It’s a sort of troll build some people here have tried at one point or another. In WvW, Perplexity Runes carry the build.
I don’t think it’s all that great once people know what you’re up to (people usually die because they don’t expect it). The benefit the build has is that it can spec for tons of regen which lets you tank lots of damage, then heal and run away or kite for a ton of time.
It’s bad in sPvP with no Perplexity Runes (actually it’s just bad in general). In fact in sPvP it’s really bad for the same reason Condi Thief is bad in sPvP – you don’t kill anything fast enough to cap a point, and sPvP is ultimately a game of Time and Resource management.
Also, for Power Builds, with the new Strength Runes, just equip that with an Ammy/Gear with Healing Power, and you can play a tanky sustain build with good damage thanks to obscene might stacking.
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Yes.
/15 characters
I think the Ele is viable, but it’s still not meta. There are still stronger builds, but you can still succeed on Ele whereas before it was much, much harder.
Yeah, it’s viable.
Do it quick before ANet nerfs it again!
Burnig Speed evade frame was a great change.
Eles have long since lacked a lot of natural defenses on their weapon sets. Dagger Eles have been in a really rough spot as a Low-Health Light-Armor class in Melee range with no real defense other than boons and cantrips. The addition of an Evade Frame to Burning Speed now gives them a real tool to mitigate damage and skirmish with others, and I do believe it was a small change that went a long way to making the spec much better again.
some of us just want a bustling casual game, and to easily switch servers if the game becomes unfun (or the map rotation gets back to skyhammer),
some of us just got screwed over…
I think this was one of the big issues, to be honest.
A player who really doesn’t understand sPvP would press “Play Now” and be thrown into this hectic zerging of 8v8 and just get an entirely wrong impression. I know quite a few players who tried sPvP, played casual 8v8 hotjoins with rampant team switching and server-switching, and were just so soured at the way the whole thing worked that they never bothered to play again.
5v5 brings far more order and sanity to a game, and gives a better place for complete newbies to practice.
I’m glad that ANet is gently trying to push hotjoins into 5v5s. It will make the game much, much better.
That is the best picture ever. Thank you.
Erm, is this a serious post? Do you really think that, after 24 games, the fact that the algorithm put you at the top of the solo queue leaderboard means we’re all going to take you more seriously somehow?
Because I’ll tell you right now, it won’t.
Excellent video. It helped me a ton.
Look up the price of Rune of Melandru.
14 gold at the time of this post.
The reason for this is that Runes of Melandru can only be gotten either by Mystic Forge or by taking them from gear from the Temple of Melandru.
Thanks to the new Wardrobe system, Melandru Runes cannot be extracted from armor from the Temple of Melandru any longer. You cannot use Transmutation Crystals to move them around like you used to be able to. It is almost impossible to take Melandru runes out of these pieces of gear now if bought with Karma, which has skyrocketed the price of Melandru runes tremendously.
Personally, I don’t use Melandru runes. I’m in a predicament where several of my characters have gear that was originally bought with Karma or WvW badges, and I now cannot remove the runes or move them around. I’ve got a ton of gold locked up in armor with no way to get them out.
There IS one way, of course – the Upgrade Extractor. But those are incredibly expensive.
There NEEDS to be a way to get Runes out of gear that was bought via karma or WvW badges. Even if it destroys the gear with no other pieces left other than the upgrades put inside, the effect this is having on the price of certain rune sets is crazy. And it’s locking a lot of us out of our own money if we put expensive runes into Karma/WvW gear.
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So basically what your all saying is “People with internet that disconnects often should not be allowed to enjoy core gameplay or else they will get banned from said core gameplay”
Yes. You’re ruining the game for 9 other people.
They’re letting the community of players who shell out money for arenas vote for the kind of arenas people will play in now. And they have chosen 5v5 Domination!
(…and 10v10 TDM… >.>; )
Time to reroll Mesmer.
For leveling, you want:
Power
Precision
Ferocity
In that order.
Thief and Mesmer are the best for roaming atm.
It’s straight up overpowered. I replaced the Scholar Runes on my Zerker set with Strength Runes instead. I should have replaced the runes on my WvW set too while I had the chance, since they’ve doubled in price since I bought them. :/
Try Strength Runes instead. They are among the most overpowered sets now, and most Eles should be using them across ALL formats (WvW, PvP, PvE). That’s right. These runes are so good that it might be worth the slight damage loss from leaving Scholar Runes to use these runes in a PUG in PvE, because +45% Might Duration and +165 Power is just too good. In PvP they can carry a Cleric or Valk Ele’s damage entirely by giving you so much Might with Battle Sigil and Fire Field Might Stacking (such as with the new blast finisher in Water 3).
