Guild Wars 2

I wouldn’t say Fresh Air it is restricted to scepter builds, but works best with scepter, alright with dagger, and is sort of redundant with staff.

EA and staff is still the way to go, imho.

Yeah, pretty much the builds I first put into use. 0/30/10/20/10 and 0/30/0/20/20. Valkyrie w. berserker jewel, divinity runes etc.

Let’s see how well the S/D aeromancer works once the meta settles..

I would not recommend using all the utilities OP picked, as you will find yourself in trouble against condition builds, and we know there are more nasty conditions on the market after the patch. Adding Cleansing Fire Instead of Signet of Air feels like a must.
And instead of Signet of Restoration, I would recommend any other heal, as it only really shines with cleric’s gear and D/D. Yes, there are some slow channeled skills when using S/D, not producing much healing. I prefer G.o.e.H if I have access to enough condition cleanses, if not, then Ether Renewal.

Speaking of the traits, I wouldn’t use Vital Striking, unless you are using staff in WvW. Your range isn’t sufficient enough, to benefit much from it. You can basically lose the benefits in one hit. There are plenty of traits to pick that benefits you more. Aquamancer’s Alacrity, Soothing Disruption (if you primarily use Cantrips) for much needed vigor and regen (and since LF and CF is on a lower CD, you benefit even more from it) etc.

Regarding the CD on Fresh Air, I think it kicks in the way EA does. The CD doesn’t apply if you change to new attunements for the first time, once you enter combat. You can dodge and achieve the EA effects of all attunements within ten seconds, if you have Sigil of Energy and vigor running.

0/30/10/20/10 and 0/30/0/20/20 works very nicely for a burst build.

Can’t either. Error code 42:6:3:2242

Focus needs love indeed. I would primarily want to see Flamewall getting a complete overhaul, as it does nothing, but look pretty and be a secondary fire field. Also, Freezing Gust is bad. It could use a grand damage buff, and Comet could use a damage boost as well.

It strikes me as odd that there are no high damage skills, like Fire Grab, Pheonix, DT, etc. in the arsenal. Clearly you could alter Flamewall and Freezing Gust into something to boost the usefulness of focus.

I agree with OP, they need to swap Attunement Recharge Rate for something else. I wouldn’t mind seeing condition AND boon duration being in Arcana, and fire getting something new that could make the traitline more interesting (also making the traits worthwhile would help).

Perhaps fire could allow conjure weapon utilities to become more useful. Again, the weapons themselves could use a wee bit of attention first, as to make it appealing in the end. Just a random thought..

Yeah, rather predictable that 0/30/0/20/20, 0/30/0/10/30 and 0/30/0/30/10 will be tested and used..

I would love seeing a trait in fire that involves arcane utilities, like adding a stunbreak to Arcane Shield, added damage, or some helpful thing.

Once they fix Flamewall to something useful, I will love them, haha.

Lets wait and see what Anet dishes up with. A bit too soon to trust these leaks… although it is tempting to imagine these changes.

I doubt they will do much with the fire tree. It needs synergy with glyphs, signets etc.

LordByron.8369:

so no damage buff…..

Did you read the leaked notes? There are damage buffs, as in reduced cast times, several damage increasing traits etc.

If these are true is another story.. Personally I only believe the official statements so far.

If the leaks are true:

If they will indeed move stunbreaks to Glyph of Elemental Power and Signet of Air, I see little difference in usage of utility skills. G.o.E.P. is a buff you would do well casting before each fight, not waiting to use it until stunned. Adding a stunbreak is counter-productive as long as it is an offensive buff. If it gave defensive boons (fire=might, air=swiftness, earth=protection and water=regeneration) depending on attunement, it would work and be used.

Signet of air is fine, but it won’t draw many people towards signets I think, as they have no interesting, really useful actives and basically no condition removal. Signet of Water passive isn’t worth the use, and its active should be to remove several conditions at once, not chill someone for a brief time. In the end, people will have to rely heavily on water traits, EA, Cleansing Fire and the likes and head back into bunker. Signet and Glyph builds certainly won’t be viable in PvP yet.

