Guild Wars 2

Look at the water and air spells with staff… they are all very good for support, mostly in groups or for WvW

Its the hardest but I think most rewarding way to play a Ele, it requires as stated above, a lot of moving around, a lot of attunement swapping, and if you spend your trait points in conjunction with how you build your gear set, it can be very powerful while also offering decent survivability.

I’m not 100% sold on it yet for WvW and being better than staff overall… its definitely better for damage (staff fire damage isn’t great for WvW except for huge fights where enemies dont notice aoe damage as much) but the utility in the staff line within air and water is unmatched I think by any class.

Just wanted to get together some player discussion on what strategies people are using in either PvP, WvW, or PvE with the Elementalist that can help the rest of the people playing the class. What is working for everyone, and what isn’t?

Currently for me, for PvE, I am using double daggers. I have been spending a lot of trait point’s in fire to up my damage, but also have been gearing more towards vitality and toughness for survivability. Typically I open a fight with the fire slide ability, it creates a nice aoe explosion at the end… then I use fire ring, the fire cone, then the #5 ability that does a crap load of damage to any enemy on fire. If there is still anything left alive, I switch to water, drop down an ice patch and run out of range, by then 4 of my 5 skills in fire are available again, rinse and repeat.

For my selectable skills, and I’m not extremely high level yet… so far I have liked taking the signets, the passive effects are nice, and effect you all the time, and their active effects are pretty nice for single targets typically. Also, while I learn the character it makes it simpler to not have 10 active abilities to cycle through to get a benefit out of all skill slots, atleast the passives work for me all the time.

For WvW, the same strategy can work… but I also like the staff for support when I play with my guildies, there are a lot of blind/stun abilities, water has 2 good aoe healing abilities, and a vulnerability causing condition that really helps your damage dealers rack in damage, and then your fire abilities are GTAOE, so you can cast them from a safer distance. Those skill’s really seem to help keep my group alive, and if my placement is good, can easily win us the battle.

I think anet has done a GREAT job with this game, including the WvW play, but I think for long term sustainability, they can do a couple simple things, that sticks within their stance of not rewarding players for long times invested in WvW that gives them an advantage in battle.

1) A ranking system on their web page and in-game. Competitive players keep score, and thats what they really care about more than anything else, and getting that recognition of being good. I would like to see statistics including, but not limited to… (possibly monthly, quarterly, and lifetime)

a)Kill total
b)Kill / Death ratio
c)Damage total
d)Healing total
e)Conditions placed total
f)Objectives completed total

and also per guild as well

2)Guild claimed objectives that display your guilds banner, and the guards wear gear representing your guild. Your guild gets an alert to guild chat (or on screen) whenever your objective is being attacked

3)More pronounced visual rewards, especially in regards to title… there needs to be a hierarchy of ranks that is vast (see DAOC, 10 realm ranks, 10 sub ranks within each if I remember correctly) and for that rank to be displayed above that enemy character. These ranks do not need to provide any reward (atleast not one directly related to gameplay / character stats) but will help distinguish the elite players on the battlefield…

Those are 3 things I think fit within Anets vision for WvW, that would make those of us that are competitive a little more driven to play day to day, and at the same time, should appease those that like the current no-reward system to WvW play, as there is still no direct reward.

I’m sorry but I rofl’ed at just the title of this…

I’m no warrior expert but some basic tips would be to find a solid skill rotation of damage/ support that works for you, try out different weapons tower what you like best, and know that those fights aren’t supposed to be a Cakewalk, if your just barley dying, then you only need to tweak a few things.

In terms of leveling, I’ve found world events give the biggest jump in XP, especially if you take attacks that damage numerous enemies. Also if you don’t already, as you go zone to zone, get every waypoint and do every quest, they give decent bumps to XP and are generally located near the world events.

I’m only 20, so I’m not extremely far yet… I used staff for a while, but all the grape was too situational for me.

With double daggers I open with that fire rush ability, then I cast the fire ring, the fire cone, then that powerful #5 ability that does ridiculous damage to anything that is on fire. All of that is aoe damage, so if you line it all up right, everything is dead in 5 seconds for the most part.

I haven’t seen any classes really outdamage me yet, but so far I really solo a lot.

