I use Fiery Greatsword on bosses that smite my elemental using a 30/30/0/0/10 build. Swap out the Grandmaster Fire trait that gives might on fire cast for more conjure charges. You can slot Glyph of Elemental Power to keep burning up while you keep swinging your sword and Signet of Fire for more crit.
Other than that the only time I use conjures is Frost Bow for gimmicks like destroying borrows in AC with Frost Bow 4.
shift 1-4 for attunements
Q/E for strafe, W/S for forward/back, I use camera to turn
A/D as alternates for 4 and 5
Shift + Q as alternate for heal
Shift + W as alternate for elite skill
Shift + E for weapon swap (when applicable)
Shift + A/S/D as alternates for skill slots 7/8/9
I use left side mouse button for rearview.
2 Builds I like to use in dungeons, both DPS. One is power/precision/crit damage and the other is condition damage.
Hang out in fire, throw fireballs and drop lava fonts, hit 3 if burning isn’t up. High AOE damage (Big crits especially with Fiery Greatsword), high endurance, low vit/toughness but dungeons are more about proper skill choice and high endurance then stacking a lot of vit/tough (at least if you are a glass cannon).
High hp, big bleed stacks and 100% uptime on burning, blast finisher every 5 seconds and weakness with auto attack. Low crit and low power but the build is about condition damage.
Last hit of fiery greatsword does about 4.5k-5k + splash,
It doesnt work that way, its why is sucks btw. Glyoh of Elemental is widely supperior for PvE.
Im not sure with glick glyph it is actually a dps boost to pick arcane skills btw. Lesser elemetals and of Elemental Power might actually be better.
I don’t know what you mean by “doesn’t work that way” since I use if all that time I got an 8k crit last night in SE and that is downleved.
I use the elite skill that is best for the encounter. The elementals get one shot on a lot of bosses, e.g. burning effigy in cof 1, esp the lesser, in those cases I use greatsword. You can’t get a dps boost from an elemental if it dies before it can do anything. If elementals are safe I’ll use them, it’s situational.
I usually use glph of elemental power in fire with gs so I can keep up burning without losing the sword. The only damage increase you’ll get from elemental power glyph is from burning and with no condition damage it’s kinds of meh. I put my Arcane trait to I for easy encounter because arcane blast CD is only 16 seconds and for 10 of those you have extra crit damage. On aoe encounters I’ll have glyph of storms on my bar. The skill bar is not static you can change your skills depending on the encounter I do it all the time.
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
Was messing around with my elementalist in the mists, testing out an eruption staff condition damage build on golems, and noticed that none of the talents that increase damage by X% apply to condition damage ticks.
With 1400 cond damage, bleed ticks were 116 and burn ticks were 695 (iirc, mostly focused on bleed) and NONE of my increased damage traits increased this amount at all, not even the ones in the earth line that is focused on condition damage. I tested them and they only work with direct damage spells like Earth 1, the initial burst on Earth 2, Earth 5, Skills, etc.
It makes all those traits (both the major and minor ones) pretty weak when power isn’t your main stat. I’m going to assume it’s the same across all traits/classes. Is this intended? It’s nice to know that those talents are basically worthless in a condition build but the tooltip is kind of vague in that it only says damage and not specifically direct damage (which is more accurate because the traits do NOT increased condition damage).
Was messing around with my elementalist in the mists, testing out an eruption staff condition damage build on golems, and noticed that none of the talents that increase damage by X% apply to condition damage ticks.
With 1400 cond damage, bleed ticks were 116 and burn ticks were 695 (iirc, mostly focused on bleed) and NONE of my increased damage traits increased this amount at all, not even the ones in the earth line that is focused on condition damage. I tested them and they only work with direct damage spells like Earth 1, the initial burst on Earth 2, Earth 5, Skills, etc.
