Guild Wars 2

Glyph of storms in earth is awesome in PvE solo, because with the very slow rate of mob attacks, you are essentially invulnerable and dealing damage for the duration.
Frost Bow is also awesome because it has a 5-second stun (still applies chill on defiant enemies) as well as a shotgun chill on 3 and huge AoE damage on 4.

One time, when I was still into playing my mesmer, there was this cute little scepter uplevelled ele that insisted on autoattacking me. I chased him back to a camp after attacking once, just to scare him, then proceeded to completely ignore him while I killed a doylak. He focused on my illusions quite a bit. I think I had to heal once, which almost killed him because I was using the reflect heal. He finally managed to get rid of me when a guardian showed up, but it was pretty funny.

I still think all four utility signets should be combined into one that has different effects based on your attunement, because they all have very similar effects (i.e. single target/small AoE condition on active, small passive element-related boost on passive).
Then the versatility would make up for the fact that they suck, and they could give us other signets. Think “Signet of Attunement: Passive: reduce attunement cooldowns by 10%. Active: Recharge all of your attunements, 30s cooldown”.

Gokil.2543:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

TyPin.9860:

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

Both are just practice. I used to have a good bit of trouble with Warriors, but after a bit the only real thing they can do to me is run away haha. If they are smart enough to run, they can always get away, but I usually don’t have much trouble with them in 1v1s.
DPS guardians can get me if they get the jump on me, but otherwise I have zero trouble with guardians of any flavor.
Really, the best remedy for either of these is to use static, earth 4, frozen ground and burning retreat to kite (also keep swiftness up), while tapping away at their health with lava font and eruption.
If either of them switch to projectiles, use magnetic aura. If you use arcane shield or some distracting control spell before it, they will often not even notice magnetic aura for the full duration and deal massive amounts of damage to themselves.

Edit: I would drop fire III for fire V (combos nicely with fire 25pt minor) and I would grab Evasive Arcana in place of Elemental attunement. Also, I would try to fit arcane wave in place of mist form or lightning flash eventually, especially when you get brilliance. This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEleYnBWGQlYAI8QACMQUwiyjY2xGA-TkAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You don’t have to follow any of this stuff, by the way, but it is a good starting point.
One of the great things about the staff is that you can do whatever you want with it.

Let me get this straight, are you saying you can reliably 1v1 warriors and guardians? As in kill them or at hold a node against them?

Because that sounds like 100 percent nonsense to me. Staff in my experience cannot duel any class, no matter what build they are running. That’s just not what it was meant to do. I would start taking staff players a bit more seriously if they accepted that and told me how they can make up for that shortcoming.

Looking back on that post, I did exaggerate a bit, but I have no more trouble with them than other classes.
I can’t get away with it with people who are actually good, but average players from most classes can be taken down fairly easily with a number of tricks. For example, most players can be caught in a lava font + earth 4 for several ticks.
I’m not really sure why you’re surprised about me being able to kill guardians using a staff. It’s a pretty fair matchup honestly, even on a point, as long as you’re briefly willing to step outside of the point to kite more effectively.
DPS warriors can give you trouble if you’re not careful, but you can either kite or reflect all of their attacks pretty well with the tools you have available.

The real trouble in my opinion is and always will be thieves and mesmers. Both of them have strong innate defense, can surprise really well, and can attack better than you can defend for the most part.

What I want for diamond skin personally:
Diamond skin: Gain immunity to specific conditions based on your current attunement
Fire: Burning, Cripple
Water: Vulnerability, Chill
Air: Blind, Weakness
Earth: Immobilize, Bleed

Or something along those lines.

KinkyPotato.4219:

Hey Chaos! Happy New Year, hope your holidays were amazing and you rested well! Glad to see you’re still advocating the support archetype in this game (as am I). I actually made a thread on gw2reddit about a month ago with some ideas on how to increase the attractiveness of healing power for support players. In addition to the amazing ideas you included (faster rezzing, gear choices, better loot + tag options…etc), my thread proposed the following:

First, in order to make healing power more of an appealing stat for support players, I propose that Healing Power is renamed to Support Power. We will attempt to increase the effectiveness of this stat by not only allowing it to increase outgoing heals and regeneration but by also baking more utility into boons. As such, we will allow boons to scale in intensity and implement additional effects to said boons to make Support Power a more worthwhile stat.

