Guild Wars 2

Kamahl.3621:

snipitysnipsnip

Oh I agree that Engineers can do great damage as Grenades either as condition or straight physical power. I’m not convinced on the might stacks, however. You list a lot of blast finishers but no fire field. That is unless you’re going FT which we come back to lowering your damage to provide a benefit (that other classes provide and maintain their damage which is kinda the point of this thread). Seems like it’d just be more beneficial to do something like Elixir/Grenade spec and take 409 and HGH and give yourself might and clear conditions that way (since the throws can be used for yourself or AOE as a group).

I’m also 100% with you with the condition part where condition spec is largely terrible. The other day I was in a HOTW group with 2 bleed warriors, condition necro, condition ranger, and me doing bleeds from grenades. It was total condition overkill and most of them were whining at each other cause the stacks were permanently capped at 25. Really it’s a shame because I’d like to play a variety of classes condition spec (Necro S/D, Thief P/D, Mesmer Illusion) but it’s just so lackluster compared to Power/Prec builds in any kind of group play.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Yet you can’t switch from Air to Water back to Air as easily as I can switch from the Flamethrower to the Elixir Gun back to the Flamethrower—which was my point.

Saying you can switch from Earth to Water to Air easily is pretty deceptive and not what we were talking about.

You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about on D/D game play. You wouldn’t swap from Air to Water to Air even if you could. Playing D/D is all about rotating skill combos and timers. Air is the default skill you go to when your other power combos (such as Dragonbreath -> Firegrab or the Ring of Fire series) are down but you certainly should never be just sitting in Air the entire time doing DPS. It’s actually the default lower DPS compared to the rest of what we do. Churning Earth alone can deal 9-11k. You also never just sit on Water because Frost Aura is a powerful offensive and defensive cool down.

Phineas Poe.3018:

This is kind of a stupid rebuttal. You’re basically deflecting the fact that the Engineer can sustain Super Elixir 100% of the time VERY EASILY, offering condition removal whenever anyone needs it. At any time.

Who cares if it’s “too much?” The point is that we can do it.

As for your Fury, Swiftness, and Might: Cool story bro. Too bad I can sustain 100% Vigor, Might, Swiftness, and Fury by myself through traits, Drop Stimulant, and Rune of Altruism.

The point is you should be using a higher DPS spec such as Grenades (which are superior physical damage as well as condition damage) because having a permanent Super Elixir is unnecessary. No one will ever need it.

This is where we come back to the point of this thread and why people hate on the Engineer. Neat, you can Super Elixir on a 20 second cool down while doing DPS or keep it up full time if you swap and cast. You’re just doing reduced damage potential to have something no one actually needs. They need/want your damage, not healing.

As for boons: Fascinating story chap. I can do all that AND give them to others (except for vigor). I also strongly doubt you can reach 25 might stacks by yourself without HGH which with 2/3 of your utility going to kits I strongly doubt it (I usually reach around 12-15 with boon duration and HGH with a Flamethrower and that’s with 3 elixirs total). Feel free to post a build and video if I’m wrong.

Why do people hate engineers? They just refuse to see how bad off they really are.

JohnDied.3476:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Except the Elementalist wears light armor and has the lowest tier health pool. You can wear P/V/T gear with Emerald jewelry on your Elementalist and pretend that you’re as survivable as the Engineer is, but the numbers don’t lie; you’re not.

No, he is. Bunker eles are way tankier than bunker engis because of their great heals, it’s just a fact of the game right now.

Don’t worry though, that may not be the case in a week. Bunker eles have Nerfs incoming

EDIT: Forgot to say that bunker eles don’t have to be D/D. Some of us wan’t to be a great team support with staff. That’s what I wanted out of my engi, but couldn’t figure one out, all everyone tells you to do is “run elixir gun noob” because they think that measly little heal will do any good against a champ.

We’ll see. As the Devs even stated, there’s really no one single ability or trait the Ele has that’s overpowered as a whole for defense but rather it’s a large combination of tiny elements that all add up (such as swapping to water attunement and immediately getting a heal, removing a condition, gaining a regen that also removes a condition).

However in that same interview they also mentioned rather than necessarily nerf it they were looking at possibly adding in better counters instead and seeing if it’s really overpowered or if there’s just a lack of counters.

What decision they end up going with they haven’t really said. Could nerf D/D or could buff other builds. Could do a combination. Guess we’ll find out more soon

Phineas Poe.3018:

Cleansing Wave also has an untraited 40-second cooldown. You toss around how many you have, but the fact of the matter is that Kit Refinement + Elixir Gun is arguably the best sustained condition removal in the entire game.

What matters is here is that you have to switch attunements to remove conditions. I can swap to the Elixir Gun in the middle of a Flame Jet attack and proc Super Elixir through Kit Refinement. I can lay down a Light field without dropping an inch of my DPS.

Can you do that with your Elementalist? Gee, no. You can’t. Enjoy that attunement swap cooldown. I can swap to the EG and Med Kit as needed to drop Light fields and buffs and swap back to the FT before the 2-second attack is even over.

You really shouldn’t speak about things you don’t know about.

Criticizing swapping attunements on a D/D Elementalist is like criticizing water for being wet. It’s what it was designed to do and the way D/D plays. I can easily change to water mid Churning Earth and gain Frost Aura, clear off 2 conditions, add regen, and AOE heal everyone around me and immediately swap right into Air before done channeling the Churning Earth.

The biggest advantage Eles have, when going for condition removal, is Cleansing Water. Any source of regen suddenly becomes a condition removal. That includes the Regen gained from Soothing Disruption which then turns any Cantrip ability into condition removal without having to swap attunements (where the ‘6’ number comes from one of which will remove four separate conditions).

Are you really going to try to compare combo fields with the Elementalist? You’re trying too hard.

The reality is that most dungeons and events in this game don’t even require that much condition removal. Most cases I don’t even bother specing into Cleansing Water because it’s a colossal waste for me and the group. I’d much rather share Auras and give out permanent Fury and Swiftness to my group instead on top of the 12-25 stacks of Might I’m almost giving them. Who really cares if you can remove 100 conditions when you only ever suffer from 1-2 tops?

Kodiak.3281:

Except the Elementalist wears light armor and has the lowest tier health pool. You can wear P/V/T gear with Emerald jewelry on your Elementalist and pretend that you’re as survivable as the Engineer is, but the numbers don’t lie; you’re not.

And yet I don’t die or get downed in Magic Find or Berserker gear let alone PVT gear and Knight accessories. This is because Water Eles are all based on a lot of little things all adding up and coming together for a powerful package.

The problem you seem to be having is simple math. You only need enough defense to survive your encounters and allow yourself to do your maximum damage. Anything more is a waste and is worthless. Like condition removal, it doesn’t matter if you can take 100 hits if you only ever take 1-2 hits.

This seems to be a reoccurring theme. Maybe this is why Engineers are regarded so poorly: people are wasting time focusing on things that aren’t necessary or needed.

Rin.1046:

I was fighting a champion abomination yesterday with two other players, all ranged. Two of us were medium armour (me as engi and the other as ranger). My higher damage drew the champ on me the entire encounter. The other two went down due to his charge attack, which got me a couple of times as well. Overall I was surviving longer and dealing more damage than the other players and I was the last to go down in the end. In fact I had been running circles around this champ, and other spawns, trying to slowly res one of the downed rangers a bit at a time, for a quite a while before I slipped up and got hit by its charge.