It makes all those traits (both the major and minor ones) pretty weak when power isn’t your main stat. I’m going to assume it’s the same across all traits/classes. Is this intended? It’s nice to know that those talents are basically worthless in a condition build but the tooltip is kind of vague in that it only says damage and not specifically direct damage (which is more accurate because the traits do NOT increased condition damage).
I’ve tried condition damage build, a healing build with 1400 healing and a glass cannon build and for dungeons I prefer the glass cannon. I use the heal/support build for condition removal and some light healing and water fields in WvW (with 1400 healing or so the splash on staff water 1 does about 500 but it’s mostly kind of meh although you’re really hard to kill with cantrips) but prefer full blown glass cannon for PvE. I kill stuff at least 35% to 40% faster, faster kills means faster clears and less chance of something going wrong. The obvious tradeoff is survival but I find that proper skill choice before the encounter is more beneficial than losing crit/crit damage and power speccing into other lines.
For PvE I use 30/30/0/0/10 like the poster above. Fire is 10% damage, 20% CD reduction and might on fire cast. Air is 20% CD reduction on glyphs, increased damage when target is less then 25% health and 3% increased crit damage for 10 sec when using arcane. I do what said poster does and switch the arcane talent depending on situation, V for group buffs and boon, I for more DPS, VI for vigor.
Stand at max range. Put down fire fields for your bros. Try to keep burning up on the target with fire 3 so you do more damage but if someone else is putting up burning then don’t bother because fire 3 and your ticks only do maybe 350 damage and you could be flinging more fireballs instead.
Dungeon survival is more about using the proper skills, range, food, and knowing when to dodge and when to strafe. From my experience glyphs are superior to signets in dungeons, especially traited heal glyph. I use arcane blast whenever it is off CD (it has a 1500 range btw) and usually put arcane shield on the bar for easy fights just for the crit damage increase because you don’t have all that many good single target skills to use at max range (elemental harmony glyph is ok with traits and will help keep up burning). Armor of Earth, arcane shield, mist form and earth elemental are good for running past trash. If boss destroys my elemental I use fiery greatsword.
I wear cof beserker gear with soldier crests, berzerker staff with fire sigil (excellent aoe damage), berserker neck, knights earrings and rings (two with ruby jewels) and a defender backpack with a soldier crest. I use stew for more dodges and might on dodge. My stats:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2ppx892.jpg
3,352 attack (2240 power)
51% crit (1,903 precision) and 69% crit damage.
2,224 armor (1,304 toughness)
11,925 hp (1,028 vitality)
@80 Normal fireball does about 1k damage + splash, ~2.4k on crit, upwards of ~2.8k to ~3k with 3% crit damage boost from arcane, target less than 25% and some vuln (which you contribute a little bit to with 25 in air). Arcane blast does about ~3k when less then 25%. Meteor shower and glyph of storms both hit like a truck, I use them whenever there are more than two mobs (or more than one for glyphs of storms). Last hit of fiery greatsword does about 4.5k-5k + splash, I’ve had it crit for 7k a few times. Sigil of fire adds even more aoe damage.
My personal playstyle, but I prefer this build to other builds and find it the most fun out of all the dungeon builds I’ve tried.
Players wanted grind, they got it.
this is just a grind to keep you busy while doing the legendary grind.
I wish you could inspect people’s spec/gear/level/class before having them join. I miss World of Warcraft’s Armory… don’t know how many people tried to join a pug I was leading only to look at their profile and find them using bad gear with empty sockets and nonsensical specs.
A pro “run paster” ROFL are you serious
No, but I’m not a leet dood that feels the need to run past everything.
Pro’s run past as much as possible.
You need to stop playing GW2 and L2P GW2: Dungeon Runner.
Run from as much as you can whenever possible. Totally the way these dungeons are intended to be run, rest assured!
Learn to run. Then you, too, can be a leet dood.
Yeah, you should be rewarded the same for 20 minutes in AC as you are for 6 hours on Arah 4.
What a silly post, Mr. Hrouda. I see a lot of words there but no real substance.
