Guild Wars 2

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.37.0.30.0.3.13.10.8.25.6.10.29.4.6.0.21.0.0.33.38.42.50.0.0.0.0.0.20.10.30.10.0

This build is serving me very well in PvP.
I’ve found that fire and earth have great synergy. With fire’s condition duration, I can get 20+ stacks of bleed on a target. With this much condi damage, that’s total destruction. Conversely, with earth’s condi damage, my fire attunement does THAT much more damage because the burns are just absolute murder.
I do an insane amount of damage in this build and have a lot of survivability. The key to my survivability, I think, is obviously the high toughness, but also a bit of purposeful healing power combined with healing signet and the 30 point earth trait, written in stone, which makes your signet passives still function while the signet is on cd. Basically, I don’t have to worry about losing my heal on cast from the signet. I can just spam the active and always get 275 hp per cast. I’ve thought about swapping the valkyrie gem for the cleric one for more healing on that, but I haven’t tried it yet. This seems to be doing well enough.

I had no problems with any of the story missions or anything. 20/10/30/10/0 D/D.
There are other builds that work well, too. You just have to get used to their playstyle.

EnochDagor.6185:

Agree with this post. Last nite I actually made the comment that I wish I could use a Utility ability instead of an Elite ability in the number 10 slot.

In PvE, Elemental is great. It works fine for what it is (a DoT or damage over time for those not quite aware). Don’t expect anything else out of it and you won’t be disappointed. It won’t tank, it won’t do much else. I try to cast it in Fire attunment for the high damage or Water attunment for the healing it provides (which is almost too low to even consider).

In PvP, the elemental is worthless. The Tornado was great for like the first day when people did not realize what it was. Now, you turn into a tornado in WvW you’ll die faster… guaranteed. Plus, it takes forever to change into Tornado form dwindling its usefulness. Needless to say, I rarely hit the elite skill in PvP or WvW. It’s just an empty spell slot to me.

The fix? I see a lot of people complaining (and I’m prolly one of em) that the elementalist is a glass cannon who is more glass than cannon… change our elite skill to be a long reuse direct damage ability.

What are you talking about the elemental doesn’t tank? Not if you use it in fire or air attunement, sure, but my earth elemental tanks like a boss! I can take down 4 veteran mobs at once if I use my earth elemental. And the water elemental has helped me through some tight spots and is definitely a huge help in a group setting.

The tornado is not that bad. Yeah, it’s bad if you use it as a last ditch effort when you’re near death. Not all elites are supposed to work in this game. When I use it at a node in sPvP when we’re struggling to take it from the other team, the other team is suddenly constantly on their backs and my team totally cleans house. I mean, you damage and launch foes on contact, you can do more damage with the lightning ability, you can send out dust devils in all directions that blind, and you can send out debris in all directions that knocks back. How is that not totally OP in PvP?

Razarei.2809:

I hear what you’re saying, and I main S/ D / D/D too, and like I said, I hardly die ever too, but as we’re both saying (but what you’ve failed to realise that you admitted) is that this is ONLY possible if you spec defensively. It takes people 3/4 and permalocks to take me down at my current build, because I play it awesome, but that’s all I’m good for, wasting time. I can’t kill anyone unless they’re kittenkitten ;D

If you haven’t died to a thief yet, then you’ve not met an ultra cannon type haste build thief who manages to two shot you in the blink of an eye while running 3300 toughness and a kittenload of healing.

You have to understand, my definition of good, probably to equates to amazing in the average eyes, because I’m a perfectionist and I have really high standard. I get it, ele’s specced defensively are awesome at low level PvP, but when you get to mid to high level where people know what they’re doing, ele’s are ALWAYS the first target, and you’re down in a matter of seconds.

You sound like a guy who knows what he’s talking about, but the one thing you’re doing wrong is assuming everyone is just qqing because they have no idea what they’re doing, but you’re wrong.

Clearly, something is wrong when people are refusing to take elementalists in PvE dungeons or PvP, and when our main damage source are signets. >_>

Again, people are only refusing to take elementalists because everyone says that eles are bad. Just like people put Galileo under house arrest because everyone said that the universe revolved around the earth. It’s popular opinion, not the game’s balancing, that has caused that. If your main damage source is signets, you have serious problems with your build.

