Guild Wars 2

Clearly GW2 is not based on forced grouping, and that, IMO, is why it has found success.

It is not essential to “group” in order to play as a group. The encouragement to do things socially is found in other ways besides forced mechanics. To me, thats the genius of this game.

Dee Jay.2460:

I would like to clear a few things up:

1. Zerging absolutely should remain a viable way to play WvW.

It’s accessible to casual players and an easy concept to understand. It also gives less committed or up-leveled players a way to contribute.

2. However Zerging should absolutely NOT be the most effective/rewarding way to play WvW.

Currently Zergs offer too much safety and don’t have enough effective counter-mechanisms in play. They need more effective counters and less safety in numbers.

Thats a nice opinion piece. But why should zergs not be rewarded the same? Your incorrect supposition is assuming the game is built for 5 man elitism when it clearly is not. Buffs are based on radius, not groups. The game is clearly a break away from group based dynamics and that is its success story.

willwill.9318:

Better solution, new class called the eldritch who can PBOA for the win, that was why the zerg was rocked in daoc. Mindless zerging is no fun and absolutely skill-less

Skill is where you find it my friend. Do you know that something as simple as rock paper sissors championships even has regular champs?

Just because you dont see it doesnt mean it isnt there

Troll or…?

Isnt zerging kind of the point of wvwvw, one world against another? Why would this need to be fixed?

Read somewhere it did, but the result was very very slight.

Reasons stands it should since if you increase your damage output it doesnt raise your healing, so it should have some means of raising it and thats what the healing stat is for. Maybe a balance thing, necros can get so many life siphons going it might get overpowered at the high end?

I’ve been hoping for a 2h axe in a future expansion!

Chance to decapitate…
Executioner style

Yep, gotten better at it (not jamming my keyboard to get it to fire) but it still doesnt make sense. Why would I enter plague for a split second??

On death shroud it makes sense since you can flash and get buffed.

I just use flesh wurm, its the only one that behaves lol. And its damage isnt half bad I agree.

Nice thing is life force builds on its own too (near deaths), so I usually dont have a problem with getting some in the tank. I wouldnt bother with either trait. If you want some life force when not in battle kill a critter.

This is JQ baby!

I actually think necros are fine as a class, but I really hate re-animator. So much I cannot put points into death magic.

If they made the summons have something I could leverage (short term cripple, etc.) I could tolerate it but as it is it only exists to get me into trouble and then die.

Assuming it works, its a huge buff to any that use the death magic line, at least “re-animator” doesnt exist just to get you drawn into combat when you dont want to be. I still feel it would be better replaced with something more general.

I didnt even know about the mark of evasion bug and I’ve used it for some time!

lettucemode.3789:

Dariroch.6482:

Also well of corruption> spectral grasp. You will have problems with opponents that have boons plus the dps from the well > something that misses 1/2 the time.

In my experience, Grasp misses far less than half the time and I don’t have problems against opponents with boons. I can get some of them off with Spinal Shivers and still deal damage through the rest. I’d say that wells miss far more than grasp does since people just blink/shadowstep/dodge out of them anyway. Also, well of corruption doesn’t give me 15% life force.

I have corrupt boon loaded up to deal with stability etc, corrupt + grasp is a great 1-2 punch for guardians

Elementalists are similar to necros in that there is a mix of condition and straight damage, they have higher numbers, but we have more control. Keep sending stuff back on a regular basis, corrupt their boons, and chill/immob them often.

Dodge their first ride the lighting / knock back combo and you are well on your way. Chill/cripple them in fire attunement (usually next up) and keep out of 600 range will frustrate them greatly, they’ll have to switch right to water to cure. Now you have them on the defensive, lay in with corrupts, conditions, return their burns. Try to save an immobolise for when they are in bad shape to keep them from running. If they get up close and you cant get away you ‘re probably better off shrouding and lifedrain/fear/jump to absorb it, but if you can save it until you’ve dodged/avoided their first air and fire spike.

Above advice is good, chills and distance mean you are winning, except if too far they can run easy. Dont bother with blind/weakness as much since they are 90% aoe, but immobilization is really harsh on them since they need to be in your face and rely on the confusion of dancing all over the place.

Sorry, but it would be way overpowered. I’m (almost) surprised they let it go as is, but it does go with the theme of us being masters with conditions. Its a perfect heal.

