Guild Wars 2

Overall try D/D celestial elementalist meta build, easiest to work with and more forgiving than anything else to learn elementalist with, in sPvP, as for PvE, doesn’t matter really.

Kodiak.3281:

BlackBeard.2873:

Kodiak.3281:

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

Nerfing self-survival in a starved class isn’t really the answer, imo. They need to make self-survival traits easier to get, but reduce the capability to support other players as easily. If you nerf d/d ele so its no longer a great duelist, the class becomes basically unviable (see: pre 4/15 situation). Decoupling the self-survival and support capabilities makes eles less inherently stack-able, so they aren’t “great in 1v1’s and very good in teamfights” in all the same build.

But that’s just it, you really aren’t nerfing self survival because the total durations in which the boons last remain the same in total. In some ways this condenses game play since certain sources of boons would be higher and more useful without as many button presses. All it does is leave the class more vulnerable to boon strip which is uncommon at best. This gives Arena Net a stance they can reasonably take, “We made Elementalist more vulnerable to boon strip, to counter them use boon strip.” without gutting the Elementalist class’ survivability since the same amount of survivability still exists only in longer duration, less quantity of boons.

Again this is ONLY if they actually are going to do something. I still don’t think they should. As I said earlier in this thread, none of us Elementalists are realistically going to suggest they do anything because we all universally agree that Elementalist is already weak enough with no HP or Armor. Nerfing might is bad. Nerfing Cele amulet is bad. Nerfing Elementalist is bad. We’re all the choir and we’re all preaching to each other. HOWEVER if they are really stuck on doing something, making us more vulnerable to boon strip is probably the least damaging way to do it.

So basically what you mean is, remove some boons from things like shielding elements, but increase duration on other sources for that boon like swapping to earth or something? I mean i could work with that, if that means that boon stripping is just going to be more permament but some suggestions in this thread just really rustle my jimmies. Coming from people that have literally no idea what they are talking about

Because if some changes suggested in this thread get taken seriously, it will potentially ruin the class in general and make it the 2013 year counterpart, which would mean that i would lose the ability to play the class i enjoy most in this game competitively, and we all know that playing a weak class, is never fun, with all the frustration and grieving that comes with it.

So if some of these changes do come in fruition, i will probably either end up either playing another class, or quitting GW2 entirely again for half a year-year, because that is how long it usually takes Anet to wake up and rebalance the classes, while letting players suffer for that entire period because of some willy-nilly porrly thought-out suggestions.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

The class does not get its survivability from passive attributes. That’s given.
This is also the case for thieves and mesmers. Thieves have invisibility and big damage; mesmers have decoys, controls, and big damage. I would say that the survivability of these classes is more in-built than ours (auras, control, heals).

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Allow me to make it more clear:
In-built defensive tools =weapon skills that heal, auras, skills that control etc
Traits = not in-built

Oh okay sorry then, i probably missunderstood or didn’t read your post carefully to get the essence.

rotten.9753:

Lawful.5314:

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

Please don’t include lingering elements.

Have to, it includes some buffs that carry over with the trait, like soothing mist, stone flesh, ect.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Lawful.5314:

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

The class does not get its survivability from passive attributes. That’s given.
This is also the case for thieves and mesmers. Thieves have invisibility and big damage; mesmers have decoys, controls, and big damage. I would say that the survivability of these classes is more in-built than ours (auras, control, heals).

Umm…?

Soothing mist, soothing wave, healing ripple, cleansing wave, cleansing water (5/6)
Renewing stamina, Lingering Elements, Elemental Atunement, Evasive Arcana (4/6)

Are all defensive traits taken for survivability, i am not sure how they are not.
Its healing and healing and condi clear plus buffs gotten from swapping attunement with the most important ones being obviously earth for protection and water for condi clear and healing again.

Yeah, as i said, we run 6 arcana and water for survivability, not for anything else, the damage boost we get from those traits is highly circumstantial.

I am not sure you need that kind of elaborate stuff for PvE leveling, i just ran blasting staff with any possible damage traits i could get, while having 2 points in water, rest in air/fire.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Supreme.3164:

Bran.7425:

I by no means am an expert on all of the professions, but having played from beta I can only really gather one thing:

The issue with the elementalist balancing is the line between garbage and godhood is very thin and so the changes tend to hokey-pokey elementalist in elementalist out.

