Guild Wars 2

won the dye lotto twice. sold abyss and used midnight ice by mistake on an alt lol. spend 300k karma on the chests , not including the karma I drank from the chest I opened. Counting those I think it’s more like 600k Karma (I used a karma booster). Got bunch of gold some so so load stoned and 30+ shards.

Tumbero.3945:

Staff if you want to make more support and be muchs usefull for aoe is better, anyway i kill the d/d elementalist with my staff ele. i was one of the first on gw to use D/D later i see bunchs of randoms use it so i change again to staff and i can survive more.

D/D is for people that cant handle the staff , nothing more.

ye you are trolling for sure.

open world roam in glass cannon is a bad idea. in general glass cannon ele is a bad idea . We have the best boon building of all classes , it’s pretty easy to build 10+ stacks of might while having perma fury. So putting pts into damage crit chance really isn’t all that efficient. The fastest way to kill mobs in open world is to kill a lot of them in 1 pull. Defense will help you more imo.

I would agree with op. The problem is that Staff ele maybe THE best toon for zerg v zerg. I’m not talking about your 20 v 20 fight. I’m talking about 50+ v 50+. When there are that many ppl in a fight you can’t really target anything due to lag and culling. Ground AE just own. First ppl don’t even see the effect due to lag, second they can’t move out of it due to lag. On top of that ele can place them from max range which makes eles immue to return fire for the most part. Now unless you play in T1 T2 or T3 you will most likely never get into a giant fight like that. But when and if you do, staff ele just own.

I would say most DD ele’s problem is not knowing when to heal. I have started a mesmer lately , It’s amazing how many DD eles don’t start heal till they are way low on health. I time my boon steal with my burst and melts them on the spot. When I play my ele I never let my health drop below 1/3 , most of the time I keep it close to 80%. With so much boon duration there is no reason not to keep health regen up 100% of the time and remove every condition.

I roam, so I don’t give a flying F about what others have to say .

I use rampager staff but zerker trinkets . I do not depend on staff for most of the damage though. I use it in between bursts to keep up pressure and more importantly for defense. My damage weapon set are all zerker.

Somewhat new to the class. My main was a Ele, rolled a Mesmer for fun and fell in love with the class. I like ranged DPS so I use Greatsword and Staff. Build idea is to stay at max range at all times and apply constant pressure with burst damage at the right time to finish people off.

10 , 20,20,15,5
illusions 15% more damage , Phantasms have fury, Dodge create clone, 20% staff cool down, 20% manipulation skill cool down, Phantasms give regen

Untils I run Decoy, Arcane thievery , Mimic and Elite I change out all the time depends on what I’m doing.

Gear armour all P/T/V Trinkets all Zerker.

Most of the time I open with GS burst to take 1/3 to 1/2 of the hp off to put ppl on defensive model. Then shatter and switch to staff and pumping out clones like crazy and stack confusion. Once they are low enough people usually start poping elites and such to recover or run. I use arcane thief and steal their buffs and switch to GS to burst them down.

I Find the only problem I have/had was with chain stealth thieves, but since I started using Mimic that problem has since gone away some what.

knock back then stomp. A lot of the times when I fight more than 1 person I pop stealth to stomp, something of a carry over habit from playing my thief.

just like to say having a blast in this match up. Lots of great 1 v 1 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 fights. A shout out to all the roamers out there.

I play both. In terms of effectiveness in pvp and WvW they are about same. 1 v 1 same. It comes down to play style. Ele play like a melee class and Mesmer play like ranged DPS.

took them long enough to grasp the obvious. Over all it’s moving in the right direction for sure. I hope it’s not too late.

Alex.9268:

Mogar.9216:

Alex.9268:

LordByron.8369:

that is imho an urban legend.

I have permaswiftness on my mesmer like on my ele >.> (lot of profession have permaswiftness)

Stop spreading lies. The only way a mesmer can achieve perma swiftness is sacrificing all of their rune slots for centaur runes AND use a focus offhand or suboptimal mirror/mantra heal combined with signet of inspiration.