I was thinking along the same lines a while back actually. In my ideal world, you would decrease baseline effectiveness of boons by 33%, to avoid power creep, and increase maximum effectiveness by 33% so that people are rewarded for investing into a support stat. So a fully specced protection would be 44% reduction, while unspecced it would end up at 22%.

Thief always revolves around initiative
Mesmers always revolve around illusions
Elementalists always revolve around attunement
At first glance, warrior does not always revolve around adrenaline, but from your responses that does not appear to be the case. Again, thank you for clearing that up.

TyPin.9860:

Okay I zerkered a bit now with this build. It was quite fun, especially if one can Meteorshower an unexpecting group during a fight over a cap point. With my first shower I downed three people and capped the point.

However, there are two professions I can not deal with at all in a 1v1 scenario. That is guardian and those healing signet warriors. They just trample over me. Is this common, or do I just need to practice and adept my playstyle?

EDIT: For healing I actually wanne use arcane brilliance, but I don’t have enough skillpoints yet.

Both are just practice. I used to have a good bit of trouble with Warriors, but after a bit the only real thing they can do to me is run away haha. If they are smart enough to run, they can always get away, but I usually don’t have much trouble with them in 1v1s.
DPS guardians can get me if they get the jump on me, but otherwise I have zero trouble with guardians of any flavor.
Really, the best remedy for either of these is to use static, earth 4, frozen ground and burning retreat to kite (also keep swiftness up), while tapping away at their health with lava font and eruption.
If either of them switch to projectiles, use magnetic aura. If you use arcane shield or some distracting control spell before it, they will often not even notice magnetic aura for the full duration and deal massive amounts of damage to themselves.

Edit: I would drop fire III for fire V (combos nicely with fire 25pt minor) and I would grab Evasive Arcana in place of Elemental attunement. Also, I would try to fit arcane wave in place of mist form or lightning flash eventually, especially when you get brilliance. This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWnEEleYnBWGQlYAI8QACMQUwiyjY2xGA-TkAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+A

You don’t have to follow any of this stuff, by the way, but it is a good starting point.
One of the great things about the staff is that you can do whatever you want with it.

Ha
Elementalist arcane grandmaster minor trait: 10% chance for spells to inflict one of the following conditions based on your attunement when you crit:
1s burning in fire
10s vulnerability in water
3s weakness in air
5s bleeding in earth

Not only this, but this exists in a boon duration line for a class that cannot really build for conditions at all.

Or flame barrier, our fire minor 5:
20% chance to burn, when hit in melee range, while in fire.
For the class with the lowest defense in the game, which is again not a condition class under any circumstance.

Juba.8406:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Juba.8406:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Juba.8406:

Warrior is the most telegraphed class

This isn’t quite the place for this little rant, but this particular phrase always confuses me.
If you have ever fought an elementalist, this argument shouldn’t really be made.
I mean seriously, compare violently swinging a hammer for 3/4 of a second to having a giant flaming rock appear and slowly spin for 2 seconds.
Or shooting an arrow to having player-sized meteors fall out of the sky, while somebody dances around nearby.
Or spinning in place to spewing fire/ice out of your face.

CC? You just jump with your hammer. Elementalists summon a bright, ring of electricity that you have to walk through, for the same stun.

Damage? You jump at someone with an axe. Elementalists crouch for 3 1/2 seconds while rocks float away from them, and have a red circle too.

Even for defense, you just stop taking damage, while we turn into a ball of mist.

ele now is something else , i total agree on that.

but still ele has massive AoE/ranged skills which make up to the some telegraphed attacks it has also massive combo fields which warrior just don’t have.

“CC? You just jump with your hammer. Elementalists summon a bright, ring of electricity that you have to walk through, for the same stun.”

well you cant cast Earthshaker from 1200 range also its Blockable .

