Guild Wars 2

Yet what does any of that have to do with what I said? Nothing you said refutes or disputes the idea that builds are neither efficient or inefficient but rather tools for players to use. The efficiency of which is entirely based on the goals of those players and what those players want to accomplish. So long as the player is able to overcome the encounter mechanics, either through brute force defenses or through avoiding those mechanics, one build is fundamentally not better than another. A build can be faster, or slower, or lazier, or require more or less skill but so long as the players can overcome those mechanics they can down the content regardless of their choice.

I mean maybe instead of creating a strawman and talking about old builds from years ago why don’t you address those points?

Also lets debunk this whole “renowned” part. How many accounts in the game have Elementalists on their account? How many of those accounts play an Elementalist as their main character? How many out of those even bother to come to these forums and don’t just get build advice and tips from their own guild/server community? Out of those, how many even know your name let alone care what you or anyone else thinks about the Elementalist? Until you got numbers all you got is assumptions. In all unlikely possibilities you could very well be a very, very vocal minority (doubtful due to the berserker meta across all classes).

Evolution is actually a great comparative topic. Sometimes one of the inherent traits of some of the Berserker players is they trash anything that isn’t like them. They do it so much certain Berserker players get their forum accounts banned and they have to buy a second account just to keep trashing other builds. They trash and trash and trash anything not like them until the other people get tired of having to justify why they playing the game a certain way. Eventually those people just kinda go away and the Berserker people go, “See we’re the best!” but really they were just the loudest.

Evolution doesn’t mean the best wins out. Evolution means those more capable of propagating win out.

So now you’re going to use a new word: “Smooth.”

However gear and build has nothing to do with how “smooth” a run goes as you pointed out. The biggest factor we deduced from your own words is that player skill and knowledge of the encounters has everything to do with a run being “smooth.”

The Lupicus video you linked is a great example of this. Right off the bat with the title of the video you can see them say no evades or blocks, because they know as part of the normal way you tackle this encounter you would need to block and/or evade. So they have that knowledge and instead in defiance of that knowledge, for whatever reasons that are their own, they choose to ignore it and do the encounter and not do what they know they should be doing for that encounter. Thus because they are ignoring the encounter mechanics, their run is not smooth. This has nothing to do with their builds and nothing to do with their gear but rather their gear and builds are simply tools they adjusted to be able to beat the encounter while ignoring critical parts of the encounter mechanics.

You also bring up a very good point that not much skill was involved. This means you can brute force your way through encounter mechanics without having to counter then by having a stronger defensive build. This means for the more casual player who has no self delusions that being skilled in PvE (especially PvE this basic) actually means anything by going with a more defensive build they can simply brute force their way through content, albeit a little slower.

The discussion is about understanding there’s are thousands of people who play this game and a lot of us have different reasons and desires and goals within the game. Not everyone is obsessed with being the best of the best of the best at PvE in a game that’s widely renown for having bad PvE. A lot of us just want the rewards from PvE and that’s it. Nothing more, nothing else. Out of those some people want to go faster than others (with Berserker groups) and other people don’t really care at the pace in which it goes so long as it gets done. Using terms like “no one” or even words like “majority” or “the community” can’t rightfully be used because there’s no data to back those terms up.

That entire picture was a joke because that entire thread was a joke on how the only way a person could be a good elementalist was if they stacked might. There’s that language barrier again and not understanding.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Indeed, and that is why I am not making such statement. My statement is that a certain level of efficiency is required to complete the content, a certain level is required to complete it smoothly enough for your team to have a good time in this social game. You deem this point faulty but you have failed to explain why. And seriously good luck explaining: you would have to argue that making purely bad decisions gets the content completed

This is what you say:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

If everybody went with some build they like that was completely inefficient then no group would ever succeed.

Are now you saying that you can do the content regardless of build? I mean you state very clearly that the the guys who downed Lupicus in the video you linked did so very inefficiently:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

So if the players from the video would come on forums and say this is how to kill Lupicus the community would be right to point out the inefficiencies in their method.

Yet clearly their method worked to down the content. Did they down it very fast? No. Were their builds inefficient by your standards? Yes. Yet did they succeed? Yes. So the argument that people playing inefficient builds of their choosing would be incapable of downing content is factually incorrect.

Now if you are then changing your argument, because that last argument was wrong, and you’re now saying players need a certain level of skill and knowledge to beat the content then we can agree on that. Because ultimately knowing the encounters, knowing what to expect and knowing how to counter it is how you beat that content. So really it’s the player skill that matters and not build.

Builds are ultimately just tools and methods you use to overcome content. Certain builds allow you to down content faster than other builds. Other builds allow you to do the same content slower but more safely. Ultimately it’s up to the player to determine what tool and method works best for them. Do they want to do Berserker gear and go with Berserker groups and complete content faster or do they want to choose a safer method with more defensive gear/build and not worry about how long it takes?

So again we see that Berserker is not the most efficient build, because the term “efficiency” is wholly dependent on the user’s goals.

I tend to use Shift+E, Shift+R, Shift+T and Shift+V for the four attunements. I also use “R” for heal and “F” “G” “H” for utilities and “T” for ultimate. Puts everything on the left hand for easy use.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

If everybody went with some build they like that was completely inefficient then no group would ever succeed. A certain level of efficiency is required to complete content.

This is a faulty and misleading premise.

For one you vastly overuse the generic term of efficiency. Efficiency is just an adjective to describe the method in which you reach your goal. A truer way to clearly state your premise is that a maximum damage build (method) will be the most efficient (adjective) at accomplishing killing bosses the fastest (the goal).

