Guild Wars 2

keloorie.6085:

lchan.2169:

I have no idea how people can think HS is OP. It amazes me. When you are going at it, you want to be using a heal skill that when activated gives you highest instant heal. Not some helling that ticks a few hundred a sec. Does kitten in a 5-10 sec fight.

400 healing per second
In a 10 second fight
400 X 10 = 4000 healing ( passively )
= kitten
Passively healing for 4000 in 10 sec is just totally useless, so dudes please stop complaining about our HS

When was the last time a fight lasted ten seconds for you?
I run a zerker staff ele mostly, and even I can’t remember the last time that a fight was that short for me.

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.

Elementalists do by far the best DPS, provided you are in a good group. If you are running with low levels, it is one of the worst because you need group support. Warriors will always be your best bet for dungeons outside of a top-tier group.

Przemek Pro.1309:

kinda useless cuz if u are dueling with ppl or fighting in wvw u will never hit an enemy by this skill, it should be instant. same for shatterstone (water 2)

Shatterstone should be much quicker, I agree, because it isn’t particularly powerful, but DT is somewhat too strong to be instant. It needs some adjustment, because it is disproportionately telegraphed and delayed, but it should still be fairly hard to land considering how much damage it does.

Gorni.1764:

yeah I actually play only Solo-Q and your parameters are pretty much the reason why I mostly play defensive (there seems to always be a thief and/or a minion-necro in the enemy team and skyhammer pops up way too often). Sometimes I switch to D/D (usually on spirit-watch when we don’t have an orb-carrier).

so basically this is my build: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-kZ;3BJVU0-5NN-Z0;9;6JJT;427-28-47A5;5sV2DsV2D6Ro
Berserker-Amulett is only equipped when my team consists of something like 2 guards and 2 warriors. Against teams without much CC I choose Arcane Wave instead of armor of earth and against teams without much stability I always pick tornado, etc. When there’s no thief or petting-zoo I sometimes pick vital striking in water for more damage.
I’d love to have 10 more points for Internal Fire or Bolt to the Heart – But Rock Solid and Healing Ripple are just too good to give up on them.

I still don’t know which runes are best though. I don’ really benefit from the crit-damage from divinity but you’ll still get the best stats out of them. I tried ogre and scholar but ogre is kinda contra-productive since you should avoid beeing hit at all costs and scholar seems to not be active very long (even with a defensive spec). Boon-Duration might be a good idea but these seem too defensive.

I have the same problem with the weapon-sigill. I think battle, bloodlust or force are best. I can’t really decide though. Thanks to soothing disruption I always have enough endurance for dodges so I don’t really need sigill of energy (would be my first pick otherwise).

Btw: Have you ever tried frost-bow? At first I was sceptical but it really kicks in, especially when your mates know how to use it. Bunker-Guards can basically be oneshotted with it (just time 4 and 5 with a team-mate and the guard can’t do anything about it). The CC is also nice to interrupt rezz or stomps (there’s nothing more satisfying than an enemy beeing frozen mid-air while trying to stomp your team-mate).

My normal rotation for Frost Bow is 3 (solely for the chill, I’m too squish to be in melee range to get the most out of it), 5, 4. The really nice thing about 5 is that even if they have stability up, it still applies chill every second which makes landing 4 pretty easy.

I’ve been playing GW2 ele for three years, and I can tell you that it is definitely OP.

zilcho.7624:

DaliIndica.9041:

I am thinking the PVP player base needs to start rolling PVE chars, just go pure tank and clog up all the dungeon and LFG groups, really push the outer limits of defense whilst contributing absolutely nothing to the group other than being alive. Dont worry, other pvp players will be with you, untill we have groups that can tank any boss but never kill him (will be like guards in beta all over again, YAY).

Actually, this is a great idea. Whenever you get one of these new players in ranked and give them suggestions, they tell you it’s just a game and that you care too much.

Maybe they’ll figure out how annoying unprepared players are if we clog their dungeons with tanks. And when they say we need to learn how to build/gear, we can tell them they care too much.

Then again, are tanks really the most useless thing we can think of? I can imagine a Swiftness spamming ele build. You know, for the utility. If you run faster, you clear the dungeon faster!

Run a staff, arcane brilliance, and arcane wave, you never even need to leave air.
Just spam all your skills and blast finish in air 5.

^this, sort of. It is sort of silly to have a skill that not only requires you to take hits, which you can take about 5 of normally, but actually requires you to take crits in a game where you are commonly taken down in 2-3 of them.

not mine, but whatever

Wintel.4873:

mysticsicness.7598:

The Elementalist downed state (where they spend a good amount of time playing from) is extremely OP. Their #2 ability is a huge hindrance to melee trying to kill them quickly, so that they may move on to the next Ele.