That’s because ele is only really good as bunker, you nerf the bunker option and you can delete the class

Well that’s only because Anet insists on making water & arcane traits OP while making sure than all other trait lines are worthless

Water and arcane are by no means OP, just that the class has no survivability to go for offensive traits.
To be honest, we have amazing traits in stone and fire too, but well, good luck with those when you are squishy as an ele and have no reliable condi clearing except for your traits.

Kodiak.3281:

First of all, it’s an example solution. Any variety of changes can be made. However since healing has pretty much been gutted and overnerfed many times over the only alternative route they feasibly have to explore is going after our boon generation. Wouldn’t be hard for them to reduce our total number of sources of boons while increasing the duration of other sources of boons since combined together that means we get the same amount of boon coverage only with fewer sources making us even more suceptible to boon strip. Boon Strip just isn’t effective if you clear Regen off only to have an Ele reapply it again one second later.

Second of all, any kind of nerf or solution would hurt. Duh. Eles are a huge tangled mess and honestly this is the only kind of solution that doesn’t have far game impacting issues for not only our class but every other class as well. As others have pointed out, it’s only an issue with the Ele. That means the only kind of solution is going to be Ele based.

Funny thing is, there is no problem with the ele class at the moment, i would even go as far as saying that we need some work here and there , buffing the class, not nerfing it even further.

Kodiak.3281:

The only “reasonable” course of action they could take would be to reduce the total number of boons we generate and increase duration of others to compensate. For example remove the Protection from Elemental Shielding, and then add additional duration to the Glyph bonuses (GoEH, Inscription Trait). By reducing our total sources of boons we generate, it’d make boon strip more effective.

I really dislike that kind of solution because it would destroy Signet builds, D/F builds, D/D builds, S/F builds, and S/D builds that are running signets as the core survivability mechanic with elemental shielding for the sake of nerfing the D/D cele build.

gaurav.7340:

Agreed. D/D cele is boring now. I tried D/D zerk ele in pvp for a change lol it wasn’t a good experience for me lol. I can do well on s/f fresh air though!

No kidding, having to go into melee with no survivability couldn’t have been fun.

Its debatable whenether you want to run both Elemental shield and critical immunity in the same setup, it will certainly lower the damage even further, but you are stuck in earth because of that most of the time, otherwise you can just skip the crit immunity and always use the shield, which will yield about the same results.

xDudisx.5914:

Comparing the same build just changin the amulet the difference is just 10% crit chance. The biggest difference would be in power but might covers it. Reduce sigil of battle to 2stacks and nerf might from 35 to 30 was a good move, but might stacking is still too strong.

Well, i personally couldn’t care less if they remove might entirely, but it will cripple the class, because cele amulet will get nerfed eventually, then we’ll be left with a bunch of weak builds again.

If they do that, i’ll just stop playing the class until they undo the “superb” balance they usually treat elementalists to.

My personal favourite is the Fire one, she does around 1500 aoe damage and applies burning, plus her skill does some pretty hefty 3-4k damage aswell.

If you don’t use it, that is your own problem really, i use the glyph of summon elemental almost every time its off cooldown, you wouldn’t believe how much damage those things do, if you actually bothered using them.

gaurav.7340:

irrumatio.4893:

My question is, why isn’t this build more popular? The fact that it’s not on Metabattle? It’s easily better than any other condition damage build for Ele I’ve tried thus far. While it lacks the versatility of D/D Ele, it crushes Thieves, and who doesn’t love that?

No idea man, it might not be that good for high tier pvp but I still use it and it works good in pvp lol I miss poison though

This build is slightly outdated now.

Actually, i will correct my post.

This build, used to focus on the additional defense from not receiving critical damage while in Stone attunement, and focused on stacking Condition damage and burning them down with burn and bleeding.

But what is strange, is that in every fight in the video, he uses different traits, one fight he uses zephyrs boon, another fight he uses Elemental shielding, in other fights he doesn’t, and stuff like that.