As your own video earlier linked shows even ignoring fight mechanics a group can still complete content. While certainly not a fast solution, it is none-the-less a solution and the content does go down. In this case it’s pretty clear that they went with more defensive builds (the method) presumably because they felt it’d be fun (adjective) to kill the boss without avoiding any mechanics (the goal).

To state that alternative methods are incapable of downing content is simply, factually incorrect. Day in and day out for years people have been downing the game content without specific builds. The only thing you could state for certainty is that non-maximum DPS builds are incapable of clearing content as fast as maximum DPS builds.

Lord Arhan Warmark.7098:

What exactly is the argument? Present both your views to new players, and let them decide.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

We can all be kind and considerate and moderate but seriously that would be extremely boring. We are not in a care bear world. I like to take sides and to have clear cut opinions. So, in the same way that you would expect people to judge builds only from the perspective of the defendant, I think those who propose builds should only perceive the comments of those who judge bearing in mind that they speak from a different perspective. I goes both ways. Once we understand this no one gets offended, helpful builds get adopted, and we don’t get bored.

But in the end, builds that are not helpful kinda deserve to be trashed

That’s why.

It’s easy to look at me as some lone madman fighting some “crusade” against the established builds or something equally ridiculous but the simple truth is I’m not the one picking fights here. Instead, it’s just another guy who doesn’t want things around here “to be boring” and wants to argue with anything and everything that doesn’t fit his judgement on what build is and isn’t helpful.

This is why there will never be an understanding. This is why there will never be an agreement. Not because of me, but simply because they don’t want things to get too “boring.”

It does however explain why Zelhyn bothers responding to me at all. He has to know by now I’ll never accept that Berserker is the only way to play. I don’t even think it’s the most efficient way to play but rather simply does the most damage which doesn’t preclude efficiency since efficiency is entirely goal oriented and goals shift from player to player. But see now we know. He just wants to argue on the forums so things don’t get boring by his own admission.

It’s most likely why his other forum account was banned. Maybe if he’s incapable of behaving himself it might just happen again…after all “actions do have consequences” right?

It’s true, though. For as long as you and I have gone “round and round” the biggest problem has always been a failure to communicate.

Over 2 years ago I used to argue with bunker Eles who swore up and down the “only” way to play an Elementalist is to rapidly switch between attunements. Their argument was if you weren’t switching attunements on cool down you were playing the class wrong. They all hated “bad Elementalists” who stayed in Fire all the time or a majority of the time for PvE. Everyone was convinced the only way to play an Elementalist was 100% bunker and anyone like Razer who preached 100% berserker or me who preached a route of moderation were bad.

Fast forward 2 years later and here we are again, only now the argument has changed where the “only” way to play the Elementalist is Berserker and anyone who suggests anything else is again bad. The argument now being it’s the “most efficient” way to play the class and therefore the “only” way to play the class because why should anyone choose to be inefficient?

My complaint has been and always will be that one player should fundamentally not seek out to disparage or put down or slam or trash talk or essentially make a judgement about another build. Simply state the facts about a build objectively and let people make their own judgements and decisions. Each player has their own values of what is important. For you efficiency is most important. For me getting whatever task I am doing completed is most important. For other players finding a build that lets them have fun and not playing perfect is important. It is fundamentally wrong to me for any person to say, “This is the way I play the game, and you must also play like me or you are bad/inefficient/terrible/awful/etc.”

This is what I meant in the original post I made. Everything is fine if you’re saying the same thing as everything else. The minute you veer out of that territory, boom…welcome to the next argument cause a bunch of people are going to come on out and tell you that’s the wrong way to play which is just absurd.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Right, so basically you would give them the advice that I have in my old guide and that Keyz has in her guide – the advice that the two main theorycrafters of the class keep on their guides. Thank you Kodiak, what a ground for grievance, that was definitely worth crusading against us.

Anyway you admitted that this is good for learning. And this is exactly why the community dislikes recommending alternative gear: we give long-term advice, then the players can make their own decision on how to get there. I believe that they should use defensive builds (and yes berzerker builds can have defensive cooldowns), some advise defensive gear, but in any case it is not worth dedicating more than a couple of lines in our guides to settle the debate.

Maybe you should read our guides

I have to wonder what kind of tinted glasses you wear where you read me talking about the same Berserker spec with defensive gear and you take that as me agreeing with you that people should use Berserker gear with Defensive specs. The two are not the same. Your method teaches players bad habits they will get used to and is inefficient since they have to learn everything twice (first on their temporary build, and again on their actual build). It’s bad advice and why you repeatedly have posts come here of people complaining they can’t make Berserker gear work.

Or the fact that after numerous posts, despite my grievance being in bold right in the middle of one of my posts up top clearly stating what it is you still continue to get it wrong.

It’s this level of misunderstanding that makes me really wish there was a Euro and a North American set of forums.

More pompous than that? You should re-read your post history.

Things will never be settled because post after post, you still continue to say, “Kodiak you’re offended by…” or “Kodiak you’re upset at…” but every time you say something new and completely off the mark. I’ve clearly stated what my grievance is, but for some reason you read it and it never registers.

As for learning Berserker play…Elementalist as a class has many active defenses if you spec into them. One of the biggest reasons I hate getting out of 4 points in Water is because I love Cleansing Wave. It’s a habit I’ve built playing this build regardless of weapon. I constantly have Vigor because I don’t run a build without Renewing Stamina. That habit is so strong I find it hard to play any character that doesn’t have permanent Vigor up all the time. These are all habits I’ve learned playing a defensive build.