They can also jump off ledges with #2 and kill themselves instantly, denying me of a proper stomp. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever properly stomped a downed Ele. They either get destroyed by damage…or suicide.

That is just ridiculously unfair and OP.

New tactic: Getting all of the elestompers’ attention, and then running away as fast as possible, preferably getting targeted in the process.
Will make them ragequit because they consider ele kills to be free and thus taking them away will frustrate them to the point of quitting.

For anyone who has yet to realize that this is a joke thread, go home and get some sleep.

Also, ele spells too flashy and annoying, gave me seizures OP plz nerf

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

could you explain your acronym? FGS? I assume Fiery Great Sword?

Yes.

Really, eles shouldn’t be able to move while casting ANY of their skills. Also, they have too many boons, we need to remove access to boons for them. They also have too many skills, so we should make those skills weaker versions of other skills and give them higher cooldowns.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ele must have its burst nerfed significantly to make way to any sustain buffs. Otherwise we have an insanely cheesy spec (fresh air) which takes no skill outside of an instant burst combo that will become powerful. Nobody wants to be 100——>0 whilst an ele casts instant abilities and is invulnerable/blocking.

I know that this has been said already, but:
1) That combo has a 30-40 second cooldown and is completely screwed by a dodge/invul. During this cooldown, the elementalist using it is not only unable to deal serious damage, but has also blown most of their defense, and their paltry 14ish k hp and roughly 1k hp isn’t going to make them anything other than a free kill/rallybait for the guy you just took down.
I mean seriously, who takes a build that makes any 5v5 into a 4v4? Which then briefly becomes a 4v5 because the person you took out respawns faster than you cool down?
2) Many classes, thief and some mesmers, an do roughly the same thing on a shorter cooldown without losing all of their defense, and then have some team support capability as well (shadow refuge rezzing etc.).
3) I’m pretty sure that most eles would gladly give up our instant cast and/or instant hit skills for buffs in our defense and various underpowered traitlines. I agree, they are somewhat gamebreaking, even if they don’t actually make us overpowered this type of skill should still not be part of the game (looks at thieves, necros, and mesmers).

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

katniss.6735:

Because 3.25s cast time is instant, right?

Use eyes.

Except the Elementalist doesn’t actually have to be sitting on top of you to use that skill and still have it damage you. Thanks to a little feature the Elementalist has known as Short-Range Teleportation the Elementalist can start channeling Churning Earth some distance away from the intended target, and then when the Channel is at about 95% complete they can select and target a Lightning Flash, get in close to their target, and 1-hit-K.O. their target. Cause no one can dodge a Churning Earth that they don’t see coming.

Churning earth is simply not capable of one-hitting anything other than a zerker thief or zerker ele.
If it is going to do any serious amount of damage, you could easily burst the ele down within that time period with any class that could be threatened by it.
Seriously, mesmers and thieves are vastly better at bursts and can do them on shorter cooldowns, with better sustain, more team utility, and defense as well.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I think “Logan Thackery” should be Trahearne Morph instead. Infinitely more annoying.

It’s more because when you’re in Moa Form, you run away, and Logan is very good at that. So is anyone who isn’t an invulnerable ranger underwater.

Ah, I see. Perfect then.

Sodeni.6041:

And lowest hp with light armor o.o?

Elementalists do not have that many dodges? Thief got more I heard. Is that right? How you survive in WvW?

You either support in a zerg, or massively outplay everyone else by a huge margin.

That isn’t as good unless you have 30 in water and can take cleansing water, in my opinion, seeing as you already have permanent vigor from Arcane II and semi-permanent regen from Elemental Attunement. Condition clears are pretty valuable.
If you like water IX more, though, its perfectly fine to take.

Frankly, the biggest problem with fields right now, from my standpoint as an ele, is other fields that are less valuable interfering.
It might make sense to allow each player a hierarchy in options to determine which fields get your finishers first. It’s always a pain when a hammer guardian starts putting all these useless light fields around and I miss my might/AoE heals.

I think “Logan Thackery” should be Trahearne Morph instead. Infinitely more annoying.

Blaze.4726:

thank you now i can finally Level kinda hard without any traits……..

I’m glad I could help.

