its RNG is part of its charm and part of its terror.

Its current iteration is just the same as its last iteration, except the performance is now underwhelming even on large hitboxes, where it should have been at its best.

This is only relevant for the PvP aspects of the game. For PvE it’s completely fine for the higher skill cap class to be more rewarding in terms of performance. You can play it well? Congratulations, you’re the dps king. You prefer more relaxed and lazy gameplay? Well, there are classes for you too! Kind of how condi engi is these days, except the part about being dps king.

Crinn.7864:

Terminsel.5728:

despite the likelihood that almost no Tempests could actually reach golem-like benchmark DPS levels in many boss encounters.

But most classes can’t reach golem-like DPS either. While some classes certainly lose less than others, it’s not going to make so big a difference as to close the massive performance gap that pre-nerf ele had over it’s peers.

You mean, the massive performance gap that pre-nerf ele had on the training golem? Because in real-life scenarios other dps classes were already close to ele on most places and better on some. Now, if you’re not top-level it is safe to assume you’re being outdps-ed by others. Some incentive to learn a hard to play and easy to die profession.

Both are better. Though for open world Arcane can be used as a base for fun builds with a lot of attunement switches and be completely viable. I’d take Air and Tempest, and maximize boon generation for BP. Something in the lines of this

It’s a pity Leadership runes are this hard to get, it seems like a fun thing to try.

I’s not worth taking Arcane over either Air or Tempest lines. And even if you decide to take it, it would make more sense to pick Bountiful Power over Elemental Surge, as ES only affects two blast finishers. In the end, you’re better off with the standard fire/air/tempest builds, either with Bolt to the Heart or Fresh Air.

SOFYAORLENA.5849:

Hi Im new into this game, had struggle in solo pve as elementalist! What type of armor I should wear to be more protective but still do kinda good dps? im now wearing Power / precision / ferosity, running with Dagger / warhorn!

Generally you want the power/precision/ferocity (Berserker’s, power main stat) everywhere in PvE. You can pretty much wear anything, but the extra defence and survivability aren’t really needed and you’re losing dps to gain them. Only switch to something else if you’re really struggling to survive. And then don’t waste your zerk gear. You’ll eventually learn to play the class properly and move back to it.

AliamRationem.5172:

Also, staff has many combo fields but hardly any blasts. Running d/x or s/x you can take up to 5 blasts, allowing you to self-stack 25 might. This is a much bigger advantage in solo play than in groups where others can stack might for you.

The goal isn’t to stack might on yourself, the goal is to kill stuff quickly. You can take blasts, sure. But then you use them to generate might when you could have been using other skills to deal damage. In the end you end up progressing slower simply because you’re wasting time to ramp up your damage unnecessarily.

OK, I stand corrected. There is a tiny relevance to WvW. It was still done with only PvE in mind.

Did you forget the hp and armor stats? We’re the squishiest of the squishy classes. And we already play in melee range if we want to produce any meaningful damage output. Sword is such a cliche… Still better than GS though.

Which part of “when hitting nonplayer targets” did you not understand?