The current condition builds, or Signet builds as they are called, don’t focus on earth’s critical immunity anymore, but rather on the Written in Stone passive, to retain Signet passives after they are used, while allowing different statuses to be applied aswell with those signets to empower the builds.
While losing the ability to negate critical damage, the new builds started running Elemental Shielding to replace that trait with, which gives you 3 seconds of damage reduction every time you use a signet, which would be the equivalent of not receiving critical damage.

Anyways, if you want a up—to-date condition build, you should check the Ember Elementalist build, or Zeigeist’s signet build.

Or make something that doesn’t look like a overgrown cat that needs a shave, or a midget with bad dental care.

Main selling point is that the class is the only true mage class, typical elemental mage archtype which i usually play.

The good – it has 25 skills to use, but you can’t change weapons midst combat.
It has versatility up to some point.
He is one of the best classes in PvE
He is one of the decent classes in PvP, with the D/D Cele meta build being currently a bit stronger than the other builds and overglorified by the community.

The bad – ugh, there are too many to list here.
Its super squishy, requiring you to run almost full tank in sPvP.
You will die a lot~
Its hard to play
Its weak at first
It isn’t nearly as strong as some people will tell you
Has very few viable builds that actually win games, despite its versatility we are still forced to build in very specific ways because of our low innate survivability.
High skill cap, expect to be getting rolled a lot at first in PvP.

Theres probably other things others can add, i just woke up so i can’t really give you any deeper insight.

Makes literally no difference, the racial skills are pretty bad so nobody uses them.
Sure you’ll read on the forums somewhere that Human race is better for some classes because it has racial condi clean, but honestly, there aren’t enough slots to equip those racials over important class skills.

xDudisx.5914:

Second, the crit dmg from zerker and celestial is pretty much the same (179% vs 180%). This happens because spvp zerker is not pure zerker it has vitality.

Third, 80% crit chance? From where are you getting those number? Pve dungeon builds? The difference from celestial to zerker is only 10% crit chance. Considering ele has a access to fury and some zerkers like mesmer don’t I think it is a problem.

Zerker builds run ferocity runes, i have 213% on my zerker ele build.
And its pretty close to 80% crit chance with fury, yet again.

To get 15 stacks of might and maintain is lucridious, unless you are fighting for over a minute.

D/D usual rotation, assuming you are in a fight for 30 seconds.
2 swaps, 4 stacks, first rotation you blast earth 4 and roll, second rotation you blast water 3, which not a lot of people even do. That is 15 stacks.
By now the might you have blasted out first, is going to start running out so you will have to sustain the might now.

PvP does not happen in a perfect world where you just stack might with nobody attacking you, there are going to always be situations where you just cant might stack every time.

You will be dodging into different directions, you won’t always be on your fire field to might stack, you won’t always have Earth dodge ready when you go into earth because you had to avoid an Eviscerate, ect.

And lastly, the cooldown on your earth 4, which is what most people love might blasting with, is a whole 40 seconds.

15 might stacks, is the breaking point where you start losing might in a battle.

And lastly, leaping is not effecient , i would not advise doing that, unless you are chasing someone.

Everything you post is “theory in a perfect world”.
It is not applicable to real PvP.

Nerfing the entire class, over a specific build in sPvP, will not help the class.
That solution will not make anyone happy, especially not Elementalist players.

I brought hard proof and facts, even PvP videos of good players, not sustaining 25 stacks, yet you insist that might stacking is the problem.

Even the ESL pro top teams elementalists don’t stack over 15 stacks of might usually, they hang at around 8~14

In PvE while you are leveling, any build is fine, altho i did prefer using staff because it just had more hard CC and aoe than anything else.

As for PvP, there are some builds.
The most popular would be the Celestial Amulet D/D Build, if you google it, you’ll find the exact build, with a few variations in water traits, but it is almost the same everywhere.

Second most popular are Fresh air builds, those tend to vary with multiple types of weapons, which involve mostly running zerker, or sometimes even celestial.

And third, there is the signet build that focuses on having 6 earth, atleast 2 in water, then 4 in fire and the rest of the points is optional, the build focuses on Celestial Amulet aswell and runs Scepter/Focus, there are two guides at the moment on the forums, one is the Ember Elementalist guid and the other is Zergeist’s build.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Burn-The-Zeitgeist-S-F-Signet-Guide-Video/first#post4851242

Personally i prefer running the Signet build, with a slight variation in traits to fit my play-style.

EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot to add, there is also the support 00266 Staff builds, that are focused mostly on group support, which can do fine, if you are experienced enough with the Elementalist class, but i wouldn’t suggest staff in PvP for beginners.

Bran.7425:

We can only hope that focus doesn’t alienate too many players as the focus on that one aspect of the game isn’t really healthy for the game as a whole.

I would have to agree, there is too much nerfing going around, destroying classes that people enjoy playing, for the sake of pro play tournament balance.

Bran.7425:

Lawful.5314:

Wasn’t a nerf, more like a fix, because it wasn’t intended to be abused like that.

I doubt it would have been caught nearly so soon if it has seen in uses in those tournaments that Anet finds so important.

I don’t think GW2 was meant to be a e-sport.
Not sure why Anet is so keen on it, sure the game has potentially good PvP, but…well, its not there.
MMO’s don’t usually tend to be very entertaining e-sport material.

I mean, the ESL finals has 5,000 people watching on Twitch, not very impressive.

Wasn’t a nerf, more like a fix, because it wasn’t intended to be abused like that.

What i see in this thread, is people grasping at Straws because they don’t know how to actually suggest a good way to balance the class, so instead of going after its strengths, they are going after its weaker counterparts and suggesting might nerfs. That make no sense.

Why? Because if you further weaken the elementalist’s survivability that is already weak at its base level, that would just break the class.
So people are searching for other angles to complaint.

And no i do not have anything against the signet build, but i assure you, that if they nerf the Cele D/D meta build, the signet build is next in line for criticism, because it is just as strong, but people haven’t caught up yet.

xDudisx.5914:

The survivability side of d/d should be better than the offensive one because they put all traits in defensive trait lines. Celestial has only about 500 less power than zerker. With 17 might stacks you have the same power as zerker. Might stack is still a problem.

Nerf might stack won’t make ele bad. Will just move from almost god mode for 1v1 to balanced like other classes.

Do you have anything against the signet build?

You don’t get it, do you?
Cele DD has 1500 base power, while zerker has 2000 base power.
With those 17 might stacks, Zerker ele will have 2500 power, which is a huge increase in damage.
Even if DD ele has 2000 power, that doesn’t make it as strong damage wise as Zerker, because it does not get the huge boost in precision and ferocity.

And 17 might stacks? How often do you have 17 might stacks? I’ll tell you right now, not very often at all, in most fights, you will have like 12 stacks and then they will start running out, even if you have 12 at all, unless your group constantly keeps blasting your firefields too.
Which means that D/D cele ele, has around on average 1700~1800 power.

If you put too much emphasis on might stacking or distract yourself too much with it, you are going to be dead way sooner than you expect, it takes away your concentration and messes with the free flow of the build, where you can’t exactly run fire>earth>water every time just to might stack, because you might need to pop water right after fire, or lightning to get some healing off, or remove some conditions.

And what i don’t understand is, why do people think that might stacking is exclussively an elementalist trait? The might stacking nerf will never happen, because it doesn’t just affect elementalist, it will affect every class in the game to some extent and will affect class that can create fire-fields themselves.

How many times has this elementalist had 17 stacks of might in this video? Twice.
Mostly because he kept using Glyph of Elemental Harmony, in fire, which people dont do anymore, so he wouldn’t have had more than 14 stacks otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYbyag78jf0
How many times has this elementalist had 17 stacks of might? Once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hZiCpMBuYQ
How many times has this elementalist had 17 stacks? Once, why? Because his team blasted a few fields, he reached 22 stacks, that quickly ran out there after.

Well i think you get my point.

Now if you will also notice, all these videos are dated, before the sigil of battle nerf, so what does this mean? Well it simply means that Might stacking is even more scarce now. And where you would have seen 17 stacks, now that would be 14-15 instead.
So basically, 14-15 stacks, is even less frequient nowadays, and 17 is even harder to get an maintain in real pvp.
And even if you get 17, like i said – you aren’t running 80% crit rate with 210% crit damage like you would have had in zerker, so you don’t utilize the damage as effectively.

