Guild Wars 2

as for me:
swamp bloom (D/D with guardian tricks, S/D otherwise)
swamp mossman (29- D/D, 30+ S/D )
imbued shaman (S/F if no or bad guardian S/D otherwise).
Ascalon (Staff and FG till first gate, D/D till final boss, S/D on boss 30+)
Uncategorized (S/F on haripies, D/D if someone tanks the boss S/D otherwise)
Cliffside (D/D, or S/D on boss if party mights needed)
dredge (D/D on switches obviously, staff otherwise; you need staff CC)
Snowbind (D/D)
MAW (S/D)
+ in all fractals if correctly used FG in ber gear is the most deadly weapon ele has.

Rings/amul + all stats , earrings ber
I also carry four 4 sets of armours (MF, PVT, BER,RAM/BER), changing them depending on party and situation, sometimes I change only chest or legs etc…

>I prefer s/f to d/f. There just isn’t much synergy with d/f,
> it’s kind of like they forgot those weapons could be equipped
> together during development.

its obious they are meant to be played together. Still even in harder pve content like frac 30+ I offten preffer s/d for the blast finishers and better team support. Focus is not so much party oriented and guardian wall of refection is way better in fractals cuz it also deals damage and focus only prevents projectile damge. I use focus only on push harpies in asuran fractal.

>When did we become “overpowered”

in beta
since the release various ele build get nerfed many times to the point where he is rather UP.
Because ele is hard to play and rather weak it requires from the player to learn and improve to be comparable with many brainless autoattack or 3 buttons professions/builds. That is why average ele player is just more skilled than avarage player… with maybe the exception for the new dd wanabe players who are basically free scores. So if you meet a good ele you meet a good player, because he played weak build he became “OP”.
After 700h on my ele I rolled a thief (mostly for pvp glory farm) and it was so ultra easy that after a 20 min of gameplay I got comparable scores like on my ele after 700h. Later on I leveled this thief to 80 and in pve it was also easier than ele.
On wvw I play the “immortal troll” 100% condi/tank p/d thief build – same as on the ele tank you can own 95% of the plyers with this – having troubles (draw or infinite fight) with other tanks – but you can do this a lot easier than as ele.
So ele compared to thief is far from OP.
In pve obiously OP are guard and warr, ele is far far far behind those two and only far behind the rest
The only aspect where ele might be slightly OP is hi end pvp – but its not tank, not dd, not 1v1, but teamplay s/d berserker eles and so far I know only one team who can play like this – chieftain ninjas, still I am not sure if this ele build is OP or they are OP.

vinceftw.5086:

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

When you get to higher levels, you’ll drop the daggers

That’s weird. I saw a youtube vid of high level fractals (50+) and 2 of the 4 elementalists were using daggers.

probably this movie was from before the AI/fractals improvement path or they used dd only on trash mobs (which I still do even at 40+). Using gc d/d on fractrals bosses is way way harder than ranged build. I use s/d almost on all frac bosses starting from level 30+ so its like Lillian wrote - in hard content you will drop the daggers - except for trash mobs.

>However, as I’ve been getting into high level fractals,
> I seem to be using staff more and more, since the risk
> of going melee often just is not worth it or even viable
>(especially since d/d damage isn’t top tier in terms of melee dps).

exactly, in hard content dd is uneffective and after frac 40+ unplayable unless in very good party. I found that s/d is often a better choice than staff for fractals, you still have the "kick" from offhand dagger and some range main hand skills + you alone can give the party perma 16+ mights.
So go for meteorlogicus probably some day aNet will realize how bad scepter auto fire and air are and buff them and we get quite nice weapon.

>arenanet hates ranged and only want people to go face to face

for harder content like fractals 30+ bosses ranged is usually the only option parties chose.
Try fight Legendary Archdiviner, Mossman, Legendary Dredge Powersuit, Captain Ashym, Legendary Grawl Shaman as close and then switch to ranged and see what a faceroll it is if you can range/kite/dps compared to close.
It is just so much easier on ranged I would like Anet to fix it by addig some projectilie reflection mechanism on those bosses.

Coast.5162:

I would like to be able to weaponswap while in combat on ele, but with the downside of not being able to swap attunements.

