Guild Wars 2

If you know every boss, dungeon mechanic well then anything less than full zerk is a waste of dps/burst imo, but make sure you have at least 1 defensive utility like mist form. If you still struggle in certain aspects within pve then yea get some sustain with toughness and health.

Baladir.2736:

oZii.2864:

ARM.3912:

Wow so you are saying that with more healing power, you heal for more? Great post!

You obviously don’t understand what his post said at all smh /fail attempt rofl

I think he did. He was just distilling the thread down for humor. The fact is the analysis is fun but is not a measure of much of anything. There are so many variables left out and assumptions made that the conclusions lack merit. Combat is so fluid that the value of the constants change during battle which means they are not constants anymore. The OP acknowledges this but then does not, because he cannnot, account for it in his calculations.

It’s all very entertaining but elaborate nonsense. Or, as he said, if you have more healing power you heal more.

For example, his methods would tell us that the elementalists’ three healing skills have a ranking of effectiveness and are constant. Yet, any elementalist knows they each have their uses and all are better than each other under different circumstances and/or builds. Under certain circumstances, they each are also almost entirely useless and have no value at all.

This statement is correect!

Gw2 is the best! With more traits and skills added a lot more capabilities to balance them all will be needed…….something even the best mmo developers always have difficulty with. I’m more excited towards crafting ascended weapons and armor and the changes towards wvw and magic find!

“Ah, what a fine day for science!"

If Fgs mobility skills get nerf then I will finally agree that every other ele that is not from the norm race will be in a major jeopardy in wvw.

Avatara.1042:

My cat’s breath smells like cat food.

LOL i understand exactly how you feel with this nerdy math talk haha.

flyingfox.6150:

My new build is 0/30/10/20/20. D/D, mostly a mix of Power + Precision + Crit % and Power + Vita + Crit % gear…
Got tired of the Scepter in less than a week lol….

You got more than 70 trait points there.

After several tries to named my Ele during beta without success I end up with “allnamesaretaken” .While I was leveling I felt ridiculous with the name so recreated a new one with a name that I thought I invented Heidia. A couple of weeks later I looked it on google and to my surprise Heidia turns out to be a successful Israeli sale company….

Kodiak.3281:

Okay sorry for the broken links in the other areas.

First off I primarily play PvE and WvW. I like playing builds that fly in the face of what others consider “mandatory” and pulling them off. In this build there is 0 Arcane which many people would say is impossible.

I congratulate you for this sort of thinking Kodiak. That’s how great pvpers are born. Those that blinded believes investing in the arcane tree is a must for all type of builds are just followers that get easily influenced by what other players say. Personally, I consider investing so much points in the arcane tree to be helpful only if you are going for a bunker/healer type of ele but when it comes to burst or even condition builds more than 5 or 10 points is not helpful and honestly is a waste. You keep playing with the builds that work for you and don’t care what other less skillful players like Aether has to say about it.

What is your armor number? It has to be very mediocre for a thief to deal 10k backstab dmg to you.. You may have high hp but tour health will quickly drop even against a bunker spec player if you don’t have armor follow by heals to sustain.

Shadow Gathering.5649:

Just gonna throw this out there: I played spvp for two hours last night and I did not see one single other ele the whole time. No exaggerating. And I was looking for eles the whole time because I just need to kill one ele in spvp to complete my pvp monthly, but there are so few of them out there. I’m not sure what this says about the ele, but it says something.

Lots of us eles in WvW though. And I feel strong as an ele in WvW.

.
It could mean varies things. Maybe it was late at night where most spvp players were sleeping, or those eles went to WvW or pve during that time. Finally it could simply means there are more eles getting completely bored of spvp and started preferring solo roaming in WvW instead just like me. You can’t really draw any conclusion from mere 2 hours of playing at a single night.

These videos are old, way before rtl was even nerfed. Eles no longer have this insane survivability with moderate dmg. Now 2v1 will kill bunker healer eles if those opponents are any good.

dreztina.4820:

Kodiak.3281:

Stealth.9324:

Is that all we can do? Roam in Zerg….Sad…

Do you mean to imply actually contributing meaningful progression of the map with the ability to take points as part of a larger group (let alone our continued solid role in said groups) should somehow be looked down upon compared to solo roaming and contributing absolutely nothing except to the number of kitten waving videos on youtube?

