Guild Wars 2

I use something very similar to this.

‘Hot Springs’ Staff Support Build

1. I use a mix of gear. I use the Vitality/Condition/Healing gear from CM and I use Cleric’s gear (Tough/Heal/Power) for Accessories and Weapon. This gives me a really good spread of +Healing, +Vitality and +Toughness as a set. It also gives me a mix of +Condition and +Power which is perfect since a lot of the time I am either in Earth (to setup Eruption Blast combos) or Water.

2. I use Arcane Wave because it’s an extra Blast finisher to combo area healing, area might, or area swiftness on demand.

3. I maintain perma-Swiftness when roaming by maintaining Gale, Static Field + Arcane Wave and Glyph of Elemental Harmony. 2/3 of these are AOE so I can keep others with me pretty easy.

4. I absolutely adore Soothing Disruption and find it to be absurdly powerful, especially the deeper you go in Water. Consider now that Earth’s Embrace not only gives Armor of Earth (Protection + Stability) but also Vigor and Regeneration (and due to Cleansing Water removes 1 condition). This source of vigor is clutch when you’re using Evasive Arcana to proc Cleansing Waves to heal or Churning Earth’s as Blast Finishers.

5. Cleansing Flame is a personal favorite of mine when you get bum rushed by another group. Nothing is better than breaking stun, cleansing 4 conditions, adding regeneration and vigor short of Mist Form. It’s an amazing defensive skill and lets me escape a lot of bum rush attacks where you’re being overrun with immobilize, blind, cripple, confuse, etc.

6. Tornado I imagine is somewhat controversial but I find that popping into a Tornado and rotating 2 (AOE Blind) and 3 (AOE Knockdown) is pretty good area denial when backing up or repositioning. The mix of Tough/Vit you get from gear is usually sufficient to survive especially with how bad people are culled in large group scenarios. Half the time Plagues and Tornadoes don’t even render to the other side it seems like!

Game play wise you stick mostly to Earth/Water. I tend to dynamically use combos as needed. Sometimes you need the big combo (Healing Rain → Earth → Evade → Evade → Arcane Wave…which is 3 blast finishers and lots of regen/condition removal) and other times you just need the basic (Eruption → Water → Geyser which gives 1 blast finisher, Healing Ripple and regen/condition removal).

Be sure to also take full advantage of your CC in staff with Static Field, Frozen Ground, Unsteady Ground and Shockwave. Frozen Ground is especially powerful defensively as Chill will drastically increase reuse times on abilities which is handy at neutering a rushing force.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Kodiak,

Are you using scepter/sword for your weapon swap? If so, can you explain what your play style is?

I use GS + Sword/Focus in most cases. I also swap out to GS + Sword/Pistol. Gear wise I have respectable offense while maintaining a good amount of armor through Toughness as well as a decent HP pool with 25 points in Inspiration. As any GS user I try to keep close to maximum distance as possible. I do this through a variety of abilities from Clones on Dodge, Decoy, Blink and Mass Invisibility. Once at this distance I usually just lay into targets by using Phantasms and ranged attacks. I am constantly moving and try to never stand near my clones.

A popular burst combo I like to do is Berserker → Mirror Blade → Mind Wrack. Since we do have so much Power/Precision Mind Wrack hits pretty hard on top of getting tagged with a Berserker burst. Best of all it’s extremely repeatable since all that has a roughly 12s cool down time. Pistol just gets even more efficient at creating burst combos because of the powerful Duelist is now in the mix. You can easily lay up a combo like above with GS, swap to Pistol and now do dodge, decoy, Duelist as you back away (preferably to an angle they aren’t facing). Shatter again if Duelist is in danger and swap back to GS and repeat it’s combo. However for WvW I definitely prefer the Focus in most scenarios cause it lets you yank people off walls and and Warden becomes very strong on walls as well.

A lot of that is what any class (including Eles) is all about. Creating little mini combos like that and knowing what each ability does and how to exploit it to great effeect. For example when using Focus, Temporal Curtain is a light field so doing a Sword Leap through it and again afterwords gives you a good chunk of Retaliation (as well as acting as a reflect field with my spec). As a power based build, that Retaliation is going to stack up very, very quickly.

A shatter build is kinda designed to be eaten by a D/D ele because of the amount of close range AOE they have which chews through clones like they aren’t even there. I don’t think there’s one “best at everything” build. I certainly am capable of dying and for a long time there I had a hell of a time with some Pistol thieves who managed to restealth 100 times (pretty sure they were using some karma consumable) in a fight (WITHOUT going melee for CnD). You just gotta learn to accept the limitations and be aware of them.

That’s why I always laugh at these D/D guys who show off these videos. I mean it’s cool and all they like doing what they do but when I play WvW I’m not just roaming around as 1 guy, 5 guys, 20 guys and fighting everyone out in the open in some sort of organized format. Most fights I encounter are in choke points, keeps and towers. You have siege going on, walls to counter and large forces to fight.

Intigo.1653:

Your post is silly. D/D does not get weaker except perhaps in very laggy situations – it’s still extremely viable in 30v30+ engagements.

I could play in full Berserker gear with full berserker spec (30/30/0/10/0) in that situation and easily survive. You never once get focused in that 6 minutes of video just occasionally taking some AOE damage. Congratulations on surviving light passive AOE damage? lol

I’m not downplaying you, your skill or your team. I mean you all clearly work well together and are all very skilled but you don’t really disprove the point that when focused Eles will go down because they lack the target breaking skills that other classes (such as Mesmer) has.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Ok, the S/D idea pretty much just adds a bit more ranged effects, right? I’ve only been doing D/D and the Staff so far so I don’t really have any idea how the S/D is played.

S/D you pretty much stick to Air/Earth and kite with Signet of Air. The main idea is as you’re kiting you’ll use your evades and if you’re out of those you’ll pop a blind (3). If you still need more you can Ride the Lightning (4) → Updraft (5) and then swap to Earth. In Earth you kinda repeat using 3 to blind and 4 to knockdown then back to air.

Fire is your super damage aura where kiting isn’t needed or necessary. Drop the standard Ring of Fire → Dragon’s Tooth → Phoenix → Fire Grab (after it lands) and you’ll pretty much gib most things. The problem is you’re stationary mostly while doing that so you’re vulnerable as well.

Water is what you swap to when you need to heal up. Always swap to water before hitting your Glyph heal and be sure to use 5 (another heal) and 4 (adds chill to reduce damage taken) before leaving.

Hardest things to fight by far are Dredge who are immune to blind. Everything else is pretty easy because even ranged mobs you can usually mix in some combination of taking a few hits while using evades and blinds to mitigate the majority of the damage you take.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Perhaps I just really suck as a Mesmer but as of late, I have been eaten alive by several D/D Ele’s. They are just so quick that they burn right through my clones and stay in melee range of me. Even with the typical shatter build, they cut me down before I really have much of a chance to get into a good pattern. Oh, and let’s not even talk about what happens if I was running as a GS Mesmer. It wasn’t pretty. Course, with the fluffy outfits that a Mesmer wears, at least I looked good when I died.

I use a Phantasm Burst build and generally have no issues. I rock full Knight Armor, Centaur Runes and Beserker Weapons/Jewelry. iZerker can crit up to 6k in a single burst and even up close the weapon will hit for around 800 or so.

