Guild Wars 2

Gaudrath.6725:

Kodiak, the reason you’re the last one to die is because those guys take the brunt of enemy fire and us elementalists usually stick to the back or sides and often get neglected in the commotion.

Try rolling as a frontliner in ’zerker gear, let me know how it handles.

As for rifle warriors, they can oneshot a glass cannon ele, the only problem is that they have to stand still and their target has to remain unobstructed and in range while the shot is priming, which often doesn’t happen.

Anyway, try small group action or 1vs1. I bet you can’t even solo a supply camp if you don’t use all the elements. There’s your empirical data.

I’m glad you’re finally starting to see my point that playing a particular way isn’t wrong and like most things it’s all based on not only how you play but the situations you put yourself in.

InFluEnZa.6908:

Even if you are in full zerk gear, throwing a meteor shower followed by water 4,2, then air,5, earth 2 then fire 2 (for might stacks) is better than just doing a fire 5 and then spamming 2,3,1,1,1,3,1,1,2 (something like that).

Prove it.

Jonathan.1580:

Hi.. just hear reading things as Ima warrior thats mad at ANET atm and going to make an alt ..ranger or ele until they fix WvW lag.

Hi.. just hear reading things as Ima warrior thats mad at ANET atm and going to make an alt ..ranger or ele until they fix WvW lag.Kodiak your very well spoken ..lotta fancy words up there.. " empirical data" I like that.

Hi.. just hear reading things as Ima warrior thats mad at ANET atm and going to make an alt ..ranger or ele until they fix WvW lag.Kodiak your very well spoken ..lotta fancy words up there.. " empirical data" I like that.< shuffles feet > Well I am a 80 warr, Asura, geared ofc.. and I run Rifle/GS in WvW and Mr. I oneshot almost all glass cannon specs in the game…and Eles are my favorite because your easy to spot. Once I see you and get you w in 1200 range you have 2 secs to start rolling back or your dead. Most times you wont see me Im small and come in from angles.

Hi.. just hear reading things as Ima warrior thats mad at ANET atm and going to make an alt ..ranger or ele until they fix WvW lag.Kodiak your very well spoken ..lotta fancy words up there.. " empirical data" I like that.< shuffles feet > Well I am a 80 warr, Asura, geared ofc.. and I run Rifle/GS in WvW and Mr. I oneshot almost all glass cannon specs in the game…and Eles are my favorite because your easy to spot. Once I see you and get you w in 1200 range you have 2 secs to start rolling back or your dead. Most times you wont see me Im small and come in from angles.So maybe PvE wise you can ask these gents here for some " data " but in WvW? your just a badge

Hi.. just hear reading things as Ima warrior thats mad at ANET atm and going to make an alt ..ranger or ele until they fix WvW lag.Kodiak your very well spoken ..lotta fancy words up there.. " empirical data" I like that.< shuffles feet > Well I am a 80 warr, Asura, geared ofc.. and I run Rifle/GS in WvW and Mr. I oneshot almost all glass cannon specs in the game…and Eles are my favorite because your easy to spot. Once I see you and get you w in 1200 range you have 2 secs to start rolling back or your dead. Most times you wont see me Im small and come in from angles.So maybe PvE wise you can ask these gents here for some " data " but in WvW? your just a badgethanks all for good read!

Empirical data was taken from Gaudrath.

I always get told a lot that I am going to get one shot or I am going to die when running around in Berserker. I remember I ran with this group of guys for a few days who swore up and down the board about PVT gear and it was impossible to do any kind of group play without PVT gear. The passive AOE was so much you’ll just fall over dead. During those few days, in Berserker gear, I was almost always was one of the last people to die. I laughed cause this guy was going on a rant about it during this 30 minute battle we had over a Supply camp near the enemy’s borderland entrance and I didn’t get downed once till the end.

This is not meant to imply I never die nor is it meant to imply I don’t get bursted down only that when I do it’s usually a situation in which I would have died anyways. I will say I have never died to a Rifle warrior yet in WvW in the last 6 months.

In the end it’s all very well and good to say what you would do in a fight but until you actually get in a fight with me it’s all rather unproven whether or not it’d actually work.

Gaudrath.6725:

Kodiak, I have given you a number of solid examples and situations supporting my claims. So far your response has been to the tune of “lalalalala you can’t prove it, you can’t prove it!”

That’s no way to lead a discussion. If you want to discuss this seriously, please address my arguments. Provide examples. Do some math. Counter-arguments. Whatever. Otherwise this is pointless.

The inherent problem with your examples are in fact they aren’t solid and based solely on empirical data which has no solid basis in fact. Basically you see one thing and therefore take it as fact. More over I’d take it a step further and say your interpretation of what you’re seeing is completely wrong.

For example we’ll take something you said:

Just because you manage to stay alive in zerg fights doesn’t mean everyone will and certainly doesn’t mean you’re doing a good job as an elementalist – those guys you see in PVT gear dropping like flies? In part because a certain fire mage in the back failed to CC the enemy zerg and they got mowed down.

The problem with this statement as “fact” is that the scenario presented (a zerg on zerg battle) has a lot of moving parts. Not only do you have the basic elements (class make up each zerg, gear and level of each zerg, terrain or other environment factors, etc) but you also have soft elements that are much harder to measure (level of organization, skill of each player, etc) and only get more complex the more players are involved. To try to say a group died because one person didn’t drop a Chill Field in such a complex situation is absurd.

In fact, the only plausible reason someone could ever possibly say something like that is because they’re trying to make a point and are grossly overvaluing the effects of a single Chill while ignoring every other factor that contributed to the outcome of the group wiping.

I want something concrete. I want something you can mathematically show to prove your point that one way is better than another. What I’m asking for shouldn’t be that hard if it really is better. Instead I get a lot of opinion based on your experiences. Personally I don’t think you want a discussion based on your responses. You just want to say this is the right way and are annoyed that someone is calling you on it and wants you to prove what you’re saying.

