If there are any good mesmers on EU I would love a chance to record some duels with you, as I would like to improve my play against mesmers as well, as good ones usually are able to give me some trouble on my elementalist.
It go good with arcane power and wave with a scepter dagger updraft into fire combo with a 6% bonus to every critical hit of dragons tooth, phoenix, and fire grab. Add divinity runes for more critical damage.
Watch your back. Problem solved.
No there are no issues with que times during prime time with free tourneys, paid too, my team on EU today got instant pops today.
You do know that the only reason to use Shadow Refuge is to stay in it so you get extended stealth right? If you leave it early you lose stealth immediately. And I am not assuming every non thief is bad. I am saying that when players have equal skill, the burst damage of thieves will be easier to avoid than it is now (players should become more aware of thieves overall), which is why nerfing them now will only make them weaker as time goes on and people get used to countering them.
How long does it take to “get used to them”?
People cried about HB warriors, but by release, most people had learned to dodge and the complaints died down somewhat.
There isn’t much to learn when it comes to countering thieves. All you can do is spec for more toughness vitality in order to be able to eat up their burst.
I guess that is true in hot joins, but in 5v5s it becomes vitally important to track thieves so everyone knows when to watch out.
You do know that the only reason to use Shadow Refuge is to stay in it so you get extended stealth right? If you leave it early you lose stealth immediately. And I am not assuming every non thief is bad. I am saying that when players have equal skill, the burst damage of thieves will be easier to avoid than it is now (players should become more aware of thieves overall), which is why nerfing them now will only make them weaker as time goes on and people get used to countering them.
So thieves should have to “set up their burst” like the other professions? How viable do you think that would make them? The fact that they can get in, do damage and escape is what makes a thief a thief. So do not try to take away a thief’s uniqueness because you haven’t learned to anticipate and deal with it yet.
And here we have the winner.
Thieves should be unstoppable. That is literally what you posted. That a thief should be able to get in, kill someone and get out, with out a chance to be stopped.
If thieves don’t need to “setup” burst, then they need less burst. That is called “balance”. You trade off the need for setup time for doing less damage. You are saying that your class should have no downside, and not be able to be countered.
I play elementalist for your information, and I do not think that thieves should be unstoppable. I think that as time goes on players will develop better awareness and thieves will go down in popularity (think of spies in tf2 if you have played that). Arena Net has already nerfed thief burst and may continue to do so but they will not just nerf backstab by 20% or something to appease the forum posters.
The near constant nerfs against Spys in TF2 helped as well. Also, Stealth in MMOs isn’t a new concept. People have been dealing with it since 2001 and DAoC.
You can’t have a class built around “Get in, Kill, Get out”, because that is the definition of overpowered.
You’re talking about high initiation (“Get In”), extreme Burst (“Kill”), and high durability (“Get Out”), that makes a class overpowered.
If you want high Initiation and good burst you need very low durability.
If you want high Initiation and High Durability you need low damage.Right now Thieves are high Durability (stealth), high burst (25k+) and High initiation (multiple gap closers, stealth).
Arena Net can either jump on the power creep bandwagon and buff every other ability in the game (all 500 of them), plus items/HP pools, or they can nerf a couple of overpowered traits/abilities.
The problem is, durability is not equal to stealth, thieves still take full damage in stealth, so if you see a shadow refuge go down, the thief is basically telling you, “Attack here! Kill me instantly!” The thing is, once you figure out stealth it is not as OP as it seems.
Did it in less than 1 hour…monthly? I mean…..are you serious? 1 hour for a monthly achievement? It would be too easy even for a daily….
Hey, now we get some free loot every month like the pve players.
Yes, I enjoy playing Conquest with my team with good communication and strategy.
Hotjoin on the other hand is about farming rank glory and zerging.
So thieves should have to “set up their burst” like the other professions? How viable do you think that would make them? The fact that they can get in, do damage and escape is what makes a thief a thief. So do not try to take away a thief’s uniqueness because you haven’t learned to anticipate and deal with it yet.
And here we have the winner.
Thieves should be unstoppable. That is literally what you posted. That a thief should be able to get in, kill someone and get out, with out a chance to be stopped.
If thieves don’t need to “setup” burst, then they need less burst. That is called “balance”. You trade off the need for setup time for doing less damage. You are saying that your class should have no downside, and not be able to be countered.
I play elementalist for your information, and I do not think that thieves should be unstoppable. I think that as time goes on players will develop better awareness and thieves will go down in popularity (think of spies in tf2 if you have played that). Arena Net has already nerfed thief burst and may continue to do so but they will not just nerf backstab by 20% or something to appease the forum posters.
So thieves should have to “set up their burst” like the other professions? How viable do you think that would make them? The fact that they can get in, do damage and escape is what makes a thief a thief. So do not try to take away a thief’s uniqueness because you haven’t learned to anticipate and deal with it yet.
