Guild Wars 2

The ability to see looped animations. Like character running, or character swinging a weapon of a type for their class, etc.

The only thing Conjures need is the ability to pick them up and add that number of charges to the existing charges. This answers a number of problems with playing with Conjures.

1. One of the most annoying things on a Conjure spec is other people grabbing your Conjures. This eliminates that.

2. This fix retains the ability to give Conjures to others.

3. Having this many uses, especially with Conjurer Trait, should be enough to largely keep things in the recast timer of the weapon.

Yea. I mean I really have a love/hate relationship with my Ele.

On the one hand, I hate how we’re pretty much pigeon holed into a single gear type if you want a mix of defense and offense cause of our base low HP for various activities in the game where HP matter (such as WvW). Our low base HP means I’m either always gearing for HP or forced into the Water tree (which just sees nerfs cause everyone spec’d into water for such a long time) and Arcane tree to help out with the schizophrenic attunement swapping also by design to access all our tools (which then also sees tons of nerfs too). If we were given more base stats, we could veer away from such trees more freely and possibly gear setups.

On the other hand, in the hands of a good player, Elementalist can pretty much do just about anything. We’re considered one of the highest DPS classes for high end PvE. We’ve got options for solo roam WvW. We got options for zerg WvW. We do great at event/bag farming. We have tons of group support (might stacking, field generation, etc). We’re currently considered one of the better classes for SPvP these days. I mean there’s really no place in the current game we can’t find a place in as an Elementalist and that’s awesome.

The only thing we really don’t have as a class is a short/mid range weapon. Most weapons fall into the 450 (melee), 600 (mid), 900 (mid-long), 1200 (long) ranges. We have 450 (Dagger), 900 (Scepter), and 1200 (Staff) but no 600 range (outside of Dagger Water). Not that there’s a huge demand for it and honestly Scepter can play pretty close like that (for Boon stacking) but it’s really only gap we don’t have.

There is nothing in the offhand for either the blue Sylvari in the middle nor the Human Female on the right. Both of these characters are wielding swords, but neither have an offhand equipped. You can see this further in the next sequence when you see a side by side of them and you can see there’s nothing on their hip. The human has a set of armor that has a bit of a skirt with a hole in it that in certain frames can make the back half of that skirt loop look like a dagger.

While this doesn’t debunk the idea that Elementalists are getting Swords it doesn’t confirm it either.

Pretty much have always ran 06044 with pvt armor+strength runes and zerker everything else. Keep a set of Knight/Celestial jewelry if I need more defense. If I didn’t S/D as much I’d probably do Pack runes instead.

I love this spec cause when WvWing I can go staff control with Lightning Rod turns many non staff attacks into attacks. The Water traits make Water attunement into a huge defensive cool down on a 10s timer (regen boon, soothing mist regen, heal, condi removal). Arcane has some handy stuff in it for vigor, boons or staff area.

As mentioned it also nicely transforms into S/D for a Fresh Air build. I use it for SPvP and do great for unranked and solo PvE when staff is inappropriate. Just gotta swap out 3 traits and boom done.

Utility wise I tend to run some combination of Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire, Armor of Earth, Arcane Wave and Conjure Frost Bow. All have their time and place in WvW depending on what yer doing.

Support build also out there, but that’s well documented.

I gotta go with others on the single attunement focused spec.

So we’ll only be Fire Elementalist (or Air, or Water, or Earth). However, we lose the other 3 attunements, but get the option to equip additional weapon sets at once (so like Staff / Scepter+Dagger) at increased performance or completely reworked weapon sets. Also we’ll get access to a new weapon, such as Sword or Mace MH in this specialization possibly as a mid-range option (600m). Most likely just 1 element to start.

If I was a betting person I would probably bet on a sword or mace MH. We only have 1 melee, that’s Dagger, but have 2 ranged options in Scepter/Staff. Pistol kinda fills same role as Scepter. Every other type we pretty much get a conjure for. I could also see one of these options made a “mid” range weapon (600) since we lack that (and as you see with Necro Axe or Mesmer GS it’s easy to make any weapon ranged).

That pic really looks like a thief in every sense of the armor and coloring. Weapons with different effects are kinda a thing in this game.

