Guild Wars 2

Its always rubber banded if you don’t execute the LF with perfect timing. Burning speed + LF still works. Burning speed + Fiery Rush doesn’t stack the burning anymore.

I wouldn’t say the trait is useless, I’ve been using it for solo roaming and dueling and in that scenario it seems to be working out quite well. If it had a blast radius after applying the burn so it did an aoe around the burned target though that would be pretty cool.

I’ve been running 30/0/0/10/30 or 30/10/0/0/30 (burning precision, burning fire, blinding ashes)
D/D: generosity sigil, leech sigil
Utility: Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire, Arcane shield
Celestial Amulet
Been using Str runes but I keep changing them to experiment

I might be mistaken but didn’t some math gurus come up with a solution that said celestial should get a 10% stat boost instead of 6% to rival with the other armor sets?

phaeris.7604:

How come you can take fall damage whilst in this form.

You can also be rooted and be obstructed by barriers.

I’m no physicist , but isn’t vapour more…well vapour like?

I can agree on being immobilized while in mist form being sort of… kitten

oZii.2864:

I hope pu stays around and mesmer keep running it because if shatter becomes popular again among mesmer we are in a world of trouble as a d/d player. I would rather fight a PU mesmer then shatter mesmer on my ele any day.

I disagree, I’d rather deal with shatter mesmer than PU. I don’t mind the chance of a fast death if it means not having to deal with as much stealth.

Mydnyght.5026:

Hey, so I play a shatter mesmer with traveler runes and I’m a bit frustrated by my mobility in WvW , almost every class I fight are able to escape/run away from me when things goes wrong for them.

So I have no way to catch a running warrior , thief , elementalist, ranger
Some guardians are also almost impossible to catch
Necro and engineer seems to be the ones that share the same lack of mobility than me.

So I end up being the guy that need other people to “want to fight” for the fight to happens, I feel I’m not able to chase people that wants to flee.

So my question is simple, is there somethings I missed ? What could I do to improve my mobility ? are travelers runes the limit for mesmer when it comes to mobility ?

Thanks

Do a 180 before you use staff 2

Eviscera.9703:

The PU condi mesmer is the biggest faceroll chees build ever made in the history of all the MMOS ever made. But it is possible to beat the kitten using this pathetic build. It’s all about your burst as a d/d ele. Use burning speed + lighting flash combo followed by a fire grab and use your CC’s smart. After the 15th patch you can switch builds wherever you are in the world, so in a duel situation you should go for Diamond skin.
Also these mesmer are very weak to condi dmg. A good engi/necro can beat them easy.
Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxirzYOA2Y

Haha, I’ve seen this vid before, I did a lot of looking into mesmer vs ele vids recently. My opponent and I were on a much more serious calibur than these two IMO. That ele and mesmer in the vid you posted are mediocre, at least it appears that way from these few fights in this video. I could go into quite a bit of detail on why but I’m sure I’d just be wasting my breath…

Edit: I noticed Intigo does better in some of his other videos so maybe that vid in particular was just a bad demonstration.

Harper.4173:

Liewec.2896:

nicknamenick.2437:

And how many nerfs for hammer? I lost counting on this weapon… too many!

and yet after the patch hambow will remain as ridiculous as it is now.
whenever i play hammer war i roam around 3 shotting eles.
it is ridiculous, it needs atleast 50% damage reduction across the board.

when it comes to warrior nerfs i have no remorse, 6 months of hambow is enough…
such a low risk/high reward build that is so incredibly easy to play, it should have been nerfed months ago.

Funny whenever I play ele I 3 shot hambow warriors. How are you not doing it?

Thats a pretty bold statement. 1st off I bet you are in WvW with ascended gear and the warriors your fighting must be uplevels in full zerk with no defensive traits what so ever if you kill them with you s/d combo in three hits. Even if you are full glass, that just wouldn’t happen vs a fully decked out lvl 80 warrior. Sure you can kill them fast when landing s/d burst combo, but it isn’t going to be in three hits.

coglin.1867:

Sons.5493:

There’s no real need to explain why condition build are so terrible unbalanced.

Actually there is. As the educated players have all seen the skill damage comparisons and videos proving that in most cases direct damage builds out damage condition builds. I am going to guess your making this blind accusation after having run zero test and no damage comparisons what so ever. I suggest doing it in soldiers compared to dire as I and other have already done, broken down, videod, and posted.

Sons.5493:

It taked 1 stat to max out damage and the other 2 can be ba directed towards tankiness while direct damage users need, power, precision AND critical damage to proc our best output in sacriface of all survival whatsoever.

This is actually untrue. I challenge you to prove your claims. Take the top damage builds in soldiers gear (only takes 1 stat for damage and the exact same two defensive stats). Hopefully in trying, you will learn for yourself what so many others have learned, tested, and posted, long ago.

Sons.5493:

As a thief player there’s not enough cond removal in any kind of build which can remove all the condition that condition build can apply (and re-apply cus why not) other than heavily investing in a trait line that i may or may not feel like traiting in just to counter game imbalances. That’s the reality of gw2.

Shadow Step/Return and Shadows Embrace are the best bet for thief. As a profession they are one of the lesser for condition removal, but that is in the inherent design of the profession. Condition applying skills are as easy to dodge as any other skill, just as hard to apply as direct damage skills when in stealth. There are some other professions with just as bad condition removal.

