I have never been one shot every in this game, in fact I am thinking that a one shot is not even possible in this game. I am 100% sure you got hit with a few skills and you just didn’t notice in time.
19k-25k hundred blades is not uncommon.
yes and dodging is not uncommon either
Explain to me how you get out of a 3-4 second immobilize(which cannot be cured or removed). Takes 2 button pushes for a warrior to kill you. He can do it at ANY TIME HE CHOOSES.
Further proof you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t spread ignorance.
Immobilize can be cured, it is a condition like anything else, you can also use a blink, there are also abilities which let you roll while immobilized, for example Burning Retreat for staff elementalist or the Lightning Reflexes utility on Rangers. If you can name a profession who cannot counter 100 blades then yes it is broken against that class, however this is simply NOT the case.
ok so im not actually slashing at anyone to get kills? just aoe stuff?
Yes as it is a condition build your main source of damage will be stacking bleeds on the enemy, if you are in a 1v1 fight sure you will have to use your auto attack some part of the time but the best thing to do right now is to stick with a build you like, it doesn’t necessarily have to be condition bleeds but i gave you this one since it has much higher survivability than the Backstab build with all the dodge rolls, Death Blossom evades and stealth.
If you want to get better stick with one build and learn what all of your traits can do, experiment around with utilities until you find something that works for you.
You can join a free tournament with 1 person, 3 people, or 5 people, it will match you up with other people on your team if your party is not full. The Free Tpvp is currently the only way to guarantee you are on the same team 100% of the time. Sure you might get crushed at first, but if you want to play with your friends it is the way to go.
If tournaments seem too intimidating at the time then you can always join in the browser games and switch teams when the round starts most of the time, auto balance can get annoying though.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmKPHdy9E95EB3Dnq0m6f4r9M4qVB;TsAgyCuo8xAjAG7MOfkzsWYEwMAA
You may need to copy/paste the link if it doesn’t work, this build relys on applying as many bleeds as possible to enemies using caltrops on a capture point, death blossom, or cluster bombs exploded in mid air. All of these apply bleeds in an aoe. When you are low on initiative you have several ways to go stealth to cure condtions or heal some hp or regen your initiative.
ok thanks, any suggestion on an alternative?
You could go a condition build with caltrops and plenty of stealth, I will make it for you hold on a minute.
yea i want a build that can kill well without me getting smashed for me to practice with basically, a good trade off. seems everyone uses these double dagger backstab builds?
That build is very squishy, sure you can go in a 1 shot someone, but if they have backup you will never be able to finish them and will usually get killed by random AOEs.
Focus Defense added to off hand dagger mobility, access to all auras at once, don’t you think that sounds a bit strong? There are many more combos such as mass AOE such as Ice Bow in Fire staff into Dragons Tooth Phoenix.
I think an even better question to ask would be, if players were playing a theoretically perfectly balanced, yet complex game, would they recognize that it was balanced or would there be just as many complaints about balance?
While my question is pretty much rhetorical, I would bet that there would still be a forum full of cries about balance, since the average players perspective on balance is based on what they experience which is influenced by their choice of class, their level of play and any biases they may have.
**I am not saying GW2 is a perfectly balanced game or anywhere close to it, but I think that many of the whine posts regarding balance on these forums are completely unjustified.
100% percent agree on this.
A 15% damage nerf would bring it more inline useful but less broken.
Nerfing Hundred blades won’t solve any problems.
Quickness would be the better one to nerf but Anet wont do that.
Not really, I have been in plenty situations where it is quite easy to negate an entire duration of quickness by using a lower cooldown utility and/or a dodge roll or CC. There are quite a number of counters to quickness.
Here we go, if a burst class cant set up a situation that a player can’t dodge roll they are the noobs. Attack from behind join in a blow up a player engaged in a fight game over.
Lets be real the noobs are the burst players that fail at doing their burst its easy its faceroll its broken.
1v1 is not the issue insta gib while fighting someone else is broken skilless gameplay.
Yes this situation can come up quite often in 8v8 where it is impossible to keep track of everybody however in 5v5 it is quite easy to know where the enemy burst classes are going and be able to save a dodge/stun break/CC to deal with them when they come. Nerfing burst builds will just make them useless and not viable in 5v5 tPvP.
A 15% damage nerf would bring it more inline useful but less broken.
Nerfing Hundred blades won’t solve any problems.
Quickness would be the better one to nerf but Anet wont do that.
Not really, I have been in plenty situations where it is quite easy to negate an entire duration of quickness by using a lower cooldown utility and/or a dodge roll or CC. There are quite a number of counters to quickness.
