Guild Wars 2

1. Elementalist (difficult to survive in in PvE, nerfed as an effective mobile roamer in WvW, and completely unviable in sPvP)
2. Ranger (frustrating to play with in PvE, easily chased down with no escapes in WvW, only viable in sPvP due to a terrible cheesy Spirits build)
3. I actually feel the rest of the classes are largely balanced and at least excel and have build diversity in one of the larger formats. Necros underperform in PvE but are generally considered pretty strong in PvP formats, and Thief is theoretically very strong but just hard to survive with in all formats. I guess both of these classes kinda tie for the third spot here.

The damage of Retal in EoTM is much greater than regular WvW and sPvP.

Please fix it, ANet.

Good work as always.

Um. Blu has been shoutcasting 2v2s for quite a while, and has recently committed to shoutcasting the Mistpedia 2v2 Weekly tournament.

His shoutcasting there is pretty good.

I guess I agree with Countless? Blu should do… more 2v2 shoutcasting like he’s been doing?…

confused

Anyway. I do agree that Blu talks a bit too fast, has a tendency to get overexcited, and that 15v15 matches really are just too unwatchable to be properly shoutcasted.

Strangely, though, I feel that the actual game mode of GW2 PvP – 5v5 capture point – is also incredibly difficult to keep up with as well.

He’s right, really. Small skirmishes – no greater than 3 players per team – are really the most enjoyable to watch and shoutcast. And aren’t we lucky that Blu has recently started to shoutcast 2v2s every week! What a great guy!

Last week’s NA 2v2: http://www.twitch.tv/blu42/b/500836258
Last week’s EU 2v2: http://www.twitch.tv/blu42/b/500744946

Just watch the videos – Blu does exactly what Countless talks about – calling skills, talking about tactics, etc. This is not Blu’s fault per se, it’s the fact that a continuous zerg of 5v5 capture point is just really hard to keep up with in the current way it functions right now.

So sorry to say, but I think that ANet is making the right decision. Whether you DCed intentionally or due to bad connection, the fact remains that your account has proven itself to be not worthy of tournaments (MULTIPLE disconnects over a period of days is just not good enough to play in tournaments). Each DC ruins the game for nine other players. This policy seems completely justified.

maxinion.8396:

I don’t think you need to say that only DnT can run the meta speed builds, that’s very silly. I am by no means pro but I play my 30/10/10/20/0 s/f LH build in pugs all the time. It’s a matter of knowing content and practicing (as well as getting non-terrible groups, so I usually look for zerker only).

I listed quite a few guilds >.>

I think you’re a very good player if you can run 30/10/10/20/0 S/F in a PUG. Truly, I do.

sorrychief.2563:

30/x/x/x/x is actually the worst spec in the game, have fun dying because you can’t kill things fast enough.

30 fire only appeals to nubs because they see: POWER traitline and automatically think it will give them the most dps.

In an organized group you take it for the Fury-on-blasting-in-a-firefield trait. The 25-point damage modifier, plus the inherent Power of the trait line, does in fact significantly raise your DPS.

But most players, even in their own organized groups, will have a SIGNIFICANTLY difficult time surviving.

That’s why the Ele is in such a strange spot. We have guides for speedclears for classes like Warrior, Guardian, and Mesmer. And these builds are difficult to survive in but it can be done with enough practice. A glass Ele is a whole different league of difficulty when it comes to staying alive, however, due to inherently low stats and very few means of damage mitigation. Given, it is certainly possible, and I know groups like [LOD], [IX], [DnT], [rT], and [HC] have some pretty good players who can play specs like the ones DKeys lists in her own guide. But for many players who just play in PUGs on LFG or with their own random guildmates who may have middling DPS, pure glassy Ele builds with 30 in Fire can be VERY difficult to play with. Enough so that there should probably be some advice for players who want advice on how to run an Ele in a casual dungeon run with reasonable (but not speedclear level) kill times.

Maybe I really should just update my guide to help explain situations like this.

The Ele is in a curious spot. They have theoretically the highest dps and offensive team support in perfect conditions. 30/30/X does absolutely monstrous damage, and I would suggest looking at DKey’s guide on the PvE Ele if you want to know what the best of the best is.

But the truth is, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to stay alive in this spec for most players. Really really hard. Much harder than, say, 30/25/0/0/15 on a Warrior. You have low health, low armor, and not many means of damage mitigation.