Phantasm burst on a Mesmer is tough to beat.

oZii.2864:

Problem
Elementalist has the lowest base health and armor. In other words the lowest base survivability in the game.

This seems to be the staple argument that people bring up as to why certain traits are a must have.

This, more than anything, is what I want to see them verbally address. People (such as myself) have been saying this for a very long time and it’s quite the common response when asked what people feel is the one thing wrong with the Elementalist.

Treborlavok.3504:

Or I’ll just run my Mesmer with mantra if resolve and have 3x the aoe condition cleanse in the same time frame… And have perma vigor, stealth, clones, etc etc…

Eles give up more than any class to be able to get that tingle condition cleanse every 10 seconds.

Goes back to the old argument about eles having to do 20x the work that any other class can do better and faster and easier…. Why? Lowest hp lowest armor =…. Free bags, gotcha.

Bringing up a Mesmer is like bringing a gun (mesmer) to a knife (elementalist) fight.

It has all myriad defenses of a Thief, the base HP of a Ranger and still maintains high burst potential. It’s basically everything we aspire to be.

xiv.7136:

lowest health + lowest armor = needs something else

- highest condition removal/immunity
or
- highest mobility
or
- highest damage
or
- highest evade
or
- you get the idea

There has to be a reward for the risk, that’s the key issue with ele

Defensive boonspam, no ICD on cleansing water and RTL mobility was a potent combination to stay out of trouble despite the inherent fragility

Now that those have been reduced, something else needs to be added

Start there, solve the actual issue, bandaids don’t really help long-term

Also, have some beer and pizza

I wish I could +1000 this cause it really covers everything that needs to be said. If you want a jack of all trades, middle ground class you can’t give it some of the lowest survivability and expect it to be okay being mediocre at everything else.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

The point I’m trying to get across is that it is once again going to be very exciting to play Ele come this patch. It’s much more effective and there’s a lot more options for players. We will also continue to work hard for you guys in continuing this trend across all game mode. If it were easy or even possible to perfectly balance a game for everyone across 3 different game modes with the systems we have we would be doing so I can assure you.

Here are some quick ungrammatically correct thoughts:

To address the other player regarding his comments stressing the importance of making unappealing trait lines better; Burning fire and Diamond Skin are steps in the right direction. It’s a big patch and we are doing a lot of things for each class. We only have a certain amount of time to make changes and it shouldn’t give you the impression that these are the only things we want to do.

Burning fire will allow you to invest offensively in fire and get some defense capability that you lose if you opt points out of water/arcane. This will likely be more useful to PvPer’s rather than PvE’rs, however, PvErs already find it innately easier to take points in fire since kiting mobs is more easily done as compared to kiting players in PvP.

I think you’ll find Diamond skin will give you more freedom than you think as well. We’ve considered bringing Diamond Skin to 85% but we worry it would be too much. It definitely gives you some freedom of mobility as well as much needed negation of condi dumps on inc. This trait will help lower the risk of swapping attunements too early as well. Surely this trait scales in effectiveness with your HP and ele does have the lowest health pool however, I wouldn’t say all ele’s have 12k health pools. Your typical support elementalist with 30 points in water in PvE have around 16-19k HP and some elementalists can get their hp up to 22k. This will let you take around a 1600-2200 hit before conditions are applied. Sure thats a common hit to take in PvE but it’ll most likely have its strenth in safeguarding you in the encounters that have immobilize spam. This trait will help you negate those immobilizes and give you the opportunity to use your cleanses and heals on teammates much easier. In PvP I’m fairly certain only cleric amulet elementalists are looking at 12k hp builds. The majority of builds that are played are actually 14k+ builds. Regardless, it’s a trait that is now way better than it used to be.

Until you add baseline survivability it’s always going to be difficult to break people away from either going extremely defensive or extremely glass cannon. You have been steadily increasing the number of options for Elementalists for a long time and no one can really argue against that. The point a number of us have been trying to make is the options you are creating ultimately aren’t viable due to factors like the innate lack of survivability after all the survivability nerfs in some areas (such as healing and mobility) but no buffs to survivability in other areas.

