Guild Wars 2

…I don’t understand the link.
Anyway, I have since changed my mind and now agree with you, mostly because I found the original thread with changes for all the classes and not just the ele.
I still think it would be a good idea to rebalance the skills’ damage without instahit (they don’t do great damage solely for that reason), but would still accept them because they’re really just finishers anyway.

Carpboy.7145:

Mbelch.9028:

Pretty glassy build.

That build wouldn’t hold up for an average ele in a 1v1 and never in a 1v2 situation.

That has average mobility, decent damage, and low sustain.

I’ve personally run 0/10/10/20/30 quite a lot but with different traits. It can be good, you’ve just got to change a few traits.

I don’t really see what you mean by low mobility. That seems like the highest mobility I can get with ele. And as for glassy, well 2600 armor isn’t bad. maybe its different for ele idk. And seems like ele has good sustain just from swapping to water. so I don’t really understand you there either

Most of the time, eles will be getting much more out of vitality than toughness. Currently, you’re sitting at roughly 14k hp, which while it isn’t particularly bad for an ele, is still somewhat lacking defensively, especially since you are used to playing a warrior. I believe the current good amount if you want to have acceptable survivability is 16k (I’m pretty used to being murdered by everything, so I personally sit at about 12-14k, but I do not recommend this to anyone that does not enjoy Dark Souls).
I do not recommend ruby orbs. Classic d/d is 2 water, 2 monk, 2 traveler’s (or another boon duration rune), so that you get very high boon time. This helps with might stacking and elemental attunement. Many substitute this with scholar’s for the burst, or another type.
You seem to have traiting basically right for d/d, though personally I would lose bolt to the heart (it doesn’t help as much as you would initially think) and take zephyr’s boon (for permafury and permaswiftness) or 30 water so that you can get cleansing water (if you do this, you might want to take soothing disruption over cleansing wave as well for a condition remove on cantrip use).

Don’t be afraid to experiment, the above is mostly a starting point that you can branch off of. It’s the closest thing you can get in ele to a low-skillfloor build, though you will still get stomped badly while you’re getting used to it.

S/D is better for DPS. Gives you a better fire 4/5, better air 4/5, more blast finishers in earth (in addition to churning earth which is great DPS), and a heal in water.
The problem with focus is that the fire and water spells are plainly awful compared to offhand dagger, as is the knockdown in air, which leaves you with three skills that are really useful in the set. Some people can make it work, but it is agreed upon that focus is defensive for ele.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

Gamgee.8612:

The fact that an evescirate can hit 10-15K in a single hit makes it more understandable of the animation, does it not? If it was instant you could oneshot thieves, which would be very funny hehe, but no, we can’t have that.

While I agree that big hitters should be highly telegraphed (kill shot, eviscerate, earthshaker), there is no equality to this rule, it is only a warrior thing. Just look at backstab. Not that I have issues with thieves or their backstabs, just making a point.

There is a good deal of equality with this for the ele, actually. Pretty much every hard-hitting elementalist skill has a massive cast time and is hugely telegraphed. Look at dragon’s tooth, churning earth, meteor shower, burning speed, and eruption.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I faced an ele in a duel arena running a similar spec. I have to tell you, Deep Freeze is a MAJOR pain in a 1v1 situation since it’s essentially a much longer pre-nerf Basilisk Venom. However, if you teleport out of it when they go to use Ice Storm, you shouldn’t die to that combo. You still have to wait for the freeze to come down, but you aren’t standing in the field getting damaged to no end.

It’s really funny when I see someone go for me expecting an easy kill, and then get frozen for five seconds in the middle of a teamfight.
The only problem is that sometimes it misses for no apparent reason for me

Passive playing builds are ones that require comparatively little input from the player to be successful. So not A, D, or E ever, and very often not the others.
Builds that do center around passive play tend to rely heavily on autoattacking, passive effects and AI over dodging, positioning, timing, and cooldown management.
It’s not necessarily any one of these things, because shatter mesmers can be very skillful and not cheesy, while PU phantasm mesmers can be very passive.
In the end, it all comes down to player interaction. If you don’t have to think very much or are letting AI do the brunt of the work for you, that is passive play. If you have to frequently work hard to position yourself, work out combos, and generally have to perform well for your build to work, that is active play.
It’s fine to have lots of health, as long as you have to work to maintain it and use c/c skillfully to help your team and deny the other team.
It’s fine to have AI helping you, as long as the vast majority of your play does not involve waiting for them to deal damage.
So to answer your questions, no, yes, yes, it’s very real.

