Guild Wars 2

Would be cool if Lightning Flash increased its range to 1200 when swapping to staff.

Occam.9841:

Malcastus.6240:

…
ANYTHING like that would be overpowered. Look at it from a PvP perspective. If you honestly think that it isn’t overpowered, you don’t know the profession and its capabilities at all.
…
… DPS (I don’t have to explain that casting Meteor Storm in an area, then start Churning Earth and flash in the midst of a group of enemies, Earthquake, also having Ring of Earth to slow their escape, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Firegrab, then swapping back to staff for a Static Field, Eruption and whatever one can mix together, will result in the ele being able to handle any situation from afar and up front, having twice the potential as before).

I’ll just quote a tiny part of your ridiculously long unreadable post because it so well illustrates what the people against weapon-swapping are getting wrong (as well as how you know the profession and its capabilities but don’t understand them at all).

You start with Meteor Storm, ok, that casts slow, you can’t move while casting and it puts a big red ring that tells enemies how far they have to walk to avoid damage but you probably did hurt the one who was afk.

“Churning Earth and flash in the midst of a group of enemies…”
Well you made you enemies move apart with your Meteor Storm but maybe 2 moved in the same direction, ok so you hit them with that and the rest of your d/d string.

“… then swapping back to staff for …”
Weren’t you paying attention, pretty much all the people in favor of weapon swap have been suggesting timers that would prevent you from going back to your first weapon so quickly.

“…Static Field, Eruption and whatever one can mix together…”
Static Field gives a 2 second stun, Eruption is a 1.75 second cast, not sure what else you think you can “mix together” in that remaining 1/4 but you better make it fast because your enemy is about to counter-stun you and rip your face off.

Also, that string you theory-crafted,
“…Ring of Earth to slow their escape, Burning Speed, Ring of Fire, Firegrab, then swapping back to staff for a Static Field, Eruption,,,”
You go from Earth to Fire to Air and back to Earth in 3.75 seconds…care to share your secret for how you shorten your attunement timer so much…is it a hack…or are you just spouting off on the forum without understanding what you are talking about?

You are a very angry person that loves taking things out of context it seems. Chill out and behave, please. Your attitude was hostile from your first post, and is about to escalate. I edited the first post to ease the reading for your eyes.

It was just a random scenario. Imagine being at a lord at Legacy of the Foefire. Many people protecting. The scenario would cause trouble there for sure (and complaining about elementalists afterwards no doubt).

And yes, I didn’t count in a 30+ sec weapon swap CD, or whatever people threw on the table of suggestions. Just highlighting the troubles of a normal swap, but I suppose everyone would see that as being too overwhelming.

You wrote: “You go from Earth to Fire to Air and back to Earth in 3.75 seconds..”

What? I never put a time on it, but you did apparently. You also cited me wrong. Fire with staff, then earth and fire with D/D, then air and earth with staff again. If there was a normal weapon swap CD on it, you could chain those (still in the lord scenario), then add time for dodges, heal and utility skills you activate meanwhile. Just a random silly string I made up on the spot. Not taking into account a 30+ sec weapon swap CD, as mentioned earlier.

While having a 30+ CD would help, it still would prove a hard thing to manage for Anet. They haven’t even come close to balancing/fixing current traits and skills for the different professions. I really can’t see this being implemented in the near future.

I can understand the frustration with not being able to do anything against long range attackers from a vantage point, if having D/D equipped for instance. However, we’ll likely have to get accustomed to swapping weapons out of combat manually for now.

The name of the thread should say.. “Elementalists too hard to kill as a bunker?”.

Hard to kill in bunker mode? Yes.
The profession overpowered? No.
Other classes hard to kill in bunker mode? Yes.
Easy to survive an encounter with a bunker built elementalist? Yes.

As with all bunkers, if they are too hard to kill, move on, or summon your team.

Chipster.6713:

SecondtoNone.7549:

What do you guys think? Heals? Boons? DPS? CC? Mobility? Escapes? What combos would be OP?