Still, just talking about telegraphing, warriors cannot compare to the massive amount of visual effects and delay on all powerful elementalist skills. (our instant cast ones are only actually high damage when we use 5 of them in 1 second).

just be thankful that you have instant cast skills plus also AoE/Ranged which negate telegraphing greatly.

You have AoE and ranged too. Besides, ranged is easier to dodge because of travel time for the most part, not to mention that its much more punishing to miss with our extra-long cooldowns.

Again, the point of my little rant is that warriors by no means have the highest telegraphing. That honor, if you can call it that, belongs to elementalists.

Juba.8406:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Juba.8406:

Warrior is the most telegraphed class

This isn’t quite the place for this little rant, but this particular phrase always confuses me.
If you have ever fought an elementalist, this argument shouldn’t really be made.
I mean seriously, compare violently swinging a hammer for 3/4 of a second to having a giant flaming rock appear and slowly spin for 2 seconds.
Or shooting an arrow to having player-sized meteors fall out of the sky, while somebody dances around nearby.
Or spinning in place to spewing fire/ice out of your face.

CC? You just jump with your hammer. Elementalists summon a bright, ring of electricity that you have to walk through, for the same stun.

Damage? You jump at someone with an axe. Elementalists crouch for 3 1/2 seconds while rocks float away from them, and have a red circle too.

Even for defense, you just stop taking damage, while we turn into a ball of mist.

ele now is something else , i total agree on that.

but still ele has massive AoE/ranged skills which make up to the some telegraphed attacks it has also massive combo fields which warrior just don’t have.

“CC? You just jump with your hammer. Elementalists summon a bright, ring of electricity that you have to walk through, for the same stun.”

well you cant cast Earthshaker from 1200 range also its Blockable .

Still, just talking about telegraphing, warriors cannot compare to the massive amount of visual effects and delay on all powerful elementalist skills. (our instant cast ones are only actually high damage when we use 5 of them in 1 second).

Juba.8406:

Warrior is the most telegraphed class

This isn’t quite the place for this little rant, but this particular phrase always confuses me.
If you have ever fought an elementalist, this argument shouldn’t really be made.
I mean seriously, compare violently swinging a hammer for 3/4 of a second to having a giant flaming rock appear and slowly spin for 2 seconds.
Or shooting an arrow to having player-sized meteors fall out of the sky, while somebody dances around nearby.
Or spinning in place to spewing fire/ice out of your face.

CC? You just jump with your hammer. Elementalists summon a bright, ring of electricity that you have to walk through, for the same stun.

Damage? You jump at someone with an axe. Elementalists crouch for 3 1/2 seconds while rocks float away from them, and have a red circle too.

Even for defense, you just stop taking damage, while we turn into a ball of mist.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that for other classes, EVERYTHING relies on their mechanic, and revolves around it, and for warriors it doesn’t, from an outsider’s perspective, have the same effect on warriors because its only interaction with your other attacks/utilities is building more of it.
This lead me to think that, because it has no direct effect on any skill outside of your burst skill, that it must be less important.
It appears that this is not the case, however. Thank you for clearing that up.

Aza.2105:

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

No!
Oh god no!
Please, please no more AI in PvP.
There’s already too much.

KeyLimPi.9031:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmmblRygjFIkCoQogCMK0BiHPgFwhlC6AA-j0xAYrASUApCAJvioxWcLiGruGT5SEVLFQETAA-w

Basic build of what I use. You can adjust it to your liking

Thank you for being less lazy than me, this is exactly what I was trying and failing to tell him/her about.

Yeah, I’m not quite willing to give up my blasting staff yet.
I actually dropped Elemental Attunement, not arcane mastery, as the defensive boost doesn’t help if you’re running zerker (I tried celestial and didn’t really like the feel of it) and I get much more out of having quicker recharging blast finishers.

