Guild Wars 2

LordByron.8369:

If you are one of those celestial/Knight mixed XXX46 DD eles you won t kill any decent:
Mesmer
Thief
Warrior
Engi
Guardian
Ranger (didn t see last nerfs but they used to outheal your damage even in Zerk+celestial…unless they mess up).

As others have said, that has to be an issue on your part. Two simple questions, meaning no offence:

Do you WvW?

Do you think elementalist is underpowered?

LordByron.8369:

Mbelch.9028:

LordByron.8369:

No the issue is Killing something without being full dps.

Once you burnt RTL you are done.
Now achieving permaswiftness requires to put half of your skills on cooldown.

You can t say that fire 2 + rtl is mobility.
You can be outrun by a mesmer with no effort.

Zergs are not an issue.
If they follow you, you already won.

In all truth that’s a you problem. I’m not saying l2p or anything, but I don’t have that issue. I can escape just about anybody to the point that they give up. And that’s without FGS.

Its more L2read i guess

P.S. alt+f4 i guess if you can escape thieves and warriors.

What exactly are you saying? Can a mobility specced thief or warrior catch up to you? Yes. Can they kill you? No. Elementalist mobility is absolutely fine. There is no faster spec that can outperform D/D ele, and when using fgs, there pretty much is no faster spec. I have absolutely 0 trouble killing stuff, so I’m not sure what you’re on about on that front either.

Trying to get some use out of your needless hyperbole in this balance discussion, you would say elementalist is currently blatantly underpowered? Noted.

I would very strongly advise against staff ele in a havoc squad. Unless you are reliably above 7-ish people large, you will be weighing your team down. D/D ele was made for this stuff.

First off, how big is your group and what general comp do you run? Generally speaking, a 0/2/0/6/6 aura sharing ele is very hard to beat. If you squad has abundant fury, go for 0/0/2/6/6 with elemental shielding. Gear wise, full knights is not very optimal. Far too much precision. You need a well rounded distribution. I’ll link an example at the bottom. For runes, melandru, water, pack, strength and hoelbrak are the strongest options, and your choice will probably depend on your team comp. If you have at least decent cleansing from your allies, go water or strength.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhcMqcW4wzBf0APAC5fvaJKQ5qJfC-TlSBAB3pCBkKB5SJXWKHGV9lOOBA4pDYhDIQeaBA4BAEAAB4mtZA4m38m38m3sQAm3CA-w
Try to aim for comparable numbers. Especially for toughness, power, crit chance and vitality

S/D thief in its glory days is a large part of the reason D/D elementalist fell out of the meta. After countless nerfs, the matchup is not as one sided as it used to be anymore, but it’s definitely still one of the hardest matchups for a D/D ele in PvP.

Glass S/F 66002 can quite reliably beat the standard ‘sizer’ S/D thief, but is not very viable in general PvP.

Actual advice vs S/D, assuming a standard D/D cele strength set or similar:

- Try to make good use of the time you get when a S/D thief shadowsteps away to regen initiative and what not. Stack some might with earth EA, frozen burst, aura leap or even churning earth. In the end, damage is your only defense.

- STAND IN YOUR RING OF FIRE! He will take 5 seconds of burning even if he shadowsteps through the borders. Devastating

- More obvious things like avoiding LS, trying to lead your earthquakes and predicting his shadowstep in accordingly.

- Make sure you’re always trading damage back, even though you might be losing the trade. S/D has unmatched sticking power, so your only defense is keeping his hp low enough to avoid him killing you. Lightning whip and fire attunement are your most important tools. He cannot outdamage these.

- Arcane shield. A godsend, and pretty much essential to survive.

- Use your shocking aura wisely. It gives you a good window of power-play.

Remember the matchup is not in your favor. Avoid it accordingly.

