Guild Wars 2

Know why Engineers get 1 weapon? Because their kits are able to be toggled on and off and can have 5 weapon sets with 1 heal kit, 3 utility kits, and a base weapon.

We have 1 weapon because we have 4 attunements and consequently 4 weapon sets. If Conjures were unlimited and able to be toggled on and off, we would have effectively 8 weapon sets to call upon on and off. That just is NOT going to ever happen.

Most Conjured weapons are pretty decent. The only two I don’t even semi-regularlly use are the Shield and Axe. I actually leveled up from 30-80 entirely on a Conjure Lightning Hammer and Fiery Greatsword.

My biggest complaint is that other people steal my second weapon. Nothing sucked more than being Conjure spec only to have some random kitten warrior run along and pick up my Hammer then throw it away after a few swings.

Personally I’d like it if they’d just allow you to pick up the second weapon and that would add the charges to the existing charges you have as well as add additional time for the weapon to be active. This way you can still share the weapon as needed but you can also double up and use both as well.

ditchy.8792:

I prefer 2 sup. monk, 2 sup.water, and 2 major water for extended boon duration.

This.

D/D is heavily reliant on Boons to keep going. It needs Might Stacks and Fury to deal damage in defensive gear. Same goes for other side benefits such as Protection and Regeneration and of course Swiftness. Trying to play my D/D in other gear (such as in Magic Find gear or Beserker Gear) I really notice the lack of boon duration more than any other factor.

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s possible that we’re penalized a bit too harshly, but that would be a tuning issue that could be fixed by adjusting numbers here and there. It definitely would NOT be a problem inherent in the 4-attunement design.

I disagree. While we have 4 attunements, we will never see the kinds of increases we need to make other specs viable. We don’t need slight tweaks. Slight tweaks won’t change our situation.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I do agree that we could seriously use a bigger HP pool. Cut back some of our healing sources just a little bit to compensate and this would open up our build diversity immensely.

Actually we shouldn’t have to give up an ounce of our healing. What we will end up giving up is some of our mobility and escapability which we already have immensely nerf after nerf.

Blaine Tog.8304:

This is another way of saying “better Grandmaster traits for Fire, Air, and Earth.” Those three lines could certainly use some sprucing-up.

No, that is not what that is saying at all. What that is saying is that without an alternative way to reduce Attunement Swap cool downs Arcane will always become a “mandatory” tree. If we can bypass Arcane tree entirely for that one net benefit we can instead look at alternative builds. Then on top of that, we need better Traits period that reward speccing into those trees.

I’ve said over and over again since the start that the biggest problem for the Elementalist is it’s four weapon set design system (1 weapon set, 4 sets of weapon skills one for each Attunement). This doesn’t even take into account the alternative weapon sets we have with Conjures (which Frostbow, Great Sword and Lightning Hammer are all fairly decent).

The reason it’s a problem is that we’re ultimately too heavily penalized as a class for having 4 weapon sets compared to the standard two that most classes get:

1. Our Utility skills/slots are on absurdly huge cool downs compared to other classes. This is a direct result of having 4 weapon sets each with a variety of utility baked into them. Look at something as simple as Mesmer Blink (30s) to our Lightning Flash (40s). Hard to give a class who can pull out all our Auras and other buffs we have throughout our various weapons and attunements even better Utility in the Utility slots. This is directly compared to a Mesmer or Guardian who both have much stronger Utility but are also much more limited on what they can bring through their Weapon Sets (and the utility contained within).

2. The “having 4 weapon sets” creates a self fulfilling prophecy where because we have 4 attunements if we want to truly excel we will end up needing to swap attunements. We essentially have to swap from weapon set to weapon set to blow cool downs in order to get any kind of performance as a result of our abilities being weaker categorically than other classes. Sure Fire Burst does a lot of damage, but a Mesmer can put out similar damage with a single Phantasm (in Phantasm spec) at range and on nearly 1/3rd the cool down without having to swap at all.

3. Any tree focusing on a single attunement is essentially useless as a result. This style works for other classes where they can only focus on one or two weapons but instead since we’re forced to use all of our “weapons” (attunements) anything that doesn’t benefit all ultimately can be regarded as worthless. This is why categorically the Fire tree is “bad” because it only benefits an attunement we will only be spending a fraction of our time in.

4. Arcane tree practically becomes a must for our class simply because swap times are inexcusable without the reduction. Going to and from 20+ Arcane is literally Night and Day play style wise. This ruins any other potential builds like 30/0/30/10/0 which are a shadow of what they could be by lack of the most basic ability to swap attunements in a timely manner.

Another gross inconsistently is our Hit points. When you compare the Light Armor classes to the Medium Armor classes the setup makes no sense. Necros/Engies are the tankier options with a High base HP pool. However from there that’s where things get skewed. Rangers are more bunker style through lots of regen and healing just like the Elementalist where as Thieves are more mitigation through evasion and trickery just like the Mesmer. In addition Thieves and Mesmers are both extremely high burst damage. However where as the Ranger has a medium set of HP to account for this the Elementalist instead gets the low end. This should be changed where the Mesmer should receive the lower base HP pool and the Elementalist raised based on the roles and functions we serve.

The most simplistic solution they could make is make Attunements have reduced Cool Down based on points spent in the tree AND/OR Arcane. This means if you do go 30/0/30/10/0 you would receive a 30% reduced cool down on Fire/Earth attunement and a 10% reduced cool down on Water while none in Air. However if you went 20/0/30/0/20 you would receive a 30% reduced cool down on Earth and 20% reduced cool down in Fire/Air/Water. This would preserve current play styles while opening the path towards focusing on one or two attunements.

From there the most basic method to help breathe life into our traits is to add traits that add rewards based on the amounts spent in each tree. For example with 30 points in a tree certain abilities (not all) gain additional effects. Maybe Eruption with 30 points blows up instantly? Lava Font now also snares for 1 second a tick? Etc.

The only thing I can say for sure is that NONE of this will be addressed in the next few years. It took them literally years and years and years before addressing core elementalist issues in GW1 (mob armor making Ele damage nonexistent).

Scrambles.2604:

I do love me some Metalocalypse

I literally can’t read your name without adding “The Death Dealer”

Scrambles the Death Dealer is right.

You basically just took a dump on literally every single weapon combination we got and then asked to be convinced to play one. Why not list what you like to do and people will list what builds they find successful for that activity?

If you’re married to the idea of having staff (personally I rocked Conjure Lightning Hammer from 30 → 80) I’d probably end up with a build like this

From there finish out 20 Air, then put rest into Water.

Your Arcane is setup as much as you need for Staff giving you the bigger areas. This is important as you sit in Fire and have bigger Lava Fonts to kite around in. With Renewing Stamina you should have enough Stamina to dodge around. Many cases I will just pull the mob(s) in Fire Attunement and when the mob is close just kite them in melee range around Lava Font with Renewing Stamina providing lots of dodges. Also remember you can use Burning Retreat for a 3rd dodge. You can also pre-combo up encounters such as starting in Earth, dropping an Eruption as mobs come in then switch to Fire and throw down a Lava Font and use Arcane Wave for a double Might Stack. Unfortunately Staff doesn’t offer nearly as many self combos as S/D or D/D.

Air can be tricky to use when leveling because of the Chain attack. You can pull a lot more mobs than you originally intended to. I typically use it mostly for Event farming if the mobs are spread out too much to tag them with Lava Font.

Water defensively becomes better as you gain more ranks to put more points into Water traits. If you’re having trouble surviving in higher level areas, you can take points from Air and put them into Water and then finish out last points into Air. Once it’s at 30 you will gain a ton of defense in forms of Cantrips (providing Regen and Vigor) as well as many passive heals (such as just swapping to Water is a heal). You can always leverage Arcane Wave for another Blast Finisher heal as well on a Geyser or Healing Rain.

