Guild Wars 2

Staff is a pretty great utility weapon, but it’s certainly no main weapon. In a group with no might stacking, Empowering then switching to another weapon is pretty standard. And Line of Warding is a great skill for creative players.

But autoattacking with Staff is pretty terrible in dungeons.

The Ele is definitely the spammy-class.

The mantra of the Ele is basically “Press all the buttons, so you can press more buttons.”

This guide is gonna be updated soon… Getting ready for when the December patch hits us.

It should be noted that this build’s damage is quite good… If you’re not aiming for a speedclear record it most certainly will still be more than adequate for your average run, really. To me, Dagger/Focus with Fresh Air represents the most “normal” build for the Ele in PvE, and one that really highlights and shows off its cool versatility.

Razor.6392:

Stopped reading at casting drake breath to benefit from bonus 10% damage from Air.

Lingering attunements doesn’t work that way.

He’s referring to the fact that you can start the spell, then switch to Air and gain the bonus damage from Air Training, since the spell is dealing damage while you’re attuned to Air, even if it’s a Fire spell.

NoTrigger.8396:

use lightninghammer. you can stack so much more might/fury for your group and your dps is higher than staff. you can switch between attunements without losing alot of dps and with an energy sigil thats enough to keep you alive in most situations.

http://imgur.com/a/PsqB1
and that was in a pug.

Is that the legendary Scepter-Focus-Lightning Hammer build that I’ve long since felt was the optimal build for speedruns?

Anierna.6918:

@ Neko: I mentioned your initial comment on Zelyhn’s guide earlier, and I totally agree. I just think that, for both your guide and Zelyhn’s, there needs to be in the opening paragraph something like “The s/x + LH build is top DPS and might-stacking. If these are important to you, use that build. No other builds mentioned in this guide will excel in both those areas to the same degree.” It is simply amazing how many noobs on this forum refuse to use LH because they think their own builds somehow do higher damage. We need to combat that by asserting truth up-front.

I totally understand that the LH spec in your guide is just outdated; my own guide was written just a few weeks ago, and it’s already outdated as well. What I don’t understand is this: there are “best-practices” that the most elite guilds EXPECT applicants to know, but those methods were not included in your guide, Zelyhn’s guide, or any other guide I could find on this forum. That’s why I felt it was VERY important for me to write my own guide and post them there. There are a few things that still aren’t in it, but I intend to add them after the Dec 10th update.

I assume that you and Zelyhn know the same methods I do for speed-clears, but you never included them in your guides. So it’s very hard for someone who wants to maximize his damage or properly play his class in the context of an experienced speed-group to learn what he is supposed to do, because neither of your guides cover that. I’d like you to edit your guides to provide that information; if you like, you could simply copy what I wrote into your thread, but even if you choose not to do that, it DOES still need to be there. Part of why there are so many noobs in this game is that it’s difficult for them to learn. Step 1 for a new player interested in playing the best he can are looking at guides by yourself, Zelyhn, and Daphoenix, but those guides are not giving him the information that he needs to play at a high level. It’s up to you guys to fix that. I’ve tried my best, writing my own guide, but there’s really not much more that I can do.

How about this, I’ll link to your guide for your guide since you seem far more into it than I am, these days. To be honest, I stopped being as into “elite” PvE a long, long time ago. I just want people to have decent damage and use good pulling techniques. I even stopped swapping between a stacking weapon and a Force weapon a while ago just because I’d always feel crushed when I lost my stacks and had to swap out and everything. Just became a hassle.

I’ll make sure to make it more clear about what is the “best” though, and I was pretty good about linking to other guides that I felt would help others. I do think your own guide is closer to the “meta” than any of the others in this forum. And it’ll definitely be one of the first changes I link to.

Given that, to be quite honest, I don’t even know what the “optimal” LH Ele trait spread array is, outside of at least 10 in Water for the abusive interaction between Piercing Shards, staying in Water Attunement, and Lightning Hammer have together. And I’ve listened to enough PvE theorycrafters top dog and out-calculate and spreadsheet wars each other over whether more in Air or Fire or whatever leads to ever-so-slightly higher DPS (and subsequently got a bit sick of thinking about it). I guess I’ll look around and try and figure out what the “best” one is for Might stacking, Fury, and DPS (probably something like… 30/0/10/20/0, and then you can put 10 points in either Air for more damage or 10 in Arcana for the slightly more noobish among us), just to make sure that information is out there. I’ll put it out once we see what December 10 has in store for us.

