Guild Wars 2

I’m sure they’ll nerf it rather than solve the real problems of dungeons.

It makes the following traits last longer, nothing more, nothing less:
-http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_Barrier
-http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyr%27s_Speed_
-http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stone_Flesh
-http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soothing_Mist

What on earth is the purpose of adding more stuff onto the Necromancer?

The bizarre shared recharge time of different skills and different kit skills is completely unintuitive. The Necromancer doesn’t need more kits. The class already has plenty of tools with DS and its 5 skills, along with the standard 2 weapon sets. I don’t see what this will accomplish or achieve, at all.

Just start charging those Quartz Crystals. Celestial gear is really not that expensive if you spread the cost over a month, really.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Fuzzion.2504:

I guess they want us all to roll warriors , troll build theives and PU mesmer builds

PU mesmer is just so terrible … I don’t get it why people complain about it

It’s a very strong dueling spec. Many people’s PvP in this game consists of just trying to duel others in WvW. For those people, their perception of PvP is very different from say, a person who plays Solo Queue or Hotjoin in sPvP. In Conquest, PU Mesmer is a lot weaker since stealth doesn’t hold points.

Change Zephyr’s Boon with Cleansing Water and it’ll be good.

90% of the traits in GW2 are useless. It’s really weird. This certainly isn’t a problem unique to Elementalists in any way. All professions have the same exact complaint.

Spirits are the main source of support for a Ranger and are actually very strong in PvP. It’s only in zerg fights that they just die miserably. Otherwise, the Ranger’s support with Spirits is pretty strong.

25%

You should try Wildstar Battlegrounds if you want large-scale PvP. They’re very fun!

GW2 has very little stat progression, and also gives instanced loot (if 100 people hit a mob and it dies, 100 people get an equal roll on the loot table). These two in combination necessarily make it so that there’s really not much else to give in terms of loot.

Every time that player struggled against the NPCs, I winced.

Anyway, if I was going to play Staff Ele in tPvP, I’d try one of these builds:

-Cleric’s Healer Ele: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6cW5wwBd0AhAB5tlrRBlrLXB-TJxHAB1eBAQqMAAPAAM2fAA

-Celestial Pirate Rune Ele: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6c24wwBd0AhAB5tmrRBlrLXB-TJRHwAAuAACeAAHLDoe/BA

Lightning Rod should be a Master Trait at its current power level, to be honest. It’s better than Halting Strike on the Mesmer because of the Weakness, and the fact that the Ele isn’t supposed to be an interrupt-based class also keeps it from being an Adept trait. But no one will ever take this as a Grandmaster. If you’re not looking at Fresh Air, then even Tempest Defense is just way better.

I’m happy that ANet is doing the right thing and creating a Standard Enemy Model option. However, reading carefully at the newspost, I noticed it said it was going to be provided for “Team Arenas and Custom Arenas that allow Tournament Commands.”

So will Standard Enemy Models be available in Solo Queue?

(If the answer is no… then I must say, I’m amazed at how much the devs hate Solo Queue, but only attack it in a sort of passive-aggressive manner. Not adding Standard Enemy Models, combined with keeping Skyhammer and Spirit Watch in the rotation of maps, seems to indicate that you guys don’t want people to play Solo Queue anymore, for whatever reason. I have to say, if ANet doesn’t like the Solo Queue, they should just get rid of it.)

Here I was so excited I might finally get a steady stream of CM Tokens for Aristocracy Runes for various characters, but turns out you all are EU. Sad days.

GW2 was actually marketed as an e-sport at launch, just as it was marketed as a non-trinity MMO. I think a lot of people just didn’t pay attention to the marketing though, and were just expecting a game like others (and were surprised to find something quite different).

Anyway, something I find quite interesting about the development and balance in GW2 is how damage has changed over the course of the game’s history. In the beginning, damage in PvE was stupendously high, crit damage allowed players to do absolutely monstrous damage, while in PvP it was much much lower. Forward to today, and we see that the curve of damage has really changed for both game types. ANet nerfed a lot of the damage in PvE (the crit damage -> Ferocity change was the biggest, but a lot of things such as moving the Warrior’s Heightened Focus from Adept to Grandmaster also show how ANet slowly worked to lower damage in PvE over time), but it also greatly increased the damage in PvP. Double Sigil procs (such as Fire+Air now working together) carry more defensive specs such as S/D Acro Thief, or even older builds like Shatter Mesmer, and have them do FAR more burst damage in PvP than they ever did at the start of the game. Celestial Stat buff and Strength Runes made all defensive specs that much stronger. The result is that all classes can now run builds that are tankier, can do more burst damage than at launch, sustain more Might than at launch, but the sustained damage of PvE Zerker DPS builds has significantly gone down since launch as well (ferocity nerf, stacking sigil nerf, etc.).