The previous post was getting a bit too long, so i’ll make another one.

I personally think that people are too used to be able to kill Elementalist with ANY build they run, and thus they don’t like the D/D cele build because its not a free kill anymore, and they can either not kill it with the setup they run , or even worse, they get killed instead and become frustrated, because for the longest time, Elementalist was just there, doing nothing but being annoying.

I think that SHOULD NOT, be the case and you should have different builds, specifically designed to shut down the D/D cele build, just like you spec against certain builds of other classes to counter them.

But ultimately, even if the devs end up satisfying these unreasonable claims by nerfing the D/D Meta Cele build, another problem will arise, and that will be the new Signet build that runs 6 earth.

The new 6 Earth Signet build, will take place of the D/D Cele build and that will be the new focus of the community, because as it seems to me, the problem is not in the D/D Cele meta build itself, but in the class instead, where people just refuse to accept the elementalist as a viable, strong pick in PvP.

People are actually opting for nerfing might stacking and cripple the class even further, than nerf a piece of PvP gear.
Making a class weaker in PvE and WvW, just to go around a problem in sPvP, is not a great solution for balance.
With that said, D/D Cele build is not even a problem, as mentioned by dozens of higher tier players.

Also if you nerf might stacking , that means that ALL elementalist builds will suffer, not just D/D Cele builds.

Instead of nerfing the survivability of the D/D cele meta build, which is obviously its strength, suggested you weaken Might stacking instead, which means that for every 3 stacks, you lose one, so instead of having 15 stacks, you would end up with 10 stacks and lose 150 power.

The problem is people wanting them to lower survivability on cele amulet and increasing its POWER instead, but you suggest elementalist lose 100~200 power, instead, which is the exact opposite direction.

Basically ,what is suggested is that – the elementalist class to be nerfed in such a way, that it would end up in the situation of year 2013, where the class had no damage and barely enough survivability to be a minor annoyance, yet not a threat.

What people really need to do, is learn how to counterplay the D/D Cele build, instead of looking for easy solutions like nerfs.

Are you kidding? Sword will never have higher range than Scepter, it doesn’t make sense, thus it will never happen.

The things with High range, are usually 2-handed weapons aka staff, bows, greatswords .
Scepter is considered the second highest range weapon on a elementalist, with 900 range, being a medium range magic tool.
Its a friggin Wand, if you may.

If you look at the daggers, you will see they are a short range weapon with range from 300 to 400, while not melee, for a magical class, that is considered short.

Then you look at the sword, its not a ranged weapon, its melee, but on a magic class it would need a bit of range impleneted, it being a sword, its not as close and personal of a weapon as the dagger, so what is the only logical conclusion?
Yeah, if a sword were to be wielded by the elementalist, it would have the range higher than a dagger and lower than a scepter, which would be around 500~600 mostly.

I highly doubt that even if elementalist gets a high ranged weapon, like a greatsword, that it will have ranger higher than the Staff, which is 1200.

Alright, so you give us the build, now give us the PvP video’s showing how good it is.
Otherwise i’m not convinced.

xDudisx.5914:

That has been suggested before. I think it would be a great change for spvp and would make it harder for people to keep perma 25 stacks of might on dungeons/pve. Also makes sense to keep the sigilf of battle at the same lvl as the blasting fire field.

Are you seriously agreeing with it? How many people stack over 12~15 stacks in PvP? I Don’t see any at all, could you show me a PvP video where someone can consistently stack 25 stacks of Might in PvP every fight.

MaXi.3642:

one more question…
Is D/D celectial ele OP without mightstacks? No.
many blasts + fire field = dmg
D/D + celestial + dmg = OP

maybe reduce might from 3 to 2 for blasts?

That would be a very stupid kind of nerf, rather nerf the amulet, then cripple the entire class.
As they are already doing, because of suggestions like that.

I suggest you try and swap around your Valk for Berserker amulet and see how it goes for you, shouldn’t change how things are too much, you will lose 600 toughness but gain 300 vitality, which means you are getting about 300 toughness back out of it worth of stats but you crit rate will go above 40%, which is a susbstantial increase in sustained burst.