People using defensive gear on berserker spec doesn’t teach them these habits but gives them enough survivability to learn. When you play Berserker spec you don’t have any of those cool downs. You don’t get any of those active defenses. Learning whether or not you should blow Magnetic Wave or Healing Rain to cleanse a condition is very important. They can actually learn how the encounters work, learn what skills to use when, and not constantly do it while dying. As they master the encounters and how to handle them they can slowly swap in more offensive gear.

You asked me what advice I’d give someone, that’s what I’d give to them. Teach them how to actually play their character and then as they learn and master their character, and more importantly the encounters, they can work their way into more offensive gear.

I recently went through the process of making my Legendary and there’s absolutely nothing Legendary about it. It all comes down to one thing: Gold.

That’s just how it is. Whether it’s someone who swiped their card, got lucky with drops or just built up enough over time legendaries are 100% about gold and nothing else.

When they add this new system and people start to get Legendaries from it I’m not going to immediately assume they simply got money but maybe they actually put some time and work into getting that thing. They’ll still have to have money, those T6 mats and lodestones are hell, but now I’ll be less likely to assume they just swiped their card and paid for everything instead.

Well writing a guide right now before HOT seems kinda pointless for anyone for any class. They’ve already stated that not only were they going to be going through each class and changing out the base class abilities (to incorporate new mechanics like Resistance or Taunts) but they’re also changing other mechanics (such as no longer capped bleeds) as well as specializations on top of all that. I mean we currently have some of the longest lasting bleeds in the game out of any class that with maximum bleed duration at 200% we could easily stack over 25 or so bleeds just with one of us.

They’ve also stated that while they aren’t planning on nerfing things like Berserker, that maximum damage builds have come into meta because of lazy designed encounters that encourage them. It’s not unrealistic to maybe see them add encounters with HOT that include unavoidable damage and other similar mechanics that could ultimately lead to disrupting the berserker meta.

You mentioned “beating the competition” earlier in another post and it’s very telling how you see the game experience. There is no competitive PvE tournament 2015, hell there ain’t even a Fractal leader board. Quite honestly it baffles me personally how serious people seem to think builds really are given all that but that’s just me. Even if I don’t understand it, not my place to try to convince them their way of playing the game is wrong.

Here’s the part I don’t get about your advice. Lets say a player is doing poorly with full Zerker because they can’t handle the lack of defenses. So you put them on another build entirely, which they then get used to that build’s active defenses (vigor boon, extra healing, extra condi cleanse, etc) and learn how to play with those active defenses. You then expect them to re-learn all over again and strip away all those active defenses and get used to playing without them forcing them to re-learn the character yet again. Ironically, that seems incredibly inefficient to have them learn two different builds. Now if you give them more defensive gear by comparison, they can learn on a zerker build how to survive without those active defenses because gear is passive defense. Slowly they can swap out pieces of defensive gear for offensive gear until they can handle not having defensive gear. If you really want to debate the cost of getting multiple sets of gear, I’ll be happy to educate you on how easy it is to get geared

You’re nothing of the sort because you guys are incapable of understanding anything but extremes. Everything must be black or white. Good or bad. You’re not going to convince me that your extreme is better than the extreme you think I am at when I’m firmly in the middle.

For example Iris. I never once said Scepter was super awesome amazing OP in all game modes should be meta for Elementalist in all situations. All I’ve ever said and continue to say is that Scepter is serviceable and gets the job done. However in me saying that you guys seem to take it as I’m directly making an attacking staves and daggers and everyone should use a Scepter at all times. I’m not. I’m saying if you like how Scepter plays, you’re perfectly capable of doing all the game content with it except maybe some fringe content most people don’t do (such as extremely high Fractals).

Zelyhn, I’ve stated numerous times I have no problems with the berserker meta. First thing you reply with? “I see you have a problem with the dominance of berserker.” I mean I don’t even know how to respond to that or make it any more clear than that. What I have a problem with is how people who espouse the Berserker meta hate on anything that isn’t the Berserker meta. I don’t care what the hot new thing is, I care that the people who are going on about the hot thing won’t let anything else even be suggested without it being trashed.

As for efficiency, I guess we get to go back through this conversation. Again. The only metric I care about is if the content dies. If it takes me a few seconds or a few more minutes to get through content long as the content gets done I don’t really care. If a little bit of Toughness/Vitality makes me not have to play perfectly but I have to spend an extra rotation to down something I don’t really care. A lot of cases when people come here asking for advice, that’s all they’re looking for. They are having problems with doing the content at all, let alone doing it the fastest.

I’ve personally received PM’s from people in game all the time like that. They’re simply frustrated individuals who try and try the berserker meta but are tired of always being dead each fight cause it just doesn’t click for them and there’s no one else willing to talk about anything else. That does not mean to imply that I’m some sort of “crusader” fighting for oppressed people or anything, only that it’s kinda sad that there’s nothing else out there for them. Why is that? Because people simply won’t let there be.

I also bug reported this in game. Because you hold it up to your face to gather, this looks fine on most races, but for the Charr your face clips right into the darned thing like you’re mashing your head inside of it.

The underhand hold of the Mad Scientist’s Mining Tool is super cool, kinda wish it did that instead (at least for Charr).