Sons.5493:

Anyone who denies how conditions are completly broken in this game on all classes going from Thief, mesmer, engie (broken as kitten k bye) Necro and warrior (also gg broken), is purely lying to himself or is a condition user himself.

That is not a very well thought out argument. Anyone who claims this has simply tested it and knows that it is actually a fact that direct damage builds have higher damage out put then conditions, and this is based on test and damage break downs in equivalent off/def stated gear.

Perhaps you should actually do a test yourself, and know some facts before you make such uninformed comments.

Although his claims come out ignorant, I believe his ignorance is as valuable as your knowledge

Conditions are a problem, regardless if they come out doing less damage than direct damage, they should. Classes that have the ability to dish out tons of condition damage and then kite or prevent damage being applied to them are the real problem. Now can you counter this? In current SPvP? not so much, but in WvW you can for sure. Should we be forced to build around countering conditions? I personally don’t think so.

I’d also like to point out something I think most people overlook when it comes to condition duration vs condition reduction.

Lets say I have a condition that lasts 10 seconds, I want to gain more duration for my condition so it lasts longer, therefore giving me more dps. Lets pretend I gain 40% duration for my condition which lasts 10 seconds. I now have a duration of 14 seconds.

Now lets pretend that condition with 14 seconds of duration is being casted upon you, but you have a tick up your sleeve, you ate some lemon grass poultry soup which gives you a reduction to conditions by 40%, I’m assuming most of you think that just means that 4 extra seconds now go away, right? Wrong! You diminish the value by almost 6 seconds. There for that food you ate to reduce condition duration really paid off.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

To me it sounds like the best way to kill a thief is to know that they are coming, know where they are coming from, preempt them in every omniscient way, and hope they fall into your traps…

As one of the few non-omniscient players, are there tips out there?

Also, since when is a class not imbalanced when everybody has to develop their characters to specifically counter these classes? If your pro-tip for not dying to this class mostly involves building your character around it, then that class is op. This isn’t a game with 2 classes. At any given point I might have to fight a different class. And being “good” means nothing when you are discussing balance. For all of the good non-thieves, there are plenty of good thieves that are more than capable of handling w/e you use to counter them. Skill should never be brought up in a balance discussion.

I have to disagree, skill should always be the main factor of class balance, otherwise you get an elaborate game of Rock Paper Scissors. You said it your self, you don’t want to build your self around the idea that you want to kill a thief. Well then it sounds like you don’t want Rock Paper Scissors either.

Now heres a thought, what if every profession took a fair amount of skill instead of only some? What if a ladder for rank was created which also took players skill level into concideration so that higher skilled players stayed out of newcomers matches? I’m thinking spvp matches in particular here, since we already divide a great majority of the players into specific sections of the game there wouldn’t be much of a down side IMO. This way classes that are a little harder to play, will also give you the time to learn your class while enjoying it.

Liewec.2896:

and you don’t have a problem with pets following your enemy 2000 across the map damaging them without any need for input from you and also reattacking them the moment they come out of stealth?

if stealth caused pets to reset then yes CnD might be an issue, but until then i feel that there are more problems with the unshakable pets than 2 seconds of stealth.

You mean 3 seconds of stealth, 4 with 15pts in SA. which would be fine with me as long as it wasn’t being spammed so often. Heck, maybe even up the stealth duration if it means less constant stealthing.

Maugetarr.6823:

I think this would have the opposite effect of what you want. Stats don’t need to be neutered the more you go into them, they need to be worth going into to promote real diversity. If there’s a leveling off effect, but you can get 80% effectiveness of the max by putting relatively minimal points into it, you’re just going to push people towards the middle, making actual choices relatively meaningless as there’s hardly any benefit to going past a certain point.

GM traits being roughly equal to each other in different ways would promote build diversity much better. Let’s look at the thief class defensive trees as an example. In shadow arts, you gain roughly 330 health per second in stealth. There is no equivalent for that kind of strength in acrobatics. Even if you only spend 25% of your fight in stealth, you’re gaining at least equal health regen to assassin’s reward (based on initiative regeneration) without having to continually attack/spend initiative allowing you to reposition yourself better. SA strength in GM traits is much better than SA, so there is usually no real decision that needs to be made if you are going to use stealth at some point during a fight (virtually every build except S/P). Creating equally strong traits that accomplish different goals would go a long way to increasing build diversity (which they are working on). Instead of “SRej: gain health” versus “ARew: gain inferior health” ARew needs to be something with a unique and equally strong effect like “ARew: Transfer a condition to your foe upon revealing yourself.” Now you’re making a choice between gaining health (and just removing conditions if you picked up SE on the way) versus removing conditions while increasing your damage output. Right now certain traits just outshine others by far which is what is killing build diversity way more than just flat stats.

Well… I think you are onto something, but I believe your perception of SR > Quick Pockets GM trait comes from your experience fighting bad thieves. That extra initiative could end up being a much better return if it means evading a10k blow instead of dying. Therefore the thief needs to be pretty skilled to really benefit from QP and less skilled to benefit from SR. On the contrary though I do believe Quick Pockets, among many other existing GM traits that don’t see much light of day, could use a revamp.

I propose that Anet goes through each entire trait line for every class and rebalances the skills that are never getting used. If they could rebalance all traits so that one trait would create synergy with a multitude of other traits, that would allow for some diverse trait customization.

