Guild Wars 2

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Theres a potion that grants swiftness. USE IT! It doubles your attack speed thus increases the stack. Also tune your Traits to inflict bleed on critical and Items to prolong bleed.

Yea a lot of people don’t like Elixir U because of the random downside but honestly it’s great. However if you’re using it, it’s usually to overpower an opponent or to wrack up a lot of damage quickly for tags not really while taking lots of damage.

Max you can get from items is 40-45% but with Food that’s another 40% (Rare Veggie Pizza). You can eek out an extra 10% if you put 10 points in Explosives but 10% on a 2s base time is pretty awful. So those two, combined with the chance to bleed on crit from Sigil of Earth and the Trait can easily push you towards 8+ stacks with no effort.

That said here’s a video of me farming earlier:

You can see even with the Bleeds the main damage is from the pistol piercing and explosions in stacked up scenarios and certainly is more than viable. Honestly the only time I have trouble in general is on something like the northern Penitent Path where you got 40 people waiting at each event spawn point and the things are often times dead before you can even target it (which lets face it is the case for just about any class).

I don’t do SPvP because none of the classes I want to do it on are really viable. Anytime I want to DPS it’s just stupid not to be a thief or warrior cause they deal ridiculously high burst compared to any other class. I’m more than content to get my PvP fix in WvW where there’s so many people that silly bunker builds or stupid damage builds are lost in the mix of people.

They nerf things like Engineer damage or Elementalist damage but then leave in the ability for other classes to practically one shot ya. Maybe in a few years when they finally manage to balance things we’ll see. Until then I’d rather let the whole thing suffer to the point no one does it so they’re ultimately forced to look at the real issues.

The only reason why I wasn’t a huge fan of Corruption is I know when you go down and it’s hard as hell to get back up. It’s one thing when you’re farming Orr cause even if you do go down it’s super easy to get stacks back, but if you down on some boss with a super 1 shot ability or WvW (where you will invariably get downed) that Sigil is just completely wasted.

I also didn’t know two Sigils of Earth didn’t stack which in that case Corruption probably isn’t the worst choice. Could always go Accuracy I suppose too for additional crit.

No problem.

For further details, this is the build I use. It’s the old “Skirmishing Alchemist” build by Vudani (few Youtube videos).

The 10 points in Inventions is arguable. I could see the 10 in Explosives but the burn proc from there is pretty terrible (1 tick and rarely seems to proc) so it’d mostly be for the 10% condition duration. I find in Orr I get immobilized a lot (Acolytes) so it comes in handy when you can drop all aggro (especially during an event). WvW it has similar uses.

Gear wise from PvE I went with working towards the Karma gear rewards from Orr (Condition/Tough/Precision) while rocking Chrysoberyl jewelry (Condition/Power/Vitality). I had also thought about going with Coral Jewelry (Precision/Power/Condition) but I wanted the extra hit points (for now) because I find myself often times up in the thick of it with the 1050 Pistol range in WvW, Events and when Soloing. I still may make the Coral Jewelry later. I also use Rampager Pistols (Precision/Power/Condition).

Sigils I went with dual Superior Sigil of Earths. I also went with 2 Superior Runes of Krait, 2 Superior Runes of the Afflicted, and 2 Superior Mad King Runes. This gives me +40% bleed duration alone. Add in some Food and now we’re cooking condition wise (hah hah…).

This gear/spec setup gives me quite a few HP and also a decent amount of Toughness. Combined with the constant elixir buffs for me to be sitting in a pretty decent situation most times. I have enough Crit that they are super noticeable but arguably don’t hit very hard. I had thought a bit about dropping Conditions entirely and going entirely for a Power/Precision build like this but it seems pointless.

I also like the fact that I can easily convert this build on over to Flame Thrower as desired. Sometimes the extra survivability and Toughness with the Flame Thrower kit (as well as the 7+ stacks of Might) really play out well with the High Precision, Condition and Survivability already built into the spec. But this is mostly when soloing or doing stuff on my story quest and not farming events with the powerful P/P.

My flamethrower auto attack in my gear hits for 2500 total not the crappy 1500 damage this guy was doing.

Flame Thrower is limited to 3 targets. You can try this in Lion’s Arch at the dummies in the back. You’ll only hit 3 targets even when sideways.

Pistol piercing attacks will pierce all targets. They may seem like less damage all around (each shot hits about the same as a single Grenade depending on gear) but when you hit 6 or 8 targets at once every second it’s pretty freaking awesome.

P/P is just where it’s at. Once you stack enough Precision/Tough/Condition it’s simply fantastic.

The biggest advantage to a P/P build is that the pierces can pierce an unlimited number of targets. This makes it supremely ideal for farming events in Orr because the P/P offers medium level damage but with unlimited targets extreme AOE DPS. Some people say it’s not enough to get credit but I have an easier time cause of pistol piercing getting credit for kills than I do out of an 80 Ele, 80 Guard, 80 Mesmer and 80 Necro. Sometimes there’s so many people it’s hard to get a few hits in, but in the vast majority of the time there’s no problems at all.

With decent bleed/condition modifiers at most you’re going to see is around 4s or so base duration from the main P/P attacks which really limits the number of stacks you can get. On average you’ll see around 8 stacks or so with occassional flickers of 10 (again with maximum bleed/condition) if you use a Sigil of Earth. I’ve seen up to 14 when I’ve popped Quickness (Elixir U) but that’s certainly not sustainable. That said with enough +Condition damage that’s still over 100 a tick and you’ll still see a good number of ticks at 8 stacks. It’s certainly no Conditionmancer build (15 bleeds spread on unlimited targets with Epidemic) but that’s kinda the other end of the extreme.