Oh yea I forgot sarcasm and a bit of hyperbole to make a point go completely over your head. But yea neat, cool story, bro.

Only thing I’ve ever expected is to let people choose for themselves. Five different flavors of Cherry ain’t variety. The berserker meta is plastered everywhere. It’s stickied in this forum. As you say it’s on Dulfy. It’s all over Metabattle. It’s replied to incessantly in any thread where someone asks for build advice. To not see it, you really gotta look hard, and that’s kinda shameful to us as an Elementalist community.

Are you really incapable of making an argument to use the Berserker build without deriding and thrashing any other build because it’s “inefficient?” If someone asks for advice and 8 people respond with the Beserker meta and two guys post some off the wall builds as random ideas is that going to topple your regime or suddenly undo the meta entirely? Who knows? It may not be me, it may not be the next guy, but maybe someone with an off the wall idea comes up with something that inspires someone else to create the next meta build or a tweak there in.

Simply put it all comes back to what I said. Everything is fine if you recommend the meta. The minute you stray from “your different flavors of Cherry” well look out…here comes the angry swarm because you’ve “threatened” them with your cooky ideas. Oh and God forbid you point any of this out. Then you’re some “crusader” on a “holy war” (I honestly can’t read that without rolling my eyes).

Iris Ng.9845:

Although it’s kinda sad to see there aren’t many possibilities to have fun builds in PvE.

Lots of possibilities to have fun builds. You just can’t talk about them because if you do they get slammed for not being efficient.

Hamster.4861:

For WvW, It’s quite fun to run a 0/6/0/6/2 build with staff

Running: Bolt to the Heart, Air Training, Lightning Rod
Cantrip Mastery Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water
Blasting Staff

For armors/trinkets, run as much celestial/knights as you need to stay alive. Do try to keep your power above 2200. I personally run Zeker everything except for pants and chest armors, which are celestial.

Yea that was always a solid build. Lots of self survivability.

These days in WvW when I run my Elementalist I stick to a 06242 or a 06044 build for running with a group. Cleansing Wave is a nice AOE condition cleanse and without 4 in Arcane Cleansing Water just has no regen to spread around to clear extra conditions. Meanwhile the 2 in Earth is strong for anti-burst situations or the Renewing Stamina from 4 in Arcane is handy for additional dodge rolls since it’s super easy to proc at least one crit in somewhere. I also prefer Aeromancer Alacrity for lower cool downs but Training is decent now too with LRod.

Gear is always a crunch unfortunately and we’re forced to gear a little toughness and a little HP to make up for our natural deficiencies in WvW play. This makes us either give up damage to stay alive or attempt to risk it as a bit more offensive for Lightning Rod damage. Constant source frustration for me with the Elementalist since the beginning.

“Next up tonight is the Zelyhn Story, how one poor Elementalist fought against all odds to get his build accepted in a sea of inefficient players. Starring Dudly Doright as Zelyhn and Snidely Whiplash as that mean ol’ Kodiak.”

lol…

I mean you make it sound like someone changing from Major Trait III to Major Trait IV is ground breaking game play innovation. “For this boss…deep breath…I’m going to use Signet of Air instead of Armor of Earth….I know it’s risky but I’m a trend setter! Someone has to pave these roads!” yet they all pretty much run around the same traits and the same gear with the same game play.

Here’s the truth buddy. I wouldn’t submit anything to this community even if I somehow did manage to come up with some groundbreaking breakthrough because it’s pretty toxic. That was the entire point of my original post here. Everything is great and dandy if you’re suggesting the meta, but the minute someone, anyone, posts something outside of it and it’s usually ridiculed, slammed and put down. Even you had to fight to get people to try something good, which is ridiculous.

The only reason builds can’t co-exist with each other is because people start to label one build better or worse than another. Maybe that’s what you don’t understand. I don’t care if your build or another build or whatever is most efficient. I care that there’s no room for anything else with that kind of mentality and posts.

Dusty Moon.4382:

EremiteAngel.9765:

i support this. T1 blobbing is horrendous.

Well, 2 servers in T1 only know how to blob. They try to win by just sheer force of numbers and no skill. nothing can be done about that besides bring on the new BL map which will kill the blob.

By kill the blob you mean make it even larger to overcome built in PvE defenses that smaller groups of players are inequipped to defeat against even a few defenders?

GWEN works for a variety of reasons.

Guardians and Warriors can generate a lot of AOE stability to carry the Necros stability while the Elementalists get tons with Armor of Earth now. Other classes need a lot of sources. Rangers can work because of Rampage as One and Signet of the Wild for example.

In addition many of these classes buff and provide utilities to each other outside of the Necros who are primarily there for their massive Well spike damage. Mesmers also part of this and provide veils, portals and other utility as needed (reflects, etc).

However GWEN’s damage is largely melee or ground target based and not projectile based. Anyone who has played a ranger out in WvW knows that feeling when you run into 4-5 guardians and Mesmers running reflect and nothing you do is applying any kind of damage or worse you are killing your own team. Engineers are also largely projectile based as well which hurts them immensely. Rangers can at least swap out to Great Sword and with stability and the rest of their protection actually perform pretty well in the melee.

A lot of people like to go on and on and on (and on and on and on…) about how easy GWEN classes are to play. The simple truth here is that things were made simple for people because it’s good commanding to make things simple for your people. Expecting everyone to play their class like it’s high end tourney play is ridiculous and unrealistic when you’re talking about 40+ people let alone enforceable. If other classes like Engineer had something to offer GWEN then they’d be made simplified as well.

