Guild Wars 2

I’m running your average GS/Sw+P shatter build and I thought, why not throw in reflection on distortion. It worked fine for a while, but I still couldn’t burst them down fast enough, especially since GS basically oneshot my phantasms and the pet was always on me. Plus, distortion has such a long cd, I use it once and if I don’t kill them in the next 8 seconds I’m pretty screwed unless the royally suck at picking out the real me( You’d think people would learn but no, RFing a clone still happens now and then). I use Blink, Decoy and Null Field but I still have a lot or trouble with both rangers and condition heavy builds that can survive or tank my burst. Any advice on either of those fronts?

It is weird and it’ll take some getting used to, but it is a lot more reliable on different elevations just from my preliminary testing. Used it to teleport around corners a few times when enemy tries to LoS me. I am noticing a weird change though. Before, when teleporting to your opponent with the switch, you’d be facing them, now you just keep facing the direction you were originally facing. Only noticed it like once or twice so not sure if it is actually a bug or if it was just me pressing tab too many times or something.

Zero Day.2594:

I think it’s similar to how car-drivers hate on motorcycle-drivers, for no reason.
(Excuse them for trying to stay alive harder then you are.)
(Metaphorically the root of all QQ’ing about thieves)

I hate on motorcycle drivers only when they weave in and out of traffic to get past people. Not only is that really dangerous, but if you get clipped by another car, the worst they’ll have is a broken mirror while the motorcycle rider could get seriously hurt.

I concur. Now that it would actually see some use, it is not longer worth using. Too bad it’ll probably never go back to the way it was. I mean, it doesn’t really fill a roll that had to be filled. Mesmers already had boon stealing, boon stripping and the like from several sources, they really didn’t need a second boon stealing utility in the manipulation tree.

Odyssey.2613:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Gabe.6810:

what is it about thieves that make people want to whine?

The stealth abuse in WvW.
I believe now with ranger and engi revealed skills on 6 secs duration, things are much much better. But without those, stealth is a total joke in this game. Tbh I think there should be more classes with revealed skills, but it’s a good start.

Thieves should get skills with no cast time or obvious tell that shut down:
*Warrior’s Defense line for 6s
*Guardian’s Valor line for 6s
*Mesmer’s Inspiration line for 6s
*Necromancer’s Soul Reaping line for 6s
*Ranger’s Wilderness Survival line for 6s
*Engineer’s Inventions line for 6s
*Elementalist’s Water Magic line for 6s

What’s that? No? Too absurd you say?

Yeah…no. Basically what Odyssey said. No other class has skills that specifically shut down another class’ defenses. Some things do it inadvertently, but none specifically say “You can’t block for 6 seconds” or “You can’t go invulnerable” for 6 seconds. Stealth(and evades) are thief’s damage mitigation. Giving all classes easy access to reveal basically means for 6 or so seconds, you shut down all benefits of an entire trait line. Revealed shuts down all minor traits of SA and 8 of the 13 traits in the line, 2 of them being grandmaster traits.

Dustfinger.9510:

All that stealth abuse. Imagine if all classes were just out using the abilities available to them, willy-nilly. It would be chaos!

Complete and utter chaos! There would be bodies everywhere! Blood flowing through the streets like great rivers of crimson! Arrows and blades left discarded in the gutter as ruffians and civilians alike clamor for the safety and shelter of higher ground! But it will all be in vain. There will be no survivors.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Necrotize.2974:

Telling a thief not to stealth would be like telling rangers to always fight in melee range

Terrible example

Rangers build for melee combat with 6 points on BM and fern hound are very powerfull.

Yeah, not the best, mainly directed at the surplus of LB rangers. It’d be like telling those LB rangers with super squishy defenses to always stay in melee range. But I also have like 0 experience with ranger so meh.

^ Exactly that too. Stealth is not something that can be reliably countered the same way everytime. For example, if you see the thief is main hand dagger, you know that when they enter stealth they’’re gonna try and backstab you, but they won’t have to get close to you if they have main hand pistol.

