What? You don’t miss out on any buffs, but you miss out on a permanent 10% damage increase.
You may have become addicted to it, but it’s pretty bad.
He’s also not even using Aeromancer’s Alacrity.
Saccing some constant damage for more crit damage and increased uptime on your strongest weapon set utility is bad?
No doubt it can be useful, but Im surprised thats an option over the
other skills.As far as the range mentioned above, Ive said since day 1 I think a
staff on an ele should have better range (considering a ranger 1500),
but Im thinking they would not do that because the AOE would go
to far into enemy keeps.
Staff’s main flaw right now is a few of the skills doing no damage and lacking good pathing for some projectiles. The CC is also subpar at a single-target level considering CC is necessary to get any damage in a 1v1/1v2 setting.
You should really use 25 Water/15 Air if you want the optimal setup. The damage you lose by not having the 25 Water trait (2% for each Boon) is really high considering the massive amount of Boons we keep up as D/D Elementalists. Also, when you have 15 Air you have to be aware of that and try to time your Air attunements for when you have a target selected (and in range) due to the nuke. I saw you without one for quite a few attunements.
Other than that, just try to Earth roll in your Fire fields a little more and you’re good.
I disagree; there’s a lot to be said about going 20 air/20 water and grabbing aeromancer’s alacrity. For a D/D ele you only miss out on a little bit of vigor/regen in the long run, but the increase to your crit damage/uptime on shock aura and updraft is something I’ve become addicted to.
Pets need to be better without investing into BM, and investment into BM needs to be rewarded with non-garbage traits. Power builds need to be made viable either by removing our subpar survivability when we run them, or by rewarding our investment with the power other cannons have without burning an entire bar, a few utilities and our elites.
Base weapon damage also needs to be raised slightly.
Oh leuca, my good friend, you are so eloquent. Ive been saying that for so long and yet you sum it up much better. Im too rough for these delicate procedings. I agree wholeheartedly. In a small well put paragraph you summed up most of whats wrong with ranger. I do think they should go the route WoW went and make it so pet isnt 50% of our dps unless we go into the PET TRAIT LINE, and maybe fix our traits to synergize better and not be in such random kitten places. Like traps being in skirmishing line….Just a thought anet.
I did forget one thing: Make the other 75% of our utilities not suck. Making do with LR, Renewal, etc is one thing; having them be comparable to utilities that have the same idea behind them would be just fantastic. There’s just so much conceptually wrong with a lot of the professions; this game was not released when it was “ready.”
I’d rather it give you a stack of might for 5 seconds for each foe you hit with the attack. This would encourage players to actually pay attention to what they’re hitting and be rewarded for doing so, without letting them stack excessive amounts of might. The bleed could also stand to be improved.
I don’t like this idea nearly as much as it being a blast finisher, as it feels more like a support/utility weapon instead of a DPS weapon. Traits for it are in the support tree. Also, you can use combo fields with a blast finisher to grant aoe might, that’s what combos are all about.
It’s hardly a support weapon in and of itself, unless you count its control aspects to be part of what we call support. All blast finishing will do is make them nerf the recharge and make us spam it on that recharge in any field we find. It makes more sense to me to reward the ranger waiting if feasible to hit as many targets as possible, increasing his benefit from good usage of the attack. And considering the fact that it’s the only reliably source of DPS on the GS aside from auto attack, a blast finish/recharge nerf would not be ideal.
Pets need to be better without investing into BM, and investment into BM needs to be rewarded with non-garbage traits. Power builds need to be made viable either by removing our subpar survivability when we run them, or by rewarding our investment with the power other cannons have without burning an entire bar, a few utilities and our elites.
Base weapon damage also needs to be raised slightly.
I couldn’t get halfway through because there was too much messing around with speed/direction of film. I’d be interested to see a less edited video.
Considering the fact that the #6 effect will proc cleansing water, it stands to reason that #4 will as well.
I generally only play Asura, Human or Sylvari on more movement-focused professions because their movement feels cleaner, but I have a Charr necromancer.
I’ve gotten so used to 1H sword’s attack that I don’t know if I would continue to use it if they fixed that leaping function.
Any profession that can time their poison application well after applying some moderate damage will eventually wear a guardian down if he’s holding a point and refuses to leave. Also d/d eles.
I’d rather it give you a stack of might for 5 seconds for each foe you hit with the attack. This would encourage players to actually pay attention to what they’re hitting and be rewarded for doing so, without letting them stack excessive amounts of might. The bleed could also stand to be improved.