In a zerg, tons of symbols of swiftness everywhere and a 1200m blink to keep up.

Without my Traveler runes do the trick.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

The only person talking about the meta is you Kodiak.

We are the most advanced class with the highest variety of builds and tons of variations. I have almost never seen anyone from this educated community say “your build is not meta enough so you will perform poorly” but I have seen you crusade upon every single PvE thread and copy-paste your usual rant against anyone who would advise efficiency. You name me as the evil mind behind this “drone swarm” of people who want to perform well. Yet the D/F build for which I am known has never been considered as “meta”. However this build is efficient, and this is why it has gained unprecedented popularity. So you see, it is perfectly possible, and perfectly acceptable to be different. In fact it is encouraged. Therefore you should relax, Kodiak. Your inquisition against the people who give clever and efficient advice is pointless.

On the one hand you lead out saying we have the highest variety of builds with tons of variations. You also say no one says people’s builds are not “meta” enough so you will perform poorly. On the other hand you immediately then launch into an entire rant about efficiency.

“We have lots of variety of builds and lots of viable builds but this is the most efficient way to play and if you’re not playing this you are inefficient and bad.”

That’s a contradiction, and like any contradiction one side invariably gives. Know what that side is? Variety and variation. You go to any thread asking for advice, no one talks about variety or variation. Everyone talks about efficiency.

That’s great. Honestly, truly, it is fantastic. However, don’t sit there and claim we have tons of variety and variation when everyone recommends the same two builds for SPvP, another two builds for PvE, and another two builds for WvW and any kind of variation or variety from that is slammed as inefficient, bad, or terrible.

That’s actually the right answer Taiyetos.

Then if they want something different THEN we get into imperfect answer territory because you’ll have the drone swarm will come out and poop on anything not meta.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Bonezz.4961:

I was following a group around and was threatened to be mass reported by a guild

I love WvW and think you will too – you should stay. Don’t let the downers chase you away. There are some great suggestions above on how commanders should be using up-levels.

As for the reporting bit you’re doing nothing wrong by playing WvW. In fact, mass reporting for a false offense is an offense itself.

So are you confirming that it’s not trolling to take an up leveled character and purposely follow around a group with the intent to grief them by rallying their opponents in group fights? “Oh but I’m just trying to play the game in WvW! Honest!”

Forget siege trolling we just found the new way for griefers to grief WvW.

A lot of people migrated the Fresh Air scepter builds over to S/F from S/D.

Basically /Dagger is 5 melee attacks (2 CCs), a 1 cleanse/heal, mobility move, and defensive frost aura. Focus is 4 ranged attacks (3 CCs), a projectile destroy, a 3 cleanse/missile reflect, a damage immunity, and a fire aura.

A lot of people prefer the defense that Focus Earth 4/5 and Focus Air 4 provides against projectile based classes like the ever growing popular Power Ranger. Straight up damage immunity doesn’t hurt either. Meanwhile /Dagger has no answer to projectile classes and often times has to straight up eat most of the damage if caught.

Both still have merits. Even if not as popular, /Dagger still provides those two strong AOE melee CCs (Updraft and Earthquake) which are great for getting groups of people off downs (yours or theirs) and RTL is always great mobility. Focus just has more what people are looking for these days again going back to all them Rangers.

All they gotta do is rotate everyone one color over. Make BL Green. OG Blue. FR Red.

This way all the servers with all the people who are losing in WvW get the most defensive base in FR and all the winning servers get the swiss cheese base of BL. It won’t fix every match up, but it will do is take the edge off.

As it stands I don’t even bother when our server ends up on BL each week cause honestly it’s just a huge waste of time.

It’s nothing personal, it’s just mechanics.

A lower level character who is upleveled isn’t anywhere on par with someone max level. This means in a group fight you’re just going to go down and rally the enemy team. Even if you’re super careful in Vit/Tough gear and super amazing player there’s still a good chance at some point this will happen and you will go down and cause the enemy to rally.

Sticking around in WvW and doing meanial tasks like escorting yaks, manning siege or really anything is just going to make you level even slower and make sure you aren’t as useful as you could be to the map even longer. Sitting around in a tower and scouting for your team for 3-4 hours is super useful and anyone can do it but it yields almost nothing to you personally.

You’re much better off going to EOTM, farming your way to 80, picking up those WvW ranks as you go, and then getting into WvW once you’re 80 and geared yourself out a bit.

People complain because they are unhappy.

If you don’t want a lot of complaints don’t do something that will nearly universally annoy people. Or choose to do it and put up with the complaints.

Anet is of the second mentality since they pretty much ignore their forums anyways.

I also do a Mesmer and I like the Ele as a complementary class. Mostly because the only thing my Mesmer doesn’t excel at in the game is large scale WvW (you’re basically just a veil/portal bot). Elementalist on the other hand fits very nicely there and most other roles and parts of the game as well.

Personally I don’t sweat it.

There’s so many different varying levels of elitism and expectations it’s unreal. I saw a warrior kicked cause he “might” have not been wearing berserker or on the meta spec. Saw an ele kicked for not being LH a few days ago. Saw another ele just yesterday kicked for not having Persisting Flames (I was on my Mesmer). I saw a Ranger get kicked yesterday cause they weren’t sure who was doing low DPS so they just defaulted to him. It’s just absolutely nutters and sadly those are just the recent ones I can remember out of the reasons I seen people kicked.

