Guild Wars 2

Well I think the biggest point of contention here is that the conjure is a not-weapon. So comparing the warrior hammer, a weapon, to the not-weapon to emphasize that the hammer should have a bit of shiney to it is causing some disconnects. Like as as a utility skill the whole point of the conjure’s existance is added functionality over the currently equiped weapon set. If it didn’t have the added functionality there’d be nothing to gain and no point to eat a utility slot on it. So figuring that a utility that completely replaces your weapon set would be Weapon Set + Shiney, so it just seems like an odd thing to compare a base weapon to to make the point that hammer needs some sweet sweet Barry White style luvin.

That said, I’d be delighted if the third hit on warrior hammer dropped a stack of confusion on those hit. I mean come on, I just bashed the guy in the dome with a sledge hammer… seriously.

Well the whole thing with the blind is that’s the only thing keeping the ele alive in melee since elementalists are made of tissue paper and faberge eggs, and rely on the skills the conjure locks out to live. If it wasn’t there conjuring the hammer would be guarenteed suicide. It’s there to compensate for the imposed weakness.

As for the stun field, it’s not bad, but I find the hammer burst to be more effective. Yeah you can dodge it, but it’s quick enough that most people won’t. The static field is just as easily avoidable, most folks walk around it and if you trap someone in it they’re probably smart enough to pin you inside it with them or just eat the stun, break it and run you down like a fat kid on a souped up rascal scooter after the ice cream truck.

Edit: Typos… god I hate writing on a tablet.

God forbid that there’s even a possibility that someone has anything better than a warrior, am I right? =P

Seriously though, I see what you’re trying to get at Defektive so for the sake of argument, lets pretend that ele hammer was a base weapon skill set and do a 1 to 1 comparison.

With Warrior hammer you have:

• An AoE stun and blast finisher on a 10 second CD (You can easily use this on CD or close to)
• A Heavy single target w/weakness on 12 second CD
• An AoE moderate damage w/ cripple on 12 sec CD
• An AoE Knockback whirl finisher with good damage on 20 sec CD
• And a single target heavy hit with 2sec knockdown on 30sec CD

Ele hammer gets:

• A slightly more damaging attack chain with a blast and blind on third hit.
• A leap attack with moderate damage on 6 second CD
• A low damage single target launch on 18 seconds CD
• A self centric AoE Storm with low damage and the potential not not even hit anything in it’s range on a 20 second CD
• An AoE stun field with 2 sec stun on 25 sec CD

—Comparing 1 to 1—

• Attack Chains: Yeah the elementalist’s is better. Does a bit more damage and blinds every 3rd hit with a blast finisher.
  Advantage : Elementalist.
• The warrior can stun everything in a target area every 10 seconds for at least 1 second, more for a stronger effect. The the ele can only do it every 25 and for 2 seconds and that’s self centered and requires the enemy to cross of field boarders. Ele does half the warrior’s damage neither is stellar.
  Advantage: Warrior
• The warrior can knock everything back every 20 seconds and do a whirl finisher on top of it, the ele can knock 1 thing back every 18 seconds for about a quarter of the warrior’s damage.
  Advantage: Warrior
• The warrior can cripple everything in front of it every 12 seconds… the ele can MAYBE damage something around it IF (big if) something actually gets hit, it does half the damage to each target (maybe) hit compared to anything hit within the warriors large attack cone. (giggity)
  Advantage: HAH! Warrior no question
• The warrior can inflict weakness and good damage on a single target ever 12 seconds, an elementalist can leap and hit something for a bit more than half the warrior’s damage every 6 seconds.
  Advantage: Close, but I’m giving it to the elementalist because it’s an extra finisher to be used rapidly.
• And finally the warrior gets a solid hit every 30 seconds w/ 2 second knockdown, to which the elementalist has nothing really to compare it to because warrior gets an extra skill since their class mechanic isn’t invalidated by holding a hammer.

So, Yeah the ele’s hammer has the potential for some rapid fire blasts but I don’t think that even comes close to overshadowing what the warrior’s hammer can bring into a fight with it’s sheer ability to shut down and knock around an opponent. (Seriously this was fun enough to make me go hammer on my warrior, it’s like playing whack-a-mole with someone’s face!)

BUT NOW, lets remember that the elementalist’s hammer is NOT actually a base weapon set, but a utility skill on a 1 minute CD owned by a class without weapon swaps, or melee supporting utilities, and the survivability of an anemic swimming in razor blades without the right traits and skills they won’t have access to while holding the hammer. Add in the lost utility slot, stats, sigils, and pile on the limited uses which combined with cooldowns imposes a hard limit on how many times you’ll actually see the longer CD moves used. Realistically the hammer will only be in the eles hand for between 10 and 16 seconds of combat depending on traits. After which it MAY be repeated if someone hasn’t run off with the other hammer (fat bloody chance) but the longer cooldowns are still shared.