The issue with this is that stealth was designed to be thief’s way of mitigating damage, coupled with evades. The problem is that stealth doesn’t actually mitigate or stop damage, it just makes it harder for someone to reliably deal that damage. With a bit of good guess work and some AoE, a player can still down you, stealth or no stealth, whereas other classes have more absolute ways of negating damage such as blocks, invulnerabilites or on demand access to protection. Thieves can’t really do any of those things because they are designed to use evades, mobility and stealth to negate damage. Telling a thief not to stealth would be like telling rangers to always fight in melee range or guardians not to block.

They know thief is in a bad place so when they die to it, their ego suffers a fatal blow, usually leading to mini-tantrums. That and I’d be willing to bet a majority of the whiners have never even touched thief except for a few seconds of experimenting in hotjoin when they had the last straw after dying to another thief. Then they kill one or two random people and instantly take this as confirmation that thief is OP.

T raw.4658:

Thanks for the replies and it’s good to know I’m not the only one.

That being said what do you fellas tend to reply with???

My personal favorite is “How did you not kill me? I can’t fathom how you lost to a thief….”

Usually incites more wrath it seems for some reason……best are the rangers. Dunno why but players who play ranger are special.

Those aren’t players who “play ranger” then. Those are players that bandwagoned to ranger. The people that actually played ranger before it become strong should be used to dying and not act like kittens when they lose.

I usually say nothing though, then for the rest of the match, keep in mind to target them whenever possible and once they’re down, poison them with SB and leave them there to die. Best is when people come to help them and then several clusterbombs+poison field later, you’ve got two corpses.

I still see thieves, but honestly, they’re all just some variation of a pure burst build because they know that if they can’t burst it to death, they’re dead. Don’t even bother going up against bunker oriented builds, it’ll just be a waste of time and an inevitable defeat unless they suck hardcore. They just kind of run around roaming, bursting down enemies, but it’s getting to a point where even other zerkers are too tanky to burst down quick enough.

Tringsh.2380:

Stealth inflicts burning on use…. on the thief.

We’ll make it the new 5 minor trait in every single line, and it’ll be called “Git Gud”. Upon gaining stealth you apply 10 seconds of burning to all allies in a 1500 radius with damage based off the highest condition damage of all allies affected.

Even better, make it so all fire based skills or being hit with burning applies revealed to thieves, because of the extra light source and all. You want to stealth? Combustive shot would like to have a word with you. Shadow refuge? Lol, ring of fire.

Weapon 5 skills to stronk, no cd, request all cost 10 initiative.

Any recommendations. As it stands, I’ve kind of just been throwing together random builds/rune/sigil combinations and messing around with them. Currently using a weird venom/condi build that really only has one venom and no points in shadow arts. Survivability is…not great.

Could just give them a trait that increases endurance generation while wielding pistols. Maybe increases it based on how many pistols you are wielding so it isn’t useless for all builds except dual pistol.

See the problem is that stealth and evades are thief’s natural way to negate damage, like blocks and protection are for guardian. Thief does not have a “no damage” button. Their way to mitigate damage is evades and stealth. This is less efficient than many other forms of damage mitigation for a simple reason. In general, you cannot continue to deal full damage while using these. Example, backstabs will take you out of stealth and prevent it for several seconds. Having vigor and extra dodges is great, but you aren’t dealing damage while doing it. Obviously, some weapon skills have dodges built in, but for things like Pistol Whip, startups are hardly something one wants to see on damage mitigation. Other classes have blocks(Pretty much every class but thief, and I think necro, has access to some sort of block), evasions that don’t stop attacking(distortion), damage prevention that doesn’t stop attacking(warrior stances, Signet of Stone, Passive blocks, etc), or other forms of passive damage mitigation such as on demand protection.

People complain about stealth because it isn’t something you can reliably counter with the same strategy for every thief because of its nature. Stealth means no telegraphs, but it also means no damage. A fair tradeoff if you ask me. People who complain about it essentially want a stealthless class that relies wholly on evades/blinds(and then they complain about evade and blind spamming) and that just isn’t going to happen.

When your main way of surviving is being more mobile than other classes and re-positioning yourself mid-combat, it only makes sense that you’d be able to do it better than other classes.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

T raw.4658:

Been having lots of people QQ hard post patch. Ranges from blind spam noob to p/d scrub (I run power when I run it btw)

All Classes too…even condi spamming engies

Just too funny

I play a power ranger (long long before the september patch). When I killed people with Sword/warhorn/axe/dagger, they QQ’ed told me I exploit. After the “RF” patch, they simply say “L2P LB scrub”.