It’s a total picture. Oh sure, Diamond Skin is neat. However since I’m forced to gear for Vitality (on top of 20 already in Water) just to get equal HP to other classes’ base line Hitpoints (15k+) that means I’m going to end up giving up points elsewhere (usually in Crit and Crit Damage). This means I’m more than likely going to end up in Air (not only because it’s one of the better lines) to raise my Crit/Crit Dmg up. While Arcane won’t be as mandatory after the patch, I still likely will end up keeping 20 in there now to pick up Elemental Attunement.

This is my beef with the Elementalist. You can add in all the coolest stuff in the world into Fire/Air/Earth but I just don’t see myself (or a vast majority of others) leaving x/x/x/20/20 without some more baseline survivability.

Nikkinella.8254:

We’re still going to be forced into arcane and water because of our super low health and lack of defensive mechanics. Eles should be the ones with multiple teleport skills on low cooldowns, not thieves. atleast then we could avoid getting hit since we’re so squishy. And most people still spec way into arcane just for the heal from evasive arcana. Changing our healing signet to function the exact same way as warrior’s healing signet would eliminate the need for this. So would removing the heal from evasive arcana and replacing it with frozen ground, then combining the heal with stop drop and roll (a trait that no one ever uses anyway). Seriously, just get rid of stop drop and roll and combine it with the cleansing wave from evasive arcana. And just put our vigor on crit trait at 5 points like other classes with similar skills.

There, problem solved. No one will have to go into water or arcane unless they want to, we’ll no longer be forced to because of crappy survivability and need to heal just to stay alive. we also need a boost to our base health. You’ve boosted warriors health in the past (the class that needed a boost in health least of all) so I know it’s possible to raise our health.

We just need more movement skills like teleports on low cooldowns on weapons, and some of our traits moved around where they would actually be useful.

Actually what should happen is Mesmers should get our HP pool because they do have a lot of in combat mobility/defenses (stealth, teleport, distortion, clones, etc) and we should be brought up to theirs. Then it would more closely mirror the thief/ranger style design.

It’s the shortest path between the two points but Anet seemingly wants to live in denial about the situation and are trying to come up with every other possible idea except the most obvious one.

All they can do is read usage reports based on what we do/use.

As more and more tournaments pass on by and no Elementalist are part of them and enough time has passed they will learn and finally do something meaningful. Until then find something else to do and for God’s sake don’t pay them a dime.

This is all dog chasing it’s own tail.

Our mobility/heals were gutted. Here we are for Round 2 by moving good traits into Master tier so we can’t get the benefit of having two good traits in the Adept/Master slot and instead only get one good trait in a Master slot and something useless in the Adept slot.

OH! But why oh why is there no build diversity!?!

Anet is the root cause of this problem. They nerf our survivability on a class that already suffers survivability issues because we spec into survivability to resolve those survivability issues which only furthers our need to spec into survivability which causes a seemingly endless barrage of nerfs to our survivability.

It’s like they’re incapable of seeing the forest through the trees. One of these days someone over there, probably some brash young intern, will recognize that if they wanted build Diversity all they need to do is raise our hitpoints up and we’ll no longer be forced into survivability paths and we all all cheerfully play builds that we actually want instead of builds we are forced to just to survive.

But, you know, lets take a wrecking ball to the whole existing survivability structure to see if that breaks it up. I’m sure when we’re at thief level survivability but completely and totally lack their burst damage or in combat mobility that people are assured to keep playing the class because….

…uh…

…reasons.

Lack of Health.

It’s entirely why we spec the way we have to and not the way we want to. Until this changes, nothing else really matters. They can dangle buffed Conjures, but we still need/want Cantrips. They can offer new Grandmaster traits and we’ll still end up speccing x/x/x/20/20 in most cases. We will always have to gear for Hitpoints which will force us into weird/expensive gear builds just to make up for a lack of what other classes get naturally.

Honestly the whole thing is pants on head kittened design. Look at the medium armor users. Thief has lowest HP (11k), most in combat mobility and escapes. Ranger has medium HP (15k), and relies a lot on regeneration for heals. Engineer has huge HP pool. Now look at the light armor users. Elementalist has lowest HP (11k), relies on a number of small heals/regen to tally up. Mesmer has medium HP (15k) and has a huge amount of in combat mobility and escapes. Necro has huge HP pool.