There are of course many ways to increase your survivability while still doing some damage. Of course you’re a scrub and a terrible human being for trying to run any of these suboptimal specs and will never be good enough for a REAL dungeon group you noob! Trying to run something like 0/30/0/20/20 Fresh Air Dagger Focus with Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement for Protection on Earth Attune does VERY LITTLE DAMAGE and you DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT RUN IT. Just play your Warrior or Guardian alt if you can’t handle it, because if you can’t run dungeons at their very absolute fastest, then you shouldn’t run dungeons at all!

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Guys, its Burnfall.
We don’t need to address this any further. If you want to see this guy rage more because he can be killed by another class, go to the thief forum.
He is a little bit like Deimos in that he’s very often wrong and may or may not be trolling, but somewhat worse in that he’s always angry.

However, I do agree that this class needs some looking at. In WvW, we are relegated to a single, mostly boring role in zergs, and in sPvP we are relegated to a single, boring role in a one-shot burst that quite frankly thieves can do better (You can of course run glass staff, but I’m not going to pretend that’s viable, only that it’s fun).
If you’re having trouble clearing any PvE content, you should probably finish levelling up to 80.

I have a solution. What if we LoS Burnfall into the Warrior subforum and get him to post a rant about Healing Sig, and pull Demios’ aggro into the thread onto Burnfall. They’ll meet each other, wrack up infraction points, and then we can jump in at the end and finish them off.

Holy crap.

Rangers are being rated as 7th place by the general populace in sPvP?

My gosh, the general playerbase really is out of touch with the sPvP meta. No wonder the devs ignore everything players say.

I really feel this is a bit tilted toward WvW in the way the results are split up.

What is good for champ farming and open world exploring may not be as good for Dungeon Speedclearing.

I really feel that Dungeons ought to have their own category. They really are an entire game mode into themselves seperate from the rest of PvE, especially when factoring efficiency and speed. My condi necro probably tags everything in champ trains fine but the DPS might be lacking for it to be a great class for speedclears.

Erm, I’m still pretty sure that Spirit Ranger is one of the best, if not the best home point bunker in the game. The class certainly needs work but Ranger certainly has a role in team comps as a home defender.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

I still don’t understand how the class with the most armor and health can have a passive heal that heals for over 400 every single second, while the class with the least health and armor can at best (fully traited with everything) get 260 health WHEN USING AN ABILITY which of course isn’t every single second.

Eles can use abilities more than once per second. >.>

Please change up the variance of the matchup system. Please widen it back to what it was in the beginning, when randomization was introduced.

I think that ANet did a great thing experimenting with how to match up worlds – no randomization, lots of randomization, leagues, and little randomization (what we have now).

I feel that the “lots of randomization” option, which was the first system used to randomize matchups, was the most preferable system. It struck a good balance between what leagues did (with far too many matches that were simply too wide) and what’s going on now (which is pretty darn boring, if the titles of the matchup subsection are any indicator).

Please consider returning to the first randomization system.

I noticed that Cantrip Mastery works to reduce the CD of Burning Fire, but not of Earth’s Embrace.

Could you guys fix it so Cantrip Mastery also works with Earth’s Embrace?

Very amazing guide. Definitely deserves sticky.

This is a great guide. <3

Seekers Of The Storm [Zeal] is a casual WvW guild dedicated to defending SBI’s property and keeping our Borderland on lockdown.

We focus primarily on defensive play. We do raiding, scouting, seiging, upgrading structures, and work to cap objectives in an efficient and quick manner.

What to expect:

• We require 100% rep in WvW (you can represent other guilds in PvE).
• There are no dedicated times that the guild constantly runs, but we expect you to spend at least a sizable portion of your time playing and running with us.
• You must get on voice comms on the SBI Teakspeak server when running with us. Voice comms are a necessity. You must also rep us with the tag [Zeal] in TS.
• You must have at least one level 80 character. Due to the nature of our playstyle, we do not have any strict class requirements. However, we expect you to be able to play in small-scale team combat well. You should be able to hold yourself against roamers and small groups.
• We want to create a positive atmosphere in our guild and in the SBI community. You should come to WvW with an optimistic outlook, and not shout down or cuss out other players just because things are going badly. Zeal strives to be a guild that uplifts people’s spirits, and give them a constant point to rally on and hope even when our home BL is under heavy attack.
• We are recruiting for all time zones. It is our ultimate goal that Zeal can keep a small, constant, cohesive presence on our home borderlands, ready to respond when things go wrong, and ready to prepare when things are going right.
• Most importantly, we are looking for players who have a desire to learn, get better, and think for themselves. We are all trying to improve our skill at the game, and we want all members to be able to call shots or make judgement calls as is necessary.