Sorry I think you got this game mixed up with WoW

You need to explore the classes and their skills more. My elementalist can demolish 6+ equal level enemies at once solo, and easily racks in a ton of damage in groups or during events with my double dagger fire build

Lol @ jay wilson

Anyone agree or disagree?

Yes seriously Ian not powerful enough, I can only burst down 6 enemies 2 levels higher than me in 5 seconds with my double dagger fire build. It needs to be atleast 3 seconds… unacceptable!

I love guildwars system of gearing and pvp with no advantage creating rewards, but I really think they have a chance to expand on that even more.

A comprehensive and large ranking system posted in game and online. Tracking all wvw and pvp stats from kills, deaths, damage, healing, objectives won or lost, etc by class, and even tracking by guild.

I agree competition is and should be the main reason to pvp, but real competitive people love keeping score. I would like to see where I rank in my server for certain things, and where my guild ranks in terms of how much we are contributing as a whole. It helps one know how good they are, and to track improvement, whether it be weekly, monthly, or over the life of the character.

Also I would love to see player rankings easily visible on the battlefield through the gear rewards, and signified by a title over a players name, or when you click on them, that way I know what level of opponent I’m facing, and for people to see how good I am.

Nah I’m questing while I wait, its literally 2 hours cause I will queue up right when I get on at 10pm, and either ill get in at like 1130pm, or not at all as I usually get off around 12am

Anyone else think they are ridiculous at night? I typically only have a couple hours to play, and I just end up in the queue for those couple hours and never get to play it…

Anet, any plans to increase capacity anytime soon? Anyone else experiencing this?

I feel like they should allow basic changes in appearance like hair, adding tattoos, realistic things like that

Often times having a master of 1 trade is better than a jack of all trades, just fits together better in group play.

Anyone know when we will see more forums open up, and what will they be?

I was hoping to see a general, pve, pvp, wvw, each class, and crafting and trading forums at a minimum.

I would like to weigh in as a DAOC player of 5 years and a online gamer for over 15 years now, and ill preface by saying I loved rewards for pvp.

1) DAOC always had realm abilities, and having the right classes with the right abilities allowed for a group of 8 to wipe an army of 100 pre TOA (I know I Rankin those groups as a pbaoe spiritmaster)

2) if you spent any amount if time playing most first person shooters, you played countless hours to try and increase your k/d ratio and for fun, noreaard.

3) This is what the whole basis of the game is about, it will not change so no point in trying.

4) if you run in a good group of skilled players and you work on working as a group, you will dominate similar number groups, and beat groups much larger. Your reward is you got better

5) I now have a ft job, wife, and 2 kids, I can’t keep up with highschoolers that can play as much in 1 day as I do in a week, this system is much more fair.

6) there are server rewards for wvw, so there is a rewards system in place

7) as a non-gameplay effecting reward I would like to see not only ranks, but a way for those ranks to be easily known by surrounding players, maybe animations rewarded like some cool taunts, and a ranking system like daox had where either in game or on the website you can see who has the most kills, kills per death, damage dome, healing done, etc… give the best of the best their spotlight, they deserve it.

8) gear grinds suck, look at Diablo 3 right now. I do believe there needs to be a variety of gear available, but it shouldn’t be required to farm for hundreds of hours, and give.overwhelming advantages

9) there are more ways to be rewarded other than gear and abilities, I mentioned a few, be creative and come up with something.

I disagree with den and pmiles, I think the intent of the game was that every character CAN do everything, not that your supposed to or are forced to.

If someone wants to play their character in a more support type of way, which isn’t JUST healing but can also include causing negative effects to monsters or removing effects from your team mates. All of that should be awarded with XP and loot in some manor.

Currently as my elementalist, I would much rather use fire and blast away, then drop a heal on a fellow player that could use some help, or help a downed player while a battle is still going on.

Depending on the encounter you are right, I typically just try to stack them all on top of each other at my location and hope it kills the enemy before me, yet it is great during world events or in decent groups.

I feel like you should be able (for some of them) to target the enemy and the effect follows them, say like meteor shower. I switched to double daggers, less grape so more damage

I bought mine digitally from Best Buy, they still have plenty of digital copies available. Once you purchase it it takes about 24 hours for the game to be able to be downloaded