I keep blasting staff for:
A) meteor shower, my main surprise attack,
(Edit: This is a “B”, then a “)”. Not a smiley) Lava Font, as it forces a dodge (or does 1-3k damage if they stay) if I use it right on them,
C) Greater damage on multiple targets, which is really important,
D) Eruption, sort of,
E) It’s hard to stay in my water fields, or to get my teammates in them, when they are small, and gives me greater freedom for blasting. You miss it a lot when you want to blast a fire field to hit an enemy, and give yourself and an ally might, and especially when you earth dodge out of your water field.

Probably just a playstyle difference though, I might try dropping Blasting Staff again at some point if I feel like I can still land my stuff and stay versatile, but for now it stays.

mahariel.4981:

Stacking is not exploiting.

Do you know how many times I’ve done AC and scrubs don’t pay attention to Kholer, get pulled in and melt to daggerstorm?

Have you tried stacking Alphard? Pugs die. Experienced players chain reflects.

Talking about AC:
Stacking on the rubble after the spider queen to avoid being damaged by the gravelings is an exploit, and probably that place you stack to kill the spiders themselves is too. Stacking on the pillar to avoid taking serious damage from Colossus Rumblus is probably an exploit as well.
Not to mention the many times pretty much any dungeon group will just skip past all of the nonessential mobs.

Similar things exist for pretty much every path in every other dungeon, though if I had to pick one I’d say that some of the Fractals are the worst off in this regard.

Stacking is not an exploit, you are correct. It is just another facet of the underlying problem: that people regularly exploit various parts of the game to clear content quicker, and thus employ tactics like stacking so that boons and fields are better shared, and full zerker so that mobs and bosses are cleared quicker. Making conditions more powerful in PvE won’t fix this, it will just shift the meta to full rampager, and nerfing zerker will just make it slower.

My opinion is that if you minimize the number of these stupid and exploitative areas/mechanics, PvE will become much more engaging, and the meta will shift naturally.
In addition, people might actually start playing the kitten game.

It is a meta heavily reliant on conditions, you do realize. You could ask any other class to not take any condition cleanse and see how long they survive, to the same effect.

Here’s my two cents on the arcane skills, because I am okay with most of the other stuff.

The damage is fine. Full zerk in PvP, I hit for about 2.5-3 k with arcane wave. I should be hitting at least that much, because frankly, tankier classes can hit more with autos.

The problem is the lack of counter play. Just add a short delay and animation and they will be fine, with the exception of arcane blast which is still an inferior option.

Also, unavoidable damage is not the answer. That just removes all semblance of skill. Not that there is any now, with all of the freaking exploitable stacking spots.

I think a lot of people are missing the point here. For 90% of PvE content, players have found ways to exploit various mechanics, like height differences and stacking, so that they can spec purely for damage.
Seriously, zerker isn’t broken, dungeons are. Everything is stack and skip, with memorized patterns to avoid having to play content and turning every battle into dpsing a healthpool that does not threaten the party. This makes berserker the only logical option, as well as making the game boring.
Remove this BS and you will stop seeing “zerk only, ping or be kicked”.

I’m pretty sure you can find it somewhere in this sub forum, don’t have any links on hand.

Oh, also brilliance, wave, shield, and then your favorite utility (I like frost bow, most other people want cantrips). Elite is usually tornado for the tornado+meteor, but I find myself never needing the extra damage so I’ve been experimenting with the other two.

Also drop the scepter trait for blasting staff, I assume this was a mistake in the editor though.

Staff generally doesn’t work too well as a tank, because of low stats and long defensive cooldowns. In fact, I would venture that pretty much all of our defense works better if you just don’t worry about tanking, and concentrate on offensive stats, because we don’t have any sustained control/healing with our extreme cooldowns.
What I run is almost what Krazy runs (there’s a couple of threads by him below tutorialing a PvP staff ele, on the second page for now), 30/10/0/0/30 with divinity runes, but I still have blasting staff and zerk ammy/jewel.
I highly recommend his guides and a damage/control setup.