Basically, ANet increased player damage in PvP, while it decreased player damage in PvE, which is arguably the opposite of what they should be doing to keep the game interesting and balanced. It’s kinda baffling when you think about it. Heck, the change to Warrior Greatsword (nerfing the damage of Hundred Blades, while increasing the damage of the burst skill) shows that they intend to continue this trend of making classes do more PvP damage but less PvE damage.

Hehe, this was an old build back in the day! Good times! I remember those early days of theorycrafting.

It’s terrible. Play something else. :X

Meta GS-Axe-Mace PvE build – http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_GS_Axe/Mace
Meta Hambow PvP build – http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Hambow

Celestial is overpowered, for sure.

Strangely though, without the overbuffed Celestial stats, Bunker Elementalist would probably quickly fall out of the meta due to its very low base stats.

Regardless, I do believe Celestial needs to be nerfed. It helps tanky builds do too much damage, which is pretty unbalanced.

Nimrud.5642:

Ty for the advice. I’m not that high rated (around 93%), but I could stand my ground quite well. I’ve played some pve on my ele so I’m not totally noob, but in my first ever PvP match I won all my 1v1s. I guess I was only lucky and got easy opponents, but its still fairly ok considering I have zero experience in pvp with ele. So this seems to be a rather forgiving build.

Is this btw just a starter build until one gets the hang of it or is this build preferable in more competitive environment as well? Should I keep other specs in mind too or is this celestial D/D build good all the way?

Thx again

p.s.: Do you get a temporarily lower rating if you start playing a new class? That would make my little story laughable…

It is insanely overpowered in PvP right now and if you get good at it (and assuming they don’t nerf it too much) you can play at a so-called high level, as far as that exists in this game.

And no, your leaderboard rank is account bound. If you switch characters or classes, it does not affect this at all. For what it’s worth, however, leaderboard rank is pretty much broken at this point. I’m consistently in the top 1000 and I consider myself a pretty average player at PvP.

I enjoy people switching at the end to level alts. I did it myself, and I’m thankful to all the people that let me do it. Now I return the favor to the rest of the community by helping them level by finishing the boss’ final bits of HP at the end.

LordByron.8369:

I really like how people once again sing how strong ele is in WWW because is viable in PvP

Seen that 4 times already.
When people in PvP started failing they started crying and quit.

Ele didn t change after cantrip+rtl nerf.
People still was saying how strong it was.

Then came PAX, and people started crying….

PvP is NOT WWW <===

PvP requires mobility.
We got a strong rune nerf on that as if rtl was not enough.

But you roam and you kill people so i guess the skill of your opponent doesn t matter.

As you said you killed thieves and warriors.
But as they say on many posts on their forums… if you die with a thief or a warrior you are a bad player.

I kill many of them… but i understand WHY at least (for ex. thief in PvP has high skill floor, in WWW has no skillfloor at all, lets see if you get why).
PvP => fleeing lose points
WWW => fleeing and reengage at will is how you win with no effort.

ele has just a small mobility burst then it lacks the CD to engage OR flee.
Also to mantain permaswiftness has to waste important cds (rune nerf)

But the discussion is limited to “i m pro i kill people, L2P” so i guess its a good reason why anet goes on reddit and other forums to gather feedback.

And possibly the reason why RTL pales compared to war GS skills.
Tell me are you able to troll zergs with your ele?
So you expect to say you can kill those profession that can survive for 30 min trolling an enemy spawn in a T1 server alone?

Do the same then i accept ele is as strong as the other 3 meta roaming professions.

I’ll be honest with you, I quit try-harding roaming a long time ago when I found it to be mostly devoid of fights or fun. People just run cheese builds and spending most of their time spamming runaway skills (at least in the way its meta developed). The profession is still very strong in places like dueling behind the windmill or in the Obsidian Sanctum. I guess they’re not the best at going into open WvW and trolling zergs like a GS Warrior can. If that’s how you measure your fun or power in the game, I suggest you play a GS Warrior then. For myself, I long ago just switched to sPvP proper when I felt like fighting another player, and I am much happier there. :P

D/D Celestial – http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;2B2VU0z4-N;9;99TT;44;049A17ATo0;3H7W3H7W30U

I remember I used to play Mages in other MMOs and then was disappointed with the Ele.

