Guild Wars 2

BlackBeard.2873:

Where did they say this was changing?

If this does change, it is hilarious: it just makes warhorn even more indistinguishable from focus off-hand (it def. isn’t dagger b/c it lacks RtL).

Honestly, the effect might be incredibly strong, but for a spec that is purely about support it really is the only one that makes you say “maybe it can kinda do that.” If you share stab, what is the point? Further, tempest is so crappy that it needs very strong effects to make up for its general poor design.

If they do take away that capability, what unique thing does tempest bring to the table that other ele specs can’t do? Sharing might – every ele build I have ever had already did that.

They said it here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/BWE-3-Tempest-Specialization-Changes/first#post5491455

Please don’t change Heat Sync.

It is the key to the Tempest’s Support spec. Removing its ability to share all boons would more or less destroy what made the Tempest’s Support spec special. Right now, as it is, Warhorn has to compete against OH Dagger and Focus. Heat Sync actually made it fairly competitive, in my opinion.

Removing this key capability, however, will all but assure that no one will use Warhorn over OH Dagger or Focus, really, ever.

Heat Sync is the current Warhorn Fire 4 Skill on Tempest.

Right now, the latest patch notes are set to change Heat Sync to only share Might.

Heat Sync right now is the key to the Tempest’s support spec. Changing this to only share Might removes the Tempest’s particular support style. While I’ve generally enjoyed the Tempest, changing this to only Might could possibly ruin what made it so special.

Right now, as it is, Warhorn has to compete against OH Dagger and Focus. Heat Sync actually made it fairly competitive, in my opinion. Removing this key capability, however, will all but assure that no one will use Warhorn over OH Dagger or Focus, really, ever.

My topic on Breakbars might be relevant to you:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Breakbars-are-Undertuned

I really like the new Breakbar Mechanic introduced with HoT. However, I feel that, in its current state, Breakbars are just a bit too weak.

Two issues:

• In the open world, enemies with Break Bars get too easily Broken. The scaling on Break Bars needs to be scaled up much stronger when playing against groups of players, large or small.
• The Elementalist’s Overload Earth is actually EASIER to interrupt than Overload Air, Water, or Fire. The reason for this is that Chill, Cripple, Blind, and Immobilize take a rather large chunk of Breakbar Health. I’ve been interrupted on my Overload Earth more than anything else because enemies used Soft CC and broke my Breakbar.

Now, I think that the Breakbar is a fundamentally good idea. The issue is that they’re just a bit too weak right now, both on Players as well as on NPCs. I think part of the problem is the amount of Breakbar that Soft CCs remove. While I understand Soft CCs removing a decent amount of Breakbar Health against NPCs, against players, it just makes Breakbars a liability rather than a benefit, which is just wrong.

I think, at its core, Breakbars just need to be buffed across the board. Soft CC should remove less Breakbar against NPCs, and Soft CC should remove little to no Breakbar against Players. Alternatively, Breakbar Health needs to be vastly increased throughout the game. I think either of these would go a long way to making the mechanic a bit better.

In particular, effects such as Banners, Spirits, Trait Buffs, Combo Fields, AoE Buff Granting, etc?

Right now, many skills are capped at 5 players. Increasing the cap of some of these to 10 (perhaps just in raids) could help bring some diversity to raid comps.

I’m very excited for Tempest. It looks really fun, and I had a lot of fun playing it during the BWE.

Ele is just crazy right now. Definitely needs some nerfs.

I’m pretty happy with the Tempest, and if people stop playing Ele because of it, all the better. Too many people play Ele anyway.

Nerfing the Fire Line would probably be a good start. Defensive Earth/Water/Arcana Eles aren’t even very strong, so it’s not really the sustain that’s bad about the Ele so much as the high amount of damage and blinds combined with the sustain the Ele gives.

I love the Tempest, and I love gliding

For PvP, D/F is also OK in some situations, but it will be the same build otherwise. And even then, you should just stick to D/D.