Burn (and poison) is sadly limited by the fact it’s a shared condition with others meaning you likely won’t see a lot of damage out of them even in a medium sized group.

We also do some great self combos with the throw Elixir U tool belt skill. If you throw it and it lands as a smoke field, that’s perma blind on the target(s). There’s other ones as well such as Light Fields (condition removal) as well.

Honestly the only frustration I have on my P/P build is that it’s limited range at 1050 can put you a bit into the hot seat but thankfully there’s a crapload of survivability in the build as well.

I still like the P/P Elixir build.

I went Prec/Tough/Cond gear with Pow/Vit/Cond jewelry and Rampager weapons to give me a bit more survival since there’s less burst. Now I work down my opponent and then slam them hard with the Quickness pops. That Quickness still catches A LOT of people.

Far from ideal, but it’s less one note than the Rifle build (which I honestly think is sub par compared to a rifle warrior) and less boring than mashing grenades non stop. Great at farming dynamic events while waiting in queue as well as the pistol pierce will pierce an infinite number of targets.

Okay I am going to try to avoid the over all topic of some sort of dungeon finding system and deal with what we currently have.

What we currently have is completely and totally inadequate. I regularly get suppressed in chat while looking for a group. If we’re going to be forced to be “social” and spam chat along with every other person out there using map chat like their own personal monolog platform can we please be able to keep up with them and spam chat more than 5 times every few minutes?

I mean I’m not even talking about being able to spam 10 times in a minute. I’m talking about something as simple as even once every 30 seconds.

I run 30/30/0/10/0 in full Berserker gear with Ruby gems in each slot (except Sigils) and the most dangerous thing I run into is retaliation. I currently sit at 60% crit and 99% crit damage.

Damage wise I destroy most people. I like to roam in Air and Blinding Flash can crit up to 6k alone to say nothing of the Auto Attack bouncing around critting for 2-4k. As Sui said swapping to Fire and dropping a Fireball + Lavafont + Flame Burst is also devastating. Once in a great while you’ll attack someone and not see big numbers but that’s ultimately pretty rare and usually is some sort of bunker style character.

Usually someone will try to focus on you and it’s pretty easy to survive with tools like Mist Form (and double Mist Form at that if they down you), your heal, and a swap to Water for a quick Geyser+Healing Rain. The more experienced you get the easier it is to survive. Reading the battle is important as well and knowing when to fall back (not retreat) is pretty clutch.

I’m usually at the point where unless I encounter some solo Thief when doing supply runs (who’d probably kill me anyways regardless of spec) or I get completely run over by the enemy I rarely die in WvW. Even Retaliation is mostly just a time out where I’ve been doing too much damage and need to calm it down for a sec.

I should also mention I always play in the Tier 1 bracket as well.

Personally I went with:

Armor: The gear from CM explorable for Vit/Heal/Condition.
Accessories: Cleric (Tough/Heal/Pow) / Carrion (Condition/Vit/Pow)
Weapons: Cleric (Tough/Heal/Pow) / Carrion (Condition/Vit/+Pow)

This gives a decent mix of +Vitality, +Toughness, +Healing, +Power and +Condition.

Carrion is the option you want if you are going for a little less “bunker” and a bit more offensive in your group mix.

When I play Support I primarily end up as Staff using Earth and Water in most cases (for the standard Eruption → Geyser combo). This also works for other standard combos (such as Eruption → Lava Font). This makes most of my damage condition based (from Eruption) and I gear accordingly.

This also works out decently when solo as Scepter/Dagger as earth is a heavy bleed base.

Don’t know what the blue means but it’s like that for every class (Rune of Guardian is blue for my Guardian etc).

I personally use high end Rubies instead of Runes for more Power/Precision/Crit%.

Selo.1250:

Thank you, thats pretty much it.

Staff migth have AoE, but what competent PvP player is stupid enough to stand in your AoE for the full duration? Just walk out of the place where the meteors are landing = 0 damage, walk out of the big red circle appearing at your feet = 0 damage.

Thats why i added DPS in the title, not support/cc/healer. As in a wizard/sorcerer.
I didnt read anything about “Staff Elementalist is a support class with some AoE that is easily avoidable” in the class disription. Atleast there shoulda been two different staff types, one for support and one for dps.

I do WvW mostly and honestly I never have a problem dealing damage on people. Fast as people are they aren’t fast enough to always dodge out of a Volcano pit with everything else that is going on. Meteor, even though it’s random, has one of the farthest reaches of any ability and is clutch for removing siege equipment on the backs of walls where most AOEs simply can’t reach. Eruption is so stealthy on wall edges and high condition damage that even with zero +Condition two is enough to down or make most people retreat off the wall ledges. Even the basic Lightning auto attack is beyond lethal in a pack and it makes me laugh to no end when it one shots Mesmer clones revealing the real one. It’s all about using the right tool for the task: you wouldn’t use a hammer to cut wood and you wouldn’t use a saw to nail something together.

A lot of our AOE requires setup if you’re aiming for a target, specifically around Water or Earth then swapping to Fire. Most people sit in earth, setup an errupt + cripple/immobilize then swap to fire for more AOE. Even if they roll out of the cripple or chill fields, they still will be slowed and will end up eating a good chunk of the AOE you swap to.