If you are interested, you can contact the following officers:

• Neko.9021
• Dark Slayer.6251
• danbysbackbaby.6871
• VagueExperience.4079
• regnorak.6721
• Astrea.1794

To apply, go to: http://seekersofthestorm.enjin.com/recruitment

Seekers Of The Storm [Zeal] is a casual WvW guild dedicated to defending SBI’s property and keeping our Borderland on lockdown.

We focus primarily on defensive play. We do raiding, scouting, seiging, upgrading structures, and work to cap objectives in an efficient and quick manner.

What to expect:

• We require 100% rep in WvW (you can represent other guilds in PvE).
• There are no dedicated times that the guild constantly runs, but we expect you to spend at least a sizable portion of your time playing and running with us.
• You must get on voice comms on the SBI Teakspeak server when running with us. Voice comms are a necessity. You must also rep us with the tag [Zeal] in TS.
• You must have at least one level 80 character. Due to the nature of our playstyle, we do not have any strict class requirements. However, we expect you to be able to play in small-scale team combat well. You should be able to hold yourself against roamers and small groups.
• We want to create a positive atmosphere in our guild and in the SBI community. You should come to WvW with an optimistic outlook, and not shout down or cuss out other players just because things are going badly. Zeal strives to be a guild that uplifts people’s spirits, and give them a constant point to rally on and hope even when our home BL is under heavy attack.
• We are recruiting for all time zones. It is our ultimate goal that Zeal can keep a small, constant, cohesive presence on our home borderlands, ready to respond when things go wrong, and ready to prepare when things are going right.
• Most importantly, we are looking for players who have a desire to learn, get better, and think for themselves. We are all trying to improve our skill at the game, and we want all members to be able to call shots or make judgement calls as is necessary.

If you are interested, you can contact the following officers:

• Neko.9021
• Dark Slayer.6251
• danbysbackbaby.6871
• VagueExperience.4079
• regnorak.6721
• Astrea.1794

To apply, go to: http://seekersofthestorm.enjin.com/recruitment

Le Rooster.8715:

Yak’s bend is the most pathetic excuse of a server i’ve seen, seriously all you do is play for second why don’t you man up and start attacking no.1 for once and actually go for that no.1 spot instead of playing for second.

I feel your pain, I really do. Yak’s has been dragging SBI down for weeks now. This is how they always play. :X

Anierna.6918:

@ Daedalus: That’s how I play; I suck the fun out of the game by turning it into a science. I suppose you could say I find replacing “fun” with “efficiency” to BE fun. To my mind, the optimal is the ONLY viable, and the quest to discover the optimal IS the fun. Anything that’s not optimal is: (1) a burden on your team; (2) because of (1), is not viable; and (3) not fun. Playing the optimal with others who play the optimal is incredibly fun; playing any other way is not fun, as it wastes not only your time, but also the time of your teammates.

On that note, I’m looking for another project, now that this Ele guide is finished. Any suggestions? I don’t suppose any other class is lacking a comprehensive guide to its meta?

I’d suggest moving to a T1 class like Warrior or Guardian if you’re that feverent about it for guide making. Probably Guardian more than anything else, since it does have quite a bit of build variety with its various weapons.

Mesmer needs a guide for how to utilize its utilities in various spots in dungeons, such as spots to Focus pull or when to do certain tricks.

If you’re looking for a challenge, explore the world of making a Necromancer optimal in a dungeon group.

(Just to be clear, this isn’t sarcastic or meant to provoke a fight- just offering honest advice if you’re looking for something else in the game to turn into a ‘science’ for PvE Speedrunning)

Anierna.6918:

Don’t count your chickens yet – I can still be annoying. lol

Eg. As per the DISCLAIMER, in all dungeons and fractals up to 30 (IMO, up to 40), what logical reason would anyone have to use your d/f build instead of one of my meta builds? (“Fun” is not a logical reason; I’m asking in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.)

Because a person wants to play a Dagger Elementalist. The damage is still good and not all people want to run Lightning Hammer or Staff.

Grahhhhhh!

If you’re not going to use Conjurer and Lightning Hammer, then there’s absolutely no point to using Scepter Mainhand for anything remotely resembling a speed clear.