You realize that dealing damage is only a small portion of aggro mechanics in this game right? You should probably read up:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

Phineas Poe.3018:

One extra detail you’re really neglecting to mention here is that Lightning Whip only has a range of 300 to Flame Jet’s 450. It can also only hit a maximum of three targets; Flame Jet doesn’t discriminate.

Is a D/D Elementalist going to do more damage than me? Yeah, maybe. Are they as good at condition removal as Engineers are? Uh, no, they are not. Are they as good at control as Engineers are? Uh, no, they are not. Are they as survivable as Engineers are?

Uh, no, they are not.

First of all, you’re woefully misinformed. Flamethrower only hits 3 targets. You can easily test this by going to the targeting dummies in LA in the back and using their primary on what should hit 5-6 targets and it’ll always only hit 3. The only time when this changes is when mobs move around and/or your target changes. As with any channeled ability it will primarily hit your target so if you spam tab to switch targets, and they are in the base range, it will hit the new target for the separate tick.

The only base Engineer damage capability of hitting more than 3 targets, and to my knowledge one of the very few actually in game, is Pistol’s explosive Shot with Coated Bullets equipped. It has basically unlimited damage potential as each shot will pierce a target, explode to targets around it, then continue on to pierce another for another explosion. However this literally requires the sun and moon to align in most cases to take full advantage of (such as COF Path 2’s Assassin Event with unlimited mobs and some Orr Events). This is also why it’s base damage is so horrendously weak to the point it’s arguably unusable (because it was so popular back in beta).

You’re also horribly misinformed about a D/D Ele. Since most D/D spec’s go so deep in the Water tree (20-30 points) there’s a lot of condition removal to be had (around 3-6 of which 3 are AOE). With D/D I have multiple Chills, Weakness, Reactive Stun, Knockback, Immobilize and Knockdown. That’s a lot. Half the time I sneak in Magic Find Gear on in dungeons and I am no worse for wear when it comes to survivability. I will admit that straight up I probably couldn’t just take the hits like my Engineer can, but a lot of that comes down to gearing and when I gear similar to my Engineer (high tough) I can take the hits just the same. It’s for all these reasons, and much more, why Devs are keeping an eye on the build to see if it needs to be nerfed cause it’s that kitten good.

Phineas Poe.3018:

What skill would this be?

And I believe I illustrated already that it’s 10 hits over 2 seconds. I’m not ignoring anything.

Lightning Whip. It attacks twice every 1 second. Here’s a thread with some example numbers in it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Dungeon-dps-build/first

But, you know, whoopity doo…5k Flamethrower!

Kardiamond.6952:

Man people keep saying Engineer don’t have any damage. Where does that come from?

We do have damage, we have direct damage and condition damage.

This is just a myth, we are very DPS efficient.

The thing is you have to remember that the game is actually quite diverse at what you do in game. Half the people in the last few posts have concentrated on SPvP and why grenades are terrible for it. People such as myself focus more on the WvW game play (which itself has the “solo roamers” and “team play” elements) and Dungeon game play which no other spec really compares to the efficiency of grenades.

As to why people complain about the DPS you got people who just hear it’s bad and parrot that its bad and you got people like me with multiple 80s to compare the class to and recognize, by comparison, the kind of state it’s actually in. People go on about “5k Flamethrower hits!” without acquiescing to the point it’s a 2.5s cast time in which with my Elementalist could attack 4.5 times each capable of doing 2k damage on crit (maximum of 8k total).

Now are 5k Flamethrower hits bad? No. It’s pretty decent when you compare it to other classes. However in a game where you start comparing everyone to each other the Engineer (along with other classes) quickly falls by the wayside. In fact, any class that can’t bring their own high DPS as well as other measures to increase the DPS of their allies (basically warriors and mesmers) tends to fall flat depending on how elitist you want to be with your group.

Omnio.3652:

How come my engi has cool damage, awesome skills and builds play very different?

Rose Tinted Goggles

nakoda.4213:

FT excels at:

- gold farming in CS
- tanking in dungeons
- spreading conds and distrupting zergs in wvw
- baking
- bbqing
- creating mayhem on points in spvp

I am not lying to you, and I do know better.

also, re: grenades being terrible to play… learn how to lead your shots better.

cheers.

Any class/spec can farm. I can farm as P/P with piercing bullets. Grenades don’t lack here either as getting close isn’t a problem to compensate for the slow flight time of grenades. The only advantage tanking wise is largely 200 Toughness from Juggernaut. The rest is gear and spec that can also be had with Grenades. Personally I run Prec/Tough/Cond armor and Rampager (power/prec/cond jewelry) and spec deep in Elixirs so I’m tanky with either. The WvW one I got a kick out of. I haven’t seen Flamethrowers used in WvW since they got rid of damage through doors.

You can lead your shots all you want and you’re never going to hit me on my Mesmer in 1v1. I have infinite vigor, perma swiftness and a huge amount of mobility. It’s just the nature of the slow projectile and ground targeted nature in a game with lots of mobility. This is okay. If you got something as powerful as grenades, it’s alright when it has a downside. You can compensate but there are scenarios it’s going to naturally be weak in.

The terrible to play aspect comes in the fact that you’re constantly having to ground target your skills: Namely there’s no auto attack. Mashing 1 for an hour or so isn’t too bad. Now do it for 4 hours or so day after day and it gets old pretty fast.

Jarin Arenos.2736:

…snip…
But I’m willing to admit that it’s entirely possible I was still playing it wrong. As a 74 engineer, how does one go about tackling hard enemies in PvE?
…snip…

You honestly weren’t wrong at all.

Flamethrower is pretty much a “that’ll do” weapon. It’s not bad simply because with 30 points in Firearms for Juggernaut you get a very high crit rate combined with numerous stacks of Might for Power before you even take gear into consideration. However anyone trying to tell you it “excels” at anything is largely lying to you or doesn’t know better. While the knock back is novel for helping push targets together it doesn’t serve much use. Since the fire field is a wall you have a choice of dropping it on the creature for burning or on your allies for combos in most cases. The melee blind is worthless. In the end the Flame Thrower ain’t going to win any DPS races but if you see someone with one you know they aren’t totally worthless either.

The only spec that does greatly excel is in fact grenades. From a pure damage/time analysis it is higher than the base Flame Thrower. It is also, with the right traits, much more efficient at stacking bleeds than P/P or Elixir Gun. On top of this, it’s constantly applying vulnerability which is a huge boon for not only yourself but everyone. Both Chill and Poison are highly valuable in any dungeon as Chill is amazing in PvE and Poison really helps on any encounters were the target is healing. It even greatly excels at destroying objects to which the Flame Thrower often times will just outright miss even if it should be in the path of the target (see an example like Graveling Mounds in AC Explore where you have to angle yourself perfectly with the Flame Thrower to hit).

The thing is Grenades are terrible to play. The lack of targeted attacks and auto attack makes for horrible game play. I only invested so heavily into trying other options such as P/P, FT and EG because how much I hated playing grenades. Personally I’d probably start playing my Engineer again if they allowed us some sort of option toggle that gave us an auto attack on Grenades like under water. This certainly wouldn’t take away from the main disadvantages of the weapon, namely it’s vulnerability to mobility.

