Guild Wars 2

Of course I do. With my favourite specc I have:

Auras grant fury+swiftness —> air trait but also helps in water attunement.
Lower Glyph cd --> since it helps my utility/heal skills it also helps in all attunement.
Shorter Cd and regen and vigor for cantrips —> also helps in all attunements.
Buff when attuning + fury when attuning --> swich between attunements now is even better.

I don’t get the 5point minior trait boon when being outside of an attunement… thats right. And I’ve got 10% more dmg in fire attunement, that also only helps when attuned to fire, right. But thats it.

Kaine

and please dont tell me to level both like with are all unemployed and living with our parents.

Didn’t like that part for example.

Maybe with a more friendly post more people would provide feedback.

I do way better with my Elementalist than I do when playing Ranger. That doesn’t mean Ranger is bad, does it?

As I said, good for you if you’ve rerolled to a class that suits you better. But just because you do better now than before doesn’t mean elementalist sucks. It just means you are better playing Ranger than Elementalist.

Than good for you, that you found a class thats suits your playstile better.

Well, if you want max damage: Zerker Amulett + 30/30/0/0/10 traits and d/d with arcane blast + arcane wave as utilitys… but you will die really fast with this specc.
Elementalist isn’t that good at running full glass cannon.

Condition damage + toughness is no glass cannon build

No he isn’t that bad. And Elementalist is really fun to play… achieving stuff will probably be easier with other professions, but these aren’t as fun to play

I use every attunement. Of course, depending on the situation I stay in one attunement a bit longer and in others shorter… but every attunement gets activly used. So I don’t see that problem. And I actually like many of the elementalists traits.

norael.2104:

This post is in response to Gelrod’s nonsense that the Elementalist is all jack and no master in any trade. Lets look at the trait lines themselves for evidence.

You have the Fire line which focuses on power and condition duration. This is obvious because what are the two base components to a fire attack in most cases? DAMAGE (burst) and Burn (dot). So, the fact the line benefits those two is obvious.

What about Air? Precision and Critical Damage. Again, most air attacks are based on burst and cc. In particular, with the option to do more per critical attack chance (precision and critical damage).

Now onto the Earth line. Toughness and Condition damage are its focus. Obviously this follows since many of the Earth abilities are purely defense like Obsidian Flesh and Magnetic Wave. And then there’s the DOT component of many main hand attacks like Impale, Earth of Earth, and Eruption all of which really do most of their damage as a DOT.

Now, the only trait line that justifies any argument of jack of all ‘elements’ is the Arcane Power trait line which focuses on boon duration and attunement cool down reduction. Since all the abilities it would influence are primarily utility slot abilities like the Arcane Shield, Arcane Power, Arcane Wave, and Arcane Blast one can assume these are meant to be the bread and butter of the line with some side benefits for doing so by the attunement switching time reduction.

So, really, only one line out of four justify the jack of all trades thesis so far. Now, unless Gelrod can show me how this is justifiable I can’t see this argument holding any weight. If the Elementalist was meant to juggle attunements there would more inter-elemental bonuses for doing so outside of the Arcane Power trait line. In fact, some elements could be redesigned with a minor change in mind where they are complements or matching elements. Think Earth/Water as a tank spec or even conversely Earth/Fire or Fire/Water for strange mixtures of Tank/DPS or DPS/CC where there are major traits you can select to benefit the other element. I doubt Anet is going to do that this early in the game. Maybe in some future expansion sure, but now not a chance.

Speccing into one traitline doesn’t neccicarily force you, to mainly play with that attunement, because many traits affect all attunements or even forces you to swich attunements to be effective (for example if you specc into water you usally take “remove a condition when attuning to water” + you’ve got an aeo-heal when attuning to water. That means, if you stay in water attunement these 2 very strong traits will never be activated. Thus you want to use different attunements, to get these effects).
Also traits in fire like “chance to burn on crit” also are active when attuned to air for example.
So you want to swich attunements to be effective.