Gear you will want to focus mostly on Power/Vitality at first. At 60 you open up the “end game” style attributes (Berserker, Knight, Clerics, Carrion, etc) and while leveling I recommend Knights. You can craft a set of yellow Knight gear at 60 which will carry you all the way to 80 or get a Tailor to do it for you if you don’t have a Tailor. Sigils are usually Bloodlust or Precision.

So for dungeons I rock two weapon sets on one build. I do use Cantrips. I use Cantrips because they are the best option all around compared to anything else we have. They provide stun breakers, huge condition management, regen/vigor (when traited), all on top of their base effects (teleport, protect/stab, invuln, condition removal). All of those are ideal for dungeons.

My over all point spread is 0/20/0/30/20. This gives me a good base to do whatever I want/need for either D/D or Staff by swapping around Traits for Staff and D/D and gear.

For D/D, I rock a slight variation of the standard Aura Share build. I lose Evasive Arcana but end up picking up a bit more damage from the Air line as a result (figuring I lose 3 stacks of Might for 10% crit dmg and 100 Precision). This allows me to support a melee team pretty well. I typically rock PVT Armor and Knight Jewelry/Weapons for greater survivability. I use 2 Sup Monk, 2 Sup Water, 2 Maj Monk for Runes and Furious/Battle Sigils.

There are many “gotchya!” style mobs in dungeons that can kick out tremendous damage and the added survivability seems to work especially with me in Melee. The huge amount of Boons (Fury and 20+ Stacks of Might) I am pumping out in this build to maintain my damage. This means I’m supporting my allies by giving them a huge amount of Boons to them as well as providing a decent amount of healing/condition removal to them.

For Staff I tend to rock something like this. You can see I really only changed 3 traits (Air I → VIII, Water XII → XI and Arcane V → VIII). You could give up the Arcane VI instead of V too but I like the near permanent Vigor in certain situations (albeit in high Condition areas such as Explorable CM I will use V). In this setup I tend to rock Berserker Gear with Berserker Jewelry/Weapon. I use Rubies for Runes and use a Sigil of Fire (but this is debatable as Divinity is also good but fairly expensive and there are other Sigils such as Battle but I tend to find myself in Fire attunement a lot). I like this setup a lot because it offers me really good damage through high base Power (gear) Crit (gear and spec) and Crit dmg (gear and spec) BUT it still lets me support the team through 30 in Water giving me colossal condition management for the team as well. Some people state this is redundant with a Shout Guardian or Warrior but I have run countless groups with neither of these options being available.

The only downside is that any boons provided are pretty short duration because this isn’t a Boon style build. I find because I am not in melee that my survivability is more than sufficient with this but if I’m really having issues then I can swap to my Emerald Jewelry. Many cases the groups I run with are perfectly fine and I tend to sit in Fire and just DPS most of the time. If I find myself out (such as to swap to Water to heal) I might rotate into Earth first and then do Eruption to blow up a Lava Field along with Arcane Wave for a double Area Might. The self combos are much more limited as Staff compared to D/D.

Arcane Wave is great for setting up self combos in either spec. For on the fly it lets you do Area Swiftness with Static Field or Area Heal or Area Might. It’s pretty great. The Cantrips, as previously mentioned, offer everything we could want. The alternatives (Glyphs and Signets) are ultimately extremely limited on what they provide unfortunately. The only one I’ve ever considered using as an alternative was Glyph of Storms because the AOE Blind in earth is pretty handy (but it’s been nerfed repeatedly). In addition when doing certain Dungeons/Bosses you will swap out Utility based on encounters. For example in Ascalon Catacombs you will often times use Frostbow for Graveling Burrow destruction as well in any other place that requires you to destroy an object. My favorite bit in P2 Citadel of Flame is dropping Meteor Shower, Lava Font, then Frost Bow and watch half the Crystal’s HP just vanish.

I also find this build works very well in WvW so this spec really ends up working out for me because all I need to do is swap around Traits and I’m ready for any scenario rather than having to go back and respec each time.

Level?

What are you doing in PvE (events, farming, dungeons, fractals)?

Is it viable for you to switch your gear or are you cash poor?

Thrashbarg.9820:

The problem with D/D in a GvG setting is, with the current meta anyway, you’ll have to get right into the “kill zone” to do any damage, and you don’t have the inherent mitigation of a warrior or guardian (as soon as your boons are stripped, which they will be, you’re a low hp light armor user all of a sudden, no matter your stats).

It worked a lot better when you could mist>heal, but now there is basically no margin for error.

For GvG static field and water fields are better than anything D/D can bring to the table. You can aura share as a staff user too (arguably better, since shocking aura is countered by stability and magnetic aura reflects a lot of incoming damage in a zerg v. zerg situation).

D/D is best in very small scale fights and large uncoordinated zergs. It can be made to work in GvG but most guilds probably aren’t cool with people playing sub-optimal team builds if they are really into the GvG thing.

If the argument against Shocking Aura is Stability isn’t that an argument against Static Field as well?

SykkoB.9465:

REALly again crying 2v1 ?? Ill say it again

SOR FOCUSES BG cause you r the bigger threat because ur coverage

JQ FOCUSES BG cause its smart for them to do so take points where u can

atleast in eb bordlerlands home server always gets 2v1 its just how wvw works

Your SOR argument makes sense but your JQ argument doesn’t.

Whomever holds Stonemist is in the most disadvantaged position for a 2v1. They can’t defend their territory and Stonemist meaning Stonemist usually is the one to fall. What JQ should be focused on is stonewalling BG in the south to ensure they attack SOR. Once they attack SOR’s territory or Stonemist then JQ goes after the other. This effectively splits the SOR territory and gives JQ a chance to get ahead by cleaning up the other target (territory or stonemist). This is using your opponent to your advantage.

What JQ is instead doing is settling for 2 towers and a camp in BG territory while still being massively outscored by SOR which has the same plus Stonemist. Basically they’re riding the kitten seat for some points while not lowering the score of the team that will ultimately end up winning. That’s not really strategy as much as it is attempting to pile onto an opponent while aiming for second place. In other words, your standard JQ affair.

Zikory.6871:

Why would SoR complain about a 2v1? I’m not going to say there is or isn’t one, I’m not really interested in a endless argument that no one is going to win but if in fact SoR and JQ are in a 2v1 vs BG why would SoR complain about it? Because of it SoR gets a win because JQ can’t. Also notably SoR is being overly defensive on the subject and seems to be desperately trying to convince everyone that there isn’t one. Sound like there is something to hide. If there is, that is…

Hard not to say there isn’t a 2v1 on when you have literally ALL of JQ in Jerrifer/Klovan and ALL of SOR in Aldon/Wildcreek with both sides trying to attack Blackgate Lowlands. When you’re being actively sandwiched and both sides are actively ignoring each other to take you out despite their territories being wide open you firmly step out of speculation about 2v1 territory and smack right down into it just being a plain fact.

Strang.8170:

I stand by my words, healing power is really sucky stat for staff ele.

With full healing power gear, you will get less than 4k extra to amount of burst heal you can do, and less than 290 hps from passive healing. And this requires you to be in the melee blob, puts 2 of your attunements on cd denying access to water, makes you spend both your dodges, requires an utility slot, forces your target to stay still to get all of the healing, has compromised your defensive stats and destroyed your damage output.

Rest assured when I rock my +healing gear and yet continue to be wildly successful (along with many others) in WvW that really I will be crying inside thinking about how poorly I should be doing :..(

The biggest problem with Signets is the lack of Stun Breaker. If there was a Stun Breaker it could really open up some Condition based Earth Builds. As is stands without a Stun Breaker you kinda have to “tank” the damage instead through Toughness/Vitality which doesn’t always work out.

I had an Asura Male Ele I deleted and a Human Male Ele I kept. Prefer the animations albeit the Asura Racial T3 armor was pretty slick looking.