Elementalist ultimately requires you master some basic combos. Staff players have to master the Eruption burst combos (Eruption → Geyser for example) and mastering how to land their CC to land their AOE.

Remember also that WvW it’s all about controlling the battlefield and persistent AOEs that make the enemy retreat and back up from should not be dismissed so easily. The whole purpose of killing another player is to tactically remove them from the battlefield so they can no longer damage/support their allies and causing them to retreat back is effectively doing the same.

Sora.5039:

Hey guys, I just hit 80 on my elementalist and right now I’m looking for some advice on high-level PVE. Specifically areas like Orr/Fireheart/Frostgorge where mobs are so dense and respawn so frequently that it’s really becoming frustrating.

I actually like the Staff Cantrip build (modified for general PvE without having to respec). I like to swap in Conjure Lightning Hammer and usually the attack speed on the auto attack generally is greater than that of the mobs so I can keep them permanently blinded which keeps me safe. However it does not work at all against the dredge Add in the powerful benefits from the Cantrips (3 stacks of might + vigor + regen per use) and Soothing Mist and it’s pretty darned defensive even in Magic Find gear.

I will say that it gets VERY annoying when someone else comes and picks up your conjured weapons.

Papaj.9035:

@Kodiak: “In other terms, look how great you are with the Ele…imagine how much better you’d be with a Thief.”

^ That right there is why I don’t play a Thief or any number of other faceroll to win classes. It simply would not be fair to any opponent. 90% of the fights would be me pausing for few seconds to whip out my junk and smash it wildly on the keyboard. Taking the time and playing them with even half the finesse that I play my Elementalist with would result in said opponents probably uninstalling out of frustration because it’d be like a cat playing with a mouse that was cornered, mere toying.

You’ll notice Thief and Warrior aren’t in my 80’s line up either

I like the standard Beserker glass cannon spec the most (30/30/0/10/0) as well. Critting with just lightning auto attacks on the run for 2-4k per bounce is just brutal. Yesterday I defended an entire tower by myself killing around 20-30 people cause I found a vantage spot that they didn’t see me. There’s the occasional thief who downs ya quick but generally I have good survivability through superior game play.

That said there’s always the more mid ground version of the Staff Cantrip build (20/0/0/30/20) that’s a decent mix and also uses Berserker gear. Lots of self survivability with that build cause of the large amount of Regen and Condition Removal you can generate. You also can function as a backup support pretty great too.

Not really sure on the whole Bunker thing. I imagine I’d probably go with the CM healer gear (+Vit+Heal+Cond) and Cleric Accessories/Weapons (+Tough+Heal+Power) with possibly some more Condition gems mixed in them (Vit+Power+Cond) on some kind of 0/0/20/30/20 build or something. That’ll give ya powerful bleeds in earth and a low cool down on Eruption for either offensive blasts or defensive ones to combo with Geyser.

I have Many 80s (Eng/Necro/Mes/Ele/Guard) and I find myself usually going back to the Elementalist these days. I could make a giant list as to why but the fact is I just prefer the class over my others for most things (not all things).

That said you’re kidding yourself if you think options makes up for raw power. I mean there’s no way I could say with a straight face my Elementalist is “better” than my Mesmer. The two are on entirely different levels.

If you take your example of the thief, that thief is going to be able to just brute force their way through many areas that we need to use various tools to overcome. For the rest of the scenarios they have a vastly superior array of escape tools and active defenses to put us to shame. That said there are few classes with the damage output and defenses of a Thief. Using them for a comparison is like taking the extreme example. You really don’t hear of many classes dealing 10k+ hits outside of Warriors.

When you really begin to look at character comparisons (which I am in the position to do with the number of high end, geared characters I have) you can see the biggest gap the Elementalist has is simply massive defensive cool downs on our Utility. As I said in another post look at Armor of Earth vs Stand your Ground or Lightning Flash vs Blink. This is most likely a direct impact of having so many options in our spec trees that we’re instead left with mediocre utility (due to low durations and long cool downs).

With the way the character is designed (four attunements) it ultimately ends up detracting from our character. Instead of having two well crafted options (like most weapon sets are for most classes) with good utility slots we’re instead stuck with four options usually with each set having one good option, a few okay options and a few poor options all with long cool down utility slots. What they should have done is kept in the weapon swapping but limit people to 2 active attunements (swap in combat) and 2 deactivated attunements (swap out of combat) and balanced it from there. It comes back to that “jack of all trades, master of none” thing which rarely does well when stacked up against the “master of one.” In other terms, look how great you are with the Ele…imagine how much better you’d be with a Thief.

Unfortunately we likely won’t see something done about it for a year or two to address the core of the issues of the Ele design if GW1 is any indication. Just one of those things people are going to have to learn to accept and move on about if they want to play the Ele.

Zonzai.2341:

@Kodiak.3281

You like it the best, therefor it is the best. I’m not here to argue preferences. I would actually prefer it if elementalists never used daggers and always used staves. So we can at least agree that I too prefer that you use a staff.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find elementalists to be more of a chew toy than any other profession, and among elementalists, I find staff elementalists to be the chewiest of them all. Granted I do run into the occasional bunker elementalist. They’re tough but harmless.

I think this conversation is pretty much over at this point. I hope you all convince many noobs to play staff elementalists.

Uhm I never once mentioned what weapon I use (I swap pretty heavily from S/D, S/F and Staff) nor did I state what I thought was best. The only thing I really talked to in fact was comparing classes.