Zephyrus.9680:

Not sure if the OP is referring to average roaming or dueling top players. You can’t simply disregard skill level. Some classes like thief I’ll beat maybe 90% until I find a really good player who wins against me 3/4s of the time. The skill caps are different on every class which makes it impossible to come up with a general % win/loss for 1v1 (not that 1v1 is even that meaningful).

If you hang around OS in T2 at least, you’ll see a lot of different fights than the average classes found roaming. Over the last week I’ve faced a D/P-S/D thief that I lost about 75% to (20+ duels), warriors (mace shield/ GS crit spike) that I could only beat maybe 1/8 even knowing stun breaks are their counter, a zerker mes I went 0-3 to (only mes I’ve lost to in a long time), a tanky condition ranger that I don’t even know what he was running, and a couple condition eles I couldn’t beat. While pretty much everyone I find roaming I can beat just because the average skill level seems much lower than people specifically looking to duel in OS. So I’m really not sure how you could come up with an accurate assessment class vs class like that when skill and specific builds are such a huge factor.

Overall I would say ele is fine in terms of 1v1 balance, which is a big improvement from pre-patch. In PvP they add a lot in a team (both staff and d/d) though I’m not seeing a huge amount of eles, compared to, say, necros or warriors which are all over the top 100-200. This implies some degree of balance but not overpowered.

I am referring to 1v1 scenarios in both roaming and the sanctum (just because that is the simplest case to consider). I very much agree that the skill level on average roamers is leagues below what you tend to find in the os. I play T2 EU and have an amazing time there. Ofcourse these numbers I mention are extremely rough estimates. It’s not really about the numbers, more about the huge swing in our 1v1 potential. I feel quite bad when I start beating the people I used to lose to because of a lucky burning speed evade and what not. I guess that’s the main point I was trying to bring across. Having spent as many hours there as I have, I would say I have become quite adept at assessing a matchup disregarding player skill.

To this day I await these tremendous guardian builds I’m told about. In my experience it is pretty much impossible to effectively lose to a guardian. Although from the guardian’s perspective it looks like you’re constantly winning trades, the ele is 100% in control of the fight. He can slow it down and sustain back up, or speed it up at will. That’s just the nature of the matchup, with guardian being extremely easy to kite.

You make a good point about rune of strength versus the old setup. I agree the transition isn’t a buff to ele per say, but it’s hardly a dent if you look at what happened to lyssa’s. I strongly disagree that the might duration is wasted on ele however. That’s the kind of conclusion you draw from a little too much PvGolems. In a real fight, the might duration from runes of strength is very useful in that it allows you to have more flexible rotations without having to constantly be dropping pressure to aura leap or what not.

I agree to most of your arguments ozii, and if you look at it purely stat-wise, not much seems to have changed. But if you look at the bigger picture, how pretty much every class lost part of its strongest builds, how burning speed evades and frozen burst is a minimal cooldown blast, elementalist feels stronger than it’s ever been in WvW. And I didn’t feel like i needed buffing pre-patch.

I’m not sure what your point is on the whole rune of strength thing. First you say it’s not really that great on ele, then you say you’ve been a long time advocate for it. IMO it’s pretty much equally strong as the old boon duration setup used to be. I would still prefer 45% boon duration over the pre-patch rune of strength though.

I suppose part of the reason I’m feeling the lack of effort required is my moderate investment in healing power, which bumped me up to 2.2k dodge rolls/water attunes.

It’s been over a month since the balance patch hit us, so I think it’s a good time to have a little discussion about where the elementalist currently stands in sPvP, tPvP and WvW.

Allow me to start with my area of expertise, WvW roaming.

Pre-patch, a classic D/D roamer was already very viable. By no means overpowered, but I never felt like I had an unfair disadvantage over other opponents. The inflated stats in a WvW environment benefit the elementalist far more than other classes, due to having the lowest base stats. Disregarding skill-level, the matchups a pre-patch ele would lose were: condi engi, corrupt necro, S/D thief, PU phantasm mesmer, condi perplex thief. A healing power condi ranger could pose a threat, but as long as you were running ether, you were fine. Boonrip shatter was about a 50/50 matchup. All other matchups were pretty much in favor of the ele. D/D has always been a potent 1vx spec against unexperienced players, since it can easily kite heavies around while chasing a backline.