This is my perspective of the situation, I am a hardcore PvPer (includes WvW and SPvP). Note that I main an elementalist and have spent +1300hrs on him in SPvP and WvW. I’ve also spent 50-100 hours on every other class, but only in SPvP for the most part.

I’m going to share my personal opinion of thief, coming from the perspective of an elementalist for the most part.

Thieves can be quite tricky to deal with, due to their options for an abundant amount of stealth and/or evasive maneuvers. I’ve fought quite a few thieves which thought very highly of them selves, using a wide variety of weapons and builds. In my opinion stealth can not be pin pointed as the soul problem to the unfair advantage a thief may have over you. Things really start getting quite overwhelming when their stealth mechanic is combined with mobility.

Thieves are far too mobile IMHO for the amount of stealth they are allowed to have.
I believe the right course of action to take would be to limit the amount they can stealth by adding a longer “revealed” debuff timer, by how much? I’m not sure, it surely needs to be tested so the thief class doesn’t become trash.

Certain mobility and stealth options on thief should cost more initiative, by how much? Well that requires some testing. These skills IMO should have more initiative added or be slightly altered:

1.) Infiltrators strike (Cost 3 initiative). Allows thief to shadowstep to target and then bail by shadow returning on command. Up the initiative and compensate.

2.) Heartseeker (Cost 3 initiative). Allows thief to run off to cover quite quickly after using cloak and dagger. It also allows the thief to gain a fair amount of stealth when combining this skill with black powder. Up the initiative and compensate.

3.) Cloak and Dagger (Cost 6 initiative). I think 6 initiative is quite enough. So instead perhaps we could see the skill take an additional 1/4th of a second to cast? This way if you’re really lookin out for it, you may be able to dodge it. The skill only shows a slashing motion of the left arm, you’d really have to be looking for it.

4.) Shadow step (Utility). IMO there should be a small delay between shadow step and shadow return.

5.) Infiltrators Arrow (Cost 6 initiative). This skill is usually used to cover a lot of ground, IMO the skill should cost 8 initiative so that the skill may not be used consecutively as much. (with a pool of 15 initiative in mind)

In conclusion, If we take away some of thief’s mobility and stealth we have to give them something in return. If the thief was revamped so the opposing player had a larger window of opportunity to hit the thief before the thief could go back into stealth, I’d think its fair that the thief class was compensated by giving them something along the lines of a larger HP pool and more damage on other skills besides the few opening stealth attacks that are already really powerful.

Using CnD on a pet is fine, it happens to every class with summoned AI. What DOES need to change is the absurd amount of stealth thieves AND mesmers can have. The thief class needs to be revamped. They should up the revealed time to prevent perma stealth for thief, and then compensate for their loss in stealth.

To kill a thief you must understand the theifs abilities well, you should pay attention to the initial location of shadow step because they will use shadow return soon after. Attack with aoe or cone ae inside shadow refuge, and most importantly, you need good burst. IMO with the proper burst methods ele can be a good class at for killing thief. It all comes down to you knowing when you can land a full burst.

Confusion is what makes engy stand out in my book. Nades and bombs make engy hard for melee classes.

oZii.2864:

Swim.6830:

oZii.2864:

Grimreaper.5370:

oZii.2864:

People do complain about PU mesmers but most people know it’s a dueling build and you can ignore it when your out roaming.

This makes me sad, that one class kills another 1v1 based on class mechanic and not skill alone -.-

Well as other said it is possible with x/F so it would be build v build or more just change your offhand. The problem is also D/D ele’s greatest strength is it’s weakness in this fight.

The D/D ele is a PBAOE specialist. That PBAOE is awesome when your fighting a thief, kiting a chasing enemy etc. It’s why we don’t need to target for many of our skills which is an advantage it has over S/x. The on death traits from mesmers specifically punish this so here the D/D eles greatest strength becomes it’s weakness in this fight. S/x does well against PU mesmers because you just need to target the mesmer and can avoid blowing up the clones.

Yeah man, you just need to get him targeted and you got him beat!

Oh wait…

Did I say you win because you use S/x?

Oh wait….

I said S/x does well against PU because you can avoid blowing up clones.

There is no tutorial on how to play Ele so I’ll assume the OP knows what he is doing and understands what I am saying in my post. You on the other hand must wanted me to break the entire fight down Barney style with a video?

Definitely think s/f would be the best bet as well. But I want to do it with d/d because I love the feel of d/d, I don’t want to have to change weapons for mesmers in particular, its such a rare occasion I run into a good mesmer anyway. Next patch should be a lot nicer with the evade on burning speed, can counter the swap from ileap this way as well as shocking aura, or even start burning speed and then shocking aura before the blast hits.

This might sound a little absurd, but I wish there was more pro mesmers like this one I fought. It bugs me that I couldn’t keep trying to fight him because I couldn’t find em again I’m sure someone is going to comment on PU mesmer not being skilled, just OP, but he he was skilled.

Hitman.5829:

The staff elementalist is a joke with barely 14k HP (maximum).

The staff elementalist is an AOE class, this means that it relies on heavy AOE spells. However, some smart designer decided to give elemetalist 14k HP which means that in a WvW battle when the elementalist use the AOE, he/she will die by retaliation damage!

Keep in mind that the damage you are receiving is from the retaliation + direct damage from the enemy.

Retaliation damage by itself can get your HP to nearly 0.

Please fix this!