I live for someone to PM me with QQ the moment I kill his character!

Havn’t had such fun since the early days in Lotro, where people reported me for playing a god-mode class…

People will always QQ. Get over it, and enjoy it

But sometimes it’s just fun to look deeper into the QQ, try and understand it, realize it is completely unfounded, unadulterated bs, and laugh wondering if the person actually believes it in order to protect their ego or if they’re just mad. Either way, it is always a good time.

Hitman.5829:

Necrotize.2974:

Hitman.5829:

The more ways that Thieves can be locked out of stealth, the more obvious it will become that they are actually an underpowered class whose underpoweredness has been masked by the efficacy of Stealth

On the bright side, you won’t be able to 1 vs 10 stealthing every 3 seconds. If you want to fight 1 vs 10 nasty things will happen! OBVIOUSLY!

Are you calling the thief underpowered just because when you go and fight 5 enemies you get killed? How about you do not go and fight them or else you will get punished.

Hahahaha thief tear so yummy yummy yummy.

For a thief to actually kill a person in 1v10 or even 1 vs 5, the entire group would have to so terrible that I’d be amazed they managed to walk around without getting beaten up by monsters. People will complain about anything that kills them. With all the nerfs thief has been getting, the only ones who stick around are the ones who are actually in love with the class and probably better at it than some FotMer.

That is not the point, the point is that you should not even be able to 1 vs 5 without proper punishment. Now, you will think twice before engaging 5 people.

• If a warrior takes on 5 people (even if the players are crap) he is wishing death.
• If X class takes on 5 people (even if the players are crap) he is wishing death.
• If thief takes on 5 people he is being OP.

Well, no more! if you want to fight 1vs5 be prepare to get some punishment just like everyone else.

I would hardly call that “taking on” 5 people. If even one person is a ranger, RF laughs at your stealth. If any are ranger/engi, revealed also has a word for you. If by taking on, you mean running through a small group and maybe clipping someone, then I’m sure even warriors, engis and maybe even mesmers could do it too. Warriors would basically save all their movement skills+blocks/stances to run through and past, engis got rocket boots+smokebomb for a stealthy get away in any direction, and possibly mesmers if they utilize stealth+teleports/clones/portals correctly. Point is, running around a group of 5 people and poking one every 10 seconds then restealthing is not “taking on” anything, its just being mobile, which is what thieves are supposed to be good at.

A huge amount of crying is based solely on the fact that thieves have reliable access to quick stealth and long lasting stealth if they need it. Thieves don’t have invulnerability buttons like rangers(signet of stone), warriors(Whatever those stances are that stop dmg and the one that stops conditions), guardians(blocks, Renewed focus), engineers(blocks), mesmers(distortion), ele(Mist form, assorted blocks, on demand protection), and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting about. If you are about to be bursted, as a thief, you can’t block it and waste their cds, you can’t just stop the damage and keep attacking like some other classes. You need to either evade or stealth. Doing both is advisable, but people seem to think thief would be fine without any access to stealth given that they have no utilities that reduce damage, but several that grant stealth. Obviously they weren’t meant to stand there and tank hits, they were meant to avoid them all together. So when your main way of mitigating damage is to avoid damage, you need to have higher mobility than the other classes. This creates the secondary effect of generally being able to avoid other classes when it comes to speed and catching each other.

Just something I noticed, you don’t use Cleansing Fire very often. You used it once out of all 3 fights from the last video. Now it could just be that the 2v2 you had wasn’t applying heavy conditions, but still, having it off cd for an entire match seems like a bit of a waste, especially when condi-clears are so common for D/D eles via attuning to water, water 5, and dodge roll in water.

Love the videos though. Hope you make more.

Had someone yesterday complaining about Heartseeker spam when I was playing D/P. They complained that I used it to gain stealth too much. This was also SPvP and they were a celestial engi so… I don’t know how to respond to that.

Just calling it as I see it and not inputting my own opinion about RF. This is all just generalized and can pretty much be applied to every class that got called OP( that’s not to say some things really weren’t OP or that things that were called OP really weren’t).