As well as fixing being able to auto aim targets behind your back without even turning the camera in the right direction, like so many skills (leaps, charges, even some range attacks like black powder) allow it… That would help positionning becoming a bit more meaningfull, it is already in bad shape due to all the AoEs and having to stand inside a tiny circle to win some points…
THIS. Auto-aim has no place in a competitive game. For instance heartseeker should be a skill shot like burning speed.
It wouldn’t be an issue if thieves didn’t work off of initiative. One of the biggest mistakes Anet made with this game was making one class have a different recharge mechanic on its weapon skills.
The only class I have an easier time killing people as than my ele is my mesmer. They’re the two strongest professions from my own impression.
My main problem with stealth is culling and lack of revealing after launching any attack, not just ones that hit. I would even be mostly happy with revealing on blocked attacks while leaving evasion alone, but something would be nice. If there is no punishment for launching multiple failed attacks, then make stealth attacks cost initiative.
@Arheundel.6451
I am not losing to them, just takes a lot of effort to defeat mindless button mashing (rotating same kitten while watching the grass grow) that can be done by simple bot/macro.In other words 90% d/d ele takes much much more effort to defeat than for example 90% thief, or 90% warrior, or 90% ranger or 90% engi…
I simply do not think that mindless rotation of same skills without much reaction to what opponent is doing (such is dodging big hits of the enemy, or deciding WHEN to apply which skill based on what enemy is doing) should lead to such good results. It indicates, in my opinion, that class is simply out of balance. I should have about the same effort expenditure and feel the same amount of ‘threat’ when defeating average (or 90-th%) player of any class.
Bad eles are easy to beat once you figure out exactly how they rotate and what utilities they have.
Oh snap, they made Moa a defensive elite instead of offensive. Poor mesmers only have the most defensively viable burst in the game bar good thieves; it must be awful having to use Moa to stop an attack instead of guarantee your own.
Ele elites are just garbage; if we got good elites the entire game would just end because everybody would be QQing about us. Granted, our strongest available specs are extremely strong in the current balance state.
I’m not sure how you can find anything wrong with Cleansing Fire. Bar Stability application, it’s completely superior to Armor of Earth. It burns 3 conditions without traiting into cantrip condition removal (allowing you to save your water attunement for a better opportunity), breaks stun, applies burning that works great for condi builds and chains well into d/d power builds, and has an amazing recharge to boot. I haven’t looked back since I started taking it instead of AoE.
condi bunker builds with cats are way stronger. condi synergizes with wilderness trait line and u simply do more damage. people dont really die to this kind of burst in tpvp. 10-15k from a BS thief, shatter mesmer or d/d ele, maybe. ranger power builds are super gimped, unless u run glass cannon LB in wvw, which is hella fun.
The problem is that the weapons with the highest defense do extremely little condi damage. You are essentially sacrificing bunker abilities, which he is not trying to do.
if you know what youre doing, you dont need too many evades. the right build can get u near perma vigor.
If you are a bunker, you want as many evades as possible; the fact that you can get decent vigor and moderate weapon evasion on a condi build was not the point.
nope, the point was u get vastly superior damage. not only do u have the staying power, but u can actually take people down. this has allowed me to turn many 2v1’s into 1v1’s. 0/0/30/10/30 is one of the best duelists in the game, and i never felt the need to switch to evasion weapons. u laugh at burst thieves, while easily handling d/p, in addition to trap rangers and d/d eles. ive also yet to die 1v1 to a shatterer.
I dont know why this turned into a build wars thread but okay. And ever thought that maybe some people don’t want to play the FOTM condi and or traps.
I hate running condi builds, so I can attest to that.
I don’t think griefing builds are healthy for any game, regardless of how they grief.
Griefing?
How is it griefing when people absolutely have the choice to do something other then trying to whack the thief.
Builds that pretty much accomplish nothing but spamming things like stealth. If your build does not contribute damage, support (for anybody but yourself) or any form of control, then what are you doing but griefing? I would also consider excessive tankiness to be a form of griefing even though holding a point wins your team games. I was under the impression upon buying this game that damage avoidance would do more good to you than damage absorption.
Blocking C&D does not prevent the stealth, and the thief can still blind you with a trait, preventing a 1 hit counter attack if that is on your bar. Does it make you die? No, but it certainly makes retaliating against a C&D thief annoying as hell. Mechanics like this need to be fixed.
Blocking CnD does prevent the stealth, the blind also does not trigger without the stealth. So really what needs to be fixed is the vast amount of ignorance on the forums.
