Guild Wars 2

Just dandy and quite fun. I go power/vit/tough or cleric’s if I D/D for up close survivability, and I have at least two cantrips.

Dude, you can’t hide his identity. It’s obvious who it is: 12-year-old with mommy’s credit card. Don’t fret. Don’t even let it worry you. People who have “power” and then lose it go quite insane.

Oh, and I’m effective from multiple ranges; no weapon swap needed.

I’ve been play-testing a S/F build after some initial frustrations with it. I have had enormous success with my new build in dungeons, including fractals. I used to hate the focus, and I still think fire and water need a revisit, fire in particular. That said, this build deviates quite a bit from conventional Ele wisdom.

This is a support build with some bite. It does not require a ton of attunement dancing.

Before I go any further. This has only been tested in PvE / Dungeons and in some very limited cases, Wv3.

Weapons:
Scepter (Superior sigil of fire)
Focus (superior sigil of accuracy).

Armor:
Glass Cannon
Full bezerker’s w/ ruby orbs, accessories, full ruby orich.

That’s right, I glass cannon in dungeons, and no I don’t spend the whole time on my butt. In fact, I go entire dungeons without even being downed once. The focus provides great defense, so you can be more flexible in the stats you choose.

Traits:
20 fire
Take the 30% burn on crit
and
CONJURED WEAPONS! (yeah, I’ll explain later).

Air 30
Take
Reduced recharge on glyphs
Bolt to the heart (20% dmg past certain health. You can also take the one where you get more endurance when you channel if you want buffs from arcane)
Aeromancer’s alacrity (20% cooldown on air spells – will explain later)

Earth – none

Water – 10
Take cleansing wave

Arcane – 10
I know most want the attunement swap buff but,
Take Renewing Stamina, 33% chance vigor on crit, unless you changed your air as cited above.

Utilities:
Lightning Hammer
Cantrip of your choice. I go cleansing on this one.
Glyph of Storms, Signet Air, or Radiation field (asura), or Frost Bow. I’d mess with the glyph of elemental attunement if it procc’d more.

Elite:
Fiery Greatsword.

Play style. This is still in the alpha/beta phase, no real “rotation,” but what I’ve done so far works really well.

I try to keep blind up as much as possible. Between the storm, the 8 recharge blind spell in air (w/ reduced cooldown), the hammer spam and signet air if I took it, I dramatically reduce incoming damage while still dishing out damage of my own.

I spend most of my time in air, spamming 1,2,3. I do fun damage, especially with all the crits. While I’m critting, I’m AOE bursting, doing burning damage, and gaining vigor. I’ve had up to 45 seconds of vigor built up. With all of that vigor, I can dodge like a mofo.

Large group of mobs? Go lightning hammer and w/ 25 charges (encourage a friend for even more fun, just have them stagger their hit off yours), you get mad aoe damage w/ aoe blinds. Not enough blinds? Drop glyph of storms in earth first or use signet air. Need more control/support as an asura? Drop radiation field and beat the mobs in it with your hammer. Blind, weakness, poison. Damage w/ crits? One attack chain has done 7-8k damage, while doing the blinds. And I’m just hitting the #1 button. I can keep doing it, over and over, and over. Hammer is just awesome. 5 then 2 for a free daze. 3 for a knockback. Herd your mobs together then go back to spamming 1. Use 5 to escape if you need to.

Things getting worse? Drop the FGS. #5 the mob. Then #3 cripple through them. Then DESELECT TARGET and #4 run through the now crippled mob. Then auto attack the one in the middle of the pack. Holy numbers… Holy, holy numbers. Get a friend to do the same with your other sword…. It’s like the second coming of Jesus.

Don’t be stingy with your weapons. With 25 charges, each of these is a beast, especially used at the same time.

Getting spanked? Save that cantrip! Use your earth 4 and 5 to send back the pain or ignore it. Use air 5 to knock down pesky baddies and air 4 to provide your entire team (if they’re smart enough to take it) 6 full seconds of projectile-free living. Not enough? Switch to water and chill them or daze them a little.

Overall tactic. Hang back, dealing damage from max range. Flip out your weapons when it gets tough. Drop them and go defense when things get ugly. Dodge like a ninja because you won’t have to worry about endurance any more.

This build is extremely flexible. It is fun. It provides a ton of team support. It doesn’t involve staff or EA. It let’s you glass cannon in a dungeon, provided you’re not just dialing it in.

I’ll work on a better guide than this, maybe w/ some video, but I’m loving it. I have no desire to even go back to my beloved D/D.