Now I find Mages in other MMOs to be super disappointing compared to the Ele. :P

Sometimes I just have to remind myself and others that there are plenty of playstyles out there, and that there’s 8 professions in GW2. Just because one may not like one or two of those particular profession’s playstyles (or even 7 of them!), as long as one of the 8 is enjoyable, a player should just play that instead. The Elementalist is a very unique take on the Mage/Sorcerer/Evocation Wizard, but it’s become my personal favorite take on the idea.

Also, if you’re dueling people, I’m pretty sure Staff is a bad choice. Dagger or Scepter (especially the overpowered Double Dagger Celestial Water/Arcana build) is stronger for “dueling” players.

nearlight.3064:

Adding my 2 coppers.

I hope that the scepter gets a buff for pvp/wvw. Right now it is a great burst weapon, but I’d love to see the autoattacks and shatterstone reworked to be less awful.

I think it’s reasonable to assume they’ll look at scepter, since they have been buffing the less popular weapons like P/P thief, axe ranger, and arsonist engineer.

The Scepter has the highest burst in the game, two blinds, and an AoE heal with .5 Healing Power Scaling and 1.4k base heal. If it had good sustained damage it would be OP as kitten.

I’ll be sad to inform you there aren’t any healers in PvE.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Yeah everybody asks for a nerf of FGS and there are hardly any valid arguments against it but…

Nerfing FGS would only make boring dungeon content take longer. Nerfing FGS would not make the game more interesting at all: strats would stay the same and fights would not change.

If only people were a bit more sensible and asked for challenging content, like fractals, where FGS is not that effective, then we wouldn’t even need a nerf.

So it is not that an FGS nerf would be wrong, but it is completely wrong to ask for it.
Anet will nerf it and we will be worse off. Good job.

It’s true. Dungeon mobs are just too dumb and hit too soft. If you actually sit in all the ticks of FGS, you really do deserve to die.

Zenith.7301:

PvE eles are used for a FGS exploit. You fix FGS, ele becomes irrelevant. Warrior alone can might stack and without bugging out/exploiting skills can put similar numbers.

Eles have higher damage with Fire staff and can might stack without hurting their own DPS. Eles are still very strong even without FGS/Ice Bow cheese.

I’d totally suggest Dagger/Focus over a Scepter build for general dungeoneering. In a PUG, trying to play a LH Ele is pretty frustrating, and Dagger Ele still provides very good DPS while greatly increasing your own personal survivability (and the projectile block on Focus is really great in certain encounters).

I have leveled all classes to 80, and I have over 2000 hours on Ele.

The Ele is immensely powerful.
-Its potential for damage AND might stacking in PvE is amazing, and unmatched when they call upon Conjures.
-The unique support it can give in PvP (Water Attunement Cleansing/Healing + Elemental Attunement boons) is fantastically powerful.
-Its access to two Water fields and high amounts of damage and CC on Staff makes it an integral support class in WvW, and Cleric’s Bunker Staff is one of the strongest builds in an organized team in sPvP.
-Fresh Air burst Ele is one of the strongest roaming burst specs in the game.
-DPS Staff Ele has the strongest AoE damage in the game.

The Elementalist’s main weakness is its low base stats. Even with a defensive spec, it still needs to keep moving and healing if it wants to survive. As a glass spec, it dies easily to burst damage. It has this weakness to balance out the sheer potential of the class.

Consider that most PvE speedclear teams run at least double Ele for dungeons if going for a record.
Consider that in the winning teams for both the NA and EU Tournament of Legends, both teams ran Eles and did very well.

Simply put, the Elementalist is very strong. It’s just hard to use for players that can’t properly utilize its active defenses or multitude of skills.

If you have this much trouble with the Elementalist, you probably just need to come to terms with the fact that it may not be the class for you. That’s ok. Many of us love to play it, and see how effective it is across the whole game. Maybe Mesmer just fits your playstyle better, which is fine! But just because a class doesn’t seem strong to you when you use it, doesn’t mean the entire class is bad. It’s probably just not for you. That’s why I encourage players to try out all the classes in the mists before settling on one. For myself, I’m a terrible Mesmer in PvP, but I’m impressed by the people that can play it well!