Truth is groups are dime a dozen. Just keep going on with what you were doing and find another one that may not be so tightly wound.

I use OBS to record cause you can change the bit rate to whatever quality you want.

Works great and usually keeps vids pretty small.

For as long as I’ve played this game (the start) the social norms I’ve always seen and heard has been:

Downed = Ress right away.
Fully Dead = Run back or wait till fight is over.

Just how it is. Has nothing to do with laziness or being a jerk or anything. It’s simply a better use of everyone’s time if the dead run back and the downed get ressed quick as a general rule. As with any rule there are some exceptions, but over all this tends to check out.

As a long time Tier1/Tier2 player in this game this is just how Tier1 has been and always will be. WvW has been a complete and utter afterthought for Anet for a very long time. Once in a great while we’ll get thrown a bone like the WvW advancement system and the new borderlands map. They refuse to even acknowledge the problem of “Nightcapping” let alone address it with some kind of variable point system based on population.

You either accept the system as is or you find your own solution to your problems cause Anet ain’t gonna do jack or squat for you.

What the price will come down to is the difficulty of getting them through alternative means vs desire for the item.

Going through some legendary crazy 50 step process for a Torch precursor or dropping 100g on the AH it’s easy to see that the 100g is preferable.

However some 50 step process to pick up a more desireable Legendary like Greatsword, Staff, etc you can easily see a scenario where people would rather do the 50 step process instead of paying the current 900+g or so for those items.

So the price on the less desirable Legendaries might come up a bit because the alternative way to get them is more painful than the gold (but not so much because they still aren’t as desireable) meanwhile the price of the more desirable precursors will drop a bit because the alternative method of acquiring them won’t take as long as grinding the gold would but still be worth a bit due to demand.

The elite skills are the only complaint I have about the Elementalist as a class.

Community around here can be down right toxic at times as well, but that’s most class forums.

Jerus’ response pretty much sums up my experience with it much nicer than I could ever say it. It gets the job done in most scenarios you need it to get the job done and I’m very comfortable with the weapon set from SPvP and WvW Roaming. I also like the burst in content like living story where often cases you have fights where bosses are vulnerable for a very short period of time then invuln the rest.

Unique for the sake of being unique isn’t superior but the way you read some of these posts man it’s like you can’t possibly succeed in this game unless you conform perfectly to someone’s build. Not everything has to be about one extreme view or another: Moderation in all things.

OMGimAnoobLOLOL.4730:

I must’ve missed where he specifically said “No max dps / meta builds” I fail to see how any of Ark’s suggestions were the opposite of what he said. OP simply said he wasn’t sure if zerk was the way to go and Ark showed some really good builds that were. The only thing I seen otherwise was a low single target weapon with half tank stats.

I’m sorry you feel offended by what Ark said and are on a rampage. Go out for a jog, get your head back into the game and stop making this thread an emotional crusade

It’s all good, the OP came back and clarified their position for you. You may find this surprising, but the Berzerker meta is literally plastered everywhere. Generally speaking if someone is looking for build advice that it is incredibly likely that they saw that and weren’t interested (or the threads end up being about how they tried it but can’t pull it off).

Unfortunately people are incapable of addressing those people and just shout the same things even louder (zerker Zerker ZERKER!) and many of us who can give them viable alternatives (even if they don’t conform to your standards of “good” despite working just fine) are also usually shouted off these forums as well. One would think the strength of the build would be enough of it’s own argument without having to simultaneously talk down other builds but that never seems to be the case.

Kinda sad you can’t even have a discussion without it being “a crusade.”

Iris Ng.9845:

Maybe it’s just me who lacks aptitude but I would love to see a footage of how you tackle, perhaps, 3-4 copper and/or silver mobs with your usual scepter/dagger combos. May I suggest solo an occupied objective in Silverwaste. I find it pretty “challenging” for new elementalists.

Awaiting for your recorded footage,
Sincerely,

P.S. The cleave is really not as strong as mobs can just walk away, or CC you, or simply charge to you and deal a considerable damage that forces you to cancel your channeling. Oh and I forget, how would you deal with multiple silver and gold as one? Like Elite Risen or Elite Mordrem?

Do you mean like if we take Red Rock Garrison and we hold it for a bit there’s some Veterans and eventually some Elites that spawn? Cause “occupied” to me means the part where the Mordrem own the tower and not the Pact forces and there’s no Veterans/Elites during then so I don’t think you’re talking about that. I just want to be clear what I’m going for as typically when I do Silverwastes I go find partially completed instances (LFG -> then look for “SW X% complete” taxis) and go there and ride the wave of easy mode staff farming on group content or honestly just bring my Ranger and afk rapid shot snooze fest my way through it. I also, in order to maximize rewards, typically don’t stick around and defend beyond a few kills because if I down 4-5 mobs and then move on to the next base I can get more reward chests that way.

BUT if you can clarify I can see what I can deliver to you in a few days (WvW reset in T1 and all that makes for busy weekends ).

I will also admit that I’m leery, but not deterred, from posting a video. Typically it either becomes a pointless argument of, “How many times did it take for you to get those results NYAH!” or “Here’s a bunch of random critiques about how you play without caring about results NYAH!” which makes the whole affair a huge waste of time. Haha I remember when Zelyhn went on and on about how I was using Scepter Fire 1 on a WvW door for a few ticks till FGS was up…it’s like there’s 3 superior rams on the door…it doesn’t matter what I’m going to do to it the thing is going down lol…but I digress.