Scepter sustained damage is just bad. Really bad. Like Dagger Mainhand has pretty mediocre damage, but Scepter is far, far below it. If you’re making the conscious choice not to play Lightning Hammer or Fire Staff, then your next best bet is MH Dagger. Scepter by itself just doesn’t cut it for speed clearing of any sort. :X

Manuelito.6081:

Hi Neko, thank you for the good efforts!
Will you update the guide after the balance patch of 10 December?

I do indeed plan to update and am currently playing around with the patch to see what’s happened.

Right now, the meta build is probably at least 30 in Fire for Persisting Flames, Conjurer, and something else (not sure with the new patch), as well as at least 10 points in Water for Piercing Shards.

You generally stack might with Scepter and Fire Fields, then throw down Lightning Hammer and just spam its autoattack.

For some strange reason, people have been lately running this build without the Lightning Hammer, which is just bad. Scepter’s sustained damage is pretty bad (though its burst damage is good, so in a lot of cases like open-world leveling, you can probably kill most mobs with a well-placed Phoenix). The “meta” for Eles, really, is to stack might with Persisting Flames to keep up lots of Fury, and then use Lightning Hammer + Water Attunement + Piercing Shards for massive DPS (since you’ll gain 20% more damage, while attuned to water, as long as the enemy has Vulnerability on them).

There’s also putting 30 in Fire and just mashing 1 and 2 off cooldown in Fire Attunement. If your target sits in every tick of your Lava Fonts, you’re apparently doing massive DPS (in reality this can get messed up easily, not to mention if you have very little in the way of active defenses).

If you don’t mind playing a build that’s near-meta, 30 in Air with Fresh Air and Dagger/Focus is pretty sweet. If you pump 30 in Fire like for the other builds, you can still provide good Fury uptime and do really nice damage.

If you’re struggling with these builds, you can put more in Water and Arcana, though your DPS will take a huge hit, so that’s a tradeoff you’ll have to think about.

My guide goes over most of this, and will be updated once the new patch settles in.

The standard Staff Ele WvW build: http://intothemists.com/guides/guide.php?id=107

It does not. It only keeps the 5-point traits.

Guardian!

/15 char

An Ascended Weapon of your choice with the stat array of your choice. It has an awesome skin with particle effects. Make it Account Bound.

Just watch, ANet will add good rewards to the Season 2 chest (something like an unlimited season finisher and an Ascended Weapon of the stat array of your choice that has a special glowy exclusive skin) and people will QQ that the reward was too good, and people didn’t get a chance to do it cause they HAD to WvW or the rewards were so bad last time that they didn’t think it’d be good this time. :P

I agree, Warriors really need projectile reflection. If they changed this skill to reflect, maybe we could finally start running dungeons with 5 warriors instead of 3-4 Warriors plus a random Mesmer and/or Guardian for reflection.

Please don’t do S/D in dungeons. I really don’t understand why people have started going pure S/D. Its damage is simply terrible in any prolonged fight, which happens a lot in dungeons. S/D should only be done as a means to might stacking, and then bringing down Lightning Hammer.

I would suggest Mainhand Dagger, for sure. For your offhand, Dagger is good in the open world, and Focus is good as a utility weapon for all dungeons in general (the two Earth Skills are amazing, as is the projectile block in Air).

30 in Air is pretty darn great with Mainhand Dagger for PvE. It lets you spam Lightning Whip and still utilize the other attunements for utility.

From there, I’d put 10 in Arcana for Renewing Stanina, just for survivability.

Your last 30 points can go where you feel comfortable. You can put them all in Fire for Persisting Flames and do massive damage. You can put 10 more in Arcana for Elemental Attunement and some in Water for Cleansing Water and the heal-on-attune. Maybe even put some in earth for Rock Solid and Serrated Stones. There’s actually quite a few choices, but I think at this point, for Dagger Mainhand builds, going 30 in Air (for Fresh Air, Air Training, and Bolt to the Heart) and 10 in Arcana (for Renewing Stanina) is a great starting point.

Try and learn to play in full Berserker gear (trinkets and armor with scholar runes). Play around with traits to see how far you can push yourself. Come next week, my own guide will give some ideas for builds with this setup. The basic ones, however, would be:

30/30/0/0/10 – Lots of damage, Persisting Flames for Fury support
0/30/0/20/20 – Low damage but much better survivability (Cleanse-on-Water, Protection-on-Earth)

lordkrall.7241:

haviz.1340:

My point exactly. Shame that this “different type of players” doesn’t include us.