It depends on your build entirely. Ele has a lot of builds for PvE. For example, if you’re a Staff Ele, you basically spend your time trying to land as many ticks of Lava Font as possible, while also inserting various DPS increasing skills like Meteor Shower, Glyph of Storms, and Ice Bow 4 into your rotation as well. If you’re playing a Dagger Fresh Air Ele, you’re basically spamming Lightning Whip and trying to get as many of your other attunement’s higher damaging skills into your rotation, and then go right back to Air Attunement for more Lightning Whip spam (trying to proc as many Lightning Strike procs as you can as well). You also use Glyph of Storms and Ice Bow for more damage as well.

ronpierce.2760:

Erm two things. One, Elementalists are actually one of the more problematic burners in pvp, even if their pve burn dps isn’t the same as the others.

More importantly this is a very slippery slope of an argument… “Why aren’t Elementalists the best with burn, we control fire itself,” could be extended to every element…
“why aren’t we best with chill, we attune directly to cold and water.”
“How are we not the fastest class. We control air and LIGHTNING.”
“How are guardians tankier than us? We can literally control bolders and stone shields/barriers of rock and metal elements.”

Theme often has little to do with potency and power. Also, guardians burn from light and radiance. Light is very powerful at burning.

Finally someone says it, thank you.

I don’t agree with the OP’s conclusion of using a Healing Guard as an overall effective method of doing fractals, even at a 3-person self-imposed cap (to, I suppose, sell it afterwards or farm it).

However, I think some people are taking the existence of this thread way too personally. I don’t detect any malice from the OP – just a strongly held differing opinion from the majority of the community of this particular subset of the game, and the desire to have a discussion over that difference. I don’t think there’s anything “disrespectful” about it.

People getting angry or righteously indignant about this should probably take a step back and calm down.

Do people really need survivable gear to do stuff easily ever since the Great Power Creep Patch of June 2015?

Not even I am a fan of this idea, but it does seem cruel of the moderators to send this thread to nowhere land. It should return to the dungeon subforums.

I’ve watched several of your videos and to be honest, I don’t see how the “Healing” part was at all helpful. For sure, blocks and reflects are highly effective and you make great use of those, but I still see people get downed or whatever from big hits occasionally. I don’t see how a large pulsing Battle Presence heal made much of a difference. It seems like it’d go faster and smoother if the Guard was also a damage spec.

Tongku.5326:

Sifu.9745:

I really enjoy so much with my condi Mesmer in PvP, WvW and open world. Only place i havent entered yet are dungeons. Not sure if i should give condi a try or not for that part?
If yes, do i use Scepter/Torch only or should i swap to Staff if mobs and bosses are not moving much?

Hi

I have played mes since launch, mostly various power based builds and switched to condi after the condi patch due to the zerker boredom. I just cant take zerker builds anymore, they make me wanna puke.

I have tried several condi variants in dungeons on mes, the powerblock / inturrapt. problem is mobs do not have enough abilities for my condi burst to be applied enough on an average, and boss fights it absolutely sucks because of the boss immunities and duration reductions.

Blind / Confusion / Torment build – extremely low DPS – both confusion and torment, unlike burns and bleeds do far reduced damage on mobs. Mobs dont use their abilities often enough for full damage and dont move around enough for torment stacks to become effective. Especially when stacking on bosses that remain stationary. Its only upside is the very frequent blinds, but there are far better group support options then that available for mesmers. Overall this is a horrible choice for dungeons.

Bleeds based pistol builds – this is out best condi option because with krait runes condi duration food you can get a large amount of stacks and unlike torment/confusion its not dependant on mob movement or ability use. But to get optimal bleed stacking you have to give up sooooooo many good traits that IMHO are what defines mesmers, you also need to run the condi damage signet thus further depleting your utility. You may skip duration signet as the rune + trait + food bonus already gives you enough. With all this, you will still far far outperform the bleed build on power based builds while retaining most utility which you cant do in the bleed builds or your DPS will fall down to the confusion/torment levels.

For comaprison, I also play a necro, and have tried out several variants on necro as well, and I can tell you even necros outperform mesmers in condi builds. But necros are still overall at bottom because mesmers have nice power based utility builds available for dungeons whereas necros do not.