When it comes to GC, it looks promising. More damage sources here and there and air attunement resets for disengages/stuns, which will be needed. However, the fire tree won’t see much usage in PvP, as air has all the good traits.

If you can reset the air tree every five seconds on criticals, there will be many people staying in air for all the control and movement spells I imagine. While I love the idea, I see it potentially causing an uproar in the community. Imagine you have access to Lightning Touch (weaken), Shocking Aura, RTL (for attacks or quick disengages) and Updraft every five seconds, and you are fighting a melee opponent. At least you can’t access Tempest Defense and Fresh Air, for added 40% damage on stunned and downed opponents.

Lava Tomb I see come into play more, even though people can easily stomp you from outside the field (sadly), therefore making it slightly redundant in the end. Added damage to downstate is fine though, as GC will be lying on the ground often. Now if the AoE was increased as with Blasting Staff, things would be different.

I am hyped, but afraid to believe these will be the changes, while they do seem like they could come from Anet. While Lightning Flash might lose the breaker, it will work well in combination with delivering offensive skills to the face of an opponent.

Burning Speed (delivered with Lightning Flash) + Arcane Wave & Blast + Fire Grab. Omnomnom..

If these are indeed the changes, I am loving Anet for opening up new potential builds. I definitely see them wanting us to have an offensive alternative, and perhaps even condition.

The grandmaster air trait will likely kick in at 50% health, or some such mechanic, I wager.

It will be interesting to see how well the weakness change will aid staff in PvP, as earth auto attack has it. Glyph of Elemental Power might become more useful in fights as well, unless they lower the duration of it. Hopefully they don’t. Rather, changing the utilily to something defensive would be nice.

I assume they will remove the stunbreak of one, tops two of the four cantrips.

The best contender for stunbreak removal is Cleansing Fire, as it removes three conditions, breaks stun and burns foes on a decent CD. Perhaps they will fiddle with CD’s on the cantrips they change, so it will even out the loss a bit.

I am more interested in where the other stunbreaks are moved to.

Signets? Hmm, they all have offensive active abilities (probably why noone uses them much), so using it to get rid of stuns would be bad, unless changed.

Glyphs? Glyph of Elemental Power/Lesser Elementals perhaps?

Yeah, hopefully they will make up for all the builds they ruined in the process of nerfing bunker builds. Reducing condition cleansing, healing, mobility etc. was a bad move, in terms of granting us more options, for sure.

Yeah, unless they add several heavy condition cleanses, evades, defenses etc. to fire and air traits, there won’t be any real changes I think.

Another problem is that air has glyphs.. The traits that grant bonuses to them are almost redundant, because you would never use many glyphs, because their uses are limited. No stunbreak, protective/evasive means, or condition removal, and the CD is rather high.

If glyphs of elemental power and glyph of storms got a complete overhaul, and added traits in fire and air to create synnergy between them, things might look better. But hey, getting two utility skills redone like that isn’t going to happen the next couple of years, if ever.

Lets just wait a see what they come up with. A good way to not be overly disappointed is to lower your expectations to bare minimum. The only way elementalists have been shocked by updates so far, is in a negative way.

The damage is barely there, and easy to avoid. The long CD makes it a no-go.

Now if they lowered the CD to 15-30 secs, and made it a single huge explosion with interesting side effects (not just the burning, blindness, bleed and chill) of whatever element you choose, with higher burst damage of course, it would be interesting.

Jack of all trades is not what eles are, or should be. It is easier to rebrand something, than to make balance changes. I, for one, am disappointed in the intended rebranding and want what was originally advertised. And hey, it is still being advertised..

Elementalist

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/

There is one build that works in PvP, and one build in WvW that is encouraged/forced on you (in guilds, to my knowledge/experience), and the two are identical, except minor trait differences.

It started out as fun, trying all new builds once a while, when people were green still. Now, as people have learned and mastered their professions, reality is that we only have one (with minor variations) build in PvP. They keep trying to tone it down, but have damaged build diversity in the process that whatever wiggleroom there was before, is gone. We are doomed to spec deep into water and arcane, using defensive gear, as options become less and less.