Mesmers being the slowest out of combat profession is not an opinion, but a heavily discussed issue ever since the game launched.

If you think that mesmers have anywhere near the mobility X/d elementalists have, now that is an opinion.

Dude you need to learn the game man. Centaur runes + 20 pts into the trait that increase boon duration you get 15 second swiftness on every heal. The heal the reflect ranged damage is on 15 second cool down. I would call that perma swiftness . This is not even using focus.

Dude, the only mesmer builds that put any points in chaos are condition builds, and centaur runes don’t have synergy with condition builds to begin with. Also, not many mesmers and pick mirror heal because ether feast is much more viable.

There are no mesmers running around with 20 points in chaos, centaur runes and mirror heal on their bars, because they would be gimping themselves.

Point is the only way mesmers can get perma swiftness is through gear. No cheesy 25% signet either.

Just noticed that this thread is in the elementalist forum, explains a lot. >_<

I run 20 pts in chaos and centaur runs and mirror heal . I have yet to lose a 1 v 1 vs any other mesmer in WvW. Chaos is the best defense line for Mesmer not for damage. Staff 2 doesn’t require you to face your target and breaks stun it’s the best tool for getting away that alone is worth 20 pts into chaos 8 sec stun breaker + teleport.

Alex.9268:

LordByron.8369:

that is imho an urban legend.

I have permaswiftness on my mesmer like on my ele >.> (lot of profession have permaswiftness)

Stop spreading lies. The only way a mesmer can achieve perma swiftness is sacrificing all of their rune slots for centaur runes AND use a focus offhand or suboptimal mirror/mantra heal combined with signet of inspiration.

Mesmers being the slowest out of combat profession is not an opinion, but a heavily discussed issue ever since the game launched.

If you think that mesmers have anywhere near the mobility X/d elementalists have, now that is an opinion.

Dude you need to learn the game man. Centaur runes + 20 pts into the trait that increase boon duration you get 15 second swiftness on every heal. The heal the reflect ranged damage is on 15 second cool down. I would call that perma swiftness . This is not even using focus.

my ele is S/D. The trick of SD is the placement of your slow hitting AEs rather than CC people to land them. Place your ae in a way that your enemy will walk into them rather than getting away from them. Most players watch the person they are fighting, you and the area right around themselves . So if they see a red circle at their feet they will dodge out. But very few players watch where they are moving towards. So if you get good you place your phoenix or pop your water 2 in the path of where they are moving towards you will land a good % of them. A lot of the time I will place ae all around the person I’m fighting, drop water 2 , then cast dragon tooth then cast phoenix beside water 2 and dodge into the space beside the phoenix while switch to earth. Chances are you will land at least 2 of those because there simply isn’t place for him to go.

FinalPatriot.8034:

@ OP,

It’s ironic as I started out a Mesmer and have now switched over to an Elementalist. After leveling to 80, doing some WvW and sPvP, I found that I just hated the class. Yeah, it’s pretty darn effective in many different builds but it just felt “boring.” So, after struggling with this dilemma for about a week, I picked up the Ele and have never looked back.

From my limited experience (only lvl 20 right now), the Ele has a much greater ranged of versatility and has something for just about any situation. There is also just something about a melee caster that I find really enjoyable. The fast-paced combat style is exciting and always makes me feel like I’m doing more than just pushing 2-3 buttons.

Anyways, I with you the best of luck though it’s kind of funny that you and I are doing the complete opposite of each other.

I think it just comes down to play style. I always played the ranged caster class. Something about doing damage at range while moving suites me. Like I said my ele is a beast it’s just not the type of beast I wanted to be

ye I run 6 centaur runes on my mesmer and have perma swiftness. Staff 2 doesn’t matter if you face your target so it’s basically a teleport on 8 sec cool down that also breaks stun. The only down side to mesmer I found so far is lack of heals but you have soo many ways to avoid damage that’s really not a problem for me at all.