14k hp? sounds like you went all crit gear and no more than 15 in water. You make a valid point though imo. My advice is don’t meteor shower until guards are dead because they give retaliation to people with guardkiller.

oZii.2864:

People do complain about PU mesmers but most people know it’s a dueling build and you can ignore it when your out roaming.

This makes me sad, that one class kills another 1v1 based on class mechanic and not skill alone -.-

WhiteRose.6934:

Grimreaper.5370:

I’m talking about good PU mesmers with 1000s of hours played. PU mesmers that took the time to learn every single class mechanic in the game in order to counter each class.

If the mesmer (or any player for that matter) has been playing this much, and has taken the steps and the effort to learn every mechanic in order to counter other classes, what makes you think that you deserve to beat them? They’re obviously better than you of they did all of this, why do you deserve the win?

Nice assumption.

Stealth should just get nerfed across the board, less duration for more skillful play. I’d rather see mesmer stealth nerfed before thieves stealth though.

Vylor.3276:

There is this magical skill called lightning whip on d/d, it one shots clones, if you die to mesmers often you should give it a try sometime.

…. lol, I don’t think you read my story behind fighting PU mesmer. In fact I don’t think you even took the time to think at all.

Swim.6830:

Grimreaper.5370:

Uhtameit.2413:

Grimreaper.5370:

Uhtameit.2413:

Grimreaper.5370:

LightningBlaze.4913:

D/d eles are easy prey for good pu Mesmers. A good s/f built Ele stand more of a chance to defeat them with good effort put into it.

yes I agree s/f might be a valid choice due to swirling winds and magnetic wave. But I still just see the mesmer hiding while any abilities to counter projectiles were up.. There must be some way to kill them with d/d… If only it wasn’t so easy to dodge burning speed when not comboing it with LF.

If you land a successful churning earth + LF, you have room to win. Else, S/F or staff zerker.

LOL! Are you trolling me? You think this mesmer wouldn’t know to dodge after 3 seconds?

Even against decent opponents, sometimes they fail to know exactly when Churning Earth will trigger, you can fake and teleport earlier to make them waste a dodge then they get hit (or teleport at the very last half second). Or you could use elemental surge and immobilize him before the teleportation, too. So no, I am not trolling you.

Hmm, I like the idea of elemental surge to land churning earth. I will try that out just for funs sometime. While that combo sounds interesting that leaves me with one stun breaker though :| There is also the problem of him going into stealth 1 second before the blast. im also left with less healing then. if only magnetic grasp was instant, or churning earth allowed you to move while channeling and/or let you cast other abilities while channeling.

If you fake cast churning earth while they are stealthed, they usually dodge if they happen to be in the area, which spawns a clone (most common build) and you basically know where they are

This has helped me a lot, dunno how I forgot it.

Good thinkin. Will keep this in mind

Uhtameit.2413:

Grimreaper.5370:

Uhtameit.2413:

Grimreaper.5370:

LightningBlaze.4913:

D/d eles are easy prey for good pu Mesmers. A good s/f built Ele stand more of a chance to defeat them with good effort put into it.

yes I agree s/f might be a valid choice due to swirling winds and magnetic wave. But I still just see the mesmer hiding while any abilities to counter projectiles were up.. There must be some way to kill them with d/d… If only it wasn’t so easy to dodge burning speed when not comboing it with LF.

If you land a successful churning earth + LF, you have room to win. Else, S/F or staff zerker.

LOL! Are you trolling me? You think this mesmer wouldn’t know to dodge after 3 seconds?

Even against decent opponents, sometimes they fail to know exactly when Churning Earth will trigger, you can fake and teleport earlier to make them waste a dodge then they get hit (or teleport at the very last half second). Or you could use elemental surge and immobilize him before the teleportation, too. So no, I am not trolling you.

Hmm, I like the idea of elemental surge to land churning earth. I will try that out just for funs sometime. While that combo sounds interesting that leaves me with one stun breaker though :| There is also the problem of him going into stealth 1 second before the blast. im also left with less healing then. if only magnetic grasp was instant, or churning earth allowed you to move while channeling and/or let you cast other abilities while channeling.

Swim.6830:

As I’ve dueled several guildies a LOT and they tend to use those kind of Mesmer builds, I can say from personal experience that you need to constantly pressure them and chase them relentlessly and anticipate where they are in stealth (people are way more predictable than you think). Air auto D/D is a huge cone so you will probably hit them when they stealth.

Also be careful when attunement dancing too much, as it wears down the cooldowns a lot and they win by persistance, so you need to be quick.

Teleport and stability are your best friends against mesmers (condition clear is kinda obvious).

I’m sure I could get better at predicting stealthed opponent location, but I find my self doing better than most people, I’m able to dodge quite often as a thief is about to back stab from knowing how long their stealth lasts and how long they’ll probably want to stay in it. I’m able to do some decent predicting of movement, but this mesmer man… I swear I feel like I outplayed him and I still lost due to his class mechanic being stronger than mine.

Uhtameit.2413:

Grimreaper.5370:

LightningBlaze.4913:

D/d eles are easy prey for good pu Mesmers. A good s/f built Ele stand more of a chance to defeat them with good effort put into it.

yes I agree s/f might be a valid choice due to swirling winds and magnetic wave. But I still just see the mesmer hiding while any abilities to counter projectiles were up.. There must be some way to kill them with d/d… If only it wasn’t so easy to dodge burning speed when not comboing it with LF.