In the end, during the hammer period, yes, The elementalist can blast rapidly but it’s in a very short and limiting window, and then must sit and wait for the cooldown on the utility to repeat, whereas thanks to the hammer being a base weapon, warrior can do a blast every 10 seconds with a whirl every 20, on top of their already superior ability to shut an enemy down, and further ability to weapon swap and gain access to further skills and finishers, something the elementalist cannot do for the duration of the conjure without losing it.

EDIT: added bullet points.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Why did elementalists got downed state and D/D changes in the patch before the last one, while the rangers haven’t got anything until this patch, and even then not enough? Because noone at anet frakking cares about rangers it seems!!!111

They’re getting more, they just can’t do everything at once. Read the post by Jon Peters post in the ranger patch discussion.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/General-Patch-Discussion-merged/page/4#post746290

Admittedly it would be nice if someone came along and touched base. I personally would be interested in knowing what kinds of problems the devs are running into on their end with balancing the class. Just to get their perspective on things. With 20 skills at our disposal per weapon set it’s probably like walking a tightrope made of barbed wire. For all I know the reason we don’t get an ele response is because the people working the class are neurotic now from trying to work out the balance issues.

The way I see it is with the elementalist, little changes have the potential to have big ramifications. It’s better to be cautious than slap a buff package together and then suddenly have to nerf the crap out of it because the changes synergized into OP, and there’s a LOT of potential for that, and probably is what resulted in the BWE nerf.

We lost a popular build, but it was because of an unitentional functionality. It sucks it’s gone but if the class is truely crippled now, Anet’s data will reflect it and something will come along to make up for it. Just keep playing and discussing it, and be patient. I’ve seen people literally throwing tantrums over this patch and I honestly don’t think that’s the way to handle it. Yeah it’s a shock, especially if you relied on it, but I really think we need to be more mature about this if we want our concerns to be addressed. It’s like the crying baby on the airplane, you can’t shove it in an overhead compartment, so you ignore it.

Yeah it’s the Haka

Ele lost an unintentional functionality of a trait that many people had come to rely on. Basically letting them set off blast finishers by doding through a field. So yeah, to a lot of people that’s a nerf. But honestly if it really breaks the class that bad they’ll buff something else down the road. As a GW1 player I’ve seen how Anet handles this and have a fair amount of trust they’ll handle it properly.

A lot of elementalist players like to complain about the class but I’ve seen an increasing number of people roling ele. So clearly there’s something attracting people despite the hardship of the class. I’m sure some just to take advantage of this particular build, so their out of luck now.

My point? Don’t play a class based on how they are affected by a single patch or because one particular build is OP. Play it because you like the way the class plays overall. Things will change, and you’re building a sandcastle in the path of the coming tide.

As far as my suggestion goes, I’d say give necro a try. It’s a good class with a few different ways to play it. I just can’t stand the combat sounds.

1. Fix bugs and broken skills
^ If only this one happens, I’ll be happy.
2. Boost to damage or attack speeds (perferable the latter)
3. Shorten Attunment CD
4. Make conjured weapons better. (Remove uses?)
5. Tornado made better.

EDIT: And maybe sometimes soon paid character appearance re-customization (PLZ Anet! I’ll give you the moneys!)

Do the charr, the toolbelt skill for the racial Hidden Pistol utility skill is awsome, you basically get the theif P/P skill 3

I recall the word being used rampently back when I played Ultima Online though chiefly in Diablo 2 a lot undoubtedly because the characters were literally cartoons back then, and you can hardly call it character because that implies a degree of depth and individuality that didn’t exist when there was no difference between two people playing the same class. Likely from there it was carried over to WoW and dissemintated throughout the MMO population.

Like any slang or jargon terms evolve and carry over between areas of interaction and the slack gets picked up by people filling in the blanks. Like I twitch when poeple say in a general “Pst me” to request contact through private messages since that originally meant ‘Please Send Tell’, Tells being the private coorespondance in the early MMOs and most MUDs, but when carried over into the next gen of MMOs when private messages were ‘whispers’ new players assumed it was the onomonopia ‘psst’ like trying to subtly get someone’s attention. So I read it as Please Send Tell me.

But there’s no fixing it, because it’s not really broken. So long as the intended meaning is obvious, it’s just nitpicking over what jargon to use when everyone has a different gaming background.

I think they were talking about natural affinity to magic, and humans and norn were at the bottom of the list because humans were given magic by their gods and norn by their spirits or something like that.