I like playing the Ele because I can act tough and talk about how much tougher it is to play an Ele than any other class.

you are hit with a wall of text and die

This is going to take forever to reply to all of these, couldn’t you have all kept your points shorter?

Xiv: You obviously haven’t had an original thought about the Elementalist and just repeat the same nonsense that’s been going on forever in the GvG WvW scene. PVT gear and blahblahblah. Try to have an original thought or at the very least don’t try to poop on the rainbows of the people who are trying to have an original thought. There are multiple and viable ways to skin a cat (or in this case play a support Ele).

Strang: As I mentioned just above, there’s many ways you can go about doing a support role and more importantly many different shades of grey on what you want to accomplish. Personally I’ve rocked a 0/20/0/30/20 style Elementalist in Berserker gear and supported the group in a similar manner as people mention AND usually was one of the last to die in group engagements. I’ve also played the various shades of grey from there ranging from PVT gear to Knight gear to even this more extreme Support role with Vit-Tough/Heal/Condi gear. My backpacks are pretty full haha…The simple truth is the way you guys are talking you’re talking from a GvG level. Most GvG groups will tell you what they want you to gear up for and spec as because they have an entire setup that works for them. I’ve seen some guilds go more defensive (my route) and others more offensive.

Even then as you mention (and it’s always been my experience, that video was just the first one I could find) typically the disengagement isn’t that far and is usually much closer these days (usually right outside the initial engagement area). That makes people better able to benefit from a +Healing stat due to the huge number of heals we can do for our allies in the ball while they are fighting (therefore increasing the time they can stay in there). I mean Evasive Arcana alone in Water is a 2500 heal with that much +Healing.

You certainly may not want every Elementalist rocking this route, but it’s not nearly as useless or pointless as some of you are trying to imply AND and it’s actually used to great success by others as we’ve seen and heard in other threads (and other slight variations such as going Clerics instead for a more Power focus instead of Conditions).

Caffynated: Field management is a huge part of the Elementalist game play and with experience isn’t hard at all. It’s pretty easy to catch people both friendly and enemy in your fields for a few ticks and the truth is there’s only two water fields you need to catch allies in. There’s plenty of other sources such as Attunement Swap as well as Evasive Arcana both which are huge 2500+ heals not to mention passive Soothing Mist and Regen that you’re pumping out. With play experience it’s not as bad as you mention.

Caffynated.5713:

If you’re not doing all of that, you’re not playing elementalist to its potential.

All you did was rattle off a list of things any Elementalist can bring. It is not helpful nor informative. It’s like saying a rogue should bring DPS. I mean honestly short of Water Fields I could bring everything you mentioned with a D/D Brawler style Elementalist. Maybe you seem to think “playing an Elementalist” and “playing a Support Elementalist” are the same thing. I contend they aren’t and that there are in fact numerous builds that can all function in a support role and potentially other roles.

You can read posts like this and many others that there are a variety of builds for when people think support. Some think you can go Berserker gear and just put points into 0/10/0/30/30 and that’s enough support. Others go to the other extreme and equip Cleric/Shaman healing gear and really crank out the heals. We’re all presenting options, it’s up to the person seeking advice to determine what they want.

The truth has been and always will be without a measured way to track performance (be it DPS performance or healing performance) there’s really no way to say one way is better than another. There’s no way to disprove that say two ticks of my Eruption bleed with my Condition gear is any more or less than say one tick of Lava font they get hit with. We can all theorize and assume based on anecdotal evidence (IE: “I saw it do more dmg!”) but without being able to measure it there’s no way to say for sure.

Here is something I play around with from time to time for giggles and when I want to mix it up.

It’s surprisingly actually very, very survivable and being able to stack up to 25 stacks of Bleed (AOE) with HUGE duration Burning/Chill/etc is pretty absurd. Does decent raw damage when needed in Fire as well because you have so much Power and any Burns are pretty painful. Kinda fun and different play style when I want something other than the usual (and frankly boring) x/x/x/30/20+ play style.

Knox.3748:

Even when i was full zerker the best meteor shower i had was 3.5k, lol. Now with new build i do 2.5, still perfectly good. Meteor Shower isnt supposed to be the 1h Blades from Heaven, and its impossible to do so much dmg from MS.

After you’ve been around on these forums for a while you learn to tune a lot of that nonsense out.

Typically their arguments just don’t make sense from the get go and typically revolve around spewing out the same cookie cutter nonsense that’s been vomited all over these forums and then lapped up again. My favorite has always been “You need PVT gear to survive in group combat!!!” and then they talk about Berserker Gear/Spec level damage. An argument that makes the case more survivability means more DPS I totally understand but pretending you’re doing as much damage as a Berserker gear/spec with abilities is just absurd.

Worse, they’re never clear on the exact scenario and the way it unfolds. “I just hit for 6k with Ice Spike because my crew of 10 guys put 25 stacks of Might with me against a target who was raised up in levels and rocking zero toughness.” turns into “I hit for 6k with Ice Spike every time you must be doing something wrong!”

Or look at threads like this. Guy comes in looking for an Ele Support build that isn’t glass cannon and you got how many posts advocating Berserker gear? All he mentions is group support but never the scale. 5 man group support is going to be way different than guild on guild level action let alone huge zerg style support but here we have all kinds of responses. Then people are right for their advice based on what they are talking about, but wrong when talking about a different topic. All pretty comical when you think about it.

xiv.7136:

Kodiak, it’s obvious you lack experience of world vs world in organised groups. Do some, and then come back with build/gear suggestions.

Feel free to watch ANY GvG video and you will see exactly what I am talking about. In fact, here’s a perfect example out of one of the top WvW guilds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwJ34UecxNk

The “murder ball” (where the two parts are engaging) are slamming into each other and then each side disengages and drops Water fields separate from the huge amount of fire fields, necro wells/marks, static fields, Mesmer Fields, etc that go on each opponent after the moment they engage. The more you can lower that recovery time the better. All of this jives with my WvW experience for group engagements.

When viewed from the Staff Ele’s perspective it appears they went more of a PVT route which is another viable route that’s actually quite popular as well.

covenn.7165:

Kodiak.3281:

The other half of the problem is anyone with GvG experience will tell you that combo fields get dropped like MAD. In the murder ball (where both sides are clashing) you have no hope of planning a proper Combo field.

I disagree. The good GvG groups coordinate combo fields in a planned and effective manner.

I 100% agree. None of them are throwing down Water Fields in the murder ball to heal with compared to the more powerful utility like Necro Wells or Frost Fields. All that’s kept in the back. The other guy was making it sound like nothing but Water Fields get dropped on a big ball and everyone gets healed instantly so therefore any other kind of healing is pointless which just isn’t the case. Most GvG groups I run with or seen tend to do a Commander in the back that becomes the Support pile you back into if you need healing/support which is where most of the water fields and blast finishers are going off while the murder ball area (where your forces are engaging theirs) tend to be more along the lines of wells and other forms of large CC (frost field, static field, etc).

Sigh…

Strang.8170:

Support =/ healing and only healing

Everything you mentioned are basics of Elementalist. It’s like saying a Warrior contributes by doing damage. The sky is blue, too. Any Elementalist spec can CC like no tomorrow be it Staff, Scepter or Dagger. If you want to play a support role it means playing a support role. It means both spec’ing for and gearing for that support role.

Strang.8170:

Condition damage

Once you’ve accepted you’re going to gear for Support damage becomes basically pointless. There’s no part of any support spec that will deal decent damage. It doesn’t matter if it’s Power based or Condition based, your damage is shot. The only way to deal any kind of remotely noticeable damage is either go with a high damage spec (30/30/0/10/0) or a hybrid of such with Berserker style (Power/Crit/Crit Dmg) gear. The only difference here is you will be often times in Earth to blow up combo fields as opposed to being in Fire to drop down DPS in a support role.