See how it’s criss-crossed there? The in combat mobility/escape class has that in combat mobility/escape mechanics because they have the lowest HP. Instead, for light armor, it’s the class with Medium HP pool who can ignore gearing for HP which also now lets them have high burst HP while still having good mitigation via Toughness.

Utterly stupid.

On a whole the Elementalist changes continue their trend of a “dog chasing it’s own tail.”

Still you put in more changes hoping to make the Fire/Air/Earth lines more attractive to use and still you fail to realize that the problem with those trees is not that they aren’t already compelling but that it’s extremely difficult to get away from points in Water/Arcane simply due to survivability issues. We lack the mobility/escapability of a Mesmer but have less HP. Design wise this makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

We used to have things that made up for this lack of HP but patch after patch they’ve consistently and constantly driven us deeper and deeper into survivability trees to make up for the losses. You took our in combat mobility away and gutted most of our healing and wonder why we spec down the most defensive trees? Really? When that no longer became viable we went the other route (full offense) and here you are now gutting that by making any decent adept trait go into Master.

Also moving Arcane V and VI to Master tier is a humongous slap in the face towards any non staff build.

You really need to figure out what you want this class to be/do and stop with the “jack of all trades” nonsense because all you’ve left is a pitifully weak character at any role that isn’t better replaced with another class entirely. With these changes support is better done by a Guardian (because you can no longer spread your support out across all 3 traits) and all we’re left with is AOE tags for WvW. Whoopity doo.

Also the original “One with Air” actually was used to exploit events that removed weapons/utilities. For example last year during the Mad King’s Clock Tower I always had the +25% runspeed on cause I stayed in Air Attunement making it much easier.

So here’s some realities.

A lot of people like to talk about blast finishers and how they’re the primary source of healing. An organized force (such as a guild) you’ll certainly have a number of Guardians doing this. However, I find it’s still pretty rare to see more than 1-2 doing it when you have a force rolling around and sometimes none if the force has no real organization.

That said it was pretty viable to play a support/healer prior to the Evasive Arcana nerf. We had many sources of healing (more than a Guardian even) and most of which in WvW got full benefit from +Healing making it pretty worth while. After the nerf you basically gotta aim dodge roll right on top of someone to hit with it (since they will be moving around too most likely so the small 180 radius is easy to miss with). It can make it far more challenging to say the least.

The new Water Blast actually helps out in the scenario of taking on doors to counter act Arrow Carts. Auto attack the door and splash heal the people near it. In other scenarios targets are unreliable to hit/heal your target as desired so it’s not really as useful.

The people who think you get zero tags have no real concept on how you play this. It’s not like you’d sit in Water 100% of the time and do nothing. Usually it was more along the lines of drop Static Field, drop Meteor Swarm, then switch to Water and use the skills there while you wait. It’s still pretty easy to hit around 2000 Power, 1400 Healing and have plenty of Tough/Vitality.

A lot of this is experience and not knowing the mechanics of this instance.

1. All riflemen put a target marker on the target they are going to snipe. So if you get a target maker around your feet, you have to count to 2 then dodge (or break LOS, or switch to earth and fire Magnetic Aura to reflect).

2. Many encounters in this instance are based around projectiles and Reflect is amazingly awesome in this place. Mesmers and Guardians can really make it face roll since they will reflect all of those heavy shots and then some as people stack up. This is why Mesmers/Guardians/Warriors are often considered the holy trinity for PvE in this game cause they are all tremendous survivability, utility and don’t need to sacrifice DPS output.

Really after a while the most dangerous part will actually be the thief style mobs that do death blossom (where they flip mid air) and put 6+ stacks of bleed and a poison on you at the same time. Few of those and it drops anyone who doesn’t have condition removal handy.

Andross.5183:

Don’t forget the unholy amounts of damage warriors can inflict. The warrior is totally overpowered while eles lack in their main area: damage. What the ele lacks in health, is not being compensated with damage. Instead eles are being forced to use artificial tools such as conjured weapons to try and compete. The design of this class went wrong on so many levels, that nowadays only masochists still play it.