As it stands our best option is also our least fun to play and that’s a shame.

konli.6927:

Couldn’t you just kill dummies, look at combat log for direct dmg – then avg bleed count + poison/burn uptime/total time, and just note the vulnerability stacks you give to take into account the total party dps increase

Attack dummies for a minute with each class in full dps gear (one with food one without, as food could be altered in future patches) to get overall dps rather than just burst.

Could then give you average DPS for each spec in ideal conditions

This ignores a great deal of things and only provides numbers in the most ideal scenario.

For example you may have a dodge heavy fight that in order to live the Warrior must dance and back in and out of melee range periodically lowering his DPS while the Grenadier Engineer can just fling away. Conversely you may have another fight where the boss ends up kited and the Grenadier misses half his Grenades. Also due to the randomness of largely being proc’d based in our specs (15% chance for bleed, 33% chance for bleed, etc) you’d need to really hammer away at something for more than just a minute to get the full picture (5 minutes should be sufficient).

Unfortunately that’s pretty absurd to gather all that information by hand. More over, you’d then have to do it with other classes to provide a comparison. You can understand why then no one has been to keen on doing this!

This game’s PvE is all about damage and survivability. You either bring it and keep yourself alive or you don’t and you get shunned. Making the argument of support as a supplication of DPS is a poor one that will never fly. Mesmers and Warriors can each bring amazing DPS as well as plenty of support. While that’s true, it will always become a question of why have one when you can have both?

Engineers categorically get hammered by the perception of their inability to bring hard DPS. This comes from both people (such as myself) who’ve played other classes and see the other classes are flat out better and others who come onto the forums complaining about how bad the class really is (topics such as these). There’s this self fulfilling prophecy that because players thing the class is bad people then complain the class is bad giving the perception the class is bad.

The reality is there is absolutely no way to measure DPS or damage in this game. A Grenadier Engineer could be every bit high DPS as 100B Warrior and no one would ever be able to tell the difference on a fight. People can vilify damage meters in other games, there are clear examples where they have merit in situations such as these which arm players with true knowledge and facts on performance. Without it, you’re left to popular opinion and that’s not something easily changed.

This build is pretty much quintessential. I have pretty much run a Phantasm Build since Day 1 in the game for all things WvW, PvE and Dungeons even after the nerf where you could miss with Phantasms. I have tried shatter builds and condition builds and every other kind of build imaginable and none of them compare to just how perfectly this build fits. It has good sustain and amazing burst all while providing amazing utility and defenses.

Here’s a few other thoughts:

1. 5 extra points in Inspiration are better spent in Illusions to reduce the cast time of Phantasms by 20%. This vastly gives you an edge for summoning Warden and Berserker but especially Berserker with Greatsword Training. The loss of a third trait in Inspiration can somewhat suck, but I’ve found it’s not that big of a deal because you still get the primary trait from this line (Warden’s Feedback) with the others being rather situational.

2. I often times will swap around my traits and skills suiting the encounter. For example taking Feedback into AC Explorable is largely useless because Gravelings don’t use projectiles (which make up the bulk of the dungeon). Conversely the utility build is perfect for CM Explorable. This means I tend to use Glamours entirely based on the encounter and adjust my traits accordingly.

3. Many times I use stun breakers instead like Decoy to help in melee. Melee does tremendous more amount of damage than GS at range so being able to hang in there as melee helps all around both on damage and not.

4. I love Inspiration Signet and it’s great to double the stacks of Might of your group. A lot of the time I’m in melee with the warriors and it’s great to just double up the boons in the melee ball for others.

5. General mesmer tip, but dodge rolling backwards will create a Greatsword clone in front of you. This will eat the next projectile sent your way. You can kinda create an infinite clone wall with dodges this way to eat attacks that would have hit you.

Otherwise, huge thumbs up. I also have a set of Knight Armor for extra Toughness which pretty much plays into this build perfectly and is it’s only weakness. That gives me huge power, precision, hitpoints, crit damage and a bit of toughness. Try as I might, I just can’t switch specs cause this one is just so perfect.

So I was all super heavy into a 0/30/0/30/10 build for a long time with Precision/Tough/Condition gear and Power/Vit/Cond Jewelry and Weapons. This gave me a crap load of hit points, toughness and condition damage and huge stacks of crit. It also gave me the point spread to easily rely on Potions for defense/utility (basically immune to conditions) and either go with P/P for conditions or Flame Thrower.

P/P is always a colossal disappointment because when everything lines up it’s wonderful with the piercing explosions (which don’t count as explosions but AOE all the same) but the condition damage is just terrible because the bleeds are a 2s base bleed meaning you’ll NEVER get any condition stackage going on past 10-12 on average. That’s with Sigil of Earth, Veggie Pizza, Haste, +bleed runes, etc. Elixir Gun I don’t find much better with a 3s base bleed other than more consistently getting to 10-12 without haste or other measures.

Flame Thrower constantly disappoints because while it does actually decent damage spec’d like this (burns hit absurdly hard) cause of the constant might stacks (10+ usually) and crazy high Precision it’s so God awfully random what it does and doesn’t hit. I’ve sat there and unloaded into things and it will miss every time then I side step an angle 5 degrees off and then it suddenly hits. The other skills are designed poorly for a group environment or just flat out aren’t useful. I usually only go this if I can afford to go melee and there’s another condition build already in the group taking up all the bleed stacks (which is very common).

Then earlier today I tried Grenades (was doing HOTW which is melee unfriendly in p2 and p3) again. While I definitely hate the smashing button 1 repeatedly got super old I also bound it to a button on the mouse and turned on ground targeting to overcome this. What I found was quite shocking. With a 30/5/0/20/15 build I was applying a stupid amount of bleeds with almost no effort around 15 or so. This was just from the huge crit % proc’ing bleeds (from Sigil of Earth and 5 in Precision) as well as the fact since they are actual explosions they also have a 15% chance to bleed. Add in bleeding grenades and I was watching bleed numbers fly by. Not only was I doing easily 3x the base damage of a P/P but I was also stacking more bleeds and other effects (Chill, Poison, Blind) and due to my gear they were all hitting quite hard (around 130 a tick per in HOTW). I imagine if I had thrown on a veggie pizza I probably could have hit 20+ bleeds.

I mean quality of life wise…I despise grenades. Smashing 1 or a mouse button for hours on end is unbelievably terrible. An hour or so? Fine. A 4 hour session? No. Just no. I also end up forgetting my spells are ground targeted only and waste a lot of cool downs when I expect the targeting reticule to come up cause I change over to auto target. However kitten if it isn’t the best Condition based spec as well. Seems like I can’t escape Grenades which is probably one of the leading reasons I don’t really play my Engineer outside of token farming when needed.

Winds.3087:

I was running with full berserker elementalist some time ago and he was dying from sneeze, so his dps was nearly equal to mine in full clerics. In my opinion, berserkers is for those who know encounter and class like their own pockets, clerics is for people who like to disregard “we don’t have healers”.

and pvt is for www

That’s always been my viewpoint: Give people a launching point and let them go from there.

I mean personally I’m always trying new mixtures of traits, specs, skills and gear. I mean realistically other than upgrading Ascended items there isn’t much to spend money on if you don’t want a Legendary. Even then most of that gear is buyable with dungeon tokens. I also know boss fights and when to adjust my gear and play style and what I can and can’t get away with.