Gaudrath.6725:

The game proves you wrong every day. The reason why front-line zergers all go for high HP and toughness is because your DPS is 0 when you’re dead, and glass cannons die real quick when hit by a zerg. You probably don’t even render for them before they’re already scooping up the bag you leave behind.

If a glass cannon zerg hits a PVT zerg head on, PVT would and does win every time. You can pretend to be wiser than every single experienced WvW player out there, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Again, the game proves you wrong every day. Now, if you think you can outDPS a thief, go ahead and arrange a duel with one. You both have to stand still and use the skills you have at your disposal with you staying in fire only. Pure DPS race.

You will be dead before you get your second fireball off.

Again you’re going on about things you have no factual basis to. You know nothing about me, my experience or what I run into when I play. You need actual facts to back up what you say in order for them to actually be true. You have no facts so all you are left with is an opinion.

Show me the video of the PVT gear zerg overrunning the Beserker geared zerg. Show me a screen shot of them dead. Can you actually prove anything you put on these forums?

Are we measuring DPS or survivability? If a thief can burst me down before I can burst him down it doesn’t mean we have less DPS it means we have less survivability. Here’s a better scenario. Have a thief DPS on a target dummy and an Ele DPS on a target dummy each for a minute and tell me who’s the higher DPS.

Gaudrath.6725:

Instead of saying that the game proves you wrong again, 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. So no, you prove it

On the contrary, the only one without any factual basis for your claims is you. I have plenty of empirical proof available to anyone actually bothering to come up with an optimal build for their class. You just like fire a lot and try to justify your gameplay with unsubstantiated claims.

Why don’t you just say “I like fire” and be done with it? I certainly won’t hold it against you (unless you drop the ball in WvW and I get stomped because you refused to CC the enemy and even then – it’s just a game). Don’t claim it’s an optimal way to play because it is not. It’s your preference and as such you are entitled to it. There is no need to justify it and certainly no need to mislead new elementalists.

The only claim I have made (not made mockingly) is that stating playing one way or another is “right” or “wrong” can’t be proven. That people, like yourself, who make claims that there is a right way to play the class have no factual basis in what you’re saying. You can’t prove it and by your own words burden of proof is on the person who is making the claim.

You have no way to prove swapping attunements will yield higher DPS. In the same light, I have no way of ever proving that staying in Fire full time to DPS will out perform swapping attunements.

Instead of trying to prove your claims after you’ve been called out to do so you’ve done nothing but repeat them over and over as if that is in itself proof. It is not. Alternatively you’ve resorted to personal attacks in not only assuming what my play style is but also my performance in said play style. Not quite sure where that falls into the logical debate structure. Something about if you can’t attack the message attack the messenger.

If you’re going to go around telling people there’s a right and wrong way to play the game you better be able to back it up.

Yea it’s a round about buff to Eles to be sure since we have less to worry about Quickness not only in a competition to do damage but also having to react to that damage.

Makes me want to dust off the old 20/0/30/0/20 build and see if I can make it again without a Stunbreaker with a ton of Toughness/Vitality.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

I would go further and add that any damage measuring tools are inherently inaccurate due to the combo system.

If the warriors, rangers and thieves deal 25% extra damage as a result of a 25-stack weakness on the enemy, the staff elementalist who put down the lightning combo field does not receive the credit.

If the warriors, rangers and thieves deal I-don’t-know-how-much extra damage because they each have 10-15 might stacks, the scepter-dagger elementalist who put down the fire combo field AND the 5 blast finishers does not receive the credit.

Well technically everything can be broken down to a mathematical value.

For example take your stacks of Might. First we have to measure the actual up time of Might. How much Might does a person have over the course of a Minute. Then you gotta measure how much damage that actually adds including any external factors like possibility of diminishing returns for Power and whether or not Might is affected by that (meaning a person who didn’t stack Power may end up getting a greater benefit than someone who did). You have to do this for each player affected by Might cause it will be different and others will be entirely out of range and get no benefit. Where it gets really complicated is when you reach the Might Cap (25) and the contribution from others adding into the Might equation (Warriors, Guardians, etc). This mathematical value represents the added (in this case) DPS to the group.

That group DPS increase can then actually be compared to raw damage values. What did you do to perform that DPS increase? Could you have been doing more DPS by just DPSing instead of buffing your team? Without having the tools to measure this, we can’t provide factual answers to these questions. While it’s fashionable to assume that providing a group benefit is in fact “better” there’s really NO way to prove it.

Gaudrath.6725:

You should google “statistics” and especially the deviation part of it. Just because you manage to stay alive in zerg fights doesn’t mean everyone will and certainly doesn’t mean you’re doing a good job as an elementalist – those guys you see in PVT gear dropping like flies? In part because a certain fire mage in the back failed to CC the enemy zerg and they got mowed down.

This is not a theory. Staying in any single element 99% of time in WvW, regardless of weapon set, is a recipe for being a free badge or pretty much useless to the group you’re running with. That’s a fact. If you want to DPS so much, roll a thief or a warrior, they’re better at it.

There simply is no argument here. GW2 elementalists are designed to use all 4 elements. Our individual skills are weaker because of that. They’re meant to be used in conjunction with each other.

And given equal skill level, a player who uses all four elements will outperform the player who doesn’t in everything, sPvP, WvW and PvE. That’s a guarantee.

I’m going to say that the guys in PVT gear died because they failed to out damage the enemy. They lost because they didn’t deal enough DPS and had they been wearing full Berserker gear they would have won. Prove me wrong.

Warriors and Thieves do more DPS? Prove me wrong.

I contend that I can stay in Fire all day and perform better than any elementalist in the world who swaps attunements. Disagree with me? Prove me wrong.

You talk a lot about good and bad but you got ZERO facts to back up what you’re saying. You have a lot of assumption and absolutely no proof to anything you say. The only difference between your argument and the people who argue that they can stay in Fire all day is that in general more people agree with the former instead of the later. Neither argument has any more truth behind it and quite frankly people need to stop saying what’s “right” and “wrong” when they have no factual basis for their claims.