But if you insist on running valk, then i would suggest changing the rune you use, because it doesn’t benefit you much at all, its hard keeping 90%+ hp in PvP effectively and you do not gain much from the ferocity on that rune. Try use Rune of the Pack, it will provide a bit of fury generation, some more precision and power.

Or don’t, however you wish.

The build is okay, but i think its a bit outdated aswell, you run valk which gives you extra toughness, but you are lacking the Health pool to stay alive effectively in most fights.
And you run 14% Crit chance, for me personally thast the turnoff of that build, plus you don’t have any fury generation to compensate for that extremely low crit chance, yet you run a crit chance proc sigil and have 200% ferocity.

I mean, sure it can work in some PvP against some players, but i can’t see you doing considerate damage consistently, as i saw in the video, unless someone is running around you and feeding you fury, then you are doing very little damage.

Hah, loved the music.

Anyways, seems like Signet builds with 6 in earth are becoming more and more popular, and personally i don’t like the Meta Cele D/D build, so this kind of condition stacking build looks really great for me, i’ve also seen the Amber Elementalist guide, which is very similar to your build, with slight differences here and there, but what i really liked about your video, is the actual PvP footage (unlike some other guides i could mention) , it shows the strengths of your build quite vividly.

Ofcourse there were a couple of times in the video , where you just got lucky and managed to stay alive by a hair’s length but all in all, it was very convincing and the build came off as pretty strong ovreall if you play it to its strengths.

All in all great guide, and thanks for sharing.

EDIT: But if there is one thing i don’t like in your video, is that you only cropped in the parts where you won your fights, which is what brings missconception and the illusion of the class being OP in PvP.
Surely the build is strong, but you should add some video footage where you couldn’t come out on top, with that 1500 hp remaining, and you made mistakes and paid for them by losing, comment them and tell the viewers what you think went wrong and what you could have done better to win that fight.
That would show in truth the weaknesses of the build aswell along to its strengths and not discourage people from playing it, if they seem like they can’t quite pull it off in every fight.

rotten.9753:

Lawful.5314:

Nothing you said is true. warrior was actually weaker at the start of GW2.
And Elementalist did not become PvP kings after April 2014.
We certainly became a better class, but to be called PvP kings, would be pretty bold.

The elementalist profession was top tier till mid 2013 when there was two patches that nerfed ele severely in survivability department.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-04-30#Elementalist
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2013-06-25#Elementalist

Anet added and buffed a lot of things back then but nerf to survivability was all they had to do in order to make elementalist non-viable in pvp.

We lost stun-breakers and cantrips were nerfed.
Thats just the tip of the ice-berg, elementalists were always lacking survivability by default just from the base low HP and armor.

After those patches we just became more subsceptible to CC, we couldn’t heal in mist form and signet of restoration became useless in PvP.

Sure that hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much, to say that we were from TOP tier, to trash tier.
Elementalist was never that good to begin with in PvP, due to its low innate survivability and mediocre damage.

I started playing around late 2013, which was the Era when elementalist was at its lowest point, on the PvP food chain.
And i’ve browsed countless topics and reasons why elementalist was weak in PvP, and i have never, literally not seen a topic prior to 2014 april, that said “Elementalist is top tier, one of the stronger classes in PvP.”
There was literally only objective explanation on the forum, how the class is lackluster.

whoever

Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits. You are caught between speccing for damage or survivability but no matter how you spec anywhere between these two extremes, eles aren’t viable at a competitive level since any build you make would have a weakness. There’s versatility in the way you can trait but you can’t out-play someone by adapting the way you play since your kit has everything but not enough of it when you need it. Having useful skills bound to different attunements and sustained damage being on one means you are predictable and get into lose-lose situations as soon as you start having to play defensively. Signet of Restoration at eles be able to maintain the upper hand since they could keep dishing out damage without pause but it’s PvP nerf and the shift to condi meta that forces Ether Renewal on eles took this advantage away.
In WvW due to the abundance of stats you can achieve the necessary damage and survivability thresholds that can make ele viable but in sPvP you cannot do this.
In summary:
Zerker/Valkyrie burst builds: heavily reliant on landing high cooldown skills.
Bunker builds: deals negligible damage yet still gets wrecked 1v1 by mesmer, necro, thief, warrior and ranger and can’t hold point against an engi. Exceptionally bad at holding point 1v2. Little to no decapping capability and no presence in teamfights.
Balanced builds: heavily reliant on maintaining high might stacks and burst skills must all be landed perfectly in succession to secure a kill.
It’s abit more elaborate than this but you have to play ele enough for yourself to understand.

