Guild Wars 2

Ride the lightning after the patch goes on a full 40 second cooldown when hitting yellow inanimate objects or open world bosses. It also does not seem to be damaging stationary yellow objects.

Wanted to add my issues with targeting that started today while completing various areas of the map and a couple of dungeons. In large events, Jungle Worm/Shatterer/Tequatl were not targetable via mouse clicks, and cycling through tabbing often did not allow me to target foes properly either. Also, in CoF story mode and FotM today, I was unable to target any mobs with my mouse cursor. This is the first time I have ever encountered this issue.

Several forumgoers have suggested underwater elementals since way back in the open betas. It is absolutely doable: Magma, Aqua, Plasma, and Mud. Tar Elementals and every other classes pets (minus certain Engineer turrets) can go underwater, why not ours?

@ Winds: I lol’d.

I play around with D/D, S/D, and Staff in WvW myself, and from what I’ve noticed, D/D has better burst and more escapes while S/D allows you to stack might more reliably and push your #2 in fire/water (or #5 in earth) before swapping to air for quick Air #2/#3/Other attunement damage burst.

A word of caution: aside from auto-attacks and Air Attunement, even if your opponent is CC’ed, Scepter’s highest damaging skills are much harder to land on moving targets in 1 on 1 combat. Shatterstone (Water 2) should only be used if you are in a group or can hit more than one opponent with it as the opportunity cost vs damage output is otherwise not there.

0/10/0/30/30 is probably the most widely used build even for an S/D but doesn’t benefit S/D Eles as much as it does D/D. If you’re planning on WvWing with S/D, you can still run a buff build with Attunement cycling and might stacking; however, you will not have as many ‘oh @#$*’ buttons in the event that you need to escape.

You can run full cantrips with 10/0/0/30/30 and use the Fire IV trait which causes cantrips to grant 3 stacks of might (may be overkill if you’re good at keeping up might stacks and/or have +boon duration). Ditto for 0/0/10/30/30; just take the Earth III trait for Armor of Earth at 50% health.

If you plan on WvWing in a group, then a split 0/10/15/25/20 build can also work. Air VI, Earth VI, Water III, Water IX, Arcana V, Arcana VI. Keep the target bleeding and swap for buff bonuses, use cantrips as needed. If you don’t need the toughness, take 5 points from Earth and place them elsewhere as you see fit.

You can also use Arcane Wave for a blast finisher in Ring of Fire, if you need the extra might stacking.

Take Fiery Greatsword as your elite if you need extra escapes or run your Glyph of Elementals elite. Other utilities to consider are Arcane Shield and/or Glyph of Storms in Earth Attunement [use Glyph of Elemental Harmony as your heal and change your Air trait to Air III].

Aside from treb shot destruction and niche uses, S/D and */F don’t see as much use in WvW as D/D and Staff. It’s really a shame. Both the scepter and focus could use some love in the coming updates.

Matt Witter.6982:

There are a few different knobs we can turn in regards to AoE some of the bigger ones being:
Radius of the AoE
Frequency of the AoE Damage
Damage of the AoE
Max Targets of the AoE

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage.
In our balance discussions we always look at what these changes could do to PvE as well as PvP. Any changes we make will undergo a lot of testing, both internal and by our trusted alpha team. It is important to understand that we are not doing a blanket nerf to all AE’s or a dramatic adjustment of the damage AoE’s can do. There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

Why not change certain AoE skills so you can use your mouse wheel to scroll up or down the radius and give each skill a min-max radius, a min-max number of targets, and a fixed amount of damage that dynamically changes based on how many people are standing in it?
Would work something like:
-Less targets, smaller AoE radius, more damage in that area [Ex: single target getting hit by AoE for 1500 damage/tick, easier to dodge out of; two players in same AoE hit for 750/tick])
-More targets, larger AoE radius, less damage to individual targets, but overall the same amount of damage [Ex: three targets hit by AoE for 500 damage, five targets hit by AoE for 300 damage/tick, larger radius to dodge out of])

Having radial AoE scale up or down based on the amount of enemies inside of the AoE at a given time might be viable. Perhaps that may work to allow it to hit more than 5 targets? Then again it might be a giant cluster and simpler to just tweak numbers. Just a thought.