My build isn’t really designed for 1v1 but I’ve found I can hold my own pretty darned well and still do amazing in large scale or group scenarios. A lot of people forget that WvW isn’t just about getting the occasional 1vXs but instead is a lot of times group combat as well. The big thing is to spread you and your clones out something you don’t/can’t do with a shatter based build. Meanwhile I’ve pulled off hilarious like dodge rolling twice, decoying and then blinked to a far away area and watch a guy hilariously run around to each clone trying to figure out who’s the real one as me and my clones auto attacked with a sword lol…

Knox.3748:

Elementalist weak in WvW. Sure, why not? Now u can stop trolling plz.

Every time I read about WvW on forums these days people go on and blahblahblah about their 1vX builds seemingly ignoring that in my experiences (in T1) it’s all about group play. Simple fact is that any class without active defenses (dodges, stealths, invulns, teleports, etc) are weak because they’re incredibly easy to call as a target and focus fire down.

Now Ele certainly has some of those but due to class design they’re all on stupid long cool downs. You might survive an initial burst, but the second round of focus fire is going to eat you alive. However this doesn’t make the Ele useless by any means and in fact are a great WvW class. People just need to understand what they are getting into. D/D is a wonderful spec and the lower the number of people the stronger it is. However as numbers scale (as they are to do in WvW) that spec gets perpetually weaker.

Inkubus.7529:

Aha….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OT6zqMMBko&list=PLqbVYxfA89UMUuKnY3E_uAq2VmBY95uBH&index=14
Watch more from that list…

And this list got his track since the game launched and here are not duels:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3esNaZZiTE&list=PLqbVYxfA89UMv5OSa94FHbA2raTSkQIig

This is another guy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rHXZ2VjKBs

1. A duel video. What a surprise.
2. A berserker video (awesome) but is clearly weak defensively. Even the video owner states 3 days ago that he hasn’t used this spec in months.
3. Another roaming dueling video. Neato.

Anyone want to link a D/D video in normal WvW scale PvP lol…

FinalPatriot.8034:

1. Is the class really as exciting to play as it looks?
2. How high is the learning curve?
3. If I do roll one, what would be a good leveling spec to use?
4. Can you recommend a solid survival-based PvP/WvW spec?

1. Depends what you mean by exciting. I would describe the experience as more schizophrenic. You pretty much have to constantly swap between attunements in most builds. Most of the utility is intermixed between weapon skills and utility skills. This means weapon matters a lot compared to a Mesmer where most of the utility is in the utility skills. Also the utility skills suffer as a result.

2. It’s really not hard. You’ll learn early on you’re extremely fragile and you’re pretty much going to be kiting. Eventually you can build more bunker but that’s much later on in the game. Prior to that it’ll be kiting almost all the time.

3. Most people use S/D while leveling and some sort of variation with 10 points in Water. Personally I did 20/0/0/10/0 by 40 and went with a Cantrip/Conjure build where my utility were cantrips (that granted regen, vigor and might) and using Conjure Lightning Hammer to perma AOE blind stuff.

4. Nope. Just about any Ele build is weak in WvW compared to a mesmer due to a lack of active defenses. A class like a mesmer can dodge/avoid large groups of players focusing on them due to their ability to break target. Ele kinda has to take the brunt of it which isn’t always possible with 4-5 guys focusing you.

I haven’t quite figured out the runes yet. The important thing to note is that +Condition duration or +Bleed duration ONLY affects stuff you generate. This means the bleeds from Sharper Images and bleeds from Clones’ Winds of Chaos ability won’t ever be greater than their initial amount.

Teknoflow.4618:

and all my questions were really just answered. any advice on where to put the traits?

Usually some variation of a 0/20/20/0/20 (+10 user choice) build works.

kandolo.2574:

Staff in a dungeon is a great defensive option. Phase Retreat teleports you to safety even when stunned or immobilized. Run any weapon set when safe, and weapon swap + phase retreat when in danger. I solo’d the Mossman from 40% to dead on Fractal 12 the other night with my staff after the rest of my group died. I didn’t take a single hit. Phase Retreat is incredibly powerful in dungeons.

I also run Berserker gear with staff. Your warlock can crit for 9-10k in a group setting. Condition damage with a staff is pretty mediocre because you won’t proc Sharper Images very often. Intermittent burning and 5-6 stacks of bleeding is not worth stacking condition damage for.

Honestly when I stack up to around 60ish crit rating my Sharper Images proc all the time. Grab a Rampager’s amulet in Mists, equip sword, and do Decoy/Mirror Images on a golem and watch the bleed stacks fly. That’s just sword which is vuln and bleed, when you take into account Winds of Chaos now you’re stacking bleed on crits + bleed or burn or vuln. Couple in spare bounces (since someone is usually close enough to have bolts bounce back) and it’s extremely easy to stack more than 5-6 bleeds on a target.

Again the main problem is when you run with some Condition Ranger/Thief/Engineer/Necro who’s already stacking 10-15 bleeds of their own plus misc bleeds from others then you try to add yours and you will hit that cap pretty darned quick. However if you’re running with a group and no one is stacking more than a few bleeds that’s ripe territory to go all out with Rabid or Rampager gear.

Biggest problem with any condition based build is that it’s going to be sharing condition slots with other classes. For example my Mesmer can maintain around 10-15 bleeds with little to no effort because clones crit plus I crit and we’re all doing conditions. However any condition ranger, thief or necro will also be sharing the same 25 bleed slots that a mob has.

So if you can get into a group without lot of conditions, then it works and works extremely well. 15 stacks of bleeds all ticking for 120 a pop is a lot of damage. However if you’re paired up with someone else or enough passive bleeds that you’re hitting the bleed cap then you’ll be wasting damage potential.

Personally I leveled all +Condition damage based with staff and it was probably the easiest character I ever leveled. Even 1 clone with the bounce attacks and anything equal level died in a few seconds. By the time you get the extra bounce at 40 and Clone on Dodge at 50 the whole thing becomes hilariously easy.

I still remember doing some event in my 50s where a group of us got swarmed by like 20ish undead with 2 Veterans and as everyone else died I was still up kiting around and killed everything.

Honestly though the only two characters I had trouble leveling were Engineer 1-80 and Elementalist pre-40. Everything else has been pretty much just rolling over content.

Here’s a really basic video that shows a scenario which I’m not really in any danger but it’s important to remain vigilant at all times. Just some basic things that should help cover how I play when I play even in the non dangerous scenarios so I’m prepared when things do actually get dangerous.

@0:05 you can see I look at the map and I see a battle in Molevekian and that we currently own it. I decide to help the green dot on the map take the Veteran. On my run over I check behind where the enemy could come from (their keep area) to make sure we don’t get blindsided.

@0:40 you can see I don’t just stand on the point. I’m constantly spinning my camera around to check for any incoming targets.

@1:12 you can see Molevekian is no longer ours. What forces took it? Could be 1 guy, 5 guys, 30 guys you can’t tell. Therefore I initially plan to run past it and check it from the south side entrance in case the enemy is going through to take Rogue’s Quarry (a common tactic).

@1:18 I notice on the radar that we have friendlies in Molevekian so I head in to check it out for a potential fight. Inside it’s just 3 allies taking out a single guy. His allies appear to be retreating.

@1:50 I’m checking out my allies. Notice one went after the skill point meaning probably a newer guy. I notice the up arrow meaning it’s not 80. Another ally is also not 80 as well. It’s important to know your allies become here the enemy comes!