Strang.8170:

Healing power

You’re really vastly overstating the amount of Blast Finishers there actually are in game that actually get used. They really aren’t that common outside of the Elementalist themselves doing them. While many GvG groups do run a D/D ele in addition to a Support Staff Ele this is only half the problem.

The other half of the problem is anyone with GvG experience will tell you that combo fields get dropped like MAD. In the murder ball (where both sides are clashing) you have no hope of planning a proper Combo field. You have Eles dropping Fire/Frost/Water/Air fields, Necros dropping Wells which are Dark Fields, Guardians dropping Light Fields only ONE of which will heal and it’s whatever field gets dropped first. This is why most high end PvP groups actually drop the water fields back so after engaging if you need a heal you back out of the murder ball where the Support Eles are keeping the Water fields to Blast heals (or Tornado to do Healing Bolts). All of this is where extra healing matters because if you heal up say 2000 HP more per Support Ele and you run 2-3 in your group you will heal 4000-6000 HP quicker than the enemy.

Strang.8170:

Vitality and toughness

I won’t argue against the value of Toughness, and it’s why my build I prop up definitely supports a decent amount of it, however it’s a combination of the two. In my setup I’ve taken the brunt of an enemy force and was able to walk away because of the extra hit points and pull back and recover without having to blow Mist Form. Again the question comes down to where you’re going to put those excess points. You really won’t have enough to focus on an particular area to make it matter.

Strang.8170:

Berserkers

This all comes down to again what he wants to do and accomplish. He already stated he doesn’t want to do Berserkers. If he wanted to do a hybrid style spec with Support and Damage I could see the argument for gear like Knights, Berserkers, etc. Fact is the OP only gave us “I want to do support” and since then we’ve had nothing but everyone come in and say, “Go deeps!”

Here’s some feedback on some topics that could be brought up:

PvE – Leveling Builds and Weapon Advice
-What builds have worked for leveling and their key level points
-Certain weapons better for leveling than others?
PvE – Using the proper element / weapon for tasks
-Event farming, using Lightning or Fire?
-Object destruction
PvE – Explorable dungeon specs that work well
-Understanding dungeon mechanics make certain builds/setup shine
-Boon sharing
-Object destruction
PvE – Beginning Fractal Builds and general Fractal type advice
-Good builds and what to shoot for with Ascended gear for later
PvE – Mid level Fractal Builds and general Mid level Fractal type advice
-Good builds and things to anticipate
PvE – High end Fractal Builds and general High end Fractal advice
-Good builds and things to anticipate

WvW – Differences between WvW and PVP
-Consumables
-Racial Skills
WvW – Understanding 3 different “types” of WvW
-Solo/Small group roaming
-Guild/Large group roaming
-Massive Zerg
WvW – Solo/Small group roaming builds and tactics
-Weapon sets and builds
-Escape tactics
WvW – Guild/Large group roaming
-Weapon sets and builds
-Combo Field management (not often discussed)
-Attaching yourself to groups/guilds freelance
WvW – Massive Zerg
-Weapon sets and builds
-Using right attunements
-Reading flow of combat
WvW – Do’s and Don’ts of Tower Attacks and Defense
WvW – Combo Field buff stacking

I think that’ll do for now.

Josh Mitchell.1596:

I have played the Elementalist well over 800 hours. I /love/ switching attunements and frequently stick to x/x/x/x/20+ builds.

One of the main issues that many players encounter with the Elementalist is that the class trait lines contradict each other — you’re encouraged to swap attunements if you go into arcane, but (especially) if you go into the Fire or Air trait lines, many trait options proc in those attunements only.

Earth, Water, and Arcana lines have more traits that benefit the player regardless of attunement.

Currently, there are a few opportunities to make builds that use one attunement and one attunement only (Zerker Staff Fire Attunement/Fire Traits, Lightning Hammer Water Attunement/Water Traits).

The proposed suggestion would still encourage the use of all four attunements.

However, the more that I think about the complexity of this energy system in addition to the Elementalist’s current attunements system, I believe the idea I proposed would be too complex for most players.

I do believe a simpler energy/overcharge system, if one were ever implemented, could be beneficial to the class. In the meantime, I am hoping the next balance/trait update introduces enhancements to some of the Fire and Air traits, and I appreciate everyone for leaving their thoughts and feedback.

It’s like this post read my mind and put it out in words.

Maskaganda.2043:

I have been running staf ele in a zerg buster roaming group (5 or less of us) against huge numbers.

I made the tankiest staff ele I could and I’m really happy with out it turned out, unless there’s 5+ guys focusing me for a long time I’m not gonna go down. Meanwhile I’m doing alot of healing and support (all the fields, insta blast on earth dodge, aoe snare, aoe stun, perma boons up, cleansing, etc)

what I run is the typical 0/0/10/30/30 , ether renewal, mist form, armor of earth and lightning flash. Cleric armor, azurite jewels, sigile of energy and boon duration runes.
Im sitting at 20k hp, 1780 toughness and I just feel unkillable.

I don’t do any damage, nor do I bother with it much. I lay the fields, do the heals, give the boons so others in my group can kill and survive the zerg trains we unleash on us.

I might make a vid of it soon since it’s been so much fun playing a staff ele like this.

Yea it’s really, really strong when played this way. It’s basically leveraging the “it was so strong it got nerfed in SPvP” elements such as all our minor heals combined leading to crazy good survivability.

In fact found the old post on this style:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Cosmic-elementalist-guide-PVE-WvW/first#post1427290

xiv.7136:

I’m very aware of those numbers.

It’s obvious you lack actual combat experience in organised wvw if you think those numbers make any difference. You’re gonna be fighting at least 30 guys (and at most 60+) coming at you with tons of damage and cc, extra ticks of 100 aren’t going to change the outcome.

So basically your argument is “because it won’t save you, it’s not worth doing”. This is an absurd position to take. If you really want to break down the numbers 10 guys focusing you will kill you so what’s the point of even leaving your starting area since you know you’re going to just flop over dead? It says a lot when you try downplay a build the “best” top end WvW groups run for support. It says even more when you’re trying downplay something that even the Devs admit is ridiculously overpowered (all these little heals add up and make for some really insane healing to the point they had to nerf it all into the ground for SPvP).

- Condition damage. Really? Do I need to even explain why this is bad when earth staff is pretty much purely for the cripple, aura and blast finisher. When every decent enemy group has condition removal coming out of every orifice?

Damage? Fire. (no, not Air, Air is pretty much static field attunement) 25 stacks of might. Direct damage that can’t be cleansed off.

Again I think you’re pretty confused at the role you’ll be doing as support as this guy asked. As a staffer, you won’t ever see 25 stacks of Might. At most you’ll be able to stack around 9 on yourself and 6 on others at any given time (which you can do in any spec).

However when you’re actually fighting, people/players will be on you in a big ball of fighting and action. You’re going to drop that Eruption to blow up a heal, and you will end up throwing bleeds on people around them. It will happen. What won’t happen is you sitting there in Fire when trying to support your allies. Hence Power is worthless because you won’t use it in a Support role.

xiv.7136:

You want to support your team, support them with fields for them to finisher on. Support them with CC. And support them with your own survival.

Elementalists are one of the best sources (as well as Thieves) sources of Blast finishers. This means you need to be kicking out both Fields and Blast Finishers when you can.

xiv.7136:

Support them with actual damage; not half-condition damage that gets insta-cleansed, low power and no crit. Power is a crazy stat, there’s a reason why 25 stacks of might is de rigeur in organised fights.

Cavalier + Knights. Power/precision/critdamage and toughness like crazy.

You don’t do damage as support. That’s being damage, not support. If you go damage and support, you end up being kitten at either where you’re not enough damage to matter to a zerg kicking out those “worthless” small heals and at best case scenario you become a Condition cleansing bot which as you note is all over the place.

xiv.7136:

Staff ele is easily one of the most powerful specs in wvw, possibly the most powerful aside from a blind-necro. It has teeth, support and survivability all at the same time.