Swagg.9236:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

@swag:
On everything except for the arcane skills, sounds great. On the arcane skills, just no. Never. The only reason these kitten things are even close to useful is because they are not telegraphed and are instant cast. Changing either of them to have delay would make them even worse than they are already, and completely useless as finishers.

MarzAttakz.9608:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

@swag:
On everything except for the arcane skills, sounds great. On the arcane skills, just no. Never. The only reason these kitten things are even close to useful is because they are not telegraphed and are instant cast. Changing either of them to have delay would make them even worse than they are already, and completely useless as finishers.

I gotta agree with this, also if arcane blast is going to be delayed, give it, you know, a blast finisher…

Non-telegraphed, instant-cast, ranged skills go against the core design of GW2: a game in which you’re supposed to be able to play according to what you see happening on the battlefield or what you see coming from an enemy. There are a lot of skills that break this rule. They’re unfair and should be balanced. Elementalist is not immune to this sort of rule just because “but my low armor” and “but my low hp.” Lead your targets, predict moves and chain attacks in an ideal manner so as to prevent enemy evasion. It’s a 1-second delay. It’s much less than you think.

Read this once, realized I needed this:
TL;DR
Arcane Blast IS telegraphed and dodgeable.
Many, many skills are ranged, have no cast time, and hit instantly.
Arcane skills aren’t overpowered enough to justify a nerf in their current form, and are balanced around their instant-castiness.
Most ranged skills have a delay that is less than one second and are less telegraphed than your suggestion, and the kind of player that uses these is fragile enough that one second is very valuable.
Finishers with delays are not incredibly useful.

Arcane blast has a visible projectile, which has a travel time and is thus completely dodgeable and telegraphed, similarly to any other projectile skill, except that it has no cast time.
Unless you also feel like nerfing every air scepter skill (not dodgeable because every single one does instant damage), Lightning Flash (900 range instant AoE), several mesmer mantras, Fear Me, On My Mark, Doom and any others I missed, the game has and will always have an abundance of ranged instant cast instant hitting skills.

Not to mention that the skills don’t even do that great damage anyway, so introducing a one-second (and very highly telegraphed) delay will make them an even worse option when compared to cantrips (they are already usually much worse because you lose huge amounts of defensive utility by taking them). Not to mention that you did not give them any other boost in compensation. If these were actually overpowered in their current form, I think that they would see a bit more use than they do.

You say that a one-second delay is not that big of a deal, but the vast majority of ranged skills have less delay than that, and are less telegraphed than building up a large AoE ring or building a ball of energy in front of your face. And one second on a burst-oriented elementalist is about the time it takes you to die, seeing as most of them sit at 12-14k hp with similarly diminutive amounts of toughness.

Finally, they both would lose a huge portion of their finisher value, which is pretty much the only reason anyone takes them anyway.

So, no.

It’s me. My thief is so good at hiding, it doesn’t show up on my character selection page.

Reanne.5462:

So I hear there is this cool new content, a kitten dragon that attacks and we get to kill him. So I level up my character, and go to Sparkfly.

There is no one here? Just a big dragon standing on the beach, it doesn’t attack anything, it doesn’t wreck havoc on anything. It just stands there, and no one is around to kill it. Not that they have any reason to, it seems pretty harmless. Maybe just came up to get some fresh air I’m guessing.

Blah. what a pointless addition, How is this a living story? May as well be a statue for all the affect it has on the area.

Guess I will go back to Mindlessly running in circles in frostgorge collecting greens and bloodstone dust.

c’mon anet, I expect better from you.

Um.
What?
I’m pretty sure you’re talking about teq.
Teq is old, definitely not current living story.

Arcturus.8109:

Nothing unusual in that, really.
http://i.imgur.com/v0hVyJj.jpg Here is today’s screenshot just for you. No excessive stacking buffs, not even a full exotic equip. I think you can get at least 17k if you’ll try harder.
Hovewer I still cannot understand why tornado amplifies power. And why we dont have some really useful skill for elite slot.

Because tornado form triples your power and doubles your precision.
It would actually be useful if a) the thing was faster, b) pulsed more than four times, c) had any defensive skill to make up for the fact that you’re now a massive target and/or d) had skills that could be used more than once per lifetime (because you’re dead meat before you use the second skill unless if you actually try to use it for anything other than a stat boost).