This kinda really brings into question whether or not you even read the posts you’re replying to and if anyone should really bother with what you have to say.

Kinda a shame, I just got my Ele up to 80 and this is the only set of gear I was interested in and I came in to these changes.

Not sure what the intent of endless waves of silver mobs is. Seems like the only way to over come this mechanic is to exploit by kiting one grenadier infinitely and 4 manning the rest of the place.

Really wish they wouldn’t “fix” places if they’re just going to break them.

I completely agree with the problem but not the proposed solution. I think that having to toggle between 4 attunements with the general play style of “blow your cool downs then swap attunements” is pretty poor yet it’s one of the only viable methods we have.

What I’d much rather see hapkitten trait changes that encourage:

1. Staying attuned to an element longer (such as “One with Air”).
2. Increased effects (stats/etc) for people spec’d deep into the tree (such as +3 for each point in the tree).

Idealistically the changes would want to encourage sticking to 1-2 elements at most (similar to the way other classes stick to 1-2 weapons at most).

This would not deter nor detract from the existing attunement swapping builds…but instead offer an alternative that encourages sticking to a few elements and having it stay viable.

I’m reading a lot of “grass is greener” style arguments in this post. Personally I have an 80 Guardian, 80 Necro, 80 Mesmer, 80 Engineer and 80 Elementalist.

Engineer seems like it has more AOE with it’s Grenadier spec but there’s some caveats you don’t really plan for. For example the huge arc on grenades make them the most telegraphed and easily avoidable projectile (meaning subject to reflect walls like Feedback/Wall of Light) in the game once you realize you’re getting hit with them. Oh sure you can get some amazing damage in if you catch people flat footed but it’s much better in theory than actual practice. Their survivability isn’t much better than the Eles either primarily relying on a few cool downs to survive (especially since 1 utility is gone). Damage isn’t that much better (grenades can crit x3 for around 2400 total damage in full glass cannon gear) which we can easily do with fireball auto + ground field damage. Their spike never really goes up from that strong start and kinda plateaus from there.

From a defensive angle, the only classes I’ve found to be truly strong are classes with numerous “active defenses” and by that I mean classes like the Mesmer who can create clones, blink, invis and have constant vigor for more dodges all on low cool downs or have a lot of CC. That’s probably the one area I find in a huge discrepancy compared to other classes, the cool downs on all our defensive abilities is huge and a lot of skills that are on 60s timers they’re on 90s timers for us. Armor of Earth vs Stand Your Ground or Lighting Flash vs Blink kinda says it all.

Damage wise I can say we’re not bad. We’re not pulling huge thief or warrior numbers but then again no one else really is. My Mesmer in full Knight Armor + Berserker Weapon/Jewelry auto attack (Spatial Surge) can crit up to 1600 each second or so. It’s really not that high. Even Beserker as Phantasm spec will only deal around 6000 damage if every spin actually hits (which is rare) and crits (rarer).

I wasn’t that happy with my Ele in beta which caused me to make so many other characters but in the end here I am back on my Ele playing it on up. The first 20 levels or so were still pretty awful but in the end I still enjoy it over my other dudes.

I wouldn’t mind but I’ve had a few cases where it’s caused falling damage when going down a hill I could walk down with no issues.

Rodriguez.7682:

I’m rocking full Carrion exotics and 30 fire/earth and I can assure you, those six stacks of bleeds hurt. A lot. If I land two eruptions (not the most difficult task in the world during sieges), that will typically lead to a dead enemy, or close to. One alone is enough to back them off. Additionally, when someone is downed I can generally keep them downed, provided they’re within range.

Yea I really wanted to pull off some kind of Fire/Earth mix style build (30/0/30/0/10 or something) with signets in the mix. Could get crit/condition from Rampager gear/signet, toughness from spec/signet, HP/Crit/condition from Carrion/Valkryie Jewelry (replace gems) and everything gives power. Even without any condition damage stacking 2 Eruptions on someone is enough to make anyone back up so I can only imagine what would happen if you stacked up condition damage out the yang.

I still might do it one day when I’m rich, bored and looking for something to throw my money at and just craft up all the exotics.

This is my build. It’s a standard Staff/Cantrip build.

I rock full Berserker armor with Ruby gems slotted with full Berserker Jewelry (mostly Exotic still finishing up Jewelry). Damage wise my staff auto crits for around 1700 or so currently with 40% crit and 63% crit damage. I think I’m soft capped on critical damage (it doesn’t seem to be going up anymore even tho I added 5 rubies to my armor) so I am thinking of swapping out to Coral gems in my armor for the extra precision and a bit of condition damage.

Survivability wise I’m usually pretty good. The build has a lot of regen (Cantrips all grant regen) and a boatload of condition removal. It also can double a bit as a back up heal support with powerful water AOEs with a smidge of healing power and again more condition removal. You also get the basic blast combo (Eruption → Geyser) to help out in that situation as well.

To obtain perma swiftness simply be in Water Attunement → Air Attunement (Swiftness) + Glyph (Swiftness) + Windborne Speed (Swiftness) which all stacks duration. Swap back to Water (best for passive regen) then again repeat when Air Attunement comes back up. You can do the same with the Scepter/Dagger combo and still get the powerful Ride the Lightning as well.