@1:55 First move I make now that I know I’m not grouped up with higher levels is to back out of the main fray. If they want to target me, it forces them to commit and pull them into the main fighting area which most won’t do. While doing this you see I pan my camera around to check out if anyone is coming after me directly. This now gives me a good tactical command of the situation and notice only the warrior charged in while his allies are sitting back. I cycle through them to check their classes.

@2:05 While auto attacking I check to make sure the 4th guy I saw originally when they were running out of the cavern wasn’t sneaking up on me.

@2:13 The Warrior switches to me. Instead of finishing my Blind, I immediately evade away and avoid the predicted shield bash. He has a sword/shield out meaning he can still leap so I don’t wait around after a single evade and immediately swap to Fire and use 4 to evade back again to create additional distance. Sure enough he leaps again to try to get distance and goes down. I drop a Lava Font and immediately move on to the next target.

@2:28 I swap to Lightning to setup a stun. The intent is to force the Elementalist to use a cool down like Mist Form or Cantrip to break it early on. Sure enough he blows Mist Form. Now I swap to Water because I know he doesn’t have Mist Form to walk through it. At best he’ll have Lightning Flash to skip over the field but it turns out he doesn’t. Everyone else catches up and he goes down. I swapped to earth to setup another field before he got knocked around out of the path.

As a side note, that elementalist should have totally abandoned the distraction the warrior stood up. The warrior completely dragged off all 5 of us towards another direction and he stuck around like a bump on a log. I mean +1 for going down with the ship but -5 for not playing tactically.

@3:05 I immediately duck out to the side and hide along the wall. I dunno where the enemy is coming out of this cave and want to draw least amount of attention to myself. Handy when you’re the smallest character in the game.

Some point down the line I’ll gather up a bunch of video and make something better for Staff tips.

pdboddy.4162:

I’ve been reading the various guides posted, but there’s not a whole lot of suggestions for surviving at the midlow to mid levels. I’m wondering what people did at low levels to not die. Levelling with other people is easier, but often I find myself the lone wolf.

The main way you do it with S/D is kiting and primarily rotating earth/air. I mean no what spec you play you can’t ever really stop moving. Even melee with D/D you want to be circling your target. By staying mobile it puts you in a better position to avoid attacks.

Air has a blind (3) and a knockback (5). Earth has a blind (3) and a knockdown (4). Basically what you need to do is kite mobs (use Signet of Air to boost passive runspeed to help kiting) using your evades and keep the blind on reserve. If your evades are down, then use a blind. If it’s still dangerous, use Ride the Lightning then knockback and swap to Earth. From here you can throw on bit more armor (2) and repeat with the same over all method of using evades and if you get caught without an Evade throw out your Blind or Knockdown and swap back to Air. The hardest mobs you will face in this scenario are ranged mobs and Dredge who are immune to blind. Remember you can avoid projectiles if you keep kiting!

Fire is your power aura in the sense you can use it to do massive damage all at once. Drop Ring of Fire → Dragon’s Tooth → Phoenix → Fire Grab after they all land and you’ll pretty much gib anything not a Veteran.

Water is your heal aura basically you swap in to throw down your Glyph Heal (which will add Regen) plus (5) and (4) then swap back out. Trident (3) isn’t really worth it for healing amount.

I can’t honestly see you getting 1 shot unless you’re facing stuff much up above your level. Personally I always like to be a bit above my content regardless of character type and tend to rotate areas. Like I recently told my friend who just started he should do a 1-15 area till 5, then swap areas to another 1-15 area till 10, then swap back and forth like that until he was 100% in both. Repeat each zone level range. Long as you stay within a couple of levels of your actual level for content you’ll always get full XP and it can be a bit easier to take on things a level or two below you.

That also said spec can help. I’ve always had 10 in water as an Ele and it was my first choice. Soothing Mist + Regen on Glyph Heal are a very powerful combo to regenerate hitpoints fast. In addition I use Cantrips a lot so the Regen and Vigor on Cantrip really helps as well since I’m usually using Lightning Flash or Cleansing Flame anyways. Also 21+ you should start gaining access to Power/Vitality gear which should help earlier on as well with hit points to avoid getting 1 shot. However, I really can’t stress the need to constantly stay moving at all times.

Frye.4608:

20 bags from a single aoe eh? I thought 1 aoe could only hit 5 people…

5 targets with each hit/tick. Meteor Shower is multiple hits/ticks.

This was my experience:

1-20: Pretty much pure misery. Couldn’t figure out spec, build or weapons to use. I died incessantly and it was pretty off putting all around. I even made a Guardian just to relieve some frustration (my initial intent was to create a support guy and Guardian could do that too).

20-40: After being EXTREMELY bored with the Guardian in PvE I read a post on the GW2 Guru Forums about the Lightning Hammer build that starts around 40. This inspired me to look around and I found others said there was success with S/D rotating blinds and knock downs while kiting. This worked well for me too and motivated me to get to around 40.

40-80: I was all Conjure Lightning Hammer on a Conjure/Cantrip build (20/0/0/10/0). The power of Conjure Lightning Hammer is that it inflicts an AOE blind every 1.5 seconds. This means you can basically go to town on medium size groups of mobs and take almost no damage. Once in a great while something will break out of the cycle but you have the Cantrips there for a huge source of regen. Add in Soothing Mist and you’re doing just fine. Eventually you end up on a 20/20/10/20/0 build or something of that nature. The recent buffs to Conjures will just make this build much more stronger for leveling. The only annoying aspect is people will steal your Hammer and Greatswords. Kinda just gotta get used to it unfortunately but doing S/D for a bit while waiting for a few seconds (if someone steals your hammer) ain’t bad. I still go back to this spec (since I am mostly 20/0/0/30/20) when I have a challenging solo PvE encounter.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Kodiak, I probably will go back to all zerks. As of now, I use
all zerg armor and trinkets, but specced 0-20-0-30-20.

Urinfamousr, I hesitated to even post that because I knew
what the response would be. It sounds like Kodiak plays
the same way I do, with the same results. Alas, it is true, but
perhaps I have the edge with who I run with on SOR (FEAR).
In those 4 hours the 25 man zerg never once whiped because
of the skill of the guild player base.

Even if thats not the case though urinfamousr, trust to it if you
follow these guidelines (and I have no shame saying these).

1) Use dagger OH when traveling far for Ride the Lightning
2) Fiery Greatsword Elite is there for the escapes on it. It has saved
my butt dozens of times.
3) If it looks like a fight is being lost, I leave. I dont fight to the death.
If leaving means getting out of combat and TPing back to zone in,
thats what I do.
4) As I said, knowing at all times whats going on around you, 360 degrees.
5) I dont fight unless Im going to win or Im with other people. Period. I cant
tell you how many enemy this week charges into 5 to 1 odds and die
right away. In fact, hundreds of players play that way. I dont.

If it helps I’ll get a stream setup of 2 hours of video, but I doubt many
are that interested. Hopefully Kodiak chimes in about it as well on his
experience, because I can tell you there are 5 staff eles who run in our guild
with the same results.

I switch specs around a lot too. Like I said I’m a huge fan of the Staff Cantrip build beacuse it offers us defenses so we can go full Zerk gear.