When I was leveling I played S/D at first. I always kept coming back to three utility skills: Signet of Air, Mist Form, and Glyph of Storms (Earth). The extra AoE blinds from the Signet/Glyph can help mitigate damage, and Mist Form helps in a pinch. That worked until I met foes who exclusively use ranged weaponry, so I tried S/F. Focus trades mobility for projectile reflection & condition removal (Magnetic Wave), projectile dispersion (Swirling Winds), a daze (Comet), a second Mist Form (Obsidian Flesh) and burning skills in fire. The Focus skills are good in certain instances, however, for the purposes of leveling, I felt that focus was not up to par with the other choices of offhand dagger or the staff.

If you would prefer the Staff I say go that route and utilize burning retreat/lightning flash if you require the mobility. It’s a tricky weapon to master, but if you time your combo fields properly (Practice laying down Eruption [Blast Finisher] first then Lava Font [Fire Field]) it can completely change how you view ranged play on the Ele. The staff lacks damage in Air, but it attempts to make up for it in ranged control. The staff really shines in team play and is boss in dungeons.

If you’re comfortable with survivability on the staff, for your other 2 utilities, you can use Arcane Blast as an opener, as it is the highest Ele ranged skill at 1500 and always crits. Arcane Wave is another blast finisher (you can use it to trigger combos inside any AoE field you lay [except Meteor Shower and Ice Spike]). Signet of Fire increases your precision if you take it on your bar, and if you are close to taking down a foe you can activate it for a 9 second burn.

If you’re uncomfortable with survivability you can use Signet of Earth which improves toughness and/or just fill your bar with Cantrips. Once you start learning an enemy’s movements and are comfortable with survivability again, switch one Cantrip back out for Arcane Wave.

One thing I wish I knew as well at the earlier levels-- using minor weapon sigils, artificer potions, and cooking buffs will augment your survivability and damage output. A few I recommend are damage (Sigil of Bloodlust), crit on next swap (Sigil of Intelligence) and refill endurance so you can dodge more (Sigil of Energy). But remember: Cooking buffs, sigils, and potions are not the be-all end-all to playing the Elementalist.

Ride the Lightning, Mist Form and Tornado break certain disguises in PvE. (Tested in Briarthorn in Caledon Forest, will test elsewhere)

I hypothesize that it’s a targeting/tethering issue, as I’ve had it happen to me on numerous occasions when dealing with underwater skill points/underwater story quests. Using any type of float/sink on the foe or moving them away from their spawn point typically exacerbates this issue. I’ve also noticed that simply using air 1 or earth 1 on close range foes causes this as well, which sometimes results in a miss if you’re right on top of them followed by periods of them being invulnerable thereafter.

It’s probably the same issue that people have with problems of mobs being slightly above or below their plane of view: even though the caster is within hitting range the mob is considered ‘invulnerable’ because the caster is outside a certain % of degrees in the caster’s position in relation to the target. (Ex: being on a cliff above a centaur and considered in range to cast skills but mob is invulnerable)

Rainshine.5493:

Josh Mitchell.1596:

-Evasive Arcana does not proc while in mist form

Are we sure it’s intended you dodge while transformed? You can’t with anything else.

Updated to this point!

Confused about the anything else bit… lol. I haven’t tested Evasive Arcana yet with Tornado/Vapor Form, but we have been able to dodge while in Mist Form/Vapor Form/Tornado since BWE 1.

-Evasive Arcana does not proc while in mist form

Not sure if these have been mentioned previously:

-Evasive Arcana does not proc out of combat (for example if I want to heal an ally while I’m considered out of combat or bleed a foe that’s chasing me but hasn’t hit me yet)

-Sometimes Evasive Arcana procs twice in the same Attunement (ex: 2 ‘churning earth’ spells within the 10 second limit). This is probably due to lingering elements — I have been able to reproduce this usually by switching quickly and having more than 2 attunements active then dodging 2+ times. Have not been able to reproduce as of 10/6/12

-Using Lightning Flash directly on top of Risen Rotmouths can get you stuck inside them. The only skill that has gotten me out of a Rotmouth prematurely before I can kill it is Ride the Lightning.

-Tornado, Glyph of Elementals, and Whirlpool all have an activation delay (about 1/2-1 second) after casting in which an interrupt or certain skill usage prevents them from activating and going on short cooldown. I haven’t noticed this on Fiery Greatsword.

-Signet of Air passive does not work in combat (bug or intended?)

-Using any Cantrip mid-stun sometimes results in the cantrip stunbreak failing and going on full cooldown. (Other cantrip benefits still proc) [“Breaks stun” description needs to be updated if this is intended]