OMG. Why didn’t I start with that class. I always played ranged mage type in mmos. When I started GW2 I picked Elemetalist because it sounded like a mage class. Boy was I wrong. However I stuck with it and learned to make it work. Sure my Ele is a beast , I tank 4 ppl all the time in WvW and pvp. But it just doesn’t feel right, I never felt like a mage .

After leveling my Mesmer to 80 I am totally in love. The mesmer is a ranged caster. The class just feels right. On top of that you can have more than 1 viable build “GASP” . So to my fellow mage type . Try a mesmer and don’t look back :P

I play ele and mesmer and thief. Mesmer is my newest 80, kitten I love the toon. He is a machine in every way. I disagree that mesmer are no good in zergs. I love the range any mobility, staff deals decent ae and GS allow you to pick a person and burst them down. I hae a lot of fun on Ele tanking 3-5 people at a time, thief is fun to melt lowbies and bad players. But kitten mesmer has it all, range, burst, mobility , stealth and crazy good group skills like portal and time warp.

Plutonium.1308:

Congrats to you, now stay in your proper tier…. or is fergeson next?

lol don’t be bitter my friend. I transferred because my 4 friends who started game late can’t get on to my server. To be honest I really enjoyed the week or so when Kain was zerged to ground by DR. A lot more fun fights a lot more 1 v 1. I highly doubt the 5 of us is of any consequence one or another in WvW . War Machine on the other hand may have tipped the balance a bit …

Kinda funny. I transferred from t1 to play with friends when Kain was in dead last in rankings. To be honest the zerg v zerg really isn’t all that different from T1 to T9 or whatever it was. It’s just more of it. Kain has so far zerged our way up to T4. I think t3 really won’t be much different. I highly doubt T2 will be that much harder. Kain win because of coverage , we have very very good guilds at off peak hrs. You can’t beat that. In t2 the servers will have better coverage in off peak hrs than lower tiers but I highly doubt any server has the zerg Kain has between 2 and 8 am est.

InfamousBrad.5879:

Having caught up on and reviewed the thread, there’s a purely theoretical question that won’t leave my mind:

Is it, in fact, good game design to let guilds migrate down? To transfer from high-ranking PvP servers to lower-ranking ones? Never mind that it’s probably impossible to stop if you allow server moves at all, how much of this week’s drama was created by this one design decision?

Having all these high-ranking guilds deliberately drop all the way down to the bottom of the WvW ratings and work their way up again feels, to me, like it griefed a whole lot of people. It guaranteed them a steady stream of opponents who could do nothing but feed them free XP and free loot bags, while costing those opponents more in armor repairs (on top of anything else) than they could possibly earn back. That seems, to my admittedly very limited perspective, to be the source of a lot of QQing: that a lot of us who aren’t on Kaineng feel like it was an abuse of the match-up system to expect us to fight these guys, like having a world heavyweight boxing contender show up at your local gym and go all-out on the local players because he needs some easy wins to boost his confidence or his career stats or something, like having an NFL team practice on a Pee Wee league team.

I’ve only barely thought about this enough to realize that it’s probably not stoppable. Even if you only allowed people in guilds on high-ranked servers to transfer laterally or up, they’d just quit the guild, then transfer, right? It’s not like you could tag every account with a lifetime WvW score, could you, and lock them from transferring to servers full of noobs? Right? I’m not being sarcastic here, I’m thinking out loud; this is the best I could come up with, and I feel like there are probably easily poked holes in the design.

That being said, a question: if you transferred to a tier-15 server from a tier-4 server in hopes of building a WvW culture from the ground up? Why didn’t you, instead, transfer to a tier 1 or tier 2 server where such a culture already existed? What was the appeal of being a big fish in a small pond?

I think it is good game design to encourage good guilds to move to the losing side. But allow them to move to the very bottom maybe is not such a good idea as it kills the fun for lower ranked servers for at least a week. One thing you are wrong about is the xp badge thing. You farm far more karma / xp/ badge on the side that’s been zerged rather than the zerging side. When Kain was getting zerged by DR I was solo farming supply camps none stop it’s like free badges and karma 24/7 when ever I wanted some. Now I don’t even bother wvw with main anymore cause you have to run 5 mins just to fight with 50 other kain players for that 1 guy we are zerging.