I don’t do much 1v1 as I tend to stick with the crowd in WvW. Even then anything short of some ultra high burst class (think thief or something similar) I usually survive or am able to escape. Usually if I am solo I swap in the Scepter/Dagger instead. Really it don’t bother me too much. Thieves are good in the roaming role and can take most classes 1v1 just like Elementalists really dominate the whole keep siege/defense scene with the AOE. If I wanted something a bit more roamer oriented I’d probably play my Mesmer anyways.

I also like this build because in PvE I can swap in Conjurer for Lightning Hammer. You may think this is nuts, but the attack speed will keep most things perma blind so you’ll be fine once you fall into that groove. I leveled up like this and had no problems (other than people stealing my weapons) to the point it made me play my Ele over my Guardian.

Kinda a kitten thread. Why would you tell people where you went to escape the noob train if you want to avoid the noob train? It either means it’s a troll thread and they didn’t really go there and just want to get people to transfer or they did go there and actually want the train to follow (but don’t want to admit it). It still wouldn’t even bring back the number of guilds that flat out up and quit the game already (such as Condemned).

More so to the point, it’s either $20 or 8g in game for 1500 gems. Even if we assume that people are cheap and won’t spend the $20 getting 8g in game is nothing if you got the know how.

You’re probably better off not focusing on transfers, leechers, noob trains, pubbies and the rest and simply try to go out and have fun. The queues were virtually non existent on HoD even during the weekend last weekend with only a few guilds that had transferred off or quit. The fact that other servers started to step up to the plate with serious challenges (JQQ’s coverage is around the clock now as well) just means you left a server with low queue times, already in tier 1 and amazing competition to try to make another server with low queue times, work it’s way up to tier 1 and try to find amazing competition. Kinda silly when you actually think about it for a few minutes.

Selix.5670:

No, please no. I don’t want to be pigeonholed into two elements. Elementalist is already remarkably easy to play and combo with, dont make it kitten easy by dumbing it down.

If you want simple stupid, go pick up a warrior or mesmer. I enjoy elementalist because I have to press more then 2-3 buttons to play. The class is balanced, you can destroy any class in the game if you understand how they work. Mesmer is a joke when you dodge the shatters and dont throw burst into distortion. Thieves are a laughing stock. Warriors are only a pain if your cantrips are on CD. Engis are completely garbage, and necros dont stand a chance with 30 points into water. Rangers are a joke because their only viable builds revolve around conditions, just like necro. What more do you possibly want????

We’ve kinda stated what we wanted repeatedly. We don’t want to constantly have be at the top of our game to get results. As it stands as an Elementalist you’re either going to play perfectly or you’re going to suck. There’s zero middle ground and zero forgiveness.

No one is asking to simplify the current advance play styles of the class. No one expects that if they aren’t playing at the top of their game that they should be able to still dominate everyone. To put it visually:

Elementalist Player Skill level:
|——————————-|——|—|
(Worthless / Decent / Great)

The bar at which we are worthless is vastly larger than any other class and that is what we’re looking to address.

Truga.5897:

I need to hit three (3), or sometimes four skills to instantly (i.e. within 3 seconds) drop a 5 size mob in PvE at level 80, with pretty much any weapon set. Does your guardian do this with just auto-attack or something, that hitting 3-4 skills is considered GIGNORMOUS disparity in “work”?

First I have a hard time believing you with that “any set” comment but we’ll look past that for now. Second, Guardian is kinda a poor choice because it’s defensively oriented class that is designed to just outlast things. I mean you could send endless streams of 5+ mobs and the Guardian would just plow through them without even trying. They are the choice of farming class so comparing them is pretty tough cause it’s literally the other end of the spectrum. If you’re really interested in how this is done I will happy to list it to ya but not sure listing the self combos (guardians also have a stupid number of fields) and other tricks is really appropriate on the Ele forum.

Morguean.6041:

can every single profession be called a healer?.. not so much.

This is actually how I plan to do my Guardian for WvW, all support. Best of all I will still get loot on events because I can use a staff and it’ll just keep auto tagging 5 targets at a time while I AOE support my allies with strong heals and regeneration.

I have many characters across many levels with an 80 eng/necro/mesmer. Lately I’ve been leveling an Ele and a Guardian in tandum or so (keeping them within 10 levels).

The core of my frustration with the Ele is that in order to do anything similar to any of my other characters I have to work 10x for it. There’s a huge, GIGNORMOUS disparity between the requirements to do well with an Elementalist and any other class.

A lot of this has to deal with the differences between a 2 weapon swap and a 4 aura swap. Even an Engineer typically will swap only between 1-2 other kits and their main weapon depending on spec. Even then on those other classes I play, I rarely need to swap to a second weapon type usually in cases of emergency for cool downs and not normal game play. Not only that, but traits tend to really limit how effective other weapons ultimately are by comparison.

What really needs to happen to bring the disparity down in the current system is general game play should be encouraged to focus on two attunements while still preserving the “advanced” game play style of swapping all attunements. This can be done by encouraging deep spec’d traits/benefits in the various lines (such as bonuses like Stoneflesh giving 1 point per level 1 point in the tree) while also building on the main focuses of each line (IE: More tanky in Earth, more in combat maneuverability in Air, more control in Fire and less in others to offset these changes, etc).

Again I’m not arguing to lower the high skill cap currently in place. I think it’s great that the better you are the more you can get out of the character. What I am looking for and am arguing for is trying to reduce the disparity between that skill cap and the required skill to play the class even somewhat competently.

I find this to be completely wrong.