It’s not a matter of what is OP and what is not. The point is to make a character that suits your style. I know that there are a lot of great options, but you can’t have them all. That’s the whole point. You need to make a choice of which things you want the most. If elementalists had all skills available for swapping all the time, then warriors would need to have all of their abilities too. Then it would be like WoW where everyone can do the same thing and trust me, we don’t want that.

What this person said. Eles are already diverse. Can’t have all the goodies. If you run with a big group, grab a staff and stay behind, if running alone, pick a more close range roamer set of weapons. I pop out the staff before I have to smash trebuchets often, or stand on the top of the building in Battle of Khylo, then switch back when AoE from afar isn’t necessary anymore. While you need to be out of combat, it isn’t that big of a deal.

Occam.9841:

Malcastus.6240:

It would be insanely overpowered to have mid combat weapon swaps. Imagine having 40 CD skills handy. You would be invincible in bunker spec for sure. Endless healing.

You didn’t put any thought into that, you didn’t address any of the points the OP made, and you evince no understanding, why did you bother posting?

ANYTHING like that would be overpowered. Look at it from a PvP perspective. If you honestly think that it isn’t overpowered, you don’t know the profession and its capabilities at all.

Alright, I said bunker (healing/toughness/condition fx) before. You will be able to use four healing skills, instead of two. You can do a D/F, S/D combo and have loads of CC (count them. There are plenty), 4 secs invulnerability, even more condition removal (which already isn’t a problem if you spec for it), far easier access to applying conditions etc.

Now with a more bursty spec, and condition removal, you can put a LOT of damage on your opponent with all all the skills handy. Again, 4 sec invulnerability, ability to deflect arrows, pin people to the ground for 2 secs (in which time you can toss a DT and Phoenix on your opponent). The amount of diversity and skills would allow you to heal all the time (then imagine having a 20 sec CD main heal ability on top), being able to apply tremendous amounts of slow, other disablers, AoE and single person damage, protective skills, condition removal and condition damage that it wouldn’t even be funny anymore. I only touched upon a S/D, D/F combo.

Sure, eles would be amazing, but everyone else would be left behind, which would result in whining and even more nerfing/buffing/balancing all across the board, taking even LONGER to manage. What a headache it would give Anet and the players.

Instead Anet needs to fix the already existing skills and traits, to make more ele builds viable, which they are working on to my knowledge. While we have to live with frustrating long animations of skills, low damage etc., it would be best to address them so Anet can evaluate said things and improve what needs to be improved. All we can do is to be patient really. The game is still fairly new and lots of things needs to be fixed/addressed.

Edit: So, you folks want different things, CD’s on swapping (longer than a warrior fx) and skills. I missed that part earlier. However, imagine the enormous task of balancing it. Other classes would want the same, and Anet hasn’t even fixed the current issues yet.

Lightning Whip: It has its issues in SPvP. In Khylo fx, it can’t break windows, unless you are lucky, but will miss 90% of the time approximately. It also constantly missed the trebuchet yesterday, and I tried using it from different angles. While the next thing is redundant to combat, I feel like mentioning anyway. It also very often misses boxes you are able to destroy on the map, where other skills work every time. Again, a 90% miss chance approximately.

Seems a bit subjective to me, tbh.

It would be insanely overpowered to have mid combat weapon swaps. Imagine having 40 CD skills handy. You would be invincible in bunker spec for sure. Endless healing.

Yeah, the only problem is bunker elementalists. While they survive for a long time, they do pitiful damage. You -can- spec for healing, toughness and condition damage, but there aren’t many spells that deal with conditions of the damaging sort. I would say a S/F bunker is worse than D/D, because you more easily apply conditions and heal for more.

Arcane Power doesn’t work in the Mists. I tested it on the dummies/robots, and never got any crit when activating it. Not sure whether it works other places. Will test it.

One shotting as an elementalist is impossible on a warrior with 23k health, sir.