This !! Rune of strength just went up because nike just made a video about them over running scholar.
The damage you get is so good the trade off is worth it IMO but some people only focus support so I understand that too.
To me the loss isn’t that big when you consider how little it gives you on elemental attunement essentially 175 stat points and rune effects for 2-3 second on anything that isn’t might
Man, I bought mine at 3ish gold thinking “Don’t know why people aren’t getting these…” then Nike makes a video and of course they rise in price. I should have gotten my other sets while I had the chance. :/
They nerfed all creatures below Level 80:
Balancing Creature Stats
Creatures in the level range of 11-79 have had their stats adjusted to account for the player obtaining traits and stats from trait lines later on in the leveling process.
30 Water 30 Arcana for beginners.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJAoYhcMKc25wyBd0AA5hLmwyoQHlH5MjNA-TkAA0E5oyxljJHZO2cGiM/A
Use your blast finishers to stack Might in your fire fields. Attune to and dodge roll in Water for heals. Fire fields and burst damage in Fire, blast finishers and control in Earth, and sustained damage (Lightning Whip) and CC in Air. You’ll be running around with a ton of Might stacks thanks to Strength Runes + Battle Sigil + manual Fire Field might stacking.
Try Strength Runes instead. They are among the most overpowered sets now, and most Eles should be using them across ALL formats (WvW, PvP, PvE). That’s right. These runes are so good that it might be worth the slight damage loss from leaving Scholar Runes to use these runes in a PUG in PvE, because +45% Might Duration and +165 Power is just too good. In PvP they can carry a Cleric or Valk Ele’s damage entirely by giving you so much Might with Battle Sigil and Fire Field Might Stacking (such as with the new blast finisher in Water 3).
Recently in the dungeon subforum someone complained about the difficuluty of TA Aetherpath. The puzzles are distinct and the mechanics are strictly enforced. All the mobs must be fought and it’s pretty hard to just shrug off the mechanics of every enemy since they all hit fairly hard. The path itself is decently challenging.
Also, no one runs it.
The thing is, people hardly run dungeons at all. And the dungeons that do have uniquely hard mechanics or are challenging in any discernable way are just never run by the general community.
ANet has no incentive to create interestig enemies at a small-scale level because players have proven by their own play habits that by and large they prefer easy, grindy, mindless content, whether that is open world champ training or getting to fight in a huge zerg in WvW and run over people and call yourself a great PvPer. The entire system of GW2, for all of its great possibilities of small, precisely timed and skillfully played combat, truly encourages people to play at the lowest common denominator, and their attempts to make small content that is difficult has been spurned by the community in favor of more zerg farming and easy path farming if they actually DO dungeons. Sorrow’s Embrace might as well only have Path 1 and Path 3.
ANet can make unique and hard content like you said but why would they do that when most people would rather just do the easy and straightforward? Remember when AC2 used to be the most run path in the game. Now people hardly ever play it because the final boss actually requires a bit of effort, and people don’t want to put that in. ANet wants to make content people will play, not content that they won’t. There’s a reason they’ve abandoned dungeons.
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Try out the new trait, Stone Heart, when it comes out. Immunity to crits will stop the bleeds from the clones which might help?
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Personally, I find that the worst class to find in a PUG is Guardian. PUG Guardians are often bunkery healing builds camping Staff. If I had to pick one class to ban when I PUG, I’d select Guard. However, I dislike judging people based on class alone, so I let anyone join my PUG groups.
On the other hand, other classes such as Banner-Bunker Warrior, Decap Bunker Engi, Bunker Spirit Ranger, and Bunker Minion Master Necro all do a far better job at Bunkering the side nodes than Guardian does. So it’s not all that bad.
Bunkering and supporting are fundamentally different. I want to support my team without playing boring “the one and only” guardian build but it seems to be impossible now.
All of these builds I mentioned support their teams in their own ways. The Warrior provides condi removal and perma regen with high healing power and good CC with Mace and Shield. The decap Engi provides a continuous stream of constant CC, both hard and soft. The Ranger provides the buffs from Spirits and the Spirit Res. The Minion Master Necro has lots of soft and hard CC and really helps put the pressure on someone with their passive AI. These builds are ALSO very strong at holding a point in a 1v1, because the Warrior and Engi are unkillable in a 1v1 and the Necro and Ranger are very strong 1v1 specs when fighting over a node. The Guardian, on the other hand, while able to hold a point for a little bit, really needs to fight in team fights, and hence why they end up as Mid-Bunker rather than as a Home Bunker.