Arganthium.5638:

Sykper.6583:

So I heard poison is a thing…

Yes, it’s easy for me to apply perma-poison on the class with the best condi clear, and especially with my mesmer and my guardian’s amazing poisoning potential.

Or elementalists, we have even better poisoning than mesmers.

1. Ele, has so much potential even if it is harder than the other classes.
2. Mesmer. I have to qualify, no PU or phantasm builds for me. Glassy zerker shatter is the only way I will ever roll, I can’t stand passive play.
3. Engineer. Explosions everywhere, and has a lot of the same upsides as the ele with about half of the downsides. Easy mode isn’t fun, though, and it’s not as satisfying to kill something that can’t one-shot you (Dark Souls anyone?).
4. Guardian. I only play this when I need catharsis, otherwise my guardian is my dedicated cook.

naphack.9346:

what I think about lava axe:

“catch!”

About the weapon: It is mostly outmatched by staff both in range aswell as in damage. Not to mention, staff is also AoE. The axe was probably meant to be a ranged option for some wonky d/f builds, but it’s just not worth the hassle… If you want to conjure stuff, go hammer. More damage, more utility and more group support.

Or frost bow, 4 is awesome damage, 3 is a nice big shotgun hit with a chill, and 5 is an awesome stun.

Mbelch.9028:

They’re free to get into, too.

…I swear I have an excuse somewhere officer, I must have left it at home.

Zacchary.6183:

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

Also, Venom Share is still going to be kinda sucky overall, IMO.

Nonsense. Venomshare — like all builds — has to put it into a position to succeed. If you’re in small group combat where people are fairly disciplined, it’s extraordinarily useful. Everyone talks about Residual Venom, but the real money is in Leeching Venoms and Venomous Strength.

Zacchary.6183:

That’s the keyword… “Functional”.

No, the key word is this one, from your post:

me

If your standard is “best and only the best for XYZ situation”, that’s cool. However, balance in WvW or otherwise is more than just one aspect; builds are about tradeoffs, and acceptable results. None of the “non-viable” builds are so far behind that they fail to perform.

My standard is: “Does it work in most situations?”

And Venomshare does not. It works in organized group settings but beyond that it’s useless. Venoms overall are crap requiring most of the traits associated with it (about 5) for anyone to even consider slotting one.

There is no way you can convince players that venomshare is any better than it has been due to the simple fact that venoms suck in general. And as a theorycrafter, it is my duty to inform newb thieves that they are going to have a hard time with them. That and just about every thief theorycrafter is going to say venoms suck up and down the thief forums.

Don’t get me wrong, venomshare works. It’s just that it is situational and something I would not want to change my entire build for.

Most classes are sort of forced to pick small group/zerg/roaming/solo/sPvP/pug pve for their build to be really effective, so something limited to organized groups isn’t bad.

Mbelch.9028:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Mbelch.9028:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Imagi.4561:

In the Ele v. Ele duels I’ve done I had fun, but they take so long oh my God.

True that.
I had a set of duels with one of my friends a while ago, also an ele, and throughout the multiple matches we played, neither of us died at any point.
It was pretty funny.

Perhaps the two people are too tanky?

I never have ele duels that run more than 10-15 minutes, and those are the really long ones.

Glad you guys like them though.

Hotjoin matches last 15 minutes. I was using full signets at the time for funsies, not sure what he was doing.

Haha that’s why, but yeah this IS more geared towards WvW. (See first post).

Obby sanctum duels aren’t limited to any time frame, and personal dueling servers are great too.

Ha I’m too busy buying pretty weapons and stuff to afford my own dueling server.
It was before fractured, too.

Mbelch.9028:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Imagi.4561:

In the Ele v. Ele duels I’ve done I had fun, but they take so long oh my God.

True that.
I had a set of duels with one of my friends a while ago, also an ele, and throughout the multiple matches we played, neither of us died at any point.
It was pretty funny.

Perhaps the two people are too tanky?

I never have ele duels that run more than 10-15 minutes, and those are the really long ones.

Glad you guys like them though.

Hotjoin matches last 15 minutes. I was using full signets at the time for funsies, not sure what he was doing.

Lily.1935:

Absconditus.6804:

You can stack plenty of Bleeds with the GS clones and Sharper Images as well. Easier to create those than waiting around for a Phantasm. Engineer’s does not have a hard time applying conditions, saying that is almost like not knowing what a profession is capable of. They even put up faster Confusion than Mesmers are able to do, they got Burns, Cripples, Bleeds, Poison, etc. and can quickly apply them. The Mesmer also doesn’t suffer if built for Conditions for that matter. I just don’t like Conditions, and don’t tend to run with these in mind myself. I find the game to be way too much Condition Wars already, where conditions are doing as much damage as direct power, but additionally allowing you to build yourself into a bunker. It’s poor design.