By the way, I would also suggest PMing a mod and asking for your guide to be stickied, if you feel it’s an important enough resource for the community as a whole. It’s probably about time we had a dedicated pure meta-builds guide on the sticky section.

Anierna.6918:

PART 2

Neko’s guide was a lot better with the 30/20/0/20/0 s/x + LH spec he gave, but it’s still not optimal damage using LH. Maybe he just hasn’t updated it recently.

Then there were things like double-bloodlust stacking, aiming Dragon’s Tooth, and banner stomping in fire fields for might that are INCREDIBLY important in the dungeon tours that top-quality guilds do every day, but which aren’t included in any guide published on this forum that I could find. That’s why I wrote my own guide, here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/The-Ele-Meta-Dungeon-Speed-Runs/first#post3112677

After the Dec 10th update, I plan to update the guide to include the s/f + LH build I’m currently using, which I described here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/staff-and-s-d-ele/first#post3245035

I view the changes I made to my ele during my time in GW2 as an inevitable evolution towards a meta-build, steadily trading in defense for offense as my skill increased. It’s taken me six months of gameplay to reach this point, but I only started playing the game 8 months after it was released. Most of the ele’s in this forum (I’m just guessing, but I’d say that includes Zelyhn, Neko, DEKeyz, etc) have been with this game since launch, or maybe 1 or 2 months after it. I know that DEKeyz was already playing a meta-spec before I even bought this game; what I’m wondering is, why hasn’t Zelyhn? Why is he still stuck in a sub-optimal spec, rather than evolving away from survivability and towards damage? I know he’s not kittened, so is he just stubborn, or what?

I think I’ve always been pretty blunt that Scepter + LH is the “meta” build for optimal groups. I just list everything else because I find as a matter of practicality, it’s actually fairly hard to pull it off. Just wanting to put my own position out there. Besides, I stopped running with optimal groups a long time ago. These days I play with all sorts of play-as-you-want players and have fun doing that. My guide is indeed outdated and I’ll update it once the December patch comes (I keep putting it off every time changes are made), but I try and put forth that the guide is a guide to the Ele in dungeons, in general. This includes meta builds as well as near-meta builds and non-meta builds. I’m also going to broaden the guide into something larger, mainly because at this point in my playtime in GW2, I’d rather write a guide that talks about more aspects of the game for the Elementalist than just Dungeons, since I think that saying “here is how to play Lightning Hammer Ele, GO!” is a rather poor impression to give of the Elementalist, when there are surely other things to do with it, as well as many other styles of play and literally other game modes, such as the open world PvE and WvW.

LH Ele with Scepter is the best (again, something that I was one of the first to point out in a public guide, and which ended up becoming adopted as the meta) for speedclearing dungeons, but I seek to explore other non-optimal builds when I write a guide on the Elementalist. I also made a wonderful video about Fire Staff Elementalist which demonstrated its DPS, though to this day I still do not like the build simply because its only utility is fire fields, plus you gotta just stick around in Fire Attunement and hope you don’t die from the lack of vigor or any other real defensive abilities other than Burning Retreat.

^^

The sustained damage of Scepter is terrible, even if you camp Fire attunement and spam 2-3 and 4-5 Dagger off cooldown. It’s only good for Might Stacking and then combining it with Lighting Hammer (an idea I pointed out quite a while ago that has since become the meta for speed clear groups).

I don’t use Focus in the open world. I find OH Dagger much more fluid there. But in Dungeons, I find the utility of Focus to be far and above superior. In fact I’m fairly certain that Scepter/Focus with Lightning Hammer is the “best” combination for Ele, if you don’t mind the sheer awkwardness of it.

The tome heal allows your team to facetank some bosses in dungeons or resist an onslaught in a huge team fight in WvW. It seems to work fine to me.

Hey dude,

If you’re interested in commanding, you should join your server’s comms, and try and seek guidance from the guilds on your servers. They’ll be better able to tell you what to do than the Profession Forums.

http://eredonterrace.enjin.com/

I suggest finding their teamspeak server and getting in there as well.

And sorry if you’ve already done this all, I’m just trying to point you in the right direction to find guidance. Generally, when trying to learn to command, you should look to your server community and its WvW guilds.