But Home Bunker is a very important job, even if it’s the dullest thing in the world. And what makes these specs strong is not only their 1v1 bunker potential, but their ability to also contribute in a team fight.
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Guardians are weird because despite the fact that they fill the job of general mid-bunker support far better than any other class, they aren’t particulalry broken. They do pretty bad damage, can still be focused down if their cooldowns are blown, have limited mobility, and honestly need to work with other players to really accomplish anything (as opposed to the various Condi-Bunkers that can tank as well as do good damage).
At the same time, they certainly just sort of push out any serious mid-support class.
I really don’t think much can be done. While Eles get close to Guardians in terms of boon support, they lack RANGE on their boons. While an Ele in theory should be giving out tons of Protection, Regen, and Stability if set up as Bunker, it rarely turns out this way due to the incredibly small range of Elemental Attunent and Rock Solid – 240 units.
Guardians will always be the best support class if only because their virtues have a massive 1200 range, and their shouts a 600 range.
On the other hand, other classes such as Banner-Bunker Warrior, Decap Bunker Engi, Bunker Spirit Ranger, and Bunker Minion Master Necro all do a far better job at Bunkering the side nodes than Guardian does. So it’s not all that bad.
Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).
Have you seen dagger ele recently? I haven’t.
I play MH Dagger Ele in PvE.
In PvE you can play any set, any weapon, any build. Just what you like. But the fact is – scepter is better in all respects.
That isn’t true at all. Unless you’re using Scepter for Might Stacking and then using Lightning Hammer, the sustained damage of Scepter is completely awful. MH Dagger is a good general weapon of choice for Eles in difficult instanced content like Fractals:
http://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwQtsq8Rv5LUqwXRm3xOYnr1oYsitaiSi
The trash is meant to be skipped in Arah. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was intentional that a lot of the Paths in GW2 are designed with skippable mobs, to encourage the use of alternative means and skills to deal with encounters (stealth, speed, etc.)
But I guess a lot of people don’t like that, hence why newer content now just has a long drudge of non-skippable trash. >.<
Five Elementalists :P
Just wanted to restate that if you needed help, and you’re on NA, I’d be glad to help you through it. It’s certainly a tough path.
Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).
Have you seen dagger ele recently? I haven’t.
I play MH Dagger Ele in PvE.
Casters aren’t inherently Ranged though.
Sword Mesmer and Dagger Necro are both Melee builds, and Dagger Ele is Close-Ranged (closer to Melee than it is to a traditional far-Range Caster).
In PvE, Fire Staff Ele is the most damage in the game, yes.
But I think most people play things other than this because it’s hard to run in a PUG with that sort of build (incredibly squishy).
For PvP, if going for great damage, there’s a lot of good choices. Thief is good burst direct damage combined with mobility. Warrior has good sustained damage while also being very easy to play and very tanky. Ranger, Engi, and Necro have good Condi Damage builds and are tanky thanks to being able to take defensive stats.
Going back to PvE, Ele does have some really strong DPS-oriented builds. Fire Staff and Lightning Hammer Ele are the best for speedclearing and do really great damage. Again, though, they’re hard to take into PUGs without going down. For that reason, if I PUG, I’ll often take a D/F 30/30/0/0/10 build due to the great defensive cooldowns on Focus.
In PvE in general, Mesmer has very high theoretical damage (spamming Phantasms) but often ends up on the bottom because of how easily their Phantasms die, and the windup time to summon them; they have some of the best team utility in the game. Thief has astounding Single Target damage with Backstab and great AoE damage with Sword, as well as the utility of Pistol 5. Warrior has great base damage, good offensive buffs, and is very easy to survive in thanks to high base stats. Guardian has very good base damage as well, and access to a ton of Defensive utility to carry your team through just about anything.
Those would be my suggestions.
Longbow has better sustained damage when Ranging.
Compare the autoattacks of the two:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dual_Shot
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding_Shot
Longbow also has generally superior utility. A Fire Field, a blast finisher, a blind, and a really quick and easy to land, long-duration Immobilize.
Rifle has a bleed on its autoattack but its more of a Burst-Damage Weapon than a Condi Weapon. Kill Shot and Volley do a nice spike of damage.
However, Arcing Arrow on the Longbow still does insane burst damage, and it’s ground-targeted, and it’s also a blast finisher.
Longbow’s sustained damage and utility is far superior, so you should use it if you find yourself in a situation where you want to Range and kite.
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Eles have wanted this trait to affect traits other than the 5-point ones for quite a while now.