Personally I don’t have a guild and tend to just attach myself militia style to other groups. I mean really that’s how this game works and I take huge advantage of it both in PvE and PvP. This is kind of the other strength of the Cantrip build, having 30 water really makes you shine in large groups since it’s huge AOE condition removal.

All your points are pretty sound and exactly things I do as well. I can’t count the number of times I watch some crazy Ele charge in or stick around and entire time in my head I’m thinking, “Well there goes another guy who’s going to complain on the forums.”

A lot of it is playing tactically. After 14 years of PvP and usually playing a mage (which are traditionally squishy) you get used to playing a lot more tactically. By tactically I mean you really have to keep the battlefield in your head as you fight and plan everything out ahead of time. None of this is really new or revolutionary, it’s all part of standard PvP tactics. It’s just much, MUCH more important when you are playing a squishy character type.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Where do you see changes to conjures?

There were two bits on them stating:

1. You still get stats on your equipped item while holding a kit (Conjure)
2. Their damage is now scaled to be that of the top end weapon for your level.

DOOM AND GLOOM AOE NER…oh wait.

katniss.6735:

I would love to be able to play staff as you describe it. I don’t have any zerkers gear except the Zed’s gloves. Contemplating buying a set. I have used 100% zerkers with staff in sPVP and it was the most fun I’ve ever had with a staff. I didn’t use that zerker’s spec you use, though. That would be a learning curve for me. Do you have any videos of staff use in wvw?

I don’t have one yet. I was thinking of making one cause I was kind of tired of reading all the whine posts about staff being useless and how everyone has to be D/D or S/D in WvW or Dungeons etc.

Personally I crafted mine. Went full Berserker armor, weapons and accessories. Even slotted Rubies in the Upgrade slots. Sigil of Fire in the staff. From here I play one of two builds:

Glass Cannon DPS Build

Pretty much what you expect out of a total glass cannon build. You really have to play defensively and learn to use your defensive tools to their maximum here. To put things in perspective I have arond 67% crit rating and 100% critical damage so basically anytime I hit I have a good chance of critting and pretty much just run over people. I laugh when I watch people go to ress their buddy only to sit under Lava Fonts that basically down them as well.

You will tend to stick with a group or crowd with this build. WvW is a team sport, use your team.

Staff Cantrip Build

This was my first build that got me comfortable with the second. It relies a lot on Cantrips to provide you the defense you lack on your Berserker equipment. It can also be used to assist a team with huge amounts of condition removal and Regen. You still do good damage, but obviously not obscene amounts (mostly because zero in Air means less crits). Be sure to rotate Water Attunement → Air Attunement (Swift) → Glyph (Swift) → Air 4 (Swift) → Water Attunemement to maintain perma Swiftness while running around since you aren’t throwing on Signet of Air. I still use this when I want to go more tanky and it’s my general purpose build for dungeons, Orr farming or WvW.

I could spit all sorts of numerologies at you and advice but it’s probably better to ask how to overcome a scenario you’re having trouble with.

Thunderbrew.7034:

snip

…but map awareness 100% and knowing when to run and where NOT to be.

This is pretty much the guide to surviving as any class but especially as Ele. I run full Berserker gear with Full Berserker Traits (30/30/0/10/0) and have no problems with survival because I keep map awareness (anticipating pushes based on map) as well as plan/think of an escape route in every scenario.

If a “brawl” happens (where like 10-15 guys are fighting 10-15 guys intermixed with each other) I tend to gravitate more towards the outside. If I’m unusually focused and in trouble (which happens) I draw the people attacking me out by backing further away from the fight so it’s clear what is hitting me and whether or not they’re willing to commit to chasing me for a kill. If it looks like we’re going to lose, I pull back. Dying and running back doesn’t serve the team as well as being able to spot and call numbers from a nearby tower (especially cause you still have the option to tele back to regroup).

Also don’t be afraid of your own power. I’ve had a lot of guys think a “A staff ele…free kill” only to suddenly get slammed with thousands of damage and flop over dead. Learn to use what tools we do have (Fire 4 is like a third evade since you evade attacks while using it) and gauge accordingly.

There’s roaming and real WvW.

Roaming can be anything really and there’s a lot of good videos showing every class doing well roaming. Just take the 1v5 style videos with a grain of salt cause you’ll always see their targets have the up arrow meaning they were bolstered up to 80.

Large scale WvW tends to favor ranged options for most classes so any long range burst class does fairly well. If you can’t really hit them at range with burst you’re likely going to miss out on kills as it’s pretty easy to pull back in a large scale battle.

I’ve had to buy 2 more bag slots because I’ve getting too much loot in Orr with Staff cause I got tired of having to go back to town to sell after each and ever single event chain.

The big key is recognizing when to use what attunement for AOE. When the mobs come in a small predictable pack that ends up a static location Lava Font can’t be messed with. You always get 1-2 ticks in which is enough for tags. Take another scenario like the Shrine to Grenth once all the adds are down and adds are streaming in slowly after the fact you’d use Air because the bouncing attack will automatically bounce to any adds that spawn in range after the fact. Another good time to use Air is when everything is somewhat spread out but still close enough to bounce attacks.

D/D is good and respectable and all but why mess with a good thing?

Firegoth.6427:

I think Anet wants each role to be more fit to its description.
At the moment the trade off a bunker ele is having vs a bunker guardian is heaven and earth.
While Guardian is “supposed” to be the tankish class, it cannot be that compared to it – another class that wears cloth is not only able to survive much better, but with very little risk of engaging any battle, be it vs zerg or in a duel.

Personally, I don’t bother fighting any D/D ele not because they’re too strong or take me out shamelessly, but rather their monster level survivability that makes any encounter with the worst player end either in tie or simply walking away on me.

Personally I just hope they don’t nerf the D/D Bunker build until they make additional specs viable. As it stands nothing else really has that much survivability to last outside of D/D. This mostly has to deal with how our utility slot skills are designed, namely minimal or same effect as other classes but much MUCH longer cool downs.

Leveling 1-40 I did it entirely with S/D.

The two primary attunements you should be using is Air and Earth. This is to rotate their multiple cool downs but specifically their Blinds and Knock Downs. You always have Fire as a backup if you need mega damage in short order. Fire is very handy against ranged mobs since you can Ring of Fire -> Dragon’s Tooth -> Phoenix -> Fire Grab and pretty much gib anything not Veteran. Water is pretty weak and I only usually swap to it mid heal so I get extra Regen on Glyph heal, pop aura, pop area heal then swap to a different attunement.

General game play is basically you kite the ever living hell out of everything. If something is going to get up to you, use your evade. If evades are down, use your Blind. If you need to disrupt then use Ride the Lightning then the Knock Up then immediately switch to Earth so you have your next Blind and Knockdown ready. Ranged mobs are definitely the toughest and melee should be no sweat kiting with Signet of Air equipped.

Past 40 the character becomes a breeze if you use a Cantrip Conjure build with 20/0/0/10/0 focusing on Cantrips and extra Conjures using Lightning Hammer. Lightning Hammer has an AOE blind component built into it and basically you can keep everything permanently blinded. This doesn’t work on the Dredge so default back to S/D for them as needed. Otherwise it was probably the easiest character I ever leveled post 40 beacuse nothing could ever hit me. Even if it did hit me, the Soothing Mist regen, numerous sources of Regen and Vigor and Greater Water Elemental basically made the game easy mode as all hell straight through Orr.