I’m not sure what the case is then; I had a thief stealth/blind me off of multiple blocked C&Ds in an encounter I had the other day. Unless there are some block skills that are not functioning properly I cannot otherwise explain what was happening. I was using a ranger (he was not actively using C&D on my pet and my pet was often nowhere near the range necessary for him to do so) and repeatedly had him stealth off of what appeared to be C&D, which I thought I knew the animation for. He did not use a stolen item and did not use a utility to stealth; it was the same animation every time and given the range necessary for C&D and the range he stealthed at each time I don’t have another explanation. He did not ever leave P/D to the best of my recollection. Before this encounter I was under the impression that blocking skills that had effects like C&D was supposed to prevent the reactive effects from successful hits, but this honestly had me stumped.
Does it make you die? No, but it certainly makes retaliating against a C&D thief annoying as hell. Mechanics like this need to be fixed.
Since when it’s forbidden to be annoying?Last i checked GW2 was a roleplaying game,so if the guy chooses the role to can’t kill anyone,but to annoy them,then so be it.I am annoyed by some demigod bunker builds that take 300 spartans to be killed,but i don’t whine,do i?
I don’t think griefing builds are healthy for any game, regardless of how they grief.
condi bunker builds with cats are way stronger. condi synergizes with wilderness trait line and u simply do more damage. people dont really die to this kind of burst in tpvp. 10-15k from a BS thief, shatter mesmer or d/d ele, maybe. ranger power builds are super gimped, unless u run glass cannon LB in wvw, which is hella fun.
The problem is that the weapons with the highest defense do extremely little condi damage. You are essentially sacrificing bunker abilities, which he is not trying to do.
if you know what youre doing, you dont need too many evades. the right build can get u near perma vigor.
If you are a bunker, you want as many evades as possible; the fact that you can get decent vigor and moderate weapon evasion on a condi build was not the point.
Based on your posts on the PvP boards I doubt you are as high up the ranks as you claim you are.
As for your build I don’t really like the look of it but I will probably try it out to see how it goes at some point before I make any comments on it.
Don’t worry its only good for dodging and holding points. It has near to no chance of killing anything.
I’ve beaten this build 1v1 with my ranger. I’ve watched D/D roll over it 1v1. Thief’s and Mesmers well you know the outcome.
And love it how you think your pets are you main damage. Let me tell you this at a professional level your pets are useless. Only classes it will hit are Necros/Guardians/Warriors, everyone else takes around 30% damage from the pet’s, there just to much cripple/cloak/chill/evade.
I recommend if your new a ranger finding build fits your play style. This build will not work in WvW, its strictly TPvP. Check out Bunker/Trapper builds they are better then this build.
Why are you lying to people? This build kills people easily. This build counters ele easily as well
Your the one lying here mate. This build might work less skilled players but doesn’t work against skilled players and that’s fact.
The player base is evolving these type of builds are done and dusted.
In a 1v1 a bunker ranger can kill most anything 1v1 given enough time bar tanky staff mesmers/pure bunker eles.
Keep telling yourself that………..
I guess it’s because I run something with a little more oomph on my character and not quite as much healing as I run a Valkyrie Amulet instead of Cleric.
The pet regen is great because it helps keep your big dps pets alive and actually grants you a little regen for yourself.
condi bunker builds with cats are way stronger. condi synergizes with wilderness trait line and u simply do more damage. people dont really die to this kind of burst in tpvp. 10-15k from a BS thief, shatter mesmer or d/d ele, maybe. ranger power builds are super gimped, unless u run glass cannon LB in wvw, which is hella fun.
The problem is that the weapons with the highest defense do extremely little condi damage. You are essentially sacrificing bunker abilities, which he is not trying to do.
Based on your posts on the PvP boards I doubt you are as high up the ranks as you claim you are.
As for your build I don’t really like the look of it but I will probably try it out to see how it goes at some point before I make any comments on it.
Don’t worry its only good for dodging and holding points. It has near to no chance of killing anything.
I’ve beaten this build 1v1 with my ranger. I’ve watched D/D roll over it 1v1. Thief’s and Mesmers well you know the outcome.
And love it how you think your pets are you main damage. Let me tell you this at a professional level your pets are useless. Only classes it will hit are Necros/Guardians/Warriors, everyone else takes around 30% damage from the pet’s, there just to much cripple/cloak/chill/evade.
I recommend if your new a ranger finding build fits your play style. This build will not work in WvW, its strictly TPvP. Check out Bunker/Trapper builds they are better then this build.
Why are you lying to people? This build kills people easily. This build counters ele easily as well
Your the one lying here mate. This build might work less skilled players but doesn’t work against skilled players and that’s fact.
The player base is evolving these type of builds are done and dusted.
In a 1v1 a bunker ranger can kill most anything 1v1 given enough time bar tanky staff mesmers/pure bunker eles.