Blaze.4726:

kitten another question see this is why i didnt want to read those guides

neko said “Once you get to level 60, put 30 in Arcana and 20 in Water. Take Water V VI and Arcana V VI XI. Equip Berserker gear and trinkets with ruby slotted upgrades (I know people will disagree with me here but I really do think that with that much in your survivability trees you’ll live). Learn how to heal with Evasive Arcana by dodging in Water Attunement and healing via atunning to Water.”

but that doesnt make sense! arcane v give me LONGER staff range!!! im using D/D

heh, slightly outdated now. What this should be is arcane II, VIII, XI, and Water III, X.
Traits got moved around last patch.

haha ok, you’re very welcome.
I did d/d for a long time and would have given you my PvE build, but honestly it sucks and is by no means optimal.
I stick with staff now, unless my party really badly needs might.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-Builds-for-PvE/first

Blaze.4726:

So i am playing elemental and its my first profession in this game! It has it ups and down but since i hate playing anything other than mages it was like the only class i could start with.
Really tough playing as a beginner, but i really learned my staff spells and got to 60! i can pretty much kill almost anything that kill-able like veterans mobs and all! (cant solo champions that are my level can any class do that? i use everything but after a min or 2 all my spells go on cd while the guy barely lost any health).
So since i want to upgrade my gear and all i was thinking of changing my playstyle! i really want to learn D/D cause i have been told its high skill cap really good in PVP WvW. But is it any good in dungeons cause i still would like to do them. Also what are some good build for D/D? I have been reading guides in the forums but they all are kinda outdated.

thanks for the help and ill be 60 so i should have 50 trait point after buying the new book and able to go 30 point in 1 trait.

I would argue that staff is the highest skillcap, except in zergs, though I’m sure some will disagree. S/F with LH is probably best for dungeons, though d/d and d/f are close behind.
Look at the stickied guide (the meta one), as well as dekey’s guide.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

It’s pretty much only good for arcane power. Everything else ends up being really lackluster (who really cares about the small burn or chill? the blind is okay, but the immobilize duration is atrocious), but with arcane power you can easily stack 15 seconds of chill, 25 burn, and five seconds of immobilize.
Even then, its on a 36 second at minimum cooldown.

!

I had no idea it did this! That’s incredible. I’m going to have to give this a shot. Thanks!

[Edit] For theorycrafting: If that’s true… Do you suppose this might work with it:

Start in Earth.
Drop Ice Bow.
Arcane wave (for initial immobilize)
Arcane Power
Ice Storm (still earth attuned).

Each bolt falling (first 5) will cause AoE immobilize with the already-ludacrous damage and guaranteed crit…
That would be pretty lol.

[Edit Edit] If this becomes a ‘thing’ i’m going to dub it the ‘Go-go gadget Icebow’. You all witnessed it. It’s official.

It does, try it.
I distinctly remember getting roughly 20 seconds of chill just using cone of cold and arcane power.
Presumably you would want Arcane retribution as well.
Also, remember that if they dodge you waste the hit.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

SlayerUK.5029:

Really interesting build, I see where I went wrong when trying fire axe now :P, I just don’t like being up close and personal, esp with zerk.

Atm I’m running a zerker 30/10/0/0/30 but with persisting flames (for longer lava font and fury for me/team) but the most important difference is Elemental surge which I carried over from the S/F build.

Maybe it’s gimmicky but it’s hilarious putting down a lava font then switching to earth and using both arcane abilities + shockwave to lock them inside it plus deal so much damage, sometimes I’ll cast meteor shower before this combo for even more madness. The immobilise can also guarantee shockwave to land if used the opposite way.

Elemental surge is also good for being defensive and offensive at the same time with blinds and immobilises, the burning is ok and chill is not used much unless it’s a melee class I wanna troll with no condi removal or perhaps runners. The reduced cooldown has them up all the time and arcane briliance also applies the condi (I just wish they would merge the 25% energy gain at last or add condi removal to their use as someone mentioned). You can also blind people for stomps in air attunement

One with air is also neat as I can switch to air while burning retreat for insane distance or use it with FGS for roaming, (but also helps to gain a little distance while crippled/chilled) I used to use tornado for the meteor shower combo, but I just find FGS too useful plus you can then call down a firestorm, fiery rush then fiery whirl, after the meteor, for probably the same damage, and is epic for disengage.

I too have trouble with thieves, so look forward to seeing your next video. Just posting this for a different playstyle that can still support but is a bit more offensively defensive. Atm I use sigil of fire for more AoE dmg but perhaps energy will help me survive that bit longer against thieves.

I really wanted Elemental Surge to work for me. But it’s really hard to give up a blast finisher (equates to a heal with staff) and a rolling heal. I also found it difficult to use my arcane abilities in Earth (for immobilize) since you don’t get any fields in earth. Like you said though, you could drop a lava font then switch into earth for the immobilize, but it’s really risky since the lava font field is so small.