Also keep in mind that shorter duration conditions, when they can be applied often, is a good thing. If you can have a Burn that ticks for 1 second and deals 4000 damage, or a Burn that ticks for 5 seconds (focusing a bit more on duration and not all on damage) and deals 4000 damage, the 1 second Burn wins. The longer a condition lasts, the more chance of it being cleansed, rendering it less effective.

You don’t like conditions, I love conditions. And many people agree with you and many agree with me. Also, Like I’ve said, I’ve made this suggestion before. I also suggested it with a boon that reduces condition damage. Because the way to counter conditions shouldn’t be COMPLETE IMMUNITY TO THEM. I’m looking at you Elementalist.

Ha.
Hahaha.
Hahahahahaha.
If you are complaining about not being able to do 2k damage (which is the practical maximum) and then keep them from regaining it on a light armor class, you have build problems.

That being said, I think DS needs to be changed to something different as well, like reflecting projectiles while under the effect of an aura or something more diamondy and less annoying to both parties.

I have either not seen any eles who use diamond skin, or I killed them fast enough that I didn’t notice they had it. As far as I can tell, it counters PU clone condi mesmers and pure condition necros, and gets you killed by everything else.
Not overpowered or underpowered, just impractical and not active enough to be really useful.

Imagi.4561:

In the Ele v. Ele duels I’ve done I had fun, but they take so long oh my God.

True that.
I had a set of duels with one of my friends a while ago, also an ele, and throughout the multiple matches we played, neither of us died at any point.
It was pretty funny.

@swag:
On everything except for the arcane skills, sounds great. On the arcane skills, just no. Never. The only reason these kitten things are even close to useful is because they are not telegraphed and are instant cast. Changing either of them to have delay would make them even worse than they are already, and completely useless as finishers.

OneManArmy.9732:

but auto attack of axe counts as fire spell. and you can stack 2 mights for each atk. (another GM trait)

Any skill used while in fire, even on conjures, counts for Pyromancer’s Puissance.

I would ague against it simply because as a high-threat low-survivability class elementalists are focused preferentially over other classes, making it somewhat more difficult to be a commander because you are very likely to die during the course of a battle, whether you win or lose.

Elfis.9102:

I fear it. Balance changes put in to appease whiners are usually buffs to autoattackers/facerollers while nerfing cooldowns and ability combos that require skill.

Please take into consideration my vote to nerf autoattacks while reducing cooldowns and buffing cooldown powers.

I agree, especially with the second bit. Won’t affect eles because any ele actually using autoattacks and expecting to get a result is essentially getting on his knees, tying himself up, and asking to get his head removed violently.

They’re still freaking annoying when someone supply drops on a point, so I wouldn’t say they’re useless, but they can’t chase, so they have some important, though limited, utility.

Oh please less focus on the AI use and more on active play, like shatters. I can’t stand trying to play shatter mes while everyone else just stealths as much as they can and throws out staff clones/phantasms.

C Hanson.4056:

Just Kidding… See what I did there? pulled you right in. Now let’s talk about some video games.

The entirety of this post deals with WvW and sPVP/tPVP play. I don’t dabble with the mysterious pixel mosters you call “PVE”. Anyways, I just got back from a wonderful experience with the mesmer class.. had a terrific time. But i knew it was a matter of time before i went back to me ol’ necro. Funny how playing a new class makes you realize everything missing with your old one.

I hear over and over again that necromancer is the “attrition” class. I was like “heck yeah it is! I’m gonna look that word up because I have no kitten clue what it means..” Turns out google knew:

---

at·tri·tion
??triSH?n
noun
1.
the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure

---

That kinda makes sense to me.. Yeah. necro. attrition class. Condis and locusts and mass condis and epidemic plagues. Yes.

BUT WAIT..

a TRUE attrition class doesn’t just deal out the damage, but is able to stay in the fight using defensive tools such as stability, invulnerability etc. I mean, what good is your attrition when you’re getting stomped because a warrior looks at you and you’re stunned knocked down and wondering what you did the night before?

Let’s see where the necro stands with some of these defensive tools:

-Condi clears:
Necro has a ton of these.. Try to beat a necro with conditions and you’re most likely asking for a quick and painful death.