Post-patch: I have to say there is a lot more room for error now. Rune of strength has lifted the damage to a whole other level, and burning speed evade is completely ridiculous vs certain specs. The matchups that a post-patch ele loses (disregarding skill level) are corrupt necro and condi thief. Condi engi is 50/50, only if he runs perplexities. S/D thief is also 50/50. It should also be noted that corrupt necro has become quite doable with burning speed to pop marks, as it denies the safety of standing in the marks. Not only have the matchups we lose been reduced drastically, the amount of effort it takes to beat all other specs has sunk tremendously. Just stack 25 might and lightning whip your opponent to death with a sigil of air. Shatter mesmer is completely hopeless now that we can burning speed every single one of their sword immobs, and S/D thief just cant keep up with the sheer damage. Just standing in your ring of fire will burn him for 3k damage every time he shadowsteps to you.

I could rant on for ages about how different elementalist feels now in WvW, but the short version is, it has become easy to perform decent at ele, at the level of most other professions. Good players can however perform better than pretty much every other profession. I don’t think that’s a good thing, although I know the number 1 complaint pre-patch was how hard it was to perform decently on ele.

The story is entirely different in PvP however. Pre-patch, playing an elementalist put you at an immediate and sizeable disadvantage. It was doable, but there were definitely better specs out there. Not at all like WvW, in PvP you were at a decisive disadvantage.

Post-patch ele in PvP feels like pre-patch ele in WvW. It has a place, but is by no means overpowered. If anything is overpowered, it’s just the rune of strength. The class itself feels perfectly fine to me. I reckon the reason people complain so much in PvP, is just that they’re not used to ele being viable, and losing to one is very strange to them.

In the conquest game-mode, the only thing that would make the ele worth picking, is the fiery greatsword mobility, and high 1v1 potential, with good 1v2 bunker potential. An elementalist is very easily denied usefulness though. A bunker-ish home-point defender, such as necro, ranger or warrior, and a mobile far-point-assaulter can completely shutdown an ele, since he has very poor teamfight contribution.

This post is long enough, let me know what you think! I’m very curious what the general consensus is.

TL;DR: elementalist feels too strong in WvW roaming, but nicely balanced in sPvP and tPvP.

That’s a really solid build. Applied fortitude would help a great deal with the lack of vitality, but really nice numbers all around.

And yes Matt, pack works on the wielder.

Too much ferocity, too little precision. Precision adds more damage overall, until you have 1140 more precision than ferocity. I’d swap all of that valkyrie for knights, and half of that cavalier’s into celestial.

Furthermore, sigil of battle is very strong on ele, i advise you swap one sigil for a battle sigil.

If you’re going solo roaming, swap cleansing wave for regen on crit.

It hurts to read so much nonsense…

Firstly, no profession has as much condi cleanse and healing over time as the elementalist. Secondly, as Zelyhn said, we’re mid range, giving a massive advantage over melee opponents, and making us far harder to put damage in, due to the fact we don’t have to be on top of our opponent. Third, perma vigor. Fourth, please stop comparing ele to any other profession without looking at the big picture.

Seriously, stuff like ‘how come we don’t get stealth game is so unfair’ is really kitten painful for me to read.

I figured I would post this here as well :-)

‘Did you know’ thread on reddit

Currently, whenever a skill gets interrupted, it goes on a 5 second cooldown. The only exception to that are skills that have an effect while channeling, such as churning earth, which cripples while it’s channeling and ether renewal, which pulses condition removal and heals as it is channeling.