Also jack of all trades also means, that he can take every position in a tournament with one build. A node defense Guardian is pretty slow and doesn’t deal that much dmg. An offensive Thief on the other hand won’t be able to defend a node effectivly. The Elementalist can defend a node, is fast, can 1v1, can teamfight… and all with one build. Thus an Elementalist is great for a sPvP team, because he can counter the enemy strategy pretty good and if the enemy counters your strategy you can quickly shift your own tactic and so on… few other classes can do that.

Erebus

i still dont get where you get this rediculess accusation from?!
i guess that blood have a hard time to get to your head and it makes illusion and voices tell you wierd stuff -_- either that or you are simply just utterlykitten and doesn’t understand the simpliest things at all.

now stop saying bullkitten or prove that i have never done spvp -_- moron… did tons in the beta’s(testing diff classes etc.) and did quite a bit in the actually game (not that much after release since i really didnt like it in the beta and most of my gaming time after release have gone to lvling chars, wvw and doing dungeons)

Erebus

-_- wouldn’t prove kitten, already told you several times and can see that soy did the same that i would take any fight with you if it is possible to do so on a max geared char (not a ele vs ele ofc).

http://i.imgur.com/usuQx.jpg

How could you not know, that everyone gets maxed gear + lvl in sPvP if you ever did sPvP?

Erebus

the rules of any game goes:
fighters > rogue
rogue >mages
mages > fighters

Why should it be like that? Because it’s established? I have a far easier time killing thiefs than guardians and thats fine.

When talking about 1v1 situations I win more than 50% fights vs well played thiefs/warriors/nekromancers and loose more than 50% fights vs well played engineers/mesmers/guardians and about 50% vs well played ranger. Doesn’t that sound pretty balanced to you?

Btw… how can you dare to still post about sPvP?…

Erebus

they are not balanced in spvp -_-
take any other class made for the purpose your gonna use the ele for and it will do better then the ele could ever hope for with the same player behind the keyboard.
ele’s takes rediculessly high RL skills just to be on pair with a lowskilled bambie, which is a clear indicator that its underpowered as kitten. take the same VERY high skilled player and throw him on another class designed to do the task you took the ele for and he will do SO much more then he ever could on a ele.

How can you still comment on sPvP if you never did any sPvP?

Dagger/Dagger is great!

maybe you want to try out this build and see for yourself

Elementalist is prolly one of the best suited classes for WvW… and he is playable in 8’s as well.

Well, lets take this opportunity to share my build + thoughts on it:

—> The Build <—

Whats the role of this build?

- D/D roamer

What are the advantages of this build?

- strong conditionremove
- strong in 1v1 situations
- hard to kill
- good pressure

Any disadvantages?

- only mediocre burst (~8k)
- relies on quick reflexes
- almost pure melee

Playstyle?

You can do… like everything with this build. And this is exactly what you will do. Your first goal should be to help others. A node gets attacked by 2 enemys? Rush there and help your defender. You are usually fast enough to be there in time. If there is no need to help your team you should try capping or neutralizing undefended nodes (if there are any) or if your team won’t need you for some time you can also attack defended nodes (you should be able to neutralize points pretty fast vs most enemy’s and keep it that way… killing the enemy will require some time). Just don’t fight unnessesarily long when your team needs you elsewhere.

On Forest:

You can kill svanir/chieftain… but it will require some practice and will take some time to kill them. You should usually let another member of your team take care of svanir/chieftain if it’s required to solo them.

On Foefire:

You’ve got great mobility and this map is very small… use that to your advantage. 1 ride the lighning is almost enough to take you from mid to the side points… that means you can help your group on sidepoints really fast or invade the enemy point and still be able to be graveyard pretty quick if they need assistance.

Kylo:

You don’t want to fight in clocktower… of course if you have to you should do it, but try not to. d/d is just really inefficient in clocktower, since you will fall of the center point all the time.
You can kill the enemy treb, though I like to swich to staff for this (and swich back to d/d afterwards), since staff is pretty OP vs treb (just lay the aoe’s on top of the treb and as soon as your aoe’s are in place oos the enemy using the treb… if he followes you to the bottom of the treb you can use the lighning flash to teleport on top of the platform and lay down another aoe (one fully channeled meteorshower almost fully kills the treb)).