DrDivine.5378:

Neko.9021:

So here’s the thing.

In people’s opinions, yes, Spirit Ranger is considered “cheese” because it’s very easy to play. If you value people’s opinions over your own effectiveness or preferred playstyle, then I suppose you could play something else.

However, at the moment, Spirit Ranger is still the best support build for the Ranger, and it is probably the strongest built for the Ranger in PvP at the moment.

My advice? Don’t bother with what people feel is cheesy or not, if you’re focused on being effective. Most of the complaints about Spirit Ranger are for how effective it is for so little effort. In my opinion, that’s really not a reason to stop playing it if you want to play Ranger. Why wouldn’t you play what is both highly effective and easy to play?

I’ve tried standard power and condition builds and I liked them a lot too, I guess when I brought my condition ranger/power ranger in pvp though and not dueling, I didn’t feel like I was helping the team much. Team mates seemed to really benefit from the stone and sun spirit especially, and I would use wolf and drakehound for typical crowd control while staying fairly tanky. I was just curious if there was a build better suited to support team members in pvp in terms of functionality. xD

There are other decent builds that I’m sure you’ve tried. Traps and Beastmaster are OK. I reserve my judgment on Power Ranger (I haven’t been impressed by it but some players say it’s really strong). However, Spirits is still the strongest spec, and also so happens to require very minimal effort.

That’s okay though. Let everyone else be salty, and keep on pew pewing in PvP, lol. I enjoy playing my Ranger and the unique support that it offers to a team.

sirloin.9145:

Diamond skin needs a change. For a condition necro it’s impossible to kill a dimond skin elementalist 1v1. + almost all cc from a necro is condition based and whit hardly any mobility u cant do anything, just stand there and die. Its even hard for power necros since like i said, cc comes from conditions (chills, immobilize, fear, blinds) nothing will work untill u get your target below 90% health. And since the elementalist has the best mobility they have a HUGE advantage and will remove a huge chunk of your health before the necro really can start the fight.
If they do it like this instead “conditions cannot be applied when the elementalist drops below 10-20% health” the fights would be more skillful and fun.

It’s very true, and I agree with this completely. It sucks to have your build completely negated by just one trait. I really hope they change it to something else one day so that Rabid builds aren’t just stone cold useless by themselves against a Diamond Skin Ele.

So here’s the thing.

In people’s opinions, yes, Spirit Ranger is considered “cheese” because it’s very easy to play. If you value people’s opinions over your own effectiveness or preferred playstyle, then I suppose you could play something else.

However, at the moment, Spirit Ranger is still the best support build for the Ranger, and it is probably the strongest built for the Ranger in PvP at the moment.

My advice? Don’t bother with what people feel is cheesy or not, if you’re focused on being effective. Most of the complaints about Spirit Ranger are for how effective it is for so little effort. In my opinion, that’s really not a reason to stop playing it if you want to play Ranger. Why wouldn’t you play what is both highly effective and easy to play?

Everyone’s having problems with Turret Engis right now in Conquest. They’re a massive headache to fight.

Dahir.4158:

Well I can’t talk much about PvE since I don’t really do it. I guess the discussion ends here :P

The thread title says PvE.

The builds you’re looking for are these:

Celestial Dobule Dagger – An all-around build that provides lots of sustain and support (AoE Boons, Healing, and Cleansing), while stacking lots of Might to do tons of damage.

Cleric’s Staff Bunker – A bunker with the power to lay down two water fields and heal allies pretty respectably.

Coopziana.1802:

Ok This is the build I have come up with on my own!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFQQFAWlMMokhtMwzN8RMABgE+QgFjaVe77xA-TRSFABA8AAUa/B70B0nSwqUGQp6P4ph4JleJfBACAgAMzZGAG6QH6QH6Q77AA-e

Thoughts?

Honestly? You’ll do very little damage. You have Serrated Stones with Pyromancer’s Puisance. You have two on-crit sigils with 11% crit chance (I assume the arcane spells are your way to “bypass” this, and I’ll tell you right now it won’t work). It’s a bad build.

Also, in general, Condi Ele is just slow and ineffective.