Couldn’t possibly agree more.

Except I’d extend the list to sentimentalists who invested a huge amount of time/resources into their Ele and don’t want to give that investment up (who then come the forums to complain incessantly as a result of their situation) as well as people who only do PvE and since anything works in PvE they are content as being better or worse in PvE doesn’t matter.

sorrychief.2563:

Oh yah sorry for having fun. Nice one!

Fun is not allowed.

You’re only allowed to be optimal.

30 FPS is more than enough for most recording and playing.

The real issue is that even if you do make a video people will analyze you second by second, frame by frame and basically it’ll become pointless because even the best players in the game can’t hold up under that kinda Monday-Morning Quarterbacking. Anything that can be used against you, even if it has nothing to do with the point you’re trying to make, will be held against you.

Mbelch.9028:

People need to stop saying FOTM and start spelling it out. I see it used as flavor of the month and fractals of the mists. Someone clarify, as there are no contexts to what this guy is asking.

My answer works for either scenario

The FOTM Ele spec is Warrior.

Sounds like you’ve got it covered.

DrTenma.7249:

Convoluted is the name of the game.

Work 5x as hard to get the same results as a Warrior.

Nothing new.

Chaosky.5276:

It’s great, but the fact that it’s linked to Attunement swapping makes it difficult to get Stability when I actually want it.

Which is why I don’t use it.

With Persisting Flames and a Scepter build you already had Permanent Fury for the whole team.

Nothing new.

Conjures will never be viable until they address the innate lack of statistical survivability on the Elementalist. Our HP is abysmal and our armor is abysmal forcing us to either rely entirely on Utilities to crank up survivability (Cantrips) or to gear to make up for the lack of attributes which then allow us to focus more on offensive burst damage (Arcane) and survivability (Cantrips).

The only time they are even remotely useful is PvE where the game play is so easy that you can easily get away with equipping them with no real penalty or loss (or rather the penalty/loss is easily ignored or overcome back the lack of difficulty).

Some people like certain roles and will make them regardless if the general population thinks they are bad, pointless or worthless. It’s just how they prefer to play.

That’s why people make Support characters.

BlackBeard.2873:

Zelyhn.8069:

I am one elementalist’s hp pool away from deciding to reroll a warrior.

Already started leveling my warrior and joining the masses in pvp with my OP healing signet!

Its really not fun out-playing your opponent to an absurd degree and still losing over and over and over b/c even at your best efforts you do less than a ranger spamming 1 or a warrior just doing anything.

That’s why I love my Mesmer and Warrior.

One day they will get the message about the Elementalist and fix it.

Zelyhn.8069:

STRanger.5120:

You’ll be able to kill ppl which are AFK, does that suffice?

Edit: It’s like if you wanted to play a warrior with two and a half weapon skills, would you like that?

Kodiak would disagree

This is a thread for someone asking for help on a build.

QUICK ATTACK HIM WITH SPREADSHEETS AND INFORMATION HE ISN’T ASKING FOR!

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Kodiak.3281:

if they are paranoid and crazy

Not being able to “factually prove” it won’t stop me from kicking you regardless.

Yeap.

Wethospu.6437:

Now your advice to him is to do whatever he wants because other players can’t detect it. If he has something to hide that means other players wouldn’t want to play with him. From neutral perspective, that’s not the optimal situation. Instead it is extremely selfish because you are overriding other people’s wishes with yours.

The only advice in that scenario is essentially to not worry about it because virtually no one calls each other out on DPS and if they are paranoid and crazy and do try to call you out on your DPS they have no way to factually prove how much DPS you are or aren’t doing.

Naturally, people being people, decided to run with the clearly never would happen hyperbolic scenario I mentioned and now want to draw the conclusion I’m advocating to leech off your group. All I can really say is good luck with that.

Karazul.2934:

I agree that everyone should play as they want… but not in my party.

Everyone should decide if they want to be a good or a bad. If you know the meta for PvE is full dps and you want to go support because “its fun” you are not thinking about the rest of the party, so you are being egoistic. You want to have fun while the others carry you through the content. You are also making everyone waste time and If its someone like me who has limited game time a week, its even worse.