Fresh air burst, full arcane utilities, zerk gear

I mean comparitively to other classes’ mechanics, where literally everything the class does is affected by it and works in conjunction with it, while with the warrior it seems that you just get up to two passive boosts from having it if you trait that way, and one skill per weapon that depends on how much you use with a trait that makes it cleanse conditions.
Not trying to suggest any changes to it, it certainly makes the class more unique to be so straightforwards, I was more wondering if adrenaline has as little comparitive import as it seems.
@Olba, I was talking less about adrenaline generation that about what it actually does. There are many ways to get adrenaline and many ways to increase its generation, but it seems to me like there are a very limited number of things it actually does.

EDIT: I think my title was somewhat misleading, sorry about that.

Sorry if this seems noobish, but this has been something that has bothered me for a pretty long time.

I’ll get to it:
Adrenaline is the Warrior mechanic, right? Why is it that it only affects four things: three traits, all of which are pretty passive, and your f1 skill?
Every other class’s baseline mechanic is pretty much what the class is centered around, with mesmers having various tricks involving illusions, elementalists having to manage their different elements, guardians having to manage passive self boosts over party burst support etc., but with Warriors, it sort of feels like a sideline boost which only really has one purpose, which is charging up your burst skill.

Even having all the traits just makes it like a sigil, in that you temporarily trade passive boosts for a short burst.

Thoughts?

Yeah, this would make EVERY game into forced 1v1s except for possibly thieves and spirit rangers, and maybe burst ele because everyone else has AoE/cleave embedded in very important skills and are actually incapable of not using this. Staff eles would literally be unusable, as would most warriors and even mesmers with their very limited amount of AoE would end up killing friends who just happen to be too close to the enemy.
So no, a thousand times over. Most classes/builds do not have the option to build single target only, not to mention that it would hit eles, who are already the weakest class, harder than anyone else.
Besides, if AoE was really the problem you would see rage threads about staff ele, seeing as AoE is everything we are, though we are pretty much never “braindead AoE spam” because that gets us killed.

I dunno about them being really bad. I’ve seen a bunch of annoying, angry players (I was one myself during exam week if my team was fighting in the center of the map while the enemy had all three points), but I’ve also seen ones that complimented me on my play and asked to join up later for more games (not that I’m very good, I think they just saw me get lucky a few times), and even ones that spent matches following me because they had fun teaming up with me.
So don’t hate on the community too badly, there are some good people out there.

I vote yes, mostly because of the complete imbalance of the current downstates (underwater rangers, for example). In fact, when I run glassier I can find classes that can not only take the last sliver of my health from downstate, but can then win simply because theirs is much more powerful than mine, or because they have a ton of AI hitting me.

hyyangoz.6195:

I am not sure if any 1 noticed it but this the Earth Armor that is triggered from “Earth Embrace” has a Cooldown of 90 secs still when i have “Cantrip mastery”.

where as “Burning Fire” has its Cooldown reduced.

any1 know the reason why?

I believe at some point, traits that mimicked utilities were not affected by traits that affected utilities until recently, but they have started to change this in favor of allowing traits to affect utility effects as well.
I think I read that somewhere anyway.

Einlanzer.1627:

MarzAttakz.9608:

Rhyse.8179:

Jeydra.4386:

Gorani.7205:

Josh Davis.6015:

There are a lot of valid concerns with the elementalist right now and we’re going to be working on addressing those points. Once everyone gets back from holiday vacation we’ll be posting up our proposed balance changes and we’ll go from there.

This surprises me a bit. Wasn’t the December update meant to be a big balance update to fix stuff? If they have to admit that there are “a lot of valid concerns”, why did they not address them with the December patch?

I’m backing this. If there are a lot of valid concerns, they should’ve been addressed with the December update. Knowing that there are valid concerns and then releasing a big patch that doesn’t address those concerns is like saying there are valid concerns of the balance team’s competence. I know it sounds rude, but honestly, nobody should release something they know to be flawed.

I get the impression that Anet is afraid to make big changes, so they iterate tiny bit by tiny bit. Then they don’t come back to it often enough and those tiny tidbits become insults that highlight how many other, bigger things are being ignored.

Balance patches like Dec 10th should happen once a month. The changes made are tiny, and at most result in a build shifting 10 points or a utility being swapped out. Anet needs to be willing to take on the big problems. If they’re afraid of backlash, then they should start an open test server so they can see the results in advance.