I dont think we’ll get nerfed much. We arent an aoe spam class, and I dont think there are many that consider us OP.

That said I’ll be enjoying epidemic as much as possible until then just in case.

Attic.1562:

Except you don’t. It’s quite possible to stick to a rigid attunement swapping pattern dumping everything you can on swap with some rudimentary combos like RTL -> Updraft -> Burning Speed -> Fire Grab thrown in and still do pretty bloody well against the vast majority of people (who tend to be quite bad fyi).

It works but it shouldnt. I see an ele coming in with RTL and hit dodge and I can almost see the confusion on their faces for a couple seconds. Anyway are you talking 1-1? because with RTL down and no skill they going to get chopped up.

Attic.1562:

Always in danger my foot. Name me one other class that routinely has 70%+ uptime on Protection, near 100% uptime on Regeneration, Shocking Aura, a heal on weapon swap that has a 1.0 Healing Power ratio, a teleport, a 3 second invulnerability, ~11 seconds of Protection and Stability, and a movement skill on par with RTL.

Seriously man, you are playing a necro and you dont squeal when you see this? Corrupt and watch them fall over, esp. if you wait for water attunement. Pass all their burns back with the dagger offhand too for extra fun. Immob around the 15 second mark, then watch them rtl to nowhere. I’ll admit knowing elementalists inside out makes them candy to me, but we also can keep 100% uptime on bleeds, chills, weakness, regen, so its potato Poe-tat-Oh.

Attic.1562:

So long as it doesn’t bug out due to z-level differences, the fight hasn’t moved too far away from your pet, and nobody kills your fragile little worm. Then it becomes one click = nothing.

Not to mention that the worm can only take you back to a place you’ve already been instead of any direction you choose and has a 40 sec cd to RTL’s 15 secs.

Works fine for me, I always work out my exit in advance, same as I did for dd ele. If you are too far away it still works, just takes you 1200 in the direction. I find its much easier and foolproof to use. Usually where I’ve been is the safest place to go anyway. If someone kills my worm, its extra knowledge for me that something is going very wrong.

RTL can mess up if you dont clear your target (can take a few clicks on open space too if there is any lag), and send you straight into the horde instead. Also adjust your facing etc. Not a huge deal in itself but if you are looking for an emergency instant out it can and does get messed up. Also if immob, well it does a whole lot of nothing.

Attic.1562:

In WvW d/d eles are very noob friendly.

There are several reasons for this: 1) Safety is, more often than not, just a Ride the Lightning + Lightning Flash away. 2) The healing, mitigation, and avoidance d/d eles can get passively just by sticking to a set rotation of abilities is absurd. If a warrior could get Protection, Fury, Regeneration, 3 stacks of Might, condition cleansing, healing, and Soothing Mist on weapon swap they’d be considered an OP FotM noob class. But you somehow think d/d ele is a pure skill class? I laugh derisively at you.

That’s not to say that a good player won’t take the class above and beyond that into a whole new realm of madness, but let’s not kid ourselves here. There is a reason why d/d eles are so ubiquitous at this point, much more so than any other of the currently strong builds like shatter mesmers and Altruistic Healing guardians, and it’s partially because they’re easy for even really bad players to play decently against the majority of the people they face.

To be fair, I rotate through 20+ skills as a D/D ele, I dont know why you would say noob friendly at all. Timing is precise, you need to always be moving and attacking, if you get stuck you die. If you stick to a rotation you’re going to get tripped up and die, you need to know every permutation.

Safety maybe a flash and rtl away but since you’re always in danger you always need to know when to use it. Health is innately very low in the class and you need to be in the thick of it. If you just “rtl + flash away” what have you accomplished exactly?

On my necro, safety is always a necrotic transferal away, much easier to use, one click = safe.

I dont think necros are easy either, certainly harder to catch people, but your comment is just way off.

As a DD ele thats also switched to necro the lack of mobility is tough to get over. The necro is definately tankier, even as a glass cannon. The main thing to consider is a necro gets his defenses through offense, you can debuff your enemies to total crap which is much better than most buffs in the game.

OTOH one buff that seems easy to keep up is regen, if you keep laying down marks of blood (staff and dodge if traited) its got very good uptime. Its not a great heal in itself but over time it adds up.

I have decided I cannot spec anything in the death magic tree because of this trait.