S/D is harder to play but it does have some advantages over DD. Range is pretty good way of getting out of spike melee damage while still dealing out damage. It’s a tricky as most of the time SD still end up melee fighting but it’s nice to have a way to back up and still deal damage. Kind of like haveing pistol as off hand on a rogue. It’s also a lot easier to build up stacks of might as SD.
On the other hand not having shocking aura and perma swiftness makes me a sad panda at times.

wvw is zerg v zerg
wvw is zerg v small force
wvw is gp v gp
wvw is solo v solo
wvw is what you want it to be.

Will you like wvw as pver? not sure if you will. The thing is people aren’t mobs. They don’t do the same thing everytime you fight them. There isn’t a ‘trick’ to every battle that’ll enable you to win everytime. You are not guaranteed to win in fact you will die and perhaps die a lot. I my experience pvers like order , routine, predictable outcomes and pvper like chaos , unpredictable nature of never knowing what’s around the corner , they don’t mind dying.

I watched most of the vid. First , GREAT PLAYING. Some of the best placement of AE I have seen ever. I didn’t see many you vs thief other than the draw at the end though.

Bandit.9620:

As soon as I notice a thief hitting me Ido the following:

1. Arcane shield as soon as I notice damage. (1,500 – 3,500)
2. Arcane blast (2,000 – 5,000)
3. Lay down fire 2 and dodge roll until I can target him (1,500 – 3,500)
4. Get target switch lighting (procs lighting blast and chance for another proc from wep sigil) (first hit will be around 3k mostly always crits with fury 2nd 1,500 – 3,000)
5. If he is squishy he is already dead. If not lay down lighting 5 if he goes invis switch lighting 2 and earth 5 if not single target him.

This does fail if my arcane shield is on cool down because I can’t see the thief before he downs me. Also depends on what atunement I am in and where his life is at different points in time. Damage amounts above depend on their toughness and all that. Could be more or less.

I hate to say this that has to be some bad thief to die to you. Lets play this from thief point of view

Steal , 3k damage
Back stab (Baslisk venom) 6-9k and you are stuned
Heart seeker another 4-6k
You are pretty much dead or close to dead by now.
Lets day you get shield off and a blast off and dodge rolled away.
Chances are the thief will simply spam heart seeker to keep up with you or take out pistol and unload x 2 . that’s that.

Lets say you are still alive and hit me with a lighting strike proc. I have now taken 2-3k from blast and another 2-3k from strike. I’m not counting lava font. Only the worst player would get hit by that. I pop blinding powder and invis. You lose target I get init and heal in stealth hit you with another heart seeker from sealth that’s 6-10k because 100% crit from sealth and more damage because you are almost dead.

This is no way you can beat a thief no matter what weapon set if you do not CC AND HEAL right away.

just like to point out my S/D bunker ele eats Thieves for breakfast. The tough part is to fight them as staff ele.

To op, staff eles simply doesn’t have the tools to beat a good thief. I play both ele and thief and staff eles are maybe the easiest to kill. My advise is to dodge then put up static field and kite in and out of it. When static is done drop water chill field and kite around that. Hope your group will klill the thief . The problem is a good thief will take out his pistol and kill you anyway from range.

Sergo.2867:

How do people handle weapon switching to get the most out of staff and, say S/D? One can’t just quickly click in the inventory, because the dagger will replace the scepter, rather than going into the secondary spot?

Also, how to people who run primarly S/D get swiftness for moving around the map?

I’m not averse to the idea of switching weapons situationally.

Click on Scepter first it will always go into main hand. For moving , get arcane trait that gives you swiftness when switch into air, that + boon dur runes you will get not quite perma swiftness but pretty close to it.

THAN YOU!!!!

:) 8 char.

I play both classes in WvW and pvp. Both my Ele and Thief are 80, both in exotic gear. Ele is bunker spec Thief is stealth spec with burst damage. This is what I think of them .