Something that I have found very bothersome however, is that during the wind-up time of ether renewal (before the first pulse and after clicking the button), which is quite lengthy, the skill still goes on full recharge when you’re interrupted. This has led to quite a few lost duels because of people accidentally interrupting my heal.

I understand that getting interrupted is supposed to be the weakness this skill entails, but I find this punishment excessive. If you have experienced it for yourself, you’d know how anti-intuitive this feels. You’ll be getting CC’d a milisecond after casting and have no heal for 15 seconds.

Opinions? I would consider this a bug that needs fixing. Any interrupts before the first pulse, or at least during the first half of the windup, should not put the heal on full cooldown imo.

Scrib.9207:

Now… if someone tells me a good strat for dealing with mesmers 1v1, that would be grand, but then again, mesmer is like the death knight of guild wars.

Condi mesmer, shatter mesmer or phantasm mesmer?

BlackBeard.2873:

Would that be stronger – OF COURSE.

Is it justified/needed at all – ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Drake’s breathe is a fine skill as it is and is pretty balanced given the damage/condi/cooldown. It also benefits from burning being the strongest condi for non-condi builds by far, and applies a very nice burn to set up firegrab.

Ele can use a little more mobility/survivability, but don’t need this.

+1 said it all.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Creamble.1652:

Dude… you sucked hard with the daggers… Dual Dagger is a lot more then your video showed.
For the new elementalists, know that Dual Dagger is a great weapon spec. Talk to me in game if you need some tips.
The idea of these videos was nice, but try to show the real side from both specs…

Elementatious D

Considering I barely took damage, and executed my skills perfectly when needed…
I think I did pretty kitten good in my opinion.

However, I must confess, I’m not running dagger build. =)
These videos are more of a demonstrations on how the skills work on both Daggers and Staff. New players can decide which playstyle appeals to them the most by just watching the video.

I agree with the first guy, that was not good D/D play. Very slow, bad rotations and an absurd choice of utilities. You did not do ‘pretty kitten good’. If you plan on making videos about D/D play you need to be a LOT better.

Two things:

1- These elites have already been debunked as fake

2- This elite would be completely 100 percent broken and overpowered on elementalist, there’s a reason our profession doesn’t get quickness, and that is because we have long channels and telegraphed threats as our defining + crippling characteristic. I’m baffled by the indifference.

Depending on how much they buff the overall stats on celestial, I could see it staying equally useful on roaming ele, but in a more survivable mix of toughness and healing power. Since crit damage will get toned down overall, and even more so when using celestial as a source, it might just become more beneficial to go for a completely different approach. Much more durable, with around 800-1000 healing power and 2.6k+ armor. There would ofcourse be a substantial damage loss, but as long as you maintain 30 crit chance and stack as much power as possible, I’m quite sure it would be small enough to warrant the durable route.

If they go slightly overboard on buffing the stats, near-full celestial might even become viable. If the new runesets introduce a proper 6-set boon duration one, I could see it happening

EDIT: and thanks ThiBash for bringing it to their attention.

The most common condi ele setup is 0/0/30/20/20. It’s heavy bunker with a shaman’s amulet.

D/F, S/F or D/D all work about equally well. Both earth grandmasters can be used, although I would argue diamond skin synergizes better with focus offhand since earth 5 can give you a free ticket to above the threshold, whereas signet of restoration synergizes better with dagger mainhand due to higher attack speed in general.

0/20/20/30 works too. It makes better use of the healing power from shaman’s, while the dodge roll of evasive arcana does very good condi damage in earth and particularly fire.

This build is unbelievably squishy, combined with the fact that you lack defensive utilities (cantrips) and more importantly, the fact that condition damage is based on attrition and outlasting your opponent. Glass builds can work given you drop your opponent quickly enough, which you never will with a condi build, especially on ele.

Squishy by virtue of the fact you have neither 15 water, nor 30 arcane, nor vigor(!), nor high protection/regen uptime, nor invulns/blinks/reflects. Nothing basically.