So what content is it your big group of players want that does not exist in the game?

More challenging content. A new permanent dungeon path that does not replace an existing dungeon path every 2 weeks and a hard-mode version of an existing path to go with it would be sufficient!

Black Box.9312:

I think a major part of the problem is the fact that they put the agony instabilities at the BEGINNING of each fractal tier rather than the end. If they had it at every 9th level instead of every 10th then at least players could work their way up to the gear check rather than being required to have the specific amount of AR from the start.

The very purpose of a gear check is to prevent people from completing content, even if they should otherwise be able to complete the rest of the content with skill. Putting the gate at the front of a fractal tier and preventing players from moving forward is working as intended.

And it sucks. I hate the agony-system being reliant on getting Ascended gear, most of which you get from doing things OTHER THAN FRACTALS.

I dream of a world where you get a small sum of dragonite ore from completing a dungeon path or fractal. I wouldn’t mind that. But as a person who spends a large amount of time in WvW (where keeps give a miserly amount of dragonite ore) and dungeons (where no dragonite ore exists), I find it insulting that of the large amount of time and effort I put into the game and its various modes, I so happen to play the wrong ones, as decided by Anet, when it comes to progressing gear.

I dislike it because of the way AR has been implemented into the game.

To get to 55 AR, one needs to either spend tons of gold on special infusions, or get Ascended Weapons.

To get ascended weapons, you need a bunch of crafting materials, at least one of which – Dragonite Ore – requires that you champ train.

To progress in Fractals I have to champ train. Ugh.

Also getting a Craft to 500 costs a TON of money. More money than most players can ever hope to achieve in normal gameplay.

And indeed, honestly, if Agony was all avoidable by skill, then it’d be fine. But scripted agony, when combined with incredible grind to get Agony Resistance, is just dumb.

I’d suggest trying to level with double daggers. The skills lend themselves to open pve roaming on offhand dagger, and mainhand dagger has pretty decent damage.

The main source of damage on a MH Dagger Ele is Lightning Whip (Air 1). It has a good damage coeffiient and nice range, and it’s easy to use.

From there, what traits you take have a huge impact on your character. Fresh Air, an Air Grandmaster Trait, is very cool because it lets you go back to Air Attunement and spam Lightning Whip over and over again. Essentially, for PvE, the idea behind a mainhand Dagger Fresh Air Ele is to blow your high damage cooldowns in other attunements (or swap to them for utility), then go right back to Air and keep autoattacking.

Good traits, post December 10 patch:
Arcana:
-Renewing Stamina, an Adept trait, gives double dodges. Great cheap defensive trait. Highly recommend.
-Elemental Attunement, moved to Master trait, gives boons on attunement swapping. It’s a large loss in damage but it’s a cool trait to basically have Protection on demand. Nice for casuals, but PROS don’t bother taking it! (I take it)
-Evasive Arcana, a GM trait, is just awesome, but the loss in damage from going this far into Arcana is massive. Best left to PvP and WvW builds, really. Still, the heal/cleanse in water, the blind in air, and blast finisher in Earth are all cool. It’s just a big DPS loss is all.

Water:
-Vital Striking, an Adept trait, is great. Scholar Runes on a trait, and encourages skillful play. Very good for increasing DPS.
-Cleansing Wave, moving to Master trait, is amazing at clearing condis. One neat thing is that the 15-point trait in Water is a sizable AoE heal, so picking up this lets you get that as well. Again, a huge DPS loss, and better for PvP builds, but if you want AoE cleansing on demand, this is pretty darn good.

Earth:
-Stone Splinters, an Adept trait, is amazing damage increase for daggers. It’s basically 10% more damage.
-Serrated Stone, an Adept trait, is also a good damage increasing trait, and nice for players who are going high into Earth Magic.
-Rock Solid is a nice support trait with on-demand Stability, and if you go with a heavy Earth build, swapping it in on certain encounters is great.
-The 25-point is a huge damage multiplier, and one that a lot of players overlook. Going 25 in Earth and picking up 2 of the 3 traits above leads to a build with a nice bit of Toughness while also doing a surprisingly large amount of damage.

Air:
-Bolt to the Heart, an Adept Trait, is insane, take it.
-Air Training, a Master Trait, is good for Fresh Air builds.
-Fresh Air is great and makes MH Dagger DPS builds viable.