However prior to discovering this I died a lot 1-20. Was trying everything and really the only thing that worked was S/D kiting for me. Tried just about everything and was having a lot of trouble in the 15-20 zones. I really didn’t want to just over level content either.

Personally I think the AOE nerf has been blown way out of proportion at this stage. I mean people don’t really think about how many AOEs there are in this game. Nearly every basic melee attack in the game is AOE. You can take that to mean that February patch is doomsday or you can realize they probably aren’t going to nerf 25% of the game’s skills. They could! However it’s extremely unlikely.

Instead they’re likely going to look at scenarios like Arcane Wave vs Arcane Bolt where most players are using Arcane Wave in favor of Arcane Bolt. Why would they ever use Arcane Bolt when Arcane Wave does similar damage and getting up melee obviously isn’t an issue. In this scenario they may consider the Cooldowns and consider them balanced, but they’re probably going to take a look at it.

Brullyra.1592:

Thanks for the comments.

Think i’ll stick to 30 in Fire, then need to decide between 20 in Water for Cleansing Water or keep Arcane at 20 for Blasting Staff.

Found i’m not really using the Armor of Earth utility so I think i’ll swap it out for a signet (probably air)

[edit]

After thinking about it think i’ll go 30 in water, switch the utilities and as i’m now only using 1 cantrip drop Soothing Disruption and grab either Shard of Ice or Cleansing Wave.

So: http://tinyurl.com/ab6r5a6

That’s pretty much what I run in dungeons only I swap out Signet of Air for Cleansing Fire if I don’t need the speed. Mist Form is pretty much mandatory in dungeons I find because there’s way too many “gotchya!” style moves on encounters.

Otherwise I tend to rotate a lot between Lightning Flash/Cleansing Fire/Mist Form. Like right now while in Orr I got Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire and Signet of Air.

Armor of Earth’s huge 72s cool down for 7s of buffs is just silly. The only time I’ve ever used it was when I was leveling and got it passively from 10 in Earth as a trait using a Cantrip Conjure build. That’s something else you should consider as well, as 20 in Fire opens up +10 conjure charges and you can use Lightning Hammer which has a massive AOE blind every 1.5s which will basically make you take zero damage. It was the way I leveled and I found leveling to be a joke on the ele past 40 with it (20/0/10/20/0 with last 10 in air and water as you level).

That’s kinda the disappointing thing once you play other classes, you realize that all this same utility is on other characters but with drastically lower cool downs. For example Mesmer Blink vs Lightning Flash or Guardian’s prot/stab buff vs Armor of Earth those other classes have noticeably lower cool downs despite them doing the exact same thing.

This isn’t a bad base of a build. Personally I went more 20(30)/0/0/30/10(20).

The reason is because the removing conditions on Regeneration is huge at a 30 point water trait. We also have many ways to generate regeneration: swapping attunement, glyph heal in water, healing rain, any and all cantrips with Soothing Disruption and more. This basically makes conditions a non factor in this build for us and since most of those are AOE for our allies as well.

The small amount of +healing we get from 30 point water also acts as a decent boost to healing without focusing on healing gear. While you’re certainly not going to win any healing competitions your heals aren’t 100% worthless either especially since Regeneration gets the most from +healing amount.

Where the build varies is what you want to do. Personally I’ve started to take 30 in Fire simply because 40 Arcana seems rarely worth it. I mean slightly bigger AOE is neat and all but it’s rarely needed for PvE. Most things are either clustered enough to get hit with the base Lava Font or spread out enough you should be using Air auto attack (there are of course exceptions to this). Instead you get might on each fire spell which should be pretty much 5 might stacks at all times. Combined with Eruption -> Lava Font, Arcane Wave and gaining Might on Fire attunement you can stack some pretty decent Might stacks. The loss of 20% attunement swapping speed sucks a bit but you get used to it pretty quick.

Offensively speaking it’s all about Fire with Air as a backup. Fire’s damage is super good and also gives you the only mobility skill in the staff arsenal (Burning Retreat). Think of it as a third evade. Most of it is just auto attacking, burning as needed, and placing Lava Fonts. If it’s safe to be melee then do Arcane Wave for blowing up Might stacks. Typically I am fairly lazy and won’t concentrate on always keeping maximum might stacks with Eruption -> Lava Font unless I’m already in Earth. This is because the DPS loss while stuck in earth isn’t worth the 3 might stacks you’ll pick up. Air is typically used when mobs are spread out a bit and you can get some good bounces with the main attack. It’s also used as a backup if you were in Fire, swap to Earth or Water and then don’t need to do anything and can swap back to Air to keep doing DPS.

Defensively speaking you got Water and Earth. Water is great at mass removing conditions and pumping out a decent regen heal. It’s also great for dropping a Chill if you need to kite a bit. There’s also, of course, Earth which can root, snare and reflect projectiles as needed. The fairly standard combo is Eruption -> Geyser then Arcane Wave and you get 3 area heals (2 instant). Also remember while in Earth to summon the Earth Elemental as it has pretty good survivability where as the other 3 tend to just instantly die in scenarios like dungeons.

The biggest, most frustrating aspect to the Elementalist is that you often times will in fact swap to one attunement to do something only to find it’s not needed. This occurs a lot in dungeon groups. For example if you swap to Water to AOE condition remove, you may find that the single swapping to Water removed it in combination with a Shout Warrior. Now you’re stuck in Water with Fire on cool down. This is where you want to swap to Air to continue DPS. Do not just sit there in Water and try to ride it out as often times that’s just all around for your DPS and the temptation to throw away a cool down (such as Healing Rain) when it’s not needed as much is high. This is why I always swap to Earth first, then decide where to go from there. This way I choose to swap to Air to continue DPS, prep an Eruption -> Geyser, use Earth utility to help kite a creature/mob or decide to ride it all out and setup a mega Might combo for Eruption -> (wait) Eruption -> Fire (5) -> Lava Font (3) -> Arcane Wave (3) -> Cantrip (3) and then continue fire attacks (5) which is quite a few might stacks.

When soloing I pretty much just ride out Fire and kite using evades, cantrips (for survivability), and Signet of Air for increased speed while kiting. This and Dynamic Events are were Blasting Staff comes in handy. Non events it gives Lava Font a bigger area to kite around in and for Events it’s very handy in Orr to have larger fields to tag mobs in for credit. However, as previously stated, I’ve began to not spec like this because I’ve managed to get away with the smaller fields.

I have numerous 80s and honestly I think the Engineer was the hardest to level and play at 80 compared to every other class. Necromancer I would consider to be the 3rd easiest class to level out of them all with Guardian and Warrior being on top.

There’s basically two main builds for the Necromancer. The standard is the S/D + Staff condition build (0/30/0/0/0 base with the other 40 where ever) and the D/H + <choice> power well build (dunno off top of my head) mostly revolving around meleeing and doing wells.

The condition build is stupid easy to play. You basically auto attack to build up bleeds and then use abilities. The most complex part you could do is to clip your auto attack chain. So you’d do 1, 1, then cast 2 to 1, 1 then cast 5 then 1, 1 then cast Blood is power…etc so you’re not wasting time with poison and stacking the more powerful bleeds. Then when you stack enough dots on a target you hit epidemic and spread them around to all nearby targets and now everything in a 20 mile radius is bleeding with 10-15 stacks of bleed and dies shortly there after. Super simple, super easy. You also get perma speed if you throw on Signet of the Locust which makes kiting with your near perma crippling AOE even easier.