I’m open for condi builds, but this one doesn’t make any sense to me. You will simply never survive any encounter, by effectively being full melee on the squishiest of all professions with none of it’s redeeming qualities in the form of heals and boons.

Elite skill:

Arcane attunement. Temporarily gives the user a supreme attunement to his current element

Air: Tether onto your target for 10 seconds (uses scepter air 1 animation), target is crippled and weakened for 1 second every second, you gain superspeed for 1 second and 5 might for 5 seconds every second the tether remains. Leash distance 1500, cast range 1200.
Water: You and 5 allies within 600 units radius gain 30 seconds of frost aura. Cures a condition on you and allies every second for 10 seconds. Initial heal per boon on you: 450
Earth: Knockdown adjacent targets every 3 seconds for 10 seconds. Grants immunity to critical hits for 10 seconds to you and 3 allies in 600 range.
Fire: Deals point-blank aoe damage each second (double to burning foes). Damage increases linearly per second during 10 seconds. Starting at 200 and ending at 2000.

kitten balance this would be awesome

The burst build comes in different degrees of silly. Basically you use S/D with two arcanes and lightning flash and a zerker amulet. Traits are up to you. Do you want to be massively silly? Pick all dmg modifiers + scholar runes and disregard every notion of heals/boons/condi cleanse. The more traditional you go (e.g. lyssa runes+30 arcane), the less silly your build becomes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1vui52/dd_roaming_elementalist/
;-)

As you say, healing power only works well in conjunction with toughness and solid condi cleanse.

I can’t see this combination being useful in any self-centered ele build. Not even in dungeon parties since when building defense, healing power won’t prevent you from getting oneshot in any way.

The only really useful new combinations I could think of would be cavalier’s, cleric’s and knight’s with power mainstat.

zilcho.7624:

Gokil.2543:

As I said, I’m not being hostile. Logically, your explanation does not make sense. If he is forced to play with lower-skilled players, there will be 5 lower skilled players on the other team, and 4 on his team. Considering he is higher skill than them, he should be able to win more than 50% of the matches. I don’t understand why that is so hard to get. It’s the typical ‘ELO hell’ remark that people just don’t seem to want to let go of.

You’re oversimplifying things. Give me any player in the world, however good, and you can easily make them lose 50+% of the time using compositions of middle-tier players.

You see this in other sports, like basketball. There are players who absolutely dwarf the contributions of average players, and even the contributions of great players. I’m talking about transcendent stars like Lebron James and Kevin Durant. Yet these sorts of players can and do have seasons with records far below 50%.

The reason is that even all-time great players don’t raise win probability by anything close to 50%. (It’s because of how normal distributions work: they aren’t linear. They drop off exponentially as you get away from the mean. Sure, you might have a one in a million player. But they do not play a million times better than average. You would need a linear distribution for that.)

Gokil.2543:

This is just statistics. Judging by the fact OP claims to have played numerous matches before coming to his conclusion of performing worse during off-peak than during peak, statistics has a value in this discussion, since coincidences get smoothed out the larger your sample size of matches.

You’re getting the statistics very wrong. There are three viable theories: my peak-hour win distribution is accurate, my off-peak distribution is accurate, or neither distribution is accurate. Without any further information, it is impossible to know which theory is the most likely. Yet you opt, by default, for the most insulting one.

That aside, you are not even disagreeing with me. Obviously, I feel that matchmaking is working during peak hours and being unfair during off-peak hours. You think the opposite is true. Either way, we are both saying matchmaking is getting things wrong.

I’m sorry, your comparison is completely irrelevant, there is no scrambling of teams in basketball.

It seems you chose to believe the matchmaking system picks on you specifically, and does not in fact work according to the MMR system. I can’t argue with that.