It’s true. Running past as much as possible in order to shave a few minutes off a run is what all the leet doods do. They are way too important and have too much big stuff going on to be bothered spending an extra 5 minutes for some coin. Too many decisions to make.
You should be ashamed of yourself for even assuming that two minutes of their precious, valuable time is worth compromising for one of the best gold farming areas in the game.
Just think of all the other important elite hardcore gamer shizz they are missing out on by spending an extra two minutes in a dungeon! They could spend that two minutes standing around in LA complaining about how bored they are or linking their pink rings in guild chat while ignoring guildies who might need helping getting there. It’s something casual players will never understand.
Apparently all the leet doods do this and like to assume everyone in the PUG just knows what, where and when to run or follow them without anyone needing to say anything. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that running is prevalent in the only dungeon paths people pug regularly (e.g. AC all paths, HotW 1 and 3, SE 3, CoF 1) since their goal is to get done as fast as possible.
Am I the only one that finds this totally annoying? Especially when skipping trash that can be killed in 30 seconds and makes running back in case of death easier (esp. in a pug) or skipping things like champs and bonus events to shave 2 minutes off a run? I’ve had people decide to skip trash in the middle of fighting trash, just decide to run off. I guess that’s how the pros do dungeons? I’m sure running away from easy trash to hide in nooks and crannies as fast as possible is totally how ANet intended people to run these paths….
Examples are skipping champs and even bosses in AC that give anywhere from five to 20 silver. The bridge event in CoF, people think it’s pro to skip to the engineer/acolyte and drag all the trash from the bridge in to the room while they kill acolytes. Skipping the elite before the effigy even though you can kill it in like 45 seconds. Jumping off the edge, running past the bridge and hanging a left in SE path 3 is another popular one, as well as running past half the stuff in HotW 1 and 3 (e.g. running to the frost magic boss after killing the werewolf boss). Skipping the first borrow before the traps and anything gives silver in AC 1 (when it can be face-rolled in 30 seconds) is just impatience and silliness to me when you can run these paths in like 20 minutes without running away from everything.
Perhaps ANet could just do everyone a favor and remove some of this trash since everyone runs from it? Except AC because they are worth killing for the silver alone.
Or how about nerfing the trash a bit while buffing the the drops so there is actually an incentive to kill them (like in AC) instead of running?
Oh, and try making the bosses at the end fun and interesting, some the dungeon bosses on these paths are nothing but hp sponges with simple gimmicks, fighting them is extremely boring, one phase affairs repeated up to and exceeding 10 minutes, and take longer to whittle down than the instance itself without providing anything interesting. Examples include SE 2 and HotW paths 2 and 3, hp sponges with a simple gimmick that is repeated for way longer than necessary. Tab when you see the invuln icon in SE 2, kite the boss in HotW 2, dodge jellies in 3. We get it and don’t need 10 minutes of the same thing for you to be sure.
(edited by Nonlinear.9823)
most folks only run it once or twice it’s not like anyone farms story mode. I just throw boulders at the guy to push him away don’t know about wiping.
almost all dungeon bosses have this problem, too many hp coupled with one long boring phase of just repeating the gimmick over and over.
I can think of a number of pre-fractals bosses this applies to off the top of my hear, last boss of SE path 2, last bosses of all exp paths of HotW. 1 phase hp sponges.
If you can do the mechanic for two minutes you can do it for 4.
Another problem I am seeing is people kitten their dps to go support and make fights up to 40% longer.
shift 1-4 for attunements
Q/E for strafe, W/S for forward/back, I use camera to turn
A/D as alternates for 4 and 5
Shift + Q as alternate for heal
Shift + W as alternate for elite skill
Shift + E for weapon swap (when applicable)
Shift+A/S/D as alternates for skill slots 7/8/9
I use left side mouse button for rearview.
I have much better chances finding groups during events like MK and this past weekend due to being put into LA overflow and being able to advertise in /m and get people from other servers (who I add to friends list if they are good).