I still hope they beef the elementalist up greatly this month (they need it), making sure that bunkers don’t get any/much stronger in the process, but plenty of other builds will surface and work out…

OP said that elementalists aren’t overpowered ENOUGH. Meaning all he said was pure sarcasm, written in internet jargon.

ARM, he was trolling, perhaps even faintly whining for reasons unknown.

Close it please.

Haha. Alright. A shame the pet skill descriptions are so vague. Hopefully that will be addressed in some way. Not a biggy to fix text, eh?

Report the maker of the thread for flaming/trolling/whatever the official terms are, and let it be closed. No need to continue a post that is nonsensical.

Try using an air compressor and blow out all the dust there is in your PCs, see if that helps. I learned not to underestimate dust and how well it decreases performance. I went from insane/unplayable lag, to slight lag in heavily populated areas.

Thank you very much!

Ohayo!

I am fairly new to ranger and couldn’t find any in-depth info on the bear skill “Defy Pain”.

Does it affect YOU (the player), or the bear only? I find it hard to decipher, and it is hard to tell in combat situations.

List three things you think would make an offensive elementalist viable in PvP.

• 1. Make a grandmaster fire trait that changes fire fields into smoke fields. 3 sec invisibility for example. We have access to a smoke field underwater, so why not above. Exchanging might, aura and fire projectiles for invisibility and blindness.

• 2. Add an adept or master fire trait that allows you to increase the damage of arcane utility skills (Arcane Blast/Wave/Power/Shield) by 20%. Your offense has to be strong to compensate for the lack of defensive measures. You are sacrificing almost, if not all utility slots for needed damage output, and current damage isn’t much.

• 3. The above.

P.S. I don’t believe it would cause any balance issues in WvW or PvE, as commanders would fancy fire fields, and use mesmers or thieves for invisibility. In PvE, your team would demand might stacking over invisibility, and the added damage to arcane utilities wouldn’t tilt the balance, as elementalist skills have mediocre damage to begin with.

So, are they going to fix it you think? They usually don’t take this long.

Looks like the bugfix last patch was a bug creation. When will the signet of restoration be fixed?

People like using “perma” a tidbit too much, thinking vigor (in this case) can be applied permanently by most classes. Nay, I say!

Yes, but they announced that the CD is reduced. By how much, I have no idea. The problem is that they made a mistake, and it is 25 still, but not affected by Signet Mastery.

Before it would be 20 sec CD with Signet Mastery, now it is broken.

• Anet:
  Signet of Restoration:
  – This skill now has its cooldown reduced by the Signet Mastery in PvP.

I wonder if they are actually reducing the CD when I re-read it. Seems like they thought it was broken before, which it wasn’t.

Down to 1 second for a scepter attack? I think it should be changed completely. Much shorter cast time preferrably, without the burning effect but with much higher damage. Currently it isn’t worth casting.

As Zenith says, all scepter auto attacks (and I would add all earth skills) should be buffed/changed. It has an incredibly bad flow currently too.

Actually, the patch gave us a nerf. PvP signet users will have a +5 second CD on Signet of Restoration.

A nerf until they get to changing it into something positive, like they promised.

Dragon Ball is a terrible contender for a deathmatch map. I really hope they won’t use it for that later.

Dragon Ball is an ok fun mini game, but the map is too tiny and has little variety that it grows boring quickly. The same would happen if it was SPvP deathmatch I wager.

The map wouldn’t work for normal SPvP use anyway, because there is way too much jumping required, and you can’t do much in air to begin with. As soon as you turn it into a SPvP type game, it would fall apart completely.

Veldan.4637:

Dragon ball is easily the most fun PvP experience I had in GW2. Reasons:

1) no stealth / teleport
2) no 10000 minions/clones/pets/turrets
3) no downed state

Oh, how awesome GW2 would be if they implemented these points in normal PvP somehow…

1) There is stealth in the middle, which allows you to attack an opponent for quite a while without being seen.