We look at what defines the difference between peak and off-peak, to see what causes the difference in outcome: there are fewer people playing during off peak. How could fewer people playing correlate to fewer matches won? There are not enough people around your skill level so the average skill level progresses toward the mean. Your skill level is higher than the mean → you win more, lower than the mean → you lose more.

That or its coincidence, which you ruled out in your original post.

That’s all I have to say about this.

Silentshoes.1805:

Gokil,

No, his MMR could be high, and he is forced to play with lower-skilled players on his team when that is all who are available in the queue.

Why are people so hostile here that they always choose to find some way to put down a poster, even when it is a stretch and they have to reach for the negative interpretation?

As I said, I’m not being hostile. Logically, your explanation does not make sense. If he is forced to play with lower-skilled players, there will be 5 lower skilled players on the other team, and 4 on his team. Considering he is higher skill than them, he should be able to win more than 50% of the matches. I don’t understand why that is so hard to get. It’s the typical ‘ELO hell’ remark that people just don’t seem to want to let go of.

If on the other hand, OP is a below average player, and there are not enough people around his skill level, the lobby would fill with players of slightly higher skill, 4 of which would be on his team, and 5 of which on the other team. Result: OP’s team has a disadvantage and loses over 50 percent of his games.

This is just statistics. Judging by the fact OP claims to have played numerous matches before coming to his conclusion of performing worse during off-peak than during peak, statistics has a value in this discussion, since coincidences get smoothed out the larger your sample size of matches.

I’ll just come in and say that vigor does not stack with zephyrs focus.

I found myself rewatching this one twice Would you mind if I share it on the GW2 subreddit? I think a lot of people would enjoy some solid D/D action in there.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/ Or you could post it there yourself.

Been through most of your previous episodes as well, you just have a very enjoyable playstyle. Always kiting and showing a good balance between outnumbered fights and skillful opponents. Keep making em :-)

zilcho.7624:

Justin ODell.9517:

@zilcho.7624: Are you taking into consideration the rating reset that happened about a month ago?

1) Your MMR reset to a higher level than it was before. This should settle quickly because your deviation and volatility were also reset.

2) Playing during off-peak hours, especially while your deviation/volatility were high, could caused your MMR to settle in either higher or lower than it should be.

Of course, this is just speculation. I will keep an eye on your account and see if I learn more.

I think it might just be the player population. I get so many repeat players on my team, I’ve started recognizing players’ names. Having a player placed on my team three consecutive games is not uncommon.

Although, I thought the population was large enough – even during off-peak hours – for repetition to still be rare.

(Obviously, all of these repeated players are having the same issue I am. I would be the repeated player from their perspective.)

Repeated players are very common, and I honestly don’t see too much of an issue with them.

As for the problem you have: not trying to offend you but the only possible explanation I could have is that your MMR is very low, which causes you to be unable to find proper matches in off-peak hours due to not enough players being at or below your performance level.

If you winrate increases as the pool of participants decreases, that means you’re at the top layer of active players. Inversely, if it decreases at low activity hours, that would mean you’re in the lowest layer. Could this be the problem?

When it comes to world bosses, soldier’s is the best, since you cannot crit on world bosses.

However people don’t generally buy a gear set for world bosses alone because it frankly isn’t hard to do and even if you go down that shouldn’t be a problem.

Generally: save karma and laurels, spend everything else on getting equipment. I would not advice starting with full zerkers. Get soldier’s armor and zerker trinkets, and work from there.

To OP: if you get oneshot on a decent build, that’s because the thief was running a silly all-in build and is now out of the fight for the duration of his cooldowns. Need I remind you elementalist can put up equally high burst in an equally short time, given an equally silly build?