In general, for a build to do “good” Condi Damage for PvE, you need to be able to maintain high amounts of Bleed Stacks while also inflicting some other damaging condition (probably burning). The closest I got to it was still pretty terrible compared to a Warrior or Necro Condi build. I won’t even post it, just to emphasize that this is really a dead end for gameplay.

Condi Ele for WvW is pretty funny though, and can actually kill quite a few things eventually.

Uhhh, wait.

You know that only your Amulet, not your actual gear, gives you stats in the Mists, right?

I was pretty upset when they removed the Bleed on Maul to be honest. I think the GS trait makes a lot more sense when Maul was a Bleed instead of Vuln.

As of the April 2014 Patch, kits (including Engi Kits and Conjures) scale with the Weapon Damage of the weapon you have equipped. So a person with a Rare Level 80 Staff will do less damage with a kit than a person with an Exotic Level 80 Staff, assuming everything else (traits, stat arrays, etc) is equal.

Zelulose.8695:

Neko.9021:

Engineers and Mesmers have some of the worst condition removal for their meta specs. This is completely off.

There are some good players who don’t use the meta i have to include them in my findings but this is true. However, players don’t complain about the metas as much as they complain about the tricky custom builds that appear once in a while.
Do note I intended this to be a broad perspective not a meta build perspective.

You’re trying to talk about profession balance but not considering what you call the “meta build perspective.” Brilliant. So your analysis will have no impact on what people actually do.

Engineers and Mesmers have some of the worst condition removal for their meta specs. This is completely off.

For sPvP, Ele is actually in a pretty good spot, in terms of tiers and power level!

Double dagger Celestial Ele is very strong and is either Meta or very near meta. You run 6 Arcana for Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement, and Evasive Arcana. You then take 6 in Water to ger MASSIVE AoE heals, and take Cantrip Mastery/Soothing Wave, Cleansing Wave, and Cleansing Water. Take 2 in Earth for Elemental Shielding. Celestial+Strength Rune+Battle Sigil+Doom Sigil. High team support with lots of boons, cleanses, healing, and might stacking.

Staff Ele can be run as a sort of pseudo-healer character. You play with a very similar trait array as the D/D Celestial build, taking Earth’s Embrace and Blasting Staff instead. Cleric’s amulet makes your heals massive, and the precious Water fields you put down can be coordinated to further sustain. You have great AoE CC. Take Energy Sigil and Renewal Sigil. Runes can be Monk, Dwayna, or Water.

Scepter is generally run as a Fresh Air burst build. Look up Zoose’s S/F guide on youtube. You basically take 30 in Air for Fresh Air and 30 Arcana for lots of attunement swapping and Evasive Arcana.

The thing about Ele, however, as you might notice from these builds, is that their PvP builds are generally:
-30 in Arcana taking Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana
-At least 2 Cantrips

Mind you, most classes have trait lines that they’re stuck to in any game mode, so this isn’t a problem unique to the Ele. However, the Ele is indeed quite viable in sPvP, and very strong for its ability to play:
-A burst DPS class (Scepter Zerker Fresh Air)
-A healer (Cleric’s Staff)
-A sustained jack-of-all-trades (Celestial Daggers)

Honestly, the Ele is in a good place in the meta right now.

To be honest, I don’t know if this skill really should be nerfed.

The thing is, it only works if something’s dumb enough to stay in all 60+ ticks and eat all that damage.

Just create encounters and AI that don’t sit in all that damage. Nerfing FGS is just a lame workaround. If anything, a skill like FGS should exist as a deterrent for the devs from creating encounters and AI that allow themselves to be abused in such a manner.

By “staller” you mean “bunker.” That’s what a bunker build does. Stall for time until their allies come.

Mbelch.9028:

I’m sorry what is skill bar?

I’m taking it is some new vlog like point of interest but more combat focused?

Can anybody link me some reading material?

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/4743783
Starts at 17:25

I’m going to bump this in vain, in the hopes that the devs notice it.

Healing Power is honestly pretty strong on Elementalist.

It’s honestly terrible for general PvE. Sword will level you up much faster.

Don’t bother with stacking sigils anymore. It’s just not worth it.

Celestial Ele actually has a pretty good 1v1 matchup against most other classes, to be honest. You’ll outsustain most things, have good mobility if using OH Dagger and Lightning Flash, and you can build up Might over time to eventually do lots of damage. It just won’t have the burst potential of a Zerker Ele.