You can watch the video in my sig. Well timed CC, high AOE damage, support fields, and survival.

I think you have a bad notion of what Support actually is. You may be actually be a great Elementalist and bring a lot to the table (I don’t watch vids so I can’t say) but you really have some awful notions of how to play a pure Support Elementalist.

Xenon.4537:

I have a hard time running anything besides berserkers. I run staff or s/f because daggers feels wrong to me, but damage on staff is laughable without full berserkers. Even then, it barely breaks even with kitten thief and mesmer builds.

Yea I rarely go support build like he’s asking for unless I’m running in some sort of large group scenario and I’m the dedicated staff support. Normally I prefer a 0/20/0/30/20 build for PVP in Berserker gear. Plenty of crit/crit dmg to get kills with and lots of survivability.

Mcrocha.3891:

I find it very hard to believe you spent that much without getting 3 wins. You’re either lying, exaggerating, or you aren’t using the winnings from getting at least in the top 3.

It’s all pretty RNG. I finally ended up getting my 3 wins, one of which thankfully due to a bug where a guy who came in second gave me credit. Another guy expressed similar cash drain for his wins as well. I’m sure there’s others who ended up probably making money on the deal.

I would have rather they kept the cost and winnings lower, such as 10s to bet and 4s/12s/28s payouts.

Knox.3748:

The truth is that staff isnt a dps weapon. Thats why i have 2 sets: 1 with Power + tough + Healing Power with runes of Dwayna. Yes i know i should change the runes but im doing some tests in WvW. And the other set has PTV + runes of earth. Both Sets with Berserker Jewels.

I have:

Vit/Heal/Condi and Weapon with Tough/Heal/Condi Jewelry set
Power/Crit/Crit Dmg full set
Power/Vit/Tough with Power/Prec/Tough Jewelry and Weapon set
Power/Vit/Condi full set
Power/Prec/Magic Find full set

Made most of them Elemental colored. My bags are overflowing now. I need to really upgrade these 15 slot Invis into 20 slotters so I can fit everything haha…

xiv.7136:

woah woah woah

woah

never do this, everything you wrote here is completely wrong

a) healing power is awful for us. For guardians, sure, I can see it. We gain so little benefit from it, it’s a useless stat. It increases our healing by around 20% with maxing out healing power. Pointless. Never take it.

b) condition damage is awful on staff eles. Our big damage comes from direct damage, power is the best stat for that, stack it, in any build. We have 4 attunements, use them all.

c) get toughness. If you aren’t awful at playing an ele and specced right, your condi removal should make extra vitality past 15k or so unnecessary. Toughness will save you, over and over and over.

Let me bust out some numerology at you:

With this build I end up with 1117 Healing power with no food and no sigil buffs or anything of that nature (also only Rare Passiflora Jewelry and not the Exotic). Skill comparison = With 1117 Healing vs With Base 300 from 30 Water Trait:

Area Healing (Blast Finisher) = 1543 vs 1380 a 12% increase
Geyser (Skill) = 3262 vs 2649 a 23% increase
Soothing Mist (Trait) = 136 vs 95 a 43% increase
Healing Ripple (Trait) = 2419 vs 1602 a 51% increase
Regeneration (Boon) = 275/tick vs 166/tick a 65% increase

Healing Power is far from useless for us especially if you’re going for a support Role in WvW which is what the OP was talking about. We have numerous sources of Regeneration (Healing Rain, Elemental Attunement, GoEH, Cantrips) which take advantage of a huge increase in performance.

This is on top of having 1291 Toughness and 18235 HP which is plenty to survive in large Zerg fights (especially with the colossal amount of stun breaking and condition removal we have in this spec).

On to condition damage…Raw damage does alright if you stack enough Power but without Crit you aren’t ever going to be lethal to another player. Doing raw damage while using a staff is all about maximizing damage because of the little amount of time people will spend in your fields taking damage. You’re lucky if you get 2 ticks often times in WvW. This means you need Crit and Crit Damage to really maximize the damage they take for those few ticks. The problem there is without spec’ing deep into Air or rocking Berserker gear (low survivability) there’s no way to get enough. Both of these suggestions, while certainly viable, go against the idea of being Support.

This is where Conditions come into play. Most of our Condition based abilities are in Earth (Bleeds) which is what you will mostly end up being in to do combos for your Water fields (for example Earth → Eruption → Water → Geyser → Arcane Wave in Geyser → Healing Rain → Earth → Dodge Roll for Blast Finisher → Stoning Attacks for Regeneneration around Target). On top of this, our base condition durations are the things Necros and Engineers dream of. Eruption being a 12 second base bleed time is insane compared to any other class. Considering how close fighting gets (either small or large scale) it’ll be extremely hard for your enemy not to get tagged by Eruption constantly.

Finally, you could make the same argument either way. I could just as easily say any Toughness over 1200 is redundant in the hands of a skilled and competent player. More so I’d say that it’s redundant because of how often you’ll end up with Boons like Protection which already reduce the amount of damage taken but nothing can give you an extra 3000 HP.

For Group Ele Support I rock a 0/0/10/30/30 build.

Gear I use Vitality/Healing/Condition (from CM Explorable).
Jewelry I use Tough/Heal/Condition (Passiflora Jewelry).
Weapon I use Vitality/Healing/Condition (from CM Explorable).
Runes I use 2/2 Superior Water, 2/2 Superior Monk, 2/2 Major Monk

This gives me a good mix of Vitality, Toughness, a lot of +Healing and +Condition. This is good because often times you will be focused when they see you in the back. If anything I’d say it’s a bit light on Toughness but with the amount of Protection you should have going on in the group ball you should be fine (where as by comparison there’s no way to gain more HP via buffs).

Power vs Condition: Most of our damage when doing support will come from doing conditions such as spamming Eruption. I find many times in WvW I end up sitting in Earth waiting to blow up an Eruption -> Geyser style combo or other various combos from people around me so making our primary combo ability do even better is always good. Also if you end up sieging walls, placing an Eruption along the edges will put 6 stacks of a very strong bleed now on a lot of targets because the size of it is massive.

The only real use we have for Power is destroying Siege equipment with our Fire AOEs which is good but base attacks are sufficient for that. Power based attacks typically synergize much better with Crit/Crit Dmg which we just can’t bring enough of in this build to very be noticeable. If you’re really a stickler for having more Power you could go with Cleric (Tough/Power/Heal) Jewelry and Weaponry probably.

Healing Power: This is pretty self explanatory. You’ll be dishing out a lot of AOE regeneration which benefits greatly from healing power.

Arcane Wave vs Third Cantrip: Cantrips are certainly powerful in this build but in a group support play Blast Finishers are huge. They let you blow up anything from Static Field (AOE Swiftness) to the more standard Lava Font (AOE Might) or Geyser (AOE Heal). Being able to Blast Finish on demand is pretty great and worth the loss of a Cantrip.

Utilities: Mist form should be pretty obvious why we take it. Cleansing Fire is fantastic because of Soothing Disruption and Cleansing Water. It basically means one button you remove 4 Conditions, Break Stun, gain Regeneration and Vigor which makes it one hell of a cool down. It also lights nearby people on Fire which with our Condition damage actually deals respectable damage.

Ultimate: The ultimate you could swap out if you prefer. Tornado is a great alternative if people bunch up on you because you can drop a Water Field and then Tornado spewing out Healing Bolts. Avatar of Melandru is another great alternative if you’re a Human because you get an AOE condition removal, AOE Protection and AOE Healing abilities.

I would like to personally and most cordially extend the biggest middle finger possible at whatever game designer decided:

1. You need 3 wins

2. Make it cost 50 silver.

20g down the drain and I haven’t even gotten my third win.

For a long time they’ve been under the assumption that Water/Arcane is so good that it’s eclipsing the other builds. They are wrong. They can keep nerfing Water/Arcane but that won’t change the way people play the Elementalist. This won’t change because, simply put, the other alternatives are terrible.