You have no instant heals with staff that you can cast on the run, which also is effective, and your attacks are often very slow. I would say it is the least viable weapon to use in SPvP, because of that. You can go bunker, and bore yourself to death by making most of your offensive spells worthless, sure. You are just too easy to pick apart, compared to alternatives, whether in group or not (not if going heal/condition of course).

SecondtoNone.7549:

Malcastus.6240:

OP, you think they will nerf staff auto attacks?

That is hilarious. The auto attacks of the staff is far worse than scepter auto attacks. It needs buffing, you mean.

I was being sarcastic.

Hard to spot sarcasm in written form.

OP, you think they will nerf staff auto attacks?

That is hilarious. The auto attacks of the staff is far worse than scepter auto attacks. It needs buffing, you mean.

Not worth it, IMO. You can easily become more glassy, but the cannon part is hard to achieve. Lets say you use both offensive arcane skills, then you might take down people in a combo.

The thing is, elementalists can’t pull off the glass cannon very well, due to low damage on many spells, long CDs, and only damage potential if you can pull off quite a long combo. And the combos elementalists use are easy to counter. If countered, you are dead. Sadly we don’t have invisibility as so many other professions have. Unless something radical changes, it isn’t worth it.

I’m having it as well. I notice it at Jormag every time. Just now at Shatterer also. Not experienced this bug in WvW.

Karl McLain.5604:

We’ll be adding a bit more functionality to this trait in the near future for the earth portion of the ability (this time, associated with the skill’s cooldown), to keep it in line with our general policy of not having a blast finisher in the same weapon set you have a combo field.
Additionally, we’re looking at traits across the board, for all professions, and will be doing some improvements in that aspect as well. We hope to be able to get some of these in for our next balance patch and open up more build possibilities!
-Karl

That sounds really incredible. Having more options when it comes to builds in PvP and PvE would be soooo welcome.

Well, seeing as OP is likely judging traits from a PvP perspective, many of the concerns really isn’t that clear cut.

Huzzah for the devs. Nice to see them respond to matters, even though many a glass of whine from the ele forum, must be revolting.

Pleasant change. Kudos!

Instead of complaining about Evasive Arcana only, why not just tell Anet to make many other skills and traits viable, so people don’t feel the need to go 30 arcane? Even if Anet reverts this skill to previous state, it doesn’t change a thing about the ele. Only very few ultra defensive builds will keep you alive for long, which people will think is the only way to play an ele (silly way of thinking imo).

There are MANY builds that people are trying out. The fact that the OP didn’t tell where it happened (SPvP or WvW), makes it nigh impossible to tell. The builds people label as the “best”, I don’t see often in SPvP. I am fairly certain it was a D/D build also, however. The fun part is that you are absolutely certain about it was the specific build you posted, plus minus minor variations.

It is kind of like fortune tellers. Predicting what is most common and likely to happen. I have seen several other builds doing the same effect.

Stin, next time you should ask the player you fight. If you approach in a friendly manner, I’m sure you will get your answers.

I don’t see D/D as being OP. Are there complaints about the eles condition removal now? Seeing as how Anet went more for the healing side of it (traitwise), and toned down the damage on eles (far too much imo), I don’t see what the fuzz is about. Bunker builds are lame, and more boring than an episode of Alf in black and white, without sound. Who waaaants to liiiiive foreveeeeeer?

If they are to nerf the bunkerish aspect of things, I would hope they do something about Cleansing Wave on Evasive Arcane, which seems to be the thing that takes things a tad too far. Change it to an AoE vulnerability thing perhaps, with damage on top, or just a lesser heal.

Of course they would need to beef up damage on quite a few skills as well to balance it out, making more build viable. As it stands, you need to go for condition removal builds, in order to survive an encounter, due to the lack of damage they can perform. Eles are dependant on condition removal, as they otherwise will be utterly broken.