The Spotter-Spirit build is really strong, and has so many dodges it’s absurd. It has nothing to do with the class, it’s all the players themselves.;

Just so we’re clear, I do not believe that people who made Infused gear are actually being screwed over in this regard. As far as I understand it, you can still gain infusions which have Agony Resistance (such as the Omni Infusion from the vendor, or the ones you make in the Mystic Forge), but they are creating a WHOLE NEW CATEGORY of infusions called “Agony Resistance Infusions”, not to be confused with Infusions which so happen to have Agony Resistance. Agony Resistance Infusions only fit into items which have an Agony Resistance Infusion Slot, not to be confused with a regular Infusion Slot. The items which will have an Agony Resistance Infusion Slot will be items that were once Infused. And of course, the changes are to items which are Infused, not to be confused with items which simply have Infusions.

Ugh, could you guys have chosen possibly more confusing terminology? I will still somehow able to understand the vague ramblings in the preview notes and subsequent clarifications by the devs after looking over it for a while.

This is a really simple request.

One of the things that really breaks Fractals is the horrid way in which Defiant goes passed 5. This is terrible. It means that we cannot use CC to deal with enemies in an intelligent manner, and instead must rely wholely on other mechanics instead. While I don’t think Defiant was the best way to deal with the problem of chained CC, at least have the decency to keep the Defiant stack to 5 in a Dungeon so that it will at least work properly.

Directly inspired by: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Defiant-and-new-awesome-boss/

How does a fractal leaderboard work anyway? And will it be as terrible as the PvP leaderboards with 2 hour degen?

O.O

/15 char

In my opinion, stick to Soldier’s Gear and Berserker’s Gear, and take an array like 0/10/0/30/30 or 0/0/20/20/30 or 0/30/0/10/30 or 0/30/0/20/20.

They’re never going to change this.

It was an overreaction of a change in a very niche meta and the developers are far too proud to ever admit a mistake like that (see choosing to make Immobilize stack, even if basically all players find it to be an absolutely abhorrent change to the game).

Obviously it should go back to what it was, originally. All of the Elementalist’s problems in PvP literally come down to survivability and mobility, and I’m fairly certain if this change alone were made, the class would be fine. But as long as the Elementalist lacks a good, low-CD escape, it will always be the worst PvP class with the lowest stats.

S/F with a group of friends and Fresh Air seems pretty good. In fact, I’m pretty sure S/F is better for actual fights these days over Offhand Dagger, really.

I’m assuming we’re using Elementalist as close to “meta” as possible – either the Scepter Fresh Air burst build or CmC’s Rock Solid build, as well as the possible new Diamond Skin build. These are my thoughts…

Elementalist v Guardian – Ele gets the nerf, and Guardian will always either tie or win

Elementalist v Engineer – Engi gets the nerf, but Engi still beats Ele handily

Elementalist v Mesmer – Ele gets the nerf, and loses even more to its natural counter

Elementalist v Necroamancer – Necro gets the nerf, still beats the Ele unless it’s a 1v1 and the Ele has specced with the new Diamond Skin, in which it’s a very long battle, and then the Necro wins

Elementalist v Ranger – Ranger gets the nerf, still beats Ele because it’s the natural counter to the class along with Mesmer

Elementalist v Thief – Thief gets the nerf, still beats them because Larcenous Strike still steals a precious boon from the Ele

Elementalist v Warrior – Warrior gets the nerf, but still wins because Heal Sig wasn’t nerfed

Ele can still win these if the opponent is bad and they use the cheesy Fresh Air burst build, only to be killed by someone else walking by because it’s squishy as hell.

Overall, a pretty good patch for Ele, I’d say.

This build is so all over the place I don’t even know what’s going on.

Most people run Signet of Restoration by itself and do it just fine without having to build around it. It’s fine as is.

Also, if you’re doing some sort of condi bunker (not that I think Eles make good condi bunkers), I believe the choice gear is Dire, Apothecary, and Settler’s gear. The Soldier’s Pieces and Sharpening Stones are a bit odd thrown in there.

Personally, I just run 0/10/0/30/30 with Soldiers and Berserkers gear for WvW small-scale, which is what I think this build is for.

Floryn.6307:

Neko.9021:

I’m very confused. Help me out here. Where in the article does it say your fractal level is being reset to 30?