On the WvW front I was not entirely impressed but WvW means different things to different people. From a massive battle standpoint they can be somewhat lack luster at times. It’s fun to land a good Epidemic in a large crowd but you aren’t going to be clearing anyone off the walls with some light hitting Marks from staff. He really has no ranged burst moves which means getting kills at long distance engagements (1200) is pretty sub-par. That said I didn’t think it was entirely worthless and used to have fun doing Plague on doors yanking people off walls with Spectral Grasp. Finding a Guardian (who almost always have Save Yourselves) and then doing Corrupt Boon and then Epidemic always makes me laugh too. From a solo or small WvW scale there’s plenty of videos of the power well build out there dominating.

Where the necro somewhat suffers is they lack a large number of active defenses built into the classes like the Mesmer. This can lead to them suffering in scenarios like SPvP because they can’t always handle the burst some classes can put out on them. That doesn’t mean they’re worthless, just can be sub-optimal at times.

ErraticFaith.9142:

Staff is legend. I avoided it, didn’t like is aesthetically but ended up trying it after seeing osicat dancing around with it on deso, and stomping some poor guy who got left behind by his zerg lol.

In short since swapping havent lost a fight 1v1 against those pesky (bad) spammer thieves in a long time. GS wasn’t as forgiving and even on my A game I could fail vs a lucky spammer but not anymore. It really was that good for me.

Bare in mind that if you swap to staff after being a long time GS user it will feel odd and at times you’ll be tempted to click back on your trusty GS! but avoid the urge. It is better I think. Just have to give it time and trait properly for your ability and style.

My biggest thing I hate with going back to staff from GS is the lack of speed. I can easily rock Sword/Focus and then 6/6 Centaur for permanent swiftness but then going back to staff and sword/focus I don’t have the same runes and it’s so slow :/

My biggest beef with the Engineer is it doesn’t really seem to excel anywhere.

Turrets, like Necro minions, suffer from attracting every mob in a 10 mile radius to attack them over any other target and have huge cool downs regardless. Even fully spec’d they rarely can survive anything outside of a 1 mob encounter. Conditions were nerfed prior to release and have simply never been made viable as a result. You’ll always be a subpar source of condition damage. Support wise we’re barely in the same league as a Guardian or Elementalist and certainly isn’t something we’re ahead of by comparison. Ranged damage wise we’re pretty decent with Grenades admittedly but they suffer from huge issues with the fact they’re ground targeted, easy to avoid and my hands hurt after playing with them for a few hours (haha).

At best case scenario a player will “make do” with the Engineer. They won’t be 100% worthless but nor will they really excel at anything. Kinda sad because anything you really aim to do with the Engineer there’s already another class that does it far better.

http://dulfy.net/2012/11/07/gw2-greatsword-skin-gallery/#13b

Huge fan of the Fellblade. You can’t see it in the screen shots but it has a faint purple glow to it. Comes from Hall of Monuments.

I’m using it till I eventually come up with a Vision of the Mists (cause yea it’s purple but still looks cool IMO).

So there’s a few things about Rampager gear vs Rabid

1. Rampager gear adds Power. Yay. This lets us use things like Shatters to great effect especially because typically a Staff clone generation build (some variation of 0/20/20/0/20) can generate more clones than it knows what to do with. Also because most of the clones are ranged, simply clipping your clones causing them to die will cause none of the “on death” stuff to proc because the clones won’t die in range of the mob. The extra power means those Shatters you will do will be a bit stronger.

2. Rampager’s has the highest crit rating you can have. Just generating 3 clones from Decoy/Mirror with a MH sword on a training dummy in The Mists with 67% crit rating meant I was able to keep 10 bleeds from crits alone on the target. 10 stacks from that alone. That’s before we get into the fact we’re using a staff that already generates a bleed/burn as is (possibly twice with the bounce).

The real math here will be does the loss of condition damage (since rabid is primary condition damage) make up for the extra bleed stacks you’ll get as a result of a crit? I mean losing 10 damage per bleed obviously isn’t worth getting 2 extra stacks ticking for 100 each in most cases.

3. How important is Toughness? I mean I realize that certain number of people like Toughness for things like PvP, that’s a given (I even use Knight gear for my WvW set and Zerker everything else). However for PvE can we get away with using any kind of defensive stat simply by virtue of the fact that we are specing 20 into Toughness as well as the fact that our class offers us a huge number of escape tools? Even with 25 in vit and Knight gear as Power/Prec GS spec I still end up using a Feedback, Null field, decoy or some other defensive cool down to survive most scenarios and not rely on just “taking” the hits.

I’ve been looking at this lately (because I had a lot of fun leveling as staff and kinda sick of the WOO WOO WOOOOOO noises) and gotta say not neccessarily seeing a bad side. I may come up with some sort of hybrid model like I did with the GS spec and use Rabid Armor (dungeon runs) and then use Rampager for Accessories/Staff (which are harder to get for Rabid anyways). Just not a fan of zero vitality in this equation. Wish there was Precision/Vit/Cond gear lol…

I wanted an extreme ranged DPS character. Instead I got aura dancing maniac constantly swapping every which way. I swap earth to blow up a water combo only to find people have already healed and I can go back to DPSing in fire…10 seconds later when the cool down resets…

…it can all be very frustrating at times.

They need to re-add Confusion on attack 1 chain with a smaller duration than originally and make Scepter be the Confusion weapon.

Until they do it’ll always be inferior to Sword which has a better illusion, a much better burst ability and is still second to staff in terms of clone generation.

Kelthien.8593:

In general, GS is driven by power/precision, range-dependent damage, and a few elements of control.

Staff’s damage is spread between power/precision (warlock) and condition damage (clones) and offers a bit more defensive capabilities.

Pros and Cons of each -

snip

This post is pretty much spot on from my experiences.

When I was leveling up I was Staff because the superior mobility, survivability, utility and condition damage were there all in a tight little package. I had an event where I solo’d around 30ish guys at once (multiple Veterans) as a staff and the dead people who were watching all sent me tells they were in disbelief. Stat wise it usually depends if you’re going more Shatters with all those clones (Power/Prec) or you want to do more condition damage with said clones (Cond/Prec).

Once I hit 80 I swapped it back over to GS because I wanted raw power for WvW and PvE. Event farming really wasn’t plausible with short duration clones or condition damage but dropping a iZerker and watching 4k+ damage rack up instantly in a huge AOE did the trick. The whole LOS thing has hurt a bit in WvW, but it’s still monstrous. The stats are perfect being able to aim for power/precision (then Toughness or crit damage as you like).

Staff Eles suffer in SPvP because most of their power attacks are ground targeted and extremely easy to avoid. I mean if you had to sit in AOE of a Berserker staff Ele you’re going to literally be roasted. The damage is there, the ability to reliably land it is not. Even using tools like our snare fields it’s still all a very risky proposition.

Defensively the issue is that a lot of the cool downs are on ridiculously long timers compared to other classes. For example a Guardian has a skill that adds X seconds of stability/protection and Elementalist has the same but is on nearly twice the cool down. There are a lot of instances like that where the Eles utility cool downs are just kittenedly long despite being identical to other classes which makes going full on DPS spec all that much harder because you don’t have the utility to back it up.