Gaudrath.6725:

Or kick you from groups doing high level fractals and dungeon romping for being inefficient. Not that I agree with that sort of behavior because I’m not a min/maxer, but it will happen.

This doesn’t reflect my experience. I’ve never once been kicked out of groups and have played as all Fire. Most fractal groups I do ends up with someone leaving if people aren’t performing well.

More importantly, why would people who don’t even play the class even think to look for it? Because of the propagation of assumption and stereotyping of game play. They may very well kick you, but it isn’t because you’re doing low DPS only because they THINK you are.

Gaudrath.6725:

And if you try ignoring your class mechanics in WvW, well, prepare to be farmed for badges. If WvW’ers give you lip about you staying only in fire and not dropping Static Fields (if you run staff) and Frozen Ground in front of enemy zergs, you deserve it.

I honestly never get any feedback on game play in WvW because there’s so much going on no one can really pay attention to what people are or aren’t doing. I also don’t get farmed for badges and survive in many cases in Berserker gear where I see people I know who are in PVT gear go down.

However, in the interest of being objective (gasp), that doesn’t necessarily mean their specs or gear choices are any worse than mine. There are any number of factors that could have contributed to that person dying and me living (being focused, less player skill and countless other factors).

In the end you just said a lot of stuff that COULD happen, but again nothing that actually happens to everyone (because none of it’s ever happened to me).

The long story short is without damage meters or damage measuring tools there’s virtually no way to determine what play style or even spec is more effective. Even the combat log doesn’t measure conditions.

People swapping attunements till they’re all on cool down could be 100% more damage than people who just stay in Fire and there’s ZERO way to back up that claim. For all they know those 27 seconds out of Fire could be half the DPS of what just staying in Fire is.

People claiming that AOE Might stacks increase more damage for the group than the damage they lose while doing those AOE Might stacks with a staff have ZERO way to back up that claim. For all they know they could have increased the damage of the group by 50 total while in the meanwhile they could have been doing 100 damage themselves instead meaning the group lost 50 damage (obviously fictional numbers).

A lot of what goes down on these forums and consequently we see in game is just wild speculation, bold assumptions and regurgitated nonsense with almost ZERO basis in fact (because the facts aren’t available to us).

More importantly, anytime anyone does try to prove it they usually state an incomplete scenario. For example they list a spec, but not a weapon or a weapon and not the gear and spec. GW2’s combat systems behind the scenes are actually quite complex. There’s a lot of soft-caps on damage and damage scaling as well as how conditions actually work. Since things like boons and conditions don’t even show up in the combat log you can’t even parse it manually for an accurate picture.

Play what you want and if someone ever gives you lip about your play style simply ask them to prove mathematically that their play style or spec is better. Just keep repeating to prove it till they go away (because they likely won’t back down despite being wrong).

Calae.1738:

Fire and Earth are our worst trees.

When I look at Fire all I see is talents that boosts Fire. It goes completely against attunment swapping which makes no sense what so ever.

When I look at Earth I see condition damage. Well lets see how good condition damage is. Oh that’s right I forgot; bleeds only stack to 25 in group content and your bleeds won’t get applied when other people are applying them. Burning stacks with other players who apply it and keep knocking off your damage ticks. Survivability? I’d rather invest in Water and get the toughness from gear instead.

If I invest deep in Fire and Earth; my survivability goes to crap and my damage is severely crippled.

Condition play isn’t as bad as you make it seem.

Solo play you never have to worry about bleed caps or burn sharing. Conditions in this setting are extremely powerful. You can’t even stack to 18 bleeds because things die off (even tho we could do it if they didn’t die off) between the third cast on Eruption when condition spec’d.

Group play (dungeons) usually works out well if your group isn’t also running conditions. The other day I had a group with all 5 of us doing bleeds. That’s just a poor group make up no matter how look at it but it’s what you get for doing PUGs. An organized group would discuss their builds and how to best work as a team. You might swap out in this scenario and you might not. Comes with the territory for any class.

Large scale play there’s nothing for it, conditions suck in this scenario. I am hoping they one day make it so instead of conditions disappearing after the cap they just do a flat amount of damage instead.

In PvP there’s enough condition removal that you should be able to go nuts with conditions and never think twice.

The real shame is that compared to other classes, our base bleed durations are absurdly high. Most condition focused classes (Necros, Thieves, Engineers) have to spec deep into conditions just to get the same as our base durations in many cases. With additional condition duration you can even make our Chills and other conditions pretty noticeable duration as well. This is unfortunately where the real shame comes into play as Condition duration is in Fire which is useless on a whole for anything not Fire (least of all Conditions). If they improve Fire to affect other trees more and offer more synergy with burns then it might not be so bad for a Condition based build that’s built around Carrion gear (massive Vitality), Toughness from Earth, and large amounts of condition duration/damage.

I was thinking of doing a Corrupted Dagger (ice) and a Destroyer Dagger (molten fire).

Personally I think they could have done a much better job with the Incinerator’s effects as well for the skills. For example Fire 1 was fine, just should have been colored that same fiery glow color as the Incinerator. Same with Water 1’s coil. The thrown daggers on these skills looks pretty lame. Air 1 could have a kind of trail effect as well as if there’s Fire in the Lightning.

wispi.2194:

I play 25/25/0/0/20 in WvW. I have 15K health, 2300 power, 33% crit, 85% crit damage using Staff with Berserker/Valkrie (power/prec/crit dmg, power/vit/crit dmg). My gems are the same stats. I have 10% added fire damage, extra damage to burning victims, extra damage to victims under 33% health, and additional radius on AoE.

Yes, I die easily if focused and don’t play solo. When I am standing behind the Staff Guardians and support specialists, I am an AoE juggernaut. I do very well in WvW and often overwhelm people who don’t realize how much damage I can do in such a short time over an area.