For balancing, absolutely. Zerging is mindless facemashing and balance means absolutely nothing there since no one is playing even remotely close to well and victory is determined by numbers rather than skill. That’s why people can zerg with upleveled characters and do perfectly fine, whereas in an even numbered fight with lower numbers they would get immediately destroyed and cause their group to lose (assuming equal skill levels).

Not entirely true . If you are in a zerg with great pvpers, you could encounter a scenario where your zerg beats the opposite zergs that have at least 2 times more players. Even on zerg, individual skills and build greatly matter.

ARM.3912:

Yes, how dare users want to play in WvW.

What’s stopping you? I still roam and zerg in wvw with my ele and I do it way better than when I go with my mesmer, warrior and ranger.

You could at least had posted a link to a video.

How Anet ever hated ele? From my experience since beta was even released to the rest of the public, the elementalist have been great at every aspect of the game. I strongly believe the issues that some players post on the forums originate by how the users play and not from the profession.

The elementalist grandmaster earth trait states: “Maintain the passive effects of signets when you activate them”. It works as described with signets of fire, earth and water but when you activate signet of air, the passive remains for only 20 secs while the utility actual cd is around 30 secs (not traited to reduced cd) and it also shows on the buff section to be 10% speed increase instead of the actual 25%. Is this intended or actually glitched?

I am working on a new build where it requires written in stones grandmaster earth trait (no it’s not a signet build…. )The trait states: “Maintain the passive effects of signets when you activate them”. It works as described with signets of fire, earth and water but when you activate signet of air, the passive remains for only 20 secs while the utility actual cd is around 30 secs (not traited to reduced cd) and it also shows on the buff section to be 10% speed increase instead of the actual 25%. Is this intended or actually glitched?

The build is great for glass cannon staff. Sigil of force is awesome too but I’m sure you would love sigil of fire on your staff more for more aeo burst.

It is a very subjective matter Shox. When some players believe the Ele is underpowered in certain situations others disagree because they are great at those areas. The same goes to those that constantly use the term viable in certain popular builds and not in other less used builds. I agree with you the Ele excels in many areas. It could be my playstyle or build or both but I never seen my Ele lacking in anything in pve and pvp. Of course I will welcome more enhancements since it will make my burst Ele even more powerful than what already is just like it did with the recent patches.

From previous mmo experiences I have learnt you have to specialize in one main area as a start to be great at pve and pvp.. Whether that is dps/burst/heals or tank is up to the player to decide.. Being hybrid in all areas won’t take you too far specially when facing against a player that does focus on one of these attributes. in Gw2, I find it best to concentrate from two to three main attributes while the rest to be moderate and low in value. For example my Ele is high in power, precision and critical damage, moderate in Hp and armor and mediocre at the rest. My main area of focus is BURST.

The difference is barely noticeable. S/D burst builds were awesome before patch. With Fresh Air added, they are even greater.

I wouldn’t call it a burst build for 2 reasons:

1- The squishiest thief is taking you too long to down. With a burst build without you being glass cannon, you should be able to down them in one sec.

2: Your damage is average even when they crit. A real burst non glass cannon build shines in group play because you can down 2 or 3 really quick before you need to heal.

Aside of that, your gameplay was superb! Great use of different combo rotations and what I always admire whenever I see eles doing is the great use of their fgs elite within combat. I found out this awesome burst dmg combo with fgs when I made this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Combo-rotations-s-d-burst-eles/first#post2305835. I have implemented in my playstyle and it works so well. It is so funny when you execute it while one or more are immobilizeddd or trapped within a guardian bubble. Maybe you can try it too.

I consider precision stacking to be best if your crit rate is below 50% (without fury buff or food buff) while you have a 85%+ of critical dmg. Otherwise I would always recommend bldoodlust.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Oh how I loathe videos that don’t give build links…

No need, you can tell the build is the same as what most eles were and still are running. Nothing is different.