Klassic.8057:

who is daphoenix? never seen him in tpvp :|

Some guy that runs around in WvW, who has a survival/healing/mobility build. He never really get any kills (far in between), but is staying a live a lot, even though it means fleeing, then coming back to slowly pick at opponents hp.

Caffynated.5713:

Most likely D/D

0 10 I 10 V 30 III IX XI 20 V VI

If he was doing good damage, he probably had a berserker amulet (assuming sPvP) or Power Toughness Vitality armor with berserker accessories in WvW.

If he was doing mediocre damage, he probably used a soldier amulet, or PVT armor with Sapphire or Emerald accessories in WvW.

This build and ones generally close to it are the current standard build for eles outside of pure glass or pure bunker spec. Your auras, in addition to their own very strong effects, proc fury, swiftness and protection.

I think it’s funny you assume it is exactly that build.
There can be a many other builds doing the same kind of damage + having protection ready, and not being the build (you probably are using) you posted.

Grevender.9235:

Malcastus.6240:

@Fuzzion
Water doesn’t boost your overall damage.

wad? “Vital Striking”, “Piercing Shards”, “Bountiful Power” to name some…. to me they all look like GREAT boosts to overall damage and compared to fire traits have the advantage of giving you self sustaining abilities.

I meant the overall trait sections. Points in fire = higher power, longer condition duration. Points in air = higher crit chance and damage. Points in water = healing and vitality… Sure, you can aim for Vital Striking with 10 points spent (while going deep into fire and air) and it would benefit you neatly, but if you suddenly aim for 25 points in water for Bountiful Power, you are missing out on the damage that fire and air provides. It is also dependant on the boons of others. Piercing Shards will give you a bonus against vulnerable targets, and only if casting in water attunement. The only real damage spell there is, is Ice Spike, which miiight hit (very easy to dodge). You just can’t rely on your enemies not having someone to purge conditions (or have no condition removal themselves), thereby rendering it nigh useless.

Survival is good, but OP wanted a glass cannon build that relies on dishing out damage from a relative safe place. Going deep into water traits just doesn’t come close to specializing in damage, using the fire and air traits. 10 points for Vital Striking would work though.

@Fuzzion
Water doesn’t boost your overall damage. Fire and air does. 0/25/0/30/15 would not be considered glass cannon, as it is mostly defensive in terms of traits.

A glass cannon build aims for high base and burst damage (in GW2) thereby sacrificing defense.

@OP
I would recommend 20 fire/30 air/20 arcane (for Blasting Staff). Critical damage, crit and power gear.

The burst was far from crazy. Rather low actually, except the occasional Churning Earth.

Scepter and focus is an odd combo. Nothing like D/F which is quite neat for SPvP. The scepter has some strange skills that range from incredibly slowly cast fire and earth (auto attack) skills, to quick air and water skills. S/F is an odd combo that doesn’t mix well, imho. I get the feeling that the focus was made with the dagger mainhand in mind.

Regarding S/F. You might want to focus on the burst skills, but switching to earth sort of feels depressing, as you have an auto attack that causes low burst damage only (and nr.2, but really not worth much). Focusing on condition damage leaves the air and water attunements left out and completely worthless damage-wise.

Personally I just can’t live with playing something that renders about 50% or more of the offensive skills useless.

If you build your character around Evasive Arcane and feel that you can’t do without it, you’ve done something wrong. Really, it sounds ridiculous when someone complaints that they can’t do anything without it rolls eyes until they bleed.

Use Arcane Wave if you want a blast finisher?

Albane.8367:

Not often enough to want it switched back. Our downed went from being the worst to one of the best, let’s keep it that way.

In SPvP more like the fourth or fifth best. Better than before, sure. The CD on Grasping Earth is sadly a wee bit long and it appears to not immobilize when first applied, but one or two seconds into the effect, which only makes it really useful when not being tageted.

How I wish that Grasping Earth swapped place with Unsteady Ground or Dust Devil,

For SPvP:
D/F 0/30/0/20/20 with Arcane Blast/Wave which you use in water attunement (+20% damage with Piercing Shards trait for extra damage). Very fun build.