I honesty can’t recall the specifics, I was too distracted by the oppertunity to break into Flax’s place for the second time. I trashed the place like an 80s rock band in a hotel room.

Options → General Options → under User Interface, check “Show Skill Recharge”

Well I did remove it because I don’t know the OPs situation and wanted to give the benifit of the doubt rather than being a jerk about it.

But I’m pretty jaded at this point from having to placate warriors on a seeming daily basis, who yell in map chat about being broken or bugged when they kill themselves for the umpteenth time without reading a tooltip.

Yeah, which is why I edited that comment out. Though still if you do it multiple times and don’t look it’s kind of odd.

You are a warrior, so when in the downed state you used vengence.
Vengence brings you back to life for 15 seconds then flat out defeates you without a downed state.
You can get a trait later on where if you should kill something while in vengence you won’t die afterward.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vengence

If you’re not a warrior, this can also happen if a mesmer casts illusion of life on you, but this is a long cooldown and it’s doubtful you’d get it as often as implied, however is this is the case you will be cured of if you kill something in the duration.

Well I would say firstly charr are underplayed because in GW1 you could only be human and people tend to go with what’s familiar. Jumping to norn or even sylvari isn’t much of a stretch since they are close to human. Many sylvari I see tend to look almost indistinguishable from humans with the more plant-like features being less popular. But I think further it goes into the process of how we make our characters in these games.

When people create characters, they typically create them in one of two ways:

• as a character they are going to play. A subject with which to interact with the world and narrative of the game.
• as an idealized avatar of themselves, through which they put themselves into the world and narrative.

You can see this in games outside MMOs as well. Traditionally, a game will provide a character already set in the narrative with their own character and motivations, though this caters primarily to the former type, in more recent years with the rise of the new gaming trends (saturation first person perspective and the blank slate protagonists characteristic of a western RPG) the player has been given much more ability to put themselves into the character. This tends to puts the former catagory into a minority position.

Now the former type, who sees their character as exactly that, would think of what protagonist they want in their story. Some might even look at humans or norn and think, “Yeah, I am a human in reality, lets try something different,” and jump on a more plant-like sylvari, asura, or charr, whichever lore or racial personality strikes their fancy.

But because of the player-centric trends in gaming more and more people put themselves into the character. It’s no surprise that the most played race in any MMO that gives you the choice is human, or human like. It’s just easier to make the connection. They aren’t a 7 foot tall kitty cat with spiky bits and a bad temper and might even feel awkward playing it. They’d always find something wrong, the armor doesn’t fit right, the proportions are wrong, etc. Basically, the less human features, the farther they get from that idealized self, and it become a bit of a splinter in their mind.

But of course, this isn’t cut and dry, you’re not really one or the other, but more of a varying degree of both. Though again because of the trends of the last decade, this tends to lead to the self-involving catatogry. Even the character based players will invest themselves into the game, gaming in it’s nature of self-gratification, escapism, and fantasy, invites us to do so. And the idealized self players at the same time engage with the story and take that into that avatar they created for themselves.

So as I see it the reason non-human races are always in a minorty is because it breaks more from the player’s sense of self that in the past decade they’ve been encouraged to place directly into the experience.

Have a cookie if you read this whole rambling wall of text…. Do it…. really do it…
—Edited to fix blaring typos. Also, have another cookie.

[Edited by Moderator]

I rerolled my elementalist recently into a female charr. It was orignally a male, but by I was getting frustrated by the physique I chose clipping through certain armors. While rerolling with different body types and running to the mists to preview armors I made a female one time on a whim. As luck would have it my creative side woke up to spin-kick me in the head and in the 20 minutes I goofed around on her I came up with a little one liner explanation for why she was such a runt (because I wasn’t paying attention to the slider, that’s why!) that involved some strife as a cub. The big brother part of my brain went, “Dawww! <3” and by the time I was done in the mists that snowballed until she was a fully fleshed out character in my mind. It’s something I tend to do to cement myself into the character and normally takes weeks or months…

Next thing I know I’m doodling little cartoons of her in the corners of my note pad during meetings and I’m paying 10 bucks for another character slot because I didn’t have the foresight to reserve any names that would fit a girly-charr.

So, yeah, my main is now a female charr, and I only now realize how few of the others I see are actually players and not NPCs. There’s often a sort of a nod or bro-fist moment when I run into another. It seems charr in general are under represented compared to the other races and female charr are the minority within a minority.

All servers are on GMT or UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, pretty much the same thing) and reset at midnight. Thats -8 hours (4 pm) for West coast and -5 hours (7 pm)for east coast.