Elementalists with Off hand dagger can CC you while immobilized if they use Updraft in Air attunement, so make sure you use shadowstep or sword 2 to escape that, because if you don’t, you will feel some serious pain.
“JOE’S CUSTOM HOTJOIN: NO THIEVES OR MESMERS,”
I hope this NEVER happens, and those two professions are not even my main.
These issues have a lot less priority than an increase in CD by double, and are probably 20 times harder to implement changes for that will not result in something else being bugged.
Part of the problem with elementalists builds is that you need differnt Elementalist character slots to play in differnt situations. A Dungeon PvE elementalist cannot be sucessfull in sPvP or WvWvW. The same is mostly true in reverse.
Cantrips are required in sPvP or WvWvW. An Elementalist cannot specialise in signets, arcane, or glyphs and expect to live two seconds in any form of pvp. There are very disticnt balancing issues being ignored that are forcing players into similar builds to be sucessful. When the players do become sucessfull those builds become nerfed.
My message as an elementalist is to please make Signets, Arcane, or Glyph builds as feasable as Cantrip specialised builds because any PvP forces you into a Cantrip specialised build.
You do not have to run 3 cantrips to be successful in PvP. In my experience, I could do well with any of the arcane skills with traits to enhance them, such as arcane wave/arcane shield as well as the cooldown reduction coupled with elemental surge. This example I got from Team Paradigms ele, Phantaram.
I have other examples from personal play as well if you need more options.
This subject seems to have the most posts/topics on this forum but is probably the least important item that should be implemented right now. You might say, “Well other classes have weapon swap, so just put it for elementalists but only out of combat,” but this change cannot be made instantly or easily.
Yes, it is a known bug, just restart.
1v1 with matchmaking would be the best way for players to get better, and developers to balance the game. Developers could gather basic statistics such as win/loss ratios between 1v1 profession fights, but also much deeper stats such as which abilities were the most used and how much they contributed to total damage, making it a lot easier to cross-balance. Also, imagine if the game was known for providing near 50/50 win ratio, you would know that any player that beats you actually really outplayed you rather than carried by his chosen profession.
Except this game isn’t balanced around 1v1’s, as its a team game and a large number of abilities are team-based.
What happens when a guardian bunker and staff ele get matched up in the 1v1? Fun times.
Simple have a time limit on the match. But in reality anyone going into a 1v1 with a bunker build is not going to win ever against an equal opponent since they simply do not have the damage.
You can join a Free Tournament as a party, you do not have to have 5 people, be warned though, it is much tougher than hotjoins.
I honestly normally find Ether Renewal to be good enough to keep me in the fight vs Necro’s. Don’t really have much of a problem with them. 1v1 I normally last long enough to wear them down. It may be a little more sketchy compared to a more defensive amulet, and I’m not denying that the build has a very glasslike lean, but I personally prefer the flying by the seat of your pants approach. Makes things more interesting, and contrary to what a lot of people would have other people believe, it’s not a guaranteed recipe for a trip to the respawn timer. I rarely die in 8v8 (not like that really matters), and when I go down in tourneys I can mostly point to faults in my play, moreso than any inherent problem with the build.
I guess you could say that about any build, and there’s certainly a lot of homogeny to Ele builds at the minute (I mean, it’s really not that far off standard – some gear tweaks and some utility tweaks, and maybe 10 traits points assigned somewhere they aren’t normally), but it’s worth checking out if people are interested in a more aggressive playstyle, assuming they’re willing to play a bit riskier for the payoff.
Well using Ether Renewal is pretty much an auto win against condition Necros, unless they are smart enough to fear you so it breaks the channel, but since you can use it with mist form or armour of earth they cannot stop it anymore and it just becomes stupid. I never really liked the idea of ether renewal, but now that they buffed it, It might be worth taking, though not really if you have 30 in water and a cantrip build, which gives you enough cleanses as it is.
Sure you can wreck people in hotjoins with this build, and with the addition of 5v5 hot joins it is probably even more viable there, but valks will let you heal to full multiple times in a single fight even if the enemy is keeping up pressure.
We could fight 1v1 and “prove” that one choice is better, but that really will not prove anything since skill difference would have to be considered.
Also, the only reason I decided to make this post is I think it is a bad idea to recommend such squishy build to other eles. It would greatly increase the thief QQ if if they are “nerfed” now.
To be honest if you want to make this build tournament viable, just switch to a valks amulet, all you miss out on is the precision and vitality, but in exchange you get a TON of survival ability. I have tried MANY times to get berserkers amulet to work for me but it completely kills any chance for long sustained fights. Sure you can play like a burst glass cannon, run in with your combo and then run away with RTL or blink when you get focused, but then you have to ditch the point, losing you the game.