Which is, more or less, why Staff won’t ever really get buffed to be usable in any other scenario. It excels so much in the scenario you describe (I do the same thing as well only on a 30/20/0/0/20 build) that it’s simply impractical to make it usable in any other. It’s a victim of it’s own success.

Personally I agree. They said they balance the thief’s damage around the fact it can remove boons and I know we sure as hell can’t remove boons so where’s our big damage? Both classes have survival through non traditional means (Ele has water healing and Thief has stealth with both supposed to have decent/good mobility).

The Fire line only helps fire. On a class that encourages swapping attunements having 10-30 points in a line that only assists one attunement is kinda a bad investment.

The Air tree has really bad Grandmaster traits that are Master level quality. The only time you end up specing 30 Air instead of 20 Air is if you want the crit/crit dmg.

The Earth tree is lackluster. It’s trait setup is poor to encourage Condition builds. Signets in general are terrible because they’re 30s cool downs with 3-4s effects. Signet of Fire is good, but has an issue with it being Power and not Condition damage. Water is novel but is vastly outpaced by the Water line’s condition management. Air is outpaced by permanent swiftness which is easy to obtain in a variety of specs. Earth isn’t bad but could use a 1s bump on it’s active effect. A lot of it could be solved if they moved Geomancer’s Alacrity to Adept to allow for a Condition build which would synergize with Signets (which are more conditions). The rest of the defenses that this tree gets are vastly outpaced by the Water tree (outside of the 10 points for the free “Armor of Earth” which is what you commonly see).

Water is your quintessential Elementalist tree. It has many small working components and heals that all add up to a large amount. It also improves our most powerful utility slots: Cantrips. It provides supreme condition management with Cleansing Water especially with our numerous sources of Regeneration.

Arcane used to be absurdly good as well back with Evasive Arcana was a blast finisher for everything. Instead it’s been pretty lack luster ever since and can easily drop to 20 points and still cover all the major abilities while still rocking good attunement cool downs.

When you break down the trees like that, it isn’t hard to see why people spec the way they do. They need to sort out the Earth tree to really bring the Condition/Signet build on par with other builds as well as open up Fire’s benefits to work on additional trees while looking at coming up with some alternatives for Grandmaster Air (the reactive stun isn’t bad but you see that kind of thing as a Master trait for other classes). If they do this, we should see some good build diversity.

Could go D/D for Aura share with 30 in Water. This will let you grant Fury and Swiftness to everyone near you. You could still swap to water for a heal and then use Cleansing Wave for another heal and condition removal and as you mentioned COC healing.

Honestly dislike all our legendary options. Incinerator is by far the best out of the choices to me but still pretty lackluster. If I get a Spark for whatever reason I might make it but otherwise I’ll pass. Rainbow staff or ridiculously proportioned Scepter holds no appeal to me what so ever.

Kinda hoping they will eventually come out with alternative legendaries to build and then I’ll look at making one.

ThiBash.5634:

While swapping should always be done intelligently, for the vast majority of the time, switching quickly will be preferable to not switching quickly. Why sit in fire waiting for Lava Font to recharge when you can pour on some CC in the meantime? The other attunement’s skill 2’s will more than make up for that 1 missed Lava Font.

While the rest of your post is pretty debatable still (I mean really, blowing your heal just to maintain protection?) this seems pretty contradictory. Intelligent swapping should always take priority over all cases and circumstances. Rifling through your attunements looking for cool downs to spam is actually atrocious on Staff and completely sub-par game play that really shines only in S/D or D/D game play due to all the cross attunement combos.

You also discount the damage done by Fire 1 which vastly outpaces Water 1 or Earth 1 and when combined with that extra Lava Font blows away Water 2 and Earth 2 respectively. In general if you want to really maximize DPS you’ll stay in Fire unless you need to swap for another reason (such as needing the CC of Water or Earth or the condition cleansing of Earth). It’s at that point you then roll through the attunements (because you’re already out of fire). For example…

You’re DPSing as Fire, then you need to drop a Healing Rain to clear off conditions. You setup a Fire skill (Meteor is best cause it’s animation can be clipped) then swap to Water and do Ice Spike. Follow up with Healing Rain. If the encounter is really tough you can drop the Chill field as well and then swap to Earth (and if Evasive Arcana blow it up for Area Frost). Finally you lead in with a Eruption and now Fire will be back so you swap back to Fire and throw down Lava Font for Area Might and now stay back in Fire to continue DPSing till you need to switch again.

If you don’t believe me that sticking with Fire is higher DPS, simply pick a suit of gear (doesn’t matter really what kind, go naked if you want) and DPS a target dummy for 30 seconds. Go through the combat log and add it all up. Now repeat with the second play style (same gear) and compare. I did this previously and Fire still came out ahead.

ThiBash.5634:

Have to disagree there, sorry. For one thing, you can also place fields and the swap TO earth, and get some projectile finishers (works especially well with Frozen Ground). Also, you can combine skills like Gust and Static Field to ensure your target gets stunned by the field. You can also cast a Meteor Shower, then switch to Water mid cast for Ice Spike. Assuming you use Arcana, this will increase your shower’s damage substantially.

Also, with boon duration runes, Elemental Surge will ensure permanent swiftness, protection, regeneration and might on any elementalist build.

Swapping to Earth for projectile finishers provides limited usefulness for yourself to combo. Can it work? Sure. However since everyone’s natural reaction is to roll the hell out of any AOE field they sure as hell aren’t going to just sit there in the combo field to be repeatedly Chilled after the fact projectile or no. This means you pretty much have to drop it on yourself to get the Chill combos reliably which is roughly the same as just dropping it on them.

Gust is atrocious and if you can reliably land it from far out well thumbs up to you because you’re literally like the only one. The projectile is completely unreliable due to how slow it is on anything outside of very short range.