However if you get someone who’s coming to the forums asking they’re most likely not on this same level of familiarity with the class yet. In general I feel it’s best to give these people a mixture of offense and defense and let them adjust from there as needed even if in this case they’re asking purely about DPS. Without DPS meters you have to give people visuals. They can visually see the boons. They can visually see them melting opponents. They can also visually see you lying on the ground dead most of the time because you didn’t know how to pull off zerk gear in zerk spec some guy on the forums wanted to brag that’s what he does.

Drawing Guy.3701:

I’m curious as to how D/D can outdps a warrior… a warrior can just sit and spam axe 1 and average over 6k per second. 100B + WW + axe or rifle filler can beat that. If a D/D can beat that, there’s zero reason to be running warrior over ele. D=

Don’t you see, that’s the fun bit of it all! We can all quote random numbers and make wild proclamations and no one ever has any way to back it up! If anyone ever calls you on it, all you gotta do is call them a noob who doesn’t know what they are talking about and you never have to actually prove anything! Just keep the numbers high but somewhat within reason and you can totally get away with it.

4 warrior and a mesmer combo? That’s for noobs. It’s all about the 5 Ele groups all able to dish out 8000 DPS each and each able to stack might to 25 while healing for 3000 on demand in berserker gear with permanent of every other boon while being immune to conditions. Don’t know how to do it? Don’t be a noob. Want a video of it? You ain’t worth the time to make a video. I’m too busy DPSing to take a screen shot of my numbers let alone a video. I dare you to disprove anything I just said!

30 Water is pretty core to the D/D build both in terms of +damage from boons (25) and aura sharing or condition removal (Cleansing Water). Deep Arcane (20) is also pretty critical because it powers being able to shift rapidly between attunements for cross combos.

Last I’ve read around you’re looking for more of a S/D or Staff based Signet built around Conditions if you want to go deep Earth. Less used (because there’s stronger Necro based condition builds) but still viable none the less.

Ultimately, however, it sounds like whether or not something is viable doesn’t really matter to you and you’d rather kinda role play the character. Part of going that route is you won’t necessarily be viable character wise. In this case the two conflict and you’ll largely have to choose between a somewhat less effective character and what you’re going for character wise.

Shimond.2478:

zTales.4392:

That’s sad, I think. :<

I can do decent damage! I can survive! I can also give you auras, which can give you swiftness, fury, and protection! Why won’t you accept me?!

Because a lot of people for whatever reason like to simplify things down into fastest/best/most powerful/what have you and don’t even consider things that aren’t at that top level.

note: I’m not one of those people (hence playing an elementalist :P)

This is exactly right.

A lot of people like to make the argument that providing boons will provide a great service to your team. As if your lack of damage is somehow carried through by the fact you’re buffing other people’s DPS. There’s a lot of math behind the scenes most people don’t want to look at or calculate and boons rarely add up unless they can be applied in large numbers. Simply adding 3 stacks of might isn’t going to cut it.

Think of it like this. Ele 1 stays in Fire the entire time and does 20000 damage in 20 seconds. Ele 2 stays in Fire for 5 seconds and does 5000 damage, then swaps to earth and only does 3000 damage over 10 seconds but provides an Area Might which adds +100 damage to everyone, then swaps back to Fire for 5 seconds for another 5000 damage. You’re comparing 20000 vs 13500.

The numbers may be a bit off, but the ratios are pretty much right in that scenario (for staff). However when you’re able to stack 9-12 stacks of might the numbers become much closer together to each other especially for D/D because once you’re done with Fire and Earth you’re immediately moving on to Air and not wasting any down time of DPS stuck waiting for Fire to come back up (which you have to for staff).

You always want to keep that in the back of your mind when playing or saying that your support enables other people’s DPS especially when comparing it to a class like a Mesmer who not only enables other people’s DPS but also brings plenty of pain on it’s own. Things like combo fields require a group who takes advantage of them. You can drop every field in the world but if no one actually uses combo finishers to take advantage of them properly then not only are they wasted but you’ve wasted your own time providing them.

There are groups that get away with simply rotating cool downs and blazing through content at lightning speeds. They don’t bother with maximizing combo fields or wasting time on buffing up boons outside of what they can do naturally. You see this in places like COF path 1 speed runs for cash with 4 war 1 mes. To imply that something is better is largely wrong but instead typically is said just to justify playing a different way than what is actually the best.

That said in general it largely doesn’t matter. Whether or not you go “boon-way” style support or “mesmer-way” style support the results will largely come out in a difference of a few minutes in each case. Your average pick up group will never even recognize the difference. Last night I had a 3 elementalist group with 2 of us staff, 1 d/d, a guardian and a thief and we just blazed through HOTW path 3 like it wasn’t even there. The only time it even slightly matters is getting into the real details of what is technically best is high end fractals.

Krag.6210:

Kodiak.3281:

Thanks, that was more or less what I tried in the mists with boon duration runes since I was amazed at how many boons you can grant to yourself and your allies so I guess I’ll try that while gearing for damage.

I’m telling ya, you buff the hell outta your team you’ll just mow through content. I’ve done a lot of dungeon runs on the Ele and it’s always been the easiest when you got a group balling up together maxing out Might Stacks and Fury. It’s not as efficient as 4 warriors and a Mesmer but it comes pretty darned close. Your damage certainly isn’t bad either as I’ve seen Lightning Whip easily double crit for 2k total damage on a single in higher end dungeons with all that stacked up together.

You’d think at the very least they’d let you try it and see how it goes and if it doesn’t work out you can always fall back to the Mesmer. That’s what I typically do

Shimond.2478:

There’s a reason speed run groups go with mesmer and either 4 warriors or 2 warriors and 2 thieves. Elementalists cannot do what mesmers do.

It’s very true. Mesmer is just built character wise so perfectly. It has a powerful group elite. It has powerful group utility in the utility slots from invisi, boon sharing (I get 12 stacks of might from warriors then inspire signet to spread back 12 to them for max stacks), mobility, projectile reflect, condition/boon removal, etc. This lets it bring a ton of damage in the weapon slots (be it phantasms, clone shatters, or just raw damage). It’s innate survivability (clones, perma vigor, leaps, evades, distortion, etc) lets you easily equip Knight/Zerker (or just full Zerker) and survive with a decent chunk of base hit points.

Biggest problem, I have Mesmer/Ele too, is Mesmer has a lot of utility packed away in it’s utility slots meanwhile for the Ele all the utility is packed away in the skills and traits. It’s difficult to match the Mesmer’s level of efficiency character wise because of this fact. TimeWarp, projectile reflect, etc is always going to be colossal to a group while easily maintaining an absurd level of survivability.

As Ele I play a number of specs and the biggest thing you can do to help the group is play a D/D spec with Aura sharing. I typically run this build when doing dungeons (0/10/0/30/30).

I run PVT armor, and Berserker/Knight Jewelry and Weapons. This gives me around 16000 HP and 2000-2600 armor at 80. Also gives me fairly decent crit and attack. I use 2 Superior Monk, 2 Major Monk and 2 Superior Water for a mega +70% boon duration with 30 Arcana. I use Battle and Force for sigils.

This lets me:

1. Apply all auras to allies. This also grants them Fury and Swiftness from Zephyr’s boon. This is great since with Frost and Lightning auras and your massive +boon duration you grant Fury basically forever.