Yeah, of course not dying is a lot easier if you spec defensively. That’s true for everyone. A warrior with a glass cannon build dies pretty easily as well. The advantage they have is that they can come back up from downed tokittenyou and rally themselves if you aren’t watching closely.
You can do a glass cannon ele and you will die easily. Just like those cannon haste thieves. Have you ever seen how outrageously fast thieves go down? Easiest class to kill in the game by a long shot. And for good reason. They have the highest burst potential. But if you do glass cannon ele, you will also kill outrageously fast if you’re not being killed. Those thieves do best when they come from behind and stick their knives up your butt while you’re fighting the gaurdian. That’s how they’re supposed to play. 1v1, they can only do well against other glass cannon builds.
I could go glass cannon and I would have the same role as one of those cannon thieves. I don’t, though, because I don’t like playing that role.
But, to be honest, I can kinda play that role in my current spec. You keep talking about not being able to kill people, but I do so much damage it’s ridiculous. I run a condition build with lots of toughness and power. My bleeds do so much damage (especially considering how fast I can pile bleed stacks onto a target) it’s unreal. And if they cleanse the bleeds, I can just ring of earth, maybe another impale for good measure, swap attunements (5 fresh stacks of bleed, altogether), and get to burning them in fire attunement, which ALSO does outrageous amounts of damage…especially when you fire grab. The only signets I use are the healing signet and signet of air for its AoE blind (which barely even does damage).

And yes, I have seen those thieves. They can’t two shot you if you dodge, blind, inflict weakness, and then knockdown if they’re still too much trouble. Avoidance is not THAT hard to get down and it’s necessary for this game.

And if people are always targeting eles first, then isn’t that evidence that they’re a threat? People always target the biggest threat first. Why would they go straight for the Ele if there’s a thief who’s ready to stab them in the back? Why would to they target the ele if they’re just gonna be giving the “totally op” warrior more time to get off his hundred blades? Maybe more than once? If everyone is going for the Ele first and it’s really as underpowered as you say, then everyone sucks at PvP.

If you spec all earth and water, then yeah, you’re not gonna be much good for damage. I spec full earth and 20 fire, with 10 points each in water and air. I have great survivability and do boatloads of damage. I probably am not quite as survivable as I would be with full earth and water, but I do plenty of damage when I focus on conditions and can kill pretty much anything. That’s the kind of tradeoff you have to make when choosing a build. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be a time waster with little damage output. That’s a role that can have great PvP applications in an organized team. It certainly has in other games (tanks had significant PvP roles in trinity MMOs).

juki.7539:

Everyone expects buffs to this class, personally I don’t want even more fotm kids playing ele…

I agree wholeheartedly.
To be honest, I already destroy so much in pvp and soloing on my d/d ele. I really don’t understand these complaints about being underpowered. If we got a buff, I’d be absolutely unstoppable. Now…that wouldn’t be that bad, but I don’t want to break the game and then see a huge nerf that probably WOULD make us underpowered.
And we have too many people playing Ele as is. The only consolation I have is that most of them suck at the profession. If they made it easy to play like warriors, I would be sad.
Higher skill curve often translates to higher skill reward. I’m happy with that. It’s been treating me VEEEEEEEERRRRRRYYY well.

Razarei.2809:

Pinkerton.5643:

Razarei.2809:

Haha no. Stop saying that that’s the reason everyone is QQing.

EVERY class is saying the ele’s are the weakest, not just elementalists. I consider myself an amazing elementalist, but I get roflstomped by any who even remotely knows how to play their class. I know my profession inside out, there’s nothing more I can learn from my class, yet here I am, posting in this thread that elementalists are indeed, underpowered.

You can say ele’s are fine all you like mate, but 95% of the games population disagree with you.

You know there is a problem when people are advertising “NO ELE” when recruiting for TPvP or Dungeons.

People are advertising like that because they’rekitten who don’t understand how the game works and are just jumping on the bandwagon. You obviously don’t understand the profession as well as you think you do because I play Ele and I roflstomp EVERYBODY. I abokittenely destroy in PvP AND PvE. All this says to me is that 95% of the game’s population shouldn’t be playing Ele.