I tried S/F briefly with the Grounded trait (20% damage on knocked down or stunned people), Piercing Shards (20% damage in water attunement with vulnerability up) and Bolt to the Heart (+20% damage to people below 25% health, trying to gain +60% damage on Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast and Dragon’s Tooth). It is a kinda hard to pull off, and not really worth it, but it feels nice when a +60% damage Dragon’s Tooth + arcane spells hit your target.

Normally I would use D/D 10/20/0/30/10 for an universal elementalist with runes of divinity and celestial amulet. Sigil of superior battle and superior accuracy. Using glyphs and three cantrips. Cantrips grant you x3 might, as does attunement swapping, so it helps out with power and condition, which makes all your spells viable and worth casting.

Imagine how hard it will hit D/F specs if they remove the healing bit from Evasive Arcana, as they only have Cone of Cold for healing (besides the healing utility of course). But then again, noone cares for D/F it seems.

Ugh, another one of those water/arcane builds. At least you tried to get a tiny bit of crit damage.

D/F rocks with Arcane Wave and Arcane Blast which makes up for your lack of offensive skills. Very good for killing rogues for instance. The downside to the build is the lack of additional healing spells, only having Cone of Cold. 30 air/20 water/20 arcane and you are golden!

Scepter has some VERY slow casting abilities and auto attacks except the water and air auto.. I will write more later for unknown reasons.

The bunker builds (booooring) will be nerfed, which then will make builds that isn’t about pure defense and healing even worse? What are they changing, do you know?

I just wish they would communicate with us..

Huh, I find that the worst attunement traits to be in fire, almost never specing into it. Sure, both fire and air has an immense percentage of traits that are barely useful like (Grounded) gaining 20% damage boost when opponents are knocked down or stunned, which are outshined by a few of the other traits that always come in handy, like reducing CD by 20% on attunement or utility skills. Fire and air lack a variety of useful skills.

I tend to go 20-30 air to gain crit damage/chance and reduce CD on air skills as they are good for mobility and a useful attunement to swap into, I only switch between Zephyr’s Boon, Quick Glyphs, Bolt to the Heart, Aeromancer’s Alacrity and Tempest’s Defense (T.D. not much, as you can often get stunned etc. from a range, and it will trigger without being of any real use to you. Why does it have to trigger on knockback anyway?).

In fire.. well, since I stopped putting traits into it, because rampager’s necklace/jewel and might boons can do the trick, I ditch it entirely now (except on a cantrip build), not looking back. The trait used being Spell Slinger. Fire’s Embrace and Pyromancer’s Alactrity being fine traits as well.

I hope Anet will look into the traits, auto cast spells (some are fine btw), the time to hit opponents with certain skills (like Dragon’s Tooth, Churning Earth and Ice Spike), cast time, CDs of some of the skills and the bugs, like the notorius RTL. If they just would tell us whether or not they are looking into the matter, or things aren’t going to change, it would be very comforting. But I digress. Hopefully I didn’t stray too much.

Aurum.9534:

Sorry but both those links keep coming up as bad links

You have to copy the link and paste it in the browser. The particular site always appears as a bad link, not sure why this forum doesn’t display it properly.

A bit of tanky and a lot of damage you said. None of the water/arcane/earth builds with no real investment in air and crit damage gear will do any life-threatning damage sadly. Not against opponents with a condition removal and skill anyway.

This build works neatly, if you want burst with survivability.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImmbwR5gjDAkHn4CLiHPURDlCzA;ToAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1MEZKC

You can try an all around build that performs rather good in every attunement. That way you can really make use of every skill and they will feel worth casting (unless it is a crummy skill to begin with of course). I really like this, because you have decent condition damage, burst, healing, boons, mobility and survivability. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhImibwR5gjFAEFn4SogCjChIU8QFlCzA;ToAAyCsoqxUjoGbNuak1MIYSA

I hope they won’t wait five years to fix them.. sighs

The conjure weapons are tricky. Unless you spec for burst damage, they won’t do you any good damagewise, as in VERY low damage and NO defenses except your utility skills. The greatsword is the only viable damage source really, and that is with high burst spec. You need to burst hard and fast to survive basically. Kill or be killed, since you have no real defenses.