You can go to the mists at any time. Just click the crossed sword icon in the top left of your screen to open the PvP menu and click ‘Go To The Mists’

If you’ve never been there before there’s a little tutorial area to check out and when you’re done there climb the stairs to the portal opposit where you appeared. Once you’re in the heart of the mists itself there are golem dummies you can attack, and in the PvP lockers you can preview pretty much any armor in the game if you’re worried about the aesthetics of an armor type.

From the sound if it you’re looking for a sniper type class, but thats not always going to be an option. Even kiting takes place in either close or mid-range, also projectiles do not home in, the farther you are, the less likely you are to hit due to a target’s movement. Many enemies will close the gap quickly, Risen in particular can run faster than you can, and some enemies can even shadowstep and close the gap to you instantly. In short, you won’t find a situation with any class where you won’t be forced into close and mid-range combat at some point (usually quite often)

That’s just the way the game is, there’s no clear threat system, so if the mob decide to switch to you and attack, you have to deal with it by dodging and kiting. In PvP, almost every class has multiple means of closing the gap on ranged attackers. So remaining a pure ranged isn’t always doable.

Engineer excels at mid-range combat, think of their rifle more like a shotgun, and with the grenade kit can even dish out a LOT of long range ground targeted AoE, but the majority of their abilities aren’t long range.

The thief is not really a ranged class and I don’t recommend trying to pay it as one. The shortbow is great but is often a backup for when you need to get away or do a lot of AoE damage, and the pistols are just… well… terrible.

Don’t turn your nose up at the warrior. Just because the warrior wears heavy armor doesn’t make it a meatshield. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the trinity format of other games, so think of it less as a tanky type class and more like a DPS with more armor. it just means you’re more survivable.

Warriors have access to both the Rifle and Longbow, and both I find to be excellent ranged weapons (bow for more AoE rifle for high single target damage) They also have several utility skills to punish enemies that get too close, such as AoE fear, knock backs, and more, including a signet that speeds endurance regent o fuel dodges. The adrenaline skill on the rifle is essentially a sniper shot that does massive damage, and the weapon itself can cripple (skill 2) and has yet another knockback (skill 5), whereas the longbow can flat out immobilize a foe (skill 5) and lay a down a huge AoE fire field as it’s burst skill.

The warrior might be just what you’re looking for, but I would suggest to keep a melee weapon for secondary, maybe a hammer so you can swap and have access to AoE cripple, knockback and knock down (and AoE stun burst skill) if things force you into close range.

As for ranger there’s really no way around the pet. Many of your abilities work with it, and it does account for a percentage of your damage. They’re going to be doing some work on the ranger class soon so keep your ear to the ground but if you don’t like the pet there’s really no getting past it.

Finally, take another look at mesmer. They are pretty great at range and are godly in 1v1 pvp. The greatsword is your longest ranged weapon. Let me repeat that. The GREATSWORD is your long range weapon. You shoot lasers out of it, can knock enemies down back in a wave, and stab the ground to make an energy blade shoot up underneath an enemy.

Keep racial skills in mind. You can’t play with them in the mists but they’re not something to be ignored. Check them out in the wiki. Those few extra abilities might fill in a gap you might feel a class has. For example, if you don’t like a class’s heal skills playing as a human or sylvari opens an extra option each for healing skills.

Check especially for the engineer. Sometimes the toolbelt skill from a racial is better than your normal utilities, and can really make the difference. My engineer for example is a charr, and toolbelt skill of hidden pistol (Hidden PistolS, lol) is essentially a pistol barrage that, for me, added a nice offensive punch when I needed it, added to the parent skill providing a nice evasive attack move, if I was soloing it was ALWAYS on my bar

I’d probably recommend a Ranger or a Guardian. I never found myself being particularly frantic with either of these classes.

As for being easy on your fingers. I might recommend trying some specialized gaming peripherals. Several companies provide more ergonamic options to put more keys at your fingertips, but it also makes it a little less stressful on the joints if you’re willing to throw a bit of money at the problem.

The few I can think of off the top of my head:
Razer Naga mouse
Razer Nostromo gaming keyboard
SteelSeries Merc Keyboard.

Heart of the Mist is a funny place. None of the gear has stats on it it so you’re only seeing the class in a raw form. It’s good to get an idea but that’s not 100 how things will be. However from the sound of it dealing a lot of damage is important to you. This is of course possible with most classes with the right traits but what’s more important is that, and I stress this, —are comfortable with the class’s abilities-- Knowing your bag of tricks and how to use them is far more important than how fast you kill something. If the numbers are good but the fit isn’t the awkward feeling doesn’t go away.

Now, If thief and engineer feel best to you, go with those. Both are good classes, and both can solo easily with the right skills.