No, stop being ignorant. They’re not, and I’m not. I DO understand my profession as well as I think I do. And I’m sorry, but if you’re roflstomping, you’re going up against paper newbs who don’t have any idea how to play their class. I hold my own very well, and even dominate most of the time, but that’s because I’m a great elementalist. Yet I’m matched or outclassed by some random thief who knows what pressing ‘2’ does yet has no knowledge of the game.

Yes, this is an exaggeration, but it’s true in the sense described. If I came across you in PvP I’d obliterate you or we’d be in a never ending match, because that’s just the way ele is. You can scream ‘newbs’ all you want, but that isn’t the case and everyone knows it.

If it was just once or twice that I’ve done well in PvP, you might be right, but it’s consistent and from day one. I’ve never been below the top three in a match. NEVER. And I’ve lost a single 1v1 against a gsword warrior (because I wasn’t prepared for his stupid hundred blades). But I came back and destroyed him in our next 1v1.
I am playing D/D, so it’s entirely different from the staff, but the staff is not meant to be a 1v1 weapon set! It’s designed to be bad at 1v1. It’s meant for group combat and it does well in group combat.
And I never screamed “newbs”. All I said is that Ele clearly isn’t the profession for the average playstyle. Not to say that those people are bad at the game. Just not naturally suited for the Ele playstyle.
Oh, and I’ve never even come close to being beaten by a thief unless he had buddies backing him up. Mashing heartseeker is only effective against somebody who doesn’t know how to avoid damage. Thieves are always trying to run away in stealth when they get tired of not killing me…and then they bleed out in stealth and reappear a few seconds later trying desperately to shadowstep far enough away from me that I lose interest…but it doesn’t work. Thieves are the most entertaining kills ever.

Razarei.2809:

Haha no. Stop saying that that’s the reason everyone is QQing.

EVERY class is saying the ele’s are the weakest, not just elementalists. I consider myself an amazing elementalist, but I get roflstomped by any who even remotely knows how to play their class. I know my profession inside out, there’s nothing more I can learn from my class, yet here I am, posting in this thread that elementalists are indeed, underpowered.

You can say ele’s are fine all you like mate, but 95% of the games population disagree with you.

You know there is a problem when people are advertising “NO ELE” when recruiting for TPvP or Dungeons.

People are advertising like that because they’rekitten who don’t understand how the game works and are just jumping on the bandwagon. You obviously don’t understand the profession as well as you think you do because I play Ele and I roflstomp EVERYBODY. I absolutely destroy in PvP AND PvE. All this says to me is that 95% of the game’s population shouldn’t be playing Ele.

I don’t know what you’re doing wrong. I’ve never gotten lower than a gold unless I showed up like 20 seconds from boss down.
And yes, dungeon groups are interesting. You can always change your traits for dungeons. Or you can just make sure you’ve got a good composition.
But honestly, a condition build for Ele IS your most survivable build hands down, or so I’ve found. Mostly because focusing on earth also piles up your toughness and earth has lots of defensive abilities.

Vaerah.4907:

@Pinkerton
Could you please share your build? It looks intriguing.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcszz9coNRTMoNwToGaxa0moccRbV

That’s my build and skill setup for open world PvE
Dungeon builds are really group-dependent and situational.
For PvP, all I do is swap glyph of stoms for lightning flash, glyph of elementals for tornado, and the 10 point air trait for VI which increases damage to foes under 25% health.

I use all 6 superior runes of the undead. I use superior sigil of purity and superior sigil of geomancy. Also, I make sure that I have enough toughness on my gear.

No…you’re kinda wrong. I’ve done those boss fights almost entirely in earth attunement before stacking bleeds (mostly ‘cause I get lazy sometimes) in my build with the 30-50 plus dudes fighting. I always get gold participation. You only really ever get lower participation rewards if you show up right near the end of the fight. Also, remember that the boss isn’t the ONLY thing that you can attack in those events and it’s certainly not the only thing that needs to be attacked in those events.