Fire is bad because it only buffs/effects fire. On a class that’s balanced around the fact we have 3 other attunements to call upon this is just shoddy and poor design. Air is an odd tree because it’s best traits are in Adept and everything else is terrible or meh. The only reason to spec deep into it is for the Crit/Crit Dmg. Earth is an “so close and yet so far” tree. It has the makings of a solid Signet/Condition build but trait locations and general poor design of Signets makes it simply not viable.

This leaves Water/Arcane as our only real options simply by virtue of a lack of universally viable alternatives. We have plenty of other situational builds that work well in very specific scenarios (such as 30/30/0/10/0 is great at keep siege/defense but terrible in roaming WvW) but very few multi-use builds that don’t end up with a 0/0/0/30/20 base.

I’d love for them to sort out Fire and make some of it’s benefits apply to other attunements. I’d love for them to add in higher end Air traits that encourage different and/or alter game play instead of just being a secondary tree. More than anything I’d love for them to sort out Earth’s issues and make Signets more competitive with Cantrips (stunbreaker…) while making conditions a viable alternative. The facts are that we’ve been hearing these same Devs go on and on for months about Trait changes that are needed and they have yet to deliver or acknowledge any specific issues outside of generic BS that tells us nothing.

We’re just as likely to get some invariably useless buffs to Glyphs in Air as we are anything actually cool. One thing you can count on is as you saw with Engineers (Kit Refinement) they give you a bunch of stuff in one hand while reaping some of the better stuff you have with the other.

Basically any build you end up with a series of choices:

Raw damage vs Condition damage: Basically Raw damage is Fire/Air and Condition damage is Fire/Earth. Our raw damage is pretty meh all around (not enough burst) without stacking a lot of power/crit such as through boons (might/fury). Our conditions are surprisingly good having a lot of long duration burns and bleeds but like all conditions suffer from max stacks in a group and your damage can be cleansed in PvP.

Stunbreaker/Condition Removal vs Raw tanking power: This basically “boils” down to (hah hah…) Water vs Earth. Water has a crapload of Condition Removal and it’s Cantrip support gives you a lot of stun breakers. Earth gives a lot of high toughness and with signets some on demand CC (root, chill, blind, etc) but no real stun breakers making you have to take the damage.

Boons and Swapping vs No Boons and Less Swapping: or Deep or Shallow Arcane. Boons are very strong for both offensive and defensive purposes. Being able to swap allows for more cross attunement combos which is really effective with spammable abilities in x/D.

Once you make those decisions you pretty much decide how you want to put your character together.

Condition Damage and Raw Tank power = 30 Fire, 30 Earth, 10 (wherever) with Carrion (Power/Cond/Vit gear) giving you lots of power, lots of condition lots of tough and lots of vitality.

Raw damage and Stunbreaker/Condition removal = 20-30 Fire/Air, 30 Water, 10-20 in Arcane with Berserker (Power/Prec/CritDmg gear).

Raw damage via Boons and Stunbreaker/Condition Removal and boon defenses = 10 Air, 30 water 30 Arcane with Berserker or Soldier (Power/Tough/Vit gear) gear depending how defensive you want to be.

etc.

From there you can see why certain builds are more popular than others. The last one mentioned (the “standard” 0/10/0/30/30 build) offers a lot compared to other build types. This doesn’t mean that other builds (such as 30/0/30/0/10) aren’t viable only that they don’t offer as much. Many people see a lack of a stunbreaker and immediately think a build is worthless. Again you have to ask yourself what situations you are going to put yourself in and whether or not you need it. An Elementalist who joins a large zerg probably won’t need many stunbreakers cause you’re one in a giant crowd and less likely to get focused.

Personally I’m waiting to see what they do with the traits that they keep saying they are going to take a look at and review. I am hoping they actually make the incentives for going a 30/0/30/0/0 build much greater than the losses felt when deviating from the standard 0/10/0/30/30 build.

voidwater.2064:

Well, since the damage formula, skill damage numbers, skill and attunement swap cooldowns, etc. are known, you could calculate DPS for various sequences of actions…

I’d be highly surprised if anyone can without the game giving us full access to all damage types in the combat log can bypass painfully slow observational based data gathering (record a video, watch in slow motion, record numbers manually for things like conditions). You’d then need to calculate the difference in damage based on what stats you have. This is only further complicated by the fact diminishing returns do exist in game and aren’t fully documented which means you’d have to determine those as well (for example is the power granted by might subject to diminishing returns?). This would require quite the setup all around as you’d also need a variety of different sets of gear to measure all that with.

While I suppose it technically isn’t impossible to do, I would say that it’s such a staggering task I doubt we’ll see it.

Gaudrath.6725:

So what’s your purpose in this thread? You might as well have said that this entire thread is nonsense to you and moved on already.

People have, repeatedly, called out other people for doing things like playing just Fire and claim superiority over such individuals. All of these claims are never made with facts supporting them. No one has, to date, proven with facts that playing one way is any superior to another. My purpose is to teach Elementalist players that they shouldn’t blindly assume one way is better than another because they were told it was. Threads like these ones just perpetuate the same baseless assumptions that have gone on for the last 6 months.

All you have is your opinion. There’s nothing wrong with your opinion and you’re fully entitled to it. In fact, no one can argue with your opinion. However don’t treat your opinions as fact! The minute you cross that line you’re subject to having to prove what you say is true.

Which consequently you still haven’t done

Hjorje.9453:

So by the argument on this thread, I would have to say both of them are correct. Staying in fire YOUR personal DPS does stay higher. But the overall DPS of the group COULD be lower. By switching attunements and utilizing the different fields we are giving and at the proper times, switching attunements can help raise the OVERALL DPS of the group.

Just my opinion based on my personal observation. It could be wrong and I am not seeing something right but that is the way it looks to me.

Probably the most reasonable post in this entire thread

Gaudrath.6725:

Despite what you’re claiming, the difference IS that huge and it is that obvious to anyone who bothers to play the game.

The proof is right there. Play the game, see for yourself. I noticed, by the way, that you conveniently keep sidestepping my invitations to prove me wrong by simply playing the game for ten minutes as a fire mage and showing us all how awesome and equally powerful that is compared with using all four elements.

If it’s such a large difference, it would be easy to prove. You seem to be unable to provide proof however.

I play the game. What you say is not self evident. I don’t have to prove anything other than backing up my claim: You can’t prove one is better than another. I don’t have to disprove your claim in order to state you can’t prove yours is better. That is, again, like telling me to disprove the Roman god pulling the sun up each morning. If I can’t disprove it, then it must be true? You’re being absurd again.

The rest…being paranoid about what “tricks” I might pull would be moot if you had actual facts to back up what you say. But you know as well as I know that most videos are edited to show off an ideal (if not extreme) scenario because who ever creates a video of failure?

Situationally being awesome at a particular task doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right way to play and another way is wrong. As others have echo’d there are many cases where sticking to Fire is superior to swapping attunements. Am I to believe them because they say it in the same light as I’m to believe you because you say it? I believe none of it because no one has proven any of it.

Gaudrath.6725:

So basically, you’re trolling. You refuse to specify what you think is an inefficient way to play an elementalist, instead focusing on repeating your mantra that nothing can be proven.

Furthermore, I offered proof more than once. Not the mathematical kind you seem to insist on (probably because you know I won’t dedicate the kind of time necessary to come up with one), but empirical proof. I have experiences I already mentioned, soloing champions, supply camps, winning duels with staff, bursting down PvE and WvW enemies with staff etc. and doing those things only because I used every single possible advantage I had. I invite you to replicate any of those using only fire. I for sure cannot even come close to that, but hey, maybe I’m just a terrible player, who knows.