My experience with Meteor Shower and Ice Spike combo has always been I’m now stuck in Water for 10 seconds and usually want to be back in Fire to drop another Lava Font which will do considerable more damage over time than Ice Spike when combined with Fireball (which won’t hit every time but the few it does with Lava Font hits pretty darned hard combo’d).

As for Boons, at max you got around 70% boon duration. You can’t keep a 3s boon up forever like that when the skills got a 9s recast. Even at 100% you’re still looking at a 33% downtime on top of the fact that in order to keep it up you’re forced to swap every 10 seconds even if it’s not advantageous to do so in order to maintain that boon up time. With Staff, you don’t always want to swap because a particular scenario may be more beneficial to stay in your attunement. Can you get some boons? Sure. But it’s no where near the same efficacy as D/D boon setup.

Earth 3 even combos well in Ring of Fire to proc Fire Aura which will also grant you Zephyr’s Boon.

Also Firebreath combos well with Fire Grab. A lot of the time I do that just to set my 45s cool down prior to using Earthquake since that’ll let me know when it’s up again for a Might combo.

The standard boon build revolves around 0/10/0/30/30 and D/D game play. With that build you got access to swiftness, fury, regen, vigor, protection and might stacks which when added up (which only really occurs during brief intervals) is very powerful. This is all accomplished by Zephyr’s Boon (Swiftness and Fury), Fire field Blast finishers (Might stacks), Soothing Disruption (Regen and Vigor), Renewing Vigor (Vigor), and Protection (Elemental Attunement into Earth). It all combos very well as is very popular once you get how to do it down.

The problem with Staff by comparison to D/D is that DD has a lot that plays off itself. For example Firebreath -> Fire Grab for a big damage boost. Ring of Fire -> Earth -> Dodge Roll Evasive Arcana -> Arcane Wave -> Earthquake -> Churning Earth for massive might stacks. Hell just swapping to Water triggers off a heal, regen, condition removal on top of being able to use Cleansing Wave for another heal and condition removal instantly. It all fits very neatly and has a lot game play where each attunement plays well off each other.

Staff by comparison has at most a few combos almost all revolving around Eruption from Earth (such as Eruption -> Lava Font or Eruption -> Geyser or Eruption -> Static Field). Other than this, there’s very few abilities that really play off each other and in general most Attunements in staff are separate from each other. It also doesn’t benefit nearly as much from Evasive Arcana anymore (which is what that old 10/10/10/10/30 build was) since it’s rarely feasible to drop a field down, switch and roll into it since you’re very rarely close up. It’s not terrible, but it’s a far cry from what it once was. This all makes the number of actual boons you have up at one time pretty limited to usually maybe few stacks of Might, Regen and Vigor.

Personally I rock a 0/20/0/30/20 template now. This more than suffices in any role in any circumstance and I can pull off a D/D boon build or a Staff build (support or offense) while still bringing my standard level of group support with the 30 points in Water (clearing off AOE Fear and other conditions with Healing Rain and Cleansing Water is great for group fights in WvW). This way I’m only swapping around Major traits based on what I am doing and not constantly respecing out.

sil.4160:

Ele could reliably 1vX? This is incorrect statement. Ele could reliably run away from multiple ppl, but definitely not 1vX, which means taking on multiple foes and winning

I’ll be happy to show you any number of videos where an 80 Elementalist in full Exotic gear 1vXs successfully against another level 80 and a bunch of up leveled scrubs in greens. [/sarcasm]

Offhand Dagger Air 4 skill that would propel you forward along the ground.

The cool down as increased. This decreased the over all mobility of /D builds.

Mostly it’s people over-reacting.

ThiBash.5634:

If they go through with the boon hate concept, then I’m figuring the few staff eles will switch to D/D just to survive.

Staff doesn’t have nearly the same boon up time on multiple boon types that a D/D does.

Really don’t see many people flocking to the Ele to 1vX when they nerf the thief. A few might but your average player just doesn’t casually discard the character they put a jack ton of time into.

Fishbait.6723:

P.S. For those that went female human. Why? Ye gads, I had a 20-25 female human Mesmer before I heard that screeching laugh & had to delete it instantly.

All it takes is one look at the screen shot thread to see a buncha half naked chicks to figure that one out.

Since I was going to end up with around 4 sets of gear I themed my around each element. Got my Berserker gear (Fire), Soldier PVT gear (Air), Magic Find gear (Earth) and Shaman (Water).

I originally went Charr, but I disliked all the tiny skirts on them back in beta. There were a few looks I liked as Charr (such as cultural tier 2) but I didn’t like being pigeon holed into one look (especially cause I carry 4 sets of gear).

Then at release I went another class and eventually got around to making an Asura Ele. The Asura was alright (finally figured out how to make it look alright by shrinking it’s head and ears to the max) but everything was a kitten event for them. Firebreath you hop up shoot flame, Meteor Shower you hop around, it was like I was an unhinged spring. Even doing normal things like running around was an event cause your whole head wobbles forward then you stabilize. At first it’s easy to ignore, but after staring at the same over the top animations I got tired of it and rerolled.

Norn are just big humans and Sylvari are just leafy humans so finally just gave in and made a human.

titaniumm.2983:

i thought about a “recharge all staff skill by 30 %, remove any combo field prducing by staff”

The problem with staff isn’t the cool downs. Most skills are quite spammable. In fact (other than the two very powerful ones in Water) we don’t have a single cool down above 30 seconds.

The biggest problem for staff is that a vast majority of it’s damage is either extremely slow or completely avoidable. This means the times you do actually do damage you need it to actually hit hard to make up for all the damage that your target will easily avoid.

This creates a problem design wise as they also have to account for scenarios such as in WvW or PvE where AOE is easier to land on large clumps of targets. If they increase the damage too much, this creates an issue where staff becomes the mandatory choice for WvW and PvE.

Unless they want to revert the EA nerf (which I doubt they want to further promote the 0/10/0/30/30 spec for Eles) this leaves staff in an odd position. The solution more than likely will end up being simply saying staff isn’t meant for SPvP and focusing on other areas instead.