1. The Red Keep is arguably the most defensive keep there is. That underwater area is a death trap if people place Arrow Carts on the ramps (which can hit but can’t be hit). There’s no where to run and they can hit anything in range. Even if they do manage to hit it taking that inner gate is near impossible because there’s no where to back out to/from because there’s a giant cliff face and that’s it. This means you’re usually out your trebs/siege you have setup on the outer walls but Red should never lose their keep if they are defending even semi intelligently.

2. The Red Keep can easily setup siege (trebs) on it’s walls and hit Stonemist. This gives a huge tactical advantage when attacking Stonemist. There’s virtually no way to defend against this short of try to work down their siege manually (which usually turns into a death trap) for people trying to AOE that wall on the thin ledge).

3. Ogrewatch and Anzalias are the only “inner” tower on the map that can’t be hit by a Treb in Stonemist on one of the fingers. Quentin, Durious, Wildcreek and Klovan can all be hit by Trebs up on the third floor at Stonemist that can’t be counter trebbed/mortared.

4. If the mortar is setup at Ogrewatch it can reach/hit that upper Harpy area where people build Trebs. In fact Ogrewatch/Pangloss is one of best/easiest choke points on the map (but certainly not the only one) because you can camp/siege that whole area from the tower itself.

5. Rogue’s Quarry (Green) is one of the most nightmarish spots to have an enemy take. I’ve seen enemies take RQ and setup a huge amount of siege there that can’t be dealt with at all. This includes Trebs that will hit Aldons and Wildcreek with ZERO ability for the Green to hit/take it from their keep.

6. Golanta/Klovan are wide open with virtually no choke points what so ever. Even Blue’s side of this you have to run past their tower.

7. That hill with the Vista overlooking Anzalias can be Trebbed/Mortared from the Red Keep.

Red is setup with the most tactical advantages, blue second, and Green the least. That doesn’t mean Green is wide open and can be taken easily at any time nor does it imply that Red should never lose. I mean just because something exists, doesn’t mean people will take advantage of it or they will use it intelligently.

You look Red to me.

Step 1: Make a new character
Step 2: Get through the tutorial
Step 3: Go to the mists and look at the armor sets for your class and see how they look

Been pretty standard for all 8 of my characters to determine what look I’d like for the class before I get too far into the class and see if I want to reroll to something else. Really helped for my Warrior where I was going to go Charr but then it looked stupid as all get out having this gignormous armor while wielding a tiny rifle most of the time lol…

Completely agree.

As a Power/Precision based build (20/20/0/25/5) I have it all. I got great damage, decent tagging for DEs, got good utility in utility slots/reflect, 1200 range and relevance in all elements of WvW. I don’t have to swap gear or specs based on what I am doing.

My 80 necro is shelved. I LOVE the Condition damage (self stacked 15 bleeds that tick for 150 is hot). I hate just about everything else. I feel useless in WvW in general other than skirmish play or the occasional amazing Epidemic. Doesn’t work at all in Magic Find gear.

My 80 engie is shelved. Grenades were great but after a few weeks of spamming 1 every 0.5 seconds it got REALLY old. Lacking targeting severely hurt with the “culling” in PvP and walls. I thought about going Pistol/Pistol spec for condition based build but we’re back to weak performance in Magic find gear as well and poor performance in WvW.

Every other character I think about I run into the same problem. Either I’m left changing around specs or changing around gear setups or the specs I want to do just don’t jive with anything else. Mesmer it just fits so perfectly really tough to want to play anything else.

I admit I am not sure it was Pistol/Pistol, just looked that way the 2-3 times we got up close but hard to tell when you’re moving and he’s moving. Pistol was definitely MH because I was catching him with Feedback and Temporal Curtain’s reflects. Maybe it was P/P and P/D?

The stealthing was rapid and often. It seemed like far more than 4 times. He definitely used in 4 times in our 1v1 before anyone got there. That is why I was asking, wasn’t sure cause our little party were pretty dumbfounded after he tore off cause we couldn’t target him for the likes of us and was far too mobile to really pin in any serious AOE. He certainly didn’t go Melee very often, only to finish us off after a kill.

Certainly wasn’t unstoppable, I later caught him and he either wasn’t able to replicate the results cause I chased him off fairly quickly but just the same was curious about the whole scenario.

Thanks for the replies!

Yesterday I ran up on a thief who was taking someone out in WvW. The thief was using Pistol/Pistol and appeared to be on a condition based build. After engaging him I noticed he was rapidly going in and out of stealth. At one point I even got reinforcements and it was a 5v1 and this guy utterly tooled us because every two seconds he’d disappear. He’d down one of us, disappear, then finish us. Eventually he realized he couldn’t down all 5 of us at once and so he took off.

My question is this possible? How is it possible?

(I am mostly curious, not looking to whine or anything else like that).

MrParanoid.5728:

Not sure what you’re complaining about.

Of course grenade kit wasn’t going to get an auto-attack, it’s an aoe ground targeted skill. No other ground targeted skill that I know of is also player-targeted. And frankly it would make grenades even more powerful (like they are underwater) and further blur the line between them and bombs. I think it’s fine.

Bomb kit autoattacks works just like any melee skill autoattack in the game. I don’t notice any difference between it and autoattack with the axe on my warrior.

And all the other autoattacks work perfectly as well. FT, elixir gun and toolkit are now suddenly much less of a pain to use.

This is a great change!

Underwater Grenades = Direct Throw

Out of Water Grenades = Arced lob that auto attack would still regularlly miss like it does with ground targeting now.