If you land a successful churning earth + LF, you have room to win. Else, S/F or staff zerker.

LOL! Are you trolling me? You think this mesmer wouldn’t know to dodge after 3 seconds? If I was a mesmer fighting an ele who churning earthed I’d either a.) teleport into him and blurred frenzy to hurt him while avoiding the blast, or b.) count the 3 and dodge.

LightningBlaze.4913:

D/d eles are easy prey for good pu Mesmers. A good s/f built Ele stand more of a chance to defeat them with good effort put into it.

yes I agree s/f might be a valid choice due to swirling winds and magnetic wave. But I still just see the mesmer hiding while any abilities to counter projectiles were up.. There must be some way to kill them with d/d… If only it wasn’t so easy to dodge burning speed when not comboing it with LF.

Uhtameit.2413:

Grimreaper.5370:

Today I fought a PU mesmer that had an abundant amount of stealth.

You don’t say?

If he is PU condition, he is very hard to kill but you can get him with a zerker staff ele easily. D/D has always been a poor weapon set to fight mesmers, maybe you would do better with more condition removals but I doubt it.

If he’s really tanky, it’s impossible with S/D too, but feasible with staff (all the illusions die in the AoEs).

By abundant I mean’t I’m pretty sure he had the full 21 second potential with veil, along with 18 seconds from other abilities…. Yeah I know I can lightning whip the veil to stop him from getting that full duration but he still seemed to get quite a bit of use out of veil. I don’t think staff could of put enough pressure on this guy to kill him. I refuse to believe its impossible >.<

I don’t even understand why there are any complaints about warriors when there are Mesmers at bay. Seriously is it even possible to kill them? I’m talking about good PU mesmers with 1000s of hours played. PU mesmers that took the time to learn every single class mechanic in the game in order to counter each class. Are they even beatable? I only want to hear a response from d/d eles with years of experience at hand, please no noob comments about how your d/d ele killed a crappy PU mesmer.

Today I fought a PU mesmer that had an abundant amount of stealth (desperate decoy, decoy, the prestige, veil, mass invisibility). He was using sword/pistol along with scepter/torch.

The fight started off alright, I was able to avoid illusionary counter by dodging so no torment was applied. I dodged as soon as illusionary leap was casted to avoid the swap followup. When I was stunned, I went into mist form to avoid the burst from blurred frenzy + duelist and mage phantasm burst. As soon as he started to channel confusing images I dodged to avoid the confusion stacks. I landed full burst combos on him, he just would stealth and healed up through all the damage I did though. My burst basically took him to 25% HP and he was back to 90%+ hp when he came out of stealth. We take turns avoiding burst for a while but eventually I end up running out of stun breakers and get low on endurance from dodging phantoms, I get stunned and he unloads on me taking me to ~10% hp before I’m able to move. I’m now put on the defensive and basically have no choice but to run, or die. I was able to escape so I heal up and go for round 2… This time I try killing off mage and duelist phantasm so I don’t have to worry about dodging their burst attacks. which didn’t work out so well, Because I’m applying even less pressure on him now… I ended up dying from an overload of confusion stacks, rending me useless, if I attack I’ll kill my self by attacking. I fought this guy a total of 3 or 4 times, just running into him on the battlefield and 1v1ing him. The fights were usually a good min or two before failing to beat him. I’m the kind of person who would spend an eternity dueling the same person just for the chance to finally triumph, I’d of loved to get more fights in with the guy but I couldn’t find him again, I seriously don’t think I stood much chance of winning, regardless I would of kept trying.

My build is 0/15/10/15/30

I have both the 10% dmg modifiers, 3150 power, 53% crit chance with perma fury, 107% crit dmg and also had 5 stacks of defense against guards for the extra hp, giving me around 18.4kHP. I have around 1600 toughness. Even with heavy burst capability I just don’t feel like I could do enough dps to end this PU mesmer. How am I supposed to win? I refuse to believe I can’t beat a good PU, there has to be some method to the madness.

Arcturus.8109:

Yes I don’t realise what “great possibilities” new traits will give to ele.
Earth trait can help you resist burst from something like thief. One burst. Or you can even cast shower with rock solid and this, that’s great! But what’s next? You will be bursted again. Or just spammed 3. And staff ele still doesn’t have stats or skills to effectively survive that, not ot say about 1v2 or 1v3 fights. And such ele still cannot do anything to decapper engies. So this will be an OP bunker? Better that guardian? As a joke such assumption is fine, no doubts.
Water trait is just a crap and doesn’t worth abandoning cleansing waters. It just doesn’t fit in current team tactics.

Ele will never be the class to play for killing multiples while soloing unless you are vsing noobs, which there are a lot of. Sounds like you want something OP to play? If you want to be good at killing multiple targets play a mesmer.

Veril.9408:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ranger. They have the best single target, range DPS while moving. (Ele have better range dps, but their attack are more static). That pretty specific and useless in PvE. But that make for a great combat profession in PvP.

Thanks for the information but I found that particular piece of particular interest.
How common is it for a character to stop and have cast time? And is the ranger really that much better at it? How much better in % would you say? (rough estimate)
Also how is their mobility? Are you noticeably faster than other classes?

Also I found the combat interface to be really odd and uncomfortable. Is there any way to change it to be less point-and-click and more like Neverwinter Online? I can’t even make the right mouse button toggle, no such option…

Are you talking about targeting enemies with out using the mouse? Yeah you can assign a hotkey to target a player.