But, I don’t know of any one player who can, actually. So based on the empirical data we have, which is that if you don’t use all four elements you are incapable of achieving things those who do use them can, we can safely assume that not using your class mechanic is a good way to tear a big chunk out of your overall effectiveness.

Now you have two choices:

1. You can behave like creationists in an evolution debate and insist it is only a theory while refusing to even approach anything resembling a discussion, in which case I have really nothing more to say to you.

2. You can discuss this empirical data, and possibly counter it by adding your own. Do you know of any single elementalist who can achieve any of the above mentioned things by staying in fire only? Can you? Do share.

I am not trolling, I’m calling your claims out for the opinions that they are with no proof to back them up. You know you have no proof to back it up so you continue to try to attack me in other ways rather than address the points at hand (such as calling me a troll).

Empirical proof is not based in fact but based on observation. The inherent problem with empirical proof is it’s entirely interpretive. You see the result, and propose a theory of why the result came about with no facts to back it up other than the results. I’m saying you can’t prove your theory and it’s little different than you saying the moon rises because a Roman God pulls it around the world each day (I liked that analogy). When asked for proof, you state, “The sun rises!”

Personally I don’t think you can do anything you claim and therefore I think your results and theory is invalid. Empirical data shows that you’re a lot of talk but show no results. Therefore I can only theorize, based on the empirical data provided, you can’t do anything you claim to do.

Gaudrath.6725:

But we’re not. The difference in efficiency and even base playability between a player who uses all four elements and one who does not is so great, wasting time on crunching numbers would be like crunching numbers to show which one is faster at top speed, a motorcyle or a bycicle. It’s pointless. Some things are self-evident.

You have it backwards. If it was so great a difference it’d be trivial and easy to prove because it is so self-evident. How easy is it to show that a thousand is greater than 10? This is just a cop-out because you know you can’t actually prove your point so you say you shouldn’t have to.

Adastra.9821:

I’ll admit I only skimmed over most of your posts on the first page because none of it had any content that offers any good explanations or evidence, or provided something I didn’t already know. You have anecdotes, but not much evidence. Some of it was wrong and/or grossly exaggerated. It was mostly “I casted skill A and this also generated effect B”, and then a weak attempt at how A and B is better than C while the effectiveness of A and B is exaggerated. There is so much more to it but you don’t consider any of the “howevers”, and you’re already preaching one playstyle which is misleading.

I acknowledge that is one way to play, and it is efficient in may aspects. This is one of the ways I’ve played since launch, with every weapon except focus, and in all game modes. I played like that before the bible was written (1 month B.C.?? B.D??). But what I’m not saying is that it is always the way to play (how many times do we have to repeat this?), which is what you’re saying. I’m also saying there are ways to play that are perfectly acceptable in different situations, some that are more effective than the rapid attunement swapping.

This is why I don’t bring up my spec or how I play. Gauddy has no proof so instead he turns it around and attacks your spec, play style and other points. It’s the classic, “If you don’t like the conversation then change the topic” tactic. He can argue against a spec or play style, what he can’t do is back up his claims.

I figure it’s only a matter of time before he stops replying all together in frustration of not being able to back up his claims or he’ll continue to try to change the conversation. However in no scenario will he actually be able to prove anything he says which is why we just keep asking for it. You can’t prove peanut butter is better than peanuts.

Gaudrath.6725:

So basically I am supposed to do an in-depth statistical and mathematical analysis, waste I don’t know how many hours just so that I can prove an obvious point to a couple of forum goers who like to ignore obvious things for the sake of being obtuse? No thanks.

This discussion is about opinions on what is an efficient and what is an inefficient use of the class. The simple fact that not using all your skills results in lower efficiency doesn’t need to be proved. Facts, in case you have forgotten how the scientific process goes, never need to be proven. They’re facts.

What Kodiak is doing is making as much sense as asking for proof that a horse can outrun a one legged man.

You’re supposed to be able to back up your claims. I think you actually said it best:

Gaudrath.6725:

…I will remind you of a simple rule in a logical debate that the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim.

By your own words, the burden of proof is on you. Prove it.

You seem to be the one confused here at what a fact actually means. Even when taken from your Scientific viewpoint stating that “not using all our skills results in lower efficiency” is a theory and needs to be supported by facts. Maybe you’re the one who needs to freshen up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

I realize I haven’t given you anything to attack and you can’t actually prove any of your statements, theories or claims but you really should stop coming up with random nonsense as a response. It does nothing for one’s credibility especially when others seemingly have no problems understanding what I’m asking for.

blackgoat.5172:

When playing in a group (organized or pug doesn’t matter) only thinking of yourself and maximizing your own dps is selfish and doesn’t contribute to anything in the long run. We as Ele’s have some of the most combo fields in the game, regardless of how you’re spec’d/geared you should use them as much as possible for the benefit of the group. Being selfish in group situations is the only wrong way to play any job IMO.

Combo Fields run on a few principals.

For one they require organization and group communication to be counted on reliably. This is because the first combo field placed will be the one that triggers any combo finishers. So for example a Guardian spamming Combo Light fields will often times ruin the best laid combination plans you might have. I can personally say I’ve blown up AOE Retaliation more times than I care to admit because some Guardian dropped a Symbol of Wrath right before I did my Might stacking combos. Another common culprit is Mesmers and their Ethereal fields. In larger scale WvW, Necros and wells.

For two they require sufficient finishers to be taken advantage of. For example the classic Static Field with projectile finishers. Without enough ranged people to take advantage of this, you won’t stack very high Vulnerability therefore lowering the net bonus. This creates problems with other combos like AOE Might because it requires the people to benefit to be close but they could be at range doing projectile finishers and not benefit. Support is all well and good, but simply doing support for support’s sake with no tangible benefit is completely and utterly useless.

More over, I’d argue that you’re doing your group an injustice by wasting everyone’s time trying to do group support when there’s no need for it. Granting AOE Might for one or two people could (no one knows) be worse benefit to your group than just continuing to DPS because the DPS you lost performing that AOE Might could be less than the DPS gained by the Might stacks you granted. No one can say for sure whether or not it does, but that should get you to at least think about the principal.

Gaudrath.6725:

Why don’t you actually read the discussion then? I was referring to Kodiak who flat out claims that you can stay in fire 99% of time and do better than the guy who uses all four elements.

But hey, I can see you guys are absolutely in love with fire, and that there is no real reasoning to be had with you in this thread. Play as you like. If we happen to meet in WvW on opposing sides, I’ll roflstomp you into the ground, take your badge, and move on. You won’t be the first noob “fire mage” I saw out there, nor the last.

For any wondering eles reading this thread, keep that in mind. You can afford to do whatever you want in PvE because it’s dead easy, but if you want to survive in sPvP and WvW, nevermind actually consistently be any good with the class, you won’t be listening to these guys.
Use all four elements, use combos and squeeze every advantage you can. A brain dead NPC boss will stand like a log in the middle of your Lava Font or Meteor Shower, but players, you will want to cripple them, chill them, bleed them and burn them, knock them down, weaken them and heal yourself a lot and whenever you can. You do 0 DPS when you’re dead.

I claim you can’t prove that using all 4 elements will yield higher DPS than the guy who stays in Fire 99% of the time. Show me once where I said sticking in Fire will yield more DPS in a non-mocking manner. Oh wait, I’m asking for you for more proof. I forgot who I was talking to!

For any wondering Eles I advocate you use your brain and think for yourself rather than simply lap up the same information that’s been vomited around and past down as holy scripture since beta. Is swapping around to do DPS better than staying in Fire? I suggest you try both and make that own determination.

Also been toying with the calculator. Horridly bugged and not working only on the most basic levels.

Gaudrath.6725:

But if we’re discussing efficiency, then there are more and less efficient ways to play the class. You can drive your car in second gear all the way to work and get there just fine… you won’t be wrong, just inefficient.