I spend most of my time in dungeons.

I still find a 0/10/10/30/20 D/D aura build is good.
I use full set svanir’s power/vit/tough

I’m also using a 20/20/0/10/20 staff build (using some conjures) is good in dungeons.
I go full bezerker’s/ruby and do fine in the back row.

Your post, translated:

Dear Bambi,

Killing your mom was such a breeze back in the day, but now killing other deer is difficult due to new gun control laws. Can you offer any suggestions? I need my 55th rack up on my wall.

Tks!

Joking aside, Thieves are the natural and hated enemy of Elementalists. Good luck getting help or sympathy.

If someone can test this out: do bonuses apply if a new person picks up the second, dropped weapon?

Bonus appears with the weapon you first conjure. Use up all charges and lose or drop and they go away (as intended). Pick up other weapon from the ground, and no bonus is granted.

Bonus only works with initial weapon, not the other one you pick up.

These two, like other conjures, are skills I want to like, want to use.

Lightning hammer is going to be easier overall. Spam one for aoe dmg and blinds. This is good stuff. Put down a lightning aura and use the jump attack for a stun. Fantastic. Knock annoying players on their butt. Woot. Lightning strike…..crickets chirp Hey, it can’t all be gold.

That said, I still like earth shield more. I tend to favor the underdog.

Auto attack = useless.

Cripple = near useless without a buff to cripple time or big reduction in CD.

3 and 4 are awesome. Even if you cast them and drop the shield, you’ve added something unique to your rotation. These alone make it worth it to me.

5 = I like it but I don’t like being rooted.

Could be fun to use while other stuff is on cooldown. It just isn’t worth having out as much like the lightning hammer.

Hammer is the overall winner, but I see shield having a lot of “just saved my rear end” moments if played properly. I’m still experimenting with this one myself.

All that said, my problem is that I look at conjures and look at another cantrip or arcane and go…………

Facepunch,

I think there are two camps of the “ele needs fix” crowd, and the two camps are worth distinguishing.

Camp One (where I fall):

- Fix obvious things like self-cc RTL and the Earth Grab spell. Self-cc is just silly.

- Revisit / Repair / reimagine borked traits (Cleansing Flame, Lingering Elements, Vigorous Scepter, Windborne Dagger, on and on and on…) and traits that run contrary to attunement swapping. They don’t need to be OP, they should just, you know, do something. Make it hard for me to choose which flavor of awesomesauce I want on my ice cream. Right now there might be 57 flavors, but too many of them are flavors like “Dung Beetle.”

-Have consistency in abilities like auras in different attunements.

-Update tooltips so that they are accurate (Healing Rain..supposed to be 4 seconds or 9? )…..

- Speed up animation times and targeting issues.

These kinds of fixes. This is your crowd that probably gets it but is frustrated by having skills/traits that are never worth picking and using.

+ perhaps a little more HP (debatable).

Camp Two: Everything listed above + way more damage +the HP + burst / etc. = Godmode plz. This is your L2P crowd.

With perhaps the exception of the boost in HP, I find it hard to believe that anyone could complain with players asking for bug fixes (camp one).

If fixing bugs and tweaking nothing else makes us Godmode, that’s pretty messed up.

On a side note, anyone else feel like the animation times were meant to mitigate big damage that is no longer there? Dragon’s Tooth = ouch, but if it hangs long enough; no one can complain if they do get hit. Eruption/Churning Earth, same thing. Meteor Shower = could be awesome, but long load time and no splash so it won’t actually hit much.

I didn’t play beta. I hear damage was higher. Seems they nerfed the damage but didn’t fix the cast times / splash radius to put things back in line. I would love to see meteor shower consistently hitting even if it was for smaller numbers vs. now: Cast meteor shower, watch auto attack hit more often on same mob. Cry. Right now frost bow #4 is more reliable.

Fix, don’t godmode. Fix!

How about this: Leave out the trolls or the defenses…comment if you ever use this skill regularly or if you wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. If you do use it, tell how us how often you use it, when you use it, and why you’d use it over any of the other utilities. Give fellow Eles some strats or give A-Net some “metrics.”

Sample post / my response:

I never use it.

Dark, I’m not going to flame/troll on you like a lot of people are going to, if this thread gets any attention at all. You are in the minority regarding Ele balance/survivability.

Assume that all complaints about underpower for Ele / survivability for Ele being low will necessarily include PvP. I think people get more upset dying to another human player when they perceive that loss to be a direct result of class imbalance, not skill imbalance. These will be the people who are most hostile toward you as they experience the most frustration, trying to do Ele in sPvP.