To everyone else in this thread: before you go all L2P on this man, let me guarantee you the same thing would happen to you. The amount of burst that kind of build puts out won’t be stopped by any reasonable WvW roaming build. These kind of thieves are very rare for some reason, so you probably haven’t seen them. A good thief will shadowstep+sword 2+weapon swap+infiltrator’s signet+steal to you and burst you down in an instant from over ballista range. It’s extremely impressive to see it happen, not gonna lie. Even if you’re able to see the thief coming you’ll get surprised by the fact he near instantly blinked 4k units to get to you, and you’ll be too slow without a doubt to stun break and condi cleanse the immob from panic strike.

And that’s if you see him coming.

I suggest you all go try this combo in heart of the mists, it’s quite fun and really cool to do. Three signets+shadowstep+basi, scholar runes 30/30/0/0/10

TakeCare.3182:

Gokil.2543:

Very nice video, thanks for sharing!

Thank you! I really appreciate it.

Przemek Pro.1309:

can u link a build?

Sure! The build isn’t really anything the forums haven’t already seen before, but it’s fun.

You do know sigil of blood and sigil of battle share cooldown right? Two sigils with internal cooldowns is generally a waste of a sigil :o

At least it’ll be gone next patch

Very nice video, thanks for sharing!

As has been said before, with the crit damage changes it remains unsure whether celestial will be worth taking until we know the details. I suggest holding off for a while

2,5k-2,6k armor here as well

Honestly this is a shame. Elementalist has easy fury, high might generation and even some guaranteed crit utilities. In other words elementalist was the profession that could make the most use out of critical damage by far. If nothing is changed about the base stats of celestial, I probably won’t be taking it anymore.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Ugh, now I have to use D/D again to try these out
I thought I could stop with it for a bit…

HEY! No sadness allowed today

:D

My jaw dropped. I had no idea something this big was coming. It’s a good day to be an ele once again. Prepare for the mass influx of bad eles though once we start wrecking people again :-D

Honestly though, we needed this stuff in PvP, no doubt about it, but i’m pretty sure we’re going to be OP gods in WvW with this stuff. I’m just afraid they’re going to overnerf us once we go to OP again.

Seriously, in WvW roaming this is going to be off the charts. Opinions?

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Mash Hog.5672:

Rayti.6531:

dukevonart.2691:

Here’s a list of elementalist skills that reduce or negate damage dealt in some way. This might be a useful reference that is a bit faster than looking through the wiki.

…

I would like to add, that dagger 2 in earth attunement (Ring of Earth) also blocks projectiles, even though it is not mentioned in the tooltip. You can also find this information as a note in the wiki. The skill absorbs projectiles for about 2 seconds.

WOW DOES IT?
I never knew that!

Yeah I tested it in the heart of the mists yesterday. Dunno if it really is 2 seconds (didn’t time it but didn’t feel like 2 seconds) but ring of earth definitely stops projectiles. There isn’t any animation or anything, the projectiles simply cease to exists when they come into range. That’s probably why I never noticed it the whole last year

That’s fricking crazy! How.. What.. I don’t even

Maybe every build you could think off wasn’t good enough? It’s really easy to mess up a D/D build in PvP, since there is little stat boosts to work with. I’m running a zerk ammy+soldiers jewel (or valk ammy with zerk jewel sometimes), arcane wave, arcane shield and lightning flash. 0/20/0/20/30 or 0/0/20/20/30 runes of the ogre. Your job is to crash teamfights and do good aoe burst in the form of fire combo +double arcanes, then churning earth + lightning flash.

Remember that your first priority is staying alive. Which is why you come lay down your burst combos in teamfights, but you have to learn to back out before you get downed. This build takes the aoe burst from typical arcane scepter setups plus the superior skirmish potential of D/D.

That’s already more than I was expecting. Happy face

reikken.4961:

a well known bug exploit is what it is. like tornado + meteor shower, only more extreme

Honestly, it costs you your elite + a strong defensive cooldown, and if you happen to hit retal, you’re dead. Only works on stationary targets too. If this wasn’t possible fgs wouldnt be worth taking over glyph.