Btw, no, there is never a good reason to stay just in fire with staff. Even if you want to do DPS, you can achieve better results with combos and using high damage spells on cooldown form all 4 elements than just spamming fire skills.

I again invite everyone who thinks they are playing World of Warcraft instead of Guild Wars 2 to visit gw2buildcraft.com and spend some time alone with the calculator. Come back here with a definitive proof that you can outDPS an equally geared build by just using fire and then we can talk.

What we’re asking you to do is prove that inefficiency. You can prove that driving to work in second gear is inefficient because you can measure the time it takes to get there.

Now prove to us that swapping attunements is higher DPS than sticking to Fire in a way we can measure. Back up your claim that it is better. You’re making a claim. Where is your proof?

We don’t have to prove anything. We’re asking YOU to backup and prove YOUR claims. The minute I claim Fire is higher DPS than swapping attunements (in a non mocking manner) with all seriousness I will present to you proof that it is.

Gaudrath.6725:

The original question if this thread is what do we consider to be a “wrong” way to play an ele, which I interpret in what do we consider to be an inefficient and subpar way to play the class.

My answer is anything that doesn’t use 100% of our potential. Which means anything that doesn’t use all of our elements and abilities. Your DPS is lower, your burst potential is lower, your survivability is lower and your utility is lower.

Why? Because you’re not using the kitten skills.

But hey – let’s just assume that your DPS is actually better by staying in fire only. Your playstyle is still subpar, because everything else suffers.

As I said – I can solo champions, supply camps in WvW and actually win a duel. You can’t do any of those, not even close, by staying in fire only. The only way you are even able to stay in fire only in dungeons is because other players take on the attention of mobs and leave you free to just spam autoattack and an occasional meteor shower/lava font.

Of course, they get squat back from you… you just do DPS. Never mind AoE Might or AoE Heals you could be throwing at them, both of which are more useful than the kind of DPS we can put out even when specced for damage.

Personally, I’d take a ‘zerker warrior over a “fire mage” any day. They’ll die harder and do way more damage.

Meanwhile I contend there is no wrong way to play an Ele because no one can prove that there is a wrong way to play an Ele. The game simply doesn’t allow us to prove it. I think this is your biggest source of confusion, I’m not saying Y is better than X and you’re saying X is better than Y. I’m simply saying you can’t prove either scenario. I have taken no sides other than the side of facts, reason and truth.

Running with your assumption that sticking to Fire is better (again no one has really proven it is or is not) the extra DPS you deal has to be also weighted against the utility you add. For example measuring the functional amount of DPS that stacking AOE Might actually does add for the group. By functional I mean you can’t simply add 5 targets if all 5 party members don’t stand in the might. Same with Static Field’s Vulnerability if you only got 1 guy with projectile finishers to proc Vulnerability you likely won’t reach 25 stacks (and notably most projectile finisher classes won’t really be stacked up for AOE Might!). The same holds true of measuring whether or not dropping a Chill or Heal would allow people to deal additional DPS that they wouldn’t have been able to deal otherwise (due to having to stop DPS to survive or stopping DPS due to death). All these utilities can be represented through DPS numbers and compared to the (relatively) simple DPS calculations of just doing DPS.

There’s a lot of assumption that doing group based activities (IE: AOE Might) will lead to over all higher DPS than had you just continued to stay in Fire and did DPS. No one has proven that it actually does.

Most groups will take Warriors over Eles any day of the week regardless. In fact many high end min-max circles will only take Mesmers and Warriors in most cases because their DPS is supreme compared to any other class and offer them good survivability. That’s really not the point of the discussion and in fact is just trying to side track the discussion because you still lack the actual proof to back up your claims that are really just your opinions based on your experiences.

Gaudrath.6725:

No, you seem to insist that a six is an orange and a two is an apple. Look, I think I’m done running in circles with this discussion.

I could go to gw2buildcraft.com and spend an hour cranking out numbers to bury your little theory, but you would probably just say that it’s a thrid party website or something, and I don’t have time to do that anyway. If you want to have fun, knock yourself out, have two identically geared builds, one 30/0/0/20/30 and the other 0/0/30/20/30, whip out a calculator, set a time window of 100 seconds and go to town.

Your playstyle, which ignores our main class mechanic and limits you to only 25% of our abilities is not optimal nor even close to being equal in both utility and DPS. End of story and end of discussion as far as I am concerned.

You’ve never provided numbers once. Not once. You’ve just blatantly held that one is better than the other but have never proved it outside of casual observation which aren’t facts. I’m talking about “fruit” because that’s all you’re giving me.

If you give me any numbers I’m going to ask how you got them and then I would attempt to replicate them to verify your information. We could, then, have a discussion on numbers. If it indeed worked out that X spec with Y gear is better than another I would repeat that same information and use said facts to back it up alongside you.

I have not stated once what my play style or spec is outside of saying I’ve spec’d Berserker before and that I use Berserker gear. My spec or play style has never really mattered to this discussion because I don’t claim the way I play is superior to any other way. I don’t have to prove why mine is better because I don’t claim it is better.

Caledore.6271:

You can’t really quantify the effects of CC skills with numbers. And numbers really don’t prove anything, even with damage skills, as they never tell the whole story – there are far too many variables in actual PvP combat to account for, and something that may do more damage on paper might never do such damage in actual combat. Lava Font hits extremely hard, for instance, but only if the opponent stays in the circle – numbers don’t represent that because you can’t account for how long the enemy may stay in the circle – there’s too many variables – do they have Vigor, are they chilled or crippled, do they have movement skills or condition cleanses to get out, etc., etc.

Numbers really don’t prove anything in a PvP environment. So the definitive proof you’re asking for doesn’t actually exist – or at the very least, accounting for every variable is far too complex to be feasible and so your request is unreasonable.

Everything can be quantified even CC.

Meteor Swarm hits random points within a targeted area. Presuming a mobile target, they will only get hit with X ticks of Meteor Swarm. You then swap to Water and use our Chill field to keep them in the Meteor Swarm area. The theory then holds that because you did the Chill, they now will get hit with X+Y ticks of Meteor Swarm (Y being the extra ticks that will hit because you Chilled them).

However fundamentally I am 100% with you and I totally agree and what you’re saying has been my point all along. People who are stating scenarios as empirical proof aren’t fully stating the scenarios which are vastly complex in nature and have so many working parts that can contribute to a particular outcome.

Gaudrath.6725:

I don’t have to prove it. Do you ask people to prove six is greater than two?

You can prove six is greater than two. See that’s a mathematical fact that can be proven. In fact I’ve been asking for you to provide the numbers to prove your point.

What you’re asserting is that apples are greater than oranges. Can you prove apples are greater than oranges? I’m saying you can’t. You seem to keep insisting you can.

InFluEnZa.6908:

There is nothing to prove; using meteor shower in conjunction with cc abilities will keep your opponents stuck in the aoe longer so they take more damage.

But is it more damage than had you just stayed in Fire and continued to do more Fire based skills? That’s the part you need to prove. You made a claim, now back it up with numbers.

If you don’t have numbers, then it’s just you think it does more damage but you can’t say for sure.

Gaudrath.6725:

Wrong? This is a game. There is no wrong way to play a game. Inefficient? Yes. Sometimes I strip all my armor when going underwater because I can’t roleplay I can swim wrapped in a ton of soaked fur. And hey, you know what, I don’t die and can kill stuff.

Doesn’t mean that I do it better than the guy who kept his armor on, and I wouldn’t go on the forums claiming as such, which is what you do.

And yet…

Gaudrath.6725:

Staying in one attunement 99% of the time is pretty much the only wrong way to play an ele, regardless of your build and trait lines. Players who do that ignore our main class mechanic and do not take advantage of it in any way. End of discussion.

What I am doing is asking you to prove that one is more efficient than the other. You’re making a claim that one is more efficient, better, right, or what other semantic variation you prefer and asking you to prove that it is inefficient, worse, wrong, etc.