Seems like a quick easy option for LFG is to make an overflow server without chat restrictions where everyone who is LFG can congregate. The suppression alone is annoying enough when trying to LFM and compete with fractal spam in LA.
It would also be really nice if we could add a line of customized text to our profile that shows up in friends lists when they mouseover your name. Iit would be nice to change it so it reflects what I am looking for when my LFG flag is on, kind of like what I remember from FFXI days, e.g. “XP PT JP ONRY” so I can do other stuff while still LFG.
It’s a mystery. I don’t get one shotted even as ele but I am ranged and stand at max distance whenever possible.
I think toughness has something to do with it. I have some toughness on my gear and seem to get more attention than completely 100% glass cannon gear and trait setups. Earth ele is hard to kill and seems to get all the agg when it is up, I assume it’s due to the high toughness of the elemental but I have no clue because…. it’s a mystery.
Why do you have so much toughness?
I run with about 1200 toughness and a little over 1000 vit, about 11.9k hp @ 80 like the OP.
I don’t have any problems in dungeons, there is a counter to every situation and they can be overcome with proper skills and none of them require traits, weapons or builds to counter. Almost everything can be countered and even made trivial with a fast charging endurance meter and smart dodging. Not everything needs to be dodge, sometimes it’s better to just take a hit and use your glyph or simply move out of the field while the damage is incoming, I only dodge out of a red circle if it is an instant cast ability that causes immediate damage.
Stay at max range with staff, keep your endurance up so you can dodge and dodge when you need to. Fire 4 (free dodge) + Renewing Stamina (with decent crit) + endurance food (the blue one that gives 80% chance on might when you dodge is cheap), your earth elemental and proper skill choice will do more for you in dungeons than any amount of vit and toughness will.
Again, it’s easier to simply remove conditions like burning than to stack vitality, easier to dodge burst than to try and stack toughness. And the only times I’ve found I need more than 1 on demand condition removal every 90 seconds or so is during wvw when you’re getting nailed with like 3-4 conditions at once.
That’s when lots vitality and lots of condition removal shine but dungeons are controlled by AI and not a group of people so most of their damage is predictable and/or completely avoidable or even paltry and not worth taking the trouble to dodge out of.
Use fire for DPS and the other three for snares/escapes/etc. If you are at max range then you can see them coming for you, switch to earth and use 5 and 4 to snare, heal with sigil while you are in either earth (for protection, if you know you’re going to be hit) or water (for regen, if you’re kiting and can get some health back).
The only issue I have with health is burning every now and again and find that slotting cleansing flame and careful use of healing glyph and cleansing flame are enough to counter those instances.
@Nonlinear
Maybe you should try to take some party members that deal damage? Sorry, couldn’t help myself, but if you did the final boss fight for 20 minutes you did something wrong.
twas hyperbole. The point being: boring easy mechanic is easy for 5-10 minutes it will remain easy for 15, 20, 25 minutes etc. more health on a boring mechanic doesn’t equal challenging or fun.
If player can’t figure out the encounter in less than in a minute and figure how to tab then player is bad. Meanwhile everyone else understands to run around for X minutes avoiding lighting AOE simply tabbing to the other golem when they see the icon. All the hp on the golem just make the encounter long and boring.
Yeah, it’s too bad that even in 400 person guilds individual members are too selfish to go down even a single level in order to help a guildmate progress.
Saw it yesterday, actually. Someone in guild chat begging for an officer ONE fractal level higher to come and be the 5th in their group (while also promising to stick around and help him get through the next one) so they could just get the thing done. Crickets. Saw them LF1M in /map before and after a dungeon run, must have been about an hour lapsed, during which time the officer he asked for helped informed the guild that he had just completed another fractal level.
GG Anet.
And that gets to the heart of the matter, efficiency. 20 minutes is all a dungeon run should take to clear with a skilled group. Nobody wants to do a dungeon that takes 45 minutes to get 60 badges when they can do another path that takes 20 minutes and then do a 20 minute path in another dungeon.