Well said, I totally agree with this.

Yep, this is spot on.

My biggest complaint is that they constantly micro-tune traits and such when there are obvious skill imbalance issues that need to be addressed first. For example-

What justification is there for the autoattacks (especially on Staff) to be so weak?
Why does Air feel like a filler attunement (especially on Staff) instead of being potent enough to hold its own?
Why does Water need to sacrifice so much damage that it isn’t playable solo just because it heals well? Weaker? Sure. Completely ineffective? No. I don’t get it.
Why are there so many sources of movement speed bonuses that they tend to render each other obsolete and become useless?
What possible justification was there for the RTL nerf when Air is already kind of a weak attunement and Eles desperately need to have escape tools?

Frankly, I want ALL autoattacks to be weak, not just ele. It’s sort of stupid that some classes can hit upwards of 2k damage without even having to blow cooldowns.

You have to do this in a way that doesn’t further increase the PvP condition meta.

Ferik.3127:

Most Elementalist staff skills have a 1,200 range. How can this be!?
It should be 200 instead! NERF IT NOW

I mean, it’s a STAFF, right? Aren’t those traditionally for hitting people, like with quarterstaves? Come to think of it, Eles have more range on dagger than most melee also, it should be reduced to 180 range from 300 for consistency. Wait, daggers are small, so this should be 60 range instead.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Dee Jay.2460:

Yesterday when I came across a Bunker + Firesword Ele.

He instant-gibbed my Trebuchet with the Firesword 4 + Teleport combo (litterally killed it in a second) and then caught me out too.

Even in other fights his constant Blinds and stuns were a pita to deal with.

Eles neither have constant stuns nor constant blinds. You’re thinking of warriors and thieves.

The FGS+LF thing is an exploitable bug, just like Chaos Storm+Dom30, but yes, it does take out things that don’t move very quickly.
On the other hand, the only conceivable way he could have more than one blind every 6-8 seconds is through Signet of Air (not particularly good in PvP), or earth attuned Glyph of Storms (which would require you to be sitting in his AoE, in which case it is your own fault).
About the stuns, an elementalist can have at maximum 3 skills that interrupt you, and they are pretty predictable and highly telegraphed.

Mochann.5298:

Soccergirl.5734:

Can’t really buff an entire class based on it’s performance in tPvP. You’d simply be asking for a PvP only buff. The problem with buffing classes across the board for it’s underperformance in one area of the game isn’t good balance.

Elementalist does well in both roaming/dueling and zerg play in WvW and does fine in PvE as well so buffing the class entirely on tPvP could make them overpowered in the areas they’re already doing alright on. Is the d/d elementalist a hard build to play? Yes. But due to it’s incredible skill ceiling once it is mastered you will not only have alot of fun with the class but you’ll be dominating as well. Also, most elementalists on the forums purely talk from a 1on1/roaming stand point. Let’s get this onto the table right here and right now, there is going to be classes that will have builds that are going to be extremely good and almost unstoppable in 1on1 / roaming situations like condition thief / condition mesmer and some classes have builds that will completely counter the elementalist gameplay style (terrormancer necros, etc). That’s just the way it is.

I actually have no problems with terrormancers. The only class that really gives me fits is Backstabbing stealth thieves.

As for Ele…. There is a skill ceiling, I passed it a month or so back while immersing myself in WvW. But once you get past it, you WILL play well, and often dominate. Those who are whining about the prevalent, “class is fine, you just lack skills” thought on the Ele forums need to wakeup to this reality: there IS a high skill requirement because of the added complexities in Ele play due to the defining class mechanic (attunements) coupled with low health and low armor.

I won’t say the class is “fine” — I’d love a buff to be honest, though I’d like it to be a damage buff and not a life buff. Let me do more damage! That’s what I live for. I’m really only good at killing and breaking things with my play style.

I will say though, as a staff ele, I rock in all the game formats — open world pve, dungeons, fractals, sPVP, WVW : but I can’t go it alone. I simply cannot go solo or 1v1, except in open world pve.