The ele is better than ever with the recent patch!

Against a skillful mesmer that constantly stealths and bursts with his clones or himself as a D/D ele you will simply not win. The main aspect to watch out from an engi is his elite and if they are running a condition based build, their confusion skill. I have complete respect towards that supply drop elite engi have. Don’t try to fight him within the range of that elite, kite him out of it. Don’t even bother to destroy it unless you are receiving help because during the few secs you try to destroy those turrets a skillful engi will burst you down. Remember must of the engies skills require him to be within melee range to be most effective so as D/D ele they pose a challenge.

It would be interesting to see how this build further develops. Personally after solo/small group roaming in wvw for so long, it is the first time I actually consider warriors to be a major threat with this build.

Puandro.3245:

I did have quite a big crowd watching me duel ppl that night, wouldnt be surprised if worth spread around the server matchup. Btw it was really weird watching SoR, BG and JQ all stop fighting in a high traffic zone to watch the duels i was having, reminded of my DAoC solo days.

Yea it was a fun night until a Jq zerg came by and ruined it all hahaha.

TheGuy.3568:

LightningBlaze.4913:

I went against another warrior today with similar build and same wep sets. Even though this one i managed to defeat 2 times during our 3 1v1 encounters, this build and playstyle is very very scary! as an s/d burst non-glass cannon build ele.

I noticed in WvW more people running this while roaming.It seems to have caught on like hotcakes kinda like DD ele back in the day, but I digress. I have been try to think up counters to it beside running Melandru and food to reduce stun duration. I think my engineer with bombs could possibly negate the build with blinds, stealth, range and overloading conditions. I will have to find someone to test it on.

I imagine with S/D ele its going to be when you pop your blind. Also in open space I doubt S/D could lose to this build.

Omg yes! SkullnBones was the first warrior I encountered with this playstyle from sor/jq(the only one I didn’t get to defeat during our 3 duels, hope to see you around more!) Since then I have fought at least 5 different ones. Some of these warriors I have seen a day before roaming with wep sets like rifle/gs or sword shield/gs now they switched to this playstyle. It’s still scary every time I face one like this. I constantly need to keep it at range and when they get close while i have my utilities, blinds and dodges on cd you will hear me screaming “Go away!, noooo! Ok I’m kitten!”. I do find the ele FGS to be very efficient for mobility and dmg against these types of warriors. The last one I faced root me and I did fgs skill 3 in place…. dealt over 16k of dmg to him, it was so funny xD.

That’s why thieves are the easiest profession to kill as a burst ele and so is this glass cannon ele. He will die wayyy before he even comes close to kill a decent player with this build. Only bad players will die towards a glass cannon ele with this horrible build.

Whoever this Zoose guy is, my point still stands. This build is horrible. I am completely sure he dies really quickly in spvp and specially in wvw. Another burst build s/d ele with any of the builds i suggested will kill him in one sec if he doesn’t have the gears complete bunker.

Jesse.1592:

So I tried the o/30/0/10/30 build for s/d but I just was way too squishy and died horribly all the time (guess I just am not so good at dodging)

Of course you will, It is a horrible build with lack of armor and hp. Even if you make it up with the gears you will just be bunker type that will take over a minute to kill even the squishiest target. Who gave you this build? a newbie to the s/d wep set? Try 0/30/10/30/0 or 0/25/10/25/10 or 10/20/10/20/10 or 0/30/0/30/10 with a mix of zerker, knight and soldier gear. You’ll burst and still have great hp and armor to perform well whether you are solo roaming or running with the zerg.

I went against another warrior today with similar build and same wep sets. Even though this one i managed to defeat 2 times during our 3 1v1 encounters, this build and playstyle is very very scary! as an s/d burst non-glass cannon build ele.

I just met an awesome skillful warrior while roaming in wvw. He’s from Jq and his name is Skullandbones. The first warrior that I stood no chance to beat. He dueled against other warriors, guardians, eles, necros and engi as well during our gather. They all came not even close to defeat him. He really impressed me. I looked up on youtube to find his videos but without success. If anyone know if he uploaded videos please let me know.