Some professions need the extra vigor though, as part of their defense mechanism. Reduce it, and you need to give the professions that rely on it something in exchange, which would result in a lot of reworking. I wouldn’t talk what is in abundance and what not, as it is too huge a subject.

The answer:
Remove all damage sources in the game, THEN remove vigor as it won’t be necessary anymore, and we have a fine flower power game with no violence, just epic frolicking in the fields.

More often than not, you log in and get into a game where your team has 0 points, the opponents 150+. Since I don’t like starting a game, knowing it will end in a loss, I quit them and search for a fresh one, but none available.

It isn’t fun playing it anymore. Perhaps some fixes to improve queues?

The regen food thing is fixed btw..

I have seen one bug so far, which made a character regenerate quicker than you could damage the person. It was at the end of one of the tunnels. Very annoying.

The Signet of Restoration now has a fixed 25 sec CD unaffected by Signet Mastery. Shouldn’t the CD be reduced?

And why would this change only apply to PvP?

P.S. I made the bug notice here, because the bugs and glitches thread was denying me to post.

Btw, you can get air cans too. They are quickly depleted and don’t have much power. The bigger machines do the trick.

For what it’s worth, I would recommend cleaning your computer with an air compressor, if you can gain access to one. I have been thinking that my low FPS/stutter issues was the result of a patch (sorry Anet), but it was dust that had limited my hardware.

There was quite a lot of dust in it, but it works now as it did several months back. Air compressor and blow out all dust in every hole you find.

N.B. There is a risk that some air compressors can produce a small amount of water, so you have to be careful. Do it at your own risk. I went all out and it worked wonders. Good luck.

Mantra of Concentration doesn’t break stun always. The engineer stun net and the rangers Entangle skill are a problem.

It would be nice with a reworked staff. Currently you need 20 in Arcane for the Blasting Staff trait, which is mandatory and could easily be placed 20 in Fire (replacing One With Fire) with a 5% damage boost to staff skills on top.

Making staff less squishy/reliant on almost pure defensive traits (and offensive builds more viable), I still believe that Persisting Flames should be changed into a trait that allows you to produce smoke fields instead of fire fields.

• 1. Build diversity and balance - Meaning at least two viable options for each class (offensive/defensive/hybrid/x).
• 2. More game modes - Capture the flag-like stuff (for instance) like “Rampage Ritual”, where each group starts in opposite ends, and have to mobilize attacks on the enemies’s base, in order to steal 3x magic trinkets of power (or some ritualistic item) and bring them back to group base. You can only carry one at a time, and after one team scores, it resets shortly after. When gaining all three trinkets, it takes three players to perform a ritual (channeling uninterrupted for X seconds) at the base shrine to summon some greater being that secures instant victory. That would be a lot of fun, especially if one had to transport the trinkets quite a long way, not just Spirit Watch length, which feels too short and easy.
• 3. More (fancy) maps - I am thinking of maps with more ways to navigate through, often leading to small skirmishes rather than a highway zerg that has no real place in SPvP.

D/F is not going to replace D/D or any other combo until they change Flamewall and a few other skills. Even IF they changed the lackluster skills that drags it down, I don’t see it taking over. Hopefully they will make alterations so that it will be used more often.

RTL might be nerfed, but D/D has by far the best play flow, making it most satisfying to play.

S/D (or S/F) for instance has an awful flow, because you have a strange combo of slow ground target skills, instant cast skills, slow and quick auto attacks (switching between condition and burst focus) and a slow cast protective skill (Rock Barrier). Several of the skills not being worth casting in the heat of the moment, if under pressure (Shatterstone and Dust Devil). Not to mention the combination of S/F, which leaves you with barely any offensive attacks in earth attunement.

Sounds odd to blame devs for balancing around their own profession preferences.

As far as I know they like playing engineers. Probably because they are game engineers irl. Shrugs

Nice with the Lightning Whip change..

What is this thread about again?

Yeah, thanks for input Leo. I had it there originally because PvP and PvE are different in some ways.