Really isn’t a good excuse to not have an auto attack on it if you want it as an option. Probably a low priority for them but hopefully it’ll come one day, till then my 80 Engineer is a Oric miner bot every 7 hours :P

Qelris.6901:

I don’t understand that change. What exactly changed? Warden would always spin if you had the trait Phantasmal Haste?

Basically speccing Phantasmal Haste made the Warden spin near continuously with a 1s delay between spins. No other Phantasm came close.

This change just reinforces my decision to stick with the “throw away” Phantasm 20/20/0/25/5 build personally. Does amazing all around and now I never have to worry about Phantasmal Haste as a factor ever again.

If you’re intent on spending a lot of money the x90 cards from nVidia (490, 590, 690, etc) are usually the most expensive cards you would theoretically want to buy. They’re basically two cards in one.

Personally I run a 570 (have for over a year now) and along with my i7 3.4 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and game stored on SSD I average around 40-63 FPS in PvE (depending on player cap) and in WvW is about the same.

The only use for Scepter I have found is that it spawns it’s clones at the enemy. This means they will guaranteed die. This makes them ripe to setup a “on death produce X” style build because there’s around 3-5 traits/bonuses that modify what happens to a clone on death. As such I use it in a hybrid Support/Condition/Confuse build that I run for dungeons.

People saying you should “grow” or “create” or whatever 24/7 coverage are being incredibly smug.

Bringing up with HoD setup prior to the game’s release has little to zero reference on today’s picture:

1. Servers aren’t always easy to transfer to. For example a server with good population over all may read out as Full during the morning hours. Just because the server is full doesn’t imply it has a good WvW presence during those times. Many of the servers that are full currently (at 7:30pm EST) were full also this morning at 7am when I checked. If I ever felt the desire to move to the Far Shiverpeaks server and battle during my prime time for the Euros it’s simply not possible because it’s listed as full most of the time.

2. Even if you do manage to find one of the non full servers, there are NUMEROUS servers who all want Oceanic/Euro players to cover the off hours. There’s a real competition trying to attract those players currently.

3. Worse still, many of those existing players already play on other servers. For example SoS and IoJ is infamous for having numerous off hour players. These large groups are already established on their servers and have no interest in moving.

4. Guilds lose any and all Influence upon transferring. Not only do they risk not getting everyone on over (because of the “Full” cap) but in addition they end up losing their Guild bonuses and Influence.

These factors are all out of the players’ hands. Trying to imply the players can do anything about “night capping” is simply misleading and smug.

People ultimately want competition. No one is going to keep trying to compete in an environment with a foregone conclusion (IE: Who has better morning coverage). Players will never work that out and it’s ultimately up to the developers to make that happen. If they refuse then the people who are looking for competition will go elsewhere and let people know what kind of game GW2 is. Maybe ANet won’t care, that’s up to them in the end. Kinda up to them if they decide to not have a competitive game or not.

Oh and the reason why I like Deceptive Evasion is it’s the only way to generate ranged attacking clones with a Greatsword. I’ve setup many escape maneuvers and confused the enemy using it. For example using Evade Back, Evade Right, Decoy then come out of stealth and just auto attack you’ve setup 4 targets that are stationary and auto attacking with Spatial Surge at range. It’s also amazing in those 1v1 scenarios where you’re using Sword/Focus in melee and if you roll around a few times and hit your clone move it’s easy to fool the enemy when they have 4 guys chasing them in melee.

Not everyone’s going to agree on that point but again for my play style it simply works.

I went for 20/20/0/20/10 spec.

I run full Knight’s (Tough/Precision/Power) armor and Berserker Jewelry/Weapons. This gives me enough Toughness to survive AOE without worrying about it and the spec gives me a small boost in Vit. It gives me enough offense to basically run over anything that isn’t spec’d out particularly defensive. I always have perma vigor up cause of how often I crit.

Traits can be debatable on some points but I’ve found this to be the ideal mix for how I play. It’s a modified version of the Phantasm Build for WvW. The 20% reduction in Phantasm attacks is useless since they typically die after doing one attack. Instead I took 10 more in Power for the 100 power, +50 power with GS, and most importantly a huge reduction in cool downs for GS abilities (brings Berserker down to 12s which is a whopping 40% reduction on use). I prefer Deceptive Evasion over 15% damage on something that dies in one hit as well (plus it’s more Precision/Crit Damage).

I use Centaur Runes entirely for Swiftness. They add more power and when you use the Focus Swiftness then your Heal it’s enough that those two can be rotated for perma Swiftness.

I have a top end machine that runs the game on max setting at 40-60 FPS at all times (even in huge battles) and the disappearing players is just ridiculous.

Pretty artwork and cool graphics are neat and all but getting killed to invisible people gets old pretty quickly.

Ever since they took the Confuse off Ether Bolt it’s just a crap weapon all around.

1. The clones generate at the enemy. This sounds nice, but the problem is that any kind of passive AOE demolishes them. That said, being able to generate clones directly at the enemy can sometimes have it’s advantages.

2. The auto attack is terribly slow presumably because the Clone is triggered to it. The slow speed was fine when it had a Confuse on it, but without the Confuse it just makes it terrible.

3. The auto attack is also very susceptible to clipping off the Clone generation. You’re forced to go through all 3 attacks if you want the Clone because if you use any other ability in between it resets back to the first in the chain.

4. Most clones do some sort of special ability based on weapon (IE: Sword does Vuln, Staff does Conditions). Far as I can tell, Scepter no longer does any again making it lack luster in comparison to others.