Maybe something like a reverse Blasting Staff where the target area doesn’t get smaller but the combo fields are removed for a 20% increased effect.

I had an Asuran Elementalist. Finally got it proportionally to where I wanted it.

Eventually I had to go to a human however because of the absurdity of the animations on Asura. Everything is an event for the Asura. You don’t just breathe Fire, you jump up into the sky and then breathe fire. You don’t just run forward, you dip your oversized noggin around like you’re about to fall over and then run forward. You leap, you hop, you bound as if you’re an unchained spring. If you’re down with that, that’s cool but after a few months it just got absurdly old to me.

It isn’t all about damage however and catching the initial contact with an AOE fear and ensuring all their cool downs are covered in a Chill (to mention nothing of an easy AOE poison field and Area Weakness combo) on top of dropping absurdly powerful Wells means the Necro is no slouch in group combat, either.

The idea of boon hate is flawed.

Boons are popular but only in so much as they have few predators (such kittenter Mesmers). The problem is that once you introduce a boon hate style build to the mix it’s going to be used exclusively to counter the classes that rely on boons to survive (IE: Bunkers). That sounds good in theory but now you’ve introduced a mandatory element to game play where 1 player will always be boon hate to counter any boon bunkers. This will make boon bunkers ineffective with such a targeted counter and people will likely stop bringing them in favor of other styles of bunker (such as a defensive mesmer or Necro).

Personally I’d wish they’d stop coming up with counters and instead just give us other viable alternatives. They may very well find that it’s not as bad as an issue as they think the minute they give us a viable alternative.

The dev’s recent roundtable mentioned that Eles pretty much got one build (0/10/0/30/30 or small variations there of) and other builds are only rarely used and they would like to address that in the way of traits.

The problem that they don’t seem to quite get is it’s a total picture scenario. The most inherent problem that prevents build diversity is our absurdly squishy nature. Most thieves build around stealth because they are squishy. It’s the same reason why we build around boon bunker d/d mobility style. I can get away with being totally offensive on my Mesmer because I have so many tricks up my sleeves to survive but for the ele I have to pretty much spec into it.

I’m sure you’ll get people who come out of the woodwork to tell you about their 30/0/30/0/10 build or 30/30/0/0/10 build or 10/0/30/0/30 build or 30/0/0/30/10 build and the list goes on but the fact of the matter is that on a large scale you won’t ever really see these builds adopted (outside of the zerker one). It’s just not going to work with the way the elementalist is currently setup outside of some niche play (but rest assured they’ll tell you they have no issues).

I like your initiative but it’s just too kitten long to really agree or disagree with any point.

Fire’s problem is that it lacks anything substantial for anything other than Fire. This really limits play style diversity on a class that’s intended to swap to 3 other attunements quite often. It’s also lackluster because Fire lacks any form of CC which means you can’t really stay in Fire in most scenarios (especially PvP). With the trait spec encouraging you to stay in Fire this becomes a non starter.

Air is decent offering a decent number of majors and minors that aren’t completely terrible. That said the final two majors are completely lackluster and feel more like Master level traits.

Earth is frustrating because it’s trying to do too much in a single tree. There’s way too much split between Conditions and Protections but no real way to focus on condition damage due to trait positions. I’d like to see Geomancer’s Alacrity pulled down to Adept (to help synergize with Earth being mostly finishers with combo fields created by other attunements). This would make for a solid (hah hah) protection or condition/signet based offensive builds.

Water is pretty much amazing and it’s why you see it in so many specs. It’s defensively great and gives any build instant survivability through improving our most powerful utility skills (Cantrips) while also providing a large amount of passive healing and condition removal.

Arcane has seen better days when EA was blast finishers galore but all in all the tree still holds up pretty well for a variety of specs.

On a final note I’d really like to see our utilities changed. The biggest problem our Utility suffers is colossal cool downs that just aren’t warranted in most cases. The biggest example of this is our Signets. Signet of Earth’s 3 seconds of Immobilize or Signet of Water’s 4s chill each with a 30s cool down is atrocious. The strength of the effects aren’t worth the huge cool downs associated with them. Signet of Fire has it about right with a 9s Burn on a 20s cool down. Really we should be seeing a 1/4th duration to cool down ratio on most of these especially because without “Written in Stone” you’re giving up the passive entirely. This would also help build diversity as a 30 earth build for Written in Stone wouldn’t seem so bad.

When I had originally read the notes I had hoped it’d be more tornado shaped (with a tiny tail below) and two legs it stood on and two tiny arms it cast with kinda like a miniature tornado man.

I got a lightning scorpion.

I’m not disappointed, just wasn’t what I was expecting.

So I’ve done this for all 4 sets of my gear (Earth = Magic Find, Air = PVT, Fire = Berserker, Water = Support Suit).

1. Create an alt with piece you want. I like human intro because Logan’s buff bubble makes the boss encounter trivial.

2. Run up into Divinity’s Reach and grab a silver out of the bank.

3. Run back over to the armor vendor (it’s just down the hill from the black lion house across from the bank next to the weapon guy).

4. Switch the tab to level 10 items. Purchase level 10 cloth helm.

5. Go back to the bank and transmute using a basic, non-level 80 stone. This will make the item account bound instead of soul bound. Place in bank.

6. Delete toon. Repeat for all items desired.

(Remember you can also grab cross class items, so if you really want a mesmer mask or necro mask you could grab that too. I really considered the necro ghost mask for my human since it’d make his eyes glow with power)

7. Log into main and transmute into level 80 items as desired.

Leveling I went 10 in Water for Soothing Disruption first but I’m a Cantrip focused player, then Air then Arcana. At 40 I respeced to do 20 Water for Soothing Disruption and Cantrip Mastery with 10 in Air for Bolt to the Heart. After that 10 more in Air to grab Inscription and final 10 in Arcana again. At 60 I respeced again and do 30 Water with Soothing Disruption/Cantrip Mastery/Cleansing Water with 20 in Air for Bolt to the Heart/Inscription. Finally last 20 points in Arcana for Renewing Vigor/Blasting Staff.