Fire:
-You basically go in this trait like for Persisting Flames, a Grantmaster Trait. Go 30 in fire or not at all, honestly.
-Conjurer makes Lightning Hammer a viable weapon set (pair it with camping Water Attunement and Piercing Shards, a Water Adept trait, for massive damage). Take this if you’re into that.
-Internal Fire and Pyromancer’s Alicarity are general traits you pick up if going heavy in Fire.

Some nice trait arrays for MH Dagger Ele are:
-30/30/0/0/10 or 30/30/10/0/0 = Fury Provider, high damage
-0/30/25/10/5 or 0/30/25/15/0 or 0/30/30/0/10 = High damage and some toughness too, but no Fury
-0/30/0/20/20 or 0/30/0/10/30 = Bad damage but better survivability tools

“The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/first

First, do you have proper Warrior-DPS rotations? You want to maximize the amount of Vuln you output with Axe/X and GS. This is hugely important. Nike has a post on it.

Having 25 vuln, and then both banners plus 25 might and Fury uptime, can drastically change DPS.

Also, keep in mind that enemies have varying armor. Some mobs have especially low or high armor.

The most important part to maximizing your DPS in a dungeon…

is finding a good group to play with.

You need a group providing lots of vuln, might, fury, and special bonuses (such as Banners, Trait Stat Bonuses, Frost Spirit) to get those sorts of numbers.

(Teamwork is OP, please nerf)

Did you use Signet of Restoration before and now?

Agony is a unique effect. It is not a Condition in the same way that Bleeding, Cripple, and Poison are. Diamond Skin will not effect Agony.

This fractal alone can ruin fractals. Mainly because it totally violates some of the basic principles of the rest of dungeon design – mobs respawning and mobs being immune to alternate methods of damage mitigation (blinds and projectile blocks). It also splits the party up at the first stage which just sucks.

Please, this fractal is terrible. Delete it or rework it. I was pleasantly surprised by the changes made to fractals otherwise (especially the lowering of Defiance to 5), but the fact that this fractal is still as terrible as ever really makes me wonder if ANet tested this place at all.

Hello there!

I see a lot of posts on these forums asking about the place of the Staff Ele in zerg play in WvW, and a few nights ago my guild had a rather enjoyable night of constant zerg-busting on the Yak’s Bend Borderlands.

Props to Yak’s Bend for defending their structures so well. We couldn’t take anything!

Because our server, Stormbluff Isle, had lost the match early into the week, and because various acts of sabotage were ruining the whole take-keeps-and-defend-aspect of WvW (I had 5 of my Omega Golems destroyed by a troll spy from YB), we decided to forego trying to take stuff or defend stuff and just goof around picking fights in the open field.

I make a ton of mistakes in this video. I was tired and not quite in the right state of mind at the time – originally we were going to just havoc when we suddenly got a few more people and decided to switch to zerg busting instead. You can even see it in the video that I forgot to change my Air Trait – Zephyr’s Boon – to something more useful like Bolt to the Heart, since I was playing D/D Ele right before.

Still, we had a lot of casual fun beating up on bigger numbers, which is where I get the biggest satisfaction when playing WvW. And the footage was pretty OK as well, so I thought to share it with the community.

Keep in mind that zerg busting only works because the enemy players are not used to, or specced properly for WvW. It’s pretty apparent here in this video that we were mainly picking on PvE heroes. YB’s main WvW guilds such as One and Side Effect weren’t around as much (though we spot a few of them at times), so this is really more of us fighting their PUGs rather than their server’s best. Still, again, props to YB for seiging up so well, and don’t mind the trash talk – it’s typical for server banter. I actually think that while the actual structure-taking of WvW was kind of lame this week (seriously upset about having so much of my stuff destroyed by trolls who transferred over to my server), the fact that YB beat us so handily and never lost morale in the open field and let us fight with them was excellent. So the actual fighting was pretty fun! (Though the game mode, spoiled.)

Here is my video. It’s my stream’s raw footage from Nov 26. It shows some pretty nice coordination by our raid, as well as the unique things that Staff Eles bring to the table (large water fields, CC with no target limit, high Ranged AoE burst damage), and I even left the comms in so you can hear how our raid communicates with each other. Overall, while I do make a lot of mistakes (I blame it to 4 weeks of faceroll due to the leagues – my positioning is terrible and had I been fighting against better players I’d have died much more frequently), I think there’s a lot to be learned from them, and you can see some great examples of team work in the video. Also, I leave my own eventual deaths in the video, so you can see what I did wrong, along with what I did right.