-Death shroud:
YES! death shroud allows us to take an extra 14k damage before we die.

-Invulnerability:
Nada.

-Stability:
None. (unless you’re willing to go 30 points into a tree that has another sweet GM trait you would probably rather take than 3 measly seconds of stability.)

-Ability to stomp those we attritionize to death:
Nope. Unless you want to waste a 3 minute cooldown on a very useful elite skill. (every class except necro has a consistent option for stomping downed players. That is not debatable.)

-combo finishers?:
We could REALLY use some love here. There is nothing more fun than getting a big fire bubble of death on your dude because you jumped through a flaming circle. You necros wouldnt understand.. wait I’m a necro too.. kitten it.

I think I’m about done complaining.. This just kinda felt good to write. I’ll probably play necro still and just see how long i can attritionate people until I die and they run away laughing.

I encourage you to post comments such as “L2P” because as I read them I’m like “wtf are you talking about, I already love to party”.

Good heavens, why do you want a fire shield? Those things are complete trash. One 10s stack of might and a 1s burn when you get hit, with an ICD.

Pretty much all I really want are 1, 2, 3 and 8. No brainer for the first one, we’re pretty much forced out of our attunements after a certain amount of time whether or not that attunement is still useful, while pretty much every other class can pick when to switch based on need and not on being locked out of their skills.
Same thing for 2, our four sets each provide an essential functionality that is not that of a complete weapon from another class. This means that after switching from fire to air for control while using staff, we lose most of our damage for the next 10-13 seconds. This flatly shouldn’t be a thing, because while some weapons for other classes focus on damage, control, etc. they still function as complete weapons, while switching attunements for us means losing a whole chunk of our usefulness for what will most likely be the entire duration of a fight, with our healthpool.
8 is because every other class gets a bonus on the skills that reduce cooldowns. Seriously, combine blasting staff, windborne dagger, the scepter one, and the alacrity
traits into four master tier element traits (ex. 20% fire cooldown reduction, increase AoE on weapon skills by 60).

I would also like more traits for conjures, and to improve the single one we have now, as well as to improve flame axe and earth shield.

korelg.7862:

thi is dumb, there are no “condition classes”, that’s the good thing about GW2, you can play condi or direct damage with any class… except guardians, guardians cant play condi

Or elementalists really

ThiBash.5634:

It’s on the top of my list of things that would really improve the staff ele quality of life.

This and letting me move while I meteor shower.

spoj.9672:

STRanger.5120:

spoj.9672:

Thats not a bug with LF lol. Thats a pathing issue with all blinks and completely avoidable if you know where you can use it. Its to prevent exploiting. Theres nothing they can do to fix it and it has nothing to do with the skill.

Ive never experienced that issue with RTL because i tend to use it for mobility and without targets (Im a pve player). And i do use it to cross gaps and jump over doors so i dont believe thats a pathing issue unless its only when using a target. Which again is nothing to do with the skill be bugged.

So you’re admitting you’re PvE player now, that makes sense.
However I’m not talking about the pathing issue, you are probably thinking that I’m totally dumb, right?
I’m talking about the bug (I don’t care what causes it, it’s bad coding whatever the reason is), all the “blink” type skills do this, even on visually flat surface, no gaps, nothing like that.

And I can assure you, in WvW/PvP, you can’t wait until you get to the place where you know that the skill will work, you have to use it when it’s needed, or you’re deadmeat….

Its not exclusive to pvp and wvw. It happens on many places in dungeons where it really shouldnt. And it is a pathing issue. The terrain looks flat but due to the way the textures were put together it acts asif there is a pathing issue. This can only be fixed by editing the terrain. So again i repeat its nothing to do with LF, its a pathing bug.

Anyway is there something wrong with being a pve player?

It’s not that there’s something wrong with being a PvE player, it’s just that it makes it hard to gauge relative effectiveness of classes in PvE because you’re all on the same team, and PvE tends on the easier side of things.
Balance in PvP is a whole different bird, because our squishiness becomes extremely relevant.

Kyskythyn.6471:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Well many things. Why would you ever pick tempest over fresh air for an offensive build? At the very least, its an extra two lightning bolts every five seconds.
The damage boost in tempest is a 20% boost on one attack every 45 seconds, provided you hit both earthquake and Phoenix, and that your opponent has no stunbreaker or stability. The defensive boost requires you to be cc’d and then hit again, which with an elementalist’s life pool is like inviting them to saw open your head.
Most ele builds need arcana because we need to dodge to simply survive and all of our dodge traits are in there, as well as Elemental attunement which has a good number of survival and mobility boons. We also need condition removal because we simply cannot afford to leave any condition on for any amount of time, and Evasive arcana both helps with that and gives an extra blast finisher for your might stacking pleasure.