Leveled entirely in Power → Power/Prec → Power/Prec/Crit Dmg gear.

This gave me a decent amount of crit and crit damage as I leveled while maintaining a decent level of survivability through the water line and cantrips. If you’re into the elemental tanking thing, could always swap out Inscription for reduced cool down as well. Most of the time I just kited around a Lava Font I’d create and run back and forth over it dragging mobs onto it and had no issues. Long as you constantly stay moving in that small area I found melee mobs missed me 9 times out of 10 cause of the terrible AI.

The fundamental problem is you, nor anyone else, understands what niche Conjured Weapons are supposed to fill. Are they meant to be long term combat alternatives similar to Engineer packs? Are they meant to be short term, slightly more powerful alternatives to base attacks? Are they meant to be an alternative to swapping attunements? We could speculate forever but the only people who have the answer is Arena Net.

That creates the problem of anytime anyone makes a suggestion it could be flying in the face of what they intended the design to be. I kinda wish they’d come out and outline what they intended for each sub set of utility but I doubt that’ll ever happen.

That said I do like the picking up the second weapon doubling charges. Gets annoying when you gotta pick it back up mid auto attack chain on a Lightning Hammer.

Most of the skills on most of the attunements for S/D aren’t bad but they are simply lackluster by comparison to Dagger MH. The only attunement worth anything is Air in Scepter and the rest you usually just swap to blow cool downs then go back to Air. It’s usable like this and more or less in theme with Ele game play but it’s hardly ideal either.

It’s the same scenario that you see with Focus and Dagger OH. It’s not that Focus is really all that terrible it’s just completely out shined in every way by Focus except in some very rare scenarios. Can you really compare Ring of Fire and Fire Grab to Fire Wall and Fire Aura with a straight face?

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’ve always really wanted to not need to use the boring cantrips and be able to run 20 air with inscription trait, 3 glyphs, and the glyph heal in a 0/20/0/20/30 or 0/20/0/30/20 bunker build. Would be so much fun.

Alas, cantrips are stun breakers and glyphs aren’t. I’d drop soothing disruption and run 3 glyphs and inscription in a heartbeat otherwise. With boon duration runes the boon stacking would be glorious.

Yeap. On Dungeon Fights where I don’t need Mist Form I usually throw on Glyph of Storms instead. Funny throwing down a Lava Font, Meteor Shower and Glyph of Storms all at once. I am pretty loathe to give up Cleansing Fire in any build however. It’s just so amazing.

HappyHubris.1096:

Can you folks recommend good trait selection for PvE solo and dungeon damage/support? I’m playing with staff traits, but even given tiers (e.g. 30/0/0/10/20) I’m not sure which staff traits are best. Thanks!

I’ve been pretty keen on a 0/20/0/30/20 spec lately.

Bolt to the Heart is pretty self explanatory. I like inscription because it basically doubles the buffs you get from GOEH. It means on fights where I don’t need to heal I can use it as a might stacking buff (especially after the latest patch). There are alternatives, but really nothing all that impressive. I also started specing Air instead of Fire because the crit and crit damage ultimately increased my damage more than 200 power.

Water line is all about support and condition management. Cleansing Fire becomes a 4 condition removal stun breaker that adds Regen and Vigor on a reasonable cool down with Cantrip Mastery. Sometimes I replace Mistform with a different utility, depends on what I am doing. Cleansing Water is pretty amazing. You can take a place like CM where the rogues spread a ton of bleeds and just clear them off en masse as needed. If it isn’t needed (such as you have a shout cleansing Warrior or Guardian) then the fields are still pretty nice for healing as you do pick up a decent chunk of +Healing just from specing down this line. Personally I love being practically immune to conditions with the amount of condition removal I have.

Arcane you got Elemental Attunement which helps stacking might or Regen (which again with Cleansing Water removes another condition). Sometimes I replace this with Renewing Stamina as it’s pretty good as well. Blasting Staff I find pretty darned useful more often than not. For doing Dynamic Events it just increases your tagging radius and for support just increases heal field sizes. Also with 20 in Arcane you rarely notice cool downs between attunements and boons last a good duration. After the Evasive Arcana nerf I haven’t been a huge fan of it. Most of our fields don’t last long enough to drop, swap to Earth and do a roll especially if you have to use your dodge for something else using up the timer. Most of the time that combo can just be reversed with starting in Earth and then swapping to say Fire/Water/Air for the combo. I like it for D/D, but staff it’s just been pretty lackluster in my experience.

Arcane Wave works wonderfully with staff. You can provide AOE Might, AOE Frost Aura, AOE Heals, AOE Swiftness or use other people’s fields to do a finisher all without having to waste time in Earth.

Gear wise I mostly use Berserker. I have plenty of defense in the form of heals and condition removal from the Water tree to afford full Berserker gear for offense. This gives me a fairly balanced outcome where I can be defensive and offensive at the same time while still providing support. I also have Emerald Jewelry for those times I know I am going to just have to deal with the hits for the extra toughness it provides without completely leaving me devoid of offense.

Works for me pretty well and the base lineup isn’t that far off what most Dagger spec’s are so if I want to D/D I can usually pull it off (but not having 30 in Arcane is kinda yikes especially after the boon nerfs).

Eles suck till around 40 in most cases I’ve found.

I originally went Asura. It was fine (I finally made peace with the goofiness of the look by shrinking the head to a more normal proportion and made the smallest ears I could) but after a while the over the top animations wore on me. All the little leaps on skills or the way whenever you started running you stop yourself from falling over as if the weight of your massive head was going to tip you over just got unbelievably tiresome after a few months. It was great being unbelievably tiny however as I picked the smallest model possible but this just lead to constantly being zoomed out. I also hated the way most staves clipped through the floor cause they weren’t far up on your back and daggers were too tiny to see.