Were you intrigued by the ranger comment because you’re trying to find a class that excels at roaming solo? Because ranger is actually a pretty good choice then, regardless of all the talk about them being kitten , they have great utility. axe/dagger + long bow is quite amazing for 1v1. You get a skill that dishes out 10 seconds of weakness with 3 seconds of chill with your axe, a cripple with dagger, and then stealth with long bow along with a knockback. It makes for a great single target dps roamer with long range. They can also be pretty mobile as well.

As for their single target dps being higher than staff eles? Yeah I’d say so. As for how much more? Hard to say with so many builds out there, I’ll tell you they can do more dmg than a staff ele and less than a d/d ele when considering burst potential.(going to exclude lucky meteor shower + tornado combo). Look into some ranger vids on youtube and play around with them in spvp to get a feel for em, you really should mess around with every class so you can learn to counter them anyway.

Fastest class is probably still thief? Right behind thief is warrior, ele, ranger… depending on weapon choice.

GoodWithGravy.8019:

Grimreaper.5370:

As for all the people saying blah blah vapor blade should lose range when running forward because of physics, go throw a boomerang and try to out run it.

Actually if you are running forward physics states it would gain range, which can be seen from a basic inertial Galilean frame transform. Maybe with a boomerang moving in an arc it would haves some effect, but vapor blade goes straight forwards and back, so it’s more like something on a spring.

This may be on a small tangent to the topic. Oops.

Thats actually pretty interesting, I went and looked into the topic some

EvilSardine.9635:

Decent setup but your burst is borderline exploit and not working as intended. It’s obvious Anet didn’t intend for lightning flash to work the way it does with certain abilities (burning speed and fiery GS rush). Horrendous coding on their part. If I’m not mistaken they are fixing the fiery GS rush exploit so they should definitely fix burning speed.

Gonna submit a bug report right now.

If they nerfed lf+ burning speed combo I’d quit the game… But they won’t so looks like I’m staying.

1. LF + Burning speed takes precise timing, skill if you will, you only get the full benefit if your opponent stays on the fire trail.
2. LF + Fiery Rush, again, is only OP if your target can’t or doesn’t move… Its not even that broken imo but I don’t mind seeing it go.

Kevin.5610:

Avead.5760:

The thing with staff ele is that it ll never be an amazing bunker.
Thats s/d ele and it was really ridiculous back then. But staff..it cant 1vs1 effectively cause its slow and unreliable and has weaker defense mechanism that other sets.
If you see the staff ele from apex team playing you can see how hard its to even fight for him solo a hambow warrior without losing the node to the point of thinking why playing this build..And a moments later you see him ressing a guy to full with the glyphs water effect and then coordinating with his team the blasts on his water fields,his might stacking and his cc,sharing prot etc.Thats amazing gameplay to me.
Support in gw2 is non existant and more healing without increasing the users self sustain is exactly what the game needs.
The game needs a build that is weaker than every other bunker to take down but at the same time has bigger inpact than all of them. I dont know if this will be achieved or another monstrosity of endless self sustain and condi clear will be added to all the pre existing kitten.. but its worth the try.Staff in general is the hardest weaponset to achieve skill cap imo for the ele.After spending countless hours playing s/f fresh air (which is for some reason considered one of the hardest specs) i found extremely more difficult to effectively direct my damage and cc with staff to a target.But thats me ..other people see it as spamming more aoes :/

I am glad some people can see the fact that a Staff elementlist doesn’t need to wait until the 15th to be considered “OP” The team members of Apex and I have helped shape the way some PvPers view a staff ele. I have had multiple people claim I am a bunker which is absurd seeing as I have barley and toughness and vitality but regardless some mind sets cannot be changed. I run a support Elementalist and I have been playing ele since this game has been in beta I have watched this class prosper and now that it is down in the dirt the PvP team of Apex and I have proven many times in skrims Vs. some of the top teams in NA such as GF and vVv who have some great/respected PvPers in North America that an elementalist without the April 15th patch Staff ele still holds a spot at the top. But with the future patches to come Elementalist will be more available and is going to be seen on many teams due to its changes.

With this all being said I want all gw2 players to know staff elementalist is possible to play in a high caliber with or without the changes to come, it all takes practice. I have some VoD’s of the staff ele game play on my twitch channel for those who are interested, Twitch.tv/Chubbsz.

Maybe the people complaining about staff want staff to have higher damage sustain in 1v1? Just a guess. Staff is definitely awesome in team play.

Cecilia.5179:

I think they should take a few risks, add some more meaningful buffs, and use the two week intervals to fine tune the buff to where it won’t make us OP without it being absolutely lame.

Yes I agree, this is what they should do for all the useless abilities and traits across all classes. I don’t care if a class becomes OP if they pay attention to whats making it OP and keep tuning those abilities every 2 weeks.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Frankly, using autos in PvP or WvW as a d/d ele isn’t particularly practical, and if you’re forced into using them because you ran out of attunements that just means you need more practice. When I see an enemy ele switch to lightning and try to whip me, I know I can 1v1 them with no problem even on my staff, because there’s pretty much always something better to do with your time (like use any skill that isn’t an auto haha).
In PvE, where damage is the only thing that matters, I can see this being a problem.

I can’t even remember the last time I cast vapor blade or impale, and I d/d moderately often.