Due to these reasons I have completely quit runing dungeons on both my necro and my mesmer. I run now on Engi, Guard, Ele. All 3 are burn builds and while viable, still do not keep up with the meta. I also tried out warrior and thief condi builds, but just couldnt even get into them enough to do any serious tries or testing.

So overall I just cant recommend runnign a condi mesmer in dungeons. You will not only kitten yourself extremely hard but your group quite a lot as well.

Condi Engi is great and Condi Guard is fine with respect to the so-called Meta builds, actually. But yes, Mesmer Condi DPS is pretty subpar at the time of this post.

All builds are viable in PvE as long as you have some way to tag enemies with damage.

Proof: The Legend of the Karkaroller

Shiren.9532:

EcoRI.9273:

Everything is viable in this game. People have cleared dungeons Naked solo.

These discussions always boil down to “viable” vs “optimal” and I think there is a clear intent from the OP and others that their view of the game is “optimal” (zerker nonsense), “possible” (nomad staff ele auto-attacking Spider Queen for three hours before the redesign) and “viable” (not the best DPS, not the fastest but good enough that the average player or run wouldn’t notice a dramatic different – admittedly this will be a subjective category).

Defining “viable” as “possible” is such a disingenuous way to approach the discussion because it treats every build on the same level as the absolute worst builds.

It’s so much easier to dismiss non-zerker discussions when every other play style is grouped together with a nomad staff ele in water attunement.

Basically: don’t lump me in with those bads, my Soldier’s Ele is way better than their Nomad’s Ele. Really, I promise! I’m not as bad as them! Please don’t put us together ;_;

(lol)

1% per type of boon. 25 Might would still be an additional 1%, not 25%.

It works this way on any class with a similar ability.

Don’t play it if you don’t like it. No point in that. And honestly, if you can’t apparently see how strong it is in PvP right now, it’s probably just not the build or class for you.

That Warhorn might be the key to Condi Ele builds.

Do people really not know that sepia-tone is a trope to indicate ‘in the past’ anymore?

That’s really sad, honestly.

Cele D/D Ele is far superior in sPvP at the moment.

Denshee is a great EU Elementalist. His team, oRNG, won the last WTS tournament and he is a very good player.
http://www.twitch.tv/superchey

Phantaram is a great NA Elementalist. His team, the Abjured, has consistently dominated the NA scene for basically forever, and they won the first WTS tournament.
http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram

Both Denshee and Phantaram are highly skilled and technical players. So they’re both good to watch.

There are other great Eles out there, but they don’t really stream.

I personally enjoy watching Cmc when he does stream. He always has an interesting perspective to listen to, even if he hasn’t really been a top player.
http://www.twitch.tv/cmcgw2

I’ve had friends talking about this and Burning Ele might be fine (I still don’t know at the time of this post), but my question is, since you’re basically camping Fire Attunement and spamming 2, why not run the best DPS spec in the game, Fire Staff Berserker Ele?

Tora.7214:

just wondering if there exist a viable decent d/d build for pve? since is the build i enjoy most but i searched around and wherever i see d/d people talks is about pvp and wvw

Dagger/Dagger is a great open world set! And Dagger/Focus is a decent defensive dungeon/fractal set.

Train Fire, Air, and Arcana.
In Fire, take Burning Precision, Pyromancer’s Training, and Persisting Flames.
In Air, take Ferociocious Winds, Aeromancer’s Training, and Fresh Air.
In Arcana, take Renewing Stamina, Final Shielding, and Bountiful Power.

All Berserker everything with Scholar Runes and Force Sigil with another DPS-increasing sigil of some sort (like Air, Accuracy, Frailty, Night, or Strength).

You spend most of your time attacking in air with Lightning Whip, using other attunements as necessary. Fresh Air lets you go back to Air for more sustained damage.

Prophet.1584:

i’m mostly on the ranger forums, i’m kind of new to ele pve, but a lot of professions have been putting together sinister builds that top out over zerk builds in pve. I’m wondering if something like this build would be viable, or even better, than zerk. you could run it as d/x or s/x. like i said i’m new to ele and builds so please don’t rip me a new one interwebs.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodnMIClNgVPAONA8RgBBAjeCbhjQEAClHAZDcBSBA-ThhMABmpEsU1fAY/hTV+B6DAIU9AkCAmlVA-e

Please do not derail someone else’s thread with an unrelated topic. It’s very rude. Make your own thread.