…

> being mostly ranged spellcasters,

play mesmer for ranged dps

>you know, lobbing fireballs

fotunatelly elem is not all about spamming fireballs

>Despite the AOE limit being a ridiculous 5 people.

yep it is a bit strange. This limit favorize primitive wvw zerg balss over strategy, formation, unit, wing, flank etc. I would like to use more military teminology/strategy in wvw but for now it is just zerg oriented “fun”.

>If I so much as see a thief or dagger ele…

yes, single staff ele (unless full bunker) is free badge, but it is your own fault – wrong weapon for soloing.
You have some skills on the staff that can extend your life but the result is obvious and its only matter of time.

>I`ve seen them be so rabid in trying to down me that they completely
> lose sight of their own ability to get away afterwards, its like they
> enter some sort of frenzy in their pursuit of the tempting target.

In typical wvw 3v3 or 5v5 I usually leave them as last, cuz they are not so dangerous and in many cases thay are the smalest thread, I will kill them anyway but for now I have to take care of more important issues :> Only if staff ele is 100% gc and ultra skilled and the remaning enemies are tanks I will go for him as first.

>Arenanet is quite aware that ele’s are becoming thief type assassin

pvt/watter dd ele is nowhere close to burst thieves. I play both, there is realy a huge gap between those two.

>but constantly they refuse to give us any alternative that isn’t a joke.

staff can be good, but for other scenarios than soloing and/or spamming autoatacks
An example of skilled staff player
http://youtu.be/-919RMwyfnk
Spamming one or 2 skills should be condemned, unfrtunately for some build/proffesions it is the best way to go :/
En example:
Thief soloes lipi using 1 skill and auto attack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye85Ad4LJqY
Other one where thief makes an toutorial of how to play fractals – and is using sb autos mostly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdkXoIhU_s&feature=share&list=PLiTqiazs9dJaoqSbZ9Bjeqrggdcw7sShR
On my thief I also found optimal pve spammable 2 skill build being a lot more effective than when I try to use all the skills thief has. Its serious desing error. You dont want to play any proffesion this way for more than 50 hours.
Ele favorizes the oposite – all skills usage in the correct timing/situation.

>Even just buffing our number one auto attacks would be a start,

it would be a beggining of a disaster – ranged autos are boring/easy/lame and fortunatelly almost useless on ele so you have to PLAY this class, not spam autos.

>Staff ele is the poor man’s guardian

all professions are poor compared to guardian, especially in pve fractals 30+

>I’m still not sure I fully understand the basilisk skill…
>I usually use basilisk

and this is why aNet had to nerf it, because it was effective even when used by a player who dont know what this skill does.

>“this is ofc true for ele, not for engi who is more specialized profession "
>You are saying Engineer is a specialized profession? Oh god…

ofc it is, you even wrote that yourself see bolow

>Here is a quote from www.Gw2.com:
>“Engineers are walking arsenals that carry everything
> they need to dominate the battlefield”

and this is the quote for anet about ele:
“We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.”

>I agree that engineer might have awesome party heals

yes, but he need to specialize for this to be awesome

> but in order to do that you have to sacrifice utility slots for blast finishers,

yes

> The ele on the other hand, can just use a few skills without much hassle

yes, ele has heal almost always, but not as good as specialized engi healer

>Engineers have good CC, it was intended for the class
>to be amazing area denial experts.

yes, they are best at cc, ele and no other profesion will never be as good

>As it is now, Guardians with hammer/staff/sanctuary can do that alot better.
> The reason being that those abilities have an unlimited amount of targets,

guardian is a bugged nup friendly proffesion, totaly OP in pve, pvp, wvw. Anyone looks bad if compared to guardian. This proffesion deserves mega nerf in almost all aspects of the game.

>My point still stands, Engineer takes alot more effort

and my point is that engi is more specialized then ele, you can makea build for perfect cc, perfect heal, insane insta burst etc… you can not make such builds with ele, ele will be always good/average in almost everything but master of none. This my definition of versatility – many options in one particular build – no specialization, and if you specialize ele in something you usualy you will end up with worse build – this is not the case for other professions where “pure X” builds are often better even when they are handicapped they still are so good in this one specialized aspect tht the others do not matters.