As for leveling, just run around and do some events, or go to an area you haven’t been to and do some of the hearts. If that gets stale you get XP also from crafting. When you make some progress in craft, you can purchase recipies with karma from the trainer to make insignias for exotic weapons/armor. The discovery XP from this is insane, the material cost is heavy but the XP gain could be close to a half a level. It’s not uncommon for me to spend a short session burning mats and leveling a skill and come away with a level or two.

Akukai.9035:

Drake Phoenix, I feel like I’m like you, can’t decide between Ranger and Elementalist, but I’m afraid I don’t have enough time to play both, unfortunately

Could you help me sway towards either one or the other? What about Ele you like best that keeps making you come back? How about the Ranger?

Elementalist will keep you engaged in combat, the class has one of the higher skill caps between being the squishiest class in the game (both lowest health and armor) and so-so damage, so there is no real face rolling on an elementalist. Whether you live or die is entirely based on how well you played it. I find this to be the draw for many elementalist players, myself included, though at the same time there’s the fact that other classes can do what the ele does with less effort, which can lead to a player becoming a bit jaded.

Basically the way I see it, if you’ve ever gotten a new piece of tech and said to yourself, “Gee I wish this idiot proofed piece of garbage would just let me do what I need to do, instead of trying to do it for me” you might be an elementalsit player.

As for the ranger, yeah it does get boring. You manage your pet, shoot arrows, maybe hit something with a greatsword every now and again. Mostly the experience of being a ranger boils down to using ‘Rampage as One’ then running and jumping circles around something while you auto-attack shortbow 1, yelling “WOOSH!” until the neighbors bang on the wall because it’s 2 a.m. and they have work in the morning but they’re not the boss of you— and really, if you didn’t stop for the cops what chance do they have?— and if it’s an AoE event then do the same with an axe and warhorn, but replace yelling “Woosh!” with vocalizing the synthesizer in the introduction to “Sunglasses at Night” by Corey Hart, which your neighbors will complain less about for some reason.

NOW THEN, the utility skills are a bit mediocre, almost feels like you can get away with not bothering with them, whereas on the ele you almost NEED them to live. It does get dull, you have to work a bit to make it fun, if you hadn’t picked that up from the above rambling. Again though, that’s just me. They are going to be patching the ranger in the future from what I hear, so if you go with the ranger I recommend you stick with it at least until then if you get bored of it.

Addendum: You got to figure a class is simplistic when almost every botter runs ranger teams.

I’ve played all three and really I can’t make a reccomendation without knowing your play style. Really it’s going to be seeing which falls most in line with how you like to play.

—Engineer—
The Engineer is one of the most versitile classes in the game. You’ll almost never find yourself in a situation where you don’t have a tool to deal with it. You can do great AoE damage, support a group, kite enemies into next week, and more with a swap of a kit. Also each utility skill gives you a secondary toolbelt skill that can at times be stronger than it’s base, giving you more ways to deal with enemies. You’re a swiss army knife. You won’t have the biggest blade, but you have a corkscrew and everyone loves booze.

The downside, a lot of this requires some forethought to equip the right abilities for the situation you’re going into. You also don’t get a weapon swap, so unless you use a utility slot for a kit, you’re pretty much stuck with your primary weapons. Also the engineer’s elite skills are pretty lackluster, and situational at best, but I often found I didn’t really need them. Turrets have stupidly long cooldowns.

—Guardian—
The guardian is a brick wall. Despite a low health pool you’re pretty defensive. Some fights you might not even see your health move, and you can bash things in the face with a hammer. Virtues are like permanent signets and can save you and friends when used right. You can hit things in the face with a hammer. Many of your abilities inflict burning and/or blindness, blindness especially, when applied repeatedly (And you CAN apply it repeatedly) can really make the difference in a fight. You can deny enemies access with wards or reflect projectiles with walls. Did I mention you can hit things in the face with hammers?

The downside. Sometimes you feel a little too defenseive, and it feels like a lot of your potential is wasted without several allies around. If you want to really tear into something your traits are going to be fairly narrow without much wiggle room. Heal skills are on long cooldowns, and your ranged combat is pretty much reliant on the scepter, and sometimes the staff for midrange.

—Thief—
I didn’t care for the thief myself, but you’re not me. It can really output the damage when it wants too, and when using daggers you’ll have the endurance to keep up the dodging. You have some fairly cool utility skills to keep things interesting, traps, caltrops, shadow refuge, and a signet that gives a passive 25% movement speed boost, and more. The class doesn’t really have a high skill cap, so if you’re new to the game you’ll find you can do well at it without being an MMO pro, and can really be nasty when you get more experience with the game. If you ever get overwhelmed you can stealth and get away from combat.