For my old characters, the Hero Panel always has a notification (the red exclamation point), indicating I have new skills to train. It only goes away when I manually open it up and go to my retrait area, only to see I have nothing to train.

The notification returns whenever I re-zone.

What the… the OP deleted their post. I’m not the original poster here :/

I have seen many players with lots of fractal skins and are still terrible players. There is 0 prestige to them. They just look really nice.

Pretty sure in Condi Meta, we still wouldn’t take Necro, so people who are fantasizing that by arbitrarily making Direct Damage terrible we can somehow backdoor Necro into becoming ‘meta’, it’s not going to work.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Maybe we should see exactly what Anet’s plan is to weaken armor-ignoring damage before we immediately start crying about an extremely vague blogpost?

As the devs implement changes to the game, it’s important for us to give our honest and candid feedback right away as they brainstorm the ideas, rather than simply wait for the day those changes are made to the game in live, and then we have to sit with any problems from those changes for months as they move onto some other project. There’s nothing to be gained by us remaining silent.

Jerus.4350:

Neko.9021:

Because as far as I understand it, that’s basically what this is going to be.

What disincentivizes us from picking the easiest Swamp fractal from Tier 1-20, 21-50, and 51-100, for the Daily Reward at each Tier?

My suggestion, personally, would be that each tier has a random fractal that serves as that tier’s daily. For example, dailies could be:

Do Fractal 7
Do Fractal 31
Do Fractal 64

Because if we’re allowed to simply choose our fractal, then it looks like we’ll only play Swamp for a quick set of the first 3 Fractal Dailies. And that’s already 3 chests right there. Even if there is a variable 4th Daily, that’s still 3 Swamps to one non-Swamp daily at best.

Please reconsider this system.

You’re thinking about it wrong I think.

You do whatever the specific 4th chest is and pick up credit for the other rewards too. So you’re not just getting one more reward for doing that other one, you’re getting double rewards.

Say it’s “do a lvl 1-20, Do a lvl 21-50, Do a 51-100, and Do a lvl 79” Why wouldn’t you do your 79 and pick up two rewards? Even if it’s cliffside you’re spending just a handful of extra minutes to grab 2 chests rather than a couple minutes to do swamp and bypassing a possible reward.

That said as I’m reading it, I’m still confused. It sounds like there will be a set of achievements for 1-20, another set for 21-50, and a thrid for 51-100.

Really wish they’d give a fully detailed sample scenario.

This is a very good point, but at the same time, it’s still 2 swamps/molten duos and then a 3rd random fractal. They should all be random at each tier is what I’m saying.

deSade.9437:

/sigh

Haven’t they said that dailies will be static? That means we’ll sometimes get swamp in the daily, sometimes we won’t. You’re not forced to follow the daily, but you get more rewards.
About the “what disincentivizes us”, well, that ^ more rewards… and boredom. Not even the most callous grinder will survive multiple sh— mossmen.
People may go: easy fractal, daily, daily achievement – something like that. Won’t be swamp 3 times (I presume).

Oh, and we don’t know if there will or will not be another fractal length/difficulty adjustment.
Can we stop and hold our hyppogriffs for a minute until we have heard more of it, huh?

The best thing we can do with the devs is to offer our honest and candid feedback to their ideas right away. There’s nothing gained by us remaining silent. And if I am wrong, I’d like to be corrected as well, because right now, this is how I read the blog post, and if that information is unclearly communicated, it should be addressed and clarified as soon as possible.

Even if that’s true (and to be honest, Molten Duo might in fact be much easier), it’s still pretty bad either way. The same 3 fractals each day seems pretty bad.

Because as far as I understand it, that’s basically what this is going to be.

What disincentivizes us from picking the easiest Swamp fractal from Tier 1-20, 21-50, and 51-100, for the Daily Reward at each Tier?

