Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand all the negativity. Air and Fire are the main damage increasing lines and its hard to survive if you put much into both. But its hard to do a lot of damage if you put points into neither.

If you put 30 points in Air you get a lot of damage but the few traits which help your defense add so little and there are better traits to take instead. Now you can put 30 points in a damage adding trait line and get some defense back. 1 vs 1 the worst case scenario is a 20% damage reduction if you gear for a high crit rate.

Before you could not trait in one of the two damage adding lines and get noticeable defense back. Now you can. I think that matters I don’t know why people are so negative about this. Oh wait, its the forums.

What I like about ele is that as soon as I change weps it feels like I’m playing a different class so it never gets boring.

When I get sick of playing piano player on ele I like to play my warrior for a break from that. With warrior you just run around thinking Hulk Smash!

Things in MMOs have to be hard enough to give you satisfaction when you succeed and easy enough that you don’t get frustrated or feel like its a job you do when your real job is over for the day. I know the pain of waiting an hour for a healer so the squad can start from other games. But there has to be a little challenge in everything to get satisfaction from it. Getting a good squad together, getting a good friends list, getting into a good helpful guild that can help you finish your quests, these can all be satisfying challenges if the difficulty is at the right level.

There is also the issue of choosing a class that gives you an identity. If having an identity is not important than why have so many races and professions. Lots of ppl like being the helpful healer, others like being the tough guy tank who protects everyone. And teenage boys want to be glassy DDers. The trinity helps with having an identity in the game. With GW2 your only choice of identity is furry vs human.

Not once in this game have I heard someone say something like “OMG your such a Mesmer!”. People in other games will remark about how your perfect for a class or how they could tell you play that class from your personality. No one in GW2 says that. No one associates personality with any of the classes. No one talks about certain classes having ppl in them that are different from the ppl playing other classes.

I understand the benefits of not having a trinity. GW2 is also my favorite game. But I honestly think I would like it more with a moderate trinity.

Zephyron.7081:

What is EHP? Sorry for my noobness.

Effective Health is the standard term for your damage absorbing ability without heals. Its solely from HP and resistance.

Yamsandjams.3267:

The shard of ice trait makes your arcane skills apply vulnerability (arcane power can apply 15 stacks alone).

Can anyone verify this? Are you saying that each of the five crits from using arcane power will give 3 vulnerability totaling 15 after arcane power has run its course?

I did some experimenting and couldn’t get results to support that, but the numbers were still higher than saying it has no effect.

The best explanation for the numbers I got was that with the Shard of Ice trait all five crits from Arcane Power count as crits for procing Weak Spot trait, contrary to the standard opinion that crits from Arcane Power will never activate a on-crit proc. I was just playing around with the trait so I’m not counting this as serious experimenting.

GW2 does a good job of eliminating so many of the things I found annoying about other MMOs. But the inventory space is ridiculous. After doing Frozen Maw and hitting Wolfmaster right after it takes me so long to salvage the drops and sell stuff and make inventory space that by the time I’m done Wolfmaster is up again.

I wish they had an auto sell feature. Meaning everytime Copper or something else I selected shows up in inventory it automagically gets moved to the trading post at a price I previously specified.

1. The emphasis on platform jumping. I’m not good at it and don’t enjoy it but I need to do it to complete maps(which I love doing) and during fractals.

2. The ppl you meet who say they love platform jumping and would quit if it was removed.

Scepter/Focus rulz.

Because it only works in water which has the worst attacks of any attunement its obviously only useful for conjured weapons. If your using LH for dungeon speed runs then the chance of someone in your party having put vulnerability on the boss is close to 100%.

For what its worth when I use a conjured wep I usually stay in water for the healing from soothing mist. So staying in water on a conjured wep is no hardship.

It doesn’t fit the mold. Traditional mage can do a one shot AOE that blows a hole in the enemy line. The Lava Font/Meteor Shower does great dps on stationary targets but is not a one hit nuke.

Another thing, in the other MMOs I’ve played there is no limit to the number of enemy that can be targeted, all in range get hit. GW2’s limit on the number of targets an AOE can hit makes AOEs less useful and further distances any class in the game from the traditional mage role.

zencow.3651:

It’s also how insta kill scepter spike gimmick works: Sigil of force, burning rage, bolt to the heart, tempest defense and stone splinters is x 1.05 × 1.1 × 1.25 x 1.20 × 1.1 which is 90% more damage, not just 70%. With scholar rune it’s up to 109% more or with ogre it’s 97%.

Is this why ppl like s/f, to you use the focus knockdown to trigger the Tempest Defense damage bonus?

Is the cooldown problem for staff related to the fact that staff eles want to stay in Fire all the time?

If I have the Vital Striking and Bolt to the Heart traits and I am above 90% health and the target is below 33% health will I do 32% more damage or 30% more damage?

Leveling is fast and easy in GW2 so don’t worry about it. Resetting traits is easy and cheap so trait however you want and try new things whenever you feel like it. Not experimenting with traits would be a big mistake.

When your new to the game getting defensive gear and traits does help with survivability. In every game passive skills are easier to use because they are … passive. So load up on passive skills and traits like signet of restoration for healing and signet of water for condi clearing and Earth’s Embrace and Final Shielding trait skills for passive defense. But if your not having trouble surviving you can ignore that advice.

No reason to marry one weapon set learn them all. If you don’t like having a large number of skills to learn than you won’t enjoy ele anyway. Part of the attraction of the class is having the highest learning curve and thus skill cap in the game.

Even if you load up on defense ele still has enough offense and if you aren’t dying a lot you can become a dps machine instead.