>For organized groups, actually “zerg ball” fights are extremely commander
> dependent with complex tactics and strategems at work.

complex ? dude, its just swarm… look at eve online battles/commanders

>Go watch vids of good guilds fighting each other

http://youtu.be/LR_qQydIPvY?t=10m2s
and the great finale
http://youtu.be/LR_qQydIPvY?t=14m20s

yea, go watch and then compare.
Ofc I saw the “great” wvw battles on yt and participated in many. At the current game stage pvp matches are 50x more complicated.

>That would certainly promote single/dual element builds a bit more….

personaly this is not what I would aim for… ele beauty, superiority and excellence comes from attunement rotation.

ThiBash.5634:

Glass cannon might be a bit more viable if the trait that grants vigor on crit was moved to fire or air. It seems out of place in Arcana atm.

yep, but after moving “vigor on crit” to fire 50% eles would rage quite this game
Btw. until arcana improves attunement recharge rate and boon duration it is almost mandatory traitline for all ele builds except for staff “nukers”.

>Which is, more or less, why Staff won’t ever really get buffed
> to be usable in any other scenario.

exactly :/
Aoe in this game is a bit bugged. If it would be balanced to 1v1 it obiously would become overpowered in XvX.
One idea is to make aoe damage to split betwen the victims. So if you hit one opponent he gets 3k, but if you hit 3 opponents each of tem gets 1k so your damage is still 3k… but this wil create whole set of new problems anyway :/
While this game has nice 5v5 balance it has problems with 1v1 balance and ZvZ. In WvW aNet tries to improve the balance by limiting aoe to 5 targets making big ZvZ like small 5v5 battles but this obiously failed and was defeated by very primite life forms like “zerg ball” or more advanced “caterpillar zerg”
Current WvW is based on swarm intelligence rather than commanders, complicated/effective tactics, inviduals etc. In one word – WvW failed.

>I absolutely love how it looks.

some ppl may like it… But imho its an oversized cigarette lighter – mechanical charr engi style, not magician elementalist.
Additionaly ele auto attacks looks worse with inci than without it, especially vapor blades looks better and are more visible with normla weapon. I dont target mobs while using some skills cuz its often more effective that way – vapor blade is one of those skills – good visibility helps a lot.

>in the future devs will add lots of legendary daggers
> elements based (frost, hurricane, thunder, rock ecc)

or one who changes according to your current attunement ^^
For such one I would even buy gems from aNet to get it.

>They did everything they could to make it so that we couldn’t
> possibly have a strong build

strong in therms of dealing high dps or dpm damage – true, we can not have that kind of build

>and it seems like it’s impossible to focus on certain things.

it is not possible, but imho this is how ele should be

>We have less weapons than every single class,

still we can use 25 skills on every ele build or even 41 on specialized builds. If you count traited attunement swap as a skill (why not?) there are even more than 41.

>which gives us fewer possible combos

ele gives insane amount of party combos. Ele is definitely not a solo class, ofc all clases are not solo but ele and engi are imho those 2 that benefit the most when plyed in party.

>and on top of that, we can’t weapon swap.

yep, with curent wapons skills it indeed sucks in many situations

>The sigils are pretty lame and seem mostly focused on getting kills or crits.

not so sure…but indeed many sigils are useless

> I don’t want a crit build, and I prefer a build that is good at support, not killing.

then dont play 30/x/x/x/x
right now I play 0/25/0/25/20, on pve ber/ram gear on pvp more balanced but in certain party setups also ber gear

>Honestly, I would be happy if they gave us more options for amulets

indeed, there should be comparable customization as in pve

>There are some really good eles

there are

> they are good in spite of all this—certainly not because eles are OP.

:*

> The people calling for an ele nerf should probably look up how to fight an ele.

:*

>It’s not that hard to avoid our AOEs

some like arcane wave are hard to avoid, but for some other to acutally hit someone you need a help from the party

>I agree with alot of this, the warrior is harder to master

GS warrior its very easy to master and very easy to counter which means on higher level pvp he is just bad and that is why sPvp players consider GS wariors to be the worst. Still there are plenty of other weapons for warriors and some ppl already realized that and make good use of them. This class is not fully discovered yet but GS warr already is.

>I also agree that Engineer takes even more mastering

not so sure. They have probably strongest party heal via fields and blasts, best cc and probably best insta burst. Ofc they need at least 300h of gameplay to be average – same as ele.