The few instances where you can do it is in WvW where you usually have a crowd of people taking up the target pool letting you use utility Cantrip skills for a bit of survival while still going full on DPS to wreck faces.

Personally I’ll never play the Ele as a melee. After making many classes to 80 the melee Elementalist still pales in comparison to just a flat out Warrior. I naturally don’t expect people to agree with that statement, but in my experience it simply is.

If I wanted to do damage in melee range I’d just play my warrior who is pretty much better in every regards.

When I play my ele I play him as staff or s/d and usually a hybrid of damage and support (usually 20/0/0/30/20 staff cantrip style). I do good damage, I provide good support and I rarely have a problem with me dying. If that isn’t enough for people then I don’t really bother with those kinds of people.

StevesDad.8213:

Wow a thread discussing exactly what I have on my mind right now.

I realize what elementalists can do in PVP, that’s great. Just great.

Don’t care though. I am playing this game for PVE and light PVP. I feel like I’m playing a RDM from FF11.

I don’t feel powerful. Ever. My warrior is ~32 and my ele is 28. I routinely die. I’ve followed builds, have very quick twitch reactions due to playing games that require it, and it’s just so mediocre it’s painful.

I sign onto my warrior and stomp anything thats around without worrying about dying.

Playing my ele is so painful but I keep doing it because I keep hearing BOY THE CLASS SURE GETS BETTER LATER ON.

I have no idea what to do other than maybe play a necro. I want to be a caster that isn’t a mesmer and do well in PVE and PVP. Has anyone seen the ele youtube vids out there of grinding?

They seriously are like “OK SO HERES WHAT YOU DO” and then rotate between ~3 “stances” and put a massive amount of effort into killing a trash garbage PVE mob. A warrior or any other class with respectable damage has nowhere near the twitch requirements or squishiness of the ele.

Please do not lecture me about survivability with the CDs you blow in PVP videos you make. I do not care.

This class needs a freaking overhaul bigtime.

This is exactly what I was talking about above with the 4 auras being a liability. In order to perform well in PvE at all you have to swap stances using a variety of skills because that’s how the character is balanced around being able to do. Sure, we have 20 abilities to call upon compared to 10. What people don’t ever mention is only around 10 are worth using at any one time and we’re forced to swap between 4 auras to get to those 10 instead of just back and forth like most classes.

I can tell you now Necro is a 1 note wonder with S/D conditionmancer build but it’s note is amazing. Easiest character I ever leveled. It’s basically just stack massive amounts of bleeds (10-20) while running around in circles. Lots of mobs? Epidemic and now they all suffer same DOTs. Blood is Power dot → send over conditions then Epidemic and now they bleed harder cause you have 10 stacks of might. It’s so disgustingly OP and simple that there’s really no other viable necro builds as a result. Pets are worthless cause everything targets them and they have huge cool downs. Wells and the like are similar scenarios having short 5 durations and huge cool downs. Unfortunately in groups the Conditionmancer build falls short cause if you have other classes stacking bleeds you run up against them cause only 25 can be on a target at once and chances are someone in the group is doing some form of bleed (Staff Mesmer, Thief, P/P Engineer, etc).

When I discovered the defensive power of a Cantrip build.

Prior to discovering it life was pretty much hell. The damage seemed super weak and I had to work at everything to kill and stay alive. S/D worked out okay at first (using Air/Earth rotating blinds and CCs swapping to fire to burst AOE) but it was still pretty miserable.

Once I learned about and discovered that Conjure Cantrip build the whole thing came together around 40. I was able to do 20/0/0/10/0 and make a pretty decent Conjure build revolving around Cantrips and conjure Lightning Hammer. That gave me perma blind and I was able to pretty much walk through content. After that it was just adding on. 10 in Earth for a free Cantrip for Armor of Earth at 50. Another 10 in Water at 60. Rest into Lightning from there for more damage. Had all the survivability I could ever want and all the damage I could need.

This translated well later on to a staff based game play with a Staff Cantrip build.

I have many, many 80s (all but Thief and Ranger).

The biggest two things that hold an Elementalist back when compared to other classes are:

1. They have 4 attunements to swap from. All other classes only have 2 weapon sets so they are easier to balance as a result (lets ignore Engineer for now). You can balance a Warrior cause you know he’s only ever going to have 2 sets at one time so those skills are stronger as a result. This is where the Elementalist ultimately suffers, because it can pull on 4 different attunements it’s pretty much forced to use all 4 to get the full use out of the character even if it’s use one ability, swap attunement, use 2 abilities, swap attunement. That ability to do that comes at the cost of having to do that because the game is balanced around the ability to do it. It’s a self feeding cycle that will hold the Elementalist back in terms of balance because we will always have to “work harder” for the same as every other class to do the same (or similar).

2. Our deep Traits suck in most cases. There’s nothing game changing about the end traits of Fire or Air. This leaves a lot of the builds focused around Water and Arcane. Occasionally you will hear about or read about a “Etched in Stone” build in Earth but it’s pretty rare. Earth needs a slight overhaul to make it so it’s more viable by bringing the Earth CD reduction down to Tier 1 to make that more viable however. Even glass Cannon 30/30/0/10/0 style builds are mostly going for stats at that point as the Traits are side additions and not game play style changers.

Until those two get resolved, in most cases you will simply have to work harder for usually mediocre or at best equal results to other classes but especially thieves and warriors.

I roll with the standard old Staff Cantrip build.

1. I use full Berserker gear top to bottom every piece and even have Rubies slotted. This still gives me a 41% chance to crit and 70% critical damage. My total attack is 3315. While I’m certainly not blowing up the damage world like a 30/30/0/10/0 is the added utility listed below is pretty noticeable and nice.

2. You may be worried about defense, but Cantrips in this build offer a ridiculous amount of defense to your character. For one every time you use one you gain 3 stacks of might, regeneration (removes Condition), and Vigor. This makes all your utility such as Lightning Flash into self heals or damage increases on demand. Cleansing Flame alone removes 4 condition types because whenever you do Regeneration you remove a Condition. All listed Cantrips remove stun as well. If you get in tune with the character play style, it’s pretty hard to die.

3. You also bring a fair share of support to the table. Healing Rain becomes massive AOE condition removal and heals for all allies that enter it. You can still do the standard Eruption -> Geyser combo except when you swap to water you will grant Regeneration to everyone nearby clearing a condition as well as heal with Healing Ripple. Without healing gear the heals will be fairly lack luster there’s no 2 ways about it but that’s fine.

4. The Bigger staff area attacks catch a lot of people off guard in PvP cause they are used to the smaller more powerful ones in the 30/30/0/10/0 glass cannon build. They also help out in PvE for more tags on targets during events.

5. Permanent Swiftness can be obtained one of two ways: Give up a Cantrip for Signet of Air or maintain a rotation of (start in Attune to Water): Attune to Air (6s) -> Glyph (12s) -> Windborne Speed (12s) -> Attune to Water (repeat). If you do all that at once the duration stacks to 30s total which Windborne will reset by then.

Best part of all about this build is it doubles as a second build with same stat distribution for Conjured weapons.

All you need to do is swap around a few trait selections like this.

1. Now you have Lightning Hammer. Lightning Hammer is incredibly strong because it’s base attack is 0.5 so it blinds targets in a MASSIVE AOE every 1.5 seconds. That’s roughly the same average attack speed of most mobs. This means using this build you can literally charge into 4-5 mobs and never take damage once you get the blind off on them all. Watch out when fighting Dredge as they are immune to blind!