RizziVanizzi.1532:

Another thing i’ve notice is the ice elemental never seems to heal anyone. Is it indirect regen or is it supposed to actively cast a heal spell on someone?

The heal works kind of like your cleansing wave with dagger offhand…except without the cleanse. Watch for it. You’ll see it.

You can do a condition/power build. That’s what I go for and it kicks butt. in ALL venues. Solo or small groups of people, the conditions stack up and do crazy damage. In larger groups, I can make use of my power and still do lots of damage.
Keep in mind, damage isn’t everything in this game. You can be contributing meaningfully to anything without doing much damage…and I don’t mean JUST by healing.
Also, you should probably not just pick one type of gear. Mix and match depending on what you need in your build. For example, I use 2 rampager, 2 knight, 1 cleric, and 1 carrion.

If what you want to do is support/damage, but mostly support (what I gathered from your post), you would probably feel right at home with a staff or scepter/focus. You might even love daggers either in the off or dual-wielded in a heavy water build. Just remember that the group support role is your purpose as a staff ele. If that’s the route you go, you will always be at your best when backing up allies…not in 1v1.
Those people saying that Ele sucks don’t understand this. They think that they should be able to be invincible in 1v1 fights with absolutely any weapon set for some reason. That’s not how this game works, though. That’s not to say that you will be terrible at 1v1 with a staff. You can definitely do it if you get good with the weapon and attunement swaps, but it will never be your forte. Keep that in mind and you’ll probably love Ele.

This is what I do. Glyph of Elemental is unbeatable for solo PvE. the earth and water attunement ones are invaluable in tough encounters. If I use it in dungeons, I rarely use earth, but the other three are all pretty good. I don’t know what’s going on, but my earth elemental is almost never killed. He pretty much always survives until his time limit is up.
In sPvP, I use Tornado. The launch effect is great. It is probably the most annoying thing for a player to be chased down by a tornado that won’t stop knocking you on yourkitten
Then again, I’m D/D. If I were Staff, or even scepter main, I would probably use fiery gsword. It has great damage and you can give it to an ally who can also use its great damage.
In dungeons, I actually sometimes take avatar of melandru (human racial) because of the awesome support abilities…even if it does have the shortest duration EVER.

WHOA WHOA WHOA!!!!! HOLD ON THERE! 3 useless elements? worthless in PvP? Fire glass cannon? Who in this game is doing a glass cannon build? That’s the WORST idea EVER!!!!
EVERY attunement is incredibly useful. Both fire and earth have the potential to down enemies like you can’t believe. Air is great for mobility boosts, stuns, blinds, single target damage. Water is all about one of the best conditions in the game…CHILL. Not to mention the heals…
PvE, I completely and utterly destroy everything that crosses my path…as long as it’s not a champion. (but seriously, who the hell can solo a champion? Nobody! That’s who!)
I haven’t done much WvW yet, so I can’t authoritatively speak to that, but I am ALWAYS in the top three players in EVERY sPvP match that I play. From the first match that I played. I’m the top player more often than not. I can pretty easily solo those extra mobs on the Forest of Niflhel. I’ve done it tons of times. I have never lost a 1v1 and I can take 4 people down to 50% or lower, downing at least one, BY MYSELF before they, together, can focus me down. And you know what’s crazy? I barely even use fire attunement!!!
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this or how many times I’m going to have to say this, but this game is all about builds and knowing how you need to play in order to make yours effective. Every build can work. Every weapon set can work. Learn your profession, learn your weapon set, learn your build. Trait it properly, gear it properly, play it properly.
If you want to be able to faceroll, go play gsword warrior and set hundred blades as your auto-attack. But that will only get you so far. If you want to play this game like a Guild Wars player instead of a WoW player, then buckle down and learn your profession!

Go heavy fire and Arcane. You can get three stacks on cantrip uses, you can get might from swapping attunements, you can get might from EVERY fire spell, you can put sigils on that give might on attunement swaps and so on. Arcane can help make sure that those stacks of might stay for a long time.
Look at the trait lines and design a build around it. It isn’t too hard.