SE 2 isn’t broken it is just long and boring. Too much trash and everything has too many hp. Two golems could use about 50% fewer hp since the fight doesn’t have any phases.
WE GET IT. BACK AND FORTH. EASY. NOW DO IT FOR 20 MINUTES!
i’ve moved on. Now I stand in the back and take a nap as intended. all is right.
Armor = defense + toughness.
light armor users get more bang for their buck for toughness compared to other classes because they have higher defense on their armor.
Not to say you should ignore vitality, because it is your only defense against condition damage, but a little of both can go a long way.
In dungeons/pve you don’t really need either as much as you need endurance and a way to remove conditions. No need for vitality against burning if you can remove it, no need for toughness against burst if you can dodge it.
who cares? dungeons are dead now. obsolete. gl finding a group for SE exp, lol.
Go run fractals.
it’s true. Fractals is the death of all the other dungeons.
Game was fine without it.
And while you’re practicing your scales so that everything comes out JUST RIGHT your buddies are selling out stadiums and rocking people’s socks off with one note.
Elementalist’s power builds are a bit underpowered.
That does not means, however, that all elementalist builds are underpowered.
We have some excellent traitlines, especially on water and arcana, and we are mostly restricted by them. However, as long as you stick to the best traits we have, you can switch between a more balanced or defensive build attribute-wise and be worthwhile with it.
Good defensive elementalists are stubborn. They refuse to die.
(And they were overpowered before the last patch, with infinite blast finishers for countless might-stacking and regeneration stacking from a single trait. Yeah, they weren’t very weak exactly).
this is coming from the person that spent all last night explaining how EA is STILL GOOD but wouldn’t answer when asked if they think it is worth 30 points or worth taking 30 arcane for by itself. It’s sad when people want the 10 extra arcane points for attunement recharge and could care less about the “grandmaster” trait at the end of it.
“EA, it’s still good you guys! Just not good enough for me to use in a build ever!”
That kind of attitude should tell you all you need to know.
Elementalists are so awesome they are practically required to put 30 points in arcane and/or water just to be half-way viable but still weak compared to other options. So awesome! Thanks for FIXING elementalists, ANet!
don’t be fooled, when people say “elemenatlist takes more skill” what they really mean is it takes 2x as many button presses and 2x the effort for 1/2 the results compared to other classes.
simple masochism. i enjoy humiliation and pain. elemenatalist is like paying a lady of the night to grind her 5" stiletto heel right into your junk while telling you what a hopeless pathetic loser you are compared to her other clients. I’m getting all hot and bothered just thinking about pressing 20 buttons for 12 stacks of might when other classes can do it with auto-attack while sacrificing nothing. Oh yeah, grind it baby.
That’s why I love my elementalist.
OK you guys, who called the fun police?
Since a good many of the elementalist’s interesting builds – builds with the highest synergy and high fun factor – were apparently based on a bug and resulted in unintended fun not planned on by ANet and therefore had to be removed immediately and nerfed into the ground with no chance to be salvaged whatsoever and nothing to take its place because elementalists are only allowed to have fun in ways that ANet intends (like ????, i.e. standing at 1200 since you have no reason not to be at max range 100% of the time now and pressing three buttons), please add more fun yet unintended bugs so that we elementalists can create interesting new builds around them so your devs can have more time on the classes they like or playing Halo 4 or whatever. Spartan Ops, brah!
Seeing as how the folks at ANet can’t seem to create interesting elementalist traits and fun builds with lots of synergy that don’t center on fun, unintended bugs on their own, I beg you to add more of these bugs so we may discover more fun since you can’t and don’t seem to care about doing that for us.
it’s sad when the funnest most engaging build was unintended. 20/10/0/10/30 synergized REALLY well, better than anything ANet “intended”.