If you are killing people 1v4 in this game, then they are all probably brand new to sPvP. A friend I have who plays PvE almost exclusively since the game’s release tried PvP the other day and it was quite obvious he had no idea what he was doing.
thanks, ive been watching them. how can i see peoples builds? also any class advice? i was thinking necro but apparently they arent great?
Necros are fine, you can do well with ANY class if you are willing to spend the time to learn your own class AND all the other ones, don’t listen to people on the forums who say that certain classes are either completely broken and useless or overpowered and overused. Yes there are classes that perform certain roles better than others, but that is the case in any game.
A 15% damage nerf would bring it more inline useful but less broken.
Nerfing Hundred blades won’t solve any problems.
You do know there is an option to switch teams in SPvP right?
There’s no one-shots in the game, with the exception of Kill Shot and Backstab against really absolutely nakedly squishy targets.
100-blades hits X times. It’s not like it’s something that just falls from the sky and is unavoidable. It has a long cast time. Here’s a solution: Walk away. Dodge. You know it’s coming. You have NO excuses to not do anything about this one-trick pony build.
If you decide to eat the whole thing, then sure as hell you deserve to die.
The “LOL NOOB JUST DON’T GET HIT” argument is getting old. The point is, giving one ability the capability of taking your life from full to zero isn’t balanced. This “one trick pony” apparently doesn’t work on good players… only bad players right? So why have it in the game? To frustrate bad players and discourage them from playing pvp?
Obviously because it doesn’t work on good players am I right?And 100b isn’t the only offender. I am looking at you too Thieves.
It does work on good players if the warrior is also a good player. Not in the way of 100% life to 0% in one Bulls Rush/Frenzy/100B combo but Glass Cannon warriors still put out very high damage and take very high damage as well.
Once you have been hit by 100 blades “X” (this could depend on a wide variety of things) number of times you will realize that you have developed better awareness of it and will get hit with it much less often, same goes for other gimmicky glass cannon burst builds such as Backstab thieves. You will reach this point only if you actually feel like spending some time getting better at learning the game just like everyone else.
People here must not have come across any good GS damage warriors, they can be the scariest thing to face if they play well, the key to knowing if they are good or not is seeing if they blow frenzy right away or work down your endurance and utilities before unleashing the burst, its quite an adrenaline rush.
It is not a glitch, they made it so you could customize what your armour looks like in the PvP matches so it will match the color you have in the mists, all enemy colors will be the proper color of their team however. If you don’t like this system they have stated before that they will be implementing an option to change it in the upcoming patch.
Agreed, watching you guys stomp noobs in frees all day gets boring, unfortunately I play on the EU servers so I cannot contribute to the NA paid tournament queue.
I don’t really like it that much, besides putting 30 points in arcane increases the duration of ALL boons by 30% not just might, so I like going that route most often because I can stack 25 might with combo field fire and blast finishers as well as the Sigil of Battle.
okay, i was in spvp… i was holding an area solo, and from basicly across 2000+ range a solo elementalist rushed me. i believe it was the burning speed ability, because i have a friend who plays ele and it looked exactly the same, but my friends didnt cover ANYWARE NEER the sheer range and speed that this guy’s did. he was on me in less then a second from a massive distance, and when he hit me, i was at half hp (23k max hp) and i was knocked down. i used shake it off, i’m a warrior but by the time i got up, i was dead. he killed me(a warrior) in 1-2 seconds from 23k hp.
ive never encountered this before or since, and i’d really like to try it, and my friend does too. can anyone explain how this is even possible? its probly a fairly new build, and hasnt gone public yet….. but kitten.
ive faught ALOT of elementalists, but NONE have come close to what this one guy did.lets recap…. his rush had incredible range over 2000+ i definetly wasnt expecting him to close that gap so quickly thats for sure. and he had some kind of cc/knockdown.
and his burst dmg was so massive i was dead within 2-3 seconds flat, with no time to react or regain any ground/heal.i have yet to see anyone else use what he did, i’m counting on you experanced ele’s to figure it out, and make this build public so we can all use it
i’m sorry i dont have more details, i was so incredibly supprized by it, my mind basicly went blank before i could gather any info. i didnt even get his name
It is basically a glass cannon burst build, someone posted a video on the forums. Basically if the ele used Ride the Lightning, which is a long range gap closing ability followed by Lightning Flash, a 900 range teleport chained with Earthquake, a 2 second knockdown, followed by Fire Grab and Arcane Wave it does quite a lot of damage, but if they miss they are more kittened than a warrior who misses a Frenzy combo, since they have used all 3 utilities to pull it off and are made of paper.