I just met an awesome skillful warrior. He’s from Jq and his name is Skullandbones. The first warrior that I stood no chance to beat. He dueled against other warriors, guardians, eles, necros and engi as well during our gather. They all came not even close to defeat him. He really impressed me. I looked up on youtube to find his videos but without success. If anyone know if he uploaded videos please let me know.

Aether McLoud.1975:

With the latest patch necros are pretty much unkillable for me as D/D. Fear, fear, fear, conditions everywhere, death.

Gotta burst them down! that’s pretty much the gist of killing any profession as an ele…

Fishbait.6723:

Try this as an ele, more then likely you`ll just get 1-2 stuns & die
That & the speed/gap he creates is waaaay more then RTL/Staff 4 gives you…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=anDVv6CvFTY#t=663s

LOL i loved this video. Warriors mobility is so awesome right now but in order for them to excel in pvp close as good as ele does they still have looooooooooong way to go. Edit: Then again if I ever encounter a skillful warrior like this one with this awesome all rounded build, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOgyt0UnHe8 I might be proven wrong…

Xunleashed.5271:

Hi guys, with this patch we have new builds open, I’m so excited that I want to share with you my very first runs. Bursty S/D with Fresh Air. My performance is far from my DD, mistakes, misclicks, forgotten consumables and so on. Hope you enjoy anyway!

Build is 0 30 0 20 20 glyph oriented with balanced gear, it’s subject to change everyday so I will share more informations when I have a stable one. Thank you guys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXkrGduXEic

Good gameplay. With a bit more burst, you can have a lot more pressure on your opponents, down enemes much faster thus preventing more major dmg towards your teammates and a chance to keep downing more while one or more are trying to heal the downed enemy back up. Also, try to use FGS elite instead of the elemental. Not only it serves as the best escape from zerg mechanism we ele have atm but it is also an awesome single, aeo damage elite specially in scenariors like you were in this video. Finally, don’t only use lightning flash as an escape utility, try to use it for burst combos rotations if there’s an opening. Remember Lf also deals damage and with a good burst s/d build it can deal from 2-5k of dmg. Here’s a thread I made of possible s/d combo rotations where lightning flash is used more as offense than defense https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Combo-rotations-s-d-burst-eles/first#post2305835

Raven.9603:

darkace.8925:

Aether McLoud.1975:

15 seconds attunement cooldown is not playable. That’s a fact.

Actually, it’s an opinion. And that’s a fact.

Zing, semantics!

But lets give you the benefit of the doubt. IF what is and isnt playable is just an opinion… opinions can be right and wrong! If the statements made were presented to the elementalist community for consensus, what do you think they would decide?

-0 Arcane, playable?
- Less than 20 arcane, playable for staff?
- Less than 30 arcane, playable for D/D?

In my opinion, the community would disagree with your opinion on playability in every single one of those cases.
Which would probably mean that your opinion is wrong.
Edit: It also means that Anet is failsauce at providing worthwhile trait options outside of Arcane.

2 out of my 4 different burst builds I constantly switch to has 0 in arcana. I do perfectly fine in wvw with them whether I solo roam 1v1/1v2 players or following a zerg. Of course points invested in arcana is convenient to lower the attunements cd but that’s all it is… convenient, not necessary.

You’ll be perfectly fine if you go with full zrker gears and traits for pve as long as you know every dungeon/bosses mechanics. Pve is easy.

Necros now reminds me of spiritmasters from Aion. While feared, they do massive condition dmg. Necros are still a piece of cake for burst build eles.

It’s the usual bunker build. You won’t be dealing anything above moderate damage but you’ll survive a lot depending on your combat skills. It’s great.

silvermember.8941:

If only 1% of players use a weapon, dont you think that they might be a problem with that weapon?

Not at all, it only means the other 99% of eles don’t know how to play with it as great as that single 1% of eles do. Orignally, it was the same case for s/d way before it was even mentioned as a burst build wep set. Most eles used to run d/d bunker/healer build(still are) and I was one of the few eles busting down those same type of eles with the so believed “unreliable” s/d wep set.