Weapon X’s sarcasm aside, his point is valid: Having a film would help your cause.

Both parties of this debate (UP vs just fine) are right. Many people do need to L2P, but many skills/animations/stats do need to be buffed, fixed, sped up, etc.

Oh, and btw, I’d love for air staff to be the “single target” element with better high-dmg one-target attacks. No more chain lightning. We already have fireball to do aoe on auto attack.

Leeach.3547:

Staff is god in www. I love to watch while my Meteor shower rain down on the enemy with 83% crit and 98% crit damage ). You will get criticals in the 4300-6800 range and 66% chance to steal life on Critical hit food will give you a fair bit of survivability. If the staff where good 1vs1 it would be VERY OP. Air one is your best option for 1vs1 and really good vs. Mesmers and Rangers.

Seafarer’s Rest – Aeoon

Out of curiosity, how does one achieve that 83% / 98% dmg?

I have full exotic bezerkers w/ rubies in each, full exotic ruby accessories, and a power/prec/%crit dmg staff. Is your power low? I’m in the 50% percent range for crit chance (w/out fury of course).

Edit: spelling.

Air gives a wide area of effect, little actual contact with enemies (damage), and the least amount of active time, BUT it looks cool, right?

TheWarKeeper.5374:

PlatypusRex.3428:

Fiery Greatsword is fun. It controls the battlefield, period. Have you seen how much cripple it can stack? The damage is good and while I’m not sure if it is intended or not, even the auto attack hits multiple tight-knit mobs. Let a friend pick up your other sword and your entire group can kite melee mobs with absolute ease.

I use GS when I staff to switch to high single-target DPS and/or to handle large mobs that my group needs to kite to survive.

That said, I’ll always take a buff, especially in range. I’m also not wild about #4 run skill. The #5 is ok, I suppose.

Tornado is blah

Elementals are both boring and barely effective.

Ty for your comment, this clearly states dungeons and not WvW :P

Lolz. “Battleground” is metaphor for any combat area. Any large group of mobs will be very well contained with the massive amount of cripple. Cripple time is long-lasting, area of effect is huge. You get in, cripple, and get out quickly.

My comments were meant for PvE setting (especially dungeons).

Fiery Greatsword is fun. It controls the battlefield, period. Have you seen how much cripple it can stack? The damage is good and while I’m not sure if it is intended or not, even the auto attack hits multiple tight-knit mobs. Let a friend pick up your other sword and your entire group can kite melee mobs with absolute ease.

I use GS when I staff to switch to high single-target DPS and/or to handle large mobs that my group needs to kite to survive.

That said, I’ll always take a buff, especially in range. I’m also not wild about #4 run skill. The #5 is ok, I suppose.

Tornado is blah

Elementals are both boring and barely effective.

Edit:

Ok.

Acalonian vs. Svanir’s?

Boon Duration vs. More Vitality and Chill increase…

arg!

What set has power/tough/vit?

I see your point. Between 30 arcane, Eruption and burning, I didn’t know if it tipped the balance in condition dmg’s favor in longer fights.

I enjoy support role w/ staff in dungeons. I’m currently using a full set of CoF. In dungeons though, do you get more bang for your buck speccing in condition damage? I still want to focus on timed chill/cripples, heals when appropriate, etc, but I don’t want to lose out on damage entirely.

That said…

Carrion?
Rampager’s?
Other?

Thanks. Checking stuff out now.

Recommendations? I have full CoF gear right now (but full cleric’s accessories for balance). Not sure if I should be stacking more power or adding con dmg, or…what? Love to hear your thoughts.

Add me. I play early (5am EST) and evenings (7-10ish EST). I haven’t found a single person, let alone a full group to do even one CoE group.

I’m having the same problem. I can’t get a single person to want to do CoE. Is it cursed? Too hard? I imagine some of it is due to Mad King taking up everyone’s time, but I can’t even get my story mode done on it yet, let alone save up for some weapon skins.

Hi,

Vet D/D. Love it, but always trying something new.
Finally seeing some good results with staff.
This brought me to Scepter/Focus.

I have tried different traits / strategies, but I’m having problem making sweet music with that weapon combo like D/D. Any suggestions? D/D feels like a set. It works off each other. S/F feels like 20 isolated skills with no real synergy.

I know that I can firewall / tooth / phoenix, but everything after that is just…well…skills. Some focus stuff is great, but too much of it is lame. Scepter has its weaknesses too, but I like the range/feel of some skills.