I may have to revisit it if I decide to go more glassy. Having a few ranged immobilizes could make the ranged bombs more worthwhile.

It’s pretty much only good for arcane power. Everything else ends up being really lackluster (who really cares about the small burn or chill? the blind is okay, but the immobilize duration is atrocious), but with arcane power you can easily stack 15 seconds of chill, 25 burn, and five seconds of immobilize.
Even then, its on a 36 second at minimum cooldown.

selan.8354:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Everybody hates eles

not really. eles if played right can be very strong. i’ve met some pretty stale eles though that just stand on the side and use aoe. ele needs to be constantly on the move just like mes. on my pu mes im constantly moving, dodging, blinking, etc. otherwise u get locked down to death in seconds.

No, I wasn’t actually saying anything about balance here.
If you look at everyone’s lists in this thread, almost all of them rank ele last or close to last.
I was talking about that.

Everybody hates eles

I found the best way to do battle with mesmers is to play them for a while. It really helps with spotting them, and most mesmers expect a period, however brief, where you don’t know where they are. Immediately spotting and pressuring them will definitely help you, because they are firstly not usually at full power early on, and you can easily make them blow important cooldowns in a panic, or sometimes outright kill them.
Using earth 4 early in between you will also help with an initial shatter burst or melee clones, especially because they rely a lot on mobility.
Earth 3 also hurts their ranged clones.
You should have blasting staff, this helps with managing the clones at the same time as the actual mes.

They’ll still get you a lot, but this stuff does help.

scerevisiae.1972:

reikken.4961:

4 stacks of torment every 2 seconds seems fine?
I’ll give you that Ele needs quite a lot to become viable as a condition damage class, but that’s a lot of power for a single trait.

sceptre earth #1 stacks 3 bleeds every 2 sec, where are you getting 4 from?

3 stacks of torment per 2 sec with a duration of 3-4 sec per stack isn’t that strong. Seems about right for a GM trait IMO.

Fire master trait is 30% burning on crit

Anierna.6918:

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

@Anierna: […] I didn’t bother with including a lot of my research. If there is sufficient interest, I can add it as an addendum.

I’d really like to see your research. You must have used something other than that modified Nike spreadsheet you linked; I was really disappointed when I saw how that spreadsheet had been designed. It’s not just the formatting that was at fault there, but the lack of clarity in assumptions and stat-breakdowns that lead to inaccuracies in EP maximization.

EDIT: I also noticed you haven’t yet fixed your Vuln-stacking LH build or your s/f LH rotation, as per my previous comments. You might want to get on that; the longer you wait, the more likely it is that people will read your guide and start using the wrong builds and rotations. We don’t want to spread misinformation.

Adding in variable optimization for each build should also be on your to-do list, but that will probably take a bit longer. I already optimized the variables for your LH and staff builds, here, but you’re on your own for your d/f builds.

There is rage deep within this one. Rage bubbling and rising in the form of elitism on a video game forum.
Chill bro.

I used to want warriors to be nerfed pretty badly, but recently I’ve been noticing that the vast majority of warriors are flat out awful at the game.
Like seriously, I’m maining staff ele right now and they walk straight through three stacked sets of AoE, never dodge roll, and in general just can’t seem to understand that they aren’t invincible. It’s sort of funny.

LightningBlaze.4913:

By the way KFC have you considered using fgs instead of tornado in conjunction with the meteor shower combo.

Tornado triples your power, FGS gives 260ish. Not much competition there.

maciora.9542:

Playing engineer from the beginning I tend to think this class is not finished, there are some things that eng should have from the beginning: like rocket shoes + slick shoes should leave burning mark or burning field, lots of gadgets – like traits blinding (acid coating) have cooldown too long, which makes this class only for fun, as damage is pathetic, skills are not usefull (because of cc, traits in wrong tiers), all in one:

class was forgotten, there is no future for serious gaming, and as this year comes to an end it will deteriorate and dissapear from dungeon, pve, wvw -

the final year of the engineer, because of broken ideas. Now engineers are very often being kicked out from dung team – had it couple of times.

Is there a hope for our class? Do not think so…

0.o
Engineers are awesome, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Biomanz.9302:

Yea I’ve seen some staffers burning retreat to chase some people but I usually reserve it for defense since it seems much more valuable that way. But I sometimes use it both defensive and offensive as I’m running from someone and they’re literally just running through the fire then Earth 2, 4 to stop them, then Fire 2 ->go to town on him. Over half the time they run away and I end up chasing lol.

Immobilized and can’t get away? Burning retreat or with axe will save you most of the burst. Also don’t forget Air 4 to escape cripple and chilled too. Can potentially save your teammates around you as well. I’ve never seen a staffer use these defenses which is kinda puzzling.