>so they can do alot of different things,
> but on a weaker level than other classes.

this is ofc true for ele, not for engi who is more specialized profession

This game is still very new and I will say it agan – there is nobody who mastered anything in this game. 95% of the players are one profesion noobs, 4% can play more than 2 proffesions. 1% played many proffesion and to some degree mastered one or 2 professions.
For now imho the best players are Chieftain Ninjas, instead of wasting time on this forum watch their streaming fights and l2p.

Edit:
and ofc after you know how to 1v1 play some proffesion and how to counter other you can strart playing this game as it was designed to play – team vs team. 2v2 or 3v3 fights are hundreds times more complicated than 1v1 – this is where the fun strarts – team play.

>Sure, the elementalist have a high skill floor;
>however, the warrior have to learn about other
> classes which makes a skill cap higher.

LOL its just funny how ignorat and blind people are…
Basicaly what you said is “Warrior is hard because he has to know ele (which is hard)”

Ofc anyone had to lern about warrior 100b or whirl wind attack, thiefs hs and c&d, necros well etc.
An ele have to know how 100b looks and how to counter it and all eles KNOW it – its mandatory.
Now the time has come that a warrior have to know what ele can do and how to counter it … and you complain that warrior has so high skill cap because he must know how other classes play.

Dude it is obious that you have to know all classes and all the strategies, and all the animations for all races (at least for those most deadly skills).

When you start to play truly competitive you will quickly relize that there is only one skill cap in this game and it is common for all proffesions and it is to KNOW ALL THE PROFFESIONS. When you get there you can start to complain about balnace.
Right now only the best pvp players got to that point.

>hit shadow step twice ….

some bad habit… hmmm …. 22222222222222

>Warrior, Does it suck in WvW?

an example of berserker warr on wvw romaing + dueling
http://youtu.be/vQkhUOoltWA?t=27s
after watching this movie you can answer your own question.

Vanillea.5764:

But the Bifrost looks nice one ele…..

yep, but its only wvw weapon. Ofc you can use it in pve but in most cases dd or sd will do better.

Chickenbone.5918:

To put things in perspective, the incinerator is still way better than the rainbow-pony-shooting shortbow… My ranger is still weeping.

you are right this one sucks the most… unless you are a 8 years old girl ^^

teg.1340:

Red Falcon.8257:

Autumn.8043:

I actually find the Ele easier to play than other professions. class.

Totally agreed.

Ele has a large amount of passive or easily accessed failsafes that make them ignore stuff other classes would otherwise need to carefully and timely deal with.

Protection/Shielding automatically negates big hits that you would otherwise need to timely react to.
Plentiful condition removal, mostly triggered by swapping or in-rotation, allows to basically avoid managing conditions that other classes have to instead do.
Long stability allows to ignore CC that other classes instead need to stunbreak.
Healing up also comes easily and passively from just rolling, your usual rotation and resto signet procs.

Basically you can focus on your rotation (rotation class is pretty easy) and disregard conditions/damage/CC/burst, while applying your CC/damage by simply playing your rotation.

Other classes need to manage all those aspects every second of the fight with more limited tools and hit buttons based on what they actually need to do instead, which takes a whole different level of skill.

Its very obvious that you never actually played an ele before.

you are right. He is probably plying the most faceroll pve professions which are guard and warrior
My upscalled 35 to 80 level GS/GC warrior is a lot more effective and easy to play on 10- fractals than my 80 ascended/exotic ele. I played an ele for 1000h+ and my warrior for 30h If I could put AR gear on my warr I realy dont need to level him to 80 upscaling is more than enought for hi fractals as warr level 35 (no elite unlocked yet).

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

still there are either bugs in aggro or it does not work as described on wiki.
About a month ago my necro friend made a new test build that got PERM AGGRO everywhere in open world (mobs/champs) and dungs. It was quite funny how the mobs/bosses followed/attacked only him while wohle party was 100% ignored

We tried to figure it out what he did to get perm aggro (he switched from pvt/well necro to rampager/condi build). According to wiki those are important factors:
1. closest target to them – he was the furthest still mobs went only after him
2. who is dealing damage – for the tests he did 0 damage – did not helped
3. top damage dealers – condi build and as I said he did 0
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor – no shield, he acutaly switched from PVT to PPC so lower tou.