5. The Block is easily replaced with the Sword’s distortion which can be used (and miss it’s damage mind you but you still get the distortion) on demand like Block and will mitigate multiple attacks (you do lose mobility).

The sad fact is that it opened up a whole separate style/spec of Confusion based play back when Etherbolt did Confusion that was very much in line with the original GW1’s shutdown Mesmer. Kinda sad that they gutted the primary allure of the Scepter and never added anything back to it. Now it’s just an inferior version of the Staff Clone Factory spec.

The biggest problem with the GS + Staff combo is the two don’t synergize at all with each other. GS is all about power and crit. Staff is all about conditions and crit. If you’re comfortable ending up with Rampager gear (Power, Precision, Condition) then you’re probably better off using a Staff based build (0/20/20/0/20 with 10 to spend wherever) and just using a GS as your second weapon. Builds are more than simply traits you also have to consider in your armor, jewelry, sigils, runes, etc at some point.

Can you pull it off and will it be viable? Sure. Will it do as good as a pure Staff or pure GS build? Probably not.

That damage “scaling up each tick” is actually a cumulative total of one use of a channeled ability.

If you go into the combat log you’ll see how much actual damage each tick is doing.

Personally I think they are waiting to see how many people are left playing after WOW’s panda xpack hits. While personally I can’t see the appeal, you know there’s going to be a large number of players who are going to go and check it out. Less people playing could dramatically alter the WvW matches and some may still want to transfer around.

I recently (last week) started leveling a new Mesmer.

I play a shatter centric build (I’ve found it best so far while leveling) which is basically just your standard Illusion/Staff/Clone build. I found the build really took off at 50 when I could do 0/20/0/0/20 as my build to spawn Illusions on dodge. Now I’m at the point with Mirror Images, Decoy, Dodge, and Staff I can keep Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration on cool down while keeping up 3 clones/phants up most of the time (mostly because I always have Vigor due to my Precision meaning I can dodge near endlessly).

On the whole I find Shatter unreliable at best and useless at worst. Many cases when I am kiting or dodging around my Shatters will miss entirely making them worthless against melee opponents unless I just stand there (which is suicide if I’m kiting 4-5 mobs). It works well against packs of ranged mobs but if the mob you’re focusing jukes, gets out of the pack, or otherwise a shatter can be 100% worthless.

I really wish they’d make it so Shatters were instant and ranged.

Sky.9347:

Okay well what you are saying here is that every 3 servers there is such a massive jump in participation/skill/organization – whatever – that warrants them taking 100% of the map from their opponents on day 2, and holding it till the end.

The ability gap between servers is THAT huge? It is SO HUGE that there will ever only be 1 match worth playing, and every other match is screwed because there are only 3 servers in each identifiable tier of skill…

Am I understanding this correctly?

Currently? Yes.

Forever? No.

Depends on how servers shake out. Right now you only have 4 servers that can reliably compete with each other. The only guaranteed victor each week is HoD because no other server can (currently) match their organization and hours of coverage (hence why maximumpanda is trying to recruit more to ET to be able to match them).

Over time people could get sick and tired of getting ground into the dirt week after week and transfer off somewhere else. Look at Blackgate. Gave ET/NSP and HoD a hell of a fight the first week and after another few weeks of being stuck in second tier and getting crushed day after day people gave up and moved on.

Sky.9347:

But this isn’t just happening with that second group that has 1 of the top servers in it.

This is happening all the way down the rank charts, including the last three.

Obviously, something is wrong with the system.

Ever hear the expression “!@#$ rolls down hill?” So now next week IoJ or SoS will go back down a tier to the 3rd tier and presumably crush anyone who’s still there.

Match ups simply will never be fair because servers aren’t equal. SoS and IoJ are Oceanic servers with different play times than ET. There’s no way to ensure a good competition there. Match making systems will very rarely if ever take that into account. The fact Anet is taking literally zero steps to ensure servers are even remotely equal certainly isn’t helping matters. This isn’t also necessarily a bad call for them because they could be waiting to see what effect that Panda expansion will have on their population/numbers.

You’re going to have to just decide how do you want to deal with it.

You all can keep going on about Eredon Terrace, but the reality is you could insert any server out of the top 4 and the results will be the same. The simple break down is:

1 EXTREME server who has 24/7 organization and players (HoD)
3 Highly Active servers who have great organization and coverage during NA prime time and good coverage in the off hours (ET/SBI/JQ)

Someone is going to have to go down each week. ET was actually poised to go back up for the 1 week matches but got held back. If it wasn’t ET, it would have been JQ and the results would be the same.

The same thing is going to continue to happen until:

1. Another server steps into the Highly active server bunch crowd (such as people xferring to or from the Oceanic servers)
2. One of the top 4 servers tumbles down due to a mass transfer, people quitting, etc.

Just the way it is.

EasymodeX.4062:

So you don’t use iWarlock in a condition build with Staff?

I was going staff for a long time till I found the mobs always bleed capped when paired up with other people making it pretty pointless all around. Great for soloing cause you can shatter cap yourself (have more illusions available than the first two shatters can reset) but man in any kind of group all it takes is a few people doing bleeds (pretty common) before you wonder why you aren’t doing something else.

Embolism.8106:

The only Phantasm this trait is worth using on is iWarden, as it makes it whirl non-stop. On all others the effect is small or non-existent as far as I could tell.

Same experiences here. Amazing for Warden, useless on the rest.