-> * legit confused, just trying to find the exact wording *

it’s not there it’s here (added anchor)

Oh, thank you. ^^

…
…
…

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I’m very confused. Help me out here. Where in the article does it say your fractal level is being reset to 30?

→ * legit confused, just trying to find the exact wording *

Is there even that much in the December Patch that changes the D/F builds though? We managed to successfully QQ enough to save Renewing Stamina so I thought the build was more or less the same even post-December patch.

I’ve been trying to stream my WvW Raids. I mainly play Ele, though you’ll see me playing Guardian and Engineer at times as well.

Try WvW Raiding. Staff Ele functions there just like it does in your imagination. Find a good WvW Raid Group that uses voice comms and calls out Water FIelds and you’ll see just how wizardly the Ele can really be in large battles.

It’s very effective.

Try it in the Mists. Try the difference between a Clerics and Soldier’s Ammy, and see how much more you just heal back up. Or try making an Ele with nothing in Water, or one that doesn’t have Elemental Attunement.

Actually, it’s really just very cumulative. The effect of the 5 point water trait and Regen and sig of restoration give the Ele a lot of passive regen, and Healing Power scales real well with ALL OF THEM PUT TOGETHER.

Elementalists are not suitable to be Commanders in the way WvW uses them. The Elementalist is, at best, a Destroyer type of character if running with the frontline. They cannot be Frontline themselves, their abilities just don’t lend themselves to that.

This isn’t to say Eles can’t be leaders in other ways, but they can’t be the guy that Warriors and Guardians stack on to become a Hammer Train. That’s just the cold hard truth of the matter.

An Elementalist should either be a Backline character with Staff or a Destroyer character with D/D (or S/D possibly, in GvG). They were intentionally designed such that they could not run with the front line and endure all the focus fire that the frontline have to be able to endure.

Burnfall.9573:

End of child play.

Take a look at this, explain a to Arena.net and the community, why D/D Elementalist outrageous bursts, shouldn’t be balanced?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBOc6Lv_BYk

Only serious.. elaborate replies are welcomed.

(This evidence is more than what i had anticipated in the posted thread. In other word, i underestimated the capacity of D/D Elementalist bursts (10k+bursts= Unacceptable))

Once again, my encouragement to Arena.net; this game breaking unbalance class, must be dealt with, without having any remorse or sympathy whatsoever,

This threat must be severely dealt with or eliminated, at once.

-Arena.net, we the community would like to Thank You! in advance

The people he fought in that video were bad. Like really bad. It’s incredibly unlikely for an Ele to ever get off this sort of burst short of the enemy player being really bad or afk.

Here’s a thought. Players have been asking for Conjures to be like Kits. That’s cool and I support the idea, but what if we went a different route, and made them like Banners instead?

In particular, I think we could save the Fire tree, Ele survivability, and Conjures, all in one if we made the Fire tree support them better.

Here’s my idea. Maybe Conjures shouldn’t create one in your hands and one on the field. You just summon one to the field, and you can pick it up. It has no charges, it just lasts for 60 seconds, then it’s gone. You can also drop the weapon, and rather than disappearing, someone else can pick it up once you’re done with it.

So what do we do with Conjurer? Well, we could just get rid of it, and create way better traits to support Conjures instead.

For instance, what about a trait that said:
-“Conjures give their stat bonuses to nearby allies.”

This could easily be worth a Master Trait slot. Giving your allies tons of bonus stats from weapons would turn the Conjures into bright little totems that would significantly boost your party in support, while also having great functionality as well. Warrior Banners are less functional, but they don’t have to trait to have them endow (gigantic) stat bonuses, so it seems like a pretty fair way to treat them.

Then, perhaps for a Grandmaster Trait, we could make something like this:
“Conjures grant a boon to nearby allies. Hammer – 5 seconds of Swiftness every 3 seconds, Axe – 5 seconds of Might every 3 seconds, Bow – 5 seconds of Regen every 3 seconds, Shield – 5 seconds of Protection every 3 seconds.”

This would allow you to build a wonderfully colorful support-damage Elementalist around conjures while giving out boons and bonuses, and then of course, the conjures themselves, which no longer have charges, and can be passed around since they don’t disappear when dropped! The protection granted by the Shield would also be tremendously helpful, giving the Elementalist a way to gain Protection outside of having to spec 20 in the Arcana tree, while also investing in a DPS tree.

Just my thoughts.