When class A is considered OP by almost everyone, players of Class A defend it and say l2p, then provide flimsy counters that work in an ideal situation.

Then, in the long term, When Class A gets nerfed, players of Class A that defended it either ditch the class completely or complain that it is now unplayable, and start calling classes B-H OP instead, and so the cycle continues.

Also, just a point I’d like to make with regards to all the flimsy counters to RF. Stealth does not counter RF, channeled skills do not lose their target when it enters stealth. At best, it just makes them wait until your stealth fades to cast RF.

But you know, when all else fails and logic is against whatever class you happen to be defending, L2P and L2Dodge are always valid arguments.

Hitman.5829:

The more ways that Thieves can be locked out of stealth, the more obvious it will become that they are actually an underpowered class whose underpoweredness has been masked by the efficacy of Stealth

On the bright side, you won’t be able to 1 vs 10 stealthing every 3 seconds. If you want to fight 1 vs 10 nasty things will happen! OBVIOUSLY!

Are you calling the thief underpowered just because when you go and fight 5 enemies you get killed? How about you do not go and fight them or else you will get punished.

Hahahaha thief tear so yummy yummy yummy.

For a thief to actually kill a person in 1v10 or even 1 vs 5, the entire group would have to so terrible that I’d be amazed they managed to walk around without getting beaten up by monsters. People will complain about anything that kills them. With all the nerfs thief has been getting, the only ones who stick around are the ones who are actually in love with the class and probably better at it than some FotMer.

Keep in mind that it blocks only what its animation covers. It usually will block grenades, but if they arc high enough, they can fall through the top, completely avoiding the winds. That’s why it sometimes helps to jump as you cast it, IIRC that makes the animation appear higher up and block projectiles from higher elevations.

tanztante.6532:

pve: highest dps
pvp: highest survivability/dps ratio
wvw: most versatile support/attack profession

in general: best gameplay, best looks!

Lol, ele sounds like the whole package then. There were only ever 2 other classes that seriously interested me and that was engineer(jack of all trades, master of none) and thief, because I’m just a sucker for stealthy assassin archetypes(plus I got my hands on trapper runes recipe and crafted a set, so I have those waiting for me) no matter the game. Thief obviously didn’t jump out as the most useful class I could pick since they don’t seem to catch a break, and currently my ele and engineer are racing each other to 80 as I jump back and forth.

Whenever I make a character, I always get discouraged or distracted and jump to a completely different character. B/c of this, I have several not 80 characters. I would like my first 80 to be somewhat of an all-rounder that is viable in most things. So that leads to my questions, how are elementalists in PvE(dungeons, fractals, random events, leveling, etc), SPvP, and WvW. I haven’t played in a long time so I’m unaware of any small but possibly gamechanging nerfs/buffs.

And just as a little sidenote, what would you recommend is the best way to level as an ele? I know EotM is probably the fastest, but is there a specific build I should be doing while there? Any tips for tagging things? Sorry for all the questions, been away for a while and want to spend the least time re-acclimating as possible.

jingkangtan.6752:

yea i just take it for bolt to the heart

i see around the forums that people say staff has lots of swiftness access
i dont see that besides staff air 4

are they refering to eruption > static field > arc brilliance > arc wave > windborne speed?

Well, it does have the only lightning field besides underwater/elite/conjures and eles have a decent amount of fairly short cd blast finishers. Without any boon duration, you can achieve perma swiftness with staff by using 3 sources. 4 on staff is 10 seconds and so is the swiftness from Glyph heal and blast finishers in lightning field. So you could do staff 4+2 blast finishers or staff 4+glyph heal+1 blast finisher. This comes out to exactly 30 seconds of swiftness(with no boon duration), which is the base cooldown of staff #4 . Again, having traits that reduce cd or boon duration gear will make it so you have more than perma swiftness.

I tried a burst staff ele a while back to great effect. It really helps if you have a dedicated person with a lot of disables like a warrior or engineer just kind of tag along with you for most of the match or at the very least, stay near you when you’re bombing a point. They draw or stop and enemy bursters that otherwise would cut you down in seconds.

Always loved how eles could range from a deadly monster of glass to a nigh unkillable machine that wears you down through attrition.