Currently they are a weak choice, I’m afraid. The frost bow has a few fun skills though (auto attack is ridiculous. What a waste of charges).

The elite ideas are all neat ideas admittedly, but lack that certain something to make them worth the CD.

The elementals are dull in damage and abilities. You need to be right next to it when it casts its spells, which likely won’t happen in PvP, as it doesn’t follow you and its pattern of moving likely will differ from yours. The earth elemental is alright in PvE, but does die rather quickly.

The tornado is fun, but I experienced it bugging for me, as in I was stunned somehow at times. You become a huge slow target and will die quickly in PvP unless you dodge roll and send people flying. Basically you just throw them around, unless they run out of your range (which is really easy after the first throw). With a constant protection spell active when using it, I could see it being a better option. Stabbing a tornado is silly in the end. The damage output of the lightning attack is based on your traits, so with maxed crit damage you can do around 2000 crits in SPvP which is ok (yet you will be a really squishy and very dead tornado). I really wish it had more options than the three. Perhaps adding a fourth and fifth skill, as it only has three currently. One could be to increase the movement speed for x seconds, the other to increase rotation speed and reflect attacks for x seconds.

The sword is sort of neat, but to get enough damage to make it worth it you have to spec glass cannon. Suffice to say you will are without any defenses and have to kill quickly, which is easier said than done.

I would pick a regular utility skill over the elite anyday, sadly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob Yeah, I am going by the general meaning of the word, and was therefore confused what people meant. One mob (one being) sounds very wrong to me. It was wrong, until the gaming community probably overruled it. Just speculation the last part, but it seems logical. Antwayyyyy… sorry for distracting from the subject.

Yeah, I was just thinking of the normal use of mob. That games has turned it into something inrecognizable is just annoying. Better to say “one monster/whatever” and “one mob” though. It will be clear and people will have more understanding of the actual language beyond the gaming world. I am not trying to be a dick or such, but I just fear that the internet language is quite silly at times.

Strang.8170:

suroktheslayer.9346:

Yes you can plod along and kill mobs one by one faster on a warrior but as an elementalist you can gather up 5 or more and aoe all of them down at the same time. Personnely I prefer the ele method.

This.

Come on people, it´s not that hard.

A mob is a group of monsters/people/etc.. I don’t think I ever saw five mobs close to each other in GW2. Maybe people are mistaken the word mob for a single being, and mobs for a group. Just saying, since I have seen this other places as well.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Your link doens work properly Malcastus. I’m quite interested in it.

Yeah, the links to that site via this forum seems a bit buggy. If you copy and paste the link in the browser, you will get there though.

A mix of burst and condition damage would be in order I think. If you only focus on condition, you will feel annoyed at the lack of skills for it. 30 earth/30 water/10 arcane with D/D is fun enough though. The burst damage is non existant, but you can survive for a long time and won’t lose in 1 vs. 1, but might not win either, since noone wants to dance around forever and will eventually just find other prey.

From 45 to 15 seems like too huge a jump. 20 or 25 seconds would be neat.

Make the fire attunement trait points more interesting? People aim for Fire’s Embrace, and that is about it. The options throughout the tree are rather weak and certainly not worth it, considering very few dare go that deep into fire, as you lose an incredible amount of defense. Fire helps out weapon users it says on the homepage. Summoned weapons are a death trap though, and rather weak in many aspects, so noone uses the fire tree to add a meager 10 charges. The skill point should add 10-15% damage instead, but that would not help the weapons in general anyway.

Got other wishes, but I posted them elsewhere. ^^