Burning retreat while immobilized. That has some great potential there. I’m going to have to give that a try.

Yeah, a lot of people will run on top of it after and take all the ticks at once, because it looks like a mini red circle to them.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Thanks for the video!
It gives eles like me who don’t want to hug cantrips some hope.
Some jerk warrior started trying to shame me for not being able to 1v1 him… with zerk staff, in hotjoin.
Not that I was trying to do anything other than run away.

You can 1v1 plenty of players. Zerk warriors are actually one of the easiest classes to beat as a staff elementalist using the combos above.

Watch out for the immobilize. When they immobilize you—drop water and blast away. If you have any defensive utilities (mist form), use this instead.

After that, just keep dropping combos. If you cycle your CC appropriately, they should do very limited damage to you, and they’ll drop faster than a french maid.

But best of all, because of their limited range everything works on them. Shockwave. Gust. Frozen Ground—all of these are much harder to land on other opponents. Furthermore, because they don’t stealth like thieves, they are so much more predictable. You can land your Unsteady Ground, and static fields on them easily every time (but watch out for their stability).

The only real trick is avoiding that initial burst damage (which they love) and know that it’s coming. A good warrior will save their immobilize until you waste your defensive utilities (don’t waste em!)

Thanks for the tips.

cheshirefox.7026:

ens.9854:

Don’t worry ele there will always be a place for you mindlessly stacking might in dungeon groups

or heals for unexperienced groups in low level dungeons z__z

Don’t forget our five minutes of FB glory in AC!

Thanks for the video!
It gives eles like me who don’t want to hug cantrips some hope.
Some jerk warrior started trying to shame me for not being able to 1v1 him… with zerk staff, in hotjoin.
Not that I was trying to do anything other than run away.

I thought he was going to not use stealth
Would have been cool if it was viable.

Biomanz.9302:

Instead of Earthquake, Wind up Deep Freeze, Lightning Flash to his face.

That sounds like a really good idea actually.

It’s pretty much pure control. If you’re lazy, the auto attack is good for Zerg tagging.

Noxrawr.6125:

katniss.6735:

Because 3.25s cast time is instant, right?

Use eyes.

Yea and if you miss 1 dodge youre instantly dead. No other class in the game can accomplish ANYTHING like this. This type of damage is a completely other ballpark than any other ability in the game. And pls, dont come at me claiming that you always dodge whenever youre about to take damage because thats pure nonsense.

I spent several matches being horribly violated by a Mesmer in PvP yesterday. Was full zerker staff, but to be fair every single time I entered an ongoing fight it was instant down from him focusing me. This isn’t a particularly uncommon situation.
So what I have to say to you is, suck it up you godkitten ed kitten, you just learned what playing an ele is ALWAYS like. You got killed once by a combo that is extremely difficult to pull off if the other guy is even just in motion.

It’s more that anyone even moderately experienced has learned to focus the ele before doing anything else. It’s somewhat stupid but that is what most of the problem is, you are just a higher priority kill.

ThiBash.5634:

sorrow.2364:

Actually, the utility slots you’re losing because of picking a kit is compensated by the Toolkit skills.

That would be true if you didn’t also get a toolbelt skill for other utilities.

Still a net loss of zero skills compared to the ele if you take three kits, and an engi gets vastly more versatility because of the variety available to them.

Celestial also gives better crit damage on coat and helm than anything else, so those are the first pieces I would make, and the last I would trade out.

Monoman.2068:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HixNwGVDOb4&list=PL_tvolwEnBwTwGF1IKeI7QLRaNLsqvsXm&index=5
There’s a link to these for every class in the description for the video you posted.

Unfortunately most of those videos just show how lame conditions can be/how bad most people are outside of their zerg.

I think all of them do.

PvP, WvW, or PvE?

Micro Hard.3601:

Conjure weaps are pretty fine in their current state. If you look at any dps test LH, FGS, and bow are all either highest burst or highest sustained dps sources in the game. This not only goes for PvE but a couple can be applied in PvP as well such as the bow/fgs in a capture the point objective scenario. I would hardly say that conjure weaps are in deep need of an upgrade and doubt we will be seeing one anytime soon after they recently buffed them however minor the buff was.

It’s not so much that they are weak, as that they are really difficult to use.

reikken.4961:

landing deep freeze is so impossibly hard. you have to force them to use up all their condition removals, or all their stun breaks, or all their endurance, and then you STILL have to combo it with something else

Condition removals and stun breaks don’t work on it, unless you’re talking about setting up for it.
In fact, once you have it on, the only thing that can remove it is damage from an allied player.