Vs different classes

Guardian:

You won’t kill a defensive guardian in reasonable time when being solo. Usually you can neutralize the defended node and keep it neutralized, but both of you won’t die. You’ve got to decide if you can’t do anything better instead, sometimes its worth it, sometimes its not.

Engineer:

Engineer… don’t engage when you have no ultimate ready but he has. You won’t even be able to neutralize the node in this case. If you have your ultimate ready… don’t hesitate to use it if you feel like you’re loosing or if he uses his ultimate. If he uses his ultimate he will usually stand in the mid of his towers, this is a great moment to swich to fire-attunement and use your aoe’s to damage him and kill the towers.
Even if he doesn’t use his ultimate this will be a tough fight. Try to spare your conditionremove for huge stacks of conditions and play good^^

Mesmer:

Mesmer is somewhere between “absurdly hard” and “almost impossible” to kill. Normaly you can only win if you’re hyper aggressive, so always keep pressure. Use your aoe’s to kill the phantasms as soon as he spawnes them. And always apply dmg. The number 2 of fire works great versus Mesmers, since you can apply a long burn (results in permanent pressure) and kill the phantasms through the aoe’s. This is your worst enemy and you will loose more often than you will win.

Thief/Warrior:

Both require a pretty similar tactic: Use Shocking Aura at a good moment and win. This skill is incredibly strong, especially vs thiefs since they’ve got no stability to counter Shocking Aura. And if everything goes wrong you’ve still got 3 stunbreakers. You should win most fights vs these classes.

Nekromancer:

I imagine fighting a Nekromancer can get really hard… but I can’t make any actual statements, since I’ve almost never fought any decent Nekromancer in a 1v1 situation.

Ranger:

Be aggressive. Use your conditionremove vs huge stacks of conditions. This is an interesting and fast paced fight, since the range will permanently put pressure on you and you’ve got to manage to pressure him even more.

Elementalist:

Since you’ve got one of the stronger 1v1 build Elementalist has to offer… you should have a build advantage or its close to a mirror match.

Because: Elementalist is the most balanced class. Imo all other classes should be balanced to the Elementalists powerlevel. Stronger can result in boring results, weaker as well.

Buffing the Elementalist would only shorten fights instead of making them more interesting.

Erebus.7568:

PS. and Gelrod.1295 kitten man, i did do tons of spvp in the beta and yes i have barely touched it in release becouse i think its badly balanced and badly made, not very enjoyable at all, but even so i am still at a good handfuld of fights there not in the houndreads but getting up towards a number where i can see i wasted too much time there. (why i do it i really don’t know, i keep dreaming of a fun scenario pvp system but its just dissapointing to play in it.. personally i found WAR to have the best scenario pvp for pug types as well as organized groups.. and only wow actually had pvp tournaments worth mentioning without asian (eu/na doesnt really have much in terms of pro gamers when not talking fps and rts games.) and never really played wow, graphic killed me before i could get into it l2 and eve-online was more me back then)

How can that be true, if you don’t even know, that everyone gets max gear + lvl in sPvP?

Cleansing Water is the most important of those 3 (awesome conditionremove with that build). And for WvW… I’d choose Earth’s Embrace over Evasive Arcana, since you won’t be able to use the spells created by Evasive Arcana (since they are close range) and the extra survivability should help you more than the extra blast-finishers.

shiNn.2571:

moa Bird -> run behind walls in 1o1 he cant kill you if u kite him. And use your own utility too. before or after.

You’re right, thats the way to counter moa. But since this game is objective based this will result in loosing a point.
And in a teamfight running behind a wall will really help your team.

Moa:
- making 2v2’s 2v1’s, 3v3’s 2v3’s…
- capping points without problem since the enemy has to run away

I do think, that is over the top.

Every skill has got a different power-ratio. Flame Grabs dmg, when hitting a burning enemy, scales for 1.1 with power for example. Elementalist Autoattacks have a much lower ratio, sth between .1 – .3… if you want to try out whats the ratio for a specific skill just read the tooltip dmg, then add or remove some power and read it again. Now you can see how much more dmg you deal per point of power.