2. Stack numerous amounts of Area Might through Fire Field and Earth skills. Some basic combos are (I typically rotate between the two):

Ring of Fire → Earth (backing up) → Dodge Forward (Evasive Arcana blast) → Earthquake → Arcane Wave (instant) → Churning Earth = 12 stacks of might AOE, 15 for you with Sigil of Battle up (45 second cool down).

Ring of Fire → Earth (backing up) → Dodge Forward (Evasive Arcana blast) → Magnetic Grasp + Leap → Arcane Wave → Churning Earth = 9 stacks of might AOE, 15 for you with Sigil of battle up plus add in Fury and Swiftness for yourself due to Fire Aura. (30 second cool down)

(Note: Ring of Fire will end prior to Churning Earth but it’ll still grant might when it’s done casting)

3. Numerous defensive cool downs with Water. Swapping to Water alone will do an AOE heal, AOE condition removal, and Regen. You then got Cleansing Wave for another heal/condition removal right after on top of a large AOE Chill and Frost Breath for damage + heal (which I typically angle towards the melee ball).

4. If Dodge rolling for extra might isn’t your thing, you can take 10 out of Arcane and put them into Earth for Elemental Shielding but also remember this takes off 10% boon duration and increases swap time. Personally I don’t take this in favor of Arcana’s extra blast finisher for more might.

With that much might and that much fury being spread around, on top of what I presume is an Empowering Might Guardian and Warrior, you should always be at maximum Might Stacks and Fury and should just chew through content like no ones business.

Knowing how to land your Might combos and the encounters is important. For example setting up a Might stacking combo on AC Explore P1 right as the guy is just about to scream could lead to bad news but doing it post scream works fine. It also runs into the problem of certain encounters not being stackable. For example in CM Explore P2 the end boss that does a lot of poison/chill fields it’s a bad idea to stack there.

The biggest downside is how many other auras and ground targeted abilities your group runs. A well necromancer is going to screw up your might stacking combos just the same as a Guardian or another Mesmer dropping Chaos/Light fields. In this case I’m not sure you can really beat your Mesmer in terms of group play simply because a lot of the group buffs are all reliant on you being able to time, land and pull them off.

Another huge disadvantage is a lack of range. You can feel it on certain melee unfriendly encounters. You can swap out to a staff in these scenarios, but it’s certainly lackluster by comparison since you aren’t really spec’d for it.

Majora.6028:

Sorry, guys. I posted this last night, went to bed, got up, went to work, then went out for some time with my girlfriend.

Thanks everyone for replying, this clearly isn’t the class for me. I’ll keep trying to look for something.

The only classes where I’ve been able to just sit in a weapon a vast majority of the time was Engineer (Grenadier spec or Flamethrower spec and just sit in those) or Warrior.

Cactus.2710:

You sound like the kind of person that writes laws so complicated that they can’t be interpreted, much less enforced.

How do you determine the relative difficulty of defending or taking a tower or camp? Simply the number of people on either side does not determined difficulty. If we have six people sitting on well placed defensive siege we can defend a much larger force of enemies … especially if they are smart enough to use siege well. And how do you determine exactly what constitutes “taking” a tower? If we bomb the crap out of well defended walls with six trebs before waltzing in with a few players does that count more than using lots of players to do the same thing with flame rams at the gate? What if we start out with lots of players to take a tower and then pull most of them away at the last minute? How far away do they need to be not to count? Do players running supplies for siege (defensive or offensive) count? If so, how do you decide whether they are or not? Does taking a tower further away from your spawn or nearest capped structure count more than taking a closer one? If not, why not (since it is generally more difficult)?

You clearly have not thought this through very well. What you propose would require so many purely arbitrary decisions by ANet, with so many opportunities to game it during the match, that there would be no end to the complaints from the user base.

What the hell are you talking about? Who ever brought up difficulty? The only thing I ever brought up was having numbers over a side that was outmanned which is something very easy to measure (and the game already does measure).

It’s pretty simple:

1. If you take an objective and the enemy has the outmanned debuff that objective is worth less points.

2. If you take an objective and the enemy doesn’t have the outmanned debuff, its worth the same points as it is now.

3. If you defend an objective (defense tick event) and X players died, your objective goes up in value by a point. The X players is to prevent ghost attacks of 1-2 guys attacking an objective and adding artificial value to it.

4. Outmanned debuff kicks in after a delay instead of instantly being calculated. This is to prevent people from rapidly logging out to devalue an objective.

You seem to be the only one over complicating the issue by bringing up “difficulty” of taking objectives which is irrelevant and immeasurable in the grand scheme of things.

Catisa.6507:

The majority of points don’t come from capping, they come from the potential points that become real points every 15 minutes. So how would your system handle that then?
If a tower is taken A 14 minutes before next tally while defender had out manned buff, what happen if at tally they no longer have out manned?
How about the reverse? Will people just want to log out every 15 minutes until the tally is taken so they can make the most points?

Whatever the status of the map when the objective was taken is what the value is. So if team A takes a tower at 8pm from a faction that has the outmanned buff it’d only be worth 5 until it’s “upgraded” through defense regardless if at a later time (say 10pm) the other side is not outmanned anymore. This means regardless of what time it was capped (night, day, prime time) taking an objective from an outmanned team is worth less than taking an objective from a team with a fighting force on the map.

People aren’t going to actively log out every 15 minutes to reduce cap values. Doing so will let enemy sides basically have free reign of the map. During that time they could lose total map presence and in the higher tiers (where there are actual queues) means they won’t guaranteed get back in.

Even if there are, you simply adjust the outmanned debuff system. So for example lets say you get a clever group of people. They know they’re going to lose a keep in a Borderlands and gets 50+ people to log out while the enemy takes the keep. This would normally give the outmanned debuff. However if you adjust the system, make it so it doesn’t do outmanned for 15 minutes until after it triggers and then if the condition is true then the penalties go into effect. This prevents that kind of rapid logout to reduce score values.

I mean really there’s a variety of ways to go about it and fix all the exploits that may pop up and meta game shifts that occur but without some some sort of variable point value system there’ll never be a real solution to sides with superior coverage (aka: “night capping”).

Catisa.6507:

How about if two 50 man zergs are battling out in hills keep on one of the borderlands, while a small team of 4 stealth caps woodhaven which had no defenders there because they were all at hills. Is that tower worth less points because no one came to defend it? If not why not? it is essentially the same as ‘night-capping’

Actually it isn’t the same thing at all.

Outmanned means you can’t possibly match the numbers of the enemy side. The other side simply has a numerical advantage where they can field more players doing more activities than you. It’s simply an unfair advantage on an offensive, defensive and side (such as extra people to escort yaks) levels.

However through superior tactics and subterfuge (important elements in WvW) if you can hold up the enemy force and “free cap” a base with no defenders, or more important blitzkrieg a base before the enemy can respond, that’s a perfectly valid tactic. It’s the defenders poor ability to defend their territory with the numbers they do have that is at fault, not that the base was empty. Outplaying your opponent should never be penalized.

Again, that’s why the whole variable system works. It still rewards current tactical game play while reducing the benefit of curb stomping an enemy that isn’t there.

When I use a similar build (0/10/0/30/30 with traits for Auras) I use:

Armor: Soldier (Power/Tough/Vit)
2 Superior Monk, 2 Major Monk, 2 Superior Water
Jewelry: Knights (Tough/Prec/Power) except Ascended Berserker Back
Weapon: Knights (Tough/Prec/Power)
Battle, Force (too lazy to get a third dagger)

This gives me, at 80, 16k HP and 2651 armor before any food or boons. Most of the time this is more than enough to survive anything and once you stack up enough Might and Fury your DPS is great too.