Please explain if the fresh air trait description is wrong or the trait is broken at the moment. There seems to be no cd after switching from air to another attunement from the second and continued times.

Adastra.9821:

Here’s one I took soon after i casted lightning flash. Note in both these screenshots, I didn’t actually swap attunements for fury so I was sitting at 38% crit chance running 0/30/10/10/20 with all the damage traits I could take.

If I swapped to air mid cast, I would’ve had fury plus another 10% bonus damage from the air trait. More crits also means more vulnerability from the air minor trait.

I just did this to one opponent and wow he just melt with these 2 skills. This deals such a massive damage.

Raif.9507:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Also for fresh air trait, there is no 5 secs cd, is the description wrong or is the trait itself malfunctioning atm?

There is a cooldown, it procs from when you crit, not when you leave/enter air. It’s from crit to crit it seems.

Where is the cd if it procs from crit to crit, one attack after the other towards those with high prec. Just do this simple testing, use air skill 1 after you return to air from the first proc and switch to another attunement. it will be the same, air immediately comes back on.

Also for fresh air trait, there is no 5 secs cd, is the description wrong or is the trait itself malfunctioning atm?

Avatar Yirachi.7162:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Adastra.9821:

FGS
Signet of earth > remove target > fgs 4 > lightning flash > switch attunement for fury = 70-100% hp off most builds if executed perfectly

earth v2
traited for arcane XII (forgot name)
earth 4 > earth 2 > fire attune > arcane wave + blast > fire grab
put in cleansing fire if not traited

That’s an interesting one Adastra. I want to make sure the remove target part you stated you meant no longer have your enemy target and then do fgs skill 4? if so what does that accomplish when you will be missing the leap hit from that skill to your target? just run past them with the fire left behind?

That line of fire does massive damage, actually if you can make you target follow you into an obstacle, or he’s meleeing a gate or so and you cast FGS4 against an abstacle, you will insta kill your target ^^

If a small havoc squad is trying to take a tower I usually use this against those who are attacking the gate. To even speed up the kill more you can cast FGS3 against a wall after it.

Woooow! I have always used FGS only to escape (even before rtl was nerf) but during the past 4 weeks i started using it during combat and this combo never occurred to me. I can now see how it deals even more massive damage this way and I will definitely put it in practice when I log in!

gesho.9468:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Every class can equip a ranged and a melee set if they choose. There is no such thing as a melee class or ranged class (they are called professions anyway) in GW2.

Having options to deal with both ranged and melee fights on a single set is necessary for game balance in this case. It’s also a fun style once you get the hang of it.

i sure mean build (obviously “classe” is not gw2 vocabulary).

build imo is either based on ranged or melee gameplay. what is the positioning goal of s/d? to stay away or to get close up? not surprising that the very first rotation in this thread has to use teleport. dunno, may be it works for atm s/d (just played couple of nights), but if game is balanced (ranger has advantage in range, melee in close up) this kind of hybrids are supposed to be subpar.

but seems like it’s working for some. what can i say, good for you.

The very first rotation doesn’t have to involve in teleporting to your target. It is only a choice if you like and if the situation allows you to. For example instead of the fire rotation i stated, from range you can cast fire 4 just to have the fire field up then use utility blast and phoenix to gain the finisher effects as a starting combo, follow with air or earth attunement, all while keeping yourself at range.

gesho.9468:

Adastra.9821:

Why can’t it be that you have both melee and ranged advantages?

it can sure be, in fact it would be great. may be it is.

but then there are seven other profs in the game and they need their gameplay too. if melee caught up with ranged – melee is supposed to win. if ranged managed to stay away from melee – ranged is supposed to win.

single class can’t have advantage in both scenarios. balancing, right?

That’s one of the beauty of s/d, you get the option to specialize on both melee and range. Sort of like a boxing match, you get to go in and out to do damage. The idea behind if melee caught up with ranged, melee wins and vice-versa is a traditional mmo playstyle, it doesn’t apply in gw2. In gw2 all the melee classes can easily catch up to ranged classes and still lose while in melee.