@Auren I’m glad I didn’t misunderstand what you’re saying, but yes ultimately you going to end up meleeing at some point. A lot of mobs have gap closers and will end up closing range regardless. However if you use a ranged weapon like Scepter or Staff ranged is always a viable option if Melee becomes inconvenient.

Conditions will be more viable post HOT when the max stacks go away. TBH we’re going to be one of the few classes that benefits immensely from this as we can easily stack more than 25 bleeds with strong Bleed duration as we have some of the longest lasting bleeds in the game. I actually have a few condi builds I use that are pretty crazy in terms of condis it can kick out but I stopped posting them around here cause the relentless negativity out of some people who take a dump on anything not berserker has long since gotten old.

@Ark: You literally gave the OP exactly what the OP said they weren’t looking for. I mean section by section, every build the exact opposite what they said they were looking for.

I don’t know how to make that anymore clear than that. If you’re incapable of understanding that or just being willfully ignorant of it either way it’s kinda like…why bother?

@Iris Ng: Do you really need more cleave than the DT -> Ring -> Phoenix -> Blast -> Arcane Brill combo when doing solo? I mean that alone will down most Veterans I’ve fought let alone if you take it a step further and EQ -> Churn -> Air (while Churn) -> Light + Flash. Honestly most multi-wave scenarios I tend to split the Fire -> Air combo and Fire -> Earth -> Air combo and that’s sufficient for cool downs and keeping the might stacks at 25. Honestly if you need more cleave than that you likely aren’t doing solo content anymore. Only time I’ve found stacking defense is obsolete is when 1) You know the encounter well enough you can handle avoiding all the damage or 2) you’re going to get one shot regardless of what you put on. Again, I’ve always found the high burst of Scepter and the sustain of 00044 to be a great combo.

Ark.9586:

“Mindless berserker build”

So being efficient is mindless?

It’s mindless to blindly accept the same information vomited all over the place and then mindlessly lapped up only to be vomited by the next individual in a never ending cycle. It’s mindless because the same advice with the same builds are recommended the same number of times regardless of what the person is actually asking for. It’s mindless because when those same people who lapped it up have issues and are frustrated they’re dying and embarrassing themselves in groups they’re told to learn to play cause the build is fine. It’s mindless because you’re not bringing anything new or fresh to the table, you’re just co-oping the builds already plastered around everywhere else.

Being efficient is wholly dependent on the metrics used to gauge efficiency. If we’re talking about damage over time, Scepter has one of the highest burst potentials of any weapon and many cases in PvE things don’t even live it to me swapping to Earth from Fire. Most encounters that live past that tend to be present in group content, not solo content. In fact much of solo content’s Living Story harder encounters rely on bursting as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time in between phases. However there’s many other measures of efficiency as well.

The most important part about helping someone is making sure you are giving them advice that works for them. You completely ignored the fact that the OP directly mentions they don’t want to be melee and that they’ve already seen the existing Melee oriented DPS builds and is looking for something else. Furthermore the OP goes on to state that not only do they like and are comfortable with Scepter, but they also state that a maximum DPS is not the right solution for them. What I find ironic is that in spite of all that not only do you give them exactly what they say they directly aren’t looking for but then you attempt to mock someone else who is actually addressing what they want.

Now THAT’S “yikes.”

First thing you’re going to find is you have absolutely no HP what so ever. Unless you’re extremely familiar with every boss’ moves, every PVE moves and otherwise you’re going to go down. A lot. Much of the later content, such as Silverwastes, has many moves that catch you unaware (such as Thresher vines that auto hit you regardless). Doing down level content doesn’t generally matter and max damage in that one scenario is pretty handy since you will kill everything in a few shots…but then again so will my build.

As a fellow Fresh Air build player and not a mindless berzerker drone, you know that we swap in and out of Air a lot to proc Lightning Strike and abuse those ultra low Lighting Strike and Blinding Flash timers. That means going into Water periodically and that’s why I love 4 in Water. That makes simply going into water, regardless of S/F or S/D give you Regen boon, a flat up heal, Soothing Mist and a Condi cleanse. This also is what makes Lingering Elements nice to have because Soothing Mist stays and it’s almost up forever giving you even more passive survivability.

There are tons of little conditions in this game, and especially in Silverwastes farming. From Torment/Poison to super long immobilizes a lot of it just gets dumped on your head or leapt at you. Ether Renewal is an option but seems rather wasteful when considering Arcane Brilliance is 3 stacks of Might you’re then giving up. This is especially true considering that many times it’s a single condition like cripple or immobilize that simply needs to be removed. Using Cleansing Fire, Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Wave (/D) is more than enough condition removal without having to give up 3 stacks of Might, AOE Damage and a Heal.

In the end the builds are very similar in terms of stats. You’re not going to realistically notice the difference in damage stats. The only real difference is a couple hundred power, bit of crit and crit damage for 5k more HP and a bit more toughness. With 21-25 stacks of Might on you with S/D you won’t even care and I for one appreciate the more survivability. This doesn’t mean I never Berserker staff, I do all the time at large events when survivability isn’t a factor, but when I’m soloing…this is the build for me.

This is the build I use for just about everything solo. be it events, living story, champs, whatever.

If things are really tough then I swap out my Jewelry for more tanky Knight with Celestial jewels which gives me a quick boost in armor at the cost of some power and crit damage. This also minimizes my inventory since it’s the same gear I use for WvW as Staff which is nice only having to carry around 9 slots total in my bags of extra gear.