Conditiondamage gets improved by the “conditiondamage” stat, not by power. Ratios are:
Bleed: 0.06 extra dmg / point conditiondmg / sec
Burning: 0.25 extra dmg / point conditiondmg / sec
Poison: 0.1 extra dmg / point conditiondmg / sec

Erebus.7568:

elchulo.3148:

What I still don’t understand is why anyone would say, “please don’t give us a boost.” Many players think we need a boost. If you are one of the “elite L2P” eles why not just keep your mouth shut and “dominate” even more if a boost comes? Guides are helpful and appreciated but saying we all suck and fighting against damage boosts makes no sense if you actually play and like the elementalist profession.

becouase his not…
his argument is that “it will get way overpowered and be the flawor of the month” which is just bullkitten.. every pro gamer knows that a flawor of the month is a specific combination of chars and abilities and this change constantly as new tactics and builds are made, actual balance changes have very little to do with that when we are talking the top tier players.

my guess would be becouse his main interest is not in the ele but in the currently stronger classes and having to fight players much better then himself on eles which actually is as strong point for point would get him destroyed.

SkyChef.5432:

Truga.5897:

Kyros, you can confirm your youtube account (it’ll send you an SMS with a code you need to put in), and then you can upload videos up to 10h long, rather than just 15 minutes.

Do eet.

I second this request. This thread has 15K view and climbing. That should tell you something.

+1. would like to see that movie at some point ^^

Gelrod.1295:

Erebus

-_- wouldn’t prove kitten, already told you several times and can see that soy did the same that i would take any fight with you if it is possible to do so on a max geared char (not a ele vs ele ofc).

Pls… visit the mists just once. Until then stop commenting on anything related to PvP.

Could you?

elchulo.3148:

What I still don’t understand is why anyone would say, “please don’t give us a boost.” Many players think we need a boost. If you are one of the “elite L2P” eles why not just keep your mouth shut and “dominate” even more if a boost comes? Guides are helpful and appreciated but saying we all suck and fighting against damage boosts makes no sense if you actually play and like the elementalist profession.

Because winning because your profession is too strong isn’t as much fun as winning because you’re playing better than the enemys.
Also fears are: If they overbuff the elementalist and realize it they could nerf it worse than it was before the buff (happens in balancing).
Before Elementalist gets any buffs all skills + traits should be working… that would already help a lot.

Novalight.7568:

Anyway, imo simplest buff would be, give us necromancer HP pool (since it’s also a clothie) or at least a mesmer one, and see how it goes. More HP with the sucky toughness and bad damage would go well.

No one would be able to kill an Elementalist with Necromancer health

Bloodtau.4672:

aydenunited.5729:

I’ve so far heard every profession except elementalists and necros referred to as OP more than once. Your point is both invalid and of childish disposition, and I would assume you will continue to be a bad player for quite some time until you adjust your attitude.

Lol Engineers OP. Wish this was actually true my friend. We can do everything but not be good at any of it.

I’d say Engineer is one of the strongest, probably even the strongest class in GW2 atm.

150 points from the lord in the 2nd map is already so low, that it usually isn’t worth going for him… When the lord was worth 100 points he was just ignored.

In Moba games you were always able to steal important mobs by lasthitting. And it’s good this way.
This way you are forced to know the enemy’s position etc. not to get your boss stealed… also you’ve gotta decide between soloing a boss and risking that the boss gets stealed more easy or kill the boss with more players at lower risk… etc.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Ninja-ing-forest-creature-kills-on-Forest-of-Niflhel-map/first#post185738

It is intended. And it is good, as it promotes good tactical play (since you want to steal enemy boss and the enemy wants to steal your boss)

Thief is flavor of the month I ‘d say. Mesmer is too strong. So it’s both.

There is a problem with the class:

The Elites.

(And some skills/traits are still bugged, but they only need to be fixed)

At the current state of balance I’d say:

If you want to learn a hard to play but rewarding class… roll Engineer.
Elementalist is good and fun. He can be used effectively. But Engineer is just a little bit better.

