Guild Wars 2

The thing is mesmers have incredible burst but less sustain than the ele. But mesmers have access to portals and 2 very good elites which are both game changing.

Well if you do not react to the Updraft combo and he hits every spell and you get hurt hard. When an ele switches to water they have many heals, scepter 3, dagger 5 and utility heal in water attunement.

If you want to work really hard to get good play Ele, I mained Mesmer since the first BWE until I decided Ele was more fun.

When you say necros and engies "cannot provide rez assistance to thier allies, you could not be more wrong. Necromancer has a signet called Signet of Undeath which can be very powerful and rez multiple team mates. The Engineer has Elixir R, when thrown at the right time, can even let the engi self rez as well as assist his allies.

This has happened to me before by pure accident, and to other teams too, I found that relogging allows you to join but it sends you to an empty lobby most of the time at 0-0 must be a bug on Arena Nets end i doubt a drop hack.

I experience these issues when I play on the EU servers during their primetime as a NA player but I doubt it can be fixed on your end.

Donut.6914:

Simplicity.7208:

You shouldn’t have too much trouble surviving with an ele. My ele has constant protection up. Protection turns that 14k health pool into an effective 21k health pool. Not to mention all the knockdowns, stuns, interrupts, heals, and mobility we get. If things start going south, run. It’s one of your biggest strengths; being uncatchable. You can’t be engaged to the death unless you want to.

Thieves have it just as hard, but like eles their biggest strength is also being slippery.

Valid point, but Thieves have a billion more ways to get away from a fight. Ele’s aren’t as slippery as you say they are.

Eles are extremely slippery, as long as Ride the Lightning is off cooldown or you have some cantrips available, I find myself self escaping hairy zergs all the time.

It is a useless trait anyway when you can have 100% uptime on swiftness during and outside combat as a D/D ele.

How can you compare the two professions and completely write one off as broken?

I mean they have completely different playstyles compared to each other and you have not even provided any reasons why you might think eles are UP (did you only pve, wvw or spvp or all three?)

If you read my post I mentioned Cleansing Fire, a cantrip, it cures 3 conditions, including immobilize, so unless you have 4+ conditions on you including immobilize, this utility will work, it also breaks stun. If you invest enough into water it can also grant you regen and vigor, and if you combine this with the 30 point trait which cleans conditions when you give regeneration buffs, then you will cure 4 conditions when you use Cleansing Fire.

I would like to add some thoughts about DD myself.

Firstly, I exclusively play sPvP and tPvP, and the only experience I have with WvW was from the BWE’s.

My favorite amulet to run with is the Valkyries with a Berserkers jewel, this setup offers high power, good toughness, healing and critical damage, for excellent sustainability. I often run with the Runes of Svanir since they are pretty much OP atm. You basically become invul for 5 seconds when you reach 20% hp, and if you have a stun break, you can heal yourself for the rune’s duration, it is extremely good for surviving solo and lasting as long as possible without dying.

All D/D builds I have run end up leading to 30 in Arcane, it feels forced, but every time I try to put less into arcane and go for more damage, it ends up not being worth losing Evasive Arcana. The 25 point trait is water I like getting on every build, even when I run S/D with 20 in Arcane for higher burst damage (something like 0/25/0/25/20 for S/D). Though recently for me the benefits of auras in D/D just seem too appealing to pass up.

What makes this build shine is you pretty much can win any 1v1 by simply outlasting the opponent with a huge amount of boons to always have the upper hand. I find it much easier to kill guardians (any class really) with the extra healing and toughness from Valks amulet despite the fact that most would think Berserkers would do more damage, the extra sustainability actually helps you come out on top much more often, which I love doing.

As far as playstyle goes, getting into the fray is what you do best, if the enemies try to focus you, you can turn it really fast by chain CCing the enemies and healing to full by switching to water . My favorite thing to do when I get caught alone in front of 2 or more players is see how long I can survive before escaping (obviously if I see two thiefs with basi venom I run, sometimes its better to escape alive then test your luck).

Sorry if this seems like a useless jumble thoughts, I just felt like giving some tips from experience to see if they could help someone out.

Also if you need any opinions on any specific sections, or elementalists in general, I would be glad to follow this thread for a while and offer my opinion based on my approximate 400 ish hours of GW2 PvP played.

Cleansing fire cantrip, switch to water with the V trait in water, mistform to avoid damage until the immobilize runs out, there are many ways eles can survive this condition.

I would have to admit it might be slightly harder to be a thief in tPvP than in 8v8s, but you really need to play smart. You say you keep getting owned by AoEs but if you choose to stand in them you will pay the price. Instead stay at range with shortbow and spam your own aoe until you get a chance to jump someone who is low or squishy.

Why in the world did you buy the silver chests, gold has much better loot and a better chance to drop better items. Also you DO get free tournament tokens from salvaging items from free tournament chests.

Feel free to play how you like, though if you are investing 30 points into arcane to stick in one attunement, I feel like those 30 points are almost completely wasted. Most elementalist builds put points in the arcane tree because of the reduction on attunement changing cds. The build you have and the playstyle you are using just do not really match up in my opinion. If you want to stay in 1 atunement (note that you pretty much lose 75% of the classes effectiveness this way), I would suggest taking 10 in arcana and putting the rest in water to enhance your cantrips.