On boss encounters where there’s absolutely no crits then I swap out Renewing Stamina for Vigorous Scepter since it’s an always on 50% vigor.

In group play I can usually swap in a staff with similar trait spread but with different major traits chosen. This keeps me not having to swap gear as much since my stats are always the same from traits (06044).

Armor of Earth can be swapped for something else as desired. Depending on what I want I will swap in Mist Form, Arcane Shield, Signet of Air, or a Conjure.

New class! Panic and all board the panic train! Choo choo!

What’s up with all the other people concerned how fast other people level?

You really think preventing me from reading tomes of knowledge, birthday insta level 20s or experience scrolls is really going to stop me from being 80 on my Revenant in the first few hours of the expansion launch? Hell, I’ll do it old school and craft it up to max crafting in 8 different crafts if you really wanna be silly about it.

Just stop worrying about it already.

I for one don’t see an issue.

Sure a 90 or 100 stack of bleeds sounds intimidating damage wise but it’s no different than if the same people it took to build those stacks did direct power based damage to you instead.

All this does is make condi specs not completely forgettable or for solo play anymore.

Becka Williams.4978:

You guys honestly think that 61 stacks of bleed is survivable?

Do you think the same number of people it took to apply 61 stacks of bleed on a target would be survivable if they spec’d power/prec instead and did damage that way?

Damage source is damage source, why cripple (pun intended) the other way to do damage?

Mo Mo.1947:

Well good to know someone who got the opportunity to participate in the beta has no appreciation for that exclusive privilege.

Do they ever have that kind of appreciation?

Half the people going to think it’ll be Revenants and Specializations and new WvW map testing 24/7 :P

The reason for this change is simple: They wanted to encourage more defensive game play. The old meta was about blitzkrieg style attacks and extreme AOE burst that would end fights fast. They’ve said many times they want to encourage players to defend what they take and not just have it be a constant attack. You can see this with the new map design as well, where they are introducing tons of benefits for defenders. By making CC stronger than Stability (since there’s an extreme amount more CC than current Stability stacks give) they accomplish this by forcing a ranged meta that is vastly slower in combat and encourages defensive tactics.

Personally I feel they went too far in the opposite direction from where it was. They really underestimated the amount of CC in their game and now the game encourages larger blobs because it will give the blob larger access to more CC to render Stability useless.

The simplest and lightest touch solution is to first look at CC’s with unlimited capability to CC people. For example Static Field, Line of Warding, Slick Shoes, Spectral Wall, etc all should have a 5 target cap added just most other AOEs in the game. They affect 5 targets, be it remove a Stability stack or actually knock em down, and after 5 they dissipate. This doesn’t make CC’s worthless because they still affect a good number of targets. This doesn’t make Stability overpowered because it’s still limited stacks that can be stripped through their limited uses. If this still isn’t enough, then other light touch changes should be made until the system is balanced.

Justifying the new system as good simply because it’s different is a poor argument. We should be expecting improvements, not something different but worse. Justifying the new system as good because it opens up other classes is also a poor argument. Those classes should get tweaked rather than change a whole system to suit a few classes. Not sure why people are willing to accept a worse over all system that is only going to get even worse when the new HOT BL maps full of choke points are introduced.

I recently went through and leveled every character to 80 in EOTM. Ranger by large and far was the worst one I did. Hated every moment 1-80 and was just waiting for the day I could finish this guy off and regulate him to Ascended material storage alt.

On a whim I decided to gear him out a bit. Figured it’d be pretty cheap using WvW badges (get tons in EOTM). However as I started to play around with different builds and different gear in the build editor I started to notice man this bad boy has a lot of damage potential and still be pretty darned survivable. At first I geared kinda kitten with ultra minimum investment of WvW gear, some Soldier Crests and only rare jewelry.

After playing with him a bit I was hooked. Replaced the Signet of the Hunt for Traveler’s Runes and now I got crazy survivability with crazy single target burst. This is what I came up with ultimately. Love taking him out in mid to large scale WvW and just focusing someone down hard. The recent stab changes with Rampage As One barely affects me in a group and still got a strong with Signet of the Wild. I find I spend most of my time finding that squishy target in a crowd and using them as a Rally bot for the rest of the people and ensuring the down while swapping between Eagle Eye and Piercing Arrows.

Not perfect. Pretty weak to heavy condi application but more than enough all around to keep going and have a great time with it.

I only have one question:

Regarding Map Design
With the recently stability changes and uncapped CC rendering stability ineffective in WvW combined the seemingly large number of potential choke points (mazes, vertical nature of the map, etc) are they all concerned that the maps will be too defensive and no one will be able to successfully attack a base that’s defended?

Please tell me you don’t take EOTM seriously.

There are so many imbalanced things in EOTM that the blue keep is by far the least of all the possible concerns you should have about EOTM.

This is a poor idea.

What constitutes a blob? 5 people? 20 people? 40 people? 70 people? The terms blob, zerg, raid and countless other synonyms used by people have no pre-defined values. Deciding on this number isn’t easy and isn’t hard to control.

Then there’s the grief aspect to it. What happens if you are 19 guys in a group and a random PUG comes up and starts hanging out giving you a debuff? Do you have any kind of recourse to solve that? What if a whole group comes over?

If they want to discourage blobbing, they need to do so through smart game play design decisions. The recent stability nerf was poorly thought out and implemented because all it has done is encouraged ranged blobbing far worse than we’ve seen since the start of the game. Decisions like this can’t be implemented without thinking them through fully.