I really hope they are working on scrim servers. They only need to do it fast
And yes, thats what I mean by paid tournaments.

My favourite video featuring an elementalist yet… well done! Good play as well.

(You only might want to try out fast ground cast for a quicker stun-break)

Razarei.2809:

Again, you’ve just ignored what I JUST wrote. I’m starting to wish I recorded the bloody thing now. I have NEVER said elementalist is complete garbage. All I’ve EVER said that it’s the WORST class compared to others. Other classes can do what we do, but better, with less effort.

I’d change “worst class compared to others” with “worse than engineer and probably mesmer.”.

darkdoe.2486:

What if we changed ele so that instead of elemental attunments we had weapon swaps like other classses, and our weapon sets came with different elemental attacks based on what they were spec’d for.

eg. Staff – ranged dmg. firballs, lightning strikes etc. mainly single target attacks.
staff/focus – mid range CC, so lava rivers, wind tornadoes, earthquake etc
D/D – melee bursty dmg. eg lighting blades, jumping from target to target like a bolt of electricity for med dmg.

just a few eg i thought up on the spot. Thoughts?

Hell no! That would take away everything good and fun and unique from the elementalist. Just no.

Then spare some nuke yourself and burst the boss down Same thing as in LoL for example… you spare smite to finish a mob to secure the kill.
And you should usually know about where the enemy team is, to know when they come for the steal.

Carlin

Go onto other forums, where people that have experience playing competitive arena in WoW (Looking at this forum, I can smell the 1200 rating scrubbers from miles away, aka, most people are kitten clueless.). They are all kitten on GW2, and it’s poorly designed sPvP, which ironically is their only content in the game. Anet forgot to ask some people actually have a clue about PvP about how to design their game, and it shows. The pvp is made ‘fun’ (oh wee, look at me and all the fancy animations. I can’t see kitten on my screen, but at least it’s beautiful and it has big numbers. ), not competitively.

If someone needs a ranking to be worthy to be heard by you:
My team is made of multiple glad’s. We all enjoy the game and think, that PvP is more skillbased than in other MMO’s. I think the balance is… not perfect, but still enjoyable. The only problem of GW2 atm is: we need scrim-servers or at least paid tournaments. As fast as possible.

Erebus

-_- wouldn’t prove kitten, already told you several times and can see that soy did the same that i would take any fight with you if it is possible to do so on a max geared char (not a ele vs ele ofc).

Pls… visit the mists just once. Until then stop commenting on anything related to PvP.

Erebus.7568:

that was soo funny awesome xD lolz… well as kyros says the ele is not up we are all just noobs that doesnt know how to play it(sure kyros. sure you know what your talking about)
:P

well i love this, one more thing that shows the difference on the class balance gj mate

Erebus.7568:

btw. if you can do an arranged spvp so i can have full gear etc on other classes i would gladly take that fight, which i also stated but sure we just forget and ignore that
(not even sure if we can dual at all even with scenario pvp … but if so i gladly noob around on a necro in a 1v1 against you and even let you fraps it and show how you “so nicely beat me” since i doubt that even against some one like me that barely know how to play a necro can stand a chance vs several invulnerabilities and TONS of dps… ofc you could run always an option but won’t win you a fight.)

You are disqualified from posting any oppinions regarding Elementalists (or any other classes) in sPvP.

No you aren’t :/
The Elemental is… ok. But yes, it’s really boring to use and also pretty random.
Tornado… is bad. Dunno, probably there are situations where tornado really helps and not only helps getting you killed. But overall, not that strong.
And ye, the Greatsword… you deal less damage when wielding the Greatsword than you would without it. It’s just bad :/

Erebus.7568:

btw. if you can do an arranged spvp so i can have full gear etc on other classes i would gladly take that fight, which i also stated but sure we just forget and ignore that
(not even sure if we can dual at all even with scenario pvp … but if so i gladly noob around on a necro in a 1v1 against you and even let you fraps it and show how you “so nicely beat me” since i doubt that even against some one like me that barely know how to play a necro can stand a chance vs several invulnerabilities and TONS of dps… ofc you could run always an option but won’t win you a fight.)