Burnfall.9573:

Sincerely, i can’t get this truth ranger video out of my head. What sadden me the most, is when the truth speaks within the soul to my poor ranger of how she has been deceived and manipulated far too long, into thinking she would be taken care of and how much she was special.

I ranger, stand alone, with a shattered heart, broken in million of pieces.

Held in a solitary prison, designed solely for me, left abandoned by my creator.

In my prison, i am constantly being reminded, how much a failure i am, how much pain i must bear, how much suffering i must abide to.

If i scream; no one will hear me, if i cry in agony; no one will listen to me, if i pray for salvation; death comes and torments me.

Light, i don’t want to cry in anymore, i don’t want to scream anymore, i don’t want to pray anymore.

Light; I stretch my fragile arms to you, embrace me, hold me, release me, from this hurtful, this hateful world of guild wars 2.

:( Ranger

Uh, are you okay?

It’s pretty darn tough. Dungeons in this game are pretty hard, in my opinion. I’d suggest leveling a bit more, watching some guides on youtube (even Strife’s old video guides work), and using good DPS builds.

Here is a list of guides to help you:

Warrior:
-Axe/Mace (Nike)

Guardian:
-Sword (Brazil)
-Greatsword (Guang)
-Hammer (Guang)

Mesmer:
-Sword/Focus (Guang)
-Sword/Focus – Old (Brazil)

Elementalist:
-Fire Staff (Guang)
-Scepter/Dagger (Hamartia)
-Dagger/Focus (Zelhyn)
-Comprehensive Guide (Neko)

Engineer:
-Grenades (Guang)

Thief:
-Backstab (Brazil)
-Comprehensive Guide (djk)

Ranger:
-Sword (Brazil)
-Comprehensive Guide (Guang)

Necromancer:
-Dagger (Nike)
(Rumors tell me that spoj will be making an updated Necro Dagger guide soon enough)

Ranger is very good in sPvP, a very strong roaming class in WvW, and has a top tier spec for PvE Dungeons with a Spotter+Frost Spirit Zerker Sword build. The only place they really are very bad is in WvW Zergs.

I’m legitimately confused. The Ranger is in a pretty strong position at the moment.

It was Anet’s intention to get people to melee things in the end.

Listen carefully to Caithe in the Aetherblade path of TA. She notes that fighting the Clockheart is easier if up close.

It seems to me that the internal player progression from being able to kite with a ranged weapon to meleeing up close was an intentional part of dungeon design for GW2.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

This is the funniest post I’ve seen in this subforum in months.

I’m curious as to what happened to you that you’re calling to nerf one of the weaker specs in the game.

The D/D Ele sees virtually no play in sPvP, is now bad for roaming thanks to the RTL nerf, due to sustainability nerfs has become suboptimal in WvW Raids, and is generally regarded as highly underpowered compared to other specs in PvE Dungeons.

I have played this spec for well over 1000 hours, and played it in high-end PvE, organized WvW, and YOLO QUEUE sPvP. I even have an Incinerator.

It’s highly underpowered. You’re completely wrong to call to nerf it. The Ele is highly squishy and dies easily to any other profession when not specced for bunker. If it’s a bunker spec, its sustained damage becomes absolutely pitiful. At best, its burst damage is pretty good, but even then, it’s either too bunkery to deal enough damage, or too glassy to survive. The elementalist is just generally underpowered across all formats of the game and D/D especially has been nuked several times and even now the developers gloat over how well they managed to kitten the spec.

You are completely wrong.

Morelia.6835:

zitounae.4803:

Add lowest hp/thoughness base on top of this, and wonder why people blame elems to have the most QQ subforum while even those who blame us admit at some point smthing wrong with us..

If you compare the different class forums you’ll see that each of them is just as whiny as the next one.

No, I check on the forums pretty regularly all around, and the Ele ones are more QQ compared to other profession subforums, overall.

Conditions on Staff Ele are terrible.

I’d suggest reading my guide if you want info on building an Ele for dungeons.

Keep in mind that in the next patch, the Elementalist is going to get a trait which gives Regen on being crit upon and immunity to condis when above 90% HP. It also has Cleansing Water which cleanses a condition upon granting Regen.