Sorry Kodiak, you have a bad mentality and I hope people here dont listen to whatever you said.

I think the mistake is that impression is that the “advice” I’m giving doesn’t already happen on a day in and day out basis in the vast majority of PUG groups.

There’s already speed run groups clearly defined as speedrun groups for people who want to be min-maxed out to be a part of. There’s also super slow crawl runs where people who don’t want to skip anything and clear everything, too. Vast majority of the rest of groups already are doing what I’m saying and are just there for the rewards and don’t really concern themselves with things too much.

The only egotistical part is saying that one way is better than another.

Zelyhn.8069:

Kodiak tell me:

• is it possible to fail the encounter in CoF p3 where you have to hold the zone while getting attacked by multiple waves of mobs?
• is it possible to fail against Giganticus Lupicus?

It’s possible to fail anything. It’s possible to fail COF P1 in fact.

What’s the point of this question?

Zelyhn.8069:

In the end it is not an argument of Elitists VS non-elitists, it is a debate of advice-givers VS “don’t-care-about-others”-tellers.

Being elitist, by very definition, is implying that the way you are doing things is better than the other ways people are doing things. This is fundamentally incompatible with:

Zelyhn.8069:

Of course you should play the way you want.

According to you, if we don’t play with trying to min-max and optimize our game play then we are selfish and leeching off the group and not caring about others. This leaves no room to play how we want.

Your problem isn’t that you’re too much of a humanist it’s that you’re simply wound up too tight and worked up over a non-issue. You are making something out of nothing. This isn’t some great philosophical debate that will kittenoed into eternity. It’s a video game. In video games you’re supposed to have fun and relax and not worry about things. Some people have fun by working out how to be the best they can possibly be. These people tend to stick to each other and look for other speed run groups. Other people just like to hop in and do whatever. I have a guild member who hates any kind of speed runs or skipping any dungeon content and she likes to clear out everything as we go through. Do I think she’s wrong or bad or otherwise? No. She just likes different things than me and has different standards. At the end of the day long as everyone is having fun and the content gets done then that’s all that matters.

This is why it’s important to give the right advice to the right individual and really listen to what they’re looking for. Big Tower was looking for a support build because he has fun playing support and supporting his team. He isn’t looking for the min-max route even if you think that would be the best way to support his team because that wouldn’t be fun for him. You need to learn to accept that there isn’t one size fits all advice.

Bismuth.3165:

That’s the bad performance mentality since 95% dungeons excluding high level fractals can be done even if you’re not wearing any armor.

This has been my entire point.

Zelyhn.8069:

It’s amazing how you avoid answering anything properly

Anyway there has never been a 15 hour dungeon because people care about performance and so they try to play so it takes less time!

And why is that?

Because they don’t listen to people who tell them to just wave their arms around. Because people want to be good at what they do.

How is this so bloody hard to understand ?

It’s pretty amazing how you think stripping down a complex issue into a yes/no format is really going to prove anything.

There’s never been a 15 hour dungeon because your average player in average gear is capable of completing the game content easily enough not to take 15 hours. What is not required is people min-maxing their performance in order to complete content as you’re implying.

Pretty much everyone gets that but you.

The entire idea of your question is problematic because there’s (likely) never been a 15 hour dungeon run and nor would it be the result of the advice that I am giving and is therefore irrelevant to this conversation. If you want to ask a question that is relevant and based on the real game that we play I will be happy to answer it.

Your entire argument is predicated on the idea that by under-performing then groups will fail and content will not get done. This is entirely theoretical and virtually never happens (with the usual reason being content doesn’t get done because people don’t know the content). It’s a spectre or boogyman that has no basis in actual reality.

This means people can do whatever they want in terms of character build and gear build and the content still will get done. Therefore that advice holds true and ultimately no one is harmed because the content still gets done at the end of the day.

Do you see me replying to any thread where people are asking for maximum DPS builds and telling them it’s pointless? No. Do you see me going to the min-max threads discussing max DPS builds and telling them they are pointless? No. Do you see me finding people who want to know about the maximum possible DPS and attempting to dissuade them from being max DPS? No.

You have a lot of opinions, but nothing to really back up anything you have to say.