Pretty much what sums it up is that there are a number of things we are somewhat forced to take just to survive, because of how little health or defensive options we have, and the fact that we don’t really have spectacular damage to compensate. Many builds in other classes can reach close to that reward with vastly lower amounts of risk.

I think fresh air is better for d/d, where the autoattack is actually useful. I would rather not be stuck in air attunement all the time, even if it means extra lightning strikes and air attunes. But that is just my personal preference.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but tempest shield stuns enemies as they use the cc move on you. This helps me deal with cc, because I have no stability. That and it is down to a 25s cd as of the last patch.
My combos rely on earthquake and updraft, so the added 20% damage is really nice on top of an already reasonable defensive trait.
As for condition removal, I have phoenix and cleansing wave from s/d, as well as ether renewal. It’s not the best condi removal, but it’s good enough for me.
I don’t mind being squishy as I can one combo most people and those that I can’t usually don’t have enough pressure to kill me or are furiously spamming all their cds to heal and get away. That’s not to say I don’t die by any means, but in 1v1s and small group, it is very good.

If it works for you, more power to you. It does sound like the people you’re fighting haven’t learned to dodge though haha. They probably don’t expect to get much resistance out of an ele.

Harper.4173:

Also – this is taken off the official site where each class is described :

“Warriors are masters of weaponry who rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive in battle” – SPEED. Nowhere did Anet intend for warriors to be slow and burdened by heavy armor. This is a class designed to move fast, hit hard and take hits. In return for this they lose the ability to mitigate damage having no access to invis, protection, blinks, blinds and whatnot.

You mean forms of damage mitigation like endure pain, doylak signet, berserker stance, and tons of passive healing?

Kyskythyn.6471:

Taldren.7523:

Kyskythyn.6471:

Taldren.7523:

So now we have the ever so popular 20/30/10/0/10 build?

So, if the target is burning, below 33% health, I am in Air, and am practically in melee range … I get to do better than average damage with the least amount of survivability in the game. But if none of those are valid I still get to keep the lowest amount of survivability in the game for just average damage.

I don’t see how that risk/reward works out compared to how its applied to other classes is all.

Hi, I run 20/30/10/0/10.
Between Internal Fire, Bolt to the Heart, Tempest Defense, and Stone Splinters I get +73% damage just from traits on my phoenix in an earthquake-phoenix combo. Damage is in the second post which you laughed off as a downed uplevel.

Also, 600 range is not “practically in melee range,” at least for S/D. It’s +10% to nearly all my skills.

1. That doesn’t add up to 73%.
2. So now its everything i said before -and- they need to be knocked down/stunned. Another hoop to jump through that is negatable by stability/stun breaks. Nice.
3. S/D build with no Arcana and using Tempest Defense … huh?!?

Ah, so it does. It would be 10+20+20+10 for 60% more. So 448% instead of 484%.

What’s wrong with no arcana and tempest defense? This is an offensive build.

Well many things. Why would you ever pick tempest over fresh air for an offensive build? At the very least, its an extra two lightning bolts every five seconds.
The damage boost in tempest is a 20% boost on one attack every 45 seconds, provided you hit both earthquake and Phoenix, and that your opponent has no stunbreaker or stability. The defensive boost requires you to be cc’d and then hit again, which with an elementalist’s life pool is like inviting them to saw open your head.
Most ele builds need arcana because we need to dodge to simply survive and all of our dodge traits are in there, as well as Elemental attunement which has a good number of survival and mobility boons. We also need condition removal because we simply cannot afford to leave any condition on for any amount of time, and Evasive arcana both helps with that and gives an extra blast finisher for your might stacking pleasure.

Pretty much what sums it up is that there are a number of things we are somewhat forced to take just to survive, because of how little health or defensive options we have, and the fact that we don’t really have spectacular damage to compensate. Many builds in other classes can reach close to that reward with vastly lower amounts of risk.

Edit:
Also it’s 6:30 in the AM so I’m ranting a bit, but seriously elementalist is in a bad shape.

ThiBash.5634:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Personally, I’m more confused about conjure earth shield than the signets. I didn’t even remember that thing existed a few days ago, when I tried it out for the first time in a year, and promptly shoved it as far away from me as I could.