The only thing that will solve the problem of equal rewards for taking an empty base on a map with no opposition (aka: “Night capping”) is scaling point values for objectives.

So lets take a tower. Towers have a variable score of 5-15. If you take the tower against a faction who has the undermanned debuff, it’s only worth 5. This means if you go ahead and wipe out someone who isn’t really there to defend themselves you don’t really get that many points. If you take the tower against a force who has normal numbers in the zone, you get the normal 10 points. However each time there’s a defense tick and a pre-requisite number of players die in the radius of the Tower the tower value goes up 1 up to a max of 15.

This would preserve all the current forms of game play (such as tagging doors to show swords so you feign your position/attacks) while opening up new tactical scenarios (defense just became a whole new proposition) AND eliminates extra rewards for factions who simply out coverage other time zones by reducing their benefits of taking empty maps.

Shimond.2478:

So your argument against fields is that people are morons and won’t use them properly? That’s fairly valid I guess, but I expect more out of people around me (perhaps I get disappointed at times, but not often).

I said 3 stacks of might to everyone in range, not just yourself.

What you say makes perfect since in a solo environment with a staff – which is a terrible idea to begin with.

And there’s some groups that use them to great effect. Such as in WvW most staffers setup the Water fields behind the main engagement area so players back up into the staff heal fields instead of there being every other field possible. It’s simply rare outside of a very organized effort.

You’re again assuming everyone is close enough to get said might. That isn’t always the case. People don’t stack on Troll or Kohler for example. A lot of groups have 1-3 people at range which will miss the Might stack. I know because I drop Lava Font → Arcane Wave all the time and see people completely miss getting the buff.

zTales.4392:

Well most people would agree with that. I don’t think you’re being very clear, however, if that’s what you’re trying to say.

It’s just confusing. lol

I’ve been saying the same thing for days since you made your post about the guy who was telling you to use Fire/Air. There are specs and trait setups where that works and is viable. You’re the one who seems think that I meant it in another way.

I would say no based on your build. Most of Water’s big benefit is condition removal through Regen (which turns cantrips into condition removals) which also offers healing. Not needing the condition removal, the healing alone is fairly minor. Since you use Signets and not Cantrips there’d be very little benefit in that area. If you stay 20 in water you may get some slight benefit but nothing that your OH Dagger 5 can’t cover.

Razor.6392:

Fair enough, then I guess it boils down to: Your staff build, playstyle and spec are bad.

Considering the source of criticism I don’t really give it much weight.

zTales.4392:

… if that’s what you do, why are you arguing against it…?

I’m not arguing against it. What I am saying is that just because that play style works for one weapon set and one trait set doesn’t mean that it works the same way for all weapon sets and trait sets. That there are gasp alternatives in play style that aren’t automatically horrible because they don’t follow the same play style.

Shimond.2478:

your ‘heals’ in water attune are actually fields as staff – so yea with 0 points in healing these are still incredibly useful in groups

3 stacks of might to everyone around the target area (at least melee) will do more damage than you spamming more auto attacks from your fire attune

So only in a solo situation does what you’re saying actually work – and I really pity you if you solo with the staff. For a guy who claims to ‘look at the numbers’ and know how stuff works, every post shows less of a clue…

Combo fields are a rather advanced topic, but lets delve into it.

1. Combo Fields only give you what was placed on the ground first. This means if you do an Eruption and then a Guardian does Symbol of Wrath before you lay down Lava Font that’ll combo as something else which you typically don’t have. Mesmers and Guardians also have a huge number of combo fields that get thrown all over the place. Most people are throwing down whatever random abilities they have.

2. People have to take advantage of said fields to make them worth a kitten If you don’t have people purposefully taking advantage of Water Fields, dropping them isn’t going to add any benefit what so ever. Most players tend to just do whatever they do and rarely take advantage of what’s presented to them as a possibility.

3. Combos tend to be very minor effects that are strong when added up with everything else. Even the devs have commented on this regarding our class, that it isn’t any one thing that’s too strong, but rather a combination of many things. Most Eles who are setting up Water fields are spec’d deep in those lines and the Water fields in combination with the rest make for a very strong package.

It isn’t hard to calculate. Go to SPvP, pull out a staff and DPS in Fire for 9-12 seconds, then swap to Earth and do whatever DPS you can until you can swap back to Fire (9-12 seconds) and then stay and DPS in Fire again with your +3 might stacks for 9-12 seconds. Now add it up all the damage for each time period and total time. Next just stay in Fire the entire time for a similar duration and total up all the numbers between the two. You’ll easily see you’ll have done a HUGE chunk more damage just sticking in Fire with a 30 Fire spec than you did by adding 3 stacks of might, but then being stuck in Earth for 1/3rd the time.

I run the numbers and don’t make just blind assumptions on whether or not adding 3 stacks of Might to an unknown number of players is “clearly” better.

zTales.4392:

I have a couple of realistic situations for ya’. This is what I would do, so tell me if you agree with it. Keep in mind I’m a D/D auramancer.

Let me just stop you there and requote what I already said on that topic:

Kodiak.3281:

I play many specs and use a variety of weapons. When I play as 0/10/0/30/30 D/D build I swap constantly. There’s numerous cross attunement combinations (mostly revolving around Fire and Earth) and useful utilities (Auras in Air and Water) in all 4 trees with this setup that you’d want to use just about in any scenario. This is pretty much the prime example of swapping around like a schizophrenic madman and what most people consider the “core” mechanic of the class

And in fact while playing said spec I do, as you say, “GO CRAZEH. Use everything as soon as it’s off cooldown!” A lot of time my game play revolves around starting in Water:

Frost Aura
Fire -> Breath -> Fire Grab
Ring of Fire -> (backup) Earth -> Dodge Roll -> Arcane Wave -> Knockdown -> Churning
Air -> Aura -> Weaken -> Auto till Arcane Wave back Up
Fire -> Breath -> Ring of Fire -> Earth -> Grasp -> Arcane Wave -> Churning
Air

So on and so forth really basically constantly swapping between all the attunements using cool downs and abilities to maximize damage and game play. I use Fire Grab early to keep an eye on my cool down for Earth 4 (since they both have 40s cool downs). If it’s down too early and I’m in Fire I use the Grasp combo to add in Fire Aura for an additional aura buffs from Zephyr’s Boon. Swap to Water as needed for healing or condition removal for me or allies.

That is because FOR THAT SPEC AND WEAPON that is the way to play. That doesn’t mean it’s that same game play style for every other spec and weapon combination we have.

Razor.6392:

etc

This guy is your classic example of setting unrealistic expectations about the class and how it plays. He thinks you’re doing a service to anyone swapping to Water to heal someone even if you have zero points in healing. Or how gaining 3 stacks of Might to do an Eruption → Lava Font combo is going to contribute more than the 10 seconds or so of significantly higher damage you could have been doing in Fire.

Long story short, you got the people who actually look at the numbers and look at the benefits and then you got people like him who just puke up the same advice they lapped someone else vomited all over them.

So here’s some very real talk about this subject.