Bismuth.3165:

Saying you want to complete the content isn’t a real answer, who the kitten goes to a dungeon and thinks “I’m not really in the mood to finish it, I’ll just leave midway,” his question wasn’t whether you want to complete the content or not, his question was do you perform well when in pug groups?(bring the optimum gear, do what is expected to be done from your class)

It actually is a real answer and if you don’t understand why it’s a real answer then you don’t really understand the position being presented by it. To repeat, essentially performance doesn’t matter because all that matters is that the content gets done. Whether I’m performing well or poorly is never even considered. All that’s considered is whether or not the content gets done. From that basis you can see the logical disagreement take shape.

All I and others care about is that the content gets done. We’re there for tokens/gold/whatever and long as we get that fantastic. Mission accomplished. Fast or slow doesn’t matter to us. Consequently build doesn’t really matter because long as the content gets done that was the only metric set. Ignoring hyperbolic examples (such as people wearing white gear with no traits selected) your average player with an average spec is more than enough to contribute to downing most of the game’s current content.

In opposition to that standpoint all that matters to them is that they are doing dungeons in the most efficient method possible. They have reasoned out that going maximum DPS is the core to this route and consequently try to build and recommend others play under this same banner. The idea being is that if everyone is kicking out maximum DPS the content will get done faster and people can move on and get more done in less amount of time. In addition this play style is somewhat reliant on others also having similar spec’s because their spec’s aren’t designed to last very long meaning they also need the group to have high DPS so they don’t have to. They also feel that anyone who doesn’t follow this mentality automatically is leeching on their group members because they aren’t contributing the maximum amount of DPS they could be.

So you can see where the two clash. Why we have to clash or why we can’t co-exist on the forums is kinda beyond me. Obviously the people who are looking for a maximum DPS source have multiple threads and multiple places to seek out information. Why the people who champion max-DPS builds constantly try to argue with people like me or give their maximum DPS advice to people who don’t want it (as the original poster said he didn’t want it) is really beyond me. You certainly won’t see me going to a max-DPS thread and telling them not to worry about it and it doesn’t matter.

There’s no point in taking it to PMs. I already asked him there to stop bothering/harassing me and responding to me publicly but he continues to do so anyways. This all stems back to a time when I said calculating a 1.1% difference in DPS was a huge waste of time and ever since he’s been obsessed and jumps onto just about anything I have to say.

Personally I’d rather he just ignore me and stop responding to me entirely but he seems to be incapable of curing himself of his obsession with me. Eventually though I get bored and stop because he usually doesn’t comprehend what’s being said (his own admission) so it’s usually like talking to a brick wall or small child who is incapable of understanding. Yet I continue to try to engage to explain hoping he might understand one time but no luck to date.

Thankfully other people seem to understand and get it so it’s not a total waste of time.

No I don’t think it is possible outside of possibly Simin in Arah P4 in which is one of the only encounters in the game that is an actual DPS race due to the high healing HP mechanic. Even then when I last did Arah P4 we didn’t have a high DPS team and we still did it because we understood the boss mechanic and how to properly wrangle the Sparks back to the altar each time.

Hundreds of PUG runs and not a single failure was due to a lack of performance. Almost all failures are due to a lack of understanding of boss mechanics such as not dodging properly or when to take appropriate action.

Answering your question yes/no isn’t too hard, it’s simply not applicable. The implications of answering “I want to complete the content” are simple enough as well. Simply put, performance is never part of the equation one way or another. It’s not I don’t care about performance (as to imply if I’m being bad then I don’t mind being bad) as to say it’s not even considered (as to imply I don’t even ask if I am being good or bad).

The only time I even remotely consider performance at all is on a group level perspective. I’ll use a reference that you probably won’t get. Imagine you’re driving on the Highway and you’re around 4 other people. The law states if traffic speeds up even past the speed limit you gotta drive faster because it’d be reckless to drive slower and put others around you in danger. The same law states if traffic is slower than the speed limit then you gotta slow down with them. Those are certainly two extremes so typically you will end up mostly around the middle with someone driving slightly slower than the limit, few people driving faster, and few people at the limit.