Eventually he had to change the build cuz it was unplayable for him.

isendel.5049:

Glad i’m not the only one that doesn’t like incinerator as it is now..i hope in the future some changes (or, why not, a new legendary dagger) will happen

yeah, keep the mats and wait for a beter dagger. Meanwhile farm fractals and pray for dagger skins – that is what I do

Incinerator fits Charr or engi (who can not use daggers)
Imho Incinerator absolutely does not fit to an elementalist.
In addition usually you need 2 exactly same dagers to look good on an ele. An exception would be for example a fire dagger + watter dagger, that would look nice but those dont exist.

Imho at the moment best looking daggers for ele are fractal daggers (but getting two my be hard). Inci is the last legendary I would go with for my ele. On current hi-end content (like fractals 30+) and the future end content you will anyway use scepter so going for Meteorlogicus which truly fits an ele is imho better idea.

Dont complain about thief OP just roll a thief. Back then when there was paids and I was in need of glory to get to any tournamet party I rolled a thief and owned pll with scores 300+ and 20+ kills each match. Farming glory with thief on hot joins is ultra easy – dont complain about this – USE IT

human female because I am (perverted) human male.
I especially enjoy those 5-6 frames during dodging in mini skirt ^^

>And its quite obvious this game is based on exploiting AI….by design.

its obvious that exploiting AI is current “meta” but I hope GW2 was not designed to be played like this.

madatom.5218:

i figured they would include a weapon we dont already “have” like a mace, sword or axe

or better

GREATAXE

yeah, that would be prefectly lore friendly for an ele to wield a great axe. Personaly I am looking forwart to get rakes, hoe, shovel (surely ele is best farmer at the moment).

>Switch to air for backdraft or switch to earth for earthquake. Which one is ready?

even if both are ready still going to one attunement is better than going to the other and it depends on your other cooldowns, your current boon/hp status, your party boons/hp status and party type, your party placement, mobs placement/status etc, etc, etc… (ofc this all does not matter if you use corner/pull bugs, have 2 guardians in party or use other bugs like perma fear from event items)

Playing ele is all about maximise skill usage. Some skills like for example earthquake do dame, cc, blast – perfect usage will be to save some party member from getting killed with additionaly cc mobs for warr to easy 100b, make blast on fire or watter and finally do some medicore aoe damage.

The problems is with current terrible mobs AI many encounters are exploitable and hi-level fotm requires the party to know and exploit the bugs rather than actuall have the skill. Perfect example is dredge freactal 30+ where you pull and insta corner kill minions and then kill the boss. Its probably still possible to do it the normmal way but then you will have to be perfect… at least as elementalist.

>Am I the only one annoyed with the long kitten animation for this?

no, ofc you are not the only one. I assume there is no decent ele who is not annoyed by this.

> It takes forever to go off, you can’t do anything else during it

yet another ele bug. I cant imagine it was designed that way…

Truga.5897:

Excuse me, I haven’t been around in a while now… What does GC mean?

both ele and warrior on this movie (0:27-0:38) are GC,
http://youtu.be/vQkhUOoltWA?t=27s

haviz.1340:

Reflections need to be buffed. If a boss can instagib me, it should mean that reflected attack should instagib him. Sounds fair.

if boss 1 hit atuoattack instagib me it should mean that I should 1 autoattack instagib him. Sounds fair.

>LoS or Stacking. Using walls/obstacle to group up enemies.
>2. Reflect projectiles.

those ofc are obvious exploits. Hope they someday repair horrible mob AI.

>people are doing smart things in those regards,
> and none of it is any kind of bug.

and how this is smart? kitten its ultra noob!!! not smart…
it would be smart to kill fotm dredge boss/minions at once – how it was designed to do but not using nap tricks…

As for guards wall of reflection devs will have hard times to balance this nub skill.
2 guards can for example end lupicus stage 2 in 10s. For now all the devs do is making some boses resistant to this skill, so the wall does not protect nor reflects (fractal OldTom for example). Imho this skill should have longer CD and max 3s duration not lame 12s… and ofc should work on all bosses and projectiles.