Pretty much the only thing I would “nerf” on thieves is the stealth spam accessibility vs reward for stealthing vs punishment for bad stealth usage. For instance, how Cloak and Dagger rewards the thief with stealth and aoe blind (if traited) even if you are blocked…
CnD will not put you in stealth if it gets blocked.
This +1,000,000. Please people, I beg you, stop making suggestions when you have absolutely no idea how the mechanic works…
There seems to be an occasional bug that is making this happen then; I had a thief stealth and blind me off of a blocked C&D the other day. It happened multiple times in the same encounter and if what you are saying is true then I’m not sure why.
The problem is not that pets do not detect stealthed enemies; the problem is their pathing and occasional huge delays on acquiring targets again. The most recent buff to pet AI was really a pathetic attempt considering you can still kite most pets in a circle without any movement buffs. Your pet will also waste its F2 if it’s set to use it on a foe that later stealths, forcing you to call your pet back to you to interrupt the casting.
Pretty much the only thing I would “nerf” on thieves is the stealth spam accessibility vs reward for stealthing vs punishment for bad stealth usage. For instance, how Cloak and Dagger rewards the thief with stealth and aoe blind (if traited) even if you are blocked. This does not encourage the thief to pay attention to enemy boons, or whether the person they are attacking is channeling a block skill, which nullifies most applied damage and blinds since they must actually hit in order to apply. A thief can launch multiple stealth attacks without breaking stealth if he hits a blocking foe, allowing him to spam powerful effects without punishment until his stealth wears off or he lands a hit. Aside from this I don’t have much of a problem with thieves being OP, except for Shortbow.
5
wait…wait…wait…
5
wait…wait…wait…
5
wait…wait…wait…
5
Practice that pattern in your head.
now, replace 5 with whatever skill you use to deal with melee attackers.
when you take a C&D…
wait…wait…wait…
repulse/block/smash
This is how you effectively deal with a permastealth troll. If you’re getting killed by these people be sad, since the nerf C&D does absolutely pathetic damage if used as the only damage source.
Blocking C&D does not prevent the stealth, and the thief can still blind you with a trait, preventing a 1 hit counter attack if that is on your bar. Does it make you die? No, but it certainly makes retaliating against a C&D thief annoying as hell. Mechanics like this need to be fixed.
Birds dont die because your burst has to do with swapping alot.
Running Eagle/Hawk I don’t find myself swapping quite as often because I’m not swapping to get the F2. The recharge on their F2 is just stupid good and the damage decrease isn’t that bad; they still hit pretty hard and add some bleed to boot, which helps me deal with frequent stealthing mesmers and thieves.
I like Eagle/Hawk myself. Also why would you bother with the 10 in Nature when you could put 10 more into BM, get 10% of healing into power and get passive regen+boost your pet spike, which is the goal anyway?
Because the regen is slow and not too helpful, I think protection is way more valuable. The whole point is to survive long enough for you to kill the enemy. And the ravens already hit like trucks.
I guess I’ve just never felt short on protection with the 15 WS trait. I run Valkyrie Amulet and hardly ever have a problem dying. I also find the regen very useful; it’s not hugely significant on the player but it’s a much bigger heal tick on the pet, and birds are very squishy.
And then you run into SUR WILLIAM MARSHALLLLLL and he drops you like a rock :P
Actually he just drops a rock.
I like Eagle/Hawk myself. Also why would you bother with the 10 in Nature when you could put 10 more into BM, get 10% of healing into power and get passive regen+boost your pet spike, which is the goal anyway?
Because the regen is slow and not too helpful, I think protection is way more valuable. The whole point is to survive long enough for you to kill the enemy. And the ravens already hit like trucks.
I guess I’ve just never felt short on protection with the 15 WS trait. I run Valkyrie Amulet and hardly ever have a problem dying. I also find the regen very useful; it’s not hugely significant on the player but it’s a much bigger heal tick on the pet, and birds are very squishy.
The ranger community’s getting a little duel thing going, eh?
I like Eagle/Hawk myself. Also why would you bother with the 10 in Nature when you could put 10 more into BM, get 10% of healing into power and get passive regen+boost your pet spike, which is the goal anyway?
I’ve never seen any ele surviving 2-3 min of straight up tanking 2-3 guys in spvp at least. It doesn’t seem possible (i main an ele). But we’ll need to know what main weapon he was using. Only ele that I’ve seen that are impossible to kill are the d/d who use Ride the Lightning to escape.
It’s still quite possible with a Shaman staff build. I get raged at all the time for killing the enemy guild lord with 2-3+ people trying to kill me in the process while the npc just bleeds/burns to death over time.