I play many specs and use a variety of weapons. When I play as 0/10/0/30/30 D/D build I swap constantly. There’s numerous cross attunement combinations (mostly revolving around Fire and Earth) and useful utilities (Auras in Air and Water) in all 4 trees with this setup that you’d want to use just about in any scenario. This is pretty much the prime example of swapping around like a schizophrenic madman and what most people consider the “core” mechanic of the class.

When I play as 30/30/0/0/10 Staff I don’t swap very often except between Fire or Air. Fire is juiced up to do a lot of damage and Air I mostly use for mobility (Swiftness) or when things are too spread out for Fire. I have no healing so Water is a hugely wasted attunement (the amount is so pitiful it won’t stop me from dying in most cases) and Earth’s only real defenses is Magnetic Aura which only works against projectiles.

You’re going to hear a lot of arguments:

1. The core mechanic of the class is to swap attunements. This is largely false and is entirely spec dependent. The simple truth is if you aren’t traited for it swapping attunements tends to be a colossal waste of time. Swapping to fire to do it’s AOE is silly because it does virtually no damage in a short melee based radius. A few measly seconds of protection likely won’t save your life in Earth without additional factors kicking in. When you are spec’d for it, such as having deep points in the Water line, swapping to other trees can be extremely beneficial.

2. You’re bad if you stay in one attunement. If you’re specialized for that attunement being in others you aren’t specialized or geared for is a huge waste of time. Setting up an Eruption → Geyser combo to heal for a marginal (10% of your HP tops in most cases) amount of healing when you’re taking hits for equal or greater damage in less than a second isn’t going to turn the tide and all you’ve done is put your Fire attunement on cool down leaving you even more useless till it’s back up.

3. You’re selfish if you don’t swap. This is a lot of garbage and really comes down to group makeup. Usually it’s some shmuck who wants you to come heal/buff them (this is nothing new and has been in MMOs forever). It’s not your responsibility to run around dropping super weak water fields for other people to combo in. Most good groups I play in are all self sufficient individuals who bring offense and defense to the mix and don’t need someone to waste everyone’s time by playing babysitter for them.

The basic thing you gotta consider is Attunements are basically just sub weapon sets for the class. If you’re going to equip a Scepter on a Necromancer, chances are you’re going to spec and gear for Conditions with it. Equipping an Axe or Dagger as your secondary weapon set doesn’t make much sense you’re not geared or traited to take advantage of those weapons. Just the same, swapping to Water to throw out weak or nonexistent heals doesn’t make much sense when you have virtually no healing.

That all said, there are a number of spec’s and play styles. Water is a very powerful tree because of all the synergy it gives towards self defense and preservation. It is arguably our best designed tree. Spec deep enough in Water and just swapping to Water becomes a powerful defensive cool down without using any abilities what so ever. It’s pretty tough to ignore such strong defenses especially on a class that is already defensively weak in utility, damage reduction and hit points.

Really that’s the problem I forsee for ya. As I am fond of saying, sometimes all you need is the hammer to get the job done. In GW2, there are many other jobs out there that will require more than just a Hammer. What bugs me about the people around here is no one will admit the former.

TheGuy.3568:

Would you guys relax. You have literally taken a talk pertaining to Spvp and applied it to PvE. Now until they nerf us in PvE I see no point in the chicken little skyfall routine. In Spvp lets be honest it has to be nerfed. If you have played tournament with 3 DD bunker eles you’ll get what the problem is and there isn’t that much room for complaint on out side anymore.

The ways they discussed nerfing us was that some of our healing support when piled on top of each other is too effective. A very specific example was permanent Fury which is a thing for us. Another was the way all our tiny heals, regens, and condition removals all stacked up together giving us very strong defense.

It’s extremely unlikely, or at least they haven’t so far, take the time to separate said nerfs from PvE/sPVP/WvW because they want the game play feel to be “consistent” (as if sPvP felt at all like PvE or WvW even in the slightest).

So yea, it all kinda pertains.

Gaudrath.6725:

You don’t go to the forums and read what Billy the Thief has to say about a class he never played, or allow a biased opinion of a handful of players to influence decisions which impact hundreds of thousands. No MMO company in history ever listened to what players have to say about class balance on forums, and for a good reason. ANet is no different.

Lets take a more realistic scenario. Billy the Elementalist posts on the forums and states his views on the elementalist builds and why the one he uses is the best build and shows a number of videos of him doing well. Meanwhile as new people come to the forums asking for builds and advice, Billy the Elementalist’s advice gets repeated over and over as new examples of doing well get propped up. As others begin to speak of other viable builds, these are quickly shot down as inferior.

This begins to have an impact in game. People who level up and play an Elementalist are all following Billy’s advice and build and other builds aren’t able to thrive. Whether or not Billy’s build is best for all scenarios is irrelevant, all that matters is the public perception that Billy’s build is the best and so that’s what people go with. This all begins to show up in…wait for it…the metrics!

The other night I sat in Fire the entire time during 3 AC runs. I had a Guardian who proceeded to tell me I was a bad elementalist (despite never going down compared to him going downed nearly once a boss fight). I asked him if he had an elementalist, and he said he had a 26 Ele alt and everything he read on the forums was how any decent Ele would never stay in one attunement very long. An 80 Guardian with a 26 Ele alt who read the same puked up crap over and over on the forums wants to tell me who’s been playing an Elementalist since kitten near day one how to play and spec. You’re right though, clearly the forums have zero impact on metrics…

…clueless.

Gaudrath.6725:

I am still amused when I realize people actually think devs base their balance decisions on forum whining and bragging.

They base their balance decisions on a great deal of factors, one of which is partly public perception and the effect it has on game play.

Public perception drives game play decisions of what is and isn’t acceptable. If every time someone comes to the forums asking how to play and every time the same responses are repeated (d/d, bunker build, arcane spec, etc) then most likely said players will also play that way. This helps drives the data they then see in game in regards to how players spec and play the game.

If someone comes up with an alternative build (or different way to play the character) and it’s viewed as “stupid” or “laughable” because again the other build is simply “better” (or rather is publicly accepted as better) in every way, shape and form then clearly there’s a problem there. The problem isn’t that they came up with a bad idea, it’s that there’s another build that’s so strong that not playing that way is considered bad.

If you want to be ignorant of that fact, by all means, but don’t be surprised when you see certain builds get nerfed as a result.

covenn.7165:

I find that most people that get laughed off the forums is due to how they play rather than how they spec. For example, those that say they don’t switch attunements and think it is awesome, then refuse to listen to reason.

Actually you’d be surprised. When you actually review most topics if you don’t express the opinion:

1. Spec Arcane
2. Play D/D Bunker
3. Staff is only Support

You tend to get discounted as a crazy person with no merit. Ultimately it’s a rather sad affair because people are so busy puking up garbage nonsense and then lapping it up to puke it out themselves there’s little room for originality. Then someone comes along and tries to offer an alternative to the same vomit and you all act incredulous at the idea of something different.

Well guess what. Check time. You all stuck to your guns so strongly and convinced everyone, including the Devs, that your way of playing the game is the only way to play the Elementalist to the determent of any other play style to the point (in the devs words) it’s become an “apex predator” build where no other builds can shine. So when it gets nerfed (as Evasive Arcana did) remember you brought it upon yourselves.

Gaudrath.6725:

Although… the fact that most ele’s run a bunker build is also problematic. I hope ANet will buff other options as they nerf what makes the bunker so effective, because overall it makes bunker eles less than useful in WvW.