2. The damage is pretty kitten good but don’t waste your time with a lot of the other moves. The only other one I use is static field cause it can help if you’re getting overwhelmed or the mobs got out of your blind cycle.

3. With 25 charges you should be able to keep your two hammers rotated withing Lightning Hammer’s cool down. Worst case scenario is someone will come up and take your other hammer. You gotta just get used to it cause it’s going to happen all the time. Usually if I am going to clear out an area I place the second hammer where I think I am going to be not where I am fighting currently so I don’t have to go back for it.

4. Firery Greatsword. This thing is monstrous and quite honestly you can do crazy stuff with it because it does a stupid amount of damage for very little charge cost with Flame Wave (1). The fact you get a cripple in it that also dashes you through targets means it’s a kiting machine while providing good AOE burning as well. If you drop it in a populated area, expect everyone to take it. I’ve kited numerous Veteran mobs with this thing out and won handily.

5. Still got all your cantrip power at your finger tips for healing, survival, and power. Lightning Flash will provide you good manueverability when you need to get in and out of situations. Cleansing Flame is your ultimate Condition remover.

6. Perma 25% runspeed comes into question a bit more here but I tend to run around with a Signet, then swap to Conjure Hammer when I am at the area where I’ll be fighting.

7. You get to wield a Hammer made out of Lightning. Cool Factor +10. The screen shot shows it all. Come at me bro.

Oh and tested, Elixir S is still broken and not fixed. Reads as 48s but on use still get the 60s cool down.

I feel for the OP and will be taking a break from the game myself soon as the Lost Shores event is over. I’m certainly not doing so out of some bleak outlook of doom and gloom just more tired waiting around for them to address real issues instead of side stepping around them and fixing issues of no consequence.

Kinda the beauty of a game like this (and GW1). Anytime I stop feeling like I want to play the game anymore I can just take a break and come back without worrying about fees or otherwise just DL the client and I’m back.

Maybe in 6 months I can play the game without feeling punished for not rolling a Thief or Warrior? Time will tell.

ThiBash.5634:

Kodiak.3281:

" Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer creates unintended blast finishers."

Even so, it should at the VERY LEAST create a blast finisher on Churning Earth. Since, you know, the dagger version also has a blast finisher.

Seems like Anet was a bit too thorough with the blast removing. This cannot have been intentional.

No where in Evasive Arcana does it state the intended effects are supposed to be Blast Finishers at all which could also mean that they were never intended from the start.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

that was expected to be changed for a pretty long time.
Is that changing in the patch?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2012-11-15

" Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer creates unintended blast finishers."

I’m fairly certain at some point they’re going to have to address the whole Engineer Kit and Elementalist Summon scenarios with equipment especially with things like Infusions.

It’s likely why they are only rolling out limited Ascended items so far.

Running the standard Karma Farm route (Plix series + drake + contender + tar) I have no problem with P/P (with Piercing) or Flamethrower. Both can be spec’d with a 0/30/0/30/0 build (with 10 where ever you want) and be very effective while offering good survivability. All you need to do is swap around traits depending on weapon.

The biggest key at any of these massive events with 20+ people is get into a group!

The truth is no class can compete when you have multiple groups all working for credit on kills. Trust me, I have an Engineer/Guardian/Necro/Elementalist/Mesmer all at 80! Even then sometimes you can reach this magic point where there’s so many people that enough traps, marks and AOE get pre-placed that things die instantly. There’s unfortunately simply nothing you can do in this scenario. What you can do is maximize your efforts by knowing the encounters and what would be best for them:

P/P excels in scenarios where there are a large number of targets and you can get at least a shot or two off. This is because one shot down the middle of the pack will cause multiple explosions (which when combined with your group) will give you credit. However in scenario where things die shortly after spawning (for example Penitent path where things run up and die the second immunity wears off) it’s pretty terrible. However the main advantage is the pistol pierce + explosion hits unlimited targets.

Flamethrower excels at situations where things are dying super fast because you can simply non target AOE and tag 3 mobs. I also find it’s best in those large groups because while you may not get the kills (which you wouldn’t get in any spec) you’ll do sufficient AOE damage to always get a gold metal on most events (which I find is okay mostly cause I was there farming Karma anyways). Where Flamethrower lacks in power is it’s limited to 3 targets at max which means in any event where there’s a bunch of dudes you’re likely going to miss credit on most of them. If you tab around each flame (if there’s time) however it will switch the targeting up and spread damage around more. Also don’t forget #2 being great for snagging credit if you’re distanced properly.

I do pretty good as P/P condition spec with elixir support (0/30/10/30/0) and Formula 409. I bring 4 Elixirs (H, U, B, S) with Supply Crate. This gives me a crapload of group utility:

1. Throwing Elixir H and B will grant an AOE boon and clear a condition in AOE.

2. U will create one of 3 fields (Guardian reflect Wall, Mesmer stealth wall, or thief smoke wall) which can combo into remove condition, confusion or blindness. All great combinations while in a group.

3. Elixir S I swap around a lot. Usually the S is great because it offers supreme survivability in most cases. Not only do you get a 3s invuln (like Mist Form) but also you get Stability or Stealth in AOE format from the elixir throw. Sometimes I put R in this (such as if it’s a fight that requires a lot of mobility).

I also like the spec cause I can swap traits around and (minus the power/precision gear) be relatively decent with a Flamethrower build.

Maimakterion.5940:

I can stack 16-20 bleed on my own, easy. Just not with the pistols. Need plenty of +condition time runes too, i use mad king because the birdies on elite entertain me.

You should elaborate further.

Most helms, masks and otherwise look pretty stupid on a Charr. Even the water breather mask makes it look like you’re a muzzled dog hah. I’ve stuck with the beginning dual goggles and haven’t used a different one so far as a result.

Wallach.7291:

Depends on how you are built gear-wise. I run Superior Sigil of Strength. It’s worthwhile to get a spare pistol to get a stack of Corruption or Bloodlust up then swap, until they make the stack disappear when you remove the weapon (I expect this to happen on Thursday’s content patch), since that is basically a free sigil slot right now. That said, I also expect Strength to get an ICD on Thursday, so it may be worth your time to just wait until the patch to see what changes are made before you invest any gold into superior sigils.

I hope not or that’ll make kits suck even harder.

PvE is a fairly broad term.

For things like farming Orr and Dynamic Events in general the Corruption +Whatever (Earth/Agony/Perception/Bloodlust/etc) are pretty good. Luck isn’t another bad offhand if you’re going for max magic find as well for farming.

It’s also gear dependent. If you have basically no crit rating going for something like Sigil of Earth is pointless. However if you’re rocking Cond/Tough/Prec gear with 30 Firearms you should have enough crit that Sigil of Earth’s bleed will be noticeably there and certainly more than 10% duration of a 2 second bleed (0.2 seconds).

The big problem with stacked buffs (Corruption/Luck/Bloodlust/etc) is places like dungeons. It’s EXTREMELY easy to get downed in an explorable dungeon for any number of unavoidable reasons. This means if you go down on a boss fight and get back up that sigil is 100% worthless on most encounters.

For all those reasons, and the fact I don’t want to carry various sets of pistols, I stick with Sigil of Earth and Sigil of Corruption.