I have a feeling these changes will be implemented in time. Anet is afraid to buff pets a lot in a short time because they don’t want a huge backlash from the community calling rangers OP. (lol@that happening within the next 6 months)
Quoted for Truth.
The way Anet buffs is small changes at a time so they get it fixed and don’t have to change it. Anet said they DO NOT do the “whackamole” system because it usually takes longer to actually get things balanced!
PS: the “whackamole” system involves making drastic changes everytime you try to balance something.
I mean, if I’m getting called OP for running an evasion tank and the person I’m fighting can’t even figure out that my bird is killing them because they don’t kite it, imagine how much people will cry if pets have proper pathing and our direct weapon damage doesn’t suck?
Upcoming nerf? No proof of that yet, but I would imagine the people
complaining about a d/d bunker build want one.
Even after the EA fix I have people raging at me all the time when I run a Condi staff with Shaman Amulet, since it’s very similar in build to the traditional bunker but actually kills people.
Currently, entering any state that alters your “form” triggers “on swap” effects when the state ends. This includes RtL, Mist Form (this one at least triggers Sigil of Battle), Tornado, etc. It also occurs when you drop conjured weapons. This probably occurred when they implemented the change so that engineers could better take advantage of sigils when swapping back to their weapons. It is probably caused by the code counting reactivation of your weapon bar as weapon swapping even if it doesn’t technically count as that.
Evasive Arcana must be active for you to reliably stack might if you are not on S/D now. This is honestly a much better concept; having each attunement dodge achieve something different to increase strategic value.
I have a feeling these changes will be implemented in time. Anet is afraid to buff pets a lot in a short time because they don’t want a huge backlash from the community calling rangers OP. (lol@that happening within the next 6 months)
It would be interesting to see much larger maps with a much more strategically implemented approach, but I highly doubt this will happen.
Your uncomfortableness is understandable but you should know that you will not really get that much more damage by traiting into it if you are comboing properly off of yourself. Speccing 20 into fire magic while on d/d for example is pretty redundant with you can mantain 15+ stacks of might. Fire magic needs a huge rework to be comparably viable next to water magic/arcana. It makes more sense to spec into survival/boon duration and get loads of might than to trait damage and get a negligible increase in comparison. I would highly recommend going 30 into arcana for sheer efficacy, but you can afford to go only 20 in water and not feel that much of a difference if you are traited properly. If you really don’t feel like you want to use evasive arcana at 30 arcana, go 20 water/20 arcana and put those extra 30 points into whatever you want. You will keep the bulk of the survivability that daphoenix has with his build but a little more freedom to spec into damage dealing lines/traits. I would highly recommend Cleansing Wave/Cantrip mastery in water magic and Elemental Attunement/Renewing Stamina in arcana.
(edited by Leuca.5732)
In general there is a sort of rotation that makes sense for optimal DPS output in PvE and PvP, but being able to switch it up is an important part of playing ele. Your rotation for pure survival and team buffing is going to be different than a pure damage rotation, and PvE often requires less variation than PvP, partially because it’s easier to predict what mob ai will do, with the other part being that good players will catch on to your rotation and beat you up for it.
Please note that other classes do have sequences that they must do to achieve optimal DPS; it is just a tad more complicated for us because we are working with 20 skills that are individually less complex than our counterparts but add up to something that achieves more in the long run, at least conceptually. This is quite obviously the case with D/D setups, but staff/scepter/focus are lacking a bit as is; scepter however is better off than the other two in terms of ease/efficacy most of the time when it comes to damage.
Couldn’t touch my Ranger with that nonsense. I am jealous of your GS aa, though! Makes me want to do some glass cannon crap for fun again.
I was just thinking that. I main Ele/Ranger and I can guarantee my reflexes are good enough to avoid the bulk of that damage unless I’m already locked, debuffed and am completely out of CD, which is a slim chance if OP is trying to roam with that build.
If he’s ticking you to death with conditions he’s on a shaman amulet and probably undead or nightmare rune. Staves are much better for conditions than people think; Eruption on my condi build does about 7.5k because of bleeds. Condi builds are also much more able to take advantage of Evasive Arcana’s full spectrum of spells.
This is all nice I guess, but saying it has just the right amount of survivability is rather misleading because the survivability it provides is practically redundant with the current state of Elementalists as a whole profession. I have never needed it to have people accuse me of hacking for being too survivable. If anything, you’re just adding survivability you shouldn’t need and gimping your damage. I guess it’s alright for people who are new to the profession but it doesn’t really offer much at a higher skill level.