The downside. The class feels terribly one-dimensional(to me). Realistically you’ll only be using one or two weapons sets almost always with a shortbow as your secondary. Pistols suck. Each weapon set will have only one or two moves you’ll actually use, but you can spam them thanks to the class functioning on iniative rather than cooldowns. Pistols are kind of lame. The steal abilities is a bit like a dice roll, you don’t always get an item that’s particuarly helpful. Also, you are squishy, dodging is vital even at low levels, but this eventually becomes true for everyone so it’s best you get comfortable with it early on. Team support is on the limited side without investing traits. Also I should probably mention pistols are terrible so if you want to pretend you’re in a John Woo flick, try the engineer.

Hope this helps.

@ Khezekiah Bellamy
Brilliant, totally fogot about those thanks.

@ Overlord Falcor
I rather like the wway the look in armor, just some pieces make them look too top heavy or give the impression of Football pads. The female model doesn’t have this so bad, so I’ll probably switch to that. It’ll look less awkward and charr get the added bonus of keeping the male armor appearances, which has kept me from having a female char of other races. Not a fan of looking like my character fell out of a strip club on halloween.

So I’m not entirely pleased with how a lot of the light armor looks on a male charr, and since I don’t know how long it’ll be before Anet works in a paid character recustomization option (or if it will encompass gender swaps) I’m going to delete my elementalist and start it over.

I bought all the karma food items I could but still have about 22k karma left over, and it feels like kind of a waste to just delete it, so does anyone know of anything I can do with it before I delete the character, account bound items or something?

Those are the final unlockable item in the Hall of Monument rewards. You need 30 HoM points from GW1 to unlock them.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_God%27s_Vambraces

I have abyss dye on my engineer, so while I can’t comment on the light armor, you don’t have to worry about abyss coming out gray, in fact Abyss is several shades darker than straight up black dye. I believe it is actually the darkest shade on the gray scale you can get.

That said, make sure you have some lighter or neutral colors for your trim or you’ll look like someone screwed up in MS paint with the paintbucket tool. At times it’s even better to use it as a trim since it will obscure some of the details of the armor within the color field.

EDIT: Here, I bought the light armor bits and it let me preview them with the color applied. Character is a charr (obviously) but you’ll get an idea on the color at least.
http://imgur.com/9KVYh <—Hope this helps

Yeah I have the same problem. It causes me to constantly target things unintentionally. Hopefully they’ll add the ability to turn this off or at least fix it so only clicks target rather than click and drags.

Charr armor has the same (male) appearance regardless of gender. That however is not armor, that’s town clothes. Not sure if it’s attainable by players at the moment.

I’m 27 years old, I’d say I’ve been playing between 8 and 20 hours a week, depending largely on how many friends I have online at any given time.

Basically if you’re downed several times in a short period you stack a penelty that makes you less and less survivable in the down state. On the fifth time you don’t even go into the downed state and are flat out defeated.

There are a few other things that could have happened here:
You are an elementalist and used mist form to escape- This is currently bugged as becoming mist removes you from the downed state and returns you to it after the duration. Unfortunately it current counts as an additional down and stacks the penelty again afterward. Basically if you used mist form in the down state then managed to rally if you go down again you’ve stacked it 3 times. One downed as an elementalist rapidly turns into 2-3 penelty stacks.

You are a warrior and pressed vengence- If this is the case don’t feel bad about it. Plenty of warriors have done it. In the down state warriors can press a button to return them to life for 15 seconds and fight, however after that time is up you are completely defeated without question. A trait can let you survive this if you kill something during vengence.

A mesmer cast Illusion of Life on you- Basically this gives you the same buff as the warrior’s vengence downed ability, however if you kill something in 15 seconds you won’t go down again. However I’m not 100% on if it fully defeats you if you fail to do so.

Also you can just click the “My Story” icon in the hero menu for a complete recap on your personal story thus far, including which order you joined.

No link to provide. My info comes straight from gameplay. Someone linked it in chat in Lion’s Arch. The item name was in red, which I believe means it’s legendary quality. When I previewed it, both the item Icon and the armor graphic were identical to that of the the Wizard Armor from the PvP locker.

That’s the info I have, take it or leave it. Sorry I can’t give you anything concrete.

I think that’s mist weaver armor, the legendary light stuff. Couldn’t tell you for certain though. I play a charr so armor looks the same regardless of gender. It looks like it has the same aesthetic though.

There’s no key bound to it by default but you can set one in the keybinds menu.

Maybe X would be a good key?

I’m a little stuck on how to properly use this heal in combat. I like the short cooldown and sick condition removal but the obvious trade off is the fact that it’s channeled, so if I need to use it in combat, I’ve usually lost more health than I’ve healed during it’s use.