Also, skip to 4:20 in the video, as not much happens before then. A big ol’ fight starts at 12:20.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

to me, a healing skill is only overpowered if it allowed a casual, average player to become godlike, cannot be defeated etc. healing signet does not achieve that, therefore healing signet is not overpowered.

Really? This is your absolutely only one criteria for if something is overpowered or not? Nothing else? Nothing else at all? Geeze.

What about if it allows an expert player to become “godlike”. What if its passive healing is SO HIGH it drives out certain specs from the meta because they simply can’t keep up with the healing per second? What if it’s so powerful that teams start double or triple stacking classes with the skill in question because it’s so effective in tournaments?

Tell me, would ANY of these criteria be valid to judging if a skill, in its practical ramifications, is overpowered or not? Or is judging how it effects Casuals the one and only way to judge this?

Ele, like all classes, requires that you are able to “click” with the mechanics and intuitively understand them. The Ele has a rather steep learning curve (really, the attunement-swapping is confusing; I’d suggest binding them to something easier like ctrl-something rather than f1-4), but honestly, once you learn it, it actually becomes a pretty middle-of-the pack class in terms of ease of use.

For example, for the life of me, I can’t get into the “flow” of play for a Thief or Mesmer. I have an easier time with the Guardian and Engineer, for whatever reason.

Conjures are what I would call an Alternate Playstyle for the Elementalist. What I mean is that they open up a whole new way to play the class (much like Mantra Mesmer or Venom Thief or Minion Master Necromancer, regardless of how good/bad these specs are). They are NOT like Kits for the Engineer, which the class was more or less designed around (for the Engineer, non-kit builds are actually the Alternate Playstyle).

For the Elementalist, I would seriously look into trying a build with lots in Arcane and playing around with that. That seems to be where the class is most fluid. In my signature, I list some builds to play around with, and the old bunkery specs are still great fun to play on. They do subpar damage and aren’t meant for speedclearing dungeons, but for general play they’re great! Honestly, the thing I’d focus on right now is putting a lot into Arcane, picking up Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina, and seeing where that takes you. Equip Air Sig for running around (it’s great now that it’s a Blind/Stunbreak!), and play around with all the weapons to see what you like (I like D/D a lot for open world roaming and D/F for Dungeons).

Ultimately, what you need to do, with any class, is find how to play the class’ “rythm”. For some classes this is very straightforward (Warrior and Guardian, for instance), hence leading to their popularity. For others, it is completely non-intuitive (Engineer), and for others, many people actually probably NEVER step foot into the class’ mechanic and instead play a more straightforward Alternate playstyle that, while still valid and good, doesn’t really take full use of the class’ mechanics (Greatsword-autoattacking Phantasm Mesmers that never shatter, Elementalists that stay in only one Attunement). I wouldn’t want that to happen, which is why while I still respect that the “meta” builds, as they are so called for the Ele, rely on a rather interesting interaction between camping Water Attunement and spamming 1 on Lightning Hammer, you should know that there is far more to the Elementalist than this, and in your general play and leveling up, you should explore these to experience the class to its fullest!

I feel the same way about Boon Duration on an Ele as the OP. It seems to be the best on a 30 Arcana Ele over most other choices. The interaction between Elemental Attunement, Sigil of Battle, and other ways Eles have to produce boons makes them perfect candidates to spec for full boon duration in WvW.

Given that, I’ve kind of just run around with Traveler Runes because these days I’m super lazy and just wanna go fast without pressing anything or giving up a utility slot. Vwoom.

Mochann.5298:

You really should include Staff DPS builds here. I’ve used a staff DPS to great effect in many dungeons.

I will.

Anierna.6918:

@ Zelyhn: that quote may indeed be sig-worthy

Dude, you can’t just quote a guy and blatantly leave out parts of the quote like that.

Stop trying to pick a fight. Seriously.

Despite some of the poor sportsmanship and fake accounts that have been floating around and ruining people’s golems and seige, I’m genuinely glad that YB has done so well and given SBI such a great challenge. We’ve learned a lot and I’m highly impressed with your server’s siege tactics.

I had a ton of fun today just busting zergs on the YB BL. Since we can’t really capture anything, we just went around killing people, and that was more fun in WvW than I’ve had than the entire season.

Thank you.