In particular, the various +10% DPS traits when attuned to a specific Element do not carry over for 5 seconds when swapping attunements. If they did, an attunement-swapping Ele could get some really awsome burst and sustained damage by dancing around attunements. Sadly a single-attunement camping Ele still retains considerably higher because of the way these traits were designed.
If you’re NA I’ll do the path with you and help you out.
Personally I spend the time trying to get all the meta “top player” objectives while our team loses, to maximize my points rewarded.
lol
I’ve always wanted a really good 30-in-Virtues Guardian to roam along with.
I’m really confused. The power creep in this game is real. The professions, in general, are far stronger than they were at launch.
Warrior – Healing Signet got doubled, massively increasing their survivability. Cleansing Ire lets them now remove conditions (once their ‘weakness’), and Berserker’s Stance is changed to give them Condi Immunity.
Ranger – Increase in survivability to Spirits makes it a dominant AI-clutter class
Elementalist – Fresh Air, a new trait, massively increases the Elementalist’s DPS
Necromancer – Dhuumfire, a new trait, massively buffs Condi Necro
Engineer – Healing Turret buff hugely increases their survivability
Thief – Buff to Initiative regen effectively increases the power of Spam (Pistol Whip builds, for example, in the current meta)
Mesmer – Prismatic Understanding buffed to give boons, and then later to give them more frequently.
Combined with the stat gains by Ascended Trinkets which give huge stat bonuses over Exotic Trinkets, and then Ascended Weapons which effectively increase Power damage by 5% thanks to the base Weapon Damage increase…
This game has had massive power creep and it’s about time they started toning classes down, both in survivability as well as damage.
I like how the OP admitted that a Warrior could just play Hambow or Condi War and they’d do well, but any other spec sucks. Warrior has (at least) already two viable specs in dueling and the OP’s complaint is that they need more. Great stuff.
Fresh Air Dagger Focus. Look up Dkeys’ guide to it on these forums.
Guardians have the best support in the game, high base damage, and a lot of inherent survivability. They’re balanced out by their low mobility.
That kick is so annoying. It actually took me a while when I first started to really see the tell for it. It’s not an easy tell. Look up footage.
Basically though, generally, Lupi will do a kick after spawning a grub. He generally alternates between kicking and spawning a grub.
This is a cool idea. I support this.
Elemental Contingency gives the Elementalist access to Retaliation. That’s huge.
No, it’s minor. Eles aren’t facetanks, they’re built to either cc the enemy or avoid being hit. If they take enough hits for retaliation to become useful, they’re gonna lose the fight.
If you’ve ever fought a DPS Guardian, you’ll see just how strong Retal can be on a DPS build. DPS Guards are very squishy yet they get a lot of mileage of damage out of having Retal.
Elemental Contingency gives the Elementalist access to Retaliation. That’s huge. If the ICD for Elemental Contingency is per attunement, I could definitely see stacking Might for tons of Power and then getting hit while in Fire to do, well, really massive retal damage.
It’ll be single target since it has an internal cooldown. It’ll proc on the first thing it Burns every 5 seconds.
See: every trait in the game that has an internal cooldown is always single-target.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Elemental_Power
There is hope. GoEP has 5s ICD per target.
Tried and tested it myself. 0/0/0/0/0 Trait Line. Use GoEP in Fire Attunement then Meteor Shower the PvP Golems. You’ll see multiple burn procs.
That’s not a trait.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dhuumfire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incendiary_Powder
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leg_Specialist
Oh my.
Dude, do the daily world boss chain and get tons of gold that way.
Join a guild, follow the tag, and do a bunch of world bosses and get a ton of rares (which you can sell or salvage for gold).
You should easily get a full set of exotic gear in a week that way.
Whisper me in-game and I’ll help you find a group to do daily world boss train with.
Also, Arah is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. Especially on a Necromancer. I don’t suggest doing it just for the armor (unless you really desperately need the skin). If you’re just going for exotic gear, much more economical to buy it off of the TP.
It’ll be single target since it has an internal cooldown. It’ll proc on the first thing it Burns every 5 seconds.
See: every trait in the game that has an internal cooldown is always single-target.
I just max melee her with Lightning Whip. In fact that’s the secret to Ele survivability in fractals. Your “melee” is actually close range, so you have double the gap in autoattacks versus, say, a Warrior’s Axe. If you learn the absolute max distance away from your target with Lightning Whip, you have the perfect distance to react to an enemy and dodge them as necessary.
Also, as others have said, Mai Trin’s gap closer is Undodgeable. You need to block it. Swirling Winds, Magnetic Wave, Obsidian Flesh, and Arcane Shield just for yourself are plenty.