I’d rather they:

(a) remove it and swap it with a I-VI trait, leaving it available if someone wants to slot it
(b) put it in the final minor trait slot so only serious investors that want it will get it
© just remove it, and leave it blank.

Prefer (a), then (b) or lastly ©

Arvid.3829:

I’d like to add: I just did some calculations regarding power/precision/crit damage. If I’m not mistaken, the ideal ratio is
1+Crit Damage*Crit Chance = Power/2100

So assuming you have 50% crit chance and +100% crit damage (50% from gear and 50% naturally), you would only need 1400 power to maximize your efficiency. Since you start with 916 naturally, that’s only +484 power. Notice though that this is just to maximize efficiency, obiviously more power will still mean more damage.

Also notice, for crit damage, that there are good and bad sources for it. Specifically the crit damage/‘other stat’ trade off is ridiculously good for jewels (you get close to 3 times more crit damage versus other sources) and, to a lesser extend, the Soul Reaping trait line. See http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature#Numeric_Attributes_vs._Percentage_Attributes

Using that formula wouldnt 50% crit chance and 100% crit damage come out to 1 + (.5 * 1) = 1.5? Meaning you’d need 3150 power to even that out?

For mesmers you need a staff, aoe is their bane. DS siphon is very good too. You need to hit them and clear out their illusions at the same time.

I accept death like a man. Its the necro way.

I dont see why direct damage needs more buffing, its the best damage right now.

AOE is also good damage but its very difficult to spam it in a way that gets kills. The only problem is when you get multiple people spamming an area creating instant (or near instant) death zones, perhaps this is the issue?

Maybe the trick is to limit the amount of AOE damage a person recieves per second, rather than limiting the AOE damage a class can do.

I love dagger/dagger… for getting from point A to point B (quickening thirst), and pve.

Other than that its staff, forms, and traits. :p

Ezeriel.9574:

The healing you can get from food, puts the healing you can get from necro skills to shame…

Get some berry pie, and any crit/life-leech build you want to make becomes viable.

Thats sad. Anyone know offhand if bloodthirst at least helps life siphon from #2 dagger?

All burn dots are the same damage if cast by the same person, per tick. All that changes is some spells have different duration (also they have an upfront damage too usually). Duration stacks so the more you pile on the longer it will tick for.

If burning damage stacked it would be way overpowered, its really good damage.

Wow that really bites.

I mean decaying swarm might actually be kind of nice for an automatic swiftness boon when you DS but it bites that they havent fixed all these other things being wasted.

Shouldnt “Last Gasp” trigger when we enter DS too then?

I was really hoping to use vampiric runes to go with the whole vamp vibe of it.

No, its good. Burn does huge damage. If it ticks away full duration thats massive. The only way its redundant is if the target is dead before it was done, but thats usually ok.

In pvp there are a lot of cleanses so you need to keep reapplying too.

Rangers built to be at range are going to have a difficult time as d/d elementalists are built to be in your face and stick there like glue.

Any knockbacks, immobilizations or cripples on you or pet can do. Use up your pet ability fairly fast because he’ll kill it just by being close.

He has two great closers:

RTL every 15 seconds, you need to dodge that, immob and otherwise keep him at range with cripples and kiting. Can see it coming a mile away, big electric spark thing

Magnetic grasp is a tricky one, it brings him to you and roots you from 900 range, if you get hit with it you have some pain coming. Its bugged and often doesnt work but if it does its a good time to knockback/interrupt or condition cure/dodge, this will mess up his rotation bad.

If you keep him at range you are winning.

They stack duration, not damage.

I’m thinking about trying necro too, they are the underpowered class of the month.

Pretty fun with complicated gameplay as well, need to think about synergies similiar to Elementalist.

Personally I’m considering a power/precision death shroud build, already did the power/condition thing on my elementalist.

Ive been locked down and locked down other ele’s with these simple tips. D/D elementalists (like me) tend to get themselves in way too deep; trip them up like this and its game over man.

Edit: If we are talking 1-1 d/d elementalists have better mobility, if its a matter of getting back to the safety of the zerg, most classes (all?) have some capability to do this.

If you read the forum every few posts is about might stacking for elementalist lol. With the about of combos an ele can pull off it may be the best class for it.

EvilSardine.9635:

I’m not trolling. Please look at my proof photo in the original post. I’ve had an elementalist since the start of the betas. I know their “strengths” and what very little weaknesses they have.