I mean sure, you can survive a lot, but you can’t really kill much, which makes you good only as a distraction in WvW and we already got thieves covering that area plus they can actually kill a target.

We need more damage oriented ele builds, the kind of crazy, eyebrows-gone pyromaniacs who can effectively shatter zergs by carelessly headbutting them while juggling great balls of fire. Too many opt for mega survival vs. turning into a tornado and just tossing people around like ragdolls.

Anytime anyone brings up any builds other than 0/10/0/30/30 or some slight variation of it they get laughed off the forums or get told they don’t know what they are doing or how to play the class.

Yes, it is. I’ve hit people for 6k with it. Takes an all Zerker gear setup and spec.

zTales.4392:

Ah, gotcha’. Guess I won’t be attempting that for myself anytime soon. XD

It’s largely for bragging rights and because it was shown here on the forums it’ll likely be used as fodder as to show why D/D is op and needs nerfing by other classes. I mean it’s cool and all but “yaaay” another extreme example that will be trotted around as common place.

zTales.4392:

Kodiak.3281:

zTales.4392:

-applauds-

Skipped the first half of the video, watched the rest… very cool.

What’s your gear/build like? O.o

Looks like PVT gear with that many hitpoints?

Most likely. But I’m a very curious person, so just “probably” won’t cut it for me. lol I feel the need to know everything, down to what jewels he has on his trinkets. XD

The main reason why I’d think that is because I’m in PVT armor and Knight Jewelry/Weapons and I’m at 4.3k HP in AC Explore and this guy is a whopping 5.5k HP. That means he’s using additional +Vit gear on jewelry/weapons or some other high Vit gear setup.

zTales.4392:

-applauds-

Skipped the first half of the video, watched the rest… very cool.

What’s your gear/build like? O.o

Looks like PVT gear with that many hitpoints?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Now mind you, I’ve spent most my time using either S/F or S/D, but I was interested in switching over to the Staff for PvP&PvE.

-Can the Staff offer anything that the Dual Daggers cant? (Besides range and combo fields)
-What are the best types of Staff builds in PvP?
-Hypothetically, is a staff user at a disadvantage against a D/D of equal skill?

If someone could give the pros and cons of both, I’ll be sure to remember you in my path to elemental glory =P

Discounting range and combo fields is pretty much discounting staff. There are other advantages but by far those two are the biggest.

Probably would help if you’d put what context of what content you’re doing in PvP and PvE.

Cynical.2097:

Staff = Easy target. As soon as both your water heal spells are over You are done.
Thieves love to insta gib staff Eles.

Anet nerfed the DPS staff build. Are now moving to nerf the D/D Build. All ele’s are required to play a Scepter/?? build.

Anet has not balanced anything since release but nerfed builds into the ground. The Ele is done for.

As a result, I’d like a refund on my incinerator so I can switch to a Thief and only receive buffs and have OP amounts of invis.

They nerfed Scepter back in beta.

Gaudrath.6725:

You guys should try S/F for some dungeons – you can practically shut down some bosses completely, plus you got tons of defense and the damage is also nice vs NPC’s who don’t know how to sidestep giant flaming teeth falling from the sky.

I almost never play D/D in dungeons, because I feel we can bring more to the table than pure damage and staff offers more on the support side of things.

I find the exact opposite scenario and it’s why I’ve been running D/D in dungeons.

Being able to stack 3 Area Mights is pretty kitten good. That’s nearly Half the total Might stacks in a single cast sequence for the team. Now Scepter can do this (and better) but with sharing Auras as D/D I also give out pretty much permanent Fury and Swiftness to anyone in range. All the heals are AOE as well so when swapping to Water everyone gets Frost Aura, the AOE heal/condition removal, the AOE heal for swapping to water and condition removal, etc. Stack me in with a AHealing Guardian (with Empowering Might) and a Warrior and we pretty much always have max stacks of Might and permanent Fury which means we just chew through any dungeon content out there.

Depends on what you’re looking for for the second half of your build (the first half being 30 in fire with Internal Fire, Pyromancer’s Alacrity, and Pyromancer’s Puissance).

Arcane offers a few choices. Renewing Stamina is great if you end up going with a crit heavy build that you primarily stick in Fire for. Even with just 40-50% crit rating it procs all the time and is an amazing source of vigor. Elemental Attunement is great when you secondary support in the Water tree (more on that later). Now a lot of people are going to try to convince you that with a staff, Blasting Staff is a must. It’s certainly good, but it’s far from mandatory. PvP wise people just dodge out of any fields they see and keep moving generally so you want to hit hard as possible for the few ticks that will land. PvE wise it’s great and really helps on Dynamic Events where mobs come in packs from a predictable location. Evasive Arcana is just garbage after the patch that made it only a blast finisher in Earth. Most people who go this deep into Arcane are doing it more for the boon duration and attunement swapping timers and not for Evasive Arcana anymore (such as as D/D spec). The time you waste swapping to Earth to get a blast finisher usually isn’t worth a single blast finisher.

Air tree is somewhat more difficult because for staff the only real trait worth mentioning is Bolt to the Heart. Unfortunately the huge amount of Precision and Crit Damage are hard to ignore in a pure damage spec so a lot who want to go full on damage spec will also put 30 here mostly for the Crit and Crit Dmg stats than actual traits.

Earth I’ve seen a few specs around that are really focusing on Fire/Earth attunements and condition damage. This is because they exploit the 20% bleed duration, condition duration/damage from both lines and blast finishers for dungeon play. The idea being they use Eruption → Lava Font with Eruption able to provide 18 stacks of bleeds with little to no effort while providing Area Might with Lava Font. It is more Earth heavy play however so probably not what you are looking for.

Water actually pairs up pretty nicely with Fire because Water is arguably our best tree (to the point even Devs admit it works too well together). With Soothing Disruption and Cleansing Water (as well as Elemental Attunement) you end up being able to provide a lot of condition management, group support, and self defense through cantrips. Swapping to Water alone does a heal, provides regen and due to Cleansing Water removes a condition for everyone around you. Couple that with Healing Rain turning into huge AOE condition removal and now you’re providing some awesome group support. Cantrips adding Regen (condition removal) as well as Vigor also makes them into very powerful cool downs.

That said you got a few “standard” builds:

20/0/0/30/20 – A more support oriented build offering primary damage through Fire but able to provide a lot of support via Water fields and regen.

30/0/0/30/10 – A more dps oriented build that still offers great support if needed in a pinch.

30/30/0/0/0 – This is the “standard” Zerker spec with either putting 10 more in Water (for Vital Striking) or 10 more in Arcane (for Renewing Stamina).

I’ve also been toying with the idea of trying to find some points in the first few builds to put into Air for Bolt to the Heart but it’s a tight fit once you go 30 water for the absurd condition removal.

hans.7265:

Is this for spvp or Pve ?

With what they said they will be potentially nerfing (removing some of the effectiveness of the Water tree/attunement and all the small things combine to make a really strong package) it’ll likely affect both.

The only possible differences they could make is split durations on boons for pve and pvp or possibly reduced effects in pvp and pve.

Cenka.9357:

I just had to respond to this, hello fellow dd dungeon runner! I do fracs an dungeons on DD as well, but you are correct. o.o I have never seen another DD user in the multiple groups that I’ve ran with, dungeons or fracs are usually staff runners

I’ve been running D/D a lot lately in dungeons.