I also noticed that between the Berserkers and valks amulet, 1v1s against my necro buddy change drastically. Sure you can say that this game is not balanced for 1v1, but the amount of sustain I lose when using the zerkers amulet is too huge to ignore, even when using 30 water 30 arcane and 3 cantrips.
I could make it work, but it is not the playstyle I prefer on elementalist.
Healing Rain: This skill’s tooltip now states the correct duration of 6 seconds.
Armor of Earth: This skill’s tooltip now states the correct duration of 6 seconds.I was kind of fearing exactly this. Epic sigh.
Mist Form: This skill now works with the Water Magic trait Cantrip Mastery.
Just tested this. Cooldown after activation is still 75 seconds with the trait.
Uh I just tested it, It said 60 seconds on the Cooldown after I used it.
I just tested in the mists, there are 0 blast finishers on evasive arcana now, I do not get any might rolling in ring of fire no matter which attunement I am in.
Well time to change my build, there goes might stacking with the nerfs on boon duration too.
Do NOT start with the free tournaments at first, you will learn nothing since you will just get focused out in all fights if you dont know what is going on, you will learn nothing. Instead just do hotjoins for a while, the new 5v5 hotjoins once they come out. You will learn the other classes abilities with time.
Yes they added /rank!
Well when you run a glass cannon build like that, you tend to take quite a load of damage from everything. You need some toughness somewhere.
If you want a quick tip here you go. I watched the video and noticed that whenever you used updraft, you would just go walk up and use lightning touch or auto attack instead of utilizing the knock down to do guaranteed burst damage. If you Updraft someone, you can switch to fire and hit Burning Speed with ease, or you could switch to Earth and chain disable them with Immobilize and Knockdown.
So you want to totally remove all but 1 guardian knockback? Yeah that will make them scary when defending points. Oh kitten! he just made a bubble we cannot walk through! Oh wait just go around it.
EDIT: The Magnetic Aura proc did NOT show up on my elemental when I tested it in the Mists so I would assume it does not work with allies either.
This actually quite easy to test I will do so right now and report back with the answer.
(edited by MindlessRuff.1948)
Use the Bloodlust and Battle for tons of Power and damage.
Yes it is a bug.
Well condition damage is good if you can hit a lot of people with bleeding and burning, but you cannot go wrong with power as it is much more reliable since it cannot be cleansed, it will always do its full damage it should do when it hits the target.
Well there are certain places it will not let you port, you just have to get used to them, personally I enjoy trying to master all of the teleport spots in sPvP.
What kind of matches are you talking about, tPvP or sPvP, if it is the latter then no, but for the former it should be there.
As a frequenter of sPvP and tPvP as an ele, there are actually a few viable builds outside what you mentioned here.
Well it seems they are adding flavor to the game mode to discourage bunkers, (if you just stand on the point you will never get the buffs or be able to contest them).
Would just like to add a note, an aura sharing balanced D/D build is quite excellent in tPvP, had some great success running it with my group today.
I would agree that good eles can destroy and bad eles make them seem UP, I just hope that people learn how good eles can be.
Racials do not matter at all in sPvP since you cannot use them there, not sure about WvW though. As far as Norn vs Asura, the Asura draws far less attention, but against good players it won’t matter since they will just make a target on you.
I would still choose Ele for long term sPvP, I have like 500 mesmer games and 800* ele games.
(edited by MindlessRuff.1948)
Well the weapon you want to switch to will never change places if you put it in your first slot, and think of how much trouble Arena net would have implementing an out of combat weapon swap, they have much bigger issues to worry about at the moment.
Considering this is the elementalist forum, anyone who would want this almost certainly uses some form of dual wield, which makes it a lot more annoying than just swapping a single item in and out.
Well I disagree, I swap to staff all the time for the Aoe speed buff on allies, and right back to S/D or D/D right after that, it literally takes a second to do if you set it up right. Though I will respect your opinion if you would prefer the convenience of weapon swap.
I like the playstyle of the elementalist more. I find it a lot funner.
Then you should stick with that, you will not regret it.
Play Now tries to match you up based on you rank but it tends to put you in almost empty servers too often, so I always just choose an almost full server.
Well the weapon you want to switch to will never change places if you put it in your first slot, and think of how much trouble Arena net would have implementing an out of combat weapon swap, they have much bigger issues to worry about at the moment.
Probably, never had any trouble on my mesmer once I got into it.
Pressing H or I takes an extra second, is it seriously that big of a deal, since you can just turn on auto run and do it real quick.
Well when I leveled my mesmer I used Greatsword Staff and shatters and everything went down before it could damage me unless there was a higher level veteran, so you should learn more as you go along I think.
What exactly are you dying to?