Bunker ele is stronger class of the 2 in pvp.
Bunker ele is the stronger of the 2 in 1 v 1 though the thief can simply walk away from 1 v 1 and there is nothing the ele can do to stop that.
WvW solo roaming Thief is better. Both class can get away from zergs. Bunker ele can win more 1 v 3 fights but thieves are soo much better at melting newbies. I would say my thief dies a bit more than ele but gets almost 2x the kills solo roaming.
In small gps it’s a tie, both work well with other classes . 2 bunker eles together is amazing so is a thief + mesmer.
Larger zergs I would say a tie . I would have gave the edge to bunker ele a few days ago until I started using my SB in zerg v zerg .

Skill wise, I think it’s harder to learn bunker ele but to play a thief well requires a lot of skill imo. Ele play is more thinking less twitchy , thief play is more reflex less thinking.

I don’t pretend to be expert at either class , I do think I am decent with both. This is just based on my personal experience.

zerg is not fun but you don’t have to stick with the zerg. Go off the path and fight smaller groups. Sure the map is a bit too small but it’s do able .

Playing stealth heavy thief right now in WvW. It’s a blast, I’m getting away with stuff that should not be allowed. Ele is still a lot better for pvp though.

I posted about this a long time ago. Eles does not play like mage in any mmo. Eles play like melee dps with magic, kind of like a fighter/mage that uses daggers. Both DD and SD play more like melee than ranged class. Staff is the only ranged weapon and it’s gimp as hell unless all you do is zerg.

I’m not in WM , trasfered from SBI to here a while ago to play with rl friends Kinda funny how WM transferred to the same server a few weeks later. Just like to say I always like WM on SBI and they are doing a great job here. Just wish we wouldn’t zerg so hard. to be honest I was having a blast on Kain when we were zerged by DR. Now days wvw is boring as heck…

Bunker wins . this is true vs any class the more bunker build wins. With no healer role in this game everyone are forced to bunker sad.

toughness 1600+ I like 1900 ish

all of the proc type sigils share the same timer so you can only have one of them working at any given time. For example if you have a sigil of air and sigil of battle , if the air proced it will stop battle from procing until the cd is over.

end game is spvp and wvw

Aervius.2016:

This is what I usually rock for WvW.
(Full Zerker exotic armor/weapons/jewelry)

http://www.intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=Vc33V-FGSwkZ0J5VOFd0;9;49TT;02;029B45A;45Nl0-Nl6G3G3G3G35BFR

Con’s:
-Low HP (11.5k)
-Low(ish) Armor (2.2k)
-No AoE aside from Cluster Bomb spam
-12 Initiative “pool”.

Pro’s:
-#1 slot chain usually totals for 6-7k.
-7-8k backstabs, 9-10k+ if Fire procs.
-BP is an awesome emergency Stealth.
-SR is a Might stacking machine + Group Stealth/Heal/Stomp-Stopper.
-Cloak and Dagger returns 2 Initiative when it Stealths you.
-Whenever you gain the Stealth buff:
—You blind enemies near you (240 Radius, 5s Blind).
—You gain roughly ~302hp/sec while Stealthed with only 300 Compassion from traits.
—You gain 2x 15s Might when you enter Stealth.
—You gain +2 Initiative.
(These effects compound when 2 Thieves sharing this build run a “Wolfpack”, as all the benefits are universal upon gaining Stealth. The source of the Stealth you gain is irrelevant.)

With the Rejuv effect from Stealth plus high-end burst damage, this build can easily 1v4/5 against equally geared/leveled opponents (assuming it isn’t a premade team w/ voice comms. If you’re good/lucky it’s still doable, but you have enough Stealth escapes that if you can’t beat them- you can safely bug-out or shadow them for a more opportune moment to strike.)

Note:
I’ve noticed that Shadow’s Rejuv extends its effects to allies you stealth. I’m not sure if this is intended or not, but I’m certainly not complaining.