See? This is what I’m talking about, thats exactly how useless these auto attacks are.

Now what if impale actually had better range? Lets say a warrior pops endure pain, you’re in earth attunement and now have a better possibility of kiting while hitting him with impale and at least applying some bleed damage while hes completely immune to direct damage. A big problem with impale is the slow cast time along with the 300 range, by the time you cast it more than once your opponent could already be out of range if he clears any movement impairing condition.

What if vapor blade actually traveled a full 600 or even 900 units in front of you regardless of you running forward. Lets say you had ran out of mobility options and are trying to chase down someone running away. You could then at least apply a little bit of pressure until you had better options come up. This wouldn’t be op at all, the further you are away from vapor blade the better chance your opponent has of just running to the side and completely nullifying the attack, you don’t even have to dodge for christ sake -.-

These situations wouldn’t come up all the time, but if they did it would be nice to have these auto attacks actually provide some sort of valuable use for the short time you would use them.

Hannelore.8153:

There is a stronger difference between Dragon’s claw and Lightning whip than people realize. Lightning whip is a cleave; meaning it behaves like a melee weapon. This is often good when you are surrounded by opponents, but if your opponents are somewhat further apart it will not hit them, while Dragon’s claw will.

This is terrible advice, that additional 100 range on dragon’s claw isn’t going to save the day, in fact it almost ensures anyone not running in a straight line will not get hit by most of the attack.

Hannelore.8153:

On top of this, with glyphs and traits, Dragon’s claw will inflict burning, while Lightning whip will inflict weakness; which while very powerful is not ideal for a build that includes condition damage (like Celestial).

You don’t seem to have a clear understanding of celestial armor potential. lingering elements can completely screw over glyph of elemental power over by the way.

Hannelore.8153:

Air is only the highest damaging atunement on certain builds, and the other autoattacks are far from useless and only water is particularly weak, however, it is the best support atunement due to the vulnerablity. In small group skirmishes combining it with allies’ massive attacks (like Maul, 100b, etc.) is devestating.

Dragon’s claw will never out damage lightning whip regardless of build… Impale can out dps lightning whip if you’re high condition damage with dagger main hand but that kind of build is only going to pan out well for 1v1, and only on occasion when versing noobs or people with little condi clear… The vulnerability on vapor blade isn’t going to provide better returns on dps in ANY situation. Why? Because you can do way more damage by playing your class normally opposed to a dodo throwing vapor blades all day.

Hannelore.8153:

It also allows you to kite with all of Ele’s plentiful CC on D/D, including the chance to chill opponents when using the respective glyph.

Do you even play an ele?

ThiBash.5634:

GoodWithGravy.8019:

Vapor blade does (assuming the blade hits on the way back as well…) 44% of the damage of Lightning whip. Even with the weakness trait it only does 50% of the damage (again assuming both passes hit).

But it also causes 2 stacks of vulnerability, something people often overlook. And it hits everything in a line, so in some occasions it’ll be more useful than Lightning Whip (and sometimes it won’t be).

And it’s still a spammable 600 range attack, something full melee weapons never have. Flamethrower is the only thing that comes close.

Vapor blade isn’t a melee based skill though, its a projectile. It can be reflected. It should travel its full distance while running forward making it actually useful when needing further range with d/d. As for all the people saying blah blah vapor blade should lose range when running forward because of physics, go throw a boomerang and try to out run it.

LordByron.8369:

Fire grab…
Its all about lag masking….it works properly.

In order to make it work use it like you would use a shotgun in any random FPS.

Yes I have come to terms with this. I just hate the rare occasion where it looks like the firegrab hits and it does nothing. I think it would be nice if the hit box was just slightly increased due to latency issues.

bump, devs need to look into this!

Korimor.2406:

RTL- yes that needs fixed, happens with thieves too sometimes with teleporting

Fire grab- it works as I figured it should, has a cone hit box.

Vapor blade- it’s how any “ranged” attack works in the game. If your running forwards you are obviously going to have less of a reach as it will go as far as you were when it casted.

Shocking Aura- I think it is just fine, it makes sense the way it is as its an “aura”…. so they have to touch the aura to get shocked.

Magnetic grasp: I think it is pretty good the way it is, instant cast would make it too good. It is a very good skill for combos and leaping, it deserves a cast time imo.

….. I think the changes they are doing to D/D are very nice and make it even better than it is now, most don’t believe D/D is in a very good place, but that is because most are not very good at it. I know that D/D is very good for solo and group, it’s just that it (and most of ele) is harder for most people and new players to grasp and become as good with as it is for a warrior or something else much easier as ele is one of the hardest to play, but if you master it, you can be one of the best for dueling and 1v1s and such (at least in terms of WvW)

After watching your vids Korimor I just can’t take your word for it, I see way too many mistakes which leads me to believe you don’t have enough experience fighting elite players on the battlefield. I don’t think d/d is necessarily underpowered. I do believe the churning earth skill deserves a shot at landing on a single target if they don’t counter an instant immobilize. The skill takes 3 1/4 seconds to cast, giving the opponent PLENTY of time to react. Vapor blade loses out on a HUGE amount of its range when running forward, I can’t think of any projectiles that go from their standard range to melee attack range when running forward, I don’t even think necro staff 1 is this bad when it comes to this scenario. The thing that bugs me about fire grabs hit box is seeing the animation touch a player yet they don’t get hit by the skill, this doesn’t always happen but when it does… its underwhelming.