How can someone who NEVER did any sPvP dare to post about class balance in sPvP? kitten…

Problem:

Speccing into one elemental traitline often results in loosing efficiency if you swich out of that element. (Dmg specc with 30 points in Fire and extra 10% dmg in fire attunement, 20% less cd for fire spells and granting a stack of might every time you use fire spell for example).
Also the overall attunement-cd is really high if you don’t spec deep into arcana.

Solution:

Adding an additional benefit to all 4 elemental traitlines: “Lower Attunement Cd for this Attunement”. I’d suggest 1% for each trait point spent. In the example of 30 points in fire you would get the cd for fire attunement lowered by 30%.

Why would this be a great solution?

As said above, speccing into one traitline can result in the player not wanting to swich out of this attunement, because he will loose more than he could gain. That is mostly due to the long time he can’t swich back into his favored element.
With my proposed change and Elementalist could swich out of his favored attunement for some utility and swich back into it way faster, thus making it more appealing to use the full arsenal of the Elementalist.
You could even combine 30points Arcana with 30points of any element (for example when using staff) to minimize the cd of the favored element.
A support Elementalist could afford to swich out of Water to use a few skills of another Element without that much risk of not being able to swich back to Water in time.

If you run a build like that you might want to consider 30/30/0/10/0, since the water traits + passive will probably help you more than earth(1k more life will make you more survivable than 100 toughness if you’re that squishy).

Attunement Cd is already pretty long… if it got increased even more… Elementalist would loose his class mechanic.

1) The point is whether ele is at par with other class if all else is equal. Hence Zarerei challenge remained valid.

You can’t compare a support build with a 1on1 Build on the base of how good the support build does in a duel. Same goes for other builds. And when comparing 1on1 Builds… the Mesmer always wins^^

2) What is duell atm?

*How would you duel at the moment

3) Well, what is the chance of 5 thiefs against 5 eles? Hence Zarerei challenge remain valid.

A 5 Thiefs VS 5 Elementalist battle isn’t relevant for balance. (And if both partys played equally well the Elementalist team should win, cause they can bunker better.)

I don’t agree with you (when talking about PvP traits):

@10 Earth: Yes, Earth’s Embrace is nice 2 have… but there are only few builds with enough points left to afford 10 points in earth.
@10 Arcana: You should always get these 10 points! But not for arcane shield but @Elemental Attunement. It’s simply the strongest elementalist trait.
5 Water: I’d always get 10 points in Water… otherwise you will usually have too few conditionremove. And since you’ve already gotten 10 points in Water… lets get another 5 and make it 15 for the strong heal when attuning to Water.

My “must have traits” are:
10 Arcana: Elemental Attunement.
10 Water: Condition remove.

Imo you should push your life to ~16k and after that focus on toughness if you need more survivability. Less than 16k life is… dangerous.

1. Being strong in a 1v1 situation is only important for some roles. Duels would show, what builds loose vs a certain Elementalist build and what builds win.
2. How would you duell atm?
3. A team made of one class is usually inefficient. You wouldn’t do too good with a team of 5 thiefs and I guess no one is saying thief is weak right?

Lets see…

- Wouldn’t take 30points in arcana. You haven’t got releavant combo fields with d/d (only fire), so you don’t really need the extra blast finishers. Also I don’t think you need 15% speed with dagger, since you will have a high swiftness uptime. If you move the points to air you get 10% speed instead, that means 5% less than with arcane, but imo precision and critdmg is better than boonduration and attunement recharge when running d/d
- I’d get at least 10points in Air (Auras grant fury+swiftness or shorter cd on heal… both really strong traits for d/d)
- I also like 30points in Water with tripple cantrips. You can trait shorter cantrip cd + cantrips give vigor and regen + regen removes conditions. That adds an additional conditionremove to all your cantrips + extra heal + vigor… pretty strong imo.

Also cantrip mastery doesn’t work for mistform, its bugged for some reason and still goes on full cd :/

This is awesome! Totally love it