I think this is simply a part of WvW’s culture. I have no problem trading objectives when it’s late in the week and the conclusion of the match is foregone. In fact, I think given the incentives placed before us (such as capping certain objectives an arbitrary number of times) and the need for WXP, I think it’s just common courtesy to trade objectives on Thursdays/Fridays of matches where the victors have already been decided.

No you’re basically right. Scepter’s autoattacks are terrible. It’s meant to be used either as an extreme Bunker weapon (using it to kite around an enemy at mid-range) or as a Burst weapon (using Fresh Air and Arcane Utilities to burst something down fast). Its autoattacks are made completely terrible to balance out the utility of the “2” and “3” skills.

I would not suggest leveling with Scepter. Pretty sure even Staff has better sustained damage. And of course, I’d honestly suggest Daggers because Melee Cleave is the easiest way to play PvE.

The same way ANet solves everything – RNG

You’re like, really good at stomping after your allies do the work, I guess >_>;

So here’s a build I’ve been theorycrafting lately:

30 in Earth:
-Diamond Skin (Condi Immunity above 90% HP)
-Rock Solid (Stability on Earth Attunement)
-???

20 in Water:
-Soothing Mist (Gain 3 sec of regen when crit upon, 10 sec ICD)
-Cantrip Mastery (20% CDR on Cantrips)

20 in Arcane:
-Renewing Stamina (Vigor on Crit)
-Elemental Attunement (Boon on Attunement Swap)

Gear:
WvW – Soldier’s Armor and Weapons + Ascended Cleric’s Trinkets; Kralkachocolate Bar and Maintenance Oil; Traveler+Monk+Water Runes

PvP – Cleric’s Amulet + Soldier’s Jewel; Monk+Water Runes

Weapon Set:

??? (Dagger/Dagger most likely)

Utilities:

-Triple Cantrip and Ether Renewal

Just trying to see if we can’t make use of these traits ANet is giving us to play with. What do you guys think?

The Great Al.2546:

How is renewing stamina OP? Guardian has the exact same spell at the 5 spot, so they don’t have to waste a trait. Additionally, Guardians have multiple blinds and aegis at their disposal, so vigor isn’t even as critical to them as it is for elementalists.

It’s OP for Guardian and Mesmer as well. :X

What if you made it so the Quip causes your Grenades to make equally frustratingly large party sounds when you used them? I would get this legendary just for the auditory pain I would inflict when tossing my ’nades.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/29#post3156808

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

THIEF

• Vigorous Recovery: Vigor duration will be 5 seconds instead of 4.
• Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR

• Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.

Thanks,

Jon

Wow, that’s really huge!

First, thank you for not moving Renewing Stamina. I agree that the trait is a bit OP, but in their current state (mainly the low health pool), they’re in a situation where this trait is semi-mandatory for many players. It’s nice to see you guys saw that by moving this up, it would destroy the old D/D Ele once and for all, and thus by not moving it, you’ve allowed it to stay alive. For that, for listening to our concerns, I am very greatful. Renewing Stamina is also more or less a necessary trait for Eles in PUG Dungeon runs. By allowing us to make this small investment, it allows glassy Eles in PUG Dungeons to remain a reasonable choice (Vigor on crit is that important to the class).

Second, I actually really do like the movement of Cantrip Mastery down to Adept tier. I know many Eles preferred Soothing Disruption, but I really do feel that Cantrip Mastery is the more generally useful of the two. I really do like the change.

Finally, Soothing Wave’s change seems pretty amazing. That synergy with Cleansing Water could be huge. Also, a full boon duration Elementalist could truly keep perma Regeneration (they already sort of could with just Elemental Attunement). I think that people won’t realize just how strong 3 seconds of Regen every 10 seconds is, modifable by boon duration, but I’m sure people will eventually see just how powerful this could be.

I like these changes and I am satisfied.

Combustive Shot is insanely strong. It gives Warriors an incredible amount of ranged damage on top of having great melee-control and damage with hammer. It was especially nasty when used with Pin Down. Combined with the fact that it doesn’t “miss” so you can proc your Cleansing Ire, and the skill was just utterly broke. I’m very happy that this skill is finally receiving a nerf.

I do believe that Rune of Speed has been patched to work.

In large-scale zerg fights, probably Ranger.

That said, Entangle is pretty devastating against backline-type characters such as Necros and Eles.

Rangers in large-scale fights should always bring Healing Spring, Entangle, and Muddy Terrain. Soft-CC is the best thing they bring, if they so insist on zerging.