This is basically how elementalist was for the longest time, ever since i can remember the class.
At the moment we have “barely” enough of everything, if we bunker into the Cele DD meta build, and that makes us averagely strong, because of the spell versatility of the class, but that can change anytime if celestial gets nerfed, we will be back to being jack of all trades, adept in none.
And this is probably back where we’re heading with all the “whining” on the forums.

And don’t start me on “But D/D Cele isn’t the only viable build! There is 6 fresh air and zerker scepter/focus”
Those builds in my opinion, are just “fun” builds, which are neither viable nor strong, but they are there, they are the same builds we used to have back in 2013, and where we were considered the “free kill” because of how easy it is to burst the ele down if he is running those.

Kodiak.3281:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

So if we are going to have a debate, it needs to be objective.

If at the end of the debate you determine 100% objectively that people are scrublords who don’t know how to play their class and counter the Elementalist there’s absolutely no way in hell any game company is going to tell their players, “Hey noobs, l2p you filthy casual scrubs, Ele is fine.”

If you approach the upset players and present to them a logical, well reasoned and thought filled post about why they are wrong and why the Ele is fine and not overpowered they’re going to take it as you’re attacking them and saying they are bad and will ignore everything you say.

What I’m saying is having the debate at all is pointless. You’re trying to get people to buy something they can’t sell and something other people don’t want.

Which is sad, because both of you are right.

Kaleban.9834:

For some reason I can’t fathom, players just don’t like being dominated by a good Ele player. It doesn’t matter if you point out PU Mesmers, most Thief builds, decap Engies, hambow/shoutbow, bunker Guards etc., etc. Its like these players have blinders on, and are tunnel vision’d on the Ele as the source of all their woes.

Ele was a “free kill” for the longest time, so when they get killed by one, they think that they are weaker than the weakest, so they whine.

witcher.3197:

Yes, 2 weeks after release (sept 12) people thought warrior was OP because of the frenzy + 100blades combo.. but as people got better at the game and Anet did a bit of balancing ele was in a great spot until ~2013 summer when anet overnerfed them. After a hiatus, they became kings of PvP after the 2014 april patch.

Nothing you said is true. warrior was actually weaker at the start of GW2.
And Elementalist did not become PvP kings after April 2014.
We certainly became a better class, but to be called PvP kings, would be pretty bold.

There are like, two fractions on the Elementalist forums, the people that blindly believe what anyone tells them and are blinded by the current (viable) ele cele meta build that for once is actually good enough to be in competitive pvp but they keep hearing and bringing up these mythical LCS players that said to be ruling over PvP as elementalists and so they think the class is super broken, but where are those players?
And the people that can actually arguably process the facts and see how things really are, that elementalist is still not the tip of the food chain, but just finally a “good” skill based class, emphasis on “skill based” , finally where its supposed to be, but still lackluster in a lot of aspects.

Elementalist has great healing? Well dog, sure we do, and so does Warrior and so does Necromancer, and so does Guardian, your point is?
But unlike them, we have to take literally every healing trait to be like that, and run +HEALING gear, how many other classes focus on running healing gear, to be viable?

Mesmer doesn’t have healing? Are you for real now? Mesmer has a million illusions so soak up damage, and juke people around, jerkin them left and right and what does elementalist have among those lines? Nothing, healing.
How do we survive? Every possible defensive cantrip and healing.

Do you want to see mesmer heal like elementalist, while always making extra illusions? I want to see people whine about “Broken” then, hah

I honestly shouldn’t get rustled so much, but people that come here and say ignorant things like : “Well duh, elementalist is broken, i hope he gets nerfed since he is the King of PvP!” really rustle my jimmy’s .

Eh nah, he doesn’t have an account, so i was thinking that i might just buy him one for gold from the gem store, otherwise i am not interested in spending 25 euro for it, lol

Enemies in a PvE group encouraged game? Wat?
What are they gonna do, come help you kill Karka faster and ruin your day?