Any advice on making this work better? Or should I stick to Signet and Glyph? At the moment it seems I can’t use this practically without using a staff or a focus for an offhand to provide the skills to keep things off my back, and even then it’s iffy.

Before you scrap your warrior, maybe try a different build. I had a similar outlook on the class why I played it beta, but I recently gave it another try, and how you build your warrior and what weapon you focus on geniunly changes how it feels. Currently running a hammer warrior (because pushing people around insanely fun) with a longbow for ranged and shouts for support. It’s fun in PvE, and in PvP you’re quite annoying. But that’s just my experience.

EDIT: Also, if hitting the F-keys is problematic try remapping them to something else. Like when my GF plays because her hands aren’t as big as mine, she remaps the F-keys to my mouse buttons, since even basic mice usually have 3-4 extra buttons. I just have a logitech G9, so the two side buttons become F1-F2 and the left and right clicks on the scroll wheel are F3-F4.

I wouldn’t think so either but I checked tested, they definitely do stack.

On the ele for example running between two landmarks with just windborn dagger takes (on average) 17.1 seconds, with signet of air as well it takes 15.3.

Thief can achieve 25% faster movement speed through signet of shadows, a 3rd tier skill. This is the fastest speed boost with the least requirements. This makes this the best option if you just want speed since you won’t have to invest for traits you might not otherwise use.

Elementalist can achieve 25% two ways. 1 via an air trait that increasess speed over time (up to 25%) while attuned to air (This particular buff doesn’t stack with other movement speed boosts, doesn’t look like you can get a passive speed faster than 25%) Another method requires a trait in the arcane tree to increases movement speed while weilding daggers, and then equip Signet of Air for an extra 10%

Finally necros can hit 25% via a blood magic trait that boosts speed by 10% for equipping a dagger in the main hand and an extra 5% for the offhand, add that with the faster movement speed from signet of the locust and you get the 25%.

There are other classes with boosts but not nearly this fast, usually a passive 10% (ranger and warrior) or requires odd conditions (engineer)

Diablerie.5296:

OP, you pointed out yourself that you had fun playing as your elementalist, why would you even consider switching to something you don’t enjoy? I’ve been playing mmos a long time and that is a disturbing trend.

It’s a concern because when WoW launched i fell in love with the druid class, and stuck with it despite my better judgement, and it took YEARS (one of the major BC patches) for the class to be ‘tweaked’ enough to be accepted outside a healer role or backup tank. It didn’t matter how much you liked the class or how good you were at it, because if literally ANY other class was avaible you were riding the bench and playing alts because your main just wasn’t good enough. I just really don’t want to subject myself to that again, not that much of a masochist.

Luckily, from the sound of things elementalist aren’t as bad off (impotent) as I was lead to believe, so I’ll hopefully throw myself back into class, since I did like it quite a bit. I’ll probably still try to keep a guardian or engineer on the side as something to fall back on if things go bad. Thanks for all the info everyone.

Can anyone clarify for me, now that enough time has passed for more people to have experience with the class, what is the actual state of the elementalist in PvP and endgame? Lately I’ve been seeing some positive commentary amidst the complaints, are things genuinely looking up now that people have a better understanding of the class? Or is this more a case of making the best of a bad situation? Objectively, how are things going?

At this point I have some experience with every class and I’ve come to find that I got the most enjoyment out of the game during my time on the elementalist. It was my first character and while it was hard at times, I enjoyed it none the less. While I shelved my other classes for various reasons, I only did so on the elementalist largely because of community perception. The message I was getting was that I would find endgame to be especially painful on an elementalist, and when the time came to do any organized content, I would be looked upon as second rate, trapped in an “Impossible to excel” situation where my best efforts would only be in line with everyone else’s average.

I want to reboot my elementalist, starting from scratch, now with a familiarity with the game. (Also to pick a different order and a charr physique where your fur doesn’t clip through the armor =/) However, I’d probably try to play a class I like less rather than be screwed down the road by the class performance or the community perception of it.

It’s very possible that the thief isn’t the character for you.

I had a similar situation. My thief stalled at lvl 53. Just wasn’t having fun with it anymore when I realized that regardless of what I was fighting or what the situation was, the best way through a fight was to hit the same 1 or 2 skills, per weapon set (not counting auto attack chains)

I feel, rather than the limited weapon sets, iniative narrowed the class’s variety and situational awareness required. With other classes you might sit on a cooldown and wait for it to be useful, with the thief often when the moves outside my normal button spam verged on being useful it was better to just burn the initiative on another attack and kill the thing rather than try to cripple it somehow.

Most situations were solved by picking one of the following and dodging as necessary:
Spam heart strike until it dies.
Spam pistol whip until it dies.
Spam death blossem over a field of caltrops until several things die.
Spam cluster bombs until the event’s over.
C+D and Backstab if you’re bored.