I love scepter air, but wish it was much stronger.

Anyone really feeling confident / successful with S/F? If so, please share build/strategies.

Thanks!

I still freeze in mid air about 50% of the time for a self CC.

Weapons in general need a revisit.

Internal CDs (weapon skills) + External CDs (the whole weapon) + Charges seems like an attempt to limit every possibility of every weapon.

External CD = so we’re not engineers, can’t switch to a new kit when necessary. We already have four attunements. This makes us use and lose it quickly.

Internal CD = so we can’t spam something like Bow 4 or GS 5

Charges = so we can’t spam hammer 1.

Unfortunately this implementation, which individually is meant to limit use of individual skills for different reasons, has been applied to every weapon skill. This is one reason, the other being lackluster damage in general, is why weapons are underutilized. I keep trying to come up with builds that would benefit from them, but they seem like too much wasted space.

I make this suggestion with NO regard to having to rebalance things. I get that you could basically get the best of all worlds regarding your builds…but…awesome?

What if you could assign a weapon to your element so that when you attunement swapped to that element, it would weapon swap to the set of your choice too.

Example:

Assign water to dagger/dagger
Assign air to scepter/focus
Assign earth to scepter/dagger
Assign fire to staff

I’d use focus more for earth and some air, but it’s so bad in fire and water.
I like some water staff stuff, but air staff is terrible.

The major complaint seems to be that weapon sets lock you into a specific range/role (too much aoe, not enough single-target, too melee-oriented, blah blah, etc).

My suggestion allows you to:

- spec all close, mixed, or ranged as you see fit (much like other professions).
- have more freedom over the kind of build you’re trying to put together

Don’t like that?

Other suggestion: swap some of the skills around to different weapons or just out-right change them so that the ele has options. Put lava front on dagger and drakes breath on staff for example. I’m too tired to give a better example, but I hope you catch my drift. Or, make staff air 1 more like scepter 1, but does bigger dmg all at once (single target, big dmg).

As with any change, balance will be an issue. Biggest for us would be building around all knockdown/stuns, etc. in a PvP environment.

BTW: I feel that on my primary build, D/D, I’m good to go in 95% of situations and don’t really feel like I’m lacking. I do feel a bit naked 1v1 on staff, but I don’t use staff that much. I’m not a huge fan of PvE scepter either, but I think that’s more personal style. I’m not calling for my suggestion to be implemented, just throwing it out there for analysis. I’d love to get some more use out of that darn focus!

TL;DR:

Allow us to assign weapons to different attunements OR

Move some skills around to give different ranges on any weapon set OR

Outright change some skills on each weapon to provide that range and target diversity.

Not complaining, I like where my ele is at, just an idea.

Overall I am happy, particularly in PvE. PvP is more difficult; I was very frustrated at first, but I’m coming around. As long as all three of my utilities are cantrips, I can do pretty well.

I want my bugs fixed. Same mantra all over these forums: animations take too long, especially considering the damage output; some skills are just plain lame, not worth using, etc. Traits don’t play well with each other, or don’t encourage core mechanic of elemental attunement changes, blah blah.

That said, elementalist provides one very important element critical to a happy gamer: challenge. When I D/D I feel like I am fully engaged. If I get lazy or distracted, I could die. This is a good thing. Gameplay is fast, action-packed, and exciting. Especially as an Asuran I feel like love child of Emperor Palpatine and Yoda, flipping around everywhere and using lightning/etc.

I have 4 alts, all around the 20s. They are boring (Memser holds some promise). So, so boring. Made a ranger, deleted him. Guardian, I feel like I’m just phoning it in.

For me playing other classes is like being a rockstar and suddenly being demoted to playing a recorder with 2nd graders. Hideous.

Staff feels very slow / unwieldy to me. It’s fine if I want to support a group with fields, but overall D/D is where it’s at.

1. I’m not losing to a majority. Most one-on-one encounters I’m ok, but certain classes seem almost impossible to counter. Sigh, I guess I’m getting tired of being bumrushed by 4 thieves on one team. I am using cleric’s or divinity’s gear.

2. I’ve tried staff, D/D Auramancer primarily. I usually do 0/10/0/30/30 w/ focus on cantrips, I usually have Mist, Flash, ArmorEarth (sometimes wave). I’ve tried a 20/10/10/X build for more individual auras too.

3. Now that I’ve had some time to process, I think I was really more upset by my team not performing well. I find that a lot of times I’m the only one guarding a point, especially when it is prudent to do so. That’s when that lone thief comes up and spanks the crap out of me.