Can you gift the 2000 Gem Deluxe Edition from the black lion market to someone? How does it work?

Can you buy it for example and make a new account with it, for a friend? Or is it only to upgrade your own account? Do you get a code or something or what?

RoseofGilead.8907:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_2

The first chapter’s wiki page is: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gates_of_Maguuma

There are pages for each of the other chapters, as well.

And yes, each episode is 200 gems IF you didn’t log into the game during each chapter’s two week release time frame. If you logged in during said times, you’ll already have them unlocked, and you’ll be able to start them from your Story Journal tab in the Hero panel; if you weren’t on during those times, you’ll have to buy the episodes you.

Whether or not it’s worth it is up to you. I personally would feel it’s worth it.

I see, that makes sense why the last one is available to me then, thought it was something along those lines.

I only started playing Again and i have gold for 2 Living World chapters, which ones are the better reward ones from the available ones?

bump :/
Still waiting for osme info on this

Supreme.3164:

Only reason why eles were deemed UP prior to the april 2014 patch was because of uber OP thieves = spammable double boon steal on sword 3 and broken Lyssa Runes combo, not so much for dhuumfire necros, they could be controlled; where s/d thieves along side pistol whip thieves were literally decimating the ele community.

Spammable boon steal is gone and will not be coming back and now there are builds that can hurt s/d thief pretty badly, should that ever happen.

Lyssa runes, something that was giving free stab, aegis, protection to thieves is gone too.

Basically even few harsh nerfs won’t bring ele back again on the brink of extinction , so we can all relax a bit

Oh yeah, it was the thief nerfs, and not the celestial amulet buff, or the signet of restoration un-nerf, or other countless little changes here and there that made the class viable again.

Well, i wouldn’t rely on suggestions from others on what YOU Should play, because everyone enjoys a different type of class.

For me, personally mages are my kink, so that makes me heavily favour elementalist, mesmer and necro.

What you need, is someone to tell you each class, what category they fall into, then decide for yourself which you want to play, based on previous game experiences.

Necromancer – your pet/dot class basically, like warlocks and such.
Elementalist – your versatility 4 element mage, fire, ice, earth and air.
Mesmer – your basic illusion, trickster mage type.

Guardian – i guess the closest thing i could describe it from other games, is maybe a paladin? Idk
Warrior – your basic hack and slash fighter class.

Hunter – a bowman with pets, the usual hunter archtype.
Thief – as always, kinda stealthy assassin, has multiple stealths, backstab mechanics , ect.
Engineer – the mechanic class, does damage with weapons such as flamethrowers and rifles, uses static tower defense units aswell.

Well, thats the basic outlook on the classes, try and figure out what fits you most.

Game is actually quite populated, some daily boss events have easily over 100 people attending them.

It will run GW2 on high graphics just fine, don’t listen to bitter replies.

Kodiak.3281:

Lawful.5314:

In the end, i have a feeling that elementalist will end up against where we were a year ago, being really bad in pvp, but meh, what are you gonna do about it.

Personally I’m finishing off my Guardian, Necro and Thief before the expansion hoping that Revenant or a class specialization will offer me similar ranged AOE not tied to my utility (IE: Necro wells).

Good one, myself was thinking about making a Guarian and Necro, always wanted to try necro but never got the time to, and i would prefer to have Guardian instead of Warrior as a tank.

witcher.3197:

Lawful.5314:

Yeah but amongst all that, Elementalist was always the worst class in PvP, up until April 2014.

That’s just wrong. Ele was strong for almost a year after release, then there was almost a year when it was indeed garbage, but now it’s god tier since 2014 April if my memory serves me well.

As far as i remember, elementalist was pretty poor even from the start, people kept crying that he dies to thieves and any other class all the time way too easily, compared to what he can dish out in return.

I remember that pretty clearly because of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ

This was dating back to september 12th, and the game was released in August , so i would say yeah, elementalist was on the weaker side since the start.

So i am confused how this whole Living World season thing works, what is it exactly and what do you get for completing it?

Are you forced to purchase each chapter for 200 gems, if you want to go through the additional story quests beyond lv80?

Is it worth it?