Then I did AC Explorable path 3 and was a human, saw the human animations and rerolled. Never looked back. Took no time at all refarming COF for zerker gear and HOTW/AC for PVT gear. I already had most of the mats for any jewelry I wanted.

I used to never D/D back on my Asura Ele. I was staff 100% of the time. When I rerolled human I thought to give D/D a try.

D/D was good, can see the strengths of it. Strong defense built into the character, lots of boons, lots of base damage depending on gear setup. A lot of synergy with swapping attunements. I’ve certainly won my fair share of 1v1s with D/D in WvW while I was unlocking the points on the new guy to the point it was almost laughably bad (never had to heal on many fights). Dungeons I had no real issues but there were a few fights I knew if I was staff would have just been way easier.

However I’m a staff guy. My natural play style is to avoid the 1v1 style duels and be opportunistic preferably from a distance. I have no problems just walking away from a fight or even just losing 1v1 because I don’t expect to be great at everything. I almost never do sPvP and focus more on group WvW and Dungeons both scenarios where Staff shines. I even do perfectly fine in PvE soloing as a staff and never had issues there. Eyeballing the numbers compared to my other 80s the damage ain’t that bad either.

The only problem I’ve ever had with the staff really is I wish there were more control in the DPS attunes (fire and air) instead of being packed away under the lower DPS attunes (water and earth). If you start out in water/earth to control then swap to fire/air to dps you’re stuck waiting to go back if you need water/earth’s support. If you’re in fire/air and swap to water/earth to CC by the time you get back to fire/air the CC is largely over. I mean it’s all very doable, but it’s also very disjointed. I’d much rather see something like with a trait Lava Font cripple for 1s on tick and something to improve Gale cause it’s super slow projectile misses and is worthless 9 times out of 10. Personally I think it’d be super cool to keep it’s slow projectile in but massively increase it’s size to a wall of air proportions and have it knock back up to 5 people who don’t dodge out of the way (like a wall…or gale…of air).

You may find better results going more offensive with your equipment (Berserker Armor with Rubies and Emerald Accessories) and then specing something like a 0/20/0/30/20 spec. This gives you much more offense (that isn’t centered around fire attunement) through stats and a very high crit rating while maintaining your defense through cantrips and water line.

Razor.6392:

The only direct nerf that 0/10/0/30/30 received was the soothing disruption one. Every other nerf, and I mean EVERY ONE OF THEM, impacted other builds on a much greater scale.

I actually used Soothing Disruption in any build that wasn’t really full on zerker mode (30/30/0/0/10) including my other three Staff builds that heavily utilized Cantrips and used it as my primary source of Vigor.

If anything the biggest nerf to D/D was to the aura boon durations which directly impacted any kind of D/D play. With 3 auras (Fire → Earth leap combo, Frost Aura, Shocking Aura) it’s the only spec with a reliable amount of Auras to benefit from ZB. ZB certainly didn’t effect my staff builds (as I rarely do Frost Blast Finisher to warrant specing into ZB) especially now that Inscription just became a lot more powerful as staff (Eruption → Fire (Battle +Ele Att) → Lava Font → Arcane Wave → Glyph Heal = 16 might stacks with staff).

Honestly doesn’t bother me much. Just makes Zerker based D/D play less viable which I rarely ran in most cases. Just means no more wearing Magic Find gear while dungeoning as D/D

Razor.6392:

divinity / ruby orbs.

man I can’t wait until they nerf 0/10/0/30/30.

I am laughing so hard right now. You couldn’t wait, and now you’re upset in how they nerfed it. There were 3 elements that made the D/D Ele strong:

1. Perma vigor with renewing stamina and Soothing Disruption
2. Easily maintained perma Fury with double Shocking Aura
3. Balled up healing efficiency where nothing is really OP but when combined it’s very strong

Nerfing 3 is hard and messy from a development standpoint because there’s really no one thing that’s OP in the mix. Even cutting Evasive Arcana’s water effect isn’t going to have a whole lot of changes of game play.

Nerfing 2 was expected. It can still be maintained, but now the user has to give up a bit more offense to do it (IE: Rune slots). I imagine in the future they will reduce it a bit more as well.

Nerfing 1 was also expected. Soothing Disruption is arguably one of the best traits in the game previously able to offer a huge amount of Regen and Vigor on demand on top of what are already some of our best utility. Coupled with Renewing Stamina you could very easily have perma Vigor which is another thing (in addition to Fury) they’ve been trying to reduce/remove. The truth is however I have a Mesmer and Guardian and Vigor is constantly up with high enough crit rating. The difference is that if you don’t have high enough Crit Rating (such as going more defensive in PVT gear and boon duration) your crit still won’t be as high (50%) as someone who’s in Zerker gear and usually has Fury up (70-90%).

Be careful what you wish for.

Can’t say I’m surprised however I am somewhat disappointed in this. They said they were going to be looking at increasing the effectiveness of other builds to expand options to see if a nerf was truly necessary or it’s just a matter of a lack of counters. Instead we got the nerf and are more pigeon holed into bunker to make up for it.

JJBigs.8456:

To me, AC is easier than CoF p1. Ive had countless bad teams wipe on Slave Driver, or unable to kill effigy. Very very few fail AC path1. If they do, they get a ele.

The biggest reason is because the tokens from COF can be used to buy yellow gear for only 30 tokens that can be used to break down into globs of ectos increasing your money/hr compared to any lesser level dungeon such as AC which requires 180 tokens.

COF is simply tough to beat.

Focus buffed. Still probably won’t use it outside of very specific scenarios.

Staff minor change. Doesn’t really alter most game play.

Evasive Arcana hit again. Could have been worse. Probably part of the whole unraveling the support ball that bunker eles have. May see future nerfs as well to other traits in the Water line as part of that initiative.

RTL nerf. Meh. Expected something like that. Could have really been worse.

Now with 50% more Prybar.