If you don’t wanna read the story just go to the TL: DR

So there I was, working hard with my team. We were capping points left and right easily since the entire opposing team decided they wanted to roam instead of bother with points. They spent a majority of their time around the center of the map by the orb, trying to stop us from getting it, despite 1-2 players just going around capping everything. This goes on and we get about 300 points to their 150, and unsurprisingly, someone drops from the match. I get autobalanced over, check teams again and notice that the person who dropped took my place. A little peeved, I go over and plan to kill them good for being a kitten but to my surprise they aren’t even out of the base. They’re just standing there. By this point, teams are almost full and my former team, being outnumbered is now stuck at about 450 points.

Long story short, my former team loses and I start asking the guy that switched wth he was doing. Apparently he took it upon himself to “balance” the teams for us and complained that we were zerging, so it was his responsibility to make it “fair”. This ofc meant forcing a player off their original team and then essentially giving them a permanent -1 player. He just sat up in the base, shouting advice to his original team and telling them things like where stealthed players were headed, or if someone was going for a point.

TLDR

Seriously Anet, make it so if people leave a match, they can’t rejoin that same match. There is no reason for them to need to do that and the sole purpose is to force an autobalance so they can get on the winning team or screw over the team that was beating them.

Thief must be building up some major karma from all the little nerfs and now the broken steal/shadowstep mechanic. But ya, by this logic, every year or so Anet should just turn the classes upside down, making every build that was remotely good incredibly weak and every build that was useless incredibly strong.

Lamuness.3570:

Is there a list of stealing priority somewhere? Not the current broken one, but what it’s supposed to be?

It is supposed to be this to my knowledge
1. Stability
2. Protection
3. Aegis
4. Retal
5. Regen
6. Fury
7. Swift
8. Vigor
9. Might

Might is most likely last due to the fact that stealing might only results in taking one stack, not copying their current stack, making it in most cases very undesirable.

Sebrent.3625:

I’m aware of the discrepancies in range. I just fought Sir Vincent the other night who was saying that Ranger Longbow and Greatsword are OP, especially to Thieves. He went Ranger and I went Thief (which I don’t play that much) and I shut him out on kills.

Daze was quite helpful. You can Head Shot every 4s with base initiative regen as it costs 4 and you regen 1 per second.

I’m interested in what you said about when you daze it though. Are you sure that if you interrupt a channeled ability it won’t go on its full cooldown? That’s honestly something I’ve never tested. Do you have a video of this for any channeled ability that has a cooldown? (that would save me time).

If you’re a thief and just running at a Ranger across an open plain … you’re either kitteny, dumb, or know something about the situation that the rest of us don’t :-p

Thief mobility is good enough to stay on a Ranger.

Now, if that Ranger starts using traps too … sorry. I’ve personally found that is a very effective counter to most melee-only Thief builds. Drop trap, stand on trap, shoot at thief.

Thankfully for thieves, though, you can’t chase someone while standing on a trap. So I find that works best for controlling a point … not roaming.

Haven’t personally tested it but that is what it notes on the wiki, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Interrupt
It makes sense as I’m sure we’ve all had heals interrupted before and assuming we don’t die, the heal comes back off cd long before its normal cd.

I’m mostly annoyed with how they bugged steal then said they fixed it and actually made it worse. For me, it no longer prioritizes stab and aegis so both of those essentially break steal for me until they run out. Plus having steal randomly miss is no fun and makes it really hard to take traits that boost steal if you know they’re only gonna work half the time.

Now people can call thieves broken and actually be right

Wow they really kittened up steal this time around.

Sebrent.3625:

If you’re using OH pistol … you should have very little issue with Rapid Fire … daze them.

If you can’t because you have allowed them to pelt you from max range … then you’ve already made a mistake … bad positioning. Thief is a mobile class … correct bad positioning.