But team me up with at least one good person to tank for me or front line for me, and I am a walking nuke.

Yeah!
Well, until a thief comes along. Then we’re sort of boned.

Ugh, I have the same exact problem with glass thieves. Was sort of hoping you had the solution, haha.
I noticed that since your current build is also pretty much exactly the same as mine is, though I still prefer Blasting Staff to EA and Zerk over Celestial, there aren’t really any build changes I can do to help me with them either.
Didn’t know about that powder combo though, that does help a bit.

At this point, the only real thing I can’t kill ever as my staff zerker ele is glass thieves.

Mash Hog.5672:

Jae.5138:

Mash Hog.5672:

Jae.5138:

not s ure if gasmic even looked at your build.

condition builds WILL give you hell with that build. I’d suggest either putting in at least 20 into water or drop the fresh air altogether if you want a good fight against condition heavy builds.

Not sure if Jae knows Elementalist at all:

Ether Renewal = -8 Conditions on 12 second timer
Cleansing Fire = – 3 Conditions on a 40 second timer < Waste
Cleansing Wave = -1 Condition on a 40 second timer
Water Attunement Evasive Arcana = – 1 Condition on a 10 second timer
Phoenix = – 1 Condition on a 20 second timer

You DO NOT need to spec into water for Condition Removal; there are MUCH better ways to access it than to waste points into the Water tree.

There is lots of Condition removal in this build especially in Ether Renewal. I use Ether Renewal even when I’m close to full health to keep myself free of conditions because I know it’ll be up again next time I need it. It also keeps me at full health which keeps my Scholar runes proccing.

i like how you list some skills out as if you can’t get them without going your build (i.e. phoenix and ether renewal)

but nice try.

btw cleansing wave trait has 0 sec cd so it actually procs every time u go into water, without the 40sec cd

it’s just sad that you even have to pick up ether renewal just for the sake of surviving against condition builds lol.

NinjaBreadMan.8926:

These classes give me trouble in 1v1 as s/d ele

I run 0/30/0/10/30 and ether renewal/cleansing fire/mist form/lf/fgs

Not sure if you know how to read…
But all of the skills/utilities that I mentioned are already included within his build.

Cleansing Water has a 5 second internal cooldown in PvP and is not worth going 30 into water for condi removal when such strong condition removal is already present.

Cleansing WAVE is the #5 Water Skill for Dagger which removes a condition.

As he stated earlier Ether Renewal is a skill he’s already taken.
Phoenix is the #3 Fire skill for Scepter.

You should play Elementalist some more before you start giving out some bad advice.

There’s actually a trait called Cleansing Wave as well, which is most likely what he is referring to: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave_
Will stay out of the way of the rest of the argument, just trying to fix the communication problem here.

It’s not logic, it’s balance. Where’s the logic in someone getting sliced by a great sword or hit by a meteor and surviving?

Otaur.9268:

Mbelch.9028:

They’ve stated they want to change the condi meta. Hence all their talk about shaving down condition builds. So I do understand.

Conditions shouldn’t be like this in any game.. Period.

Elite forum eles teaming up. I like that, but no. It’s a simple view that certain people have. I don’t mind that your view differs. I think differently.

I got peeved off at your sarcasm.

There is a difference between continuously buffing all classes and trying to maintain a status quo. You can think one is better than the other, but it isn’t nitpicking to have an opinion one way or another.

I personally think that elementalists, guardians and rangers are in a good place, but changes need to happen to conditions and other classes to adjust the game to head in a good direction which encourages skill over anything else.

Full zerk ele hitting 3.5k with Lightning whip on a GS warrior using healing signet. The warrior was out-healing the damage of my lightning whip and hit for 2.8k – 3.2k damage with each swing just from his auto attack… Buff the freaking Ele to Beta status. Give us the damage, mobility, and healing power we had back in Beta. No one at Arena Net even plays an Elementalist, and it shows.

What? I think you exaggerate somewhat, max hp/s of a warrior is about 1200.