A well specced necro can spam all their marks and wells on a point and kill an entire team if they simply stand there and choose to eat the damage, how is this not broken? A glass cannon staff Ele can do the same, how is this not broken? The list goes on, you just need to learn how to counter it instead of complaining.
If scepter did the same damage it did in the beta right now, it would be OP as kitten. This guy in the video had no idea how to do good Ele damage combos that are common knowledge today, so it doesn’t really show how strong it would be.
You forget that the downed Mist Form heals them to almost full, too. It’s probably the most perfect downed ability in the game. It sets up the Elementalist to be easily revived by a teammate. If there’s water nearby, they could even Mist Form into the water and then continue running that way.
No matter how fast you try to stomp a downed Ele, even with a Quickness stomp, they will always have Mist Form available first to interrupt you.
Also, the Ele in a downed state beats everyone else when they’re in a downed state themselves (except Warrior).
Don’t forget ranger, 100% impossible to out DPS pet heal, even after 3-4 vapor form cooldowns they will eventually win, just experienced this the other, also pointless to try and kill the pet, since they can just swap it while downed.
Started on Mesmer in the beta, switched to ele, played 1000 games on ele, cannot get enough of it!!
Nope, I got the Codec and it still is sending me into 11 FPS when recording.
Are you recording and playing to the same hard drive? I know that this can often cause frame problems for me.
What settings do you use on Dxtory?
I’m having trouble with it – I go from 60 Fps not recording to 10 Fps while recording with it however with Fraps I hardly get an FPS drop. =/
I record at 1920×1080 in Lagarith Lossless Codec at 29.97 fps, not sure why you don’t have a problem with Fraps but lag on Dxtory.
how about player gets a tick of bleeding only if he moves on the caltrops? i dont understand why it keeps on ticking even when youre standing still. conceptually, it makes no freaking sense, and it’s outright broken.
It isn’t broken, you would probably get owned faster if you stood still, regardless of caltrop damage, so this wouldn’t change much.
So Caltrops don’t have a CD now? I don’t think statements like that show that I am the one disconnected with what might happen in a real game. You don’t need to blow ALL cds to deal with caltrops, it has some cripple and can stack bleeding quite high if you stand in them the full duration. For example you could stand of of them if the stack gets past 7 stacks or so, use one CD to remove the stack, then move back to contest the point. I have zero problems with Caltrops in tPvP matches, maybe it is the nature of my class but I disagree they are OP.
Have your ele or guardian or any class with strong condi removal stand on the point, there are MANY ways to cleanse conditions.
you shouldnt need a coordinated maneuver to counter a spammer. cuz thats all it is, it’s spamming, not strategy.
You should be prepared for anything if you want to win, a necro standing on the high ground which is featured on several points is able to stack bleeding on a target, spread it in an AOE, and use wells which do considerably more damage than Caltrops. They shouldn’t just remove all AOEs just because some think that they do too much damage when stood in and refuse to do anything to mitigate/cleanse/heal the damage. If all AOEs like caltrops were nerfed people could stand in them with impunity.
Have your ele or guardian or any class with strong condi removal stand on the point, there are MANY ways to cleanse conditions.
Just walk out of it, problem solved it does zero damage.
Yeah I had the same problem, it will take a day or two to get used to but you can always quickly check the scoreboard to see which team you are on, or just look at the opposite of the enemy color.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_Burst
Fire Roll does apply burning for 5 seconds.
Question, are we invincible for the duration of the ride? (honestly, i’ve never looked) – if so it’s not to much of an issue but still needs a fix at some point, if not then it needs hotfixed ASAP as it’s a pretty major issue.
No way does RTL make us Invincible I have been Immobilized and killed in the animation plenty of times.
Fire EA is pretty good, roll at someone > Firegrab.
Seriously guys, aren’t you fed up of it already?
Can’t we get more stream/video threads or general “This is what I did on my Ele!” threads, PvE or PvP – anything is better than the doom and gloom that is constantly plaguing this part of the forum. ._.So lets make this thread about sharing experiences, whether good or bad, funny or sad, it can be what ever you want, even the small things! (Screenies/Vids allowed ofc, just keep it civil, please)
I’ll start with something small – I was proud of myself when I solo’d the rampaging Golem (The event that is just down from the Fire Elemental) in Metrica province on my level 14 Human Ele, I used S/D and it was the 1st Champion I solo’d, I know it’s not an amazing level 80 Champ but it still makes you feel pretty kitten good. xD
I lost the screenshot though, well not lost it never took it. =(So who’s next?