Yes, we have lower pools than Mesmers. And yes, it’s probably because we have more heals. But we’re not the lowest in the game. That prize goes to Thief. And for good reason.
But we didn’t get screwed. We’ve got good defense abilities, strong offense abilities, heals, AND significant condition potential on EVER weapon set. Pick one and focus your build around it. You’d be surprised at how totally invincible we can be.

OK, guys…you have to get out of the WoW mindset. Not every weapon set of every profession is designed to be viable for 1v1 combat. Staff Ele can do 1v1 if you’re good at it, but that is not, nor was it ever meant to be its strong point. It’s a support weapon set. It excels in 2v2 or 3v3 or more. It’s good for controlling the battlefield to give your allies an advantage while helping them out some with a decent amount of damage when it’s used properly. BUT if you go up in 1v1 against a player with a weapon set that IS especially good at 1v1, then you will not do well. Not if they know how to play the game, because yeah, it’s pretty easy to dodge your ground target AoE attacks when that’s all that the opponent has to worry about. When they have to worry about more than just you, it’s not so easy to avoid. It’s not UP, it’s the way this game works. This game is about working together. It’s not CoD.
Learn your profession, learn your weapon sets, learn your build. Everything has a place. Every profession, every build, every weaponset…learn them and EVERTHING feels OP. Trust me.

You just have to get used to the way that the aiming and targeting works on some skills. Yeah, it’s a little harder to hit someone with lightning whip than with impale, for example, but it’s easily workable and, once you figure it out, you almost never miss.

1. toughness is more important than vitality for non-staff Eles
2. get better at dodging, kiting, and all around avoiding damage (earth and air attunements are the bomb)
3. several of the story quests are very difficult no matter what profession you are. The battle for Claw Island, for example, is tough to do anything but run from objective to objective fighting as little as possible.
4. even so, glyph of storms in earth attunement is your best friend. Get to know it. buy it lunch. You’ll grow to love each other.
5. Oh, and glyph of elementals in earth is awesome, too

Anlyon.8375:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

So when do Eles get the ability to farm as fast and easily as a warrior or guardian and what spec do I need to use?

D/D. Condi Build.
Glyph of Storms in Earth.
Churning Earth.
/dance as mobs die (yes at level 80)

Yes! This guy knows what I’m talking about. Glyph of storms in earth attunement is totally op. It’s basically a perma blind plus damage. Either that or signet of air. AoE blind with damage is great. My normal rotation for taking down tons of baddies is earthquake-signet of air-churning earth-dodge-spam impale and ring of earth while running in circles. Works EVER time. Especially if you use your glyph of elementals and have your earth elemental tank for you. He’s the greatest tank ever.

I stack condi damage and go up the fire tree as well for condition duration, improve my bleed duration with the trait, and I can get 20+ stacks of bleed on a target by myself. Those dudes drop SO fast. Most of the time, I can’t even get that high before they die. I just really like those flying numbers =)

I can see that working, but you need more focus on defensive stats.
As far as gear goes, don’t just pick one type of gear. You should mix and match.
I’m specced for heavy AoE and condition damage. Mostly an earth build. I use 2 rampager, 2 knight, 1 carrion, and one cleric. It’s working out amazingly for me.

The advantage that D/D eles have is mobility. I almost always open combat with RTL, pop my shock aura and Lightning Touch, updraft, swap to either earth or fire, and then either burning speed or Magnetic Grasp and go from there. you can be constantly flying in and out of melee range as a D/D ele and it’s great. Not to mention tons of fun.
And I have to agree with masanbol. D/D has incredibly awesome AoE.
I’m traited for AoE and heavy condition damage. 20/10/30/10/0 (fire/air/earth/water/arcane).
I excel in PvE when I pull at least 3 mobs. I get them close together, and then I blow the crap out of them with Churning earth. Either that, or line them up and hit them with a Drake’s Breath, Fire Grab combo.
In PvP, by myself, I can take 4 enemies to below 50% with at least one of them downed before they can kill me.

Keran Lors.8560:

Also, Ride the lightning is indeed completely broken =( Misses a good 80% of the times.

Don’t know what you guys are doing…mine never misses.

Myndranius.2139:

Can’t believe nobody else has posted this one, it’s one of my biggest annoyances.