I take that parallel back to grouping and game play. If I’m in a group and they are going at break neck speed then I keep pace to that. If I am in a group and they are crawling through the dungeon slowly killing everything I keep pace to that. Most groups tend to hover somewhere in between skipping some mobs/encounters and killing at a reasonable pace.

An example would be my various Arah runs. Now most groups I joined did Lupicus from range. They simply were incapable of doing him fast as melee. If I tried to force them to do the encounter melee which would be faster, we wouldn’t have been able to complete the content because they wouldn’t have been capable of doing it. Conversely when doing a few runs with higher end groups and individuals who wanted to do him melee and backing out and doing range could also potentially not enable us to do the content because melee stacking is usually based on the idea of everyone stacking together. Again, content wouldn’t have gotten done.

So you can see from that example, the metric is not about what is better, but about completing the content.

ThiBash.5634:

To be honest, the differences are quite a bit larger than I’d expected. On a standard 30 seconds rotation, you’d have something like: Glyph of Elemental Harmony/Geyser/6x Cleansing Wave (from swap and EA dodge).

With your numbers, your actual build would heal for (5007+2538+6x1452=)16257. With the healing build that’d be (6055+3585+6x2763=)26218. That’s almost 10k more without taking into consideration regeneration or soothing mist.

I’m not saying I’m gonna swap over to full healer all of a sudden, but those numbers sure are impressive.

The amount of healing we get is very, very impressive and is actually very noticeable the more you stack healing mostly due to all sources of Cleansing Wave (blast finisher, swap, EA) all gain +100% of healing in WvW/PvE. It isn’t hard if you run the numbers (as has been done in the past) to see the actual differences.

The usual counter arguments towards healing usually revolve around other classes being available and there which isn’t always the case. I honestly see very few shout healing warriors for all they are talked about. Also outside of organized groups, very rarely do Guardians run around bashing Water fields to blow up AOE heals and if we’re talking about organized groups they typically have their own builds they want you to run.

I mean if I can out heal/out CC a thief and survive I think that says a lot of how strong the healing is.

And again my answer is when I am in a group I want to complete content.

It is strange that it’s so hard for you to accept my answer. It’s almost like you’re trying to setup a narrative based on what you presume my response would be. Hmm suspicious.

Your question is based off your taking another meaning from my response (I am there to complete the content). Therefore, your question is really to yourself because I can’t answer a question based on how you pretend I responded.

I’ve already answered the question directed at me. If you want to continue to have a conversation with yourself by imagining my response to be something it’s not and then asking questions based on your fantasies of how I responded then I leave you to it.

I did.

Maybe you can pretend I said something different like you normally do and have an over the top reaction to the thing you imagined I said but that I never actually said?

This is what I use for WvW support:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbxR4QlDAkHvcCLjChUeMzO2A-jECB4hBhaIIZPFRjtuJsVXRr8KIqZER1KbYSB8tyI-w

(except I have Exotic Jewelry and not Ascended)

1. This gives me pretty kitten ed good healing power and the ability to make use of it. Regen gets the most effect out of Healing Power and as a stacked buff the most powerful Regen heals others. This means by making our Regen super long (85% duration) this makes our sources of Regen (Elemental Attunement and Healing Rain) very good.

2. Arcane Wave gives us a second chance at a Blast Finisher which is always good for providing AOE Healing, AOE Swiftness or AOE Might for the team. Cleansing Fire is good for clearing multiple conditions (this will clear a ton in one press due to traits) and Stability/Protection from Armor of Earth is pretty handy.

3. Offensively I gave up Crit but didn’t sacrifice Power. Power translates to raw damage and many things in dungeons can’t be hurt by Crits/Conditions anyways. Going Healing Power usually means you end up giving one area or another and I have multiple sets of gear for other play styles. You can get Crit (such as with Magi gear), but with no Crit Dmg it’s kinda pointless.

All around pretty tanky. I’ve survived a lot of Thieves 1v1 in WvW like this which was pretty impressive to me especially cause it’s a staff based build. If it can survive good in WvW with a thief on you, should do good in dungeons since most of the support is AOE and can be given to allies.

What’s up with people lately necroing old jokes and complaints?

Define end game.