How ele was created:

DevA:lets give an ele 2x more skils!!!

meanwhile DevB: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets take 50% of his HP
meanwhile DevC: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets make his CD twice as long
meanwhile DevD: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets make his condis 50% shorter
meanwhile DevE: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets make his auto attack effective hits only 50%
meanwhile DevF: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets take 300 tou frmm the ele compared to heavy
meanwhile DevG: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets make pre and after cast times twice as long as others have
meanwhile DevH: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, they absolutely cant swap weapons!!!
meanwhile DevI: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, they must be either close, mid or range – but never all at same time
meanwhile DevJ: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, they must use watter/arcane traitline to live
meanwhile DevK: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, they must have ultra obvious/long skill animations
meanwhile DevL: omg ele has so many skills its so OP, lets put some nasty bugs ^^ to make it more balanced

@devs:
Please communicate with each other

Intigo.1653:

You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
And you don’t seem to realize just how insanely good Engineers can be.

the problem is that from his point of view he know what he is talking about. He just never fouht against a good engi or other good player. He indeed is killing (or rather running/not dying from) average/small wvw zergs. Basically he is playing a different game than you play and totally different (because of teamply) game than for example chieftain ninjas play on tournaments.

You, Musph and Purie (chieftain ninjas best ele) will have 3 totally different opinions on how OP or UP dd ele is. It depents who, where, and agains who played it.

>So i decided to give the weaponset a try…..was Crystal clear how
>strong those weapon are even after few minutes.

I know how strong they are and for many ocasions they are a lot stronger than dd, sometimes even they are required – like you did need them in frac 34 lava shaman, haviz need them for soloing lupi etc.
In “High level fractal discussion threads” Krag wrote what weapon set he is using on hi level fractasl and it turned out that dd is effective (best choice) only for trash mobs. Scepter/x is the way to go for harder encounters. Imho same goes for pvp/wvw, dd is best choice vs trash players, you can not 1v1 kill any decent (or other tank) player as tank dd. Also best pvp elementalists I saw (chieftain ninjas) plays usually with scepter and berserker amul.

haviz.1340:

Lavadiel.6231:

Imho bosses and mobs should use magnetic auras to minimize the huge skill gap between players who use range build vs plyers who use melee builds.

If I may add, some melee attacks (not just ele) are counted as projectiles.

unfortuntally yes and to make thing worse they dont count as projectile finishers Addidiontally some decend ranged attacks do not count as projectiles and will not be reflected so my idea with magnetic aura on bosses inded is bad. There sould be some other mechanism forcing players to play the game how it should be played instead of easy mode dps’ing mobs from safe distance.

krag, thanks for clering my doubts out. I was almost sure on 30+ dd will be mostly usabe only against trash mobs and ranged set should be used for the hard encounters :/ especially wehen rest of the party is also range.

…there is also an ultimate alternative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIFOmCruUR4

it quite funny because I usually use mist form, arcane shield, armour of earth (one or max 2 of those at same time) in pvp/wvw and I also found hydromancy sigil usefull there … so exact oposite as you.

>screams scepter focus…..

so far I do all the pve content with dd, ofc I know it would be a lot easier if switched to ranged waepon set… still I have to do this only with very very bad (all ranged) parties where I am the only one who is close to mobs/bosses.

max I did so far was 28, I died mostly on bosses from agony because I had only 15ar back then. Trash mobs dont 1 hit you, even Jade Maw tentacle hits “only” for 3/4 of gc HP pool.
I expect next level threshold at 30. As staff ele you just have to keep the distance and evade ranged attacks. Generally the higher fractal I go the more range oriented parites I end with. Imho bosses and mobs should use magnetic auras to minimize the huge skill gap between players who use range build vs plyers who use melee builds.
Also currently many fractal encounters are exploitable :/

>Healing is non existent. (get hit, you die).

not sure what do you mean by “higher fractals” but there are my test at level 16 in asura fractals:
http://imageshack.us/a/img689/9782/gw002dh.jpg

you are not one hit but 3 hit…yet the second champion hits for 13k which more than full gc ele HP pool so 1 hit = die, forntunatelly this attack is quite obious so easy to evade.

Healing ofc is always crucial because its not possible to avoid all hits and you have to cure somehow.

>Its not a spammable defense, you just use it when you need it.

when you need it but not more often than 75s

>I personally am forced to use that , mist form and armor of earth.