I did enjoy watching your vids, hope I didn’t offend you.

Right the lightning: Occasionally will stop dead in your tracks after popping out of ride the lightning form, this bug has been around for quite some time and needs a fix.

Impale + healing signet: Healing signet wont fire when using impale.

Fire grab: The hit box on this skill seems to broken on rare occasion, due to latency perhaps?

Vapor blade: When running forward, vapor blade loses out on a lot of its range, should this really be happening? Is this working as intended?

Shocking aura: Targets don’t get stunned when attacking you if not in close range of the elementalist. I think it would make more sense if any target attacking you whos also in visible range of shocking aura was stunned.

magnetic grasp: Instead of a 1/2s cast timer, I’d like to see the skill have an instant cast, this would greatly help with d/d burst combos. It would allow churning earth to at least have a shot at hitting a single target with more reliability. Churning earth currently has no chance of landing on a target who understands the skill mechanic.

Veril.9408:

I’m new to this game but not new to MMO’s.
I’ve always liked to min-max builds including classes (in this case professions).

In no game has there ever been a proper balance and I doubt this game has it either. One class is always superior at DPS than others.

So my question is:
Is this class superior in AoE DPS? What about single target DPS? What about burst in PvP?

Scepter/dagger will give you the strongest form of burst you can apply.

The usual reliable burst method with s/d :
Earthquake, lightning flash, ring of fire, arcane skills if slotted, phoenix, go into air attunement to finish the job if target not already dead. If you get good at doing this, you can basically fire all these skills off in about 2 seconds, and kill multiple people stacked up on each other before they can do anything, note though if you miss your burst you’re gonna want to play it safe until you can burst again.

Staff is good for for a larger AOE burst. The usual reliable burst method is:
Meteor shower, tornado (for extra stats to make meteor shower hit harder). Tornado will get a single meteor to crit somewhere around 7-10k depending on target. Note that staff has great large aoe burst, but doesn’t have the greatest methods to sustain dps.

d/d is very mobile and has some aoe, some cone AE.

Burst method for d/d: burning speed, lightning flash as you take your stance for burning speed, ring of fire, (Fire grab optional, use it if you think it will land), dodge in earth on top of ring of fire for blast finisher, magnetic grasp, ring of earth, earthquake. From here you go into air to apply more damage. This burst method isn’t as strong as s/d burst, but that doesn’t mean d/d isn’t viable, you get great mobility and nice cleave dmg as well as chill/immobilize/cripple.

It really bugs me that vapor blades range goes from 600 to about 200 when you run forward and cast it >.<

Cecilia.5179:

IMO Dragon’s Claw should deal additional damage to burning foes. It’s so easy to apply burning with main hand dagger. It’s a shame it misses out on a potential damage boost from that burning. Increased projectile speed on vapor blade would be nice. Impale could use faster cast time. Of course, there several other skills on D/D that could use some work too.

Any change to make it useful would be wonderful.

if you pay attention to his build guys, 30% of his damage is negated by forcing him to dodge and lowering his hp by 90%. 30% is quite a bit! Thats why you see him at his best when he initiates the fight

Darn nay sayers, get outta here with your shenanigans. This is about adding more flavor to a class thats already super cool… but could always get a little cooler

I read a comment justifying vapor blade using a PvE scenario… PvE? Who does that?

Vaporblade needs faster projectile speed, it should have to be dodged, blocked, or reflected if you want to avoid it at all times, not sidestep out of the way and I’m okay. I also think it would make more sense if this ability stacked more vulnerability stacks per cast with slightly longer vulnerability duration in order to burst harder. It still would take a while to stack up the vulnerability and most people who play smart have a condi cleanse anyway.

As for the impale bug? Yeah! How ridiculous is it that Impale still doesn’t work with signet of restoration… I’m no programer but isn’t that an easy fix? Just imagine if the range on impale was maybe 500 or 600, we could actually have some sort of shot at kiting well as d/d.

And back to dragons claw… What about this?

1 claw land – Normal damage
2 claws land – Damage increased by X% when second claw lands
3 claws land – Damage increased by X% when third claw lands

The auto attack could be balanced around the idea that it would be a gamble to use
but if you got lucky with 3 crits in a row from your one auto attack, it could hit a little harder than lightning whip.

OR

Perhaps it should just provide some sort of condition with a low duration, like torment? Mind you I said with a low duration in mind.

Impale does not seem to count as casting a spell, I receive no healing benefit when using it with signet or restoration equipped. Bug? Working as intended?

FrownyClown.8402:

I disagree for the most part. Vapor blade has synergy with the 20% extra damage to vulnerable targets while in water. It also had the longest range for a skirmish weapon.

The earth auto is weak in regards to its close range, however the bleed duration is awesome and it can make condi builds dangerous. All it needs is a greater range.

The fire auto is pretty plain and not used much. Change our to a single fire attack and make dps equal to half of lightning whips

Dragon’s claw should serve some purpose so there is more of a reason to use it imo, sure it has a slight range advantage opposed to lightning whip but seriously that 100 additional range isn’t going to make Dragons claw > Lightning whip. Maybe the damage doesn’t need to be higher but it should have SOME sort of purpose.

And the comments about vapor blade… seriously? You’re okay with people just stepping to the side to avoid the attack? Its our weakest auto attack as far as damage, it should at least land if one doesn’t dodge it.