I wouldn’t gear for healing power all that much it doesn’t really help you that much in the game. I keep a staff with healing stats and a Superior Sigil of Life on it in my inventory for anytime I need to heal. After killing 25 trash mobs it gives me 250 extra healing power and thats enough to do some decent healing. You can also use the Frost Bow conjured wep for healing.

Mist Form is a life saver hard to get by without it. Glyph of elementals will keep agro off you for 60 seconds and thats great for soloing hard things.

Things to remember about GW2 that are different from other games:

mobs/bosses do more damage to toons in melee range. Toons do more damage to mobs/bosses in melee range. Distance attacks are systematically weaker in this game.

agro is not about who has done the most damage. Toons with high toughness draw more agro. Toons in melee range draw more agro. You don’t want agro. Your squishy.

Overall just have fun and either enjoy the long learning cure of learning the class with the most or at least second most skills because thats the fun of the class.

edit: you mentioned that many of the guides are said to be out of date. A lot of that is in reference to PVP which the game makers keep trying to rebalance. So its not relevant for leveling. In every game I play the forums are dominated by PVPers an that always gives an unbalanced view of things.

I think its only PVPers who use Fresh Air with S/D and I’m not really sure what they see in that. What D/Xers see in the Fresh Air build is the chance to spend as much time in Air autoattack as possible. Its the only strong ele autoattack and since it cleaves its useful as an AOE as well. Fresh Air lets you jump to another attunement for a heal, defensive skill or whatever else you need and then rush right back to autoattacking in Air as soon as possible.

NB: if you just go by the numbers on the screen the Scepter Air autoattack looks good. Those numbers are wrong, look at the damage log for the real numbers. If you doubt me just time how long it takes you to kill a mob with just Scepter Air autoattack and then try again with Dagger Air autoattack or a conjured wep.

I never see Arcane Power mentioned in burst strategies. Doesn’t guaranteed crits on your next five attacks fit in with bursting?

I think scepter/dagger is great for leveling. The computer generated enemies in this game do more damage if your in melee range and scepter has the range to take you out of that. By the mid 40s I could solo Champion Corrupted Wolfmaster( one of the easier champs) with scepter but still can’t solo it at 78 with dagger because coming closer increases the damage I take.

S/D also gives you tremendous burst AOE damage. In this game fighting several trash mobs at once is inevitable. The only way a squishy class like ele can survive that is to kill them fast. S/D has no problems with this at all. And this weapon set has some good defensive skills and healing and gap closers/mobility skills.

The only drawback to solo leveling with this is that the autoattacks are lame compared to mainhand dagger. That’s not a big problem.

I also think that when playing a new class you should just use which ever weapon drop you got is the strongest up until midgame at least. This save you money and expose you to all the weapon sets eventually.

If you ever get one a zerg train or zerg attack a champ like Shadow Behemoth my advice is to switch to staff and autoattack from max distance. Let the 80s farming the champ do the work for you your just a lowbie.

Has anyone geared around the goal of keeping their HP at +90% as much as possible to maximize the value of Diamond Skin? Maximizing healing and toughness at the expense of vitality would seem to do the trick and I’m wondering if anyone has tried this and what were the results.

My idea: instead of champs dropping gilded boxes have them drop all the items directly into your inventory. Inventory space would fill up much faster and slow down the train.

I’ve been playing GW2 for about 2 months and quickly gravitated to ele and s/d as my favorite weapon set. I’m saving PVP for when I get bored of PVE and that hasn’t happened yet. I try to use and learn all the weapon sets and have some questions about the non scepter sets.

With s/d might stacking is the obvious start to most attacks. Its so easy with the scepter and the skills you use to stack might are useful on their own. Stacking might doesn’t seem easy at all with the other weapon sets and I’m wondering if I should just ignore might stacking with them. For example d/f, is it worth stacking might at all on that setup? For staff I often get one stack from the Eruption>Lava Font combo but I would prolly start fights that way even if it didn’t stack might.

So I’m curious if for the scepterless setups might stacking is important. So far when I’m not using a scepter I find it easier to just ignore might stacking all together and focus on other things.

I find the Final Shielding trait very helpful.

I think this is a great idea for both practical and aesthetic reasons. I hate it when I’m being attacked by something and I can’t see any of it above the waist. Kind of gross tbh.

My honest opinion is that GW2 set itself up for negativity with that stupid Manifesto and overhyping the game before the launch. Its one of the best games in the world but the Manifesto made it look like it was going to be more than that and disappointment is inevitable. I really enjoy this game and the negativity around it reduces my enjoyment. I wish the company had been smart enough to manage expectations better but instead they went loco on us and released that stupid Manifesto.

So a blast finisher on a water field gives just a one time heal? Is the heal strong enough to bother with having a blast finisher on my utility bar?

I’m not going to gear or trait for healing but I want to be good at pushing the buttons for the times when I choose to play healer.

One thing that is giving me trouble is trying to use a finisher on the water field created by Healing Rain. I’ve tried hitting Eruption first and then switching to water and hitting Healing Rain and I don’t notice any effect. When I try it with the fire fields or with the lighting fields it works but I try it with the water field from Healing Rain nothing seems to happen. I count off the duration of the healing regeneration buff and its not any longer so I’m not getting the duration stacking I was hoping for. The icon also never gets any little numbers on it showing stacking, though I’m not sure if Regen icons ever get those.

I’ve also tried using the blast finisher from Arcane Wave and that also produces no observable effect on water fields but works on fire and lightning fields.

My second question is about the utility of the healing from Water Blast. I’ve seen several things on the internet claiming the healing from it is useless. The numbers do seem okay to me I’m wondering why this skill is so lowly regarded.

Its still bugged. Wasted so much time trying to figure the quest out thinking this game is too good to have such a stupid bug in it.