I think that Anet needs to look at these specific D/D builds that have such high survivability and can deal so much damage while at the same time having the freedom to say “Nah, you know what…this fight isn’t going my way. I’m calling it off and no one can stop me.” Exiting the fight, regenning out of combat, and coming back instantly is just plain silly.

This post was originally made in the general forum but a mod moved it here. Sadly it will now get some negative attention since it’s “attacking” the class.

Haha, I had an elementalist in beta too. They changed big time from that!

Ok, your main complaint is that exiting a fight at will is overpowered it seems. I agree DD ele is one of the most slippery classes in the game. The fact you call this boring is what is marking you as troll, to be clear. The way to counter this is with immobolize and stun/knockdown etc.

fishergrip.4082:

Viable? More like the best 1v1 class in the game. The skill ceiling isn’t that high, don’t kid yourselves. Cycle attunements, spam abilities off CD, win. If you want high skill cap play an engineer.

When you say spam abilities you discredit yourself.

There is huge advantages to be had by timing these correctly which will multiply your effectiveness!!! In fact spamming abilities will lead you to bad positioning, since many alter your position when others require you be in 300 range. Hit RTL and you may end up in an entirely different area! Hmmm suspecting I just got trolled. doh!

If elementalist is boring you I have bad news, its the most engaging class in the game

I’m tempted to try out whatever people are calling underpowered these days (was ele when I signed up) but I doubt theres any way it could be as involved to play.

I am smelling troll too since theres no way it could be called a boring class to play! But thats my opinion.

Funny thing is I got in a couple months ago when everyone was saying it was the most underpowered class in the game and needed major buffs. Barely anything has changed and now most people agree now we are fine to OP. Such a fickle crowd. Just goes to show how a few people that know how to play a class can turn around the entire populations view of a class.

Yea not much we can say right now, we are one of the strongest classes. I’ll bet for an expansion down the road they’ll be adding more.

I got moa’ed the other day. Been so long I didnt know what to do lol.

I suppose I dont build for dueling, I jump into an enemy zerg and get out when I hit my limit.

I could build tougher, but I’d rather be able to share by auras, and give everyone around me a boost. I go for power/condition, because I want to lay in a lot of pressure to a whole lot of enemies, and dont focus on getting one person down. But it does really good for bursting down most people too, I havent actually had a duel I didnt win where it was a straight fight 1-1 but I bet there are much better out there at this. Conditions are great for keeping up pressure, an elementalist can apply them faster than they can be removed. That burn is going to keep being applied, dont even bother!

So I dont measure myself by how well I would do dueling another elementalist, but by how well it fits my playstyle. Something to think about.

I agree it should be called legendary for a reason. Its purely optional and a built in grind for those that like that kind of thing.

I may try for it someday (when I look and discover I have half the stuff already), but until then I dont want to see them everywhere. It should be insanely hard to get, isnt that the point?

Aside from a few weapon sigils, I dont see many sigil recipes. Looking specifically for sigil of battle. Or are these only available by salvage??

I dont like to grind so I dont. The minimal grind I do for a few gold when I want to change something up is enough to get a level 79/80 rare or exotic and I’m pretty much top tier all round. Usually just enough time for me to queue into wvwvw.

As an elementalist I can testify to that immobilize working very well. Been trapped a bunch by it. But really a staff ele never leaves the wall, and a d/d elementalist can quite easily get himself too far away from the door to vapor back in.

It does feel a tad dirty when it works out however. On the other hand I take chances I probably wouldnt and get myself downed/killed more often because of it, which is fun.

I do fine with 1300 toughness and 22k health. I’m not as worried about healing efficiency since I do my healing afterwords, I worry more about dps output until its time to retreat. With mistform/lightning flash I can cap my losses and get out fairly efficiently.

Higher toughness will make your heals much more efficient, but if you let vitality go you are at the mercy of conditions. At 14k my sigil of fire will remove half your health by itself.

Magnetic grasp I have little faith in. It seems about 50/50 for me. Interesting tips here though.

I dont have any arcane, seem to do ok. I tend to blow through my attunements fairly quickly too, but I dont mind sticking in one for a bit either if its all on CD. I feel like D/D has great spammables in earth/fire/lightning, the damage is pretty high, and water is nice for the regen if you are just recovering.

Numbers is the biggest advantage always, people have a way of overcoming obstacles. In daoc the home maps were all different and there never seemed to be a large advantage.