CMstorm.8679:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

CMstorm.8679:

question: do auras from runes gain trait bonuses/effects when proc’d? like Rune of fire/Rune of Earth/ maybe Rune of Vampirism(Mist form?)

Yes, except for mist form.
Mist form is not an aura, silly.

Yeah, i know, but i was hoping you’d know what I meant, but i just threw it in there because y not

I’m not sure if Rune of Vampirism mist form procs cantrip bonuses, actually.
Wiki says nothing.

CMstorm.8679:

would any1 else like if the trident skills were affected by Blasting Staff as well, because they currently aren’t, and why does Magnetic Current pull yourself to your target? doesn’t that interrupt you?

Also, is it too late for there to be an underwater version of conjures?

I think Anet gave up on underwater elementalists a long time ago.

CMstorm.8679:

question: do auras from runes gain trait bonuses/effects when proc’d? like Rune of fire/Rune of Earth/ maybe Rune of Vampirism(Mist form?)

Yes, except for mist form.
Mist form is not an aura, silly.

The worst thing I have encountered are Mesmers named after phantasms, which is horribly difficult to play against when they are asura too.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

It puts a condition on enemies. OF COURSE it counts as an attack. Anything else would be ridiculous.

so by your logic, stomp is an attack as well?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stomp

and stomp will miss everyone if the warrior is blind?
that is ridiculous.

all right, time to make a new topic about blind then.

no, fear me! is an utility shout, not an attack.

What about it isn’t an attack?
It targets enemies and applies negative effects to them!
By your logic, about 50% of utility skills that apply conditions/damage to enemies are not attacks, because they have a subtype.

Mochann.5298:

SWR.4687:

Is a solo staff with an ele viable at all? I mean I can kill lot’s of stuff, but I die a lot too. I don’t know if dual daggers would be more effective for solo play?

Solo staff works in open world pve. Not in dungeons or fractals. But only madmen solo dungeons and fractals.
Des not work anywhere else actually, especially not wvw or pvp.

I’m not so sure about PvP. I ran D/D forever, with a semi-classic bunker, but I’ve actually been doing vastly better with a staff, though maybe its just that I’m more suited to that playstyle.

I think you’re in the wrong subforum.
But anyway, its because legendaries are much more impressive than ascended. It’s not about stats, they’re just cooler and harder to get.

Mbelch.9028:

I’m that one guy who still has fun in spvp even though I have two hard counters. I’m over it.

Wintel and I disagree that ele is a liability. It is certainly one in the wrong hands, as I know you need more skill to play ele now more than ever.

You’ll know if ele isn’t right for you by how dedicated you are to the class. Also, don’t just follow the “meta” most of the best builds aren’t found by sticking to the “meta”.

I know what you mean, I run 30 fire and it works fine for me usually, you just sort of have to accept that if you screw up, you’re dead.
I don’t particularly like that there are builds that can get me without using skill at all, but I like the class enough to work around it. Ironically enough, it tends to be that I end up killing thieves who actually try to use skill more often then spammy ones.
The spammy ones can hit too fast for me to heal, and I run out of dodges before they run out of initiative.

Wintel.4873:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I’ve come to realize that the reason Elementalists are not viable in PvP is pretty much just thieves and to a lesser extent mesmers.

Bursty classes with stealth and plenty of teleports will eat you alive, because you have minimal defensive capabilities.

Umm…“minimal defensive capabilities” doesn’t mean you only get blown up just by 2 classes. It means if you’re not careful you can get blown up by ANY class that uses a damage-heavy build, even other Ele’s.
Sure, Ele’s are free kills for Thieves and Mesmers. But 1v1’s against Rangers, Necros, Engineers or Warriors don’t go all that much easier unless you vastly out-skill them.

Oh, I agree, but thieves and mesmers have just the right mix of stuff to ensure that they can very close to instantly kill you without any chance of you retaliating, whether you play perfectly or not, because of stealth, defense mechanics, teleportation and very high burst.
I can actually take down a lot of other stuff even using staff, but I do recognize that if a mesmer or thief shows up I’m dead meat.