Amazing,

Just writing let me vent. Back into the mists to try the focus because, hey, why not?

I just deleted yet another “ele needs balance/help” thread I started to write because I realized that the only two responses I will get are “we fell ya, bro” and “L2P you kitten nub.”

I know we need to wait. I know, I know, I know….

It’s just so darn frustrating to lose in PvP when there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s lame to know that the loss has more to do with inherent advantages/disadvantages than player ability. Maybe I’ll try thief and I too can experience the joy of 7000-9000 damage hits.

I actually turned the game off tonight because I was so frustrated. It was the first time. That’s all I really wanted to say. I’ll try again tomorrow. My fear is that if I keep feeling like this, I’ll end up wandering off to get my fix from another title where I feel like my planning and skill have a real bearing on the outcome.

If you’re warming up your trollish little fingers to fire off a L2P response, just don’t. I’m venting. Keep your leetness to yourself, please.

I’m not crying nerf/buff. Anet can figure that out. I know we need to wait. I know, I know, I know. I just don’t know how much longer I’m willing to wait.

/yellingintotheether.

I would think that D/D would always outdamage staff. Of course D/D makes you fight like Yoda (which I personally love), so you may not live to deal your damage, but such is glass cannon.

I always want to use and like the focus, but I am hopeless adicted to my off-hand dagger. I almost wish I could main-hand a focus and off-hand a dagger.

I find the focus’ fire skills to be terrible, water is blah at best, but air and earth are fantastic. On the other hand, the off-hand dagger skills are awesome for all four traits.

Looked awesome. Have you tried in actual PvP? What happens if RtL misbehaves and you mess up the burst?

It’s all good. The more attention we draw to bugs, the better. Squish them all!

Zepher’s Boon: Not sure if bug or intended, but different auras provided different boon durations. Shocking aura gives me 13 (30 arcane, so 10 sec base) sec. of swiftness and fury, whereas frost aura gives between 6 (4-5 base, again arcane bonus). Same with fire auras. Not sure if shocking is too high or the rest are too low. (Hope the rest are too low).

Zepher’s Focus: 100% endurance buff is in effect only while channeling skills. That seems to fit the description, but oddly if you mouse over the effect that pops up while you are channeling, it shows a duration of 8-9 seconds which will far exceed the channel time of your spell (say Drake’s Breath).

HOWEVER: Using Cone of Cold will allow Zepher’s Focus effect to last the full duration displayed for other skills, and will not shut off when the spell finishes channeling. The effect can be cut off early by by switching to another channeling spell and using it, causing the effect to end on the end of the channel. This is not just a visual effect, the regen is still in effect. Not sure if all of them should last the full time or if all should be shutting off the second you stop channeling.

Zepher’s Boon and Vigorous Scepter do not seem to stack. Previous comments mentioned speed bonuses not working correctly either. Not sure if this is working as intended or a bug, but it seems that with everything in GW2, nothing stacks, it just takes the highest number.

Powerful Auras
1/2 times, auras do not display on friendly targets, making you unsure whether or not they have been applied. It appears that they are fairly regularly applying to those within range, as when I click on my friends I can see the effects. This would appear to largely be a visual bug.

Burning Fire

Tooltip is incorrect and frankly effects don’t seem to do anything. Cleansing Flame (sic) ((Fire?)), Signet of Fire already do fire damage…How is this helpful? Does it ADD an additional 3 sec of fire damage?

Zepher’s boon grants full, described benefit when using shocking aura, but a drastically reduced duration when using frost aura. 3ish seconds instead.

Not sure if this is intended or not, but different traits that regen your dodge roll energy don’t stack. Example: zepher’s focus and vigorous scepter.

Amen on the funky ride lightning, meteor shower not hitting enough or being clear enough about how long I actually have to stand there channelling it, and the requests for heal buffs.

Please up water damage.

Underwater combat is so pathetic, I can’t even take on one regular risen mob unless I’m ready for a five minute fight. Meanwhile on land I can take on. Three to five.

Focus needs love. Fire in particular as noted.

Aoe range for heals like the heal blast finishers needs to be increased.

Staff:
Fire is good other than ms hit frequency.

Water: up damage on one and/or increase heal radius/amounts healed
Decrease animation on two
Increase geyser size
Increase healing rain time and or reduce cd

Air:
Gust only seems to hit one target for me. Bad luck or glitch or working as intended?
Static field needs to trigger if you cast it on mobs, not just if they pass through it.

Earth:
Eruption time drastically reduced.