I actually have a video thread right now (it’s on the second page) but I plan on bumping it after recording some more tPvP game play on my ele later today, check it out there are a few videos already there.
They are adding matchmaking, but it will not take into account your group format. If you and 4 other good players queue, you will stay most likely get rolled by premades since the system won’t differentiate between the two.
I disagree, if the two groups are equally skilled, it can be quite an even match, I have gone into tPvP solo and won against enemy guild groups a few times.
Any one with a teleport can follow the thief up the cliff you just need to learn the spot.
Teleport skills of other classes: average 30-60 second cooldown.
Thief’s shadow shot blink: 0 cooldown. Zero. Cooldown. Good luck catching that thief after he jumps down, blinks back up behind the keep, and then rains cluster bombs that crit for 4k in an AoE on the control point.
Thief teleport costs quite a bit of initiative when used, so if they do use it twice to jump up then down as you said, they will not have much left to rain down infinite cluster bombs, and you can always CC the thief once and kill him, necros stand up on that cliff all the time and rain down AOEs, rangers can do it too, it is a strategic point that if you control it becomes much easier to win the point.
Why is a thief chosen over a warrior for the burst damage role in tournament settings?
I’ll tell you why. It’s because they both fill the same role, but thieves don’t have to sacrifice precious utility skills for basic melee necessities such as gap-closing and crowd controlling. While Bull’s Charge and Frenzy take up a warrior’s utility slots, thieves have all of that gap-closing and stuns/immobilizes/dazes all built into their weapon skills! This leaves the thief’s utility skills available for team support (Shadow Refuge for the clutch revives, etc).
In terms of survivability, thieves win, too. On the Forest of Niflhel map’s keep area, thieves can shadow shot from the control point up onto the ledge BEHIND the keep. The only way to kill a thief in this situation is to run around the keep the long way, and meet the thief behind the keep – in which the thief would promptly just jump back down onto the point, wait for you to jump down, and then simply shadow shot back up behind the keep again. There are many places on every map where thieves can perform this troll trick and essentially have unlimited survivability.
More flexibility, more survivability. Same burst potential as warriors, but more reliable burst. This is what thieves bring to the table. Now, how about warriors? What do warriors bring to the table that thieves do not, in tournaments? Your thoughts?
Any one with a teleport can follow the thief up the cliff you just need to learn the spot.
Personally I like playing a damage built mesmer with support utilities so I can cover both roles effectively. I take Illusion of Life so I can save downed team mates, Time Warp to change the tides of the battle in our favor by increasing the damage of all me allies, Null Field to remove conditions in an AOE and take boons off enemies, and Portal to be able to instantly show up to assist someone in need. Just because you don’t have the “support traits” or weapons does not mean you cannot help your team.
It can be traited to 40 second cooldown with the IX trait in water.
Hotjoin representation is about new players perceptions of balance, not actual balance.
So true—however, new players’ perception of balance = population.
The thread is called “observed profession distribution in sPvP,” not, “thieves are OP in paid tournaments.”
People will draw conclusions regardless of what the data is meant to represent so it is important to make the two distinct which I think the OP has done in his later posts.
what builds stay in water/air?
As for water, how about a ‘healing build’? Sure, it’s not great…but you do have an auto attack that you can use to heal whatever melee is whacking at your target as well. It’s not more useful than attunement swapping, true, but it can be useful at times.
If you have a “healing” build the worst thing you can do is stay in water and auto attack. The 15 trait point in water is an AoE heal and can be traited to cleanse multiple conditions from teammates and yourself. If anything you should be switching away from water so you can get the bonus from swapping TO it as much as possible.
Hey, thank you for the questions, I would be quite glad to answer them for you.
1.) Why do you use Ice Bow conjure? I thought all conjures are pretty much crappy, I read about people saying conjures are “sub-par” often. You only use 2 skills and then drop it? Will you please explain this?
The Ice Bow can be quite destructive in PvP, especially on that map in the video you watched. The Ice Bow volley can take out half of the enemy trebuchet hp, as well as hit the enemy using it if they choose not to run away, I use it all the time for this. It is also quite effective at defending points or stopping enemy rezzing. I only use 2 skills and then drop it since it is quite pointless to sit there auto attacking with the Bow while waiting for the CDs of the worthwhile skills, the freeze ability is quite a good CC if it lands. You can also pick up the second bow to use the skills again once they are off cooldown.