Wow, you sure went all out for endurance traits, especially since you could always take sigil of energy instead to give 50% endurance when you attunement switch. It also does not make much sense to take all of those traits while ignoring the trait which makes our rolls become extremely useful blast finishers.

If you are running D/D then take the ten point air trait Zephyrs boon and spam auras.

I will agree with you on thieves and mesmers having high mobility (if the mesmer is using portal), but to name a couple more, warrior can have extreme mobility with greatsword and sword shield with 3 charges ( not to mention utility skills ), and elementalist with Ride the Lightning can escape nearly any situation.

Arheundel.6451:

blackgoat.5172:

kasiba.5829:

i have played enuf that i can say : Arenanet balance this game already or you can only dream of e-sports and tournamet’s.

E-sports are a scourge in the world of MMO’s IMO They bring in people with huge egos who want everyone to “bow down” to their greatness. I like pvp AND pve and I don’t appreciate getting looked down on for enjoying pve content. Now I’m generalizing, I know not all e-sports pvper’s act like this but I see it WAY to often from this crowd.

With the game being F2P You can come in jump right in the mist’s and pvp with a fully lvl’d character which is great for a lot of reasons. However, if the average e-sports pvp player doesn’t do anything else they are much less likely to ever use the gem store (why would they need to?) which means they aren’t generating any revenue. So why should Anet cater to or even worry about what they want?

1) Why Anet has placed tournie tickets as free tournaments rewards?
2) Why not offering these tickets in the gems store only?
3) Why people should spend real money in the gems-store when the balance is not here?
4) Only 3 classes are “viable” in tournament, so why me as ele should spend money?

Uh, ele is extremely viable in free and paid tournaments.

Dodge roll away from the target it is bouncing on, this damage does it fast if he spammed it I have to admit, but unless you had a flesh golem or something right next to you, it is easier to avoid than backstab combos.

Dreaming sure is nice isn’t? :/

Water is your Best attunement by the way, since staff, S/D, and D/D all have decent heals, and when you combine it with utility heal, you become very survivable. If you go staff bunker build, you have enormous healing potential. Personally i use S/D, but feel free to ask about any weapon choice or build.

If you use valks amulet instead of berserkers you will win much more 1v1s kitten D ele I have found. The extra healing power a long with 15-30 points in water makes your sustain much higher.

You are ele getting hit by a glass cannon thief as a glass cannon, if you cannot hit your spells and cc his kitten properly, you are going to die.

You get the chest after the tournament is over.

To be honest, the fastest way to improve is by practicing, just like everything else. But the streamer Phantaram is a pretty good choice otherwise: www.twitch.tv/phantaram for his vods and he streams sometimes.

A lot of people who don’t like dying a lot run highly defensive builds while playing elementalist, but personally I like living on the edge with berserkers amulet and high damage utilities. I have play on my feet much more and typically only die where I would have died with any build on any profession, (turning a corner to find 5 enemies glaring at you).

You can use them for testing purposes, to see how different builds affect damage of certain skills with 100% consistency.

You can weapon swap out of combat already, just press H, it takes a few extra seconds, engineers have to do the same thing.

Paid tournaments do not cost real money to enter, sure you can buy the tickets with gems, but there are free tourneys available to earn them too.

You can port up onto the same things you can with the mesmer and thief blinks. I have blinked through the ground to the clocktower, up to the trebuchet from the ground and up to the balconies from the ground. Tell me a place that others can blink that we cannot.

Yeah, it makes me rage hard, never had this problem before the recent patch.

I heard they only glow when it is night time on the map, like on Forest and Khylo.

Dont join servers with less than 10 people, problem solved.

That might be the Fire attunement glyph of renewal proc. When you cast it, you revive yourself when downed for 15 seconds, I have done this before once, not really worth it though since the cool down is so long.

If you rely on going down to win a fight with any profession, you are doing it wrong.

To tell the truth, even if I do reach the top of a leader board in an 8v8 hotjoin sPvP match, it does not satisfy me at all. I always feel much more accomplished whenever I do my job well of roaming or point defending whenever I play in a tPvP match with a PuG or with friends. The sad part is if you try the latter in a sPvP game, you will be zerged, killed, and get mediocre points for trying to win the game for your team.

Fastest way is to win tourneys, if you do not want to try that yet then just follow the zerg in sPvP matches. Make sure to always get the free 20 points you get from neutralizing and capturing a point. Don’t bother defending, the enemy zerg will make quick work of you even if it is only 2 people. Always do damage to any moving enemy, even if you can’t get the kill. Also stomping gets you more points than killing them when they are down. Always kitten the treb on Kyhlo, if no one comes to stop you, it is easy as hell to make it rain and rack up points. Never focus on winning, win bonus is often not worth it. If you are good enough, getting the top kills / revives / captures / neutralizes / boss kills can give nice points.