I use lighting flash, before I used mist form and arcane shield but later on I found Lighting flash to do better than them in term of protection and overall to be more versatile skill cuz can be used as offensive or for example to solo enable switches where normally 2 players are need (veru usefull in ausra fractal in nab parites)
Ofc depending on fight/situation I end up with totaly different utils but my current “standard” is glyph of storms(v. nice in earth), arcane wave (3 mights, 100% aoe crit + bonuses/heal/vun on crit), Lighting flash (best ele util).

>i don t get whatequip do you use…

you can see my stats on one of the screenshots in my previous post.
Left side is rampager/berserker, right are balanced +all stats (they have v. high crit dmg bonus), wapons are berserker sigil might on crit + 3 might on swap.

LordByron.8369:

P.S. in fotm 30+ you use positioning and arcane shield to survive :|
Also air 5

probably I play more of GC than you (but I am affraid this will change when I get to fotm30) so positioning is crucial for me even at 10.
Also I hate arcane shield, if it would have 20s cd – then I would consider using it on frac 20 but with 75s cd its waste of util slot. Its really bad I will have to rely on that kitteny long cd in the future :/

Intigo.1653:

PvE heroes all up in dis thread.

whether it is to be an insult?
Dude I watched your wvw/duel movies and you dont know how to use shocking aura but other than that – its ok.
I played pvp too, got slayer achevement a fev weeks after the release and usually end up with score 300 and above and 20 or more kills and all that not as nab pvt tank.

http://imageshack.us/a/img62/7862/gw050e.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img835/5355/gw057k.jpg
as a bonus me as a pure gc thief after 2h of gameply as a thief
http://imageshack.us/a/img405/4112/gw078n.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img835/6066/gw074h.jpg

I stopped playing pvp some time ago cuz it became boring as hell.

ps.
Ofc we can duel if you want but I already know the resoult – after 15 min fight it will be draw because two tank cant kill each other in this game….

haviz.1340:

I was that ultra terrible ele …

Trully to say I forgot that bad ele name and even if I rembered it I would not post it on the forum. Back then I was absolutelly sure his “10s lag” was just an excuse for “pro playing”.
No problem, lets us play together anytime, now with LordByron as a bonus teammate. I am rally courious how you survive as pure GC dd in fractal 20 and above. I might lern something new.
Btw on the screenshot with lupi you have 2.5k hp more than full GC fire/air, and a focus + summon weapon. The trick for soloing lupi is to have enought evades/reflect projectiles/inv on his stage 2, its not as hard if you have them but indeed hard or not posible at all if you dont have them.

LordByron.8369:

@lavadiel
we may play together fotm
I play D/D mostly even if recently i m switching to S/F at some bosses….

I will be very happy to play fotm with other decent dd ele – found none so far so you have the chance to be the frist one. I will talk to you in game. I am on fotm 20+ now and more and more feel the need to use scepter in some encounters. My build is http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4343/gw013ei.jpg but after last nersf I spec more in tou and vit cuz is was unplayable unless I found very good DPS melee party. The problem is 80% parties are ranged nabs semi dps or even tanks…
Its also funny how easy this game is as ranged dps compared to melee gc. On scepter almost all the dd problems are gone…

in EU/pve dd is not popular and never was. I play this game since betas, over 1000h by now, hundreds of dungs and fractals completed. I’ve meet other dd ele in dung only twice :D Is definitely the rarest build played in dungs and there is good reason for it – its extremely hard to play if speced other than full tank.
1 moth ago in similar topic I found other 4 pll who also play doungs as dd ele. Unfortunatelly 2 of them was NA server and the other 2 EU were ultra terrible. We could not complete fractal level 10 :D as 3 dd ele + 2 randoms. One of those “pro dd ele” wrote on forum that he is playing pure GC dd and has no problems at all… on that run he died before he finished burning speed :) and killed himself a fev times falling down because of bad skill usage (colosus fractal). The second ele dd was full pvt watter/arcane and did zero damage – in one word he was useless :) YES in pve dung dd ele tank is USELESS – remember this pls and dont play pvt watter/arcane in pve its nab and you do nothing compared to any other build that actualy is able to do some damage.

Compared to my thif, messmer, warrior and even staff or scepter/x ele, dd ele build is hardest to play and hardest to find in any pve dung. So pls stop spreading myths that he is popular.