ThiBash.5634:

Gokil.2543:

It can be extremely potent in sPvP to instapop a downed person (and the one ressing him) with fiery rush+lightning flash.

How does that work actually? I’ve often seen people talk about combining FGS with Lightning Flash, but how does that work in practice?

Use fiery rush untargeted and blink on top of your target right after. You will be running in place at target location and have the trail stack up where you’re standing like when you rush into a wall.

While this solution is very appealing to all of us experienced players on the forums, it’s not exactly a pure win-win. By making every skill harder to master, your pvp becomes less accessible. From an outside standpoint it always seems better to solve things ‘intelligently’, but in the long run, after countless skills and traits have been rebalanced to be more active, combat starts becoming less reactive. Which is the current strength of GW2 combat. The simplicity allows for a setting in which you can easily learn how to deal with other professions, whereas the more of these changes you implement, the more you need to know about the game and particularly what the meta builds are and what their weakness is.

What I’m trying to say is that your solution is fine for experienced players, but people who are just getting into the game will be less effective, and this gets worse the longer you keep up this approach. GW1 was an extreme example, where new players were mathematically ineffective unless they looked up what builds to run and mindlessly wrecked people until the meta shifted

Please do note that every class is balanced around its entirety. Meaning the fact that our elites are lackluster is a part of the way our class is balanced. You can’t say you demand an elite as gamechanging as thief or engi. Just because their elite is this strong doesn’t mean we’re entitled to an elite that is equally strong.

inb4 rage and ‘ele isn’t balanced’. I know that, that’s not the point.

Btw, fgs is a worthy elite now that you can cast it while moving. It can be extremely potent in sPvP to instapop a downed person (and the one ressing him) with fiery rush+lightning flash. Also useful to burst immobilized targets or people ressing others.

FGS 5 does very nice damage over time as well. Drop it on a point or a downed person for very good pressure.

FGS 3 gets you out of anywhere. Remember you don’t need to face your target for the autoattack, this can make a big difference

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Rayti.6531:

dukevonart.2691:

Here’s a list of elementalist skills that reduce or negate damage dealt in some way. This might be a useful reference that is a bit faster than looking through the wiki.

…

I would like to add, that dagger 2 in earth attunement (Ring of Earth) also blocks projectiles, even though it is not mentioned in the tooltip. You can also find this information as a note in the wiki. The skill absorbs projectiles for about 2 seconds.

It does, really? Never noticed that. That’s kinda awesome.

I read that on the wiki as well recently. Assumed it was nonsense since I never noticed either.

I think if this trait got some reasonable buffs we could be close to a viable condi spec:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Precision

Honestly a bleed on crit trait would be awesome, but that might be too much to ask for in one go. Although I really don’t understand why we don’t have one.

Skim through this thread before you post it. This is where the idea originated

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/New-Improved-Skills/first#post3501401

I’ll come and support you when you post it in profession balance. Don’t have the time to post it myself atm

Agreed. Shame it doesn’t fit in earth or fire lines thematically, but I hope that’s not too much of a problem.

Alternatively, if Anet finds they have to put frostbite in the water line, we could go with the thermal shock idea. An extra effect when target is both burning and chilled. That could go in the fire line without too many problems.

The advantage of that idea is that it introduces some interesting counterplay particularly with frost aura and fire aura.

A blast finisher in a water field does not grant regeneration, but rather an area healing combo.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_field

Regarding water blast, it’s quite decent healing but there is not often a time where your time wouldnt be spent more useful in another attunement.

It is worth noting though that water blast recently (october 15th) got a buff in healing power scaling. Sources you find will likely predate that. With enough healing power this can provide solid healing, but again, you will probably be more useful doing damage or control in other attunements, since the heal is quite hard to make good use off (everyone has to be in melee range of your target)

You don’t need superspeed to be able to escape any situation with FGS. I used to use superspeed when the trait just came out, and darting halfway across the map is fun, but I’d rather have reliable fury and swiftness.