2.) I’ve thought Lightning Flash, the teleporting cantrip that you used to teleport from the ground up onto the ledge @ the windmill was genius! I did not know I could even do that! wtf… The range for this utility seems to be kind of short. It would be nice if I could increase the range.
I’m not 100% sure but I think the thief’s infiltrator arrow has the same range as the elementalist teleport, this means we can go where ever thieves can get to (and there are quite a few useful teleport spots).
3.) …Why do you have so many runes/sigils in your bag? ?_? Do you switch between sets depending on what you’re fighting? That’s pretty smart. I might have to start doing the same.
I do that for ease of access really, I never really change runes or sigils during the game unless I get up to 25 stacks of bloodlust since they stay even if you change your sigil. I often slot different runes before the game starts depending on the enemies though.
4.) Do you prefer the +power per kill buff over the +condition damage per kill buff? I’ve recently been using Corruption Sigils and thinking that maybe I’ve been doing it wrong and should be using the Bloodlust sigils.
Well my build is focused on direct damage, and has no real source of condition damage, so I use Bloodlust to enhance my main source of damage, do note there is nothing wrong with using Corruption, it just depends on your playstyle and if you like adding more conditions or not.
5.) Why does your scepter have the Sigil of Superior Battle? I can see the weapon info between 0:07 and 0:09 seconds marks in the video. Are you able to get the benefit from this sigil somehow? Was it just an accident that this was the sigil? Did you change it mid-game and I spaced-out while this happened?
The sigil of Superior Battle works when you switch an attunement in combat, for this reason the other weapon swap sigils will also work on elementalist. The might stacks you can keep from this while fighting can greatly increase your damage.
6.) Your videos are nice and play just fine for me. Do you use FRAPS or a different program? I’m not too fond of FRAPS or Sony Vegas, but I always end up using FRAPS anyway.
I actually use Dxtory for recording and Sony Vegas to render.
7.) I really enjoyed watching you play. Thanks for uploading this video, I haven’t seen many other Scepter/Dagger players in-game. I hope I can see more
Yep, should be recording some more this coming week ^^
Well from looking on how anet still has not fixed the GAMEBREAKING loading screen bug [15 days and counting] little hope that they can fix the 100’s of trait bugs that are still this game since beta.
Well if you watched the video Jon did mention they were expecting a fix this Monday on the Loading Screen.
I crunched the numbers a bit more. Out of 51 samples, 27 of them the thief was either the most popular profession, or tied for most popular. Warrior comes in second at 15 times out of 51 samples, Mesmer third at 12, and guardian fourth. Over 50% of the games I played during this period, thief was the prominent or tied for the prominent class, 29% warrior, 24% mesmer and 16% guardian, ele 8%, ranger 8%, engie 6%, and necro but 2%. This stat may be the reason people think sPvP is filled with mostly thieves. Even though they represented 22-23% of all players encountered, they were the most prominent class 52% of the time. See the attached graph.
24% of the samples had 5 or more thieves. 5 or more…
You cannot claim ANY statistics from hotjoin sPvP are actually indicative of balance, I’ll give a few reasons here:
1) Rank Diversity: If you ever look at the scoreboard after the game and take a look at the ranks, you will notice a HUGE difference. This is extremely important since ranges of ranks with their professions would likely see variations. Such as the range of 30-40 the stats of professions would probably be much different than 1-10. I would like to see these statistics broken up into level ranges.
2) Hotjoins aren’t serious: Myself and I am sure many other people jump into hotjoins to test builds and mess around. Have I ever tried warrior in hotjoin? Yes I have back in the beta when no one had any idea how to counter 100 blades (some still don’t) but I would never play warrior in tPvP, only to have some quick fun in hotjoin.
3) Most hotjoins are 8v8s: This makes them a zergy mess so it would be apparent that the more mobile classes with more burst damage could get high glory scores, this does not mean I haven’t seen bunker eles running staff in sPvP, it just means people like quick and fast action, tPvP is completely different in this regard since people don’t usually go there to get some quick fun out of it.
And how about the majority of the sPvP community that already left? Oh, hey I heard GW2 just tweaked Eles a bit. Let’s go on back to GW2 and play! (Sarcasm)
When you have just about the entire PvP community saying the sky is falling, you know something is extremely fundamentally wrong. Adding a couple of features on top of a system that doesn’t work initially won’t fix it.
Well “the entire PvP community” is quite a dramatic hyperbole to say the least. Sure it might seem that way if you look at these forums, but all my friends who play gw2 do not claim it is broken or that the sky is falling and we enjoy the game quite a lot so I would thank you not to make outrageous claims.