Now, obviously PvP would be more engaging if only due to the chaotic nature of having player controlled enemies rather than AI, also making some of those less used buttons a bit shinier, but I personally don’t PvP until I’m fully comfortable with the PvE playstyle.

Try jumping into WvW if you haven’t yet. Gank some people, do a few hit and runs, see if it breathes some life back into the class for you. If not, it might be time to try something else.

Ah, that sucks about Battle Roar, but thanks for the builds, I’ll definitely give these a shot.

Everything is going okay so far. I particularly like Skill 3’s abiliy to cripple everything in such a large area is pretty awsome. I know it’s a little goofy, but I think the sound effects of using the hammer are making me feel powerful. Like to make a noise like that I must be hitting this thing like a Mack truck hauling a slightly smaller Mack truck. I kind of like that.

I’ve been in a similar way. I think a big part of the indecision is the lack of defined class roles most people are accustomed to, knowing right from the character select what you can expect and what can be expected of you.

I had planned to be an elementalist, and leveled one to 50, but as I leveled the class seemed to have an inverse growth, feeling weaker rather than stronger as you level up. I liked the complex playstyle, but at the end of it, it was putting in the extra effort for the same payout, all the while a metaphorical gorilla is constantly throwing barrels at you. I was a bit heartbroken after that, elementalist was the character I rolled with the longest in GW1, primarily as a PBAoE fire or earth, and loved it. So far I’ve tried engineer, thief, and guardian, but nothing has quite given me that buzz I used to get back then.

I think what has helped me is to think about my past experiences and identify exactly what it is specifically about a class and play style that makes me like it. Which has helped me get outside opinions to steer me toward what will hopefully be a better fit. So right now I’m trying a hammer warrior, still low leveled but seems like it meets the criteria of what I like in a class.

Played around with it a bit in the Heart of the Mists.

Yeah, I can see a hammer build being fun, especially for when I get into PvP, and the longbow seems about my speed for a ranged weapon if only to drop a massive fire area every now and again. Definitly going to give it a shot, hopefully it’ll click with me and I’ll stick with it.

Anyone know if the traits that affect shouts would do so to the charr racial skill battle roar? Might be fun to stack that up with For Great Justice.

Hmm, that sounds interesting. I’ve kind of been avoiding looking into the warrior largely because every 3rd player I run into is playing one, so I kind of got the FoTM vibe from it where the class is either too powerful and will get nerfed or too easy to play and I’ll get bored but I can’t say the idea of hitting stuff in the face with a hammer and screaming at them isn’t appealing. The hammer skills definitely look more my speed than the guardian ones.

Thanks for the input.

My ele isn’t 80 yet so i can’t see how much bigger the problem gets by endgame but I definitly feel more synergy is needed in the attunment system to make it feel less like a liability once you get into traits.

Maybe something along the lines of attunment specific traits retain their effects for 10-15 seconds after leaving the attunment. Maybe even give each attunment an innate passive effect not requiring traits, Like fire gives a passive boost to power, air makes endurance regenerate 25% faster, earth boosts toughness or condition damage, and water gives regeneration or something similar. Combine the two and this would also kind of brings a Risk v Reward option if the elementalist quickly shifts between all four elements to stack the buffs, but at the same time locking themselves into only one element by putting the other’s on cooldown.

But that’s just a casual ele observation, I’m sure there are more elementalist hardliners here that have a better understanding of what the class needs to make it accessible.

Well, thinking about it, I guess I like to play a more aggressive style. I’m not one for being too cautious and like to just throw in. Punch it in the face, blow it up, I’ve been told I have the subtly of a hand grenade, but I mostly prefer to see direct results to my actions, as opposed to manipulating an encounter. Occasional damage spikes and things like knockback/down make me grin. As far as support goes I’d prefer protecting and making allies stronger over making enemies impotent, which is almost contrary to my lust for hitting things in the face, though admittedly running out to drop caltrops in front of an oncoming wave of enemies during events was satisfying.

Not really sure how I’d fit in PvP in this, but in most competitive multiplayers I like to serve as a distraction or harasser if I can, everyone paying attention to me is one more peeled off an enemy surge. My two fondest PvP memories are when I played World of Warcraft, and I got a handful of players to split off from a rush and chase me, which lightened the initial surge enough for the defenders to crush it, and another was in Warhammer Online when myself and a partner came across a large enemy force and despite being insanely outnumber we rushed in and spiked down their healer, we both died but we felt like we won. In a shooter for example I’d probably be the guy putting down suppressing fire (or riding the nuke =P ). I don’t mind dying so long as I do something cool or beneficial before I go.