My suggestion, personally, would be that each tier has a random fractal that serves as that tier’s daily. For example, dailies could be:

Do Fractal 7
Do Fractal 31
Do Fractal 64

Because if we’re allowed to simply choose our fractal, then it looks like we’ll only play Swamp for a quick set of the first 3 Fractal Dailies. And that’s already 3 chests right there. Even if there is a variable 4th Daily, that’s still 3 Swamps to one non-Swamp daily at best.

Please reconsider this system.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/

“In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness. The combination of these changes will increase the viability of different builds and give players more to think about when attempting to overcome a particular scale.”

First off, a small rant, everything is viable in GW2 PvE. There was never a problem of viability of builds in GW2 PvE content, just how good they were relative to each other.

Second, this idea worries me, because knowing how there’s now going to be 50 more levels of fractal scale, I really don’t want to get to Fractal Level 100 and see that everything now has 4000 Armor and everyone has to switch to Sinister specs to do decent damage. That’s hardly innovative. All it does is move us from one glass spec to another.

So while I’m fine with Condi Specs doing more damage than Berserker specs over the long run in a long fight, please don’t go overboard and basically make all enemies at Fractal 90-100 into Mordrem Husks.

Why is Guang’s build in the open world farming section? It’s a highly competent dungeon build.

Probably an old video. FGS got nerfed a while ago.

A demonstration of the spec’s capabilities from Guang’s youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkXOyaE9AgA

Hello all, I wanted to bring more attention to a build that I feel has been a bit under the radar.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/96806-zerk-is-for-casuals-june-2015-ranger-builds/

The always controversial Guanglai Kangyi has come up with a really strong Condi Ranger build. It primarily relies upon the interaction between Quick Draw and Bonfire. By constantly switching weapons off cooldown and throwing down Bonfire (Torch 5), you can stack massive AoE Burning.

My guild and I have been trying out in fractals (50-40-30) and general dungeons, and I can say it’s pretty darn strong. Please see Guang’s guide for more details, as I think this may be a build that many players have been looking for, and not even known it!

(Here is a demonstration from Guang’s youtube channel of its DPS capabilities while buffed)

EDIT: DnT has released their own version of the build:

I think you should just join a guild to run dungeons with if this matters so much to you.

My guild tried out the Condi Ranger in our FOTM Marathon last night (50-40-30-20) and things went pretty fast! My friends and I really like the build. You should post it to the Ranger subforums here yourself Guang, I think it’s a pretty fun build.

Normally the D/D Ele is in your gank squad, not your melee train.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure Tempest, like everything in GW2, is designed for an idealized version of GW2 combat, where all modes require players to bring balanced comps in order to succeed. And no, dungeons as they are right now aren’t a part of that. It’s why they’ve more or less abandoned making dungeons with the current system in place. They do not balance for dungeons and I don’t think they ever will balance for the dungeons we have now.

For myself, I greatly look forward to the Tempest, to try it out in the casual things I play now, mainly casual dungeon/fotm runs, but also random open world PvE stuff. But I know it’s not as good as the optimal set up for now, and I’m OK with that. But I understand, for those who strive for excellence, why it must be such a letdown.

It looks like a lot of fun, I can’t wait to play it.

The cast times in the tool tips are off. Simple experience will show that they’re often wrong. You generally need to find the cast times of skills, as Guang said, by either testing and recording it yourself, or by getting it from some other reliable source (like the Wiki notes).

Not sure how D/D for leveling in EoTM is, but D/D Cele Ele is the best spec in GW2 sPvP right now, so there’s that.

Also, I think D/D Berserker is probably the best open world PvE set, in my opinion. Some players prefer other stuff and that’s fine, but I think D/D is far easier to level with than Staff.

In general, the trees that interest you for PvE for Dagger/Dagger leveling would be:
Air for Fresh Air
Fire for damage
Arcana for utility
Water for more damage modifiers

For PvP, the lines that would interest you would be:
Arcana for utility and sustain
Water for more healing
Fire for damage
Air for damage

You can talk to me in game to hear my thoughts on the matter.