Thank you so much. I have thief alt jut hit 80. This build is freaking awesome in WvW. My main in ele I love the ele but this build rocks newbies so hard I’m having thought of making thief my main now lol.

Good read.
I go 0 0 20 20 30. Bunker build. All boon dur. runes. Sigil of battle and bloodlust. All cleric armor. Reason for 20 earth is for master trait that damage and cripple combined with dodge blast from EA you can really slow someone down to let you land your slow hitting spells.

cesmode.4257:

I dont know, I still just disagree. This hasnt been my experience at all. @mogar: From a pack of 3 centaurs to the next pack of 3 centaurs, my rotation would be the same. Fire to earth, might stacking and aoe via arcane wave, earthquake, and churning earth.

I havent had much problem leveling. but this has been my gameplay for 40 levels now. Each and every encounter of more than a few mobs.

For pve you are right since pve is mostly brain dead stuff any way. For pvp and WvW I’m right :P Real players don’t do linear damage and they don’t stand still. So the skill level is a lot higher in pvp. I also play a thief alt, to be honest thief pve is also brainless imo.

It’s both. You have to rotate to achieve max effectiveness and with in each attument your rotation are more or less set. The decision is WHICH attument you are going to use at what time. This is a lot harder than it sounds. Because you have to plan ahead rather than just react.

Are thieves over the top? Well, I play a bunker ele I don’t think they are.
Are most thief issues brought up on the forums are l2p issues? I would say most are and a few are not.

However I STILL think thief class needs some change and/or nerf depends how you look at it. The burst damage MUST go. Why? because it’s killing the pvp player base . For GW2 to have good pvp we need LOTS of people playing it above any other issue. Put yourself in the shoes of a new player. You are trying pvp out for the first time. You get in spvp with your started gear and BOOM you get back stabbed for 10k and die in 2 sec. This keep happening over and over. What would you do? 99% of the people would say kitten this I’m going to play another game where I have a slim chance of winning.

If we want pvp in GW2 to not turn into ghost town thief BURST damage must be nerfed or we will not get many new players in pvp if any at all. Toon down burst and give thief more tools to survive.

if you are willing to do dungeons sure you won’t need gold. Dungeons are freaking boring as hell because you spend hrs trying to get a gp together and when you have a gp you have 50% chance that someone will suck in the gp and you end up wiping. I rather spend real money to buy fake gold than doing dungeon as pug.
That being said it’s so easy to level in GW2 there really is no pt buying sets of geat until you hit 80. Just buy a few pieces of green with karma as you level up it’s more than good enough to get you by.

It’s bad because it’s very unfriendly to progress. Everyone start as newbie at some point. The problem is there is no way in GW2 to allow newbies develop skill in a fun way .. hint hint skill ladder. Right now you have to be willing to get facerolled over and over to get good. Let’s say you are hardcore enough to stand that but what are the chances of you finding 4 other people who are willing to get beat over and over for weeks before you get good?

With no new teams the guys at top also get bored even if you win all the time there is only so much fun beating up the same kid for the 1000th time.

lol I transferred from Tire 1 ro Kain only to find myself part of the ZERG. The irony …

not really because of rewards. WvW have no rewards after you got your 500 for gift. Karma is useless , xp is useless and gold is barely enough to keep up gear repair. What make WvW better it’s because it’s more fun. You are not bunkering all the time. You get to kill people .

I’m a ele, here because I have a theif alt. I play S/D but basiclly same build as DD. To be honest if the Ele is good it will be at best a draw.

dreztina.4820:

Mogar.9216:

For pve sure. For wvw and pvp I would not use berserker.

I run a full suit of berserker’s armor, p/v/t weapons, and beryl/emerald jewelry in wvw and do quite well solo, small scale, and group vs zerg.

You can get away with that with most player but I really don’t see how you can win vs skilled bunker of any class with that setup. Heck I could be wrong. It’s just my personal experience that everytime I gimp on heal or toughness I get away with it for a day or two until I meet that good player and he/she shows me why I ran bunker in the first place…