What a shame that the intended builds aren’t as much fun. Hopefully ANet “screws up” or there is another fun “unintended bug” that we can create interesting builds around.
Please, ANet, introduce more bugs. I want to find more fun builds.
Listen to the fanboys you guys, EA is still good! Still worth 30 pointss.
Why? Because ANet did it! That alone makes it a good thing and worth getting!
Stop having unintended fun and start having fun the RIGHT way, i.e. stand at 1200 (because if you have a staff you have NO REASON not to be at max range 100% of the time) fire off auto attack and press two buttons. You know, THE WAY YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO PLAY! THAT’s how you’re SUPPOSED to have fun!
Not pressing more buttons, pressing buttons isn’t fun, standing at max range and falling asleep is fun! You were pressing too many buttons!
ANet fanboys are saying the talent is still good and stuff.
Is anyone going 30 points in arcane JUST for new EA since supposedly it is still good?
shift+f1 through shift+f4. I also unbind A and D (turn left and turn right) and set them as secondaries for 4 and 5. I only turn with my mouse (old habit, I highly recommend it) and it gives me two nice skills in handy spots.
For heal I use shift+q, for elite skill I use shift+w for weapon swap (when applicable) I use shift+e
for utilities I use shift+a, shift+s and shift+d.
I bind “look behind” to a side mouse button so I can check my rearview/target while running.
My left hand never has to move far.
tons of skills to combine and use…
auto attack 1, pop 2 and 3 when off CD. MAD SKILLZ BRAH!
Err… if all you do is “cast a few spells” from time to time as an ele, evasive arcana or not, then yeah, you’re doing it wrong. Sorry, but I still have tons of fun on my elementalist. I still have a ton of skills to combine and use, as opposed to any other class where I’m reduced to pushing the same three buttons over and over and watching pretty numbers fly. Now… that’s boring.
kitten from all this complaining on the forum, you’d think your computer explodes if you try to play an elementalist.
yeah, moving around for no reason, just because you can, is fun and takes lots of skill!
encouraging someone to play bad classes is not considerate.
Nonlinear, you are completely missing the point here. The poster of this thread obviously doesn’t want ot roll a Guardian, Thief, Warrior or a Mesmer. He/she wants to roll a Necromancer or an elementalist. Telling him/her to roll something else than what he/she wants to roll is quite inconsiderate here.
On the point of which to roll, I’ve not tried the elementalist. But I find Necromancer a lot of fun. In PvP, the staff marks when properly used can spread a ton of conditions to multiple people and fear and slow them. You got a large AoE slow on the Scepter, and a single target slow on the focus. Unfortunately the Focus one has a long cast time. Also, if you play staff and Scepter, there is a combo possibility I find fun. Stack all the conditions from the staff on a target and change to Scepter. The scepter 3 ability does more damage the more conditions there are on the target.
Telling someone not to make a mistake by rolling a kitteny broken class is not inconsiderate. OP will just regret leveling it once it plays a not-bad class.
If you like very active game play, roll an Elementalist. To get the most out of an Elementalist, you really need to master all four attunements and know when to switch to which one.
i.e. if you like pushing lots of buttons in order to perform worse than every other class, if you want to make every encounter an unnecessary challenge whereas other classes rip through content with 1 button, then elementalist is your class!
seriously. roll a guardian, thief, warrior or mesmer. they aren’t broken.
ah, my warrior alt. he is level 25, he has 75% crit in wvw and pve. Surely, WORKING AS INTENDED!!!!
Running signetbuild and not contributing anything to the group? Oh, also it doesnt scale well after lvl 60.
what group is there at level 25 besides a zerg? I also know how the scaling works, that must make it OK?
roll a warrior.
bow warrior can do it every 10 sec.
ah, my warrior alt. he is level 25, he has 75% crit in wvw and pve. Surely, WORKING AS INTENDED!!!!
I made the mistake of rolling an ele first and leveled it all the way to 80 before playing another class. then I rolled warrior and picked up a greatsword. lol…