For one thing get rid of the move speed traits you have, they do NOT stack, and swiftness + Ride the Lightning provide you with the highest mobility in the game right now. Also I am mostly a PvP player and have found that full condition builds aren’t very effective there, do not really know if they are viable in PvE.

This will not always work, most of the time in games where the players know what they are doing (in a zergy pub way) anywhere from 2-4 or more people will go to stop you from destroying them over and over again.

Sure if you build for all damage you won’t be able to sustain long enough to take down a bunker in 1v1. This is why more balanced builds should become prevalent in the meta, with average damage, survival, and healing. I think balanced builds can be very strong and should start becoming more popular.

So in a game dedicated to small scale PvP that is completely reliant on capturing and defending points, there shouldn’t be any builds that can hold the line against 1 or 2 people or be moderately survivable? Think of all the viable bunker classes, if you nerf the durability of one build, you have to make the others on par and vastly reduce the flexibility of the professions, decreasing the variety of builds.

shaolin.9716:

It’s good that this thread is positive. However, it also justifies the complaints of the 3 players when they come asking for nerfs to bunker elementalists because holding a node 1v3 for a full minute just shouldn’t happen in a balanced game. Even more so that OP did this with only 1 hour experience playing the build.

Maybe he did so in a sPvP hotjoin match, if you join a tournament you might survive for 10 seconds maximum 1v3. Even 1v2 good players can make you burn your utilities and then lock you down eventually.

Sure you won’t die against bad players, but think of how nerfing because of that would effect higher levels of play.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Yes it procs when you switch attunements, very good with Evasive Arcana.

Very nice. Why did you go with cantrips giving vigor and regen instead of 20% faster water skills recharge?

Well the vigor uptime lets you roll even more, and those two boons have synergy with the 25 point minor trait that gives you more damage based on the number of boons you have, and I figure that I won’t really need to cast water spells as often with the extreme survivability of three cantrips.

If you want to only take two cantrips, I might suggest switching out the cooldown reduction on cantrips for the water spells, but the vigor and regen are so good (regen also clears conditions if you have the right 30 point water trait).

Yes it procs when you switch attunements, very good with Evasive Arcana.

Zatria.5783:

aydenunited.5729:

This is exactly more of the kind of posts we need on this board.

I agree. :P

Please continue……..MindlessRuff.

Added some stuff to my other post.

This is the build I use in tournaments when running staff bunker ele:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImmbyR4gjDAkHn4CLjChUeMzO2A;TkAgzCmouxcj4G7Nubk3M+A

Get the armour of earth utility and trait for 10 in earth, this stability time is invaluable to holding points against professions with annoying knock backs and disables.

Take evasive arcana for 30 in arcane to make use of blast finishers when rolling in the healing rain field for 2 AoE heals every 10 seconds, since you get 1 from the cleansing wave proc and one from the combo field.

The runes, heal, and utility skills all have great synergy in cleansing conditions, since every time you give someone regeneration, you can cleanse 1 condition.

Rolling in the chill field gives AoE frost armour, awesome in team fights.

Learn to chain your CCs to give teammates opportunities to get easy kills in tough fights. For example in air, use the static field into gale to knock them into it, switch to earth, use 5th skill to immobilize, drop the 4th skill, unsteady ground to cripple, switch to water and drop a chill field, then switch to fire to do some damage.

The elementalist is all about chaining your abilities together effectively to give the most synergy and deal the most damage to your opponent, so it is important to not get stuck in a “rotation” and learn to use the skills when the time is right, while adapting to the situation (this comes with lots of practice).

Even if you are in bunker spec, you cannot stand in 100 blades or pistol whip spam and expect to live, backstab can still make your life hell as you have learned. You need to dodge these high damage skill combos with utilities, rolls, or by CCing the enemy. This will extend your life drastically since when they fail their haste, they become an easy glass cannon that even you can whittle down with your mediocre damage.

Final thing, do not get discouraged with ele, if you find yourself getting frustrated or bored or what not, I would gladly give you advice, or you could always switch up the weapons for a more aggressive damage dealing build.

If you damage someone enough to get the credit for the kill, then range doesn’t matter, you will rally if someone finishes them off.

That build is outdated and not relevant any more (evasive arcana as a 10 point trait really?). Here is my build which also uses 2 arcane spells for high burst damage in sPvP.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgIQNAW8alwzaqnVzoGZ9ICqHaX29dkU0asWJF42FC;T0Ag0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1ssY8x5j9HvPA

As a note, you will not be very survivable with this build however your burst damage can be extremely high if you pull off the combo right.

You basically want to updraft them and switch to fire as fast as possible, then cast Dragons Tooth, Phoenix, both arcane skills (cast these AS SOON as you switch to fire for the bonus crit damage from Arcane lightning), then fire grab.

It is very possible to hit this combo if they dont have a stun break ( even if they dodge the dragons tooth, you can get off fire grab before they get up).

Since Elemental Surge will make them take burning when you are in fire, you can always get the extra damage from Fire Grab.

It is extremely useful for applying burning to multiple foes in a cone then quickly following with Fire Grab for huge AOE damage in front of you.