The air attunement is considered an attack. It has its own range indicator (little red bar at the bottom when target is out of range), and switching to air attunment will auto-attack anything in range. This is EXTREMELY annoying when I switch to air for a speed buff for the express purpose of travelling from area to area, and it ends up auto-attacking some neutral mob, pulling me into combat and thus actually slowing me down to combat speed.

Note: I’m not referring to the 15-point air trait bonus which adds a lightning attack when switching to air attunement. What I am referring to is simply a bug with switching to air attunement.

yeah…I’ve tested this…it doesn’t happen on my Ele unless you have the 15-point minor trait AND autotarget on.

Yoke.4671:

troll tread is obvious, thief calling the runt of the litter aka the UP class OP

They might not be OP, per se, but they are anything but UP. It’s all about builds and how you play the class. My Ele is level 80 and I steamroll sPvP. Also, I never seem to have any real problems in PvE. I’m playing double daggers with a heavy earth build.
Conversely, when I played Guardian in beta, I actually felt REALLY underpowered.
In my opinion, the issue is that different people have different natural playstyles and there will be a class and weapon set or build that will just naturally jive with how you play games. I think Guardian just takes a more common skill set.
In WoW, for example, I couldn’t stand PvP with any character other than my fury warrior, with whom I totally destroyed in PvP. That was an extremely unpopular PvP spec and everyone said it was underpowered for PvP, but I made it work. Since double dagger Ele, at least, works great for me, I don’t think it will work for most people, as I seem to have a patently uncommon playstyle.

I’ve had no problems with it. The autotarget thing is important. It stops on terrain that would stop you if you were running, which makes sense. The thing that I get annoyed with is Magnetic Pull. Sometimes that will pull me to an enemy, stop, the bar will stop moving, and then I’ll just be stuck in the pull animation for WAY too long not able to do anything until it decides that I’ve been sitting there long enough.

It’s because everyone thinks they’re cool. What’s going to happen, is that everyone will play Ele, get mad because they can’t faceroll, and then end up playing Greatsword Guardian like everyone else and only the good eles will be left, which means like 25% of us. And we’ll destroy all those Guardians because Ele is a totally OP class if you know how to build it.
Honestly, feel free to keep griping about how bad you think Eles are. I wouldn’t mind a buff. It’ll be like when they buffed healing smugglers in TOR because everyone was complaining and then the people who actually knew how to play them were suddenly elevated from good players to completely invincible status.
Seriously, though, I don’t see what you guys are mad about. I’m having absolutely zero problems on my Ele. And I’m dual daggering it, so I’m in peoples’ faces all the time. Soloing all kinds of stuff in PvE without issues, absolutely destroying in PvP…Builds, people, it’s all about builds and knowing how to play to them.

You guys, this game is about builds. If your elementalist can’t do much, it’s because you haven’t set it up properly.
Your healing isn’t supposed to be amazing unless you spec heavily into it
Your air give GREAT damage. heavy air is all about stacking heavy power/prec and knowing how to avoid damage.
Earth damage is totally OP if you set it up right and know how to use your bleeds
Fire has great damage, yes, but you have to know how to avoid attacks

Finally, you are NEVER supposed to stay in one attunement. If you stay in one, yes, you will be terrible.

I’ve never had a problem with PvE. My friend is always going crazy trying to figure out how my elementalist can solo so much PvE content without a problem.
A couple days ago, I tried sPvP for the first time and I was the top player in the match 60% of the time and in the top three the rest of the time. I could run into groups of 4 opponents and get them all down at least to half health and downing at least one of them before they could kill me, giving my team enough time to show up and clean house.
The trick is in building properly. Just like GW1. If somebody didn’t know how to build their character/heroes in GW1, they did terribly. If they did know, then they could solo nearly any content.
Toughness is key if you’re running daggers.
Healing power is a big one for staff. Even if you’re not going heavy water!
I’m not super familiar with scepter or focus since I don’t use them, but I’m certain there are certain things to keep in mind with building for those weapons as well.

The most important thing to know with Ele is what the advantages of each attunement are and swapping properly at the right times.