Can agree with you there. It’s a tool mostly, with very specific purposes mostly aimed at cc. Some people can probably make it work, but I’m not one of them either. It was fun pulling someone in a gap in Skyhammer with it though, because they don’t expect eles to be able to do that. I’m sure the shield has a niche somewhere for someone.

You sort of expect the skills to be worth using, but then its like, 3 second rooted invulnerablility, a smallish aoe pull, a very small daze leap… so meh.

Wintel.4873:

Yup, because unsupported LH build basically gets 1-shotted. And I mean literally 1-shotted. Being in melee range with 10-12k hp really isn’t something that’s very…safe, unless you’re very good :P

Well, you’re also not particularly mobile while in LH. Zerk daggers is ok in dungeons because you have your heals and your movement skills, but that goes out the window with LH.

Elementalsts. What is your opinion on them at the moment, and what are your plans for them?

Edit: Can I also stop being the first target for everything? Please?

maxinion.8396:

for what it’s worth, LH might stacking builds are super high DPS in dungeons, and have a hugely positive effect on party dps as a whole.

If you have a well coordinated team that knows you’re running LS and wants to support you.

I don’t know, I have too much fun when a hotjoin mesmer tries to use it on me and then panics when I beat the crap out of him with it. They expect me to be so confused, and then I’m not and they cry.

Susulemon.3204:

How about confusion? Do you get confusion ticks every flamethrower tick? Because that would be a bigger problem.

Nope, channeled skills count as one cast, not per tick or per hit.
So one flame=one confusion tick.

I ran arcane surge and arcane power for a few hours, right after the patch when I could do it without getting lynched by group members. I managed to stack around 45 seconds of burning with one drake’s breath, even without any burn or condition duration runes. It was funny but didn’t serve much purpose.

iBlasiannn.4279:

Aaroneous.6190:

Going to be pretty short on this, as I’m trying to my hardest not to let my anger govern this post. However anger is what finally pushed me to make my first post about a real issue.

I don’t play spvp, so I don’t know if this is an issue there, but in WvW perma-stealth thieves are pretty much beyond ridiculous and into the absurdity level.

Thieves IMO are completely busted in WvW because of how intangible they are to catch. But guess what? it’s not because of their stealth. let them be invisible all day, I don’t care.

Shadow step is the problem. Cut the range of that move in half. I have faced off against actual speed hackers before, and let me tell you, I always have to pay real close attention to whether it’s a real speed hacker or a shadows stepping thief.
I’d like to see what you guys think though. Surely I don’t know everything.

You complain about Perma-stealth thieves. I felt a point coming on, but you completely changed your argument to shadowstep. I don’t understand you stating that Perma-Stealth thieves then in order to argue your point about Shadow step.
The basis of your argument is basically that a thief can disengage from any fight if he pleases, and this is very true, but then you bring up the topic of speed-hackers. I have not seen a speed hacker since the the first two months the game has been out, and I highly doubt it is a high enough occurrence for you to make the comparison between a “speed-hacker” and a thief that is using shadow steps. The thief is supposed to be a highly mobile class. The problem is I don’t see the problem with the shadow stepping mechanic as a tool to disengage. Yes it seems broken, but if a thief is running from you in a fight, you in a sense have won the fight. If they run to get OOC and come back to try again, then the fight has reset for both parties. What is the problem?

Basically, its the exp and loot bags. A secondary issue is that a thief who can time his disengagement well can reset the fight until he gets lucky, or just wear you down.
I don’t usually have a problem with this second one, but I’ve seen it posted a lot on the forums so I have to assume there are some jerks who just stalk people until they win.

pablo.8495:

Hey guys, to start off i would like to say i dont want cryers answering my questions please…Now on topic, im thinking about creating an elementalist to make it my new main. But i do have some concerns(i dont wanna waste gold+time):

-I like classes that are hard but rewarding, is this the case of the ele? Is it needed or are other classes just way more efficient at the same things

-Can eles solo roam in WvW and take camps(not group)

-Do eles always fill the “support” class in zerg wvw/dungeons or can they also be a high damage class?

-And lastly is there any guides to start off with spvp as a new ele?

1) People have a lot of different opinions on this one, though everyone agrees they inherently have the highest risk of all the professions. Part of this is that, because we have fairly high damage potential but very low defenses, we are pretty much the first people to get targeted by anyone that knows what they’re doing, other than possibly thieves who tend to be more annoying than eles.

2) We used to be awesome roamers, but that capability got nerfed into oblivion. I can solo camps, but I’m fairly certain it would be much easier to do on another class for most people. My mesmer does it much easier (no, he isn’t one of those annoying PUs).

3) In zergs, yeah pretty much. We actually do huge amounts of damage as well, but we are relied upon to heal/might stack/control, because we have awesome AoE in the staff. In dungeons, just do whatever you want, as long as you do it well. I usually end up being one of the higher damage players in my group and tossing out might stacks like Oprah because I don’t have to give half a kitten about survivability.

4) We sort of suck in sPvP. Here are a few builds that work decently provided you outplay everyone else by a fairly large margin.
These are:
d/d bunker (x/x/x/30/30 with 2 runes of the monk, 2 runes of the water, and 2 other + boon duration runes of choice, using three cantrips, FGS, and ether renewal). This one is classic and has been around for a while.
s/d Fresh Air dps (Probably Scholar runes and x/30/x/x/20, not really sure on this one, but ether renewal, a couple of cantrips, and arcane wave, as well as either FGS or Elementals). Super bursty, super fragile.
Staff can do a lot of things, a bunch of people like 30/30/x/x/x with scholar and arcanes for dps.
Some people like d/f, not too sure on what to use with that. Focus has three good skills and five skills that do very little, and tends on the defensive side of things.

Pretty much nobody uses us for tournaments.

ThiBash.5634:

scerevisiae.1972:

ThiBash.5634:

If you want control, you might wanna try a signet build. Or maybe team it up with conjure earth shield for even more control skills.

Not sure you’re playing the same game as the rest of us.

Yeah, I know, it sounds silly…but I’ve ran a signet build with staff before and you’d be surprised how well Signet of Earth works in combination with the other staff control stuff. And it makes landing say, an Eruption a lot easier. The main benefit of the signet build that I experienced, was that you can spec pretty offensively (signets require some fire and air traits after all) and still get good uptime of defensive boons. Try it sometime, you may like it.

Personally, I’m more confused about conjure earth shield than the signets. I didn’t even remember that thing existed a few days ago, when I tried it out for the first time in a year, and promptly shoved it as far away from me as I could.

DontJudgeMe.3958:

PS. Sorry about forgetting the Elementalist, I will add them.

Thanks, I was feeling left out.

Dalanor.5387:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Why not change dhuumfire to agony…

There isn’t AR in sPvP.

And also you then get horrific necros with absurd amounts of AR from having full ascended gear and all 10+ AR infusions, if you base it around AR difference, who can basically instakill people without ascended gear with an unremovable condition.

DontJudgeMe.3958:

Then don’t come here and post rubbish.

You don’t see me going over to:
Mesmer section and complain about the billions of clones, dazes, conditions, invulnerability, invisibility.
Necromancer section to complain about the ridiculous amounts of CC they can put out and kiting me around.
Thief section about the amount of stealth and blinds combined.
Engineer section about the ridiculous annoying CC and Conditions (perplexity rune, rly?)
Guardians section about how many of their skills are combinations of ours into 1 skill.
Ranger section…… for having a longer range? No wait… that’s not right…. They can use a shortbow! Yeah that’s it. I want one too.

If you don’t play a Warrior, stay out plz? You’re wasting our profession space which we want to use for laughs and giggles how we still win from the other classes while not playing like a coward.

You left out elementalists… Obviously we have the coolest looking skills!
Lightning effect OP pls nerf.

Not going to take a side here, but on the third point the guy is talking about how a heal that has no cast time, and cannot overheal, has advantages over a heal that both takes time to cast and with a bad prediction will waste part of it because you can heal for more health than you have lost.
Whether this makes up for the lesser heal in a shorter fight is up for discussion.

Burst is irrelevant to this point, unless someone is bursting you down fast enough that you are forced to dodge instead of heal, or are losing enough health/have bad enough timing that the one second cast time is too long and you get downed, while the passive heal would at least provide some healing and potentially save you.

Wintel.4873:

I don’t see how condi Engi loses to DS. They always run rabid gear (+condi damage, precision, toughness) and ALL their condi appliers have direct damage which frequently crits for around ~400-600 damage, e.g. grenades or pistol. The ele should drop below 90% after the very first round of grenades.

That pretty much leaves condi necro (carrion) as the only build that truly gets hard-countered by DS.

And condi mesmers, who rely on staff clones to apply conditions for the most part (if you don’t know, these do roughly 0 damage per hit at level 80) and have only a small amount of direct damage burst.

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.