Still, assuming your reaction time is good and you see the ranger targeting you, the casting time for headshot is 1/4 seconds and has some traveling time(not much). So, accounting for that, you will take at least a fifth of the damage, a little more depending on how the arrows hit you as your headshot travels. This is ofc assuming you both press your respective skill at the exact same time. There is also the difference in ranges. Headshot is 900, RF is 1200 and potentially 1500 if I understand the Eagle Eye trait correctly. RF also has been known to arc and travel a bit further than its listed ranged so I’m including that just to cover all the bases. This means that to headshot a ranger that is aiming for you, you need to cover over 600 units and launch headshot, assuming that they aren’t finished casting at that point. This of course all goes out the window if you are both already in range of each other fighting. Also worth mentioning that if you interrupt their rapid fire, it goes on cd for 5 seconds instead of 8 or 10(most likely 8 ), so if you take a certain amount of damage from rapid fire before interrupting it, you are actually helping them more than you are hurting them by stopping it mid cast.

There are definitely more factors to it all but I’m tired and don’t feel like thinking right now.

mompen.7952:

When I see a ranger I equip Smoke Screen, it blocks their first burst (usually rapid fire) and since they now feel invincible, they are all usually glassy now. So if you manage to survive that first burst, they are not really a threat.

But yeah, it’s bound to be nerfed. I wonder if A-net really test things before hitting live? Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that to me…

What’s best is when they know they’re screwed so they try using back to back pet CC’s to keep you away until Rapid Fire is back. Had one ranger blow RF then Wolf’s fear, hound’s immob, knockback shot and stealth shot then switch to GS and use swoop to run. Lo and behold he was waiting right around the corner, waiting to launch RF again. It needs to be toned down but ranger really needed a buff anyway since last I remember, they were pretty much free kills who were there mostly to provide spirits to other players. It was like the whole team had a pet who also happened to have a pet.

Also worth noting that in conjunction with Mug, you can CnD>Start backstab attack>Immediately steal, triggering mug and breaking stealth, using a backstab that is also boosted by revealed training IIRC.

Just curious about the EotM leveling tips since I personally have zero experience with WvW outside of some roaming when I’m bored. Do I just follow around the zerg and take keeps/camps and level from that or do I participate in the big fights that pop up? Because I was just following around commanders for a while and honestly the leveling didn’t seem that fast unless they literally just went camp to camp to keep, which they rarely did. They frequently stopped off at our own camps to resupply then headed back to repair stuff at our own bases. Am I supposed to do something else?

Edit: I feel stupid for just now realizing that EotM is different from regular WvW lol. Disregard.

I’ve always found the autoattack clunky, which is a shame because it does decent damage and has fairly good tracking. Is there something I should be doing differently to effectively utilize this weapon or am I better off just sticking to a main hand axe or a greatsword? I’m still trying to find a good keybind for about face so I can use sword for movement, which is the main reason I lean towards Greatsword. Any and all help is appreciated.

dancingmonkey.4902:

You can actually run out and grab an environmental kit and do the same at an earlier level and on any profession. Picking a stone or stick or other environmental kits allow this.

Awesome to know, that will make leveling past this “tutorial mode” far less tedious for me.

Edit: Are you sure? I can’t seem to replicate it on my elementalist with things like metal bars and training swords in queensdale? What environmental kits specifically did you use and where?

Sandrox.9524:

AND IF YOU ARE A GOD kitten MESMER WHO DOSNT HAVE STABILITY AND JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN WITH THIS kittenG GAME?

Stealth, reflect, distortion or one of the several interrupts will make short work of them. Mesmers can abuse one of the 3 most fatal flaws of longbow rangers. LoS and multiple targets. Stealth, clones and teleports lets you move in and out of LoS more, clones make great meatshields and distractions, and reflects will eat most noob Lb rangers alive since most don’t seem to think its worth interrupting their rapid fire when it’s all coming straight back at them. But really…stun them. Most of them only have 1 stun break and some of them don’t have any for whatever reason.

Normally your utility slots are all locked up until much later levels now, but once you get to 13, spend your points on Grenade kit. Then, once you swap to the kit, your other 2 utility slots open up, basically giving you access to skill slots you wouldn’t be able to use till I think level 35. It also unlocks your elite slot, but seeing as you most likely don’t have an elite yet that is kind of a moot point.

Might be worth testing to see if picking up kits does the same for other classes.

ionix.9054:

I don’t know what this: ‘level gating’ means. But I crank out levels in Edge of the Mists

Pros:
- Constantly fighting dumb PvE bosses. So you can practice changing attunements and using your spells over and over and over again. So when you hit 80 you have a good start.
- You level very, very fast if your train is on a roll.
- You get a ton of drops that you can salvage or sell. This allows you to stock up on mats and/or make gold
- Easy to blend in with the zerg and take no damage.
- Gain WvWvW rank very quickly. This will give you your applied buffs
- Can mindlessly participate (works best with dual monitors. Can watch a movie on the other monitor, half pay attention and rank up)

Cons:
- Becomes boring after a couple nights.

I’ve leveled 6x 80’s casually this way since EoTM release. All for WvWvW so I can rotate to the class that is currently the most OP.

You can also spice it up every day or every other day and do PvP. Do one track a night for the Tome of Knowledge then go out to EoTM after or vice versa. You can hit 80 in under 2 weeks playing a couple hours a day. Use any boosters you have. Also burn guild exp banners. Note that I haven’t found anything faster then EoTM other then crafting.

Cool, I’ll give it a shot. Just gotta hope I can keep up and not get oneshot lol. But by level gating, I mean the restrictions they have in place now. You don’t unlock certain weapon slots until certain levels so you can’t even use your 5 skills until level 10. Eles in particular get screwed by this because they don’t get access to Earth attunement until level 22. Utility skills are also unlocked at later levels now with elite skills being the final one unlocked at level 40.

So I decided to start fresh with a new ele. Besides the patronizing hand holding and level gating, my only problem is slow-ish leveling. At the moment, I’m just running around, doing events I come across and doing hearts. Is there a faster/less tedious way that doesn’t involve crafting(because I’m poor and would rather not spend the gold on a character I may end up deleting anyway if something else comes along)?

It probably just seems really OP by comparison to how rangers were before. Funnily enough, LB rangers hard counter other LB rangers. If you catch one of them in their rapid shot towards another person, you can wipe them out so fast since they all seem so intent on finishing the channel and not dodging. People just aren’t used to range dps actually being a thing I suppose. I mean, I used to have a full class cannon staff ele, my meteor swarm would down even tankier players if they were in it for maybe half the duration, and you can’t reflect those back to me. Same with lava font on down trait, had that kill several people trying to stomp me. Rangers are just like that. If focused on, they melt.

But just going from past nerfs/changes to all classes in general, I’d rather something be a little too powerful than not worth using at all. Or at the very least, separate changes for PvE and PvP.

Ok cool, I was under the impression the grenade auto attack was pretty much the go-to attack for dealing damage when things are on cd. I used to be pretty good at managing cds b/c before I left I was using a 3kit build but now I’m all out of practice.

Anymras.5729:

Some people use the fast-cast option – ‘press to prepare, release to fire,’ more or less.

I see, I wasn’t aware of this option, but then again I’ve been away from the game for quite a while. I’ll give it a shot. Still wish it had some sort of autoattack like the rest of the 1 skills.

For me, a huge barrier for the grenade kit was the fact that to keep dps up, you need to constantly keep pressing 1 to bring up the AoE target then press again to throw. Doing this makes moving around and dodging harder for me so I figured I’d ask if anyone does anything special to make it easier. Macros? Special Keybinding? Anything really, because I would hate to miss out on such a great kit for both power and condition damage and the only time I feel comfortable using them is underwater ._.

I’m more of a Biology kind of guy :P

And thanks so much for the guide, I’ll be sure to go through it and learn all there is to learn.

Edit: I notice none of the build include evasive arcana, which was the build I used mostly before I left. Is there a reason or is it just not the most optimal usage of trait points?

I have been away from this game for far too long and would like to pick up where I left off. That means hopping back on my elementalist and finally leveling her up to 80. She is sitting comfortably at 68 right now, but even then, I’m completely at a loss for what I should be doing.

How should I be leveling? What gear should I be using? WvW or PvE? Or even SPvP? Just to give you an idea of when I last played, the trait system was still using the 30 point investment thing, not the current max of 6. I really would like to make this re-acclimation as painless as possible, especially since the only character I could always come back to if my others were boring me was ele.

So, pretty much anything is helpful at this point. Be it as extensive as a crash course in every change that has occurred or simply just linking me a build and telling me to get cracking, every little bit helps. I really don’t have a preference when it